novelSusiti Chapter 319 The Kremlin's "Conspiracy"
Chapter 319 The Kremlin's "Conspiracy"
Chapter 319 The Kremlin's "Conspiracy"
In the secret room, only a kerosene lamp was lit, its dim light casting long, distorted shadows of Constantine and Alexandros onto the cold walls.
Alexandros took the forged document fragment and immediately sensed its unusual nature.
"Your Highness, this document—"
Constantine didn't let him finish his question and immediately began to explain the exquisite details of this "work of art".
"Paper," Constantine tapped the table lightly with his fingertips, "is the high-grade parchment used by the Tsarist Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that you got from a black market dealer in Hamburg last time. Each sheet has a unique iris watermark; the British have it on file, they'll recognize it."
"The ink," he continued, "after repeated analysis and formulation by Nicholas in his Athens laboratory, its chemical composition is 99 percent similar to the ink used in the Russian official documents we intercepted. The only difference lies in some trace elements that will naturally oxidize over time. This difference only makes it look more authentic, like an old document that has been stored for some time."
Alexandros's breathing became somewhat rapid. He knew that the "Nicholas Laboratory" mentioned by the Crown Prince was the Kingdom of Greece's top secret, a place where a group of scientific geniuses gathered from all over the world gathered.
"But the contents of the document are the key." Constantine smirked, a cold smile playing on his lips.
He personally explained the "script" to Alexandros, a script to which he had devoted countless efforts.
This is a fragment of a "secret memorandum of understanding" written in fluent Russian and encrypted with a high-level mixed code by the Russian military.
"We've only deciphered half of this code. The other half needs to be completed by the British themselves. This will make them completely convinced of the source of the intelligence."
Using his vast historical knowledge from later generations, Constantine added a large amount of jargon and background details to this incomplete document, which only senior intelligence analysts from Britain and Russia could understand.
“Look here,” he said, pointing to a line of text. “I quoted a secret conversation from 1887 between Tsar Alexander III and the former Greek ambassador to St. Petersburg, Driannis. The British spy planted in the Winter Palace only heard the first half of that conversation. I included the second half, the promise regarding the financing guarantee for the Balkan railway.”
“And here,” he gestured, moving to another spot, “it mentions that in 1888, the Russian Black Sea Fleet's armored cruiser ‘Monumenta Azov’ conducted an unofficial emergency resupply in the port of Piraeus. The files on this event are only in the archives of the Greek and Russian navies. The British can't find it, but they will confirm through other channels that the ship was indeed not in Sevastopol at the time. That's enough.”
Each detail, a mix of truth and falsehood, is like a finely tuned gear, cleverly assembled by Constantine to form a perfect machine of lies, capable of crushing trust.
The core content pointed to by this fragment of a document was enough to make the entire British Empire, from the Prime Minister to ordinary citizens, tremble.
That was a terrible "conspiracy":
In exchange for the Russian Tsar's strong support in the London negotiations and an unspecified "gold loan," the Kingdom of Greece has "agreed in principle" to grant the Russian Black Sea Fleet "priority passage" through the Dardanelles Strait at a "suitable time" in the future, and to allow it to conduct "joint friendly visits" with the Greek Navy in the Aegean Sea.
After hearing this, Alexandros felt his palms were covered in cold sweat.
What he held in his hand was not just a piece of paper.
This is clearly a powerful bomb capable of detonating the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and even the whole of Europe!
"Your Highness, your wisdom—" Alexandros's voice was somewhat hoarse.
Constantine waved his hand, interrupting his compliment.
"Now, tell me your action plan."
Alexandros immediately composed himself, straightened his posture, and began to report on the plan he had already devised.
"Your Highness, our target, Vasily Orlov, has a fatal weakness besides his greed: he is extremely superstitious."
"He believed in a Gypsy fortune teller, thinking that the woman could predict the outcome of the card game. And that fortune teller is already one of us."
"My plan is, as a first step, to have the fortune teller tell Orlov that he will have god-like luck at the poker table for the next two days."
"My second step is to arrange a poker game at a London club heavily monitored by MI6. The opponents will all be our people. We'll let him win first, win a huge sum of money, and drive him completely insane."
"The third step, in the most crucial round, is to cheat, so that he loses all the money he has won before, along with all his own money, and incurs huge gambling debts."
"Fourth step, our creditor will threaten to expose his gambling debts to the Russian ambassador. To keep his job, he'll stop at nothing. At this point, we'll offer him a trivial old document from the embassy as payment."
"As a final step, he will inadvertently lose this document tonight," he said on his way back to the embassy from the club. That route is the one British intelligence officers take during shift changes.
Alexandros's plan was meticulously crafted, with each step carefully calculated to exploit human greed and fear to the fullest extent.
Constantine listened and nodded in satisfaction.
"Very good. Remember, make it all look like an accident."
"Yes, Your Highness." Alexandros carefully placed the fragments of the document into a specially made waterproof inner bag and hid it close to his body. He gave Constantine a silent military salute, and then disappeared into the shadows of the secret room like a drop of water merging into the ocean.
The plan was executed flawlessly.
Two days later, on a rainy night.
In a high-class club in London's West End, Russian Third Secretary Orlov lost his last penny in a high-stakes gambling game. His eyes were bloodshot, and he reeked of alcohol as he was dragged out of the club by two tall "creditors."
As he passed through the dressing room, a briefcase he had been tightly tucked under his arm "accidentally" slipped out. Several documents spilled out, and one parchment silently slid under the thick Persian carpet.
Orlov was supported and stumbled away into the rain.
A few minutes later.
A well-dressed English "gentleman" wearing a monocle strolled leisurely through the dressing room. His cane lightly tapped the carpet, seemingly unintentionally lifting a corner of it.
His gaze fell on the pale yellow parchment.
The "gentleman" bent down and elegantly picked up the document with two white-gloved fingers.
In the dim light of the corridor, he saw Russian letters written in a special code on the paper.
His eyes darkened.
official residence.
Alexandros stood before Constantine, still carrying the chill of the night.
"Your Highness, the bait has been laid."
, 7
"The fish has taken the bait."
Constantine nodded. He walked to the window and opened it a crack. A cold, damp wind blew in. Gazing at the endless, rain-soaked London night outside, he could almost hear the terrified screams of that greedy fish as it struggled for its life in its office at 10 Downing Street.