The map of Russia was spread across his desk like a death shroud.
Petrograd was a black heart at its center, a vortex of streets and canals designed to swallow him whole. Jake traced a potential smuggling route with his finger, a thin, desperate line through enemy territory.
He was planning his own funeral. The odds of survival were so low they were a rounding error. This fatalistic clarity made him reckless. It burned away the trivialities of command, of strategy, of fear.
All that was left was regret.
Kato entered the office, her footsteps silent. She placed a single sheet of paper on his desk. Sofia's report.
He didn't look at it. He looked at her.
"What did you mean?" he asked, his voice low and rough. "Earlier. In the archives."
She stood perfectly still, her professional mask sliding back into place. "It was a figure of speech, Koba. Nothing more."
"No," he said, shaking his head slowly. "It wasn't. You asked if I liked how our chapter ends."
He stood up, the chair scraping against the floorboards. He walked around the desk, closing the distance between them until they were only an arm's length apart. The air crackled with a tension that had been building for months.
"Are you with me in this book, Kato?" he demanded, his voice raw with an emotion he hadn't let himself feel in an age. "Or are you just reading over my shoulder, waiting for the final page?"
Her composure finally fractured. A flicker of anger, of pain, crossed her features. "What do you want me to say?"
"The truth!" he shot back, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I am walking into hell for this kingdom. This place we built. I need to know..."
His voice dropped, the anger replaced by a desperate, pleading exhaustion. "I need to know if my queen will hold the throne, or if she'll sell it the moment my back is turned."
The word hung in the air between them. Queen.
It was an accusation. A prayer. An admission of everything he couldn't say.
It broke her.
"What throne?" she cried, her voice suddenly sharp and full of a terrible, ragged grief. A file slipped from her hand, scattering papers across the floor. "There is no throne, Koba! There is only this room, this city, this prison!"
She took a step towards him, her eyes blazing with a fire he hadn't seen since the days before Vologda.
"You burned my world to the ground to build this... this fortress of ghosts," she said, her voice trembling with the force of her words. "You took my life, my love, my future, and you forged them into a key for this cage."
Tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She was not weak. She was wounded.
"So don't you dare ask about my loyalty. Don't you dare ask where I stand."
Her voice broke on the final, whispered words. "Where else would I go? This is all that's left of us."
Us.
The word shattered the last of his defenses. In that moment, she wasn't his spymaster. He wasn't her commander. They were just two people, trapped together in a history they were bleeding to create.
He reached out, his hand shaking slightly, and gently touched her cheek.
The touch was electric. A current of shared grief, of unspoken pain, of a love that had been buried alive, passed between them. Her skin was cool, and for a second, he saw her lean into his touch, her eyes fluttering closed.
It was a fragile truce in a long and bitter war. A single, perfect moment of connection in the heart of the storm.
And then the door burst open.
Pavel stood there, his face ashen, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. He ignored the scattered papers, ignored the charged intimacy of the scene, his eyes locked on Jake.
"Koba," he choked out. "It's Sofia."
Jake's hand dropped from Kato's face. The warmth vanished, replaced by a sudden, biting cold.
"What about her?" he asked, his voice instantly hardening back into the commander's tone. "The Okhrana?"
Pavel shook his head frantically, his eyes wide with panic. "No. Not them. A witness saw it. She went out for a walk an hour ago, by the canals. She never came back."
He took a ragged breath.
"A black motorcar. No markings. Men who moved like soldiers, not secret police. They took her."
Jake stared at Pavel, but he didn't see him. He saw a rooftop. A rifle scope. A rival spymaster with cold, intelligent eyes who had chosen not to shoot.
It wasn't the Russians.
Stern.
The hunter had stopped watching. He had taken one of Jake's pieces right off the board.
Pavel was hyperventilating, his face slick with a cold sweat. Kato stood frozen, a pale, porcelain statue whose eyes were locked on Jake.
Jake's mind was a white-hot storm. Calculations, probabilities, and one single, repeating thought.
He knew. He was watching me. This was a direct message.
