Chapter 17: The Double Mastermind

“…Hmm.”

“Misha, Misha. Are you very busy?”

“Misha’s seemed busy lately. He won’t even play with us.”

“Princesses, then what would you call what I did yesterday and today, dressing up dolls with you?”

“Playing house!”

Four-year-old Maria, who had joined in saying she wanted to play with her big sisters now, shouted it at the top of her lungs and burst into giggles.

“Princesses, if playing house isn’t playing, then what on earth is it?”

“Don’t know, don’t know! Anyway, Misha has to play with us more!”

Olga, with a face that said this was only right and proper, dumped the box of dolls out onto the floor.

Eight, six, and four.

Led by Olga, who was my age, the three Grand Duchesses, Tatiana and Maria included, occupied the drawing-room floor and began changing their dolls’ clothes, and the lips of the watching servants naturally curled upward.

Far off on the sofa, two-year-old Anastasia sat sound asleep in her nursemaid’s lap, a palace afternoon as peaceful as could be.

“Misha, isn’t this dress pretty?”

“It’s pretty. The blue suits Princess Tatiana well.”

“Really? Hehe.”

While Tatiana dressed her doll in the blue gown, I lowered my gaze to the paper spread open on my lap.

From the outside, I was the very picture of an 8-year-old doing his French homework.

Only, the content filling the page had nothing whatsoever to do with French sentences.

-On the Baku oil workers, troop deployment absolutely has to be kept to a minimum. The oil industry is tied straight into state finances, so the strike can’t be allowed to drag on. But if they crack down indiscriminately it’ll turn into another Kishinev, so go with separating out and arresting only the union leadership. Of the wage demands, grant only the ones that are acceptable. The rest will disperse on its own.

Seong-jun’s voice ran on in neat order inside my head.

I copied it onto the paper exactly as it came.

“Huh? Misha, what are you writing?”

“Homework.”

“You do homework here? While playing with us?”

“The Professor said to hand it in by tomorrow.”

Olga tilted her head, then quickly lost interest and began combing a doll’s hair.

-Odessa is the biggest one, since the dockworkers and the factory workers have joined up. Get the port back to normal first, and cut off the leadership cleanly, but promise the ordinary workers a minimum of improvements to their working conditions. Tiflis is railway workers, so there are a lot of skilled men. Apply pressure with troop deployments, but we need an imperial edict from the Tsar forbidding them to open fire. Go with the logic that killing them is a net loss because there’s no one to replace them.

“Ah-ah, Princess Maria. You mustn’t drop the doll!”

“Ehh…?”

A 4-year-old dropping a doll was simply a fact of life.

The moment she made her mistake, I picked it right up and handed it back.

While Maria hugged it tight in both arms and beamed, Seong-jun’s briefing went on.

-The remnants of the police union Zubatov built are standing at the head of the strikes, so let’s hit them first. A body that’s lost its head won’t hold out for long. Good, that should do it for the Okhrana side.

The contents to be passed to Section Chief Yakov through Nicholas II now filled an entire page.

It was about time to send a directive to the other side.

-So now we’d better send the commie bastards their directive too, right? I’ll boil it down to the essentials, so take it down word for word.

I pulled out another sheet and began writing new sentences.

“Misha, I want to write a letter too!”

Tatiana came scampering over and crouched down beside me.

Before I knew it, Olga had settled in next to her as well, saying letter-writing sounded like a fun game too.

“I’m going to write to Papa!”

“Yeah? I’ll write to Mama. Who are you writing to, Misha?”

“To a friend.”

“Misha, you have a friend? Who?”

“He’s called Father Gapon, a friend outside the palace. He’s a kind priest who helps the poor, and we write letters back and forth.”

“Wowww!”

Olga and Tatiana each brought over a sheet of paper, and the three of us lay flat on the floor.

To Papa, to Mama, and to Vladimir Lenin.

What a truly heartwarming hour of letter-writing, wouldn’t one say.

