The lead box sat in the center of the Situation Room table.
It was small. Just a cubic foot of steel and lead. But the room felt tilted toward it, as if the box possessed its own gravity.
Kurchatov stood beside it. He wore heavy rubber gloves. His face was gaunt, his eyes sunken. He looked like a man who had stared into a furnace for too long.
"Open it," Jake said.
Kurchatov unlatched the heavy clasps. He lifted the lid.
Inside, nestled in velvet, was a sphere. It was the size of a grapefruit. It was dull grey, warm, and unremarkable.
But Jake knew what it was.
Plutonium-239. The Demon Core.
"It is... small," Molotov whispered, adjusting his glasses. "This can destroy a city?"
"It is not the size, Comrade," Kurchatov said softly. "It is the density. This ball contains the energy of twenty thousand tons of TNT."
The generals around the table shifted in their seats. Even Brusilov looked uneasy. They were soldiers; they understood bullets and shells. They did not understand this grey marble of death.
"Is it safe?" Menzhinsky asked.
"As long as it is sub-critical," Kurchatov said. "But if you compress it... or if you bring two hemispheres together too fast..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
Jake reached out. He hovered his hand over the sphere. He could feel the heat radiating from it. The decay heat.
It was alive.
"We have the core," Jake said. "But we don't have the bomb. We need the implosion lens. The trigger."
"We are working on it," Kurchatov said. "But the mathematics of the shockwave... it is complex. We need computers."
"We don't have computers," Jake snapped. "Use slide rules. Use an abacus. Just make it work."
He closed the lid. The heavy thud echoed in the silent room.
"This is our shield," Jake announced. "The British have battleships. The Americans have money. We have this."
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"Leak it."
Menzhinsky raised an eyebrow. "Leak the existence of the weapon? We haven't even tested it."
"Leak the threat," Jake said. "Let the spies hear rumors. 'Super-weapon'. 'City-killer'. Make them afraid of the dark."
"Fear can provoke an attack," Menzhinsky warned.
"Fear buys time," Jake countered. "And I need time."
He pointed at the box.
"Take it back to the Urals. Do not drop it."
Kurchatov nodded nervously. He picked up the box like it contained the Holy Grail.
As he left, Jake felt the room settle back onto its axis. The gravity was gone.
But the fear remained.
The courtyard garden. Spring was trying to break through the Moscow winter.
Nadya sat on a bench, wrapped in furs. The first green shoots of daffodils were pushing through the snow.
Jake sat beside her. He held her hand. Her fingers were swollen.
"April," Nadya said, looking at the sky. "He will be an Aries. Stubborn."
"Like his father," Jake said.
"Like his mother," Nadya corrected with a tired smile.
She winced, rubbing her lower back.
"Are you in pain?" Jake asked, instantly alert.
"Just pressure," she said. "He is heavy. He is ready."
Jake looked at her belly. It was huge. A whole new world waiting to be born.
"I have a name," Jake said.
"Oh?"
"Yuri," Jake said.
Nadya frowned. "Yuri? It is a common name."
"It means 'farmer'," Jake said. "Or 'earth-worker'. It is humble."
He didn't tell her the real reason. Yuri Gagarin. The first man in space. He wanted his son to have the name of a hero who touched the stars.
"Yuri," Nadya tested the word. "Yuri Dzhugashvili."
"Yuri Stalin," Jake corrected gently.
Nadya looked away.
"Why must he carry that name? It is a name of iron. Can he not just be... a boy?"
"He is the son of the General Secretary," Jake said. "He will never be just a boy. He is a symbol."
"I don't want to give birth to a symbol," Nadya whispered. "I want to give birth to a son."
She squeezed Jake's hand.
"Promise me, Koba. Promise me you won't make him a soldier."
Jake looked at the daffodil struggling against the ice.
"I promise," Jake lied.
Because he knew the truth. If the war came, everyone would be a soldier. Even the babies.
Berlin. The Reichstag.
The mood was ugly. Brownshirts were brawling with Communists in the street outside.
Inside a smoky beer hall, Adolf Hitler stood on a table. He was screaming.
"The Bolsheviks have a weapon!" Hitler roared, his face red. "A weapon of fire! They threaten German soil!"
The crowd cheered. They were angry. They were hungry.
In the back of the room, a man in a grey suit watched. He took notes.
It was Taranov.
He had stayed in Berlin after the kidnapping. He was now the eyes and ears of the Kremlin.
He walked out of the hall. He found a payphone.
"The rumors worked," Taranov said into the receiver. "But not the way you wanted."
"Explain," Menzhinsky's voice crackled on the line.
"Hitler is using the rumors," Taranov said. "He says the 'Super-weapon' is proof of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to exterminate the German race. He is using fear to recruit."
Menzhinsky sighed on the other end.
"Fear is a double-edged sword," Menzhinsky murmured. "We sharpened it, and now he is swinging it."
"Should I liquidate him?" Taranov asked. "I have a clear shot when he leaves the hall."
"No," Menzhinsky ordered. "Stalin was clear. If we kill him now, he becomes a martyr. We need him to fail politically."
"He is not failing," Taranov growled. "He is winning."
"Return to base," Menzhinsky said. "We have a new priority. The Americans."
Taranov hung up.
