The intelligence from the newly turned Tishchenko began to flow almost immediately, a secret stream of information delivered to Captain Orlov in the dead of night. The first report confirmed Mikhail's suspicions. Plehve, unable to attack him directly, had resorted to his favorite tool: manufactured chaos. Agents from his ministry, the Okhrana, were being directed to infiltrate the railway workers' unions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Their goal was to use the genuine grievances of the workers—long hours, low pay, and the hardships of the war—to foment a general strike that would paralyze the Trans-Siberian Railway, thereby proving Mikhail's incompetence as Deputy Commissioner.
As Mikhail reviewed Orlov's summary, Alistair's mind raced through the historical parallels. Plehve was playing with matches in a powder keg. These state-sponsored provocations were precisely the sparks that had historically ignited the inferno of the 1905 Revolution. The minister, in his myopic quest to destroy a rival, was willing to risk setting the entire Empire ablaze.
It was a profound threat, but to Mikhail, it was also a perfect opportunity.
He did not move to arrest the agitators. That would only create martyrs. Instead, he decided to seize control of the narrative. Using Tishchenko, he began to feed misinformation back to the Okhrana, exaggerating the "success" of their agents while subtly directing them toward the most radical, violent, and easily discredited union factions.
Simultaneously, Orlov's Directorate worked to identify the key figures within the legitimate labor movement. They pinpointed one man as the lynchpin: Matvei Gromov, the respected, pragmatic leader of the St. Petersburg railway workers' union. Gromov was a genuine advocate for his men, not a revolutionary ideologue, and he was growing wary of the increasingly violent rhetoric being pushed by the new, vocal members of his union.
Mikhail arranged a secret meeting. It was an incredible risk. A state commissioner meeting with the head of a restive labor union was unheard of, an act that could be construed as treason by Plehve's faction. They met in the back room of a neutral tavern, the air thick with the smell of cheap tobacco and boiled cabbage.
Gromov was a large man with intelligent, tired eyes. He was suspicious. "Why does a Baron and a Commissioner want to meet with me?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.
"Because we have a common enemy, Mr. Gromov," Mikhail said simply. He slid a thin file across the table. It contained photographs and surveillance reports from Orlov's men. "The men in these pictures are your most vocal new members, the ones calling for a general strike and violence against the state."
He paused, then delivered the killing blow. "They are also all on the payroll of Minister Plehve's Okhrana."
Gromov stared at the photographs, his face hardening as he recognized the men. The proof was undeniable. He was being used, his union hijacked by the secret police to serve some political game he didn't understand.
"What do you want?" Gromov asked, his voice now tight with controlled anger.
"I want what you want," Mikhail said. "To avoid a bloody, pointless confrontation that will only result in your best men being shot or sent to Siberia. But your men's grievances are real. You cannot simply back down."
He then laid out his proposal. It was a staggering piece of political theater. "You will help me purge the police provocateurs from your union. In return, I will not crush your movement; I will negotiate with it. You will call off the general strike. Instead, you will organize a one-day, peaceful work stoppage, demanding specific, reasonable improvements: a ten percent wage increase and a formal review of safety standards. It will make you look like a responsible leader, not a revolutionary. It will make the provocateurs look like the violent extremists they are."
"And you?" Gromov asked, studying him intently. "What do you get?"
"I get to be the man who averts a national crisis," Mikhail said with a cold smile. "I will publicly meet your demands, granting most of them. The state will hail me as a master of social order. Minister Plehve's plot will have failed, and he will have been made to look like a fool. And you, Mr. Gromov, will have won a real victory for your men, and will have a powerful friend inside the government."
The union leader saw the brutal, brilliant logic of it. He was being offered a chance to trade a suicidal rebellion for a concrete victory and a powerful, unlikely alliance. He agreed.
Gromov moved with surprising speed. Within days, the Okhrana agents found themselves publicly branded as extremists and cast out of the union, a move that cemented Gromov's control over his men. The revolutionary fervor, so carefully stoked by Plehve's agents, fizzled out. The feared general strike was replaced by a single day of disciplined, peaceful protest. This gave Mikhail the perfect political stage. He arranged a public meeting with Gromov, a carefully choreographed negotiation between a 'reasonable' state official and a 'responsible' labor leader. The next day, the newspapers praised Baron Volkov's enlightened statesmanship as he announced a settlement, granting new benefits to the workers and ending the crisis.
Plehve was checkmated. He could not deny the success of his own rival. His attempt to set a fire had been expertly contained and then extinguished by the very man he sought to burn.
The chapter concluded in Sergei Witte's study. The old financier looked at Mikhail with a new level of awe and trepidation.
"You made a pact with the unions?" Witte asked, stunned. "You gambled the stability of the capital on the word of a labor agitator."
"I didn't gamble, Sergei," Mikhail replied, swirling the brandy in his glass. "I invested in a controlling interest. Plehve thinks the great threat to Russia is revolution. He's wrong."
Mikhail looked out the window at the city lights, his mind already moving to the next phase, the next move in a game only he could see.
"The greatest threat to Russia is Russia itself. Its incompetence. Its corruption. Plehve thought he was setting a fire to smoke me out. All he did was show me exactly where the fuel is stored for the real blaze yet to come."