-Comrade, 200,000 people have come out into the streets in the south. There will be those who grow excited and call this the prelude to revolution, but look at it coldly. We are not the ones who started this strike. Are our Party members leading this strike? Or are they controlling it?

“I’m going to write, Papa, I love you.”

“I’m going to write, Mama, I miss you every single day.”

-Second. This strike will be suppressed. There are signs that the Tsar and the government will move differently than before. Not simple armed suppression, but the selective removal of the leadership. If our Party operatives are exposed to this, the underground network of contacts we have built up until now risks being wiped out in a single stroke.

“Wow, Misha, your letter is super long.”

“I have a lot to say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That the world is a bit noisy these days, so he should be careful.”

“Come on, you should send something fun. Brag about dressing up the dolls!”

-Third. What must be done now is not to go out into the streets, but to shut the doors and refine the organization. When the strike ends, disillusioned workers will come looking for us, and by then an organization must be ready to receive them.

Olga leaned toward my paper with eyes full of curiosity, but since I had dashed it off in cursive, she couldn’t even properly read it.

“Misha, you’re smart but your handwriting is really bad.”

“No one in this world is perfect.”

“Hehe, then I’ll help you write nicely.”

Thanking a brightly smiling Olga, I folded the remaining sheet along with the first and slipped them into their envelopes.

On one sheet, how the Okhrana should suppress the strike.

On the other, how Lenin’s organization should survive that suppression.

Now the right-hand one would be delivered to Yakov through the Tsar, and the left-hand one would fly to Geneva through Gapon.

“Misha! Tie this doll’s hair for me!”

“Yes, Princess.”

While I tied the doll’s hair up with a ribbon, Maria held up her finished letter and waved it proudly.

“Papa, I love you! All done!”

To Papa, I love you.

To Mama, I miss you.

And to Lenin, follow my advice.

-A truly productive afternoon, I’d say.

A genuinely beautiful day, one might even call it.

Today, as always, the time spent playing with my lovely little sisters was fun and fulfilling.

Just as it always had been.

* * *

Geneva, the new home of the Russian socialists who had left London behind.

It was an evening just a few days before the Second Party Congress.

On the desk of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin, lay an envelope in a familiar hand writing.

M.

One would think he’d have grown used to his heart racing before he even tore open the envelope, yet he simply could not get used to it.

-Comrade. 200,000 people have come out into the streets in the south. Among the comrades there will be those who grow excited and call this the prelude to revolution.

Today, too, the very first sentence struck mercilessly at the heart of the matter.

Indeed, with the Party Congress at hand, excitement was boiling over among the comrades because of the reports flying in from home.

But M, in a scathing tone, was rebuking such men for their planlessness and their optimistic predictions.

A painful criticism.

But whenever M said something painful, it had always been the truth.

“The strike will soon be suppressed? And not by simple armed suppression, at that?”

The Tsar’s government, it said, was moving differently than before.

The weight of an analysis he could never have imagined pressed heavily on his chest.

Certainly, since the Akashi affair, Lenin himself had sensed through various channels signs that something was changing in Petersburg.

Rumors that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had undergone a sweeping change of personnel, whispers that the very constitution of the Okhrana was shifting; strange talk of every kind was pouring in.

But those had been mere portents, nothing more, whereas M apparently knew the details.

“Don’t rush out; put the organization in order and bide your time for after this strike ends….”

Lenin carefully folded the letter and tucked it inside his coat.

Do not ride the spontaneous labour movement.

Build the organization of professional revolutionaries first.

The very argument he had put forward in his own book, M was now urging, applied perfectly to a real-world case.

He had been uneasy already, and now M had added his warning; what was there to hesitate over?

His decision made, Lenin, quite apart from the Congress agenda, secretly sent a directive to his own people.

Do not intervene directly in the strike.

Do not expose the organization.

Watch and wait, and prepare for the world after the strike.

Honestly, Lenin’s every instinct made him want to throw himself into this raging storm as well.

They were, in the end, revolutionaries.

