Windsor Castle, England. May 20, 1910.
The air in the Green Drawing Room possessed an almost unbearable olfactory density, it was a cloying mixture of fresh funeral lilies, naphthalene from gala uniforms pulled from old trunks, and that sour smell of fear that had sweated from nine men who, in theory, were the owners of the earth.
Outside, beyond the gray stone walls, the British Empire and half the world mourned the death of Edward VII. The bells tolled with a certain cadence that resonated in the bones of hundreds of thousands of citizens.
But inside, while Europe's Monarchs adjusted their silk sashes and straightened the heavy medals they wore, the conversation didn't revolve around the deceased King's virtues, nor about the void he left in continental politics.
The conversation revolved around the debts of the living.
Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany, paced impatiently across the carpet, his left hand, the atrophied one, skillfully concealed over the hilt of his ceremonial sword. He hated being there. He hated English food, boiled and flavorless. He hated the humidity that frizzed his mustache. But above all, he hated the financial reports that Abteilung III b had handed him that very morning before the service.
He stopped abruptly beside Alfonso XIII of Spain. The Spanish King, tall and with a prominent jaw, seemed uncomfortable under the weight of his golden epaulettes, as if the uniform were a size too large for his national treasury's reality.
"Avez-vous pris connaissance de la circulaire de la City de Londres? (Have you seen the City of London circular?)" the Kaiser asked in brusque French, the lingua franca of diplomacy they all shared, though he spat it with a Prussian accent.
Alfonso XIII nodded, lowering his voice and glancing sideways at the servants serving sherry.
"About the new industrial credit rates. It's humiliating. The consortium... that firm, H&A Holdings... has bought the sovereign debt of my shipyards in Cartagena. Now they demand we use their exclusive turbine patents or they threaten to execute the bonds and leave the Royal Navy without spare parts."
"It's a plague," Wilhelm growled, twisting the ends of his mustache violently. "The same thing is happening in the Ruhr. My industrialists complain. H&A buys small chemical companies, absorbs patents, and closes German factories to relocate production. And the worst part is my own General Staff says their technology is better than Krupp's. How is it possible that an investment firm without a flag has better engineers than the German Reich?"
The Kaiser spun on his heels and fixed his watery blue gaze on the host. George V, England's new King, conversed in low, somber tones with Albert I of Belgium near the unlit fireplace. Wilhelm approached them, unable to contain his characteristic paranoia.
"George," the Kaiser interrupted without protocol. "Your Parliament allows these H&A merchants to strangle Europe from their City offices. Since when is the Great Powers' foreign policy dictated from a stock office in London? Does the Crown no longer command in its own capital?"
England's new King looked tired, shrunken inside his mourning frock coat. His eyes had the dark bags of those who have spent the night reading accounting books instead of the Bible.
"It's not Parliament, Willy," George V responded coldly, using the family nickname. "H&A Holdings operates outside Crown jurisdiction. They have headquarters in New York, Zurich, even in Argentina... and now, apparently, they have massive mining interests in our cousin Albert's Congo."
The King of the Belgians, Albert I, visibly tensed. He was a tall, serious, observant man, known for his prudence. But the mention of his personal colony made him grip his sherry glass.
"Not just interests, George," Albert corrected in a grave voice. "They've bought territorial concessions the size of Wales in the Katanga region. They pay absurd prices for lands that, according to my most greedy people on the maps, only have copper and useless black rocks. My geologists say they're looking for something called... uraninite. It makes no immediate economic sense. But they have infinite liquidity. They pay in cash gold."
An uncomfortable, heavy silence fell over the group of monarchs.
Infinite liquidity.
That was the phrase that terrified Kings in 1910. They had armies, fleets, and lineages of a thousand years, but they had the cash flow. And in the twentieth century, cannons didn't fire if the bank didn't approve credit for gunpowder.
"There's an exception," a soft voice said from the back of the room.
Everyone turned. It was Haakon VII of Norway, a practical man, an elected king who rarely spoke of high politics, preferring to discuss navigation or fishing.
"The Russian Empire," Haakon said.
The mention of the Eastern Empire provoked a change in the atmosphere, as if someone had opened a window in winter. Nicholas II wasn't there; for security reasons after the disturbances of previous years, he had sent his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Мария Фёдоровна), and his brother, Grand Duke Michael. The Tsar's absence felt like a void in the room, an empty chair at history's table.
"Russia is morally and financially bankrupt," Wilhelm II dismissed with a short, cutting laugh. "They shamefully lost to the Japanese monkeys five years ago. They have strikes every week. My cousin Nicky is a weak man, a mystic who prays to dusty icons while his own house burns on all four sides."
"Not anymore," intervened Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, the Fox of the Balkans, adjusting his glasses with fingers full of precious stone rings. His spy network was legendary. "My informants at Black Sea ports say very strange things. They say ships leaving Odessa no longer carry just wheat and wood. They carry... machinery. Small, powerful engines. And they say the Russians are paying for their German steel imports in physical gold, not in devalued treasury bonds."
"Gold?" asked George V, the banker of the group, perking up his ears. "Where does Nicky get gold from? His reserves were depleted after the war and the strikes."
"From a secret mine in Central Asia," Haakon said, shrugging. "My merchants speak of a 'stone of light.' A company called Fergana Mining is selling shares to European nobility at astronomical prices. A speculative bubble, say London's skeptics. But the money flowing to Saint Petersburg is real. And they're using it to buy coal, aluminum, and steel at a rate that... visibly worries many parties."
The Kaiser scoffed, but his eyes weren't laughing. A phantom firm in Saint Petersburg, Neva Technical Solutions, had registered fuel injection designs weeks before German Daimler. And now this.
"Are you suggesting the 'Sick Man of Royalty' has risen from his deathbed?" Wilhelm asked with venomous sarcasm.
"I suggest the sick man has found a medicine we don't yet know," Albert of Belgium responded. "The same firm that has us in its hands is trying to block their international credit, I know this from good sources. They're trying to asphyxiate Saint Petersburg. But the Russians... resist. And they grow with every moment they act."
The royal photographer's discreet but insistent throat-clearing broke the tension.
"Your Majesties, if you would be so kind... the natural light is fading."
The nine Kings moved to their positions preassigned by protocol. Three seated in front, six standing behind. They organized themselves adjusting swords, smoothing trouser wrinkles, and composing their faces into masks of eternal serenity.
While the photographer from W. & D. Downey covered his head with the tripod's black cloth, King Manuel II of Portugal, young, nervous, and tragically unaware that he was only five months from losing his own throne in a revolution, leaned to comment to Alfonso XIII: "If those merchants control Western money and Russia controls... whatever they're secretly building in the East... what's left for us, the Kings?"
Alfonso XIII looked forward, toward the camera's dark lens that would capture his image for history books.
"We're left to be remembered, Manuel. We only have the pose."
'Puff!'
The magnesium powder flash exploded with a muffled sound and a cloud of white, acrid smoke, freezing the moment forever.
In the resulting photograph, the nine Kings would appear serene, the unquestionable Masters of the World. But in the reality of that Windsor room, as the smoke dissipated, everyone knew they were marble statues in a garden about to be remodeled with dynamite.
Kaiser Wilhelm broke formation first, marching toward the exit with a furrowed brow and his hand gripping his sword.
'I'm going to order Krupp to thoroughly investigate those Russian patents,' he murmured to himself as he left into the corridor. 'If Nicky thinks he can play at engineering with me, I'll show him what German steel is.'