The Maraclad Estate was a sprawling, Gilded Age mansion nestled in the rolling hills just outside St. Louis, a place of manicured lawns, stone fountains, and enforced tranquility. It had been "offered" by the U.S. government as a secure and comfortable residence for the two Chinese delegations following the "unfortunate incident" at the Olympics. It was, in reality, a luxurious prison.
A discreet but formidable cordon of U.S. soldiers patrolled the perimeter. And unseen, moving through the woods and gardens, were the sharp-eyed, plain-clothed agents of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, their presence a constant, unspoken threat. The Emperor's two most powerful ministers, the hero and the traitor, had been caged together.
The first dinner in the grand, baronial dining hall was a masterpiece of social and political tension. The long, polished mahogany table was a battlefield of unspoken hostilities. At one end, Meng Tian sat in stoic, pained silence, with a concerned Captain MacArthur to his right and the watchful Colonel Jiao to his left. At the far end of the table, a symbolic gulf between them, sat Yuan Shikai and his delegation, including the sneering Lord Zailan. The American State Department officials placed in the middle did their best to make polite, meaningless conversation, but their words were swallowed by the immense, crushing weight of the animosity that radiated from the two ends of the table.
Meng Tian watched Yuan Shikai. He had seen the look in the minister's eyes at the stadium, the flicker of cold triumph in the midst of the chaos. His Battle Sense, which was more a deep, gut-level intuition when it came to men, told him with absolute certainty that Yuan was the architect of the attack on Secretary Root. He saw Yuan's new, unsettling confidence, the smug self-assurance of a man who has just successfully completed a high-risk gamble. He knew something fundamental had shifted, that Yuan had made some secret move, but he could not fathom what it was.
Yuan, in turn, watched Meng Tian. He saw the general's pain, the subtle way he shifted his weight to favor his injured leg. He saw the weariness in his eyes. And he saw the contempt. Yuan felt a surge of triumphant spite. The honorable general, the Emperor's perfect sword, was a wounded animal, trapped in the same cage as him. It was a deeply satisfying sight.
After the excruciatingly polite dinner, Captain MacArthur approached both delegations as they stood in the grand hall. His expression was apologetic but firm.
"Gentlemen," he announced, his voice carrying across the marble floor. "Due to the ongoing and serious security threat, my government has been forced to implement certain… additional protocols. For your own safety and protection, of course. All external communications from this estate will henceforth be subject to review by my office. All telegraphs, all diplomatic pouches, all letters will be monitored. It is a temporary measure, to ensure that no further unfortunate incidents occur."
The meaning was clear and brutal. They were completely cut off. Isolated from their government, from their spies, from the entire outside world. They were alone in the belly of the beast, with only their American captors and each other for company.
Later that night, there was a soft knock on the door of Meng Tian's private library. It was Yuan Shikai. He entered the room alone, a rare breach of protocol, as Colonel Jiao had been called away to speak with MacArthur. For the first time since the tense confrontation at the Hall of Nations, the two men were truly alone.
"A beautiful prison, is it not, General?" Yuan began, his voice a low, conversational murmur as he idly inspected the leather-bound books that lined the walls. "The Americans are masters of the gilded cage."
Meng Tian did not rise. He sat in a large armchair, his injured leg resting on an ottoman, his face a mask of cold disdain. "If you have something to say, Minister, say it. I am not in the mood for your games."
Yuan turned from the bookshelf, his own face becoming serious. The usual oily charm was gone, replaced by a look of stark, pragmatic assessment.
"You are correct. This is no game," Yuan said. "We find ourselves in a very difficult, very dangerous position. We may be rivals, General. We may, in fact, loathe the very sight of one another. But we are, in the end, both servants of the Dragon Throne. And we are now both prisoners of the American government."
He took a step closer, his voice dropping. "Do you not see what they are doing? They have isolated us. They have cut us off from our Emperor. They will now begin the real work. They will try to play us against each other. They will come to you with stories of my corruption. They will come to me with whispers of your… instability. They will feed our suspicions, stoke our rivalries, all in the hope that one of us will break and give them the leverage they need to cripple our nation. It is the classic barbarian tactic: divide and conquer."
Meng Tian listened, his expression unchanging. Everything Yuan was saying was true, but hearing it from the mouth of a man he knew to be a traitor was a disorienting, surreal experience.
"Our only hope of survival," Yuan continued, his eyes locked on Meng Tian's, "our only way to continue to serve the Empire in this hostile land, is to present a united front. To do the one thing they do not expect."
He laid his shocking proposal on the table. "We must form an alliance. Here. In this room. We must agree to share all information. We must coordinate our actions, our responses to their provocations. We must present a single, unbroken wall of Chinese resolve. It is the only way to resist their manipulations."
It was a stunning, audacious gambit. The traitor, the murderer, the man who had just tried to assassinate the American Secretary of War, was now proposing an alliance of convenience with the one honorable man he knew despised him most. He was asking Meng Tian to make a deal with the devil in the name of patriotism.
Meng Tian stared at him, the silence in the library stretching for a long, tense minute. He saw the cold, calculating logic of Yuan's proposal. He knew the American strategy was to divide them. He knew that a united front was the only strategically sound response. But the thought of aligning himself, even temporarily, with this corrupt, treacherous man was a violation of his very soul.
And watching them both from the shadows of the doorway, his presence unnoticed, was Colonel Jiao. He had returned early from his meeting, and he stood now, a silent witness to this impossible, treasonous negotiation. His mind was a whirlwind of fanatical calculation, wondering how this new, dangerous dynamic, this unwilling alliance of the heretic and the traitor, could be twisted to serve his own sacred, bloody agenda.