But M had never once been wrong.

And when about a month had passed.

Returning to Geneva after the Congress ended, Lenin received the reports flying in from Russia and felt goosebumps rise over his entire body.

“Comrade! Have you heard? The southern general strike has been suppressed at last.”

“Good God… in barely a month?”

“Yes! But the Russians’ method of suppression has changed completely from before.”

Not the old indiscriminate crackdown; they had precisely singled out and arrested only the leadership.

Because of this, the Socialist Revolutionary Party cells (branches) that had ridden the strike to run their agitation were rounded up in one sweep.

“The Baku cell is annihilated! The Tiflis leadership has been detained to a man.”

“They say a great many of our domestic Party operatives who leapt into the strike sites have been arrested as well.”

The operatives who had dipped their feet into the strike, riding the public mood, suffered staggering losses.

The Mensheviks alone lost 8 core members in Odessa.

By contrast, the cells that had followed Vladimir’s directive were unharmed.

They had not intervened directly in the strike, and so had not been caught in the Okhrana’s net.

Only 2 members of a Kiev small cell, who had ignored Vladimir’s secret directive and joined the strike, were arrested.

“M was right again this time. If we had jumped in as the Mensheviks argued….”

His hand tightened around the report without his realizing it.

And even the third stage M had predicted swiftly became reality.

When the strike ended and the workers came back from the streets, a deep disillusionment spread among them.

The organizations that had led the way had all been swept away.

The Socialist Revolutionary Party, and the Party operatives who had leapt into the strike alike.

It was only natural that workers with nowhere left to lean would seek out the one organization that had foreseen this whole affair exactly and quietly built up its strength.

Thanks to this affair, the Bolsheviks under Lenin gained decisive momentum in their growth.

“So M had calculated all of this too, down to the last detail.”

Just how far did this man’s insight reach?

Lenin took out the letter again and read the last line.

-From one comrade in Russia who cheers for Comrade Ilyich. M.

A man who knew the inner workings of the Tsar’s government through and through, and yet cheered for the revolution.

The mere fact that such a human being existed in this world kindled in his chest a heat close to conviction.

“…Send word to our operatives in Russia. We must find a way to make contact with M.”

He had to meet M, without fail.

No, he wanted to meet him, without fail.

As long as this man stood on their side, the Russian revolution would not fail.

* * *

The season of strikes passed, and 1903 moved on toward winter.

Compared to half a year before, the atmosphere of the Alexander Palace had become another world entirely.

Empress Alexandra felt that change on her skin every day.

The servants she passed in the corridors walked faster, and the number of officials coming and going from her husband’s study had visibly grown.

Even her husband’s expression had changed beyond recognition.

The man who used to sigh before his piles of papers now spent his days with the look of someone utterly absorbed in something, did he not?

She wanted to believe it was a good thing.

But something nagged at her.

She didn’t know why, but the intuition that that child’s arrival was the beginning of all these changes still scratched at a corner of her heart.

Honestly, she was envious.

If she had a son that brilliant, how lovable would he be?

If only she had a son….

“…Urgh!”

“Y-Your Majesty! Are you all right?”

“Ah… I’m fine. My stomach is just a little….”

Had all this useless worrying and daydreaming finally brought her to the point of nausea?

But the next day, and the day after that, the same symptoms repeated.

On the third day, the doctor finished his examination and knelt before the imperial couple.

“Congratulations, Your Majesty. It appears Her Majesty the Empress has received the Lord’s blessing.”

Nicholas II’s eyes flew open wide, and an unconcealable joy flashed across Empress Alexandra’s.

“Is it true?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Judging from the symptoms so far, it seems certain.”

“Oh, Sunny… you, this time too….”

The Tsar clasped his wife’s hand tight.

Never in her life had Alexandra prayed to God as desperately as she did now.

Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia.

The fifth pregnancy of an Empress who had borne four daughters, and only daughters.

This time, surely, the longing of all Russia gathered upon the Alexander Palace.