The Price of a Battleship

The warehouse was a cavern of cold, damp shadows on the forgotten end of the London docks. The air, thick with the smell of river muck, coal smoke, and rotting timber, was a stark contrast to the perfumed salons of Mayfair where Sir Reginald Thorne conducted his life. He had been summoned here, to this squalid, degrading location, a deliberate and brutally effective power play by the mysterious Mr. Jiang to strip him of every last vestige of his authority and comfort. He was no longer a senior official of the Foreign Office; he was a rat in a trap.

"This is insane!" he hissed, his voice a panicked whisper that was swallowed by the vast, dark space. He pulled his expensive wool coat tighter around himself, as if it could ward off the grime as well as the chill. "Meeting in a place like this! What do you want now? More shipping manifests? I've given you everything I can get my hands on without raising suspicion! I am taking enormous risks!"

A figure detached itself from the deeper shadows. It was Captain Jiang. The flamboyant, smiling Chinese merchant from Venice was gone. In his place was a man dressed in simple, dark, Western-style clothes, his face as hard and emotionless as carved granite. His placid smile had been replaced by a chillingly direct gaze that seemed to see straight through Thorne's bluster to the terrified man beneath.

"Your 'goodwill payments' have been noted, Sir Reginald," Jiang said, his voice low and devoid of any accent, a feat that was in itself unnerving. "My employer is pleased with your cooperation thus far. But your debt remains substantial. It is time for a more significant contribution to our… partnership."

"Significant?" Thorne's voice cracked. "What are you talking about? I am already risking my career, my freedom, my entire life for you!"

"You are risking nothing compared to what you will lose if your marker for fifty thousand pounds is presented to the board of your bank," Jiang replied coldly. "Do not mistake my employer's patience for weakness. We are finished with trifles." He stepped forward and placed a heavy, rolled-up document on a dusty crate. "We are no longer interested in commercial shipping. We are interested in military matters."

Thorne stared at the document as if it were a bomb. "Military? No. Absolutely not," he stammered, shaking his head frantically. "That is treason. I am a patriot! I serve the Queen!"

"A patriot who gambled away a fortune he did not have," Jiang countered without pity. "Your patriotism did not stop you from signing the marker. It will not serve as a shield for you now." He deliberately unrolled the document on the crate. It was a technical drawing, a detailed schematic. "This," Jiang explained, "is a cross-section of the new Majestic-class of battleship currently being constructed for the Royal Navy. It is an impressive design. But it is incomplete. We require the full, detailed blueprints. Especially the schematics for the new 12-inch wire-wound naval guns, the chemical composition and layering specifications for the Harvey steel armor plating, and the complete engine and boiler layout."

Sir Reginald Thorne looked as if he had been physically struck. The blood drained from his face, leaving it a pasty, ghastly white. This was not a casual request for marginally sensitive information. This was a demand for the blueprints of the single most advanced and powerful military technology possessed by the British Empire. This was high treason, the kind that led to a swift, secret trial and a quiet, unmarked grave.

"Impossible!" he gasped. "I can't! Even if I wanted to, I don't have access to that level of clearance! That's held by the Admiralty, under the highest security protocols!"

"But your cousin, Commander Thomas Pike, is the deputy chief of naval ordinance at the Portsmouth dockyard, is he not?" Jiang said, his voice a relentless, factual hammer. "A good man, by all accounts, but one with his own unfortunate fondness for the card table. His debts are smaller than yours, but significant enough to cause him great distress. He is a man whose career you have personally sponsored. A man who owes you a great deal, both professionally and personally."

Jiang's intelligence, meticulously gathered by May-Ling over months of patient work, was flawless. He knew every detail of Thorne's life, every vulnerability, every secret shame. He was not just blackmailing Thorne; he was providing him with a detailed, step-by-step instruction manual for committing the very treason he required.

Thorne collapsed onto a nearby crate, burying his face in his hands, his body trembling. "You would have me suborn my own family?" he groaned, his voice muffled. "You are a monster."

"I am a businessman, collecting on a debt," Jiang said, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. "You will find a way to persuade your cousin. A generous loan to cover his debts, perhaps, in exchange for allowing you a 'brief look' at the plans for a report you are preparing for the Foreign Office. You are a diplomat, Sir Reginald; you are skilled at persuasion and deceit. You have one month. We require the full set of blueprints."

Jiang turned to leave, his business concluded. Thorne, in a final, desperate act of a drowning man grasping at a straw, called out to his back.

"And what if I do this?" he cried, his voice breaking. "What if, by some miracle, I get you these… these damnable plans? Will the debt be cleared then? Will you finally leave me alone?"

Captain Jiang paused at the doorway, a dark silhouette against the foggy grey light outside. He looked back at the broken, weeping man.

"If you provide us with these blueprints, Sir Reginald," he said, his voice calm and clear, "your debt of fifty thousand pounds will indeed be considered paid in full."

A tiny, pathetic flicker of hope ignited in Thorne's eyes. A way out. An end to the nightmare.

Then Jiang delivered the final, crushing blow, his voice turning to pure ice. "But our 'partnership' will not be over. It will have just begun. Because from that moment forward, you will no longer be a debtor, a foolish gambler who made a mistake. You will be a traitor to your Crown and country. And traitors, Sir Reginald, are so much more… manageable than debtors. We will own you. Body and soul. Forever."

He stepped out of the warehouse and melted into the fog, leaving Sir Reginald Thorne alone in the cold, damp darkness. He was trapped in a prison far more secure than any debtor's jail, a prison built of his own weakness, greed, and fear. He was no longer just a man in debt; he was an asset, a tool to be used in a silent, brutal war he never knew was being fought, a war that would be won or lost with secrets and blueprints, not soldiers and cannons. And he had just been ordered to steal the keys to the kingdom.