The room had no name, only a code: Project Chimera. It existed in the deep, labyrinthine basement of a non-descript government building near Whitehall, a place scrubbed from all official records. It was a space of stark, brutal functionality. There were no wood panels or leather armchairs here; only bare brick walls, harsh electric lighting, and the sharp, clean scent of ozone from the humming telegraph and telephone equipment. The walls were dominated by colossal, newly-drawn maps of China and the Pacific, bristling with pins and annotations. This was the nascent brain of the world's first supernatural cold war.
Michael Abernathy stood before the largest map, a cup of rapidly cooling tea untouched in his hand. Across the table, a handpicked team of three American and three British intelligence analysts sat in tense silence, their faces pale under the stark lights. The secure telephone line crackled, and from it, the disembodied, impatient voice of President Theodore Roosevelt echoed into the sterile room.
"The time for analysis and debate is over, gentlemen," Roosevelt's voice boomed, filled with a righteous anger that seemed to make the very wires hum. "We have been attacked on our own soil. The Prometheus data is clear. This Emperor is a clear and present danger to us all. We need to show this dragon we have teeth of our own! Burn his shipyards in Shanghai! Wreck his new railways in Manchuria! Fight fire with fire!"
One of the American analysts, a young, hawkish man from Naval Intelligence, nodded vigorously. "The President is right. A decisive kinetic response is the only language a tyrant understands."
Abernathy took a slow, deliberate sip of his cold tea. He set the cup down with a soft click that drew every eye in the room. He had spent the last forty-eight hours doing nothing but absorbing the Prometheus file, his mind reeling from the implications. He now believed. The skepticism had been burned away by the cold, hard data. But belief did not equate to recklessness.
"Mr. President," Abernathy began, his voice calm and measured, a stark contrast to Roosevelt's fiery passion. "With all due respect, a direct, kinetic response is precisely what he would expect from us. It is a game he understands and has likely prepared for. Sending saboteurs to his shipyards would be like challenging a master swordsman to a duel. We might land a blow, but he would learn our technique, our reach, our strength. We cannot afford to teach him how to fight us."
He turned from the map to face the telephone, as if addressing the man himself. "We must attack him in a way he does not anticipate. Not the body of his empire, but its mind. Not his industry, but his trust. We must turn the very nature of his autocratic power against him."
A palpable silence fell over the room. Roosevelt, across the ocean, did not immediately respond. Abernathy had their full attention.
"The Emperor's greatest strength is his absolute, centralized control," Abernathy continued, beginning to pace slowly. "But that is also his greatest vulnerability. Such a structure breeds paranoia, rivalry, and fear. Our own intelligence, predating this crisis, speaks of deep-seated rivalries within the Qing court. Specifically, between the 'new men'—the technocrats and industrialists like this Yuan Shikai—and the old Manchu aristocracy, who feel their power and influence being eroded."
He stopped and looked at the analysts. "We have learned from our new American friends that this Yuan Shikai is the Emperor's Minister of Industry, a man of immense power and, it would seem, ambition. He is precisely the kind of man the old guard would despise."
"What are you proposing, Abernathy?" Roosevelt's voice asked, the anger replaced by a grudging curiosity.
"I propose we conduct an operation, codenamed 'Echo'," Abernathy said. "We will not attack Yuan Shikai's factories. We will attack his reputation. We will take the information we have gleaned from your sources—about his potential corruption, his possible black budgets, his theft of state materials—and we will leak it. Not to the press, where it can be dismissed as foreign propaganda. We will leak it internally."
He pointed to a name on a chart of the Qing hierarchy. "To this man. Prince Chun. A high-ranking Manchu royalist, brother to the previous Emperor, and a man known to be deeply conservative and profoundly jealous of the power wielded by low-born Han Chinese like Yuan Shikai. He is the perfect vessel for our poison."
The young American analyst looked confused. "I don't understand, sir. How does giving a palace rival some gossip hurt the Emperor?"
"Because we will not present it as gossip," Abernathy explained patiently. "We will disguise it as a betrayal from within Yuan's own camp. We will use a cutout—I have a German diplomatic attaché in Beijing in mind, a man known for his greed and indiscretion. He will pass a simple, anonymous note to the Prince, claiming the information comes from a 'disgruntled source within the Ministry of Industry.' The information will be specific enough to be credible, but vague enough to be deniable."
He laid out the true genius of the plan. "Then, we do nothing. We simply watch. We listen with every asset we have. We observe the echo. Does the Emperor punish Yuan? Does he protect him? Does he launch a paranoid internal investigation? His reaction will tell us everything. It will reveal the fault lines in his court. It will show us who he trusts. It will expose the stability, or instability, of his inner circle. We will force the dragon to show us the underside of its scales without ever revealing our own hand. It is a scalpel, Mr. President," Abernathy concluded, his voice a whisper of conspiratorial excitement. "Not a sledgehammer."
On the other end of the line, Roosevelt was silent for a long moment. The hunter in him still craved a direct confrontation, a visceral fight. But the strategist, the historian, recognized the subtle, deadly elegance of the British plan. It was a weapon of pure intelligence, a move from a different kind of game.
"Very well, Abernathy," Roosevelt's voice finally came, resigned but firm. "You may play your game of whispers. You may use your scalpel. But if it fails to produce a significant result, we do this my way. And my way will involve considerably more smoke and fire."
The scene shifted, the cold, sterile air of the London basement dissolving into the warm, humid atmosphere of a Beijing teahouse. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine tea and sweet plum cakes. In a discreet alcove, shielded by a carved wooden screen, two men sat opposite each other. One was Prince Chun, his face a mask of bored, aristocratic indulgence, his silk robes immaculate. The other was Herr Schmidt, a pudgy, sweating German diplomat whose eyes darted nervously around the room.
"The information is… reliable," Schmidt whispered, pushing a small, plain white envelope across the rosewood table. His Mandarin was clumsy, but his meaning was clear. "It comes from a man inside the Ministry. A man who feels his loyalty to the throne outweighs his loyalty to his minister."
The Prince picked up the envelope with two fingers, as if it were something unclean. He clearly had little time for this grubby little foreigner or his sordid marketplace of secrets. But for the right price, he was always willing to listen.
He broke the simple wax seal and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. He began to read, his eyes scanning the lines of neat, precise calligraphy.
The boredom on his face vanished.
It was replaced, first, by a flicker of shock. Then, by something else. A slow-spreading look of profound, malicious opportunity. His lips, barely visible behind his wispy mustache, curled into the faintest of smiles.
The first scalpel of Project Chimera, forged in London and wielded by a bumbling German, had been plunged deep into the heart of the Forbidden City. It was aimed at one ambitious minister, but it was destined to strike the throne itself with the force of a hammer blow.