Yuan Shikai was alone in his luxurious hotel suite in Washington D.C., and he was a man drowning. The opulent room, with its velvet curtains, gilded furniture, and panoramic view of the distant, illuminated Capitol Building, was not a sanctuary. It was a cage. A lavish, impeccably furnished cage where he had been brought to be broken.
The mask was gone. The carefully constructed facade of the calm, powerful Supreme Overseer had crumbled the moment the door had closed behind him, leaving only the raw, curdled rage and profound humiliation of a master player who has been utterly and completely checkmated. He strode to the ornate liquor cabinet, his hands trembling with a fury he could no longer contain, and poured himself a large glass of French brandy. He drank it in a single, burning gulp, the alcohol doing nothing to quell the fire in his gut.
He had just come from a final, debasing debriefing with Lord Zailan. The Manchu watchdog, his face a smug mask of concerned duty, had questioned him relentlessly about the "generous American industrial proposal." Zailan, with his primitive understanding of the world, saw only a potentially profitable business deal. He could not comprehend the intricate web of blackmail and treason that lay beneath its surface. Yuan knew, with a sick certainty, that at this very moment, Zailan was in his own suite, drafting a coded report for Spymaster Shen Ke. A report that would detail Yuan Shikai's "receptive and enthusiastic attitude" toward a proposal that would effectively sell out Manchuria to the Americans. The noose, which had been loosened by his journey to America, was now being methodically tightened again back in China.
He poured another brandy. He thought of his options, and they were all paths to ruin.
He could refuse the American deal. He could return to China, a failure, and face the Emperor's cold, divine wrath. That was a swift and certain death, an execution that would erase his name from history.
He could accept the American deal. He could sign the contracts, sell out his nation's future, and return to China as a celebrated diplomat, all while living as a secret, puppet of the American government. That was a slow, agonizing death, a daily humiliation that would poison everything he had ever worked for.
Or, there was a third option.
He walked into his bedroom and opened a locked piece of luggage. From beneath a pile of fine silk robes, he withdrew a small, beautifully crafted, pearl-handled derringer pistol. It was a lady's gun, elegant and discreet, a gift from a European arms dealer years ago. He had brought it as a last resort. He checked the chamber. It was loaded.
He stood before the large mirror, looking at his own reflection. He saw the face of a man who had risen from nothing, who had built an industrial empire, who had schemed and fought his way to the pinnacle of power, second only to the Emperor himself. And now, he was a puppet. A broken toy. He raised the small pistol to his temple, the cold metal a welcome, definitive sensation against his skin. For a long, quiet moment, it seemed like the only honorable way out. The only way to reclaim control.
But as he stared into his own eyes in the mirror, something else stirred within him. Not honor. Not despair. It was the hard, unkillable core of his being. The same ruthless, defiant spark that had fueled his entire life. He was Yuan Shikai. He did not bow. He did not break. And he did not end his own life like a disgraced scholar in a poem.
He lowered the pistol. Suicide was a loser's gambit. He had been betrayed by his Emperor. He had been trapped by his American enemies. All his attempts to play the game by the established rules had led to this room, to this moment of absolute defeat.
So, he would create a new game. With new rules.
A slow, cold, and utterly audacious idea began to form in his mind, a plan born from the ashes of his own ruin. It was insane. It was treason on a scale he had never before contemplated. It was perfect.
He put the pistol away and strode back into the main suite. He sat at the ornate writing desk, pulled out a sheet of the hotel's finest watermarked stationery, and dipped a golden pen into a pot of black ink. He began to write a letter.
It was not addressed to the Emperor, begging for forgiveness. It was not addressed to Elihu Root, accepting his poisoned terms.
It was addressed to Sir Mortimer Durand, the British Ambassador to the United States.
He wrote for an hour, the words flowing with a newfound clarity and purpose. He was no longer the broken man; he was the master strategist, making his final, desperate, and brilliant move on the global chessboard.
He began the letter by laying his cards on the table, a calculated act of shocking candor. He confessed, in part, to his secret war against America, but he masterfully framed it not as an act of personal ambition, but as the work of a "beleaguered patriot, trying desperately to protect China from the rapacious encroachment of American industrial interests."
Then came the bombshell. He acknowledged that he was now being blackmailed by the Americans into a deal that would grant them exclusive control over Manchuria—a territory he knew the British coveted as a vital buffer against Russian expansion toward India. He was appealing to their self-interest, to their own Great Game rivalry with the United States.
He then made his offer. He would become a secret asset. Not for the Americans who had trapped him, but for the British Empire. In exchange for their protection and a secret partnership, he would give them something far more valuable than industrial contracts. He would give them the keys to the entire kingdom.
The Americans, he wrote, his pen flying across the page, believe they can control me. They are mistaken. They seek to control a minister, a temporary position of political power. A foolish and short-sighted goal. You and I, gentlemen of an older, wiser, and more sophisticated empire, can aspire to something far greater. Together, we can seek to control a god.
He offered them the one thing he knew they secretly craved more than anything else: detailed, verifiable intelligence on the Qing Emperor's supernatural abilities. He would provide them with eyewitness accounts, with the data from his own secret studies, with a full analysis of the Emperor's strengths and weaknesses. He would even, he added, provide them with all the information he possessed on the "heretical" and "unstable" nature of the so-called war hero, General Meng Tian.
The Americans seek to lease a railway, he concluded. I am offering you a partnership that will allow you to understand, and perhaps one day, to neutralize the single greatest strategic imbalance on the planet. I await your discreet reply.
He finished the letter, the ink still wet on the page. He had just committed the ultimate act of treason, an act that made his secret war with America look like a child's game. He had decided to escape his trap by setting the two great Western powers against each other, with himself as the indispensable, knowledgeable fulcrum.
He sealed the letter in a plain envelope. He rang for his most trusted personal aide, a man who had been with him for twenty years, a man whose loyalty was absolute. He gave the aide the letter and a simple, quiet instruction for its delivery to a secret contact at the British Embassy. The Great Game had just become infinitely more complex, and infinitely more dangerous.