The Kremlin map room was suffocating. Cigarette smoke hung in a blue haze, motionless in the stagnant air.
Jake stared at the red pins clustering around the German border. They looked like drops of blood.
"They are moving fast," General Brusilov rasped, tapping a pointer on Warsaw. "The Panzer divisions are massing here. And here."
"They haven't invaded Poland yet," Jake said. "They are waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Menzhinsky asked from the shadows. "Permission? Or a mistake?"
Jake didn't answer. He looked at the black phone on his desk. The hotline to Berlin.
It had been silent for two days.
"Hitler knows we are supplying Strasser," Jake said. "He knows we are fueling the civil war. He considers the pact void."
"Then strike first," Taranov growled. "Send the T-34s. Smash them before they cross the Vistula."
"If we invade Poland to get to Germany," Jake said, "we trigger the British alliance. We fight the whole world."
He rubbed his eyes. They felt like they were filled with sand.
"We need the deterrent," Jake whispered. "We need the rocket."
The Secret City. The Launch Bunker.
The atmosphere was brittle. Technicians moved with jerky, terrified motions.
On the pad, the V-3 rocket stood tall. It was uglier than the V-2. Wider. Welded together from stolen aluminum and desperate ingenuity.
At its tip, the bulbous nose cone held the Sledgehammer—the atomic warhead.
Wernher von Braun was pacing. He looked like a child who had built a monster and lost the instruction manual.
"The wind shear is high," von Braun muttered. "The staging clamps... I don't trust them."
"Trust isn't required," Jake's voice came over the speaker from Moscow. "Only gravity."
"Herr Stalin," von Braun pleaded into the microphone. "If it explodes on the pad... the fallout will kill everyone in the Urals. Including us."
"Then don't let it explode," Jake said.
He sounded calm. But in the Kremlin, his hand was crushing the receiver.
"Targeting?" Jake asked.
"Coordinates locked," Turing's voice cut in. "Berlin. The Mitte district."
Jake closed his eyes.
He imagined the fireball consuming the Reichstag. The Brandenburg Gate melting. The history of Europe erased in a nanosecond.
He was about to become the greatest war criminal in human history.
"Hold the count," Jake ordered.
"Holding at T-minus five minutes," von Braun exhaled.
"Why?" Taranov asked in the office.
"Because a threat is only useful if they know it exists," Jake said.
He picked up the phone. He dialed the Berlin number.
It rang once. Twice.
"Chancellery," a crisp voice answered.
"Put him on," Jake said.
A pause. Then, the soft, hypnotic voice.
"Stalin. I thought you would be hiding."
"I am standing by a button, Adolf," Jake said.
"A button?" Hitler laughed. "You have buttons. I have tanks. My Panzers will be in Minsk by Christmas."
"Your Panzers burn diesel," Jake said. "My rocket burns cities."
Silence on the line.
"You are bluffing," Hitler said. "You have a science experiment. A firework."
"I have a multi-stage ballistic missile with a twenty-kiloton yield," Jake said. "It is sitting on a pad in the Urals. It is fueled. And the guidance computer is aimed at your desk."
He heard Hitler breathing.
"You wouldn't dare," Hitler whispered. "You would start a nuclear war?"
"I am a Bolshevik," Jake said. "We believe in the end of the old world. Don't tempt me."
"If you fire," Hitler hissed, "the British will bomb Moscow. The Americans will invade. You will die alone in the rubble."
"Maybe," Jake said. "But you will die first. In a flash of light."
He looked at the clock.
"Pull back your divisions," Jake ordered. "Move them fifty kilometers west of the Vistula. Or I press the button."
"I do not take orders from subhumans," Hitler spat.
"You have one hour," Jake said.
He hung up.
His shirt was soaked with sweat.
"He won't do it," Brusilov said. "He is a fanatic."
"Fanatics love their own lives," Jake said. "He thinks he is destiny's child. He won't risk vaporization."
"And if he calls the bluff?" Menzhinsky asked.
Jake looked at the red button on his desk—a direct line to the launch bunker.
"Then we fire," Jake said. "And God help us all."
Forty minutes later.
The teletype machine began to chatter.
Warsaw Observation Post: German units are moving.
Jake leaned forward. "Which way?"
Heading West. Retreating from the river.
Jake let out a breath that sounded like a scream.
He slumped into his chair. His legs gave out.
"He blinked," Taranov grinned. "The bastard blinked."
"He didn't blink," Jake said, wiping his face. "He calculated. He bought himself time."
Hitler wasn't retreating because he was scared. He was retreating because he realized he needed his own bomb.
Jake had just started the clock on the final race.
"Stand down the launch," Jake ordered into the microphone. "Defuel the rocket."
"Thank God," von Braun's voice trembled.
Jake hung up.
He looked at the map. The red pins were moving back.
He had saved Poland. For now.
But he had revealed his hand. The world now knew that the Soviet Union held a gun to its head.
"We are safe," Menzhinsky said. "For six months. Maybe a year."
