Excerpt
PROLOGUE THE MAN IN the sealed train was not a soldier, not a king, and not the kind of man history usually hands the match to. But Vladimir Lenin wasn’t waiting for permission. He was waiting for collapse. It was April 1917. Europe was clawing itself apart. Trenches, mustard gas, and empires on fire. Russia — poor, bloated, angry Russia — was a fractured mess of bread lines, dead sons, and royal incompetence. The Tsar was gone. A Provisional Government had stumbled into power, barely keeping the country upright. And into this chaos stepped a man who hadn’t seen Russia in over a decade. A man sent through enemy territory in a sealed German train, like a virus in a test tube — quietly...