The smoke from the Baku oil fires drifted north, turning the sunsets in Moscow a bruised purple.
Jake stood on the balcony of the Grand Kremlin Palace. He wiped soot from the marble railing.
"The fires are contained," General Brusilov reported from the doorway. "But we have lost six months of production."
"Six months is an eternity," Jake said without turning.
He looked at the darkening sky.
The British strike had been surgical. Brilliant. It reminded him that he wasn't the only player on the board who understood total war.
"The British Ambassador requested a meeting," Brusilov said. "To discuss 'mutual security concerns'."
Jake laughed. It was a harsh, dry sound.
"He wants to gloat," Jake said. "He wants to see if I blink."
He turned around.
"Send him away. Tell him I am busy planning his funeral."
Brusilov raised a bushy eyebrow. "Provocative."
"Necessary," Jake said. "We need a distraction, General. Something so loud the British forget about oil."
Calcutta, British India. The docks.
The humidity was suffocating. Flies buzzed around crates of tea and spices.
A man in a rough tunic walked through the bustling market. He looked like a laborer. But his hands were soft—the hands of an intellectual.
He stopped at a tea stall.
A tall, bearded Sikh was waiting there.
"The shipment arrived?" the intellectual asked in Hindi.
"It arrived," the Sikh whispered. "Crates marked 'Sewing Machines' from Odessa."
"And inside?"
"Lee-Enfield rifles," the Sikh grinned. "And gold. Soviet gold."
The intellectual nodded. He took a sip of tea.
"Gandhi preaches non-violence," the intellectual murmured. "But Stalin sends guns."
"Gandhi is a saint," the Sikh said, patting a hidden bulge under his shirt. "But saints don't stop the British police. Bullets do."
"When do we strike?"
"Tomorrow," the Sikh said. "The Viceroy is visiting the railway station. We will give him a warm welcome."
The Kremlin. Menzhinsky's Office.
The spy chief was reading a telegram. He was smiling.
"It has begun," Menzhinsky said as Jake walked in. "Riots in Calcutta. A bomb thrown at the Viceroy's car in Delhi."
"Did they get him?" Jake asked.
"No," Menzhinsky said. "He survived. But the panic is spreading. The British are pulling troops from the Middle East to reinforce India."
Jake nodded. He sat down heavily.
He was tired. His bones felt heavy.
"It's a diversion," Jake said. "It buys us time to fix the wells. But it won't win the war."
"It weakens them," Menzhinsky argued. "Every soldier in Bombay is a soldier not guarding the Persian oil fields."
Jake rubbed his temples.
He was playing Risk with real lives. Thousands would die in India because he signed a check.
"I feel like a monster," Jake admitted.
Menzhinsky poured two glasses of tea. He slid one across the desk.
"You are a monster, Koba," Menzhinsky said gently. "But you are our monster. That is the difference."
He took a sip.
"There is more news. From Berlin."
Jake looked up. "Von Braun's replacement?"
"No," Menzhinsky said. "The Nazis."
Jake froze.
In his timeline, the Nazi party in 1925 was a fringe group. Hitler had just got out of prison. They were a joke.
"What about them?"
"Their membership has tripled in the last month," Menzhinsky said. "They are marching in Munich. They are screaming about the 'Bolshevik Threat'."
He opened a file.
"And they are getting money. Lots of it."
"From whom?"
"From Henry Ford," Menzhinsky said. "And from the British aristocracy."
Jake slammed his hand on the desk.
"Of course," he hissed. "The immune response. We scare the West, so they fund the fascists to stop us."
He had accelerated the rise of Hitler by five years.
"We need to kill it," Jake said. "Kill the Nazi party before it grows."
"We can't," Menzhinsky said. "If we assassinate Hitler now, he becomes a martyr. Another leader will rise. The anger is the problem, not the man."
Jake stared at the tea.
He had created a feedback loop. Every move he made to strengthen the USSR made its enemies stronger too.
"Then we need an alliance," Jake said.
"With whom? The British are bombing us. The Americans are blockading us."
"With the Germans," Jake said.
Menzhinsky choked on his tea. "The Weimar Republic? They hate us."