"We have to do something!" Pavel finally exploded, the words tearing from his throat. He lunged forward, grabbing the front of Jake's coat. "Now, Koba! We have to find her!"
His knuckles were white, his eyes wild with a cocktail of terror and guilt.
"We sent her into the fire! I did this!" he choked out, the memory of that Parisian cafe twisting in his gut. "You can't just stand there making calculations. She is one of ours!"
Jake didn't move. He let Pavel hold him, his own body rigid as iron. His gaze was distant, seeing not the panicked man in front of him, but the cold, smiling face of his true enemy.
"Let go of me, Pavel," he said, his voice dangerously quiet.
"No! Not until you listen! Her life is on the line!"
Jake's hands shot up and grabbed Pavel's shoulders. He shoved him back, hard, sending him stumbling against the map table. Papers rustled to the floor.
"And what do you propose we do?" Jake snarled, stepping into Pavel's space, his voice a low, menacing growl. "Storm the streets? Kick in every door? Announce our presence to the entire city?"
He poked a finger into Pavel's chest. "This is what he wants! For us to panic. To get emotional. To run blindly into a trap he has already set."
Pavel stared at him, his mouth agape. He saw no empathy in Jake's eyes. Only ice.
"She is a soldier, Pavel!" Jake's voice was brutal, cutting. "And soldiers get captured! That is the risk. That is the job we gave her."
He leaned in closer, his whisper more terrifying than a shout. "Do you want to honor her sacrifice by getting us all killed? Or will you control yourself and let me think?"
Before Pavel could answer, the door opened. Murat stood there, his massive frame filling the doorway. He held a small, grubby envelope in his hand.
"A boy delivered this," Murat grunted. "Said it was for the Warlock."
Jake snatched the envelope. His fingers didn't tremble as he tore it open. He pulled out a single sheet of cheap, flimsy paper.
The writing was neat. Precise. Four simple words.
The Professor for the Girl.
Below them was an address and a time. Midnight. Tomorrow.
A wave of nausea hit Jake so hard he almost staggered. It wasn't about him. It wasn't about revenge or money.
It was a strategic decapitation strike. Stern had correctly identified Ipatieff as the brain, the nuclear weapon at the heart of their entire operation.
He wanted Jake to trade his most valuable asset for a single, captured agent.
The room was utterly silent. Even Pavel was speechless, the horror of the demand silencing his grief. He understood. They all understood.
Giving up Ipatieff would gut their kingdom. It would render their German funding useless, turning them into just another gang of radicals. Refusing meant leaving Sofia to die.
Pavel looked at Jake, his eyes pleading. He was no strategist. He was a man who saw a friend in a cage.
Kato looked at Jake, her expression unreadable. She was a spymaster. She was waiting for the commander's decision, no matter how terrible.
Jake stared at the note. He felt the two halves of his soul tearing apart. The 21st-century man who screamed to save the innocent. The 20th-century monster who knew the cold, hard math of power.
He wants me to choose, Jake thought, the words a cold whisper in his mind. He wants me to bleed an asset or bleed a soul. He thinks he's trapped me.
Jake crumpled the note in his fist.
I will not lose either. I will break his fingers instead.
He turned his back on them both. He walked over to the corner of the room where a small, discreet travel bag sat waiting. The bag for Petrograd.
He opened it and began checking its contents. A spare pistol. Forged papers. A roll of currency.
Pavel watched him, his face a mask of disbelief and dawning horror.
"What are you doing?" he whispered. "The exchange is tomorrow night. We have to make a plan."
Jake ignored him, methodically placing a box of ammunition into the bag.
"Koba?" Pavel's voice grew louder, cracking with desperation. "What are you doing? You're leaving?"
He took a step forward. "You're abandoning her?"
Jake finally stopped. He slowly closed the bag, the click of the latch echoing in the silent room.
He didn't look at Pavel. His eyes found Kato's across the room. He gave an order that was also a vow, an act of impossible, desperate faith that would change everything between them forever.
"I am going to Petrograd," he said, his voice calm and absolute.
"You will get her back."