August 1837, St. Petersburg
The foundry didn't exist—at least, not officially.
On paper, it was a "private venture" owned by a fictional trading company registered under the name Velkanov & Sons. The property itself had once been a derelict naval warehouse along the Neva River, abandoned after a fire gutted its roof. Now, a new roof gleamed with imported German steel plates, and fresh chimneys puffed faint smoke into the air like early signs of awakening giants.
To Alexander, it was the beating heart of a future Russia. A heart that would pump iron instead of blood.
Sergei Witte reviewed the latest receipts by lamplight. "Even disguised, this is expensive. We're bleeding rubles."
"We're investing rubles," Alexander replied. "And if this works, it will pay itself back a hundredfold. This isn't just about steel—it's about proving that Russian industry doesn't need noble permission or foreign ownership."
Witte looked up. "And if your father finds out?"
Alexander shrugged, lips tight. "Then I remind him that innovation requires faith—and remind our auditors that the Church's expenditures are twice as opaque."
Witte didn't laugh, but the flicker of amusement in his eyes said he approved.
The foundry's true purpose was manifold.
By day, it produced basic iron goods—tools, nails, rails—under the guise of small-scale domestic industry. By night, its core team of thirty engineers and metalworkers, all sworn to secrecy, studied blueprints, ran tests, and learned to fabricate precision machine parts.
Alexander had acquired two disassembled steam engines smuggled in pieces from Prussia, hidden beneath loads of textiles. He gave them to the engineers as puzzles.
"You will not only rebuild these," he'd told them. "You will understand them—and make them better."
The workers were skeptical at first. But when one of them, a young Baltic machinist named Anton, found a way to increase the piston efficiency by 12%, Alexander had given him a small gold coin and a handwritten letter of commendation.
It wasn't about flattery. It was about showing that merit would be rewarded. A lesson the aristocracy refused to teach.
Yet Alexander knew Russia could not modernize in isolation. He needed knowledge. Expertise. And allies who could bring both.
Enter Professor Johann von Mertens, a Bavarian metallurgist with a sharp tongue and sharper mind. Alexander had corresponded with him anonymously for months under the pseudonym "A. Rostov," praising his papers and sending modest funding.
When he finally invited the professor to St. Petersburg under the guise of a university lecture series, Mertens had arrived suspicious, but intrigued.
Now, after a private carriage ride and a locked-door conversation in the Winter Palace library, the truth had spilled out.
"You're him," Mertens had said, eyes narrowing. "The so-called Rostov. The one who knows too much for a bureaucrat."
Alexander didn't deny it. "And you're the man who will help us remake an empire."
Mertens had stared for a long moment, then said, "Only if you have coffee stronger than what I was served in Munich."
They began the next day.
Within a fortnight, Mertens was consulting directly with the engineers at the foundry. His insights into alloy blends, temperature calibration, and tooling efficiency shaved months off the learning curve.
He wasn't the only one.
Alexander also brought in Émile Carpentier, a French textile magnate ruined by the July Monarchy, who now sought refuge—and redemption—in Russia. Though his specialty lay in fabrics, Carpentier understood supply chains, worker management, and industrial discipline.
"He's a capitalist," Witte had warned. "He'll ask for control."
"No," Alexander replied. "He'll ask for purpose."
Carpentier proved useful immediately, redesigning the foundry's layout and introducing a shift rotation that increased productivity by 28%.
But more than productivity, Carpentier and Mertens offered something Alexander craved: validation. Proof that modern systems could work—even here, in the frozen shadow of tsars and tradition.
Of course, nothing remained secret forever.
One evening, Alexander was summoned to an informal dinner with his father, Tsar Nicholas I, along with a few high-ranking courtiers and military men. The food was plain—roast duck and cabbage—but the mood was heavy.
The Tsar cut directly to it.
"I hear a great deal of hammering along the Neva these days," he said, spearing a slice of turnip. "Odd, for an abandoned warehouse."
Alexander kept his voice level. "There's a workshop being renovated by a private merchant consortium. They've been granted temporary use for tool production."
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "And this consortium—is it entirely private?"
Alexander met his father's gaze. "For now. But should it succeed, I intend to recommend it for military partnership. Independent arms and parts manufacture. No foreign ownership. Russian workers. Russian steel."
A pause.
Then the Tsar grunted. "Just keep the foreigners out of our artillery designs."
"I promise nothing reaches the army without full review."
The Tsar said no more. That was as close to approval as Alexander would get.
Later that night, Alexander sat alone on the balcony of his quarters. The wind off the river was cold, but he didn't mind. Below, the foundry's lights flickered in the distance, tiny stars of industry against the dark.
He wasn't naive. The project could be discovered. The money could dry up. The resistance from entrenched nobles could grow violent.
But something had changed.
The steel was being poured. The knowledge was spreading. Foreign minds were at work on Russian soil not as colonizers, but as collaborators.
And the cadets he'd trained? Some of them now visited the foundry in secret, learning not only how to fight—but how to build.
It was slow. Painfully slow.
But it was movement.