The night sky is deep, the moon is clear, and the sky is as black as ink, dotted with shining stars.

In the gardens of the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm sat quietly on a bench, the breeze blowing through his somewhat messy gray sideburns and his depressed face. There was a familiar sound of footsteps on the bluestone path, and William's brows couldn't help but raise slightly; However, after a moment, he lowered his gaze again, and only stared at the hazy darkness in the distance.

"Tomorrow morning, Alexei will arrive in Kiel with the ship." Qingying walked slowly up to William and said softly, "Kiel is very close to Berlin, less than two hours away, would my father want to meet him here, to show me how much the Hohenzollern family cares for the Romanov line?" ”

William said slowly: "It should be so." Nicky's family had just been murdered by the Bolsheviks, and the young Alyosha was in a stage of extreme helplessness and vulnerability, and at this time, we should express our comfort and tolerance for him, whether out of consideration for the future of Eastern politics or sympathy for this child. You go and arrange for him to come to me tomorrow when he gets off the ship, and arrange for a doctor to conduct a comprehensive medical examination of him, and make sure that he is in good health. "Qingying should claim to be.

William let out a long sigh and said with bitterness and anger: "I really didn't expect that these Bolsheviks could really do such a vicious thing. Not only did they kill Mr. and Mrs. Nicky, but they also spared their children! If it weren't for the fact that you had the power to lurk in Russia, the direct bloodline of the Romanov family would really be completely cut off from now on! Ettel, they are a real group of demons. We released this devil out of Pandora's box. It was an unimaginable sin. ”

Qing Ying fell silent when she heard this. No further comments were made on this issue. Although the relationship between the two cousins, William and Nikolai, was not very harmonious, but both were absolute monarchs of a world-class empire; Now that one person is dead and martyred, along with his wife and daughter, this will undoubtedly make the other person feel sad about the death of a rabbit and a fox. However, Qingying also had no choice in doing so: the Russian bourgeois party, which had already established some roots in the State Duma, had never been the master of the armistice and peace, and only the Bolsheviks, who had been lurking underground, would reach an armistice and peace talks that would humiliate the country for the sake of power!

I don't know how long it took. The sadness, resentment, and anger on William's face slowly faded, and he returned to his usual calm. He looked up at the young man beside him and said, "Ettel, how are you going to deal with Alyosha's arrival alone?" According to our previous plan, we were to take the Nicky family to live in the Netherlands in order to avoid the disgust of the people; Now that Nicky is the only one left in the Alyosha family, it will be difficult for us to carry out the original plan. Now, the only thing we can really do effectively call on the forces of the White Russians is Alyosha: if he is sent to Holland again, I fear that he will be assassinated again by the Bolshevik agents who are not willing to accept defeat. ”

"My father's concern was that we had to protect Alexei, who was the only one who had been left of his fruits. Compared to the legal Russian crown prince. Sanya is vastly deficient in both gender and identity; And Berlin, the heart of the empire, is definitely safer than Amsterdam, which has a mix of forces. Qingying pondered for a moment. There was also a hint of identification in his eyes, "As for the German people's ill feelings towards the Tsar, it is enough to dilute it through the atrocities of the Bolsheviks shooting the Tsar's family; We could have harshly criticized the Bolsheviks for their extermination in the press and broadcasts, and in this way we would have portrayed Alexei as a victim in need of sympathy. For him, who was only ten years old, he was a poor teenager who suddenly lost all his family. ”

"Then let Alyosha stay in Berlin. Placing him under our direct control also allows us to re-educate him so that he will always regard Hohenzollern as a benefactor and lifelong friend. William closed his eyes and said slowly. The night wind blew, cool and cold, and William suddenly felt an irrepressible desolation in his heart: the old man who had known him for forty years had just withered away, leaving only an heir who was old enough to be his grandchild to take care of by himself.

"What about the aid we promised the Dutch, do we still need to give them now?" After a moment of silence, William asked again. Under the terms of the agreement signed between Germany and the Netherlands, in return for the Dutch extradition of the Tsar's family, Germany was to help the Netherlands build a modern naval force to defend its colonial rule in the Dutch East Indies. Now that even Alexei, the only remaining member of the Tsar's family, had no chance of being in the Netherlands as originally planned, Germany undoubtedly had good reason to refuse to fulfill this clause.

