The meeting with Sergei Witte proved to be a critical turning point. A week after the salon, Mikhail was invited to Witte's private residence, a house filled not with frivolous art, but with maps, charts, and stacks of economic reports from across Europe. There were no pleasantries. Witte, a man who saw time as a resource more precious than gold, got straight to the point.
"Your provincial model is impressive, Baron, but it is a candle in a hurricane," he stated, his voice a low rumble. "Russia does not need more high-quality bricks. It needs steel. The rails for our expanding railways buckle because they are poorly made. The plating on our new battleships is inferior to what the British produce. Plehve and his ilk think the strength of Russia lies in its police and its traditions. They are wrong. It lies in its blast furnaces."
He leveled a piercing gaze at Mikhail. "I am cultivating a group of Belgian and French investors who see the potential in Russia but are wary of our… antiquated business practices. They need a Russian partner who speaks the language of modern industry, not just a well-connected courtier. I want you to draft a proposal. Not for a bigger brickworks. For a steel foundry. A modern one. Show me a plan that is efficient, profitable, and strategically vital. If it is sound, I will put it in front of them."
It was the opportunity Alistair would have killed for. This was not just funding; it was a license to build a cornerstone of a future superpower. Mikhail spent the next week in a fever of creation. He did not sleep. He barely ate. He filled page after page with designs, production flowcharts, and financial projections. He designed a fully integrated steelworks incorporating a Bessemer converter for mass production and a Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnace for higher quality steel, technologies that were years ahead of anything in Russia. He detailed plans for a machine shop capable of producing high-tolerance parts for engines and artillery. He named the proposed enterprise the "Northern Industrial Syndicate," with the Volkovo foundry as its research-and-development core. It was a blueprint for a miniature Krupp works on Russian soil.
Meanwhile, news of Baron Volkov's activities in the capital had reached the ears of Nikolai Katorov. In his opulent office in Pskov, the industrialist was seething. The boy had not only survived, he had been summoned to the capital and was now meeting with figures like Witte. The threat was no longer provincial; it was existential. Katorov, a man who had built his empire on political favors and brute force, immediately decamped for St. Petersburg to call on his own allies.
He found a sympathetic ear in Konovalov at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. "This upstart baron is a protégé of Witte," Katorov explained, framing his concern as a matter of state security. "He consorts with foreign capitalists. He promotes dangerous new methods that could disrupt the established order. Giving a man like this control over a strategic asset like a steel foundry would be madness. He is an unknown, a rogue element."
The poison worked. When Witte presented Mikhail's ambitious proposal to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, it was met with a wall of bureaucratic resistance. Plehve's ministry raised official concerns, citing the national security risk of foreign involvement in military-grade production and questioning the wisdom of concentrating so much industrial power in the hands of a minor, unvetted baron. The project was stalled indefinitely.
Mikhail learned of the roadblock from a frustrated Witte. "Welcome to St. Petersburg, Baron," the financier grumbled. "Where the right hand of the government works tirelessly to chop off the left. Plehve would rather Russia have no modern steel than have it be steel he does not control."
That evening, Mikhail met again with Princess Sofia. The political dimension of the game was now starkly clear. He was no longer just a businessman. He was a piece in the colossal struggle between the modernizing faction represented by Witte and the reactionary security state led by Plehve.
"You cannot win this with a better financial projection," Sofia told him, her analysis sharp and immediate. "Witte fights with numbers. Plehve fights with fear and loyalty. You must find a third front. You must appeal to a power that both men must respect."
"The military," Mikhail stated. It was not a question.
"Precisely," Sofia confirmed. "Plehve speaks of national security, but the generals and admirals care about the quality of their guns and their ships. They know we are falling behind. You must prove that your project is not a risk to them, but their salvation."
Together, they devised a new strategy. Mikhail spent two days reworking his proposal. He added a new, detailed annex, a confidential report that Alistair's future knowledge made devastatingly effective. It analyzed the current steel plating on Russian battleships, highlighting its specific metallurgical flaws and demonstrating with precise calculations how it would shatter under fire from the newest German naval cannons. It then detailed how the steel from his proposed open-hearth furnace, with its specific chemical composition, would provide vastly superior resistance. He included designs for a standardized, higher-quality artillery shell casing that his machine shop could produce.
It was a technical masterpiece, but its true purpose was political. It was designed to make the generals and admirals profoundly afraid, and then to present himself as the only solution.
Sofia, through her family connections, knew exactly which hands to place it in. "General Dragomirov is the most respected artillery theorist in the army," she advised. "He is a traditionalist, but he is a patriot who despises incompetence. Vice-Admiral Makarov is the navy's most brilliant strategist, and he is desperate to modernize the fleet. Give them the technical proof that their men's lives are being endangered by inferior industry. They will become your advocates."
The chapter concluded as Mikhail sealed two copies of the new proposal. One for Witte, to show his new line of attack. The other, he addressed to the office of General Dragomirov.
He had arrived in the capital hoping to find investors for an enterprise. He now found himself at the center of a shadow war between the most powerful factions in the Empire. He was no longer just building a company. To get his foundry, he first had to help arm a faction in the silent, vicious battle for Russia's soul.