Chapter 41: A Tree with Rotten Roots (3)

The Okhrana’s formal name was the Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order.

Nicholas II had reorganized it under the name Main Directorate for the Protection of State Security and Order under the Emperor.

Shortened, the Imperial Okhrana. It was no longer a mere department that guarded public security and order but a main directorate that guarded the Empire.

Yakov had been promoted to Director-General of the Okhrana, and his official standing was confirmed as Privy Councillor, corresponding to the third class.

In formal precedence he stood below the ministers, who were of the second class, but measured purely by the authority concentrated in his hands he was in no way beneath a minister.

For it had already become a wholly independent body, and having absorbed the Gendarme Corps it could now mount military operations, and it had taken into its hands the authority to keep even the Orthodox Church in check.

Yakov, originally of the sixth class, the grade of Colonel if one spoke in military terms, had in a single stroke leapt to the grade of Lieutenant General, an absurd promotion.

“Congratulations, Section Chief. Ah, no, I suppose I have to call you Director-General now.”

“Haha… I really can’t get used to it. My position has climbed so far that I keep wondering whether it’s even allowed….”

“It’s only natural, since you absorbed the Gendarme Corps.”

Surely the head of an organization that had swallowed the Gendarme Corps couldn’t stand lower than the old commander of that corps.

Of course, with a promotion this extraordinary, it was impossible for there to be no noise about it.

However great his services, this was hardly some world war; when a colonel became a lieutenant general overnight, it would be strange if anyone had a kind word to say.

And not merely a lieutenant general either, but the head of a body whose real power could take the head off any ordinary minister without breaking a sweat.

“Director, things are going to get very noisy from now on.”

“I know. I’ll have to be careful. I’m well aware of how undeserved this opportunity is. I’ll watch every little thing, from the smallest turn of phrase to whom I meet.”

“No, no. That won’t do at all.”

-No kidding. How is a man who clawed his way up to Director of the Okhrana this naive? The promotion must’ve gone straight to his head and floated it clean off.

If being careful in this world were enough to keep a man from being framed, why would so many loyal servants throughout history have ended up in a ditch?

Evidence? That sort of thing can simply be manufactured.

“You’d honestly do better to be a little less careful. I don’t mean go around openly taking bribes; I mean leave them a few openings to jab at.”

“Ah… I see what you mean.”

Yakov and the Okhrana are the eye of a typhoon that has risen over Russia with terrifying speed.

Even those who mean to check us still have no proper information about us, and they do not know how capable he is, or how little he leaves open to attack.

So at the beginning it is best to look as easy a target as possible.

The truth will come out later, but whether one holds the advantage in the first clash will be decided by how much information each side carries into it.

“Director, right now you’re the man in Russia who has all of His Majesty’s favor and is rising at a speed that shouldn’t be possible. Be arrogant.”

Swagger at every man he met, sprinkle a little rudeness on those old superiors of his with the rotten tempers, that sort of thing.

“Yes. I shall swagger with all my strength.”

Yakov nodded as hard as he could, his face set with resolve.

Well then. Time to sit back and appreciate the acting talents of our Director-General, installed at the heart of power overnight.

* * *

Just as Mikhail had predicted, the Tsar’s creation of the Imperial Okhrana provoked the collective fury of any number of factions.

There was no way to block it on grounds of principle, and its necessity was perfectly understandable, but whether they could accept it was another matter entirely.

“This is absurd. Absolutely absurd! The Okhrana absorbing the Gendarme Corps? Surveillance of the Orthodox Church? Audits of military units? This is nothing but an extralegal body.”

“And on top of that, its head is not a nobleman of any standing but a former section chief who knocked about in the Okhrana. Does that make any sense at all?”

Petersburg, the Russian capital, was famous for its cold even on ordinary days, but on this day the heat pouring out of a sealed room in the official residence of the Ministry of Internal Affairs boiled over hot enough to put the chill outside to shame.

The gathering had been convened by none other than the new Minister of Internal Affairs, Pyotr Durnovo, in person.

And the faces seated across from one another were, every one of them, anything but ordinary.

Chief of Staff Vladimir Sukhomlinov of Kiev, and Bishop Isidor of the Balakhna Diocese.

The leading men of the bureaucracy, the military and the Orthodox Church, the three pillars of Russia, had gathered in one place.

“I trust you all grasp the situation. The Imperial Okhrana… what a grand name. Until yesterday it was a department under our own Police Department, chasing commies, and overnight it has been seated in a position to watch us.”

“The army finds it no less preposterous. Officers of confirmed loyalty are to be seconded to them? And who, precisely, examines that loyalty? The Okhrana?”

Sukhomlinov folded his arms and let a sneer slip out.

“In the end it amounts to an outside body meddling in the army’s power of appointment, does it not?”

“The Orthodox Church takes much the same view.”

Bishop Isidor fingered the cross at his breast and let out a heavy sigh.

“The audit began with the files Feofan handed over, and they say 47 cases were uncovered in the first week alone. At this rate there will be no end to it until every disgrace within the Orthodox Church has been dragged into the light.”

