Germany's decision to abandon not only Qingdao but also to sell its Pacific holdings stunned the world.
It stunned Berlin.
It stunned London.
It stunned Tokyo most of all.
When the initial approach was made, Japan did not yet know Germany's full intention regarding Qingdao. German diplomats spoke carefully—too carefully. They hinted at consolidation, at strategic re-evaluation, at Germany's desire to avoid unnecessary entanglements in the Far East. They spoke of Africa. Of trade. Of focusing strength rather than dispersing it.
They did not speak of surrender.
Japan listened with suspicion.
The islands in Oceania—German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and the scattered chain of over three hundred islands—were not trivial scraps of land. They were stepping stones across the Pacific. Naval anchors. Future harbors. A line of dots that could become a line of power.
At first, Tokyo assumed a trap.
Germany had just demonstrated military competence in the Balkans that unsettled Europe. Its industry was expanding. Its army modernizing at frightening speed. No declining empire behaved like this. No weak power sold territory so calmly.
So Japan negotiated cautiously.
It asked for better terms. A slight reduction. Perhaps concessions in shipping rights. Perhaps staggered payments.
Berlin did not blink.
The message, politely delivered, was unmistakable: Germany was not desperate. This was not liquidation. This was strategy.
And that fact changed everything.
Japan knew its position in the world was not secure. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance existed, yes—but alliances were tools, not guarantees. Britain had interests. Britain had limits. And Britain had never truly intended for Japan to become a rival equal in the Pacific.
Even if war came, even if Japan seized the islands by force, there was no certainty London would allow unlimited expansion. Empires supported allies only so long as they remained useful.
But this—this was clean. Legal. Purchased.
A once-in-a-century opportunity.
And Oskar had anticipated exactly what would tempt them.
German diplomats in Tokyo, under very quiet instruction, did more than present maps. They spoke of resources. Of timber and fisheries. Of agricultural exports—coconuts, palm oil, coffee. And then they lowered their voices.
Gold.
Copper.
Oil.
Natural gas.
Whether proven or not did not matter as much as the suggestion. Japan was an island nation dependent on imports—especially food, coal, and raw materials. Self-sufficiency was not a luxury; it was survival doctrine.
The implication was simple: buy now, and you buy the future.
By the time the Japanese cabinet finished arguing, suspicion had turned into calculation.
Japan agreed.
For 125 million marks.
Across Europe and the Pacific, observers reacted uneasily.
Australia feared demographic pressure. British newspapers debated whether Germany was retreating—or preparing. French diplomats watched for hidden clauses.
Oskar, of course, turned it into a speech.
He spoke of peace. Of friendship. Of respect between nations. Germany sought trade, not domination. Cooperation, not colonial rivalry.
The performance was elegant.
But Tokyo was not naïve.
Having secured the islands, Japan's appetite sharpened. Qingdao loomed in its calculations. If Germany was withdrawing from the East, would it not make sense to acquire the port as well?
Then came the second shock.
Germany announced it would return Qingdao—not to Japan, but to China.
Not as a concession to defeat.
As a gesture of trade.
The port would remain open to German commercial interests, but the fortress would vanish. No garrison. No war flag. No colonial administration.
Japan felt the ground shift beneath its feet.
The islands had been a prize.
Qingdao had been leverage.
Now that leverage was gone.
Tokyo's satisfaction cooled into irritation.
---
In London and Paris, the reaction was different.
Germany's front lines had not advanced—they had withdrawn.
To some, it looked like peace.
To others, it looked like preparation.
An empire that trims its excess does not necessarily weaken. It concentrates.
And concentration is what precedes impact.
So while Oskar spoke of trade and goodwill, the British Admiralty quietly recalculated naval ratios. The French General Staff revised mobilization timetables. Intelligence services intensified their watch over Berlin.
If Germany was narrowing its ambitions, it might not be retreating.
It might be drawing its fist closer to its body.
And a fist drawn inward does not always mean surrender.
Sometimes it means the strike is coming.
And as for Oskar, time slowed after the Eastern talks were concluded.
There were no celebrations. No triumphal tours. Just work.
He and Karl returned to their maps, their ledgers, their private projections of what the coming decade might demand. Europe felt like a loaded mechanism waiting for the wrong finger. So while generals elsewhere polished swords, Oskar sharpened something else.
