Chapter 51: The Dopamine Is Boiling Over (2)

Winter in Paris was practically spring compared to Petersburg, but Trotsky felt like he was walking on thin ice every single day.

Fortunately, the reply to his letter to Lenin came back quickly.

[Let us meet and talk. You may set the place and time.]

It was a short, dry answer, but the mere fact that Lenin had agreed at all carried a meaning of its own.

It meant that stubborn man did not consider him a traitor.

Perhaps it was proof that the changes inside Russia were gradually becoming known to the Bolsheviks as well.

“Sir, the weekly reports from the surveillance agents on the ground in Geneva have come in.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Trotsky pretended to flip through the report while casually scanning elsewhere.

The deployment of the agents watching Lenin’s residence and their entry-exit logs. The movements of key figures, and so on.

As the department head in charge of Geneva, all of these materials came straight to his desk.

‘Just as M said, making contact while dodging surveillance won’t be that difficult.’

For an Okhrana department head, exploiting the gaps in the Okhrana’s own surveillance net was something even an idiot could manage.

“The surveillance agent in Sector 3 here rotates every Wednesday afternoon, but isn’t the handover running rather long? An hour and a half leaves a big gap.”

“Ah… that can’t be helped, sir. Some of our personnel were recently pulled elsewhere.”

“Even so, cut the Wednesday handover down to 45 minutes. If the gap runs too long, the target could slip away.”

“Understood, sir.”

With him inspecting things this meticulously, no one would ever suspect a thing.

The real reason, of course, was to confirm exactly when Sector 3’s shift change took place.

To meet Lenin, he would have to make the most of that gap.

Since he had ordered the handover shortened to 45 minutes, his subordinate would adjust the Wednesday rotation, and for a few days during the adjustment, surveillance would actually grow sloppier.

That was more than enough time for Trotsky.

He had already chosen the meeting place, too.

A café in the French-speaking old town, well clear of the Russian émigré community.

The alley lay outside the Okhrana agents’ patrol routes, so he would have to lay out a separate route for Lenin, but better safe than sorry, no?

Paris to Geneva was half a day by train.

It was perfectly natural for the department head in charge of Geneva to go inspect his own jurisdiction, so he did not even need a pretext.

Having finished planning his movements, he reached for the pile of documents, and a directive sent down from Paris headquarters caught his eye.

“Come to think of it, why were surveillance personnel pulled in the first place? Was it because of this, by any chance?”

“Yes, sir. Orders came down from above.”

[Thoroughly monitor all movements on the French side seeking to obstruct investment in Russia’s Manchurian venture. However, do not intervene; focus solely on gathering evidence.]

“There are going to be moves on the French side to obstruct investment in Russia’s Manchurian venture?”

Trotsky’s hand stopped.

“What is this now….”

Come to think of it, he had heard that Witte was returning to take overall command of the Manchurian development venture.

Were they certain those opposed to this move would sabotage the investment from behind the scenes?

“But wouldn’t obstruction of Manchurian investment fall under economic crime? Is this really our jurisdiction?”

“Headquarters must consider it our jurisdiction. That would be why they’re sending down orders like this.”

His subordinate nodded and withdrew, but Trotsky’s mind was growing tangled.

Until now, the foreign postings had handled only counterintelligence and the watching of revolutionaries; did this not mean they now intended to reach into outright political matters as well?

At this point he could not even begin to guess how large the organization called the Okhrana ultimately meant to grow.

M had said it.

That Russia was in the middle of shedding its skin, becoming an entirely different country from what it had been.

He did not know where this road might finally lead, but there could be no such thing as a road without blood.

Whether it would be the revolutionaries who spilled that blood, or the nobles, he still could not say.

But at this point, no amount of agonizing would produce an answer anyway.

Either way, for now, there was nothing to do but move forward.

Lenin was waiting.

* * *

A man possessed of clairvoyance, who paid the nobles no heed and anticipated their every move as though it lay in the palm of his hand.

Nicholas II moved swiftly, before the nobles could mount any proper response.

The moment executive authority passed into his hands, Witte began sweeping forward, quite literally, like a storm.

The Special Committee for Far Eastern Development and Industrial Finance was formally inaugurated, and the instant Witte took his seat as Chairman and Director-General, the venture went straight into its launch phase.

The first thing Witte did was move up the investment-financing schedule already negotiated with France.

“I hear Chairman Witte has returned to active office?”

“He’s personally overseeing the Manchurian venture?”

“Wait! We must get in on this investment too!”

The French financiers who had worked alongside him building the Chinese Eastern Railway still remembered the name Witte, and vividly.

