Rasputin of the East

18

“What are you doing?”

Irina looked at me with an expression of incomprehension.

“What day is today, Irina?”

“It is June 28, 1914.”

“Yeah, it’s June 28th.”

“……?”

“We sent three agents to Bosnia and Herzergovina. Operation name Preemptive response, not authorized by the Tsar. The only people who know this are me, the parties, and you. I didn’t leave any documents behind.”

“…….. Yes?”

“You know about young Bosna and black hands?”

“Young Bosnia, I have heard of it. The GRU documents say that it is a common Serbian nationalist organization that is not worth paying attention to…”

Irina, who shook her head for a moment, also shared information about her black hands.

“Aren’t the Black Hands the ones who staged a coup in Serbia 11 years ago? The brutal murder of Aleksandar Obrenovich.”

“Yeah, it’s them. They are indirectly supported by the Serbian royal family. They’re plotting an assassination. Their job is to prevent that in advance.”

“Is it an assassination? who…….”

“The Prince of the Double Empire.”

“You mean Archduke Franz von Ferdinand?”

“Yeah, he’s going to visit Sarajevo, to watch a military drill.”

“Well, then I should stop it.”

Irina thought simply. This was due to the fact that the diplomatic position of the empire in the Balkans was lame after the last several Balkan wars.

Bulgaria, which the empire had supported in the past, ran rampant during the Balkan Wars, so the Russian imperial government and the tsar took the crane off their support and cut off support.

Worth noting, Bulgaria had even accomplished the feat of simultaneously turning enemies into the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Serbia, Romania and Montenegro. Continuing to support such a devastating state is nonsense in itself.

The problem was that when this happened, if the Russian Empire wanted to maintain its influence in the Balkans, all options other than being friendly with Serbia were blown away.

As a result, the diplomatic situation of the Russian Empire was now in a goddamn situation where the diplomatic option itself in the Balkans would be lost even if Serbia ran rampant.

In addition, the Balkan Wars caused the Balkan alliance countries to become hostile to each other, which drove Russia’s Balkan diplomatic situation to five minutes before the opening of the war.

Therefore, it was natural for us to block Serbia’s runaway in advance.

I suggested that we unofficially support a coup in Serbia to overthrow the current regime, but Nicholas II rejected that. to rot.

“But wouldn’t this meeting be a problem if it was revealed that we did Black Ops?”

The French president and foreign minister are expected to visit the country soon.

“It will be a problem. But that was when it was released. All agents possess poison and leave nothing to do with the Russian Empire. All conversations were in English, and none of them were Slavs. Besides, the purpose was not to kill anyone, but to save someone.”

“Even if the goal is to save lives, you can raise suspicions. Otherwise, our empire might become known as the mastermind behind the assassination attempt…”

“So I got rid of all the books. We will unconditionally deny them if caught, and all evidence that they were our agents has been expunged. It means that the three will become non-existent people in the first place. Then, unless they are caught and tortured themselves, only you and I will know that we are behind it.”

“Didn’t you tell the Tsar?”

“Yeah, it’s a situation where we’re quarreling, and if we get rejected again, it’s going to be really out of control.”

In fact, in terms of time, it was a time that would remain no matter what happened.

At that moment, the sound of urgent footsteps was heard from the hallway. I unknowingly grabbed my thighs tightly.

“dismissal! dismissal! This is an emergency!”

“Something? Were there any attempted assassinations?”

“In Sarajevo… in Sarajevo…”

“Something from Sarajevo! Speak!”

This time it was Irina. The messenger read the telegram, staring at me and Irina.

“Prince Ferdinand and Sophie von Chotek assassinate Serbs…”

-bang!

I unknowingly threw the ink bottle on the desk. The inkwell smashed against the marble floor, shards of glass and ink splashed everywhere.

“…………”

“Shit! Shit!”

Not a single thing has changed, not a single thing!

It was proof that the three men had become bystanders throughout the case, far from committing the assassination attempt. They’re probably packing their bags to come back, saying they’ve failed their mission.

“Sir, would you like to visit your Majesty?”

“Yeah, I have to go right now, I’m sorry, but I want you to take care of it.”

“All right. I call people.”

I got up, put on my coat, and walked out the door.

Before leaving the room, I looked at the broken inkwell.

Was it my own optical illusion that the ink flowing at right angles along the marble tiles looked like a river of blood flowing along the trenches?

***

GRU agents had their own circumstances.

One of them was an agent who did not participate in the operation in the first place and supported the infiltration and extraction, and only two appeared on the scene.

One was standing on the roof of a nearby building with a scope on his Springfield rifle, waiting to stop the assassin, while the other was running through the crowd looking for the assassin.

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Meanwhile, they found an assassin trying to throw a grenade from a completely different direction than they had expected, and almost fired.

Unless the grenade hit the car and bounced off.

Their primary mission was to stop the prince’s assassination, but the next most important task was to remain undetected.

The agents at the scene decided that as long as the assassination was unsuccessful, of course, the Crown Prince would immediately stop his schedule and return, so it was better to just withdraw as it is, rather than risking his identity being revealed after using a gun to complete the mission.