Capital.
In the United States—under the sprawling, carefully layered structure of the Oskar Industrial Group—new experiments were already unfolding.
Las Vegas, still little more than dust and rail lines, began taking shape in ways that made older men shake their heads. It was years ahead of what anyone expected that patch of desert to become. Hotels rose where scrub had stood. Electric lights flickered against the dark like promises. New forms of gaming—clever, calculated, addictive—spread quickly through saloons and private rooms. Oskar did not invent vice. He simply refined it.
America, the land of liberty and spectacle, proved fertile ground.
Fashion shifted. German-inspired designs—lighter fabrics, bolder cuts, sharper tailoring—found eager buyers. Women's clothing grew more daring in certain circles, less restrained, more modern. Swimwear changed shape. Men's suits grew slimmer, more aggressive in line. The old world loosened, one thread at a time.
And in places where money flowed most freely, the crude brothel system of the nineteenth century evolved into something brighter, louder, more theatrical. Velvet curtains replaced narrow hallways. Music replaced silence. Stagecraft replaced shadow.
By the end of 1913, establishments that would one day be called "strip clubs" had begun appearing openly in certain American cities—part entertainment venue, part vice den, part financial machine. They had been spreading quietly for years through Oskar's cooperation with Goldman and other powerful families who understood that pleasure, properly packaged, could be industrialized.
Due to the partnership, invitations from the United States arrived regularly—written on thick paper, sealed with impressive crests, always addressed with immaculate respect.
Oskar never accepted.
His father had warned him, quietly, the way men warn about things they can't afford to say aloud. Oskar had agreed before the sentence was finished—because the letters didn't read like ordinary invitations. They were too polished. Too playful. Too… coded.
Goldman wrote often. So did others—names that sat at the top of American finance like crowns. Their words were friendly on the surface, almost warm, yet each line carried that faint pressure of a hand resting on your shoulder a second too long.
A typical letter would arrive with the usual pleasantries—
"Your Highness, next week we gather again. You should honor my private estate with your presence. We have excellent pizza here—proper New York style—fresh, hot, and endless. A man of many women will surely appreciate a table like ours.
And if pizza is too simple for a prince, we can offer finer things: aged whiskey that burns sweet, champagne that makes the mind light, sushi so fresh it practically melts. Our chefs insist you'll never taste anything like it in Germany.
Come hungry. Leave satisfied."
It was harmless, if you read it quickly.
But Oskar had read enough—heard enough—to notice the strange weight of certain words. Fresh. Rare. Tender. Private. Off-menu. Special guests. No press. No records. Phrases that sounded like luxury and yet—if you tilted your head—could mean something else entirely.
He had ideas about what they meant.
No proof. No names. No photographs.
And he did not want proof.
Some worlds, he sensed, were profitable to touch but dangerous to enter. The elite circles he dealt with in America had their own rituals, their own hungers, their own private amusements—extravagant and indulgent, theatrical to the point of decadence, sometimes whispered about with the kind of nervous laughter people used when they were trying to make a nightmare sound like a joke.
Oskar suspected that if he ever stepped fully into that world, he would step back out… changed. Not physically, perhaps. Worse than that. Altered in ways he would never welcome, carrying knowledge he couldn't unlearn and stains he couldn't scrub away.
So he stayed in Germany, where things were, normal.
They used him.
He used them.
The arrangement suited everyone.
There were strings attached, of course.
In exchange for influence and cooperation, Oskar sold things such as older motor-vehicle patents to people like Goldman. Not his newest designs—never those—but proven technologies just outdated enough to be safe. From that foundation emerged a new American automotive brand: Goldline.
The slogans were everywhere.
Buy Gold.
There Is No Other Choice.
Own the Standard.
The Gold Standard of Motion.
When It's Gold, It Wins.
It was shameless.
It was effective.
By 1913, American streets carried not only German-built vehicles but also Goldline machines—sleek, confident, aggressively marketed. Oskar owned roughly a quarter of the company's stock. Every car sold sent dividends quietly back across the Atlantic.
It was a cash cow.
And he needed cash.
Not for pleasure. Not for vanity.
For Germany.
If some of that wealth came from less-than-pure enterprises, so be it. The world did not run on purity. It ran on leverage. And leverage required money.
Oskar kept working.
