Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg. October 9, 1910.
The 'Gatchina Incident' had reached Tsar Nicholas II's ears duly filtered and softened by Stolypin's bureaucratic machinery. In official reports, the hangar fire was a "regrettable accident with chemical products" exacerbated by some anarchist subordinate's negligence. The words "corporate sabotage," "magnesium," and "international conspiracy" were deliberately omitted, so as not to disturb the Autocrat's fragile mental peace.
But Alexei needed to capitalize on the fear. Fear is like a hydraulic lever, if applied at the right point, it can move Empires.
It was late at night. Nicholas II sat in his private study, under the green light of a banker's lamp, reviewing decrees about grain exports. He looked tired, with the sunken eyes of a man who would rather be pruning roses in Crimea than governing one-sixth of the world's landmass.
"Papa," Alexei said, entering the room in his silk pajamas and dragging a teddy bear by one leg.
Nicholas looked up, his face instantly lighting up with that paternal devotion that was his greatest virtue and his greatest political weakness.
"Alyosha. What are you doing awake? Does something hurt, son?"
"No, my body is fine," Alexei lied, approaching the desk and climbing onto his father's lap. "It's just... I'm scared. I can't sleep."
Nicholas hugged the child, kissing his forehead.
"Nightmares? Monsters?"
"They're not monsters, Papa. They're the anarchists," Alexei whispered, injecting the exact dose of tremor into his voice. "Uncle Pyotr says the aerodrome fire wouldn't go out with water. He says it was unstoppable fire created by anarchists who want to... kill us."
Nicholas frowned. The mention of an unstoppable fire awakened his natural superstition.
"It's just chemistry, son. They're dangerous things."
"But the anarchists have those things now," Alexei insisted, looking into his eyes with terrifying seriousness. "And the normal police don't know how to put them out. Police only know how to chase students with books. They don't know how to look inside machines like others."
The Tsar remained thoughtful, stroking his heir's head. The regular police's incompetence was a complaint from his ministers. The Okhrana was good at beating, but blind to modern sophistication.
"What do you mean, Alyosha?"
"I think we need a new police, Papa," the child proposed, guiding the Emperor's thinking. "A small office. Just to look at machines, trains, and foreigners' money. Smart people. People who know mathematics, sciences, everything, not just capable of shooting. So they don't steal our Great Russia's secrets and don't burn my planes."
Nicholas reflected. The idea of protecting Russia's secrets and his family's physical security appealed to his most basic instincts.
"A specialized unit...," the Tsar murmured. "Perhaps within the Ministry of Industry. So as not to alarm the Duma."
"Yes. A Special Section," Alexei christened it instantly. "And have it answer only to you, Papa. And to Stolypin. So spies can't bribe them."
Nicholas nodded, convinced the idea had been his, inspired by the Tsarevich's prophetic innocence.
"I'll speak with Pyotr tomorrow. We'll do it, my son. Now, go back to bed. The anarchists won't come in here."
'No,' Alexei thought as he got down from the imperial lap. 'They're already inside. But now I'm going to hunt them,' he thought with a maniacal face.
. . . . . . .
One week later.
Safe house on Nevsky Avenue (Невский проспект), Saint Petersburg.
The Special Section had been officially born through a secret decree, endowed with a budget diverted from the naval modernization fund. But its headquarters wasn't in a granite building with imperial eagles, but in a discreet apartment above a tailor shop, rented in the name of a phantom company.
Alexei, dressed in street clothes for one of his "medical outings," reviewed the files on the dining table. Before him was Tatiana. The Grand Duchess, at thirteen, had stopped playing with dolls to become Saint Petersburg's most efficient personnel chief.
"We have the first candidates for the Section, Alexei," Tatiana reported, sliding three brown folders across the lace tablecloth.
"Tell me they're not retired gendarmes," Alexei requested, opening the first folder.
"No. I followed your instructions of 'I want brains, not muscles,'" she quoted.
She pointed to the first photo. A young man with a gaunt appearance and thick glasses.
"Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich. Topographic engineering student. Expelled from the military academy for reading Kropotkin and criticizing official cannon ballistics."
"A socialist?" Alexei asked.
"He calls himself a technocrat, somewhat disillusioned it says here, though with certain tendencies," Tatiana corrected. "He hates the current regime for its inefficiency, not its ideology. If you give him tools and complex problems, he'll work for the Devil."
"Hired," Alexei said. "Put him in charge of railway traffic analysis. I want to know which wagons enter and leave the German border."
Tatiana pointed to the second folder.
"Vasily Nikitin. Forensic accountant from the State Bank. They fired him because he discovered a Grand Duke's embezzlement and refused to sign the false balance sheet."
"Honest and good with numbers. A rarity," Alexei smiled. "Hired. He'll be our threat auditor. I want him to track every ruble entering radical union accounts."
"And the third...," Tatiana hesitated a moment. "This one is strange. A self-taught cryptographer who works at the post office. He says he sees mathematical patterns in language."
"Name?"
"Friedman. William Friedman. He's the son of immigrants, but wants to return to Russia."
Alexei stopped. Friedman. In world canon lore history, so to speak, William Friedman would be the father of American cryptography, the man who would break the Japanese Purple code. Having him here, in 1910, was an absurd stroke of luck, or proof that the butterfly effect was creating something new, which served them directly, anything that brought talent was incredible.
"Bring him. Pay him whatever he asks. If he wants to continue his university career in this country, convince him too," Alexei ordered, closing the folder.
"We'll need him to read the cables from London."
The Office of Shadows was taking shape. It wasn't like the Okhrana with its leather coats and basement tortures. It was a modern intelligence agency: characterized by analysis and lethality. The future KGB, built thirty years early to save the Monarchy.
"There's something else, Alexei," Tatiana said, lowering her voice. "Rumors have arrived from communications about Kiev."
Alexei tensed.
"Kiev?"
"Yes. An unusual increase in revolutionary activity in the area. And alleged money transfers to anarchist cells in the south."
Alexei stood up and walked to the bookshelf. He pulled out a roll of blueprints he had requested months ago under the excuse of interest in music.
He unfolded the blueprints on the table, covering the agents' files.
They were the blueprints of the Kiev Opera House.
"September 1911," Alexei murmured to himself.
In the original history, within eleven months, the Tsar and Stolypin would attend a gala at that opera. During intermission, a double agent named Dmitry Bogrov, a man who worked for both the Okhrana and the anarchists, would approach Stolypin and shoot him twice in the chest.
That shot would kill agrarian reform. It would kill hope for peaceful evolution of the Russian Empire. And it would condemn the Romanov Dynasty to death.
Stolypin was the master beam of the building Alexei was constructing. If he fell, all the State's weight would collapse on a weak Tsar.
"What are you looking at, Alexei?" Tatiana asked, observing the corridors and boxes drawn on the paper.
Alexei took a red pencil and marked an X in the orchestra's first row. The place where Stolypin would fall.
"I'm looking at the place where someone might try to kill us all, Tanya," Alexei said. "They won't use fire this time. They'll use a lone assassin. A fanatic of the worst kind."
"Can we stop him? Can we cancel the visit?"
"No. Papa has to go. It's a state visit to show strength. If we cancel, we show fear," Alexei reasoned. "We have to go. And we have to let the assassin get close."
Tatiana looked at him with horror. "Why?"
"Because I need to capture him alive," Alexei said, driving the pencil into the paper until the point broke. "I need him to confess who gave him the revolver and who paid for his passage. I need to expose the connection between revolutionaries and foreign money."
Alexei looked at his sister.
"Prepare the Special Section, General. Next September we're going to the opera."