A titan of such meticulous strategy and superb dealmaking that one could scarcely believe he was Russian.

Was he not the man who had shut out patronage appointments, hired strictly on merit, and slashed the construction schedule to a fraction of the plan?

However many rumors were whispered behind the scenes, that “the Manchurian venture is dangerous” or “an imperial monopoly guarantees no returns”, now that Witte held full authority, there was no reason to hesitate.

On top of that, recruitment gathered momentum.

The young officials Witte had handpicked in his days as Minister of Finance came running at the news of their idol’s return, elbowing one another to be first.

Back home there was a ceiling no one could rise above without noble connections, but the Manchurian venture came with a guarantee that it would be a path to advancement judged purely on results.

“I have experience from the laying of the Chinese Eastern Railway! Send me, sir!”

“I will rack up a brilliant record and return to Petersburg!”

However cold the Far East might be, wasn’t it better to prove oneself out in that wilderness and come back to the capital than to spend one’s days flattering noble bastards and reading their moods?

Even those who had been skeptical when the Emperor vouched for the venture flipped their stance the moment Witte guaranteed it, hurling in their applications.

With events flowing this way, the nobles promptly began to sweat bullets.

Whatever else, they had been certain the imperial household could never staff the venture on its own, and now this absurd wild card had leapt out of nowhere.

The nobles, wanting a foot in the Manchurian venture even at this late hour, ran first to the Emperor.

“Your Majesty, we should like to recommend men of experience in Manchurian development.”

“Ah, take that sort of thing to Witte. I’ve left the practical work to him.”

The Emperor said he paid the practical work no mind; what could they do?

The delegation of nobles who knocked on the door of Witte’s office put on their gentlest smiles and broached the subject.

“Chairman, congratulations on assuming your great new charge. If our humble services might be of some assistance….”

“No, there’s no need to congratulate me.”

“…Pardon?”

“I’m saying I don’t see any particular need to receive your congratulations.”

He had always been one to drive his words straight in, but having fallen into hell and clawed his way back up, he now feared nothing and no one.

“B-but we have men well versed in the affairs of the Far East on our side….”

“Oh, do you? Astonishing, that someone should know the Far East better than I do. Who is it, then?”

“Well, not as well as you, Chairman, of course, but….”

“Then there’s no need to hear it. Would you kindly leave? I have more than one or two matters to attend to.”

Witte waved them off without so much as hearing the nobles out.

When the nobles retreated and the door closed, Witte sank deep into his chair and crowed in triumph.

Ahhh… that’s the stuff.

Were these not the very people who, three years ago, when he was demoted to a sinecure post with nothing but its honors, had come calling to “congratulate him on his promotion”?

Now those same bastards came with favor-seeking petitions to be cut into the venture, and barking at them to quit spouting nonsense and get out was a kind of pleasure he had never tasted even as Minister of Finance.

His wife Matilda had brightened noticeably too, saying invitations summoning her back to society balls were pouring in again.

Of course, the intent behind them was so transparent that she said she tossed them straight into the fireplace, but watching the nobles change their tune in real time was endlessly entertaining.

But surely grudges and fury piled up over so many years would not dissolve over so little.

“I will make the future you fear most into reality.”

Now, and in all the years to come, so long as he stood here, they could forget about ever crawling their way into Manchuria.

Charging into the venture without hesitation, Witte declared he would turn the imperial household finances to a surplus within three years at the latest.

By then, the imperial household would achieve complete financial independence, without leaning on any treasury subsidy at all.

In other words, until the nobles’ final card became a meaningless scrap of paper.

Exactly three years remained.

* * *

About a fortnight after Witte’s return, I had tea alone with him, without Yakov.

It was Witte, of course, who had requested the meeting.

“I’ve long wanted a proper, unhurried talk with you, Young Master Mikhail. Thank you for coming.”

“The thanks are mine, Chairman. I heard you’ve been very busy lately, so I’m just grateful you made time for me first.”

“Better to be overworked than to rot away with nothing to do.”

There was such life in Witte’s eyes that it was hard to believe he would turn 60 in just a few years.

-See, people need to work. We basically rescued one poor old jobless bum. So let’s work him even harder from here on out.

Come on, sinecure or not, the man was Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. Jobless bum, seriously?

Though the part about working him even harder had my wholehearted support.

“I heard you turned down all the nobles’ petitions this time. Not just turned them down, but threw them out without even listening. That must have felt good.”

Witte let out a short laugh.

“It was certainly a pleasant experience. Once, their whispers cost me my post; now they’re the ones bowing and scraping before me.”