He worked because work was the only thing that made the future feel like something you could still grip. Papers, meetings, budgets, cables—every lever he could pull to bend the world away from the cliff he remembered. And yet as the year rolled into 1914, a cold pressure settled behind his ribs, the sensation of a clock winding down toward a final click.
He could feel it coming.
The day when history would either break… or repeat.
He told himself he had done enough. He told himself the Balkans were different now, that the Ottomans had been shattered, that Germany had repositioned, that alliances had shifted. He told himself he had widened the odds, twisted the path, built buffers and brakes.
But odds were not certainty.
And then the letter came.
It was Franz Ferdinand's own hand—an envelope with familiar weight, familiar ink. Oskar opened it expecting routine.
Instead he found an apology.
Ferdinand wrote plainly, almost gently, as if he were admitting to a social offense rather than stepping onto the most infamous knife-edge in Europe. He was going to Bosnia-Herzegovina. He would observe and inspect military exercises—XVI and XV Army elements in motion, the kind of visit an Inspector General "had to" make, especially now, with tension rising and Serbia watching.
He ended it like he always did, with that stubborn warmth Ferdinand reserved for the few he trusted:
Sincerely, your friend, Ferdinand.
Oskar read it once.
Then again.
His fingers loosened. The paper slid from his hand and fell to the floor without him noticing, as if his body had momentarily forgotten how to hold things.
For a second the room felt far away. The walls. The light. The air.
All of it.
He had warned him.
Not in riddles. Not with vague superstition. He had warned him as a man who had seen the future burn and was begging his friend not to walk into the match. He had even given him proof—proof the world was already sharpening itself. Not long ago General Marijan Varešanin had nearly died to a Serb student's attempt. Weapons had been caught crossing borders. The Black Hand and its shadows were not rumors; they were methods. Networks. Men trained to kill and die for the idea of killing.
And Ferdinand still chose to go.
Oskar had strengthened Austria-Hungary in every way he could without openly seizing the wheel. Their economy steadier. Their internal cohesion improved. The army better equipped—helmets, supply reforms, discipline—still primitive compared to Germany's best, but no longer laughable. Ferdinand himself now rode in a Muscle Motors A-class car, surrounded by bodyguards trained under Eternal Guard methods. The odds of an assassination succeeding had dropped. The odds of someone even daring to try had dropped.
But Oskar knew the darker law of the world:
When defenses rise, the bold do not always retreat.
Sometimes they escalate.
More men. Better weapons. A bigger bomb. A closer shot. A willingness to burn civilians just to reach a target.
Protection did not end threats. It reshaped them.
He stared at the letter on the floor as if it were a verdict.
This was it.
Not a battle. Not a treaty. Not a clever economic reform.
This—this single decision by a single man—was the hinge of the century.
Oskar felt something in him go very still, like a blade being drawn slowly from a sheath. He had spent years pulling history away from the abyss, convincing himself that small changes would accumulate into safety.
And now, at the exact edge, history had offered him one last test.
If Ferdinand died, the old timeline would snap back into place like a steel trap—springs locking, teeth biting down, Europe dragged once more into the slaughter he remembered too well. Alliances would ignite. Mobilizations would follow. Pride would harden into inevitability. And the century would burn exactly as it had before.
If Ferdinand lived—
then perhaps, just perhaps, the chain could be broken. The trigger might fail. The avalanche might never begin. The war that devoured millions might remain nothing more than a possibility that never found its moment.
But hope was not a strategy.
There was only one way to make certain the trap did not close.
He had to act.
Oskar did not think of himself as a hero. He had never wanted to be a man leaping into chaos with banners and speeches. He preferred numbers, leverage, quiet pressure applied in the right place at the right time. He preferred to move history with ink and steel and patience.
But he had also built himself into something else.
He had built a body capable of action. A mind capable of decision. A will that did not freeze when the path narrowed to a knife's edge.
If you see the danger, you do not debate it.
If you smell the smoke, you do not wait for flames.
You move.
You step into the trouble before it spreads. You throw yourself at it—not because you crave glory, but because no one else understands what is coming.
Oskar stood very still, staring at the fallen letter.
He could already feel the world beginning to tilt.
There would be no more waiting. No more careful nudges. No more distant calculations.
If this century was to be stolen from war, it would not be done from behind a desk.
It would be done in motion.
And the moment had come.