He looked back at the beer hall. The cheering was getting louder.
He spat on the pavement.
"Bad move, Koba," Taranov whispered. "You woke the wrong dog."
The Secret City.
Robert Goddard stood by the hospital bed. He held his wife's hand.
Esther Goddard looked frail. Her skin was translucent. The oxygen tent hissed softly.
"You look tired, Robert," she whispered.
"I am working," Goddard said. "Building... things."
"Rockets?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted. "Big ones."
"For the Russians?"
Goddard looked at the door, where the NKVD guard stood.
"For science," Goddard said. "Just for science."
Esther squeezed his hand. Her grip was weak.
"They say you are a prisoner, Robert."
"I am a guest," Goddard said. "A very... important guest."
The door opened. Jake walked in.
Goddard stood up quickly, blocking his wife from view.
"Mr. Secretary," Goddard said stiffly.
"How is she?" Jake asked. He didn't look at the woman; he looked at the medical chart.
"Stable," Goddard said. "But the air here... the pollution... it is bad for her lungs."
"I will order air filters," Jake said. "From Sweden."
He looked at Goddard.
"The guidance system is ready. Von Braun says the airframe is reinforced. We need to mount the warhead."
"The warhead?" Goddard paled. "You mean the... the thing in the box?"
"No," Jake said. "A dummy. Concrete. Same weight."
Goddard relaxed slightly.
"We launch in three days," Jake said.
"Three days?" Goddard shook his head. "The weather forecast is terrible. Blizzard conditions."
"We launch in a blizzard," Jake said. "The Americans need to know we can fly in any weather."
He leaned closer to Goddard.
"If that rocket flies, Robert, your wife gets the best doctors in Switzerland. If it fails..."
He let the threat hang in the air.
"It will fly," Goddard whispered.
Three days later. The launch pad.
The blizzard was blinding. Snow whipped sideways, stinging like needles.
The V-2—now painted red with a white "CCCP" on the side—stood on the pad like an icicle. Steam vented from its base, instantly freezing.
Jake watched from the bunker.
"T-minus ten seconds," von Braun counted down over the speaker. His voice was shaking.
"Ignition."
A flash of orange light illuminated the storm. The roar shook the ground.
The rocket rose slowly at first, balancing on a pillar of fire. Then it accelerated.
It punched through the snow. It punched through the clouds.
"Telemetry good," von Braun shouted. "Mach 1... Mach 2..."
The radar screen showed a green dot climbing higher and higher.
"Apogee," von Braun called out. "100 kilometers. We have touched space!"
A cheer went up in the bunker. Technicians hugged each other. Even the Finn was smiling.
But Jake was watching the descent vector.
"Target?" Jake asked.
"Tracking..." von Braun said. "It is heading for the Novaya Zemlya test range."
The dot began to fall. Faster and faster.
"Impact in 5... 4... 3..."
The dot vanished.
"Confirmed impact," the radar operator said. "Within 500 meters of the target."
Jake let out a breath.
Five hundred meters. From a thousand miles away.
He could hit a city. He could hit a specific district of a city.
"We have the delivery system," Jake announced.
He turned to Kurchatov, who was standing in the corner holding the lead box.
"Now," Jake said. "We build the package."
The Kremlin apartment. Midnight.
The phone rang. It wasn't the secure line. It was the domestic line.
Jake picked it up.
"It's time," Nadya's voice was a gasp of pain.
Jake dropped the phone.
He ran.
He ran through the corridors of power, past the guards, past the portraits of Lenin.
He burst into the bedroom.
Nadya was on the bed. The sheets were twisted. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead. The Kremlin doctor was already there.
"Koba!" she cried out as a contraction hit her.
Jake fell to his knees beside the bed. He took her hand. It was crushing his fingers.
"I'm here," he said. "I'm here."
"It hurts," she sobbed. "Why does it hurt so much?"
"Breathe," the doctor ordered. "Push!"
Jake watched. He had ordered the deaths of thousands. He had started wars. He had built bombs.
But he had never felt terror like this.
This was life. Messy, screaming, bloody life.
"One more!" the doctor shouted.
Nadya screamed. It was a primal sound.
Then, silence.
And then, a thin, wailing cry.
The doctor lifted the baby. It was red and wrinkled and furious.
"A boy," the doctor announced. "A strong boy."
Jake stared at the child.
His son. Yuri.
The doctor cleaned the baby and wrapped him in a blanket. He handed him to Jake.
Jake held the bundle. It was impossibly light.
He looked at the tiny face. The eyes were squeezed shut. The fists were clenched.
"Hello, Yuri," Jake whispered.
He looked at Nadya. She was pale, exhausted, but she was smiling.
"He is here," she whispered. "He is safe."
Jake looked out the window.
The sky was dark. But somewhere out there, a rocket had just touched the edge of space. And somewhere else, a ball of plutonium was waiting to explode.
He held his son tighter.
"I will burn the whole universe to keep you warm," Jake vowed.
And for the first time, he wasn't speaking as Stalin. He was speaking as a father.
Menzhinsky stood in the doorway, unnoticed. He watched the tableau.
He opened his notebook.
The Heir is born.
The Bomb is ready.
The Rocket flies.
He closed the book.
The Trinity is complete.