Night of November 22, 1910.
Moscow-Kazan Classification Station.
Russian winter is not simply a meteorological season that devours heat, will, and sometimes life. At thirty degrees below zero, the steel of the rails becomes brittle as glass and breath freezes before leaving the lips.
However, in cargo sector 2, that night it wasn't cold. It was a heat that wasn't even expected on hot days.
Alexei observed the scene from the window of an unmarked armored car. The flames rose twenty meters toward the black sky, licking the falling snow and turning it into dirty, boiling rain. The smell wasn't the usual of burned wood or coal, for in the environment there existed an aroma... no, a chemical, metallic, acrid stench that pricked his throat even through the glass.
"They've used thermite," Alexei murmured. His voice was so cold that the Special Section officer seated beside him shuddered.
"Thermite, Your Highness?" the man asked, wiping fog from the glass. "What's that?"
"A mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide. It burns at two thousand five hundred degrees. It can't be extinguished with water. Water only makes it explode," Alexei explained, clenching his fists on his knees until his knuckles whitened. "It's used in the military sphere. This isn't the work of socialist revolutionaries with kerosene bottles. This is sabotage. I think..."
The train burning before them wasn't just any transport. It was the Fergana Express, the special transport camouflaged as a cattle train bringing the first three tons of ore from Tyuya-Muyun. The basis of Russia's physics and nuclear future.
Alexei opened the car door and stepped out into the snow.
"Your Highness, it's dangerous!" a guard shouted.
Alexei ignored him. He walked toward the heat, his boots crunching on snow mixed with ash. Moscow's firefighters ran back and forth, useless, throwing water that vaporized with a sharp hiss upon touching the red-hot metal.
The main car was a skeleton of twisted steel. The ore was lost, melted into a useless radioactive mass mixed with the train's chassis. Whoever planned this had fulfilled their threat: if they couldn't block the money, they would burn the asset.
But what stopped Alexei wasn't the financial loss. It was the body.
Near the track, covered with a railway police tarp, was a small bundle. Too small to be a soldier.
Alexei approached and lifted the tarp's corner with a firm hand.
It was Misha. One of Neva Technical Solutions' junior draftsmen. A young boy, barely eighteen years old, a mathematics prodigy from Kazan who had insisted on accompanying the cargo to supervise the radiological safety seals.
He had burns on his face. He had died of asphyxiation, but his hands still clutched the cargo manifest briefcase. He had died trying to save the papers.
"His name was Misha," a broken voice said behind him.
It was Professor Stanislav. His face was stained with ash and frozen tears in his graying beard. He seemed to have aged ten years in ten minutes.
"I know," Alexei responded, releasing the tarp gently. "He had a widowed mother in Vyborg. We paid for her medicines so her son wouldn't have to pay for them."
"This isn't competition, Your Highness," Stanislav sobbed, pointing to the orange inferno. "This is murder. Whoever did this has crossed the line. They've killed a civilian."
Alexei turned. The fire's glow illuminated his face, creating deep shadows that made him look like an ancient gargoyle carved in ice. In his blue eyes there were no tears. Tears were for children, and he had stopped being a child long ago.
"No, Professor. They haven't killed a civilian. They've killed a soldier in the line of duty," Alexei said. "And in doing so, they've turned a commercial dispute into a blood war."
The Tsarevich walked back to the car, where the Special Section chief waited.
"Captain," Alexei said.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Until today, we've played by market rules. We've used lawyers and patents," Alexei said, looking at the fire one last time. "But London has decided to use thermite. I want you to activate Directive Zero."
"Total cleanup?"
"I want every British commercial agent, every 'consultant' from British and American companies, and every industrial spy we have on the surveillance list in Saint Petersburg and Moscow detained tonight. Under Martial Law. Accuse them of sabotage, espionage, sodomy if necessary. I don't care. Then do the same in other regions."
"That will provoke a diplomatic incident with Ambassador Buchanan," the captain warned.
"Buchanan will say nothing," Alexei assured with an icy smile. "Because if they complain, we'll publish the evidence... We'll make it look like an act of state terrorism. King George will have to choose between protecting some murderous bankers or avoiding a crisis with his cousin the Tsar, and above all both my grandmother and great-aunt will be making certain reprimands..."
Alexei got into the car.
"And send a check to Misha's mother. Full pension for life. Tell her her son died building the Empire's foundations."
The car started, driving away from the fire. Behind remained the smoke, the molten metal, and the last shred of nineteenth-century innocence.