The Oval Office was thick with the scent of cigar smoke and the palpable energy of impending victory. President Theodore Roosevelt, brimming with a robust, almost boyish enthusiasm, paced before the Resolute Desk, a half-smoked cigar clenched in his teeth. His gambit, his demand for a direct response from the Chinese Emperor, had succeeded beyond his most optimistic projections.
Before him sat his two most trusted advisors, a study in contrasting styles. Secretary of State John Hay, a man of the old school of diplomacy, sat gracefully in an armchair, his expression one of weary, cautious concern. Beside him sat the formidable Secretary of War, Elihu Root, his posture as solid and unyielding as a block of granite, his sharp, legalistic mind already parsing the strategic implications of their new position.
"Gentlemen, we have them!" Roosevelt declared, punctuating the statement with a triumphant slap on his desk. "The gambit worked. The Emperor has folded. We have received official confirmation through their legation. Not one, but two separate high-level delegations are now crossing the Pacific, bound for our shores."
He began to pace again, radiating a kinetic energy that seemed too large for the room. "Yuan Shikai, their great minister, is leading a diplomatic mission ostensibly for the World's Fair. And Meng Tian, their so-called war hero, is coming to our Olympics. We'll have the butcher and the saint, the traitor and the loyalist, both on our soil, both under our control. We'll play them off each other like fiddles! We confront Yuan with Riley's confession, we show Meng Tian the depth of his government's corruption, and we watch the Emperor's entire power structure crack wide open!"
Secretary Hay sighed, a faint, worried sound. He was a man who believed in the delicate, careful dance of international relations, and he saw the President preparing to charge onto the dance floor like a bull. "Mr. President, I must urge a degree of caution," he began, his voice placid and reasonable. "We are playing with fire. If we push the Qing too hard, if we publicly humiliate them, we risk an open conflict we are not prepared for. A destabilized China could fall into the orbit of the Germans, or worse, it could collapse into a civil war that would throw all of Asia into chaos. We must proceed with the utmost diplomatic delicacy."
It was then that Elihu Root spoke, his voice calm, pragmatic, and heavy with authority. He was not a man given to flights of fancy or emotional outbursts. He was a builder of systems, the architect of the modern American military, and he saw the situation not as a chance for a dramatic diplomatic coup, but as an unprecedented intelligence opportunity.
"John is right to be cautious, Theodore," Root said, his gaze steady. "But your instinct for aggression is also correct. The goal here, however, should not be to simply break them. A broken tool is a useless one. The goal should be to assess them. To understand them. To learn every strength and every weakness of the two most important men in China, and by extension, the nature of the Emperor they serve."
Roosevelt stopped his pacing and listened, his respect for Root's strategic mind absolute.
"This is not one mission," Root continued, laying out his strategy with the clarity of a legal argument. "It is two separate operations, and they must be handled by different hands. We must control the stage."
He looked first toward Secretary Hay. "The diplomatic delegation, led by Yuan Shikai, is a political matter. Therefore, it falls under the purview of the State Department. You, John, will handle him. Do not allow him to proceed directly to St. Louis. Bring him to Washington first. Entangle him in protocol. Subject him to endless, frustrating rounds of formal negotiation. Delay, obstruct, and wear him down. While you are keeping him occupied, our intelligence agencies will have him under a microscope, monitoring his every move, every contact." He paused. "As for Corporal Riley, he is to be moved to a secure military facility at Fort Leavenworth. He is no longer a man; he is a bargaining chip. His existence is the unspoken threat in every conversation you have with Yuan."
Then, Root's expression hardened slightly. He turned his focus to the second, more mysterious visitor. "General Meng Tian, however, is a different matter entirely. He is a soldier. His visit is a military concern. Therefore, he will be my responsibility."
He laid out the second part of his plan. "Meng Tian will not be brought to Washington. We do not want him tainted by political wrangling. The moment his ship makes landfall in San Francisco, he will be met by a military honor guard and escorted, not to a hotel, but directly to the United States Military Academy at West Point."
The idea was brilliant in its simplicity. "We will treat him as the honored guest his invitation proclaims him to be," Root explained. "He will be given a full tour of the facilities. He will observe the training of our cadets. He will be introduced to our finest military minds, our instructors of artillery, logistics, and strategy. We will impress upon him the professionalism and intellectual rigor of the American military machine."
"This serves two critical purposes," he concluded. "First, it flatters him while simultaneously demonstrating our strength in terms he understands. Second, and more importantly, it isolates him. It removes him from Yuan Shikai's orbit and places him in a controlled, military environment where my own handpicked men can engage with him, twenty-four hours a day. We will assess his character, his loyalties, his code of honor. And," he added, his voice dropping slightly as he glanced at a classified file on the table, "we will attempt to assess the true nature of his so-called strategic genius."
Roosevelt, who admired nothing more than a clear, decisive, and intelligent plan of action, grinned broadly. "Elihu, that is a masterstroke. A perfect division of labor." He clapped his hands together. "Then it is settled. Hay, you get the politician. Root, you get the soldier. Let the games begin."
The American stage was set. The roles were assigned. Later that day, in his cavernous office at the War Department, Elihu Root was reviewing the file on Meng Tian. It contained not only the standard military assessments and battle reports from Sumatra, but also a thin, highly classified addendum from Michael Abernathy. It detailed the strange "sympathetic resonance" event detected in Siberia and the alliance's growing suspicion that Meng Tian was, in fact, the "second dragon."
Root was not just preparing to meet a foreign general. He was preparing to meet a potential supernatural entity. This required a special kind of handling, a special kind of liaison officer. He needed a man who was not only a brilliant soldier, but also possessed a keen intellect, a deep sense of history, and an unshakable self-confidence bordering on arrogance. A man who would not be easily intimidated by a living legend.
He picked up his pen and wrote a name on an order sheet. He was assigning a personal aide-de-camp and liaison officer to General Meng Tian for the duration of his visit to West Point. The officer he chose was a quiet, observant, and fiercely ambitious young captain, a recent top graduate of the Academy, a man named Douglas MacArthur.