Chapter 210: Representative of Tsarist Russia (K)

Chapter 208 – Representative of Tsarist Russia (4K)

After seeing Arthur off, Mrs. Levine lingered in the embassy lobby, looking at the four tickets cupped in her hand, seemingly agonizing over how exactly to allocate the concert seats.

It was at this moment that a sudden creaking sound of hard riding boots on the floor came from outside the parlor.

Mrs. Levine looked up, and her face was instantly replaced with a smile, “Count Orlov.”

The visitor was a man with an eight-pointed beard and wearing a blue and green officer’s uniform.

Speaking of the surname Orlov, it could be considered a household name in Russia.

Among the right-hand men of Ekaterina II who ascended to the throne in a coup d’état were the five brothers of the Orlov family.

These five brothers almost without exception, followed by the political and military circles in Tsarist Russia have become a significant figure, and the oldest two and the oldest three behind also became Ekaterina II’s lover, and because of this layer of nepotism climbed a little faster than the other three brothers.

And in front of this Count Orlov’s father is not the Queen’s lover, but he himself is by Ekaterina II personally supervised the raising, therefore, Count Orlov is almost with Ekaterina II’s two grandsons – the former Tsar Alexander I and his younger brother the current Tsar Nicholas I from childhood to play.

With this experience alone, no one in Russia dared to underestimate Count Orlov’s power. Especially after the current Tsar Nicholas I ascended to the throne, the Russian political community’s compliment and fear of Count Orlov is steadily increasing over time.

Because everyone knows that the current Tsar is more determined, single-minded, steel-willed and has a strong sense of duty and mission than Nicholas I’s indecisive, mild-mannered brother, the former Tsar Alexander I. While these descriptors can be considered strengths, if they were to be superimposed on a single If all of these descriptors were applied to one ruler, the country in question would most likely be happy to have a great dictator.

Nicholas I was such an energetic, power-hungry, almost pathological ruler.

He took a keen interest in everything that went on in the Russian Empire, especially in the army, to the point of personally ordering the number of buttons on the uniforms to be altered.

As for things like the Decembrist uprising against his rule, Nicholas I was rightly concerned with arresting, investigating, interrogating, and punishing the Decembrists, asking about everything.

This revolt also aggravated his suspicious character and made him tend to stay away from the normal administrative structures.

From the very beginning of his reign, Nicholas I was particularly fond of running the country through committees independent of the regular state institutions, which generally consisted of a small group of the Tsar’s most trusted cronies.

But such cronies were few in number, so that the numerous and varied committees in Russia actually consisted of different combinations of this same group of men.

The work of these committees, like that of the Imperial Office, was usually secret, and yet, apart from giving the Tsar a meagre degree of security, it only added to the confusion of the already very complicated administration of the Empire. The whole machinery of government became more and more permeated with direct orders, absolute obedience, and a meticulous military style, and this characterization became more and more pronounced in official documents and in outward appearance.

Count Orlov, a man of both military and hair-raising qualities, was of course one of the few close confidants of the Tsar, or, to put it more plainly, Count Orlov held important positions in many of the committees under the Tsar’s direct authority.

The Russian delegation to the London Conference was naturally led by Count Orlov.

However, perhaps the others would have been more cautious in the face of the Tsar’s most popular personage in front of the throne.

But Mrs. Levine could talk to him in a stable mood, for no other reason than that her father, Count Benckendorff, was also the third head of the Imperial Office, who was trusted by His Majesty the Tsar.

It was well known in Russia that His Majesty the Tsar spent more time with Benckendorff and Orlov than perhaps he did with the Empress.

Count Orlov looked at Mrs. Levine, who was holding the tickets with a sad face, and couldn’t help but open his mouth to ask: ”Dorothea, are you in some kind of trouble? If there’s anything you need help with just ask, I’ll definitely find a way to help you out.”

