Peterhof Palace (Петергоф), Saint Petersburg. July 1907.
At three years old, the world is a question of scale. For Alexei, seated on the Persian carpet of the imperial office, the ministers' leather boots were Doric columns supporting the weight of a decomposing state.
From his ground-level perspective, Alexei observed. He no longer thought of himself as Thomas Blackwood. That name belonged to a corpse in a future that might never exist. Now he was Alexei. And his current objective was Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin.
The Prime Minister stood before Nicholas II's desk. He was an imposing man, with a fan-shaped black beard and a physical presence that displaced the air around him. Stolypin was the anomaly at court: a competent man, brutally pragmatic and with a vision for the future.
"The peasant commune is a burden, Your Majesty," Stolypin argued, his voice resonating with the controlled frustration of someone who has explained the same equation a hundred times. "The Mir system (peasant community that collectively owned and cultivated land) paralyzes individual initiative. If the peasant doesn't own his land, he has no incentive to improve it. It creates a resentful rural proletariat, fuel for the radicals who will lash our nation."
Nicholas II sighed, toying with an ivory letter opener. "But, Pyotr Arkadyevich, the commune is a sacred Russian tradition. It protects the weak."
'It protects mediocrity,' Alexei corrected from the floor, where he pretended to be absorbed in building a fortress with lead soldiers. 'And it blocks agricultural modernization. Without grain surplus, there's no capital for industry. Without industry, the Germans will eat us in 1914 if the revolution doesn't happen first.'
Alexei knew Stolypin was right. Agrarian reform was the cornerstone. If they succeeded in creating a class of conservative landowner peasants, the kulaks, Lenin's social base for revolution would evaporate. But Nicholas wavered. The Tsar feared change more than death.
Alexei decided it was time for a tactical intervention.
He stood up. He wore a white sailor suit that he hated with all his rational soul, but which served perfectly as camouflage for 'innocence.' He walked toward the desk.
"Papa," he said, with that clarity of diction that always startled adults.
Nicholas smiled, relieved by the interruption. "Yes, Solnechko (in Russian: little sun)? Are you bored?"
"No," Alexei responded. He pointed to the Empire's map spread on the table. "Pyotr says the land is like my soldiers."
Stolypin turned, looking at the child with curiosity. "How so, Your Highness?"
Alexei grabbed a handful of lead soldiers. He placed them in a disorderly pile on the map. "If all the soldiers belong to everyone, nobody cleans them. They rust."
Then, he separated five soldiers and aligned them perfectly in front of Stolypin. "But if this soldier is mine... I take care of it. I make it strong." Alexei looked at his father. "If the peasant has his own land, he'll care for it like I care for my toys. And then Russia will be strong."
The silence in the office was absolute. The analogy was simplistic, but devastatingly accurate. It attacked Nicholas's sentimentalism directly, using his own paternalistic language.
Stolypin looked at the child. Not with the usual condescension, but with a glint of recognition. The Prime Minister was an intelligent man; he had just realized that the three-year-old child had summarized the core of his agrarian reform better than his own five-hundred-page reports.
"The Tsarevich has... an intuitive wisdom, Your Majesty," Stolypin said slowly, not taking his eyes off Alexei's blue ones.
"He's a very special child," Nicholas agreed, radiant with pride, not understanding he had just been manipulated by his own son. "Perhaps you're right, Pyotr. Let's proceed with the reform. But carefully."
'Not carefully,' Alexei thought. 'With brutality. We have five years before they assassinate him at the Kiev Opera. The clock is ticking.'
. . .
Autumn 1907
The intervention with Stolypin earned Alexei something more valuable than paternal approval: access.
The Prime Minister began visiting him. Officially, to greet the heir. Unofficially, Stolypin, a man besieged by enemies in the Duma and at Court, found in the child a strange sounding board. Alexei, leveraging the 'child prodigy' myth, began asking questions. Questions about railways. About steel production. About coal.
