Actually if I wanted to look for a specific historical document hundreds of years old and in bad condition, I would just track where the compressed nitrogen gas is being shipped to, compare that to a list of libraries. Then you do the footwork and go to each library and see which ones have areas that are off limits or restricted. Then you pass the list off to James Bond who hasn't been to any of these libraries yet and let him do the dirty deed.
I mean, how many important ancient documents do we have that need to be kept in a climate controlled atmosphere of nitrogen lying around? Of those, which ones would we actively guard and hide from the public?
You could do the same with any other agents specific to document conservation. Russia has done document conservation before on their own. They have ready access to experts and resources. They know what goes into document conservation, and we dont have a lot of resources. So if we need tanks of compressed nitrogen to keep a positive pressure inside a vessel to keep a document from deteriorating further, it wont be that hard to track. Its an ancient document that requires certain experts to test and maintain and repair, and it requires certain specific resources.
If you really want to go all in, draw up a list of places that receive compressed nitrogen, draw up a list of places that archivists and librarians who specialize in document conservation work at, and draw up a list of libraries. Then you just see who gets all three, and chances are you are getting really close to the declaration.
If it gets exploded before we reveal it, its our word versus Russias. If it gets exploded after we reveal it, how many native states are going to willingly destroy the Declaration? Even Victoria might not go that far.
Bear in mind that the Commonwealth
does have a concept of military secrecy and internal security. It's entirely probable that there are shipments of bottled nitrogen being produced (it's not hard to compress) and shipped to undisclosed locations. Or to several such locations. And the Declaration can be moved, perhaps to a site in our large rural hinterland where random spies would not normally have occasion to go, and to which some of our archivists have "disappeared" without telling anyone where they went.
I mean, I'm not saying this kind of security is unbreakable. But it's just...
not hard... to level things up to the point where it is genuinely challenging to find such a small and inert object that a national government doesn't want found. It would take time, and resources. And there's a risk of accidentally exposing your existing spy networks when they go digging for information like "hey, so who's been shipping around bottled nitrogen lately" after the local equivalent of the FBI has already established that asking that question without a damn good reason puts you on their watch list.
If the Russians actually have good intelligence penetration of our territory (not a given), it's entirely possible that Alexander IV would prefer to
let the Declaration be, rather than seeking it out and destroying it in a way that would make it obvious to us that Russian spies had done the dirty deed and that we needed to start hunting down and rolling up his networks.
But, you know who will care? Victoria. Remember, despite how proud Victoria is for killing the old US of A, the CMC's original vision statement was a return things to a "better" time. A time before Cultural Marxists destroyed the Founding Father's utopian vision. I have absolutely no doubt that both sides in their civil war would do a lot of awful things to take the DoI for themselves or at least destroy it so it cannot be used by anyone else.
Yeah, but we can
deal with the Victorians. Their spies are unlikely to get past us very well, their resources are limited, they don't directly have access to things like highly secure and compact communications devices, and if they try a more brute force approach we can cut them to ribbons (again).
I'm not worried about the Victorians going berserk. I'm definitely worried about the Russians going berserk.
Waiting a year means Russia (and Japan) will have big fires to put out and will be forced to split it's attention. We can force Russia to dilute it's efforts.
Plus in a year we'll be in a far better position (immediate fires being put out, like the looming food crisis and the refugee situation as well as hostile neighborhood) to reveal and weather the hostile attention.
Or to reveal and use the resulting diplomatic leverage to expand rapidly and become large enough that Russia can't destroy us simply by deploying one force to one place.
Right now, a succession of airstrikes hitting around Chicago and maybe Detroit, flown out of Victorian territory by long range stealth aircraft, could pretty easily cripple the Commonwealth's ability to make war or grow economically. If we integrated a very large number of friendly revivalist states scattered over an area of the Midwest 2-3 times larger, the sheer number of significant targets and the physical extent of the territory would make it harder for Russia to squash us without doing things they have historically avoided doing (like actually deploying Russian ground troops in large numbers on North American soil).
Not
impossible, but again, harder. The forces Alexander can deploy to America, and their size, are limited, he'll be dealing with multiple rebellions at once, and he has kind of a shortage of good bases to operate from. Victoria will host his troops but is fighting a civil war that complicates their ability to do so- local supplies of food and so on will be harder to guarantee. And thanks to Alexander's own policies (as implemented by Victoria) there are VERY few places in North America out of which a large military force can base in a secure, well-supplied environment- and the main ones are New York and California, neither of which is likely to be open to him.