Hearing this, Mrs. Levine couldn’t help but open her mouth to snicker, “Alexei, this is not St. Petersburg, if you want to arrest someone, you still have to ask the police officers of Scotland Yard if they will agree first. Wow, maybe it’s not too late for you to turn around and go after him, truth be told, I just met with a young superintendent from Scotland Yard.”

Hearing this, Count Orlov couldn’t help but look back, “You mean the young man who just went out? Quite a tall and strong young man, when I first saw him, I thought that since he was so tall, he was mostly a Netherlander. It wasn’t until he greeted me in a heavily Cockney English that I realized that he was indeed a proper Englishman.”

“Hush!” Mrs. Levine put one hand up between her lips and scolded, “Alexei, be careful what you say, and don’t let the Duke of Wellington hear you, or he’ll have nothing to do with you; he hates to talk about height.”

Hearing this, Count Orlov couldn’t help but laugh out loud, “I just remembered when you said that, the Duke of Wellington seems to be shorter than Napoleon, right? Napoleon claimed to be 5 feet 6 inches tall, but everyone said he was a dwarf, but most people didn’t know that the Duke of Wellington was only 5 feet 5 inches.

But with all due respect to the two of them, height doesn’t really matter anymore to reach the kind of achievements they both did, and hordes of big men stood in front of both of them during the Napoleonic wars and didn’t dare to breathe a word. Even if they were virtual dwarfs, it didn’t stop them from being military giants.”

Mrs. Levine asked, “So, are you ready to take on the giant that is the Duke of Wellington this time? As it stands now, the British seem to be ambivalent about Belgian independence; they don’t say they’re either for it or against it. For Russia, this is not a good thing. His Majesty the Czar must have given you an oracle before you arrived. If I am not mistaken, in accordance with our usual policy, he must have asked you to seek to gain the support of England and to keep up pressure on France to bring independent Belgium back under Dutch rule. Only then will there be no gaps in the siege net surrounding France. If the Dutch lose Belgium, then there is no way to stop the French from expanding their sphere of influence eastward with their existing power alone.”

Count Orlov nodded his head and said, “The reasoning is so, but although the British are uncomfortable looking at the French, they may not be as comfortable looking at us now. Since Britain’s Codrington defeated the main Ottoman Turkish naval force in the Navarino naval battle, our resistance to entering the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea has been all but eliminated.

The British Admiralty and Foreign Office seem to be so angry about this that they benched Codrington in the Channel Fleet not long after the Battle of Navarino. Didn’t you also make a secret report to His Majesty the Czar about this?
It was as hard as having sand in your eyes for the Brits to see our Black Sea Fleet flowing unimpeded in the Mediterranean, and I reckon that’s a big part of the reason for their ambiguous attitude on Belgian independence.

If possible, I’d like you to figure out Britain’s current diplomatic approach for me, I desperately need to know if they still consider France as the number one threat in Europe or not.”

Hearing this, Mrs. Levine simply smiled and returned, “If you had mentioned this need to me a while ago when the Tories were still in power, I would have rebuffed you straight away. Because although I am on good terms with the Duke of Wellington, that old man’s lips are not normally tight, and trying to get some useful information out of him is simply harder than climbing up to heaven.”

“Dorothea, listening to your words ……” Orlov grinned, “the situation has now taken a turn for the worse?”

“Indeed there is some turnaround.”

Mrs. Levine pulled her hair behind her ears and guffawed, “The Whig foreign minister now is my dear Henry. He was able to take this position without the strong advice I gave him, in addition to Mrs. Cowper’s connections. To tell the truth, that old dandy Henry wanted to go to the Ministry of Finance at first.

But I told him that the competition for a position in the Treasury was too fierce, and that with his position in the party he might as well seek another important chair in the Cabinet; others might not be able to do much in the Foreign Office, but he had me, and I could share with him through my network of connections some inside information that would be hard for others to get.”

Count Orlov sniffed and teased, “That sounds really sad! Dorothea, I thought you were with Viscount Palmerston because of love.”

