The train station in Moscow was draped in red banners.
HUGE portraits of Lenin hung from the rafters. But Lenin wasn't there.
Instead, a single figure stepped off the train. He wore a simple military greatcoat, unadorned by medals. He looked like a soldier returning from a long shift at a slaughterhouse.
The crowd didn't cheer. They didn't wave flags. They stood in absolute, terrified silence.
Jake walked down the platform.
He looked at the faces. He saw the fear in their eyes. It was a cold, hard currency, more valuable than gold.
"They are quiet," Taranov rumbled, walking a step behind him.
"Cheering is cheap," Jake said. "Silence means they are listening."
He walked past the honor guard. The soldiers stood so still they looked like statues carved from grey ice.
A limousine waited. It wasn't the battered Packard from the front. It was a Rolls-Royce, seized from the Tsar's garage.
Jake got in. The leather smelled of old money.
" The Kremlin," Jake ordered.
He looked out the window as the city blurred past. The queues for bread were gone, replaced by patrols of Chekists in leather jackets. The anarchic energy of the revolution had been paved over with concrete and discipline.
Moscow wasn't a city anymore. It was a machine. And he was the operator.
The Politburo Meeting.
The conference room was warm. Too warm.
Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin sat around the long table. They looked like schoolboys waiting for the headmaster.
Jake walked in. He didn't sit at the head of the table. He sat in the middle, leaning back, lighting his pipe.
"The Civil War is over," Jake said. The smoke drifted toward the ceiling. "Mamontov is dead. The Whites are fleeing to Crimea to catch boats to France."
"It is a glorious victory," Zinoviev said quickly. "The Party is triumphant."
"The Party is lazy," Jake snapped.
Zinoviev flinched.
"We have won the war of guns," Jake said. "Now begins the war of iron."
He threw a folder onto the table.
"The West is watching us," Jake said. "England, France, America. They are building tanks. They are building planes. They are fifty years ahead of us."
He looked at Bukharin. The "favorite of the Party," the soft-hearted theorist.
"We must catch up in ten years," Jake said. "Or they will crush us."
"Ten years?" Bukharin laughed nervously. "That is impossible. The peasantry needs time to recover. We need to support the farmers, let them grow rich so they can buy our goods."
"Rich farmers become fat farmers," Jake said. "And fat farmers don't build steel mills."
He stood up. He walked to the window overlooking the square.
"I am canceling the New Economic Policy," Jake announced.
The room erupted.
"You can't!" Bukharin shouted, standing up. "That is Lenin's policy! It is the foundation of our recovery! If you seize the grain again, there will be famine!"
Jake turned around. His yellow eyes were flat.
"There will be hunger," Jake admitted. "But there will be steel. We need tractors. We need turbines. We need a modern army."
"At what cost?" Bukharin asked, his voice shaking.
"At the cost of the present," Jake said. "We are buying the future."
He pointed the stem of his pipe at Bukharin.
"Do not speak to me of Lenin's policies," Jake said softly. "Lenin is in a wheelchair staring at a wall. I am the one holding the shovel."
He looked at the others.
"We start collectivization next month. Every farm belongs to the state. Every bushel of wheat belongs to the army."
"The peasants will revolt," Kamenev whispered.
"Then we will build more camps," Jake said. "We have plenty of room in Siberia. Ipatieff needs neighbors."
The threat hung in the air. Siberia. The Gulag.
Jake sat back down.
"Vote," he said.
Three hands went up. Slowly. Reluctantly.
Jake smiled. It was the smile of a wolf watching the sheep agree to dinner.
The Archives.
Menzhinsky was waiting in the hallway. The head of the secret police looked thinner. The stress of working for a monster was eating him alive.
"Walk with me," Jake said.
They walked down the long corridor of the Kremlin archives. Dust motes danced in the light.
"The Finn has returned," Menzhinsky whispered.
Jake stopped.
The Finn. The smuggler who had worked for Kato. The man who knew where the skeletons were buried in Berlin.
"Where is he?"
"In holding," Menzhinsky said. "He brought a package. From Germany."
"Bring him to my office," Jake said. "The old one. The closet."
"The closet?" Menzhinsky asked. "But you have the Chairman's suite now."
"Some business is too dirty for red carpet," Jake said.
The Closet.
It smelled the same. Musty paper and leaking pipes.
The Finn sat on the wooden stool. He looked older. His face was lined with the hard miles of a spy.
He didn't stand when Jake entered.
"Koba," the Finn said. "Or do I call you Stalin now?"
"Call me whatever keeps you alive," Jake said. He sat at the wobbly desk.
"I heard about Kato," the Finn said. His voice was rough. "I heard she died for a bank vault."
"She died for the future," Jake said. He didn't want to talk about her. The hole in his chest throbbed. "What do you have for me?"
The Finn reached into his coat. Taranov, standing in the corner, tensed.
The Finn pulled out a thick envelope. He tossed it onto the desk.
"Parvus is dead," the Finn said. "Heart attack in Berlin. Convenient."
"And his network?"
"Gone," the Finn said. "