What they did not expect was that the Crown Prince went ahead with the schedule.

Obviously, the director said there would be two attempts, but after one failed, the agents who decided that the Crown Prince would immediately move to a safe area loosened their guard and prepared to withdraw.

And that made him angry.

The Crown Prince strongly insisted on visiting the attendants, and was eventually shot and killed by Gavrilo Francis.

***

Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, Imperial Palace.

“Wilhelm II asked me to show the sincerity if it was true that this military action was aimed only at Austria, not Germany. To cancel the mobilization order…”

Nicholas II hesitated, but the Russian leadership was stubborn.

“If you cancel the mobilization order, you will be defeated by the German surprise!”

“Your Majesty, Germany will not intervene! Let’s set a Jailbreak for Austria!”

“The Austrian ultimatum is too hard. At this rate, Austria will invade Serbia and the Empire will lose its last resort to intervene in the Balkans!”

“The German Empire has not shown much movement so far. This can be seen as evidence that the German Empire did not agree with Austria’s military action, so take this opportunity to correct Austria’s habit and increase its influence in the Balkans…”

“Stop the bullshit!”

I couldn’t hear it and screamed.

“As head of the GRU, I will report to Your Majesty, the present Austro-Hungarian Empire has received a blank check from the German Empire. The German Empire was determined that Britain and France would not intervene in the Balkans, nor would our Empire intervene. Until a few days ago.”

“……”

“His Majesty, our support for Serbia can be a precedent. don’t you know Now public opinion that Serbia has done the right thing is mainstream even within the empire.”

“It has already been decided! Dare to vomit at the tsar’s orders…”

“Shut up and listen! General, I am speaking to the Tsar, not telling you to listen! Your Majesty, we will report on the current situation inside Austria-Hungary we have gathered. The imperial cabinet was convened on July 7, nearly ten days after the incident, and, according to our information, the completion of the obituary was July 19. It worked, and in addition, the French president, who had recently returned to his home country, was in his home country, so the mail was delayed for four days. In addition, the purpose was to buy time for war preparations as the Austrian military reported to the cabinet that it was not at all prepared for war.”

“……”

Originally, this was information that Russia did not know until the war broke out. I continued to speak.

“It is true that Austria’s ultimatum contains content that infringes on Serbia’s sovereignty, and the decision of the home country to support Serbia also means that if Serbia’s sovereignty is violated with this provision, it will lose its sole forward base in the Balkans. The risk was too great, however, according to intelligence gathered within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hungarian Kingdom unofficially expressed concern about the war, and opposed the war in the Cabinet. This is due to concerns that acquiring territories in return for victory would lead to division of the empire. Accordingly, the Imperial Austrian government established the principle of guaranteeing the present territory and sovereignty of Serbia even after the war, but it was classified as a secret because it could expose its fragility!”

These are all historical facts.

“Austria-Hungary has already delivered a declaration of war to Serbia. Even if you don’t defend Serbia, the Austrian army will beat Serbia until it gets out of hand, and will retreat from the line of receiving only reparations. We don’t have to go to war, Peha!”

“The Count, then we will have to intervene even more! What if we stand still while Serbia and the same Slavic peoples are attacked!”

“It would be great, Count, if the information you have gathered is accurate, that you can extract such detailed information from inside the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If so, shouldn’t we use that information network? It’s like having your enemies on the palm of your hand as to what and how they’re going to perform.”

“So I want to go to war, you mean? Did you see the report from the Ministry of Home Affairs? There are more and more dissidents out there, and we’re beating up a lot of them, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any pyramids escaping the net! Did you forget 1904?”

“Isn’t it your job to stop it? Earl of Vostok? With the ability to plant so many spies in other countries, it would be simple enough not to recreate what happened in 1904.”

I really felt really speechless.

When I brought you Austro-Hungarian insider to prevent a war, those damned bastards don’t want to focus on that inside information and go, ‘Oh! How dare you bring such confidential information! So now, all of their plans are ours, right? Let’s get rid of the dear Austrians, who are sure to have an information advantage! Kyo-oh clothes!’ In this way, he was rolling the happiness circuit.

“Is the Empire ready for a major war? Can we win the world war against the German Empire and the Austrian Empire!”

No! The Russian military was not ready for all-out war until the last moment in its original history.

Of course, the Russian army today is different from the Russian army of World War I. With some success in Stolipin’s reforms, the Russian army, which increased its armaments, improved to some extent. One such example was the Izmail-class battlecruiser.

Although the battlecruiser, like the original station, was not yet completed, the consensus was that it could be put into service within a year. This was possible thanks to a significant increase in the budget.

But at the same time, I could be sure that the situation in the Russian army would not be so different from the original history.

that’s natural Because the military absorbed all the increased taxes, the naval plan was shortened and machine guns were delivered a little more – I also had some fun in the bidding competition – but not a single fundamental problem of the Russian Imperial Army was solved.

The stockpile would have increased a little, the weapons would have been a little better, and the number of cannons and machine guns would have been a little more.

But it ends there. Knowing this for sure, I wanted to ask what kind of confidence did you have to be so dignified?