The initial success in the Irkutsk railyard was only a prelude to the true battle. The heart of the Siberian problem, the chokepoint that was truly starving the army, was Lake Baikal. Here, the Trans-Siberian Railway stopped dead. The western shore was piled high with thousands of railcars, while the eastern shore was a barren expanse waiting for the trickle of supplies that could make it across. The entire war effort depended on two aging, inefficient ice-breaking ferries, the Baikal and the Angara, which slowly shuttled a handful of cars at a time across the vast, frozen lake.
When Mikhail and Colonel Denisov arrived at the port town of Listvyanka, they found a system defined by lethargy. The process of unloading cargo from a railcar, loading it onto the ferry by hand, and then reversing the process on the other side could take days for a single train's worth of supplies. The ferries ran on a loose, daylight-only schedule, their captains more concerned with conserving coal than with supplying an army.
"This is not a crossing," Denisov muttered grimly, watching a team of laborers struggle to move a heavy artillery piece with ropes and rollers. "It is a funeral procession."
Mikhail saw the problem with Alistair's clinical eye. It wasn't about the speed of the boats; it was about the time they spent idle at the docks. His solution was radical.
Mikhail, however, saw the problem differently. He grabbed a piece of charcoal and, on a discarded wooden plank, began to sketch for a bewildered Pavlovich. His hands moved with a feverish certainty, outlining a series of heavy timbered ramps and cleverly jointed sections of track. "We stop unloading the cars," he explained. "We bolt new rails directly to the ferry's deck. The railcars will no longer be unloaded; they will be rolled aboard, cargo and all, turning the entire ferry into a floating section of the railway."
Under his plenary authority, he requisitioned every available carpenter and blacksmith in the region. Work began around the clock, under massive canvas tents lit by bonfires to ward off the brutal cold. His next target was the ferry captains themselves, two stubborn old sailors who ran their ships like private fiefdoms. Mikhail, with Colonel Denisov at his side, met them on the freezing dock. He didn't shout or threaten. He simply laid out a new, non-negotiable schedule that had the ferries running in constant, synchronized rotation, day and night. When they complained about coal quality, Denisov's aide was dispatched to seize the best stores at the depot for their exclusive use. Their excuses were systematically dismantled, leaving only the stark imperative of the timetable.
As the first railcars were successfully rolled onto the Baikal using the new ramps, a ragged cheer went up from the watching workers. For the first time, it seemed the mountain of freight on the shore might actually begin to shrink. A sense of real possibility, something more tangible than hope, began to spread through the port.
But the deposed railway chief, Bazanov, and his network of corrupt officials were not idle. From his "confinement" in Irkutsk, Bazanov saw Mikhail's success as a direct threat to his own survival. If the boy-baron succeeded, the subsequent audits would surely expose a decade of graft.
The sabotage was subtle at first. A critical shipment of forged steel pins needed for the new loading ramps was "accidentally" misdirected to a distant depot. Without them, the entire project would grind to a halt.
When Pavlovich brought him the news, his face pale with panic, Mikhail did not rage. A cold, focused light entered his eyes. He went straight to his own small foundry at the Volkovo works' forward maintenance depot—a facility he had insisted on establishing near the lake. Working with a handful of his best men, he used his knowledge of metallurgy to improvise. They spent thirty-six sleepless hours forging their own pins from scrap steel, tempering them in whale oil to achieve the necessary hardness. They were cruder than the originals, but they were strong enough.
The act of sabotage had failed to stop him; it had only served to demonstrate his terrifying resourcefulness to his men. Their loyalty, already strong, now bordered on fanaticism. They saw a leader who did not just give orders from a warm office, but who would stand in the fire and forge the tools of victory with his own intellect.
The final month of the ninety-day deadline was a frantic race against time. Mikhail, Denisov, and Pavlovich practically lived in the dispatch office, tracking the daily tonnage figures with an obsessive focus. The new system was working. The ferries, now carrying whole railcars, moved more supplies in a single day than they previously had in a week. The backlog on the western shore began to shrink.
The tension was immense. Every mechanical breakdown, every sudden squall on the lake, threatened their delicate timetable. Volgin, Plehve's silent watchdog, had also arrived from Irkutsk, observing the entire operation with a sour, disbelieving expression, waiting for the spectacular failure he was certain would come.
On the final day of the deadline, Mikhail, Denisov, and Pavlovich stood before the tally board. The clerks worked in a charged silence, adding up the figures from the last 24-hour cycle. The final number was written on the slate.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Colonel Denisov let out a raw, incredulous laugh.
They had done it. The target set by General Kuropatkin had been to double the previous average daily throughput of 250 tons to 500 tons. The final figure on the board was 610 tons. They hadn't just met the target; they had shattered it.
Mikhail looked at the number, feeling not elation, but a cold, hard satisfaction. It was a mathematical proof, an undeniable testament to the power of a modern mind against a feudal system.
He turned to a waiting telegraph operator. He dictated a short, unadorned message to be sent directly to the Minister of War in St. Petersburg.
"GENERAL KUROPATKIN. REFERENCE COMMISSION DIRECTIVE. AVERAGE DAILY TONNAGE FOR FINAL 7-DAY PERIOD: 610. FULL REPORT TO FOLLOW. BARON MIKHAIL VOLKOV."
He didn't add congratulations or explanations. He didn't need to. In the silent, brutal calculus of power, the numbers were the only victory speech that mattered. He had won the Siberian gambit. Now, it was time to return to the capital and claim his prize.