The residence where the Imperial Guard deposited Mikhail was not a prison cell, but a gilded cage. It was a lavishly appointed suite of rooms in a minor palace wing overlooking the Moika Canal, furnished with fine mahogany and heavy silk draperies. Guards in immaculate uniforms stood watch at his door, their presence both a guarantee of his safety from Plehve's ministry and a constant reminder of his confinement. He was a guest of the Dowager Empress, with all the comfort and powerlessness the title implied.
For two weeks, he existed in a state of suspended animation. He was cut off from the daily operations of his syndicate, a general unable to command his army. His only contact with the outside world came through two channels: discreet, coded messages from Alexei, delivered by a trusted courier arranged by Witte, confirming that production at Volkovo continued unabated; and the cautious, carefully managed visits of Princess Sofia.
She was his lifeline, his window into the storm he had unleashed.
"Plehve is furious," she told him during one visit, her voice low as they sat in the opulent but stifling drawing room. "You have humiliated him. He cannot arrest you, so he has resorted to slander. The court is buzzing with rumors. They are painting you as a charlatan, a war profiteer who used false evidence to prey on Her Majesty's grief for Admiral Makarov. They say your industrial success is a fluke, and your warnings were merely a lucky guess."
Mikhail listened, his face impassive. It was the predictable counter-attack of a man whose direct weapons had been taken from him. "A rumor is only effective if it is not challenged by a greater truth," he stated.
"Precisely," Sofia agreed, a sharp glint in her eye. "And Her Majesty has just forged the hammer to shatter his lies."
She explained the Dowager Empress's move. It was a masterstroke of court politics. She had not directly confronted Plehve. Instead, she had used her influence on her son, the Tsar, to establish a new, emergency body: the "Special Imperial Commission on Military Preparedness and Supply." Its official mandate was to investigate the causes of the failures at Port Arthur and to propose reforms to the entire military supply chain.
"It will be chaired by General Kuropatkin," Sofia said.
Mikhail knew the name. Alexei Kuropatkin was the Minister of War, a man of immense vanity and limited strategic talent who was largely responsible for the army's state of unpreparedness. It seemed like a defeat.
"But," Sofia continued, a small smile playing on her lips, "Her Majesty insisted on appointing a 'technical and industrial' advisor to the commission, a man whose expertise was vital to understanding the full scope of the problem. Your dossier has been submitted as the commission's first piece of evidence. And you, Baron Volkov, have been named as its primary expert witness."
The brilliance of the move settled over Mikhail. The Empress had not exonerated him. She had deputized him. She had taken his private war against Plehve and turned it into an official government inquiry, with him at its center. He was no longer the accused; he was the star witness for the prosecution. Plehve could not touch him without directly defying a commission sanctioned by the Tsar himself.
"I am to be a tool, then," Mikhail said, the statement a simple acceptance of fact.
"A tool to rebuild a broken war machine," Sofia corrected. "But a tool that can be discarded if it proves ineffective. You have won your safety, Mikhail. Now you must prove your worth all over again, not just to my aunt, but to the entire military establishment."
He knew she was right. Waiting for the commission to vindicate him was not enough. He had to be proactive. He had to demonstrate that he was not just a man who could identify problems, but the only man who could offer viable solutions on a grand scale.
For the next week, he worked with a ferocious intensity Alistair had previously reserved for his doctoral thesis. With Sofia smuggling him the necessary maps, ministerial reports, and railway timetables, he began to draft his magnum opus. He did not focus on his own syndicate. He focused on the single greatest weakness of the Russian war effort: the Trans-Siberian Railway.
It was a logistical nightmare, a single, fragile artery struggling to pump men and material across a continent. Using his 21st-century understanding of logistics, he drafted a comprehensive plan for its complete operational overhaul. He introduced concepts unheard of in 1904: dedicated timetables for military and civilian traffic, the creation of logistical hubs and marshaling yards at key points, a system of standardized freight management, and a plan for doubling the trackage at critical bottlenecks using steel from his own foundry. He titled the proposal, "A Plan for the Reorganization of the Imperial Military Supply Chain."
When Sofia next visited, he presented the finished document to her. It was over a hundred pages of dense, irrefutable logic.
"This is not a defense of your past actions," she said, her eyes wide as she scanned the first few pages. "This is a blueprint for winning the war."
"They are one and the same," Mikhail replied. "Plehve wants to make me a scapegoat for our failures. I will make myself the architect of our future success. Give this to General Kuropatkin's chief of staff. Let them see that while they are investigating yesterday's problems, I am already solving tomorrow's."
He was no longer playing defense. He was launching a full-scale assault on the incompetence that was crippling the empire. He had been placed in a gilded cage, but from within its walls, he was forging the key not only to his own freedom, but to the command of Russia's entire war effort. The Empress had given him a shield; he would now give her a sword.