The small office adjoining Yuan Shikai's grand chamber had become Riley's entire world. The window overlooked a sterile courtyard, and the door was always guarded. He had spent days immersed in the Project Atlas dossier, the cold, clinical data of his homeland's vulnerabilities becoming a perverse kind of scripture. The initial horror had not subsided, but it had been walled off, compartmentalized. In its place grew a chilling, focused clarity. To survive, he had to become the instrument Yuan wanted him to be. To survive, he had to excel.
He had finalized his analysis. He had found the flaws in the Qing agents' logic and crafted a new, more terrible plan in its place. Now, he was summoned to present it. He walked into Yuan Shikai's office, the report held in his steady hands. He felt a strange, detached calm, the calm of a man who has already fallen off a cliff and is no longer afraid of the ground.
"Minister," he began, forgoing any unnecessary preamble. He spread his notes on the desk, his movements precise. "Your agents' plan is strategically sound, but psychologically flawed. The plan to fund radical unionists in the Appalachian coal fields will fail."
He laid out his logic, his voice the flat, confident monotone of a professional briefer. "You cannot purchase an American uprising like you would a shipment of goods. The miners there are a deeply conservative and patriotic people, despite their grievances. They will take money from anyone, but they will not take orders from a man they perceive as a socialist or an anarchist, let alone a foreigner. Your agents would be discovered, and the entire movement would be discredited as a foreign plot."
Yuan listened, his chin resting on his hand, his expression unreadable.
"My analysis suggests a different path," Riley continued. "One that does not seek to impose a foreign ideology, but to weaponize an existing American one. The story of the common man against the powerful, wealthy elite. It is the nation's founding myth and its most potent political weapon."
He slid a photograph across the desk. It was a grainy surveillance shot of a man in his early sixties, with a kind, craggy face and a shock of white hair, addressing a crowd of miners. "This is your target. Sean O'Malley. President of the United Miners Local 14. He is not a radical. He is a moderate, a devout Catholic, a grandfather, and widely respected, even by the company owners he negotiates with. He is seen as honest, fair, and incorruptible."
"An incorruptible man is a useless asset," Yuan interjected, his voice a low rumble.
"He is not the asset, Minister," Riley corrected him. "He is the tinder. You do not want his cooperation. You want his righteous fury. And to get that, you must give him a tragedy he cannot ignore."
He then detailed the plan he had meticulously crafted, the words flowing from him with a horrifying ease. "The Black Creek Colliery. It's owned by a faceless conglomerate in New York. It has the worst safety record in the state. Statistically, it is due for another methane explosion within the year. We do not need to cause the accident. We only need to wait for it. And when it happens, Project Atlas moves from observation to action."
"Our agents, posing as investigative journalists from a progressive New York magazine, will descend on the town. They will not be spies; they will be champions of the little man. They will bring with them a portfolio of expertly forged documents: internal memos from the company's board discussing the cost-inefficiency of safety upgrades; a falsified geologist's report warning of imminent danger that was ignored; a ledger showing a payoff to a federal mine inspector."
"They will not release this information to the public at large. They will leak it, exclusively, to Sean O'Malley. They will convince him that the deaths of his men were not an accident, but deliberate, cold-blooded murder, committed for profit. You will transform his grief into a holy crusade for justice."
Riley paused, his gaze unwavering. "When O'Malley, a man of peace, calls for a non-violent protest, a march on the company offices, you will execute the final phase. Your other assets—not spies, but hired thugs, local criminals—will be paid to infiltrate the company's own security forces. They will be the ones to incite violence. They will attack the marching miners. They will beat the women and children. And they will ensure that Sean O'Malley himself is brutally, publicly beaten, but not killed. Our 'journalists' will capture it all. The photographs of the bloodied, beloved old man will be on the front page of every newspaper in the country."
"That," Riley concluded, his voice barely a whisper, "is how you start your fire. Not with foreign gold, but with American blood. The strike that follows will not be about wages. It will be about revenge. And it will burn until you decide to put it out."
A long, heavy silence filled the room. Yuan Shikai stared at the young American, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across his face. It was the smile of a master craftsman admiring a perfectly forged weapon.
"Madame Song," Yuan said, his voice filled with a chilling satisfaction. "The analyst is correct. His logic is flawless. It is the logic of tyranny, the kind Americans claim to despise but respond to with such predictable passion. The plan is perfect."
He turned back to Riley. "You have exceeded my expectations."
Then, turning to his aide, he began to dictate, his voice now sharp and commanding. "Prepare a coded dispatch for our chief agent in North America. Codename: Artisan. Use the new high-security channel."
He began to pace, the words flowing from him as he constructed the message that would set the world on fire.
TO ARTISAN. FROM YUAN. PROJECT ATLAS PHASE ONE IS HEREBY ACTIVATED. ABANDON ALL PREVIOUS DIRECTIVES. YOU WILL PROCEED TO THE PENNSYLVANIA COAL REGION IMMEDIATELY. YOUR PRIMARY TARGET IS AN INDIVIDUAL NAMED O'MALLEY, SEAN. UNION LEADER. DO NOT MAKE CONTACT. BEGIN COVERT SURVEILLANCE AND PROFILE DEVELOPMENT. YOUR SECONDARY TARGET IS THE MINE KNOWN AS THE BLACK CREEK COLLIERY. FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH ITS OPERATIONS AND IDENTIFY INTERNAL SECURITY WEAKNESSES. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS FOR 'EVENT' TIMING AND DELIVERY OF SUPPORTING MATERIALS. THE EMPEROR DEMANDS A HARSH WINTER FOR HIS ENEMIES.
The message was sent.
Miles away, in a grimy, third-floor boarding house in the industrial heart of Pittsburgh, a man who looked like a simple Chinese laundry worker sat at a small table. He was slight of build, unassuming, a man designed to be ignored. This was Artisan, Yuan Shikai's most dangerous deep-cover agent, a man who had been living in America for fifteen years, his accent, his mannerisms, his very identity a perfect camouflage.
He worked by the light of a single, dim bulb, carefully decoding Yuan's message with a practiced, steady hand. He read the words, his face a mask of placid concentration. When he was finished, he committed the details to his flawless memory, then calmly lit the message paper with a match, dropping it into a metal bowl and watching until it was nothing but fine, grey ash.
He rose and went to a large, battered steamer trunk in the corner of the room. He opened it. The top layer contained the clothes of a laborer. Beneath a false bottom, however, lay the tools of his true trade: a compact camera with a telephoto lens, a set of high-quality forged documents providing him with a new identity as a journalist, a small but powerful wireless receiver, and several thick bundles of American cash.
He put on a worn tweed coat and a scally cap, the unofficial uniform of the local working class. Looking in the mirror, the unassuming immigrant vanished, replaced by just another anonymous face in the industrial crowd, a man who could go anywhere and be noticed by no one.
He walked out of the boarding house and into the grimy, smoke-choked streets of Pittsburgh. He was heading east, towards the mountains. He was a silent, deadly instrument of Yuan Shikai's will, a scalpel guided by the intimate, traitorous, and brutally logical knowledge of Corporal Riley. The first active Qing intelligence operation on American soil had begun. Its goal was not to conquer land, but to ignite a fire in the very heart of the nation itself.