But Alexei needed more than political influence; he needed data and information from the period he lived in, but above all, current information.
His tutors were insufficient. Monsieur Gilliard was excellent for languages, but useless for teaching other topics. Petrov, the geography tutor, was a romantic nationalist who taught that the Volga was Russia's soul, not a logistical artery to boost navigation and industry.
Alexei demanded a change.
"I want to know how things work, Mama," he told Alexandra one afternoon while she embroidered. "I don't want fairy tales. I want to know why ships float and why trains move."
Alexandra, relieved that her son showed no interest in the nobility's usual vices, agreed. They hired a mathematics professor from Saint Petersburg University, a nervous man named Professor Stanislav.
The first lesson was a farce. Stanislav tried to teach basic arithmetic with apples.
Alexei stopped him after five minutes. He took the chalk and wrote on the blackboard the formula for calculating shear stress in a steel beam.
Stanislav froze, the chalk hanging from his hand.
"I don't need apples, Professor," Alexei said, his three-year-old voice cold and precise. "I need you to bring me the production reports from the Putilov factories. And I need the blueprints for the new battleship Sevastopol. We're going to review armor efficiency."
The professor swallowed. "Who... who taught you this, Your Highness?"
"God," Alexei lied without blinking. "Now, please. The reports. And don't tell anyone, or I'll tell Papa you're a socialist."
The threat was crude, but effective. Stanislav became the first agent in Alexei's intelligence network. Through him, the Tsarevich began receiving engineering books, German and British scientific journals, and industrial reports.
Alexei read at night. His adult mind devoured the information, searching for technological gaps between 1907 and the future he remembered.
And then, he found the anomaly.
It was a report in a British financial magazine, The Economist, dated September 1907. A brief article about fluctuations in the rare metals futures market.
Someone was buying these materials, primarily tungsten. Massive quantities.
Tungsten in 1907 was mainly used for high-speed steels and incipient light bulb filaments. Global demand was low at this time. But the purchase volume recorded in the article was absurd. It was the type of volume one would need if planning to build industrial-scale machinery... or advanced tank armor... or aerospace components. Decades ahead of time.
Alexei felt a chill. He checked the buyer's name. A shell company in London: H&A Holdings.
Alexei put down the magazine. His heart beat forcefully against his infant ribs.
Tungsten was key for high-speed metal cutting.
"Damn it," Alexei whispered in the darkness.
Alexei got up and walked toward the wall map. Russia had tungsten. Deposits in the Caucasus and Siberia, not yet discovered or exploited at this time.
He had to reach them first. But how? He was three years old. He couldn't order a mining expedition. He had no budget.
He looked at his small hands. They were useless for digging. But they were perfect for drawing.
He sat at his desk and began tracing a geological map from memory. He remembered the natural resource reports from his previous life. Tyrnyauz in the Caucasus. Dzhida in Buryatia.
The next morning, when Stolypin came to visit, Alexei had a drawing prepared. It looked like a child's drawing of mountains, but the locations were marked with precise red crosses.
"Uncle Pyotr," Alexei said, handing him the paper. "I had a dream. I dreamed there were treasures in these mountains. Gray, heavy stones worth more than gold."
Stolypin smiled, taking the drawing. "Gray stones, Alexei?"
"Yes. To make cannons," Alexei said, injecting a dose of prophetic seriousness into his voice. "You must send your geologists. It's important for the Tsar."
Stolypin tucked the drawing in his pocket, probably thinking about humoring the child.
"I will, Your Highness. I will."
Alexei watched him leave. He knew Stolypin would verify it. The Prime Minister was meticulous. And when they found the wolframite, Stolypin would begin to believe the Tsarevich wasn't just a genius, but a seer or for other thoughts perhaps a monster.
That was dangerous. The line between 'genius' and 'monster' was thin. The opinion between both differed in that one was acclaimed for its character and the other denied for its form of existence.