The Project Chimera headquarters felt like a tomb. The frantic energy of the past few days had evaporated, replaced by a thick, anxious silence broken only by the rhythmic clatter of the teletype machine and the incessant, transatlantic hiss from the speaker of the secure telephone. Michael Abernathy stared at the map of Beijing, his elegant theory of "Operation Echo" feeling more foolish and naive with every passing hour. He had promised a scalpel. He had promised a subtle, strategic victory. Now, all he had delivered was silence.
Across the ocean, President Theodore Roosevelt's patience had worn paper-thin. His voice, crackling over the line, was strained, the voice of a caged bear.
"Any word, Abernathy?" Roosevelt demanded, the question less a request for information and more a prod with a sharp stick. "It has been three days. Has Prince Chun presented our little gift? Has the dragon purged this corrupt minister of his? Or are we to be defeated by the glacial pace of Oriental bureaucracy?"
"Patience, Mr. President," Abernathy murmured, though he felt little himself. "The information was delivered. The Prince met with the Emperor. We must allow the ripples to spread. A move this significant will not happen overnight."
Even as he spoke the words, he knew they sounded hollow. He had expected a swift, brutal reaction. A public denouncement. A quiet execution. Something. Anything. This baffling silence was more unnerving than any open response.
It was then that the teletype machine began to chatter with a new urgency. The young American analyst, a man named Peters, ripped the sheet from the machine, his eyes scanning the coded message. His face, already pale under the harsh lighting, lost what little color it had left.
"Sir…" he stammered, looking at Abernathy. "We… we have news from our legation in Beijing. It's… it's not what we expected."
"Out with it, man!" Roosevelt's voice boomed from the speaker.
Peters swallowed hard. "The Qing court has just issued an Imperial Edict. It announces the creation of a new wartime post… Supreme Overseer of Imperial War Preparedness. The position is being granted sweeping powers over all industrial and military mobilization for the coming campaign in Siberia."
"And?" Roosevelt prompted, his voice tight with anticipation. "Who did they give it to? Have they replaced Yuan?"
The analyst looked up from the paper, his expression one of utter disbelief. "No, Mr. President. The man appointed to this incredibly powerful new position… is Yuan Shikai."
A roar of pure, unadulterated fury erupted from the telephone speaker, so loud and violent that the analysts physically flinched. The sound was distorted, bestial, the sound of a man whose last shred of patience had been torn away.
"HE WAS PROMOTED?" Roosevelt bellowed. "PROMOTED? Abernathy, you told me you were using a scalpel! You've done nothing but give our enemy's most dangerous man a commendation and a new scepter! He's laughing at us! Laughing! He knew we were trying to play these subtle European games, and he has shown us his utter contempt!"
Abernathy stood frozen, the blood draining from his own face. It was a public, humiliating refutation of his entire strategy. His elegant, logical plan, the proud product of his intellect, had not just failed; it had backfired in the most spectacular way imaginable. He had intended to place a seed of doubt and had instead handed his opponent a crown. He could feel the smug, pitying eyes of the American analysts on him. He had been outmaneuvered, outplayed, and made to look like a fool in his own game of shadows.
For a long, terrible moment, he had no answer. The Emperor's move was illogical, insane. It defied every model of political behavior he had ever studied.
Then, slowly, through the fog of his humiliation, the mind of the spymaster began to work again. He forced himself to discard his own ego, to analyze the failure not as a personal defeat, but as a new piece of data. Why would a leader, when presented with proof of a subordinate's treason, promote him to a position of even greater power?
"No," Abernathy said, the word a quiet whisper at first, then gaining strength as the new theory took shape in his mind. He began to pace, his mind racing. "No, this is not contempt. It is not laughter. Mr. President, this is fear."
The room remained silent, waiting.
"Think about it," Abernathy continued, his voice regaining its analytical edge. "A leader who is confident, who is secure in his power, purges the traitor swiftly and silently. He cauterizes the wound. But a leader who is terrified? A leader who has just discovered a catastrophic leak in his inner circle and does not know its source? A leader who fears his enemies can read his mind? He cannot afford to show that the poison is working. He must project an image of absolute, monolithic stability. He promotes the man he knows is a traitor to prove to the world—to us—that the rumors are baseless. He's not laughing at us, Mr. President. He's trying to pretend he didn't hear us. He's desperately trying to plug a hole in a sinking ship while pretending the ship is invincible."
It was a brilliant piece of reverse-analysis, but Roosevelt, stewing in his fury three thousand miles away, was in no mood for elegant theories.
"I don't care if he's afraid!" he thundered back. "Fear hasn't stopped him from preparing for war! Your turn is over, Abernathy. Your delicate games have failed. Now, we do things my way. We stop trying to understand the dragon's mind, and we start poking it with a very sharp stick to see how it moves."
He made a decision, his voice now cold and hard as iron.
"We have another asset in play. The physicist, Dr. Chen. Our man Donovan reports she is growing impatient. She wishes to conduct a dangerous experiment, something to test the fundamental resonance of the Emperor's power. She has made a specific request, through Donovan, for a quantity of refined uranium salts. A material we know is connected to this… this atomic sorcery. Until now, we have held back, fearing the consequences."
He paused, the silence on the line crackling with menace.
"No more. Our caution has gained us nothing."
He issued a direct command, his words intended for the coded message that would soon be flying across the wires to Agent Donovan in his hiding place in China.
"Give the lady what she wants. Procure the material, whatever the risk. Let's see what kind of noise Dr. Chen can make when she has the proper ingredients for her little science project. Let's stop whispering in his ear and instead start a tremor he can feel in his bones."
The alliance was abandoning subtlety. Roosevelt, in his rage and frustration, was pushing them toward active, high-risk scientific provocation. They were about to hand a rogue genius the key to an atomic bomb, hoping to trigger a supernatural event they could neither predict nor control. The time for scalpels was over. Now, they were reaching for a sledgehammer.