“It’s going to be even more fun from here.”

“Hm? And why is that?”

“Because there’s no way the nobles will just sit still.”

Witte, who had been contentedly savoring the aroma of his tea, stopped his hand.

This sly old fox knew everything and had been playing dumb on purpose.

“It can’t be that they simply covet the Manchurian concessions too much to let go. What they truly cannot stand is the imperial household becoming financially independent.”

“So… Yakov was right after all. When I think of what I was doing at your age, it’s hard to believe.”

“Please just think of me as precocious. In any case, assuming the deficit is cleared within three years as you calculate, Chairman, how much profit would the venture yield once it reaches full stride in five to ten years?”

“Even by a conservative estimate, we could draw a net profit of 50 million rubles a year, no?”

Witte didn’t know it, but if I mixed in a bit of Seong-jun’s knowledge and grew a few more of the businesses likely to turn a profit, we might push that net figure to 60 or even 70 million.

Which meant Nicholas II would become one of the wealthiest monarchs in Europe.

“An imperial household that already holds an organization capable of watching every noble and even running military operations, and then gains its own money pipeline producing over 50 million rubles in net profit a year… that would be rather frightening, wouldn’t it?”

Setting down his teacup, Witte nodded slowly.

“The nobles having no choice but to interfere means that however careful they are, they cannot help but hand us grounds for a purge… is that what you’re getting at?”

“Yes. The day you realize your ideals will come that much sooner, Chairman.”

“Ho ho… what an interesting thing to say. So, is there something you’re planning?”

“Not just planning, we’re already moving. Reports on the financiers’ movements are coming up from the Paris branch in real time.”

It hadn’t stopped at prediction; surveillance had been underway for some time already.

Witte stared at me wide-eyed, then asked with the look of a man who had just discovered a comrade.

“Young Master Mikhail… could it be that you dislike the nobles as well?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“I think people should be judged by ability. Monopolizing everything by bloodline is wrong. Ah, the Emperor’s throne is an exception, of course.”

“Cadet branch or not, it isn’t easy for someone carrying a ducal house’s blood to dislike the nobles… how curious.”

-Obviously you should hate them. Those guys all have to crash and burn for you to become Tsar.

Quiet. We’re in the middle of an important conversation here, so cut the sideline commentary.

Letting the noise rattling around my head go in one ear and out the other, I smoothly shifted the subject.

“Oh, and a report will be going up to you soon as well, Chairman. You know the people on the Nobles’ Committee who resent you most?”

“Well… there are so many I couldn’t begin to say which ones you mean.”

“We’ve narrowed it down to 10 of them for now. Who meets whom, where they gather, what letters they exchange… it’s all being recorded. If they interfere within legal bounds, there’s nothing to be done, but the moment they cross the line even slightly….”

Witte’s hand pressed down, firmly, on the corners of his mouth as they tried to climb once more.

“Then, Young Master Mikhail, allow me one request of my own. Could you ascertain the state of the nobles’ estate debts?”

“Their debts?”

“Yes. There must be quite a few houses with their estates mortgaged to the Nobles’ Land Bank, squeezed dry by their debts. Nobles are, by and large, a lot of half-wits who swagger about society while in truth gasping to keep up their interest payments.”

“I’ll mention it to Director Yakov. We should be able to sort it and send it up within a fortnight.”

“A fortnight?”

Genuinely surprised this time, Witte leaned back into his chair and let slip a heartfelt exclamation.

“Well, I’ll be… this is incomparably easier than my days as minister.”

“Isn’t it?”

“To think work could be this easy and this enjoyable. Back then I had to guess at everything the nobles were doing behind my back on instinct alone. Honestly, I never understood until I lived it myself. His Majesty has built a truly monstrous organization.”

Naturally.

People of this era couldn’t possibly know how much power a professional organization holds when espionage, investigation, and domestic surveillance are fused into one.

To be precise, they might grasp it in their heads, but they could never feel it in their bones.

People tend to underestimate what they’ve never experienced.

So the longer they went on not knowing, the easier my work would be.

“Then, it’s strange to call it payment, but may I ask one thing of you too? When you do this work, please step out front and make as much noise as possible. So that every eye lands on you, Chairman, and not on the Okhrana.”

“Ah, now that happens to be my specialty. Leave it to me.”

The one strangling the nobles would be, unmistakably, Witte.

Not just any Witte, of course.

A wicked Witte burning with vengeance.

All of this is simply Witte drawing on his thirst for revenge to display superhuman ability. Our Okhrana is really not on that level.

~~~

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