The bread mold was green. Fuzzy. Ugly.
It grew on a petri dish in the converted kitchen of the Metropol Hotel.
"This is the miracle?" Nadya asked, wrinkling her nose.
"This is life," Jake said.
He stood next to Alexander Fleming. Not the real Fleming—he was still in London, probably staring at a similar mold in St. Mary's Hospital. This was Pyotr Kapitsa, a Soviet biologist Jake had pulled from academia.
"We have isolated the strain," Kapitsa said, adjusting his glasses. "It kills staphylococcus in the dish. It eats the bacteria alive."
"Can we inject it?" Jake asked.
"Not yet," Kapitsa warned. "It is impure. If we inject this, the patient dies of anaphylactic shock. We need to refine it."
"How?"
"We need ether," Kapitsa said. "And freeze-drying equipment. And thousands of liters of mold juice."
Jake looked at the mold.
In his timeline, penicillin wasn't mass-produced until 1943. He needed it now.
"Take the vodka distilleries," Jake ordered. "Convert them. Use the fermentation tanks for the mold. Use the stills to purify the ether."
"The people will riot if we take their vodka," Menzhinsky said from the doorway.
"Let them drink water," Jake snapped. "Water doesn't cure gangrene."
He turned to Kapitsa.
"You have one month. I want a vial of pure penicillin on my desk."
Kapitsa nodded, terrified.
Jake walked out.
He felt the weight of the timeline pressing on him. He was forcing science to sprint when it wanted to crawl.
The Radio Tower. Moscow.
Gregor Strasser sat in front of the microphone. He looked healthier now. Fed. Clothed in a Soviet suit.
But his eyes were still haunted.
"Testing," Strasser whispered in German. "Testing."
"You are live," the technician signaled.
Strasser took a breath.
"Comrades of the National Socialist Party," Strasser's voice boomed across the ether, bouncing off the ionosphere, reaching radios in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg.
"This is Gregor Strasser. I speak to you from the grave."
Jake watched from the booth.
"Hitler betrayed us," Strasser continued. "He murdered Röhm. He murdered the SA. He sold the party to the barons and the bankers. He is not a socialist. He is a puppet."
Jake smiled. It was poison. Pure, distilled poison poured into the ear of the Third Reich.
"Rise up!" Strasser shouted. "Reclaim the party! Death to the traitor Adolf Hitler!"
Jake signaled to cut the feed.
"Good," Jake said.
Strasser slumped in his chair. He looked broken.
"I just signed my death warrant," Strasser whispered. "Again."
"You just bought yourself a future," Jake said. "If Hitler falls, you go home. You lead Germany."
"As your puppet?"
"Better a puppet than a corpse," Jake said.
He walked out.
Menzhinsky was waiting.
"The signal was strong," Menzhinsky said. "We have reports of street fighting in Hamburg. The SA remnants are attacking SS barracks."
"Chaos," Jake said. "Excellent."
"But there is a cost," Menzhinsky warned. "The Americans have noticed the signal. They know Strasser is here."
"So?"
"So Hoover is escalating. We found a bomb on the Trans-Siberian Railway yesterday."
Jake stopped.
"A bomb?"
"Dynamite. Timed. It was meant to derail a grain shipment."
Jake felt a cold rage.
Hoover wasn't just blocking trade. He was trying to starve the Soviet Union.
"Did we catch the saboteur?"
"Yes," Menzhinsky said. "An American engineer. Working on the dam project."
"Execute him," Jake said.
"He is a US citizen. It will be an international incident."
"Execute him publicly," Jake ordered. "Put his face in Pravda. Title it: 'The Starvation Plot'."
Menzhinsky nodded. He wrote in his notebook.
Escalation.
The Nursery.
Yuri was playing with the silver rattle. He banged it against the bars of his crib. Clang. Clang.
Nadya was reading a book on biology. She was trying to understand the mold.
"Did it work?" she asked as Jake entered.
"Kapitsa is optimistic," Jake said.
He picked up Yuri. The boy smelled of milk and powder.
"He is getting heavy," Jake said.
"He eats well," Nadya said. "Better than most."
It was an accusation.
"I am fixing the food supply," Jake said defensively. "The new tractors are working. The harvest will be good."
"If the trains don't blow up," Nadya said.
She knew. She always knew.
"We caught the saboteur," Jake said.
"And you will kill him," Nadya said. "And then they will kill one of ours. And the wheel turns."
She stood up. She touched Jake's arm.
"Koba, when does it stop?"
"When we win," Jake said.
"What is winning?" Nadya asked. "Is it a flag on the moon? Is it a bomb that kills cities?"
"It is survival," Jake said.
He put Yuri down.
"I have to go to the Urals," Jake said. "The new core is ready."
Nadya looked away.
"Don't bring the radiation home," she whispered.
The Secret City.
The underground lab was buzzing.
Turing was there, looking like a mad conductor. He was directing technicians who were soldering the new electronic triggers.
"Careful!" Turing shouted. "The capacitance is sensitive! Don't touch the leads!"
Jake walked in. He wore a lead-lined coat.