Mrs. Levine wrapped her fingers around her hair and winked playfully, “Love, more or less, and it’s a pleasure to be with Henry, he knows how to get along with women. But after all, this is England, and in England you have to do things the English way. Mutual benefit is called love, and asking for it is slavery, which a decent Russian may not understand very well, but the English call it free trade and a commodity economy.”

Count Orlov laughed out loud at this, “It seems that His Majesty the Tsar really wasn’t wrong, putting Dorothea in England, she is as useful as half of the Third Office. Your father should really send the Commissioner of the three foreign intelligence departments all over to learn from you, I recently turned over the documents of the three departments to see simply big head, they write what are some brainless things, words around and around all ambiguous information. On these not very useful information, just grab two chickens dipped in ink and stepped on two feet are written more insightful than them.”

Hearing this, Mrs. Levine hesitated, but still could not help but politely defend the three departments, after all, the three departments are also considered to be her father’s subordinate departments, and there are also part of the three departments of the commissioner stayed in the Russian Embassy.

Mrs. Levine spoke, ”Alexei, you should know that the Third Branch also has no choice. Intelligence is not that easy to gather, sometimes it is obvious that there is no information in this regard, but if His Majesty the Tsar says that there must be, then it must be on the report of the Third Branch. Even if you add a little bit of your own conjecture, you have to make a report.

His Majesty the Tsar is such a man of action, so the subordinate departments must also keep up with his ambitions, because of this, so he did not let the tragedy of the 1824 St. Petersburg floods like the previous tsar, in the just-ended cholera epidemic of 1830 in Moscow, His Majesty the Tsar’s performance is simply admirable.

I’ll bet that if cholera had struck England, they couldn’t have done as well as Russia did.”

Orlov couldn’t help remembering something when he heard Mrs. Levine mention it, and he opened his mouth to laugh, “Speaking of cholera, did you know about that incident with the Duke of Bergendorf?”

Hearing the other party mention this name, Mrs. Levine couldn’t help but also have some mischief, “His old man is having fun with His Majesty the Tsar again?”

Orlov pursed his lips, “After the cholera was over, he wrote a report and handed it in, in which he said – it seems that for everyone, the disease itself has given in to defeat in the face of His Majesty the Tsar’s unlimited power. Of course, I’m inclined to think that this passage is free of irony.”

Mrs. Levine couldn’t help but agree, “Yes, it’s like the conversation His Majesty the Tsar had with him the last time he tried to fight corruption. His Majesty the Tsar said, ‘I will stamp out bribery with blazing iron!'”

Count Orlov picked up, “Duke Bergendorf returned, ‘Your Majesty, then with whom do you intend to stay?'”

At this point, a burst of merry laughter broke out in the Embassy parlor, and even a few of the Tsarist Russian military officers standing in the doorway smoking couldn’t help but turn their faces away, their shoulders shaking, obviously laughing.

However, in the parlor of a laughter, no one noticed the door of the room dedicated to placing the blower flashed a black shadow.

Little Pinkerton, with a letterhead in his mouth, moved with difficulty a little out of the vent pipe, and when he noticed a glimmer of light in the blackened opening, he saw in an instant Arthur, who was crouching against the wall and leaning on the branch of a large tree, smoking.

Arthur noticed the commotion occurring in the vent, and he turned his head to look at it, froze at first, and then smiled, “Boy, you sure can surprise me. I was merely asking you to conduct a mapping of the terrain in the ventilation ducts so that you wouldn’t find the wrong place the next time you sneak in. I didn’t expect that you would bring me back some embassy specialties the first time you went in.”

He reached down and scooped Pinkerton out of the vent, then tumbled out with a deft hand.

As the horse boots hit the ground, the carriage resting on the side of the road hurriedly pushed open its door, and Elder, who was sitting inside, hurriedly beckoned them in, “Get on the bus, I’ve already counted, the embassy’s guards patrol around this place on average once every three minutes, and counting the time, they’ll be here soon.”

(End of chapter)