"They hate the French more," Jake said. "They are humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. They want to rearm."
He stood up. He walked to the map.
"We offer them a deal. Secret training grounds in Russia. Tank schools. Pilot schools. In exchange for German technology and a non-aggression pact."
"You want to train the Wehrmacht?" Menzhinsky asked, horrified. "The very army that will try to destroy us?"
"I want to train them to fight the French," Jake corrected. "I want to point the German gun west, not east."
It was the Rapallo Treaty on steroids. A desperate gamble.
"If you do this," Menzhinsky warned, "you are feeding a tiger."
"I know," Jake said. "But I have a leash."
He tapped the Urals on the map.
"In three months, I will have the Bomb. When the tiger gets too big, I will shoot it."
The bedroom was quiet.
Nadya was asleep. Her breathing was shallow.
Jake lay beside her. He stared at the ceiling.
He couldn't sleep. He kept seeing the burning oil fields. He kept seeing the faces of the Indian rebels he had sent to die.
He felt the baby kick against Nadya's stomach.
A boy.
What kind of world was he leaving him? A world of burning oil and secret police?
"I'm sorry," Jake whispered to the dark.
He got out of bed. He went to the kitchen.
He opened a bottle of vodka. He poured a shot. Then another.
The alcohol burned, but it didn't numb the fear.
He realized then that he missed the future. He missed the internet. He missed the safety of knowing how the story ended.
Now, every page was blank. And he was writing it in blood.
The door creaked.
Taranov stood there. The giant was wearing his coat.
"Comrade," Taranov said softly. "A message from the secret city."
Jake put down the glass. "Kurchatov?"
"No," Taranov said. "Von Braun."
Jake frowned. "What does the boy want?"
"He says he has a design," Taranov said. "For the guidance system."
"At 3 AM?"
"He says genius doesn't sleep."
Jake sighed. He grabbed his coat.
"Let's go."
The radio room in the Kremlin basement.
The voice of Wernher von Braun crackled over the speaker.
"Herr Stalin," the boy sounded excited. "The gyroscopes! We can't use mechanical bearings. The friction is too high at supersonic speeds."
"So use air bearings," Jake suggested, remembering a documentary.
"No!" von Braun shouted. "Better! We use floating bearings! Suspended in fluid!"
Jake blinked.
"Fluid suspension?"
"Yes! It dampens the vibration! The accuracy improves by a factor of ten!"
Jake smiled. Despite everything, he admired the kid.
"Build it, Wernher," Jake said.
"There is one problem," von Braun said. "We need high-grade silicone oil. Russia doesn't produce it."
Jake closed his eyes.
Another bottleneck. Another resource he didn't have.
"Where do we get it?"
"America," von Braun said. "General Electric."
Jake laughed. It was a bitter sound.
"America is blockading us, Wernher. We can't exactly place an order."
"We don't need to buy it," von Braun said slyly. "We just need the formula. My cousin works at GE. In Schenectady."
Jake looked at Menzhinsky, who was listening in the corner.
Menzhinsky nodded. "We have assets in New York."
"Steal the formula," Jake ordered.
"One more thing," von Braun added. "Goddard is asking for his wife."
Jake paused.
"His wife?"
"He is depressed," von Braun said. "He says he cannot think without her. He threatens to stop eating."
Jake rubbed his face.
He had kidnapped a man, and now the man missed his wife. It was human. It was pathetic. It was a problem.
"If he dies, the program slows down," Jake muttered.
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"Can we get her?"
Menzhinsky shrugged. "She is in Worcester, Massachusetts. Under FBI surveillance."
"Get her," Jake said. "Smuggle her out through Canada. Bring her to the Secret City."
"You are turning into a romantic, Koba," Menzhinsky noted dryly.
"I am turning into a zookeeper," Jake corrected. "I need my pandas to breed."
He cut the connection.
He walked out of the basement.
Dawn was breaking. The sky was red.
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.
The world was spinning out of control. India was burning. Germany was rising. America was watching.
But Jake had a plan.
He would build the rockets. He would build the bomb.
And then, he would hold the whole world hostage until it learned to behave.
"Peace through terror," Jake whispered to the rising sun.
It was the only peace he had left.