"Status?"
"The triggers are synchronized," Turing said, wiping grease from his forehead. "Variance is down to 0.1 microseconds."
"And the bomb?"
"Assembled," Kurchatov said.
He pointed to the center of the room.
It was a sphere. Large. Ugly. Covered in wires and detonators. It looked like a deep-sea mine.
"Fat Man," Jake whispered.
"We call it 'The Sledgehammer'," Kurchatov corrected.
"Does it fly?" Jake asked.
Von Braun stepped forward. He held a blueprint.
"It is heavy," the German boy said. "Five tons. The V-2 cannot lift it."
Jake frowned. "I told you to reinforce the airframe."
"I did!" von Braun argued. "But the physics... we need a bigger engine. Or stages."
"Stages?"
"Drop the fuel tanks when they are empty," von Braun explained. "Shed the weight. The rocket gets lighter as it goes up."
"Multi-stage rocketry," Jake realized. "Tsiolkovsky's equation."
"Exactly," von Braun grinned. "But the staging mechanism... it is complex. If it fails, the rocket explodes."
Jake looked at the bomb. He looked at the rocket plans.
He was trying to do in 1929 what NASA did in 1960.
"Build it," Jake said.
"We need aluminum," von Braun said. "Lots of it. High grade."
"We don't have it," Jake said. "The blockade."
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"Where is the aluminum?"
"Canada," Menzhinsky said. "Or Norway."
"Norway," Jake said. "They have hydro power. Smelters."
He walked to the map on the wall.
"We can't buy it," Jake muttered. "We have no money."
"Then we take it," Taranov said from the shadows.
Jake looked at the giant.
"Invade Norway?" Jake asked. "That is an act of war."
"It is a raid," Taranov said. "A Viking raid. In reverse."
Jake laughed. It was a dark sound.
"Steal the aluminum," Jake said. "Use the submarines. Send the Spetsnaz."
"Spetsnaz don't exist yet," Menzhinsky reminded him.
"Then invent them," Jake ordered. "Pick the toughest men in the Red Army. Give them black uniforms. Give them knives. Send them to Norway."
He looked at the bomb.
"I need that metal. If I have to strip every roof in Oslo."
The North Sea. Two weeks later.
The submarine K-1 surfaced in the darkness. It was raining.
The deck hatch opened. Men in black wetsuits climbed out. They carried submachine guns.
The Norwegian smelter at Odda glowed on the shoreline. It was unguarded. Why would anyone guard a pile of ingots?
"Move," the commander whispered.
They launched rubber boats. They paddled silently.
They reached the dock. They killed the night watchman with a knife. Silent. Efficient.
They loaded the ingots onto the boats. Ton after ton of silvery metal.
It was piracy. Industrial theft on a massive scale.
But as the submarine slipped back under the waves, heavy with loot, Jake felt a thrill.
He wasn't just changing history. He was looting it.
The Kremlin.
The ingot sat on Jake's desk. It shone under the lamp.
"Aluminum," Jake said. "The metal of flight."
Von Braun touched it reverently.
"This is enough for the first stage," the boy said.
"Build it," Jake said. "I want the Sledgehammer in orbit by Christmas."
"Orbit?" Von Braun stopped. "You want to put the bomb in orbit?"
"No," Jake said. "I want to put it on a sub-orbital trajectory. To Washington."
Von Braun swallowed hard.
"Targeting a specific city... from 5,000 miles away... the math..."
"Ask Turing," Jake said. "He speaks math."
The phone rang.
It was Brusilov.
"We have a problem in Germany," the General said. "The Civil War."
"Strasser?"
"He is losing," Brusilov said. "Hitler has rallied the Army. They are crushing the rebels in Hamburg."
Jake cursed.
"Send more guns."
"We can't," Brusilov said. "The Polish border is closed. And... there is something else."
"What?"
"Hitler has new tanks," Brusilov said. "Panzer IIIs. Faster than ours. Better optics."
Jake froze.
"Where did he get them?"
"Ford," Brusilov said. "And the British. They are arming him to fight us."
Jake dropped the phone.
The feedback loop. He had scared the West so much they were giving Hitler state-of-the-art weapons.
He had created a Super-Hitler.
"Menzhinsky!" Jake shouted.
The spy chief appeared.
"The pact is dead," Jake said. "Hitler is off the leash."
"I warned you," Menzhinsky said.
"We need a deterrent," Jake said. "Now. Before those Panzers cross the border."
He looked at the aluminum ingot.
"Forget the test launch," Jake ordered. "Mount the warhead. Put it on the pad."
"It's not tested!" von Braun screamed. "It might blow up on the ground!"
"Then we blow up!" Jake roared. "But I will not let German tanks into Moscow again!"
He grabbed the ingot. He threw it across the room. It dented the wall.
"We are launching," Jake said, breathing hard. "Target Berlin."
The room went silent.
Targeting Berlin. The capital of his ally. The heart of Europe.
It was madness.
But Jake Vance wasn't a historian anymore. He was a cornered animal with a nuclear button.
"Do it," Jake whispered. "Aim for the Reichstag."