Qingying nodded slightly, and said in an affirmative tone: "Although we no longer need to use the Dutch to receive the sensitive Uncle Nikolai, they have made a friendly decision to follow Berlin's will before. We should also give them the reward they deserve for their willingness to cooperate with Germany. Crucially, the Netherlands is strategically well worth it. If the Reich could establish an air base here, then our bombers would be able to fly directly over London and drop bombs, and after taking control of the Low Countries, they would also be able to form a direct oppression and deterrent to neighboring France. ”

"However, in order to balance the constraints on the Japanese navy in Southeast Asia, where the Dutch development fleet is located, we should also reduce the amount of assistance we provide to them. We only give them preferential terms of paying at cost when ordering ships at the Deutsche shipyard and help them train seafarers; As for the introduction of various equipment production lines for routine maintenance, other aspects, all return to the normal way. Qingying's mind turned, and all factors had been considered in his mind, "With the financial and executive power of the Dutch government, it is already the limit to be able to build and maintain a balanced fleet of 80,000 tons, and it is difficult to become a threat to the Japanese Navy in the Pacific." ”

William gently pinched the goatee under his chin and said, "In that case, then sell the low-cost large cruiser proposal to the Dutch when necessary." The purchase of ships that cost almost as much as capital ships, but could not compete with them at all, was the most desirable situation in the Empire's Far East strategy. We must not allow the Dutch to become too powerful in the Far East, so as to ensure that the United States will be successfully dragged into the quagmire of the Pacific game by the expansionist Japan. ”

"There is no greater wisdom than Caesar." Qingying smiled and complimented from the bottom of her heart. After twenty years, William's attainments in the field of warships have become more and more profound, and he has already put the most ideal strategy in front of him before he has revealed any words. On the eve of World War II, in order to cope with Japan's expansion in the Far East, the Netherlands planned to build a regular patrol equipped with nine 11-inch guns and a speed of 34 knots to be deployed to the Far East. Although the plan was aborted with the outbreak of the war, its low cost performance was unquestionable: the final standard displacement of the project was as high as 28,000 tons, and the cost of the 180,000-horsepower power store was bound to soar all the way. Instead of building this kind of thin skin that can't be on the battle line at all, it is better to add some money to buy regular battleships like Richelieu and Veneto, the former can be safely driven out by a King Kong, and the latter can't be effectively dealt with if Nagato or even Yamato is not dispatched!

"By the way, how are the contacts between us and the Siberian state going, does Kolchak really have more than 500 tons of gold urgently transferred from Kazan?" Referring to the distribution of forces in the Far East, William suddenly thought of another important matter, and couldn't help but ask. In the era of the gold standard, the importance of gold as a quantitative premise for the issuance of currency to a country's economic activities is self-evident: it is precisely because of this that Britain fought a fierce war with the other side for three years in order to obtain gold mines and diamonds.

Qingying's thoughts flickered, and then she nodded: "The information that Kolchak holds a large amount of gold can already be determined. In October last year, in order to prevent the loss of gold reserves in St. Petersburg due to the fall of the capital, the Russian government urgently transferred most of them to the important city of Kazan, which is located in depth; When the Bolsheviks launched a revolution to overthrow the Provisional Government, Vice Admiral Kolchak, who was recuperating in the city of Kazan, raised an army and plundered all the gold east of the Urals. Although we have not yet been able to determine the exact location of this batch of gold, it is certain that it must still be in Kolchak's hands. ”

Looking at William's suddenly lit up eyes, Qingying showed a wry smile: "However, if we want to obtain these 500 tons of gold, we still need to spend a lot of effort." Due to the hostility between Siberia and Red Soviet Russia, the transportation route from Europe to Germany has been completely blocked; This time, our men were able to catch up with them after crossing the Caspian Sea and passing through the Autonomous Republic of Arash with great difficulty, reaching Omsk, the administrative center of the country. And even the Trans-Siberian Railway, which leads directly to Vladivostok, is now unreliable: a local force under the command of Semenov is entrenched in Chita, choking the railway from the central part of the country. Whether it is our ammunition transports or the golden convoy of the White Army, there is a risk that they will be intercepted by this gang of bandits while passing through the Baikal region. (To be continued......)

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