“47 cases… so the Orthodox Church is in serious trouble too.”

“The problem is not the findings themselves. Once a precedent is set for a secular body to investigate and try clergymen, the independence of the Church is finished. This is not a matter to be treated as some mere corruption inquiry.”

From this discussion alone one could easily guess how badly the creation of the Imperial Okhrana had shaken Russia’s existing structure of power.

Durnovo tapped the papers on the table with a finger.

“Let us look at this calmly first. We can hardly prepare a remedy without examining how all of this became possible in the first place.”

A silence fell for a moment.

Sukhomlinov was the first to speak, and cautiously.

“Is there any chance… that this Yakov has His Majesty in his grip?”

“It isn’t impossible. But I am told the Police Department rates that possibility low.”

Durnovo shook his head.

“The massacre of Jews, the Japanese spies, the purge of the Grand Dukes, Bloody Sunday, and Rasputin besides. If all of that came out of the head of one man named Yakov, why on earth would he have been sitting as a section chief in the Okhrana? He would have distinguished himself long ago and be a minister somewhere by now.”

“Then… it truly is His Majesty behind it all?”

“Yes. The timing of each strike is far too precise. The moment the Grand Dukes’ corruption was leaked to the workers, the decision to forbid firing on that day they call Bloody Sunday, the way Vladimir Alexandrovich was goaded into insubordination. It is right to see all of it not as coincidence but as a planned sequence.”

Bishop Isidor nodded as well.

“The Rasputin affair is the same. They watched him a long while, stacking evidence in a study, then drew in Savinkov and caught him in the act. That is not something the judgment of an Okhrana section chief could accomplish.”

“And there is one more decisive point.”

In truth, this alone made it impossible for Yakov to be the mastermind behind the scenes, brainwashing the Emperor and manipulating the affairs of state.

“I mean the little boy who has just been attached to the Director-General as his aide. A collateral branch of the House of Odoyevsky, they say. You will all have heard of him.”

“I have. Rumor has it he is the prodigy His Majesty dotes upon.”

“That child was not appointed as an aide to the Director-General of the Okhrana. He was simply planted there as the organization’s next successor.”

It would be no exaggeration to say this went far, far beyond mere favor.

But thanks to this move, the nobles could see easily enough that Yakov’s role was a limited one.

“If Yakov were truly the mastermind, what reason would he have to seat the man who will take his own post right beside him? Anyone can see this is a placement made on the premise of replacement.”

“It is unmistakably a design to have Yakov grind the organization’s blade to a keen edge and then, at the proper moment, swap him out for the confidant His Majesty truly favors.”

“Logically it holds, but… you are saying His Majesty is looking that far ahead?”

It was airtight, flawless reasoning, and it had exactly one weakness.

The fact that the man directing all of it was Nicholas II.

Without that single element it would have been immediately convincing; with it, the whole thing lodged like a fish bone in the throat.

But what could they do?

The circumstantial evidence was this plain.

“In any case, what is certain now is that Yakov is a cudgel swung by the Emperor, and that child is the blade of the next round.”

A hush settled over the sealed room for a moment.

Bishop Isidor, having reached his conclusion, nodded gravely.

“Taken all together, then, blocking the reorganization of the Okhrana is impossible.”

“Of course it is impossible. This is the body that thwarted an attempted assassination of the Tsar. And if we were to say, ‘It must not be expanded’, what would that make us?”

Perfect grounds for someone to ask whether they were in league with the commies too.

Sukhomlinov let out a bitter sigh.

“Then the method more or less presents itself.”

Durnovo rose from his chair and picked up the papers.

“However finely a sword may be honed, one need only change the man who holds the hilt. Pull Yakov down and seat a vetted man as Director-General. Let us go that way.”

A vetted man meant, naturally, one who would speak for the interests of the nobility and the Orthodox Church.

But to break the blade the Emperor was now swinging, they needed grounds for disqualification with which to drag Yakov down.

Fortunately, Yakov these days was a man whose momentum pierced the sky.

Word was spreading everywhere that the Director-General, made third class and the grade of Lieutenant General overnight, had visibly changed his manner.

A man who not long ago had gone about with the word section chief hanging on him, head bowed, now lifted his chin and had begun slipping familiar speech into his talk with his former superiors.

His dinners with factory owners had increased noticeably, and the sight of him coming and going from official residences in a fine carriage was that of a greedy upstart who had discovered the taste of money late in life.

“I have set the Police Department loose to investigate Yakov closely. Signs of bribe-taking and abuse of authority are already turning up in numbers.”

The corners of Minister of Internal Affairs Durnovo’s mouth crept quietly upward.

“As soon as sufficient evidence is gathered, I shall lay an impeachment motion before His Majesty in person. And I shall of course make it clear that we are in no way opposed to the Okhrana.”

“A fine strategy. What we offer is not treason but remonstrance.”

The master of this Russia was the Tsar, but the power of life and death over that master was held by the nobility.

This was a truth proven by history, and a law besides.

Even a Tsar dies at our hands if he acts up.