"Until they build their own," Jake said. "Hoover is throwing money at Oppenheimer. Hitler will throw slaves at Heisenberg."
He stood up.
"We need more than a bomb," Jake said. "We need a shield."
"A shield?"
"Space," Jake said. "We need to control the high ground. Satellites. Lasers. Mirrors."
Menzhinsky looked at him like he was mad.
"Lasers? That is science fiction."
"So was the atomic bomb yesterday," Jake said.
He walked to the window.
"Get Turing. Get Kurchatov. Tell them the war is moving up. To orbit."
The Nursery. Evening.
Nadya was feeding Yuri. The boy was making a mess with his porridge.
Jake stood in the doorway. He felt like a stranger.
"You saved us?" Nadya asked. She had heard the news.
"I postponed the end," Jake said.
He walked over. He touched Yuri's soft hair.
"He needs to leave Moscow," Jake said.
Nadya looked up. "Why?"
"Because Moscow is a target now," Jake said. "Every missile in the world will be aimed at this room."
"Where can we go?"
"The Urals," Jake said. "The Secret City. It is deep underground. Safe."
"A bunker," Nadya said bitterly. "You want to raise our son in a cave?"
"I want him to live," Jake said.
Nadya stood up. She wiped Yuri's face.
"I am not going to a cave, Koba. I am staying here. Under the sun."
"It is dangerous!"
"Life is dangerous!" she shouted. "You can't put the world in a box to keep it safe! You are destroying everything that makes life worth living just to survive!"
She was crying now.
"Look at you," she sobbed. "You are grey. You are cold. You are not the man I married."
Jake looked in the mirror. She was right.
His eyes were dead. His face was a mask of tension.
"The man you married was a teacher," Jake whispered. "He didn't have to stop the apocalypse."
"Maybe the apocalypse is supposed to happen," Nadya said. "Maybe you are just making it worse."
She picked up Yuri and walked out.
Jake stood alone.
He looked at the toy rocket on the floor.
She was wrong. The apocalypse wasn't fate. It was a choice.
And he had chosen to fight it. Even if it cost him his soul.
The Lubyanka Basement.
Turing was staring at the screen. The simulation of the orbital mechanics was running.
Trajectory: Stable. Payload: 5 tons.
"We can do it," Turing said. "We can put a satellite up."
"What kind of satellite?" Kurchatov asked.
"A mirror," Turing said. "A giant Mylar sheet. Unfold it in orbit."
"Why?"
"To reflect sunlight," Turing said. "We can light up the night side of the Earth. Or..."
He typed a command.
"Or focus it. Like a magnifying glass."
Kurchatov gasped.
"A solar weapon? To burn cities?"
"No," Turing said. "To melt ice. To change weather. To grow crops in Siberia."
He looked at the Russian physicist with wide, excited eyes.
"Stalin wants weapons. But the machine... the machine wants to garden."
The door opened. Jake walked in.
"Status?"
"We can launch Sputnik," Turing said. "Next month."
"Make it bigger," Jake said. "Put a radio on it. I want it to beep."
"Beep?"
"I want every ham radio operator in America to hear it," Jake said. "BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. The sound of Soviet superiority overhead."
He looked at the screen.
"And Turing?"
"Yes?"
"Start working on the mirror," Jake said.
Turing smiled. "For agriculture?"
Jake's face was stone.
"For burning," Jake said. "If Hitler moves again, I want to set Berlin on fire from space."
Turing's smile faded.
"You are a dark man, Mr. Stalin."
"I am a necessary man," Jake said.
He turned to leave.
"Launch it on October 4th," Jake ordered. "The same day as the real history."
He paused.
"Let's see if we can get at least one date right."
October 4th, 1929. The Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The R-7 rocket—a modified V-3—stood steaming on the pad.
It was dawn. The sky was clear.
Jake stood in the bunker. Nadya wasn't there. She had refused to come.
"Ignition," von Braun commanded.
The engines roared. The earth shook.
The rocket rose. It climbed on a pillar of fire, piercing the blue sky.
"Stage separation... confirmed."
"Second stage ignition... confirmed."
"Orbit achieved."
The room erupted in cheers. Vodka was sprayed. Men hugged each other.
Jake picked up a set of headphones.
He listened to the static.
And then, out of the cosmic noise, a sound.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
It was lonely. It was mechanical. It was triumphant.
The first man-made object in history was circling the Earth. And it was Red.
"We did it," Menzhinsky whispered. "We touched the face of God."
"Now we own it," Jake said.
He walked out of the bunker. He looked up.
He couldn't see the satellite. But he knew it was there. A silver star moving across the constellations.
He had changed the course of history. He had launched the Space Age thirty years early.
But as he looked at the empty steppe, he felt a sudden, crushing weight.
He had conquered space. But down here, on Earth, the wolves were still hungry.
And they were looking up.
"What comes next?" Taranov asked, lighting a cigarette.
Jake watched the smoke rise.
"Now," Jake said, "we go to the moon."
"Why?"
"Because," Jake said, "it's the only place where no one is trying to kill us."