Traveling west, Mikhail saw the fruits of his labor. The railway, once a symbol of imperial dysfunction, was starting to breathe again. At the Chita station, he watched as a train loaded with ammunition—marked with red priority tags, just as he had ordered—was given clear passage. It was a small thing, but it was a sign that his system, his logic, was propagating down the line.
He arrived in the capital not with the anxiety of a man summoned for judgment, but with the cold patience of a victor waiting for the official surrender. His telegram, a simple, unadorned statement of fact, had landed in the Special Commission with the force of an artillery shell.
His new authority was made concrete with the assignment of an office within the General Staff Building itself. It was an intimidating environment, the air heavy with the scent of floor wax and the silent judgment of a hundred years of military tradition. Men who would have ignored him a month ago now nodded respectfully in the hallways. He was no longer a provincial baron with a strange proposal; he was now part of the institution. He bypassed any celebratory gestures and immediately set to work, issuing his first directives to begin the consolidation of the Trans-Siberian supply lines under his direct command.
The fallout from his victory was swift. Faced with the irrefutable evidence Mikhail had presented to the commission, and under immense pressure from the military, Nikolai Katorov was arrested. His industrial empire was seized by the state pending investigation, and his name, once a pillar of Pskov society, became a whispered synonym for treasonous greed. Plehve's faction had been dealt a staggering blow; their key financial backer was neutralized, and their own incompetence had been laid bare.
Mikhail knew, however, that a cornered wolf is at its most vicious. Plehve could no longer attack him through official channels; Mikhail was now a celebrated war hero, shielded by the military and the Dowager Empress's lingering favor. A different kind of attack was inevitable.
The Dowager Empress, in her shrewdness, had seemingly anticipated this. While his official "protective custody" had ended, one of its elements remained. A single, quiet man in a plain but perfectly tailored coat shadowed him everywhere. Captain Dmitri Orlov of the Imperial Guard was a man in his thirties with the dead-calm eyes of someone who had seen too much. He rarely spoke, but he moved with a fluid, predatory grace. He was not a bodyguard in the conventional sense; he was a human guarantee, a living symbol of the Empress's continued interest in her "investment."
Mikhail's carriage was forced to take a detour through a quieter, gaslit street to avoid the worst of the festival crowds after a late-night strategy session with Witte. The sounds of music and celebration faded, replaced by the rhythmic clatter of their own horses on the cobblestones. The sense of isolation was immediate. It was this sudden quiet that put Captain Orlov on alert, a moment before a heavy cart was pushed from the mouth of a dark alley, its bulk completely blocking the narrow lane.
It was the classic ambusher's tactic. Before the driver could react, three men emerged from the shadows. They were not common thugs. They moved with a purpose, dressed in dark, heavy coats, each armed with a revolver.
The world seemed to slow down. Alistair's mind registered the threat, the angles, the impossibility of escape. But it was Captain Orlov who reacted. In a single, fluid motion, he shoved Mikhail to the floor of the carriage, shouting "Down!" as a bullet shattered the window. Orlov didn't draw his own pistol. Instead, he kicked the carriage door open, using it as a shield, and threw a small, heavy object he'd produced from his coat—a blacksmith's hammer, of all things—with terrifying force at the closest gunman, striking him in the throat.
As the man collapsed, gurgling, the other two opened fire on the carriage. Mikhail, his heart pounding against the floorboards, was not paralyzed by fear. He was calculating. He shouted, "Orlov! The horses! They mean to box us in!"
Orlov understood instantly. Instead of engaging in a protracted gunfight, he lunged from the carriage, firing his own Nagant revolver twice, not at the men, but at the traces connecting the panicked horses to the cart blocking their path. One of the heavy leather straps snapped. As the last assassin turned to fire at Orlov, the captain shot him cleanly through the chest.
The driver, a man Mikhail had hired for his steady nerves, lashed the carriage horses. With the cart's harness broken, they were able to shoulder the obstacle aside with a splintering crash and bolt down the street, leaving the scene of violence behind.
They did not stop until they reached the safety of Mikhail's residence, its entrance now guarded by two more Imperial Guardsmen whom Orlov had summoned with a piercing whistle.
Later, in the quiet of his study, the adrenaline fading, Mikhail looked at the bullet hole in the shattered window. Captain Orlov stood by the door, a silent, watchful presence. The assassins were professionals. This was not a robbery. This was the work of Plehve or Katorov's remaining network. An official investigation would lead nowhere, swallowed by the bureaucracy Plehve controlled.
He had survived, thanks to Orlov's brutal efficiency. But the lesson was seared into his mind. His intellect, his political alliances, his industrial might—they were all useless against a determined man with a gun in a dark alley. He had been playing chess on a grand scale, but his enemy had just reminded him that the board could be violently overturned at any moment.
"Captain Orlov," Mikhail said, his voice quiet and cold.
"Baron," the captain replied.
"Your previous duty was to protect me as a ward of Her Majesty," Mikhail stated. "Your new duty is to serve as the chief of my personal security. I want you to find me ten men. Men like you. Former soldiers, loyal, discreet, and utterly ruthless. Their first task will be to discover who hired the men you killed tonight."
He was no longer just a commissioner or an industrialist. The attack had forced his hand. To continue his ascent, to survive long enough to reach the throne, he had to build his own private intelligence service, his own Praetorian Guard. The war in the shadows had just become personal, and he intended to fight it with the same cold, methodical precision he applied to everything else.