The nobles resolved first to put Yakov on the guillotine and send the Tsar a warning.

* * *

Exactly ten days after the meeting in the sealed room.

Through the good offices of Dmitri Trepov, Governor-General of Petersburg, Minister of Internal Affairs Durnovo was granted a private audience with the Tsar.

Dmitri Trepov was on close enough terms with the Emperor to sit and talk with him at least 3 times a week, and he was a neutral figure who stood on good terms with the nobility as well.

That such a man had agreed to the Minister of Internal Affairs’ request meant this was not simply one minister acting on his own but a voice speaking for the great majority of the nobility.

“Your Majesty, I beg your pardon most humbly for the impertinence of stealing your time. But I judged this a matter that must be laid before Your Majesty in person, and so I have presumed to commit this discourtesy.”

“For a minister to draw out his preamble at such length, the matter must be no ordinary one. Well, what is it?”

“It concerns Yakov, Director-General of the Imperial Okhrana.”

The Tsar’s gaze wavered faintly.

“The Police Department’s investigation has turned up indications that Director-General Yakov has diverted a portion of the seized assets to his own use. Among the funds confiscated in the course of sweeping up revolutionaries there are sums never entered in the ledger, and traces have been confirmed of that money flowing into Yakov’s private account.”

I stood at the Tsar’s side filling his empty glass and listened closely to Minister Durnovo’s explanation.

Ledger reconciliations, witness statements, the movement of the funds.

His account was restrained, closer to a bare recitation of facts one after another with every trace of emotion stripped away.

He’d certainly put together a solid strategy.

Did his homework too. Very impressive.

-The Police Department must be pissed as hell. The lackeys who used to fetch and carry for them shot way above them overnight.

“In addition, there are reports that Director-General Yakov has lately been socializing frequently with factory owners. Of course that alone cannot be pronounced a bribe, but taking the whole of the circumstances together….”

“…Very well, Minister.”

The Tsar, visibly and unmistakably flustered, raised a hand and cut him off.

“So then, you take issue with the reorganization into the Imperial Okhrana?”

“Not in the least, Your Majesty. The Imperial Okhrana is Your Majesty’s great decision, and I do not for a moment doubt that it is a body this Russia absolutely requires.”

“…You do not oppose it?”

“No. And precisely for that reason, the man at its head must be one who has been thoroughly vetted. It is the shield that guards Your Majesty and the sword that will strike the Empire’s enemies. Surely that sword must be examined to be certain whether it has rusted, whether its edge still cuts.”

There was not a flaw in the logic.

And naturally our Nicholas II had no proper ground from which to argue back.

“…Very well. I shall look it over, so leave the papers with me.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

The Tsar, who had taken the documents almost before he knew what was happening, could do nothing but bob his head.

When Minister Durnovo turned and went out wearing a victor’s smile, the audience chamber was left, naturally enough, to the Tsar and me.

The Tsar leafed through the papers for a while, sighing, then turned to me and shook his head.

“Misha, you heard all that?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I heard everything.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the minister isn’t wrong.”

It must have been an unexpected answer; the Tsar’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“The Director-General of the Imperial Okhrana can’t just have ability. Only when he has loyalty to Your Majesty and clean hands too is he fit for the post. The Minister of Internal Affairs is offering to bring in the whole Police Department to vet him. Is there any reason to refuse?”

It wasn’t our side vetting him as we pleased; it was theirs offering to do it for us. If the verdict came back with no case to answer, what a powerful weapon that would be.

“But if Yakov really did do such things….”

“Then he should be dismissed. It would mean he isn’t the right man to be Director-General of the Okhrana.”

Of course, if I unsettle him any further my old man might have a heart attack, so he needs soothing in the right measure.

“But Your Majesty, the Director’s loyalty to you is genuine. I’ve watched it from closer than anyone, so I know it well. That’s why I’d rather we held a hearing, openly and with our heads high.”

“A hearing, you say?”

“Yes. Your Majesty need only open the hearing yourself and declare that you will judge strictly and fairly. Then who could possibly find fault with it?”

The other side would give their all to unseat the Emperor’s own runner right in front of the Emperor, so they would hardly object either.

The Tsar set down the papers and nodded slowly.

“Good. We shall hold a hearing, just as you say. I shall have Director-General Yakov’s fitness formally examined.”

“Yes. Then I’ll go and tell the Director.”

I smiled broadly to put the Tsar at ease, and calm settled once more in the Emperor’s eyes.

“Then I shall trust in you alone. Hahahaha!”

There is no country on earth where reform comes without a backlash.

And in a country as rotten as Russia, the stench is bound to pour out thick enough to blanket the whole of Petersburg.

The Minister of Internal Affairs climbing into the ring at the very outset is plain proof of that.

Clearing away that stink requires a fumigation to match.

A hearing on the head of the intelligence service, presided over by the Emperor himself, no less.

Where is there a procedure that confers stronger legitimacy than this?

I took a deep breath, dragged both hands down my face, and steadied myself.

The arena is open, so let them stab at each other to their hearts’ content.

…Not that anything is going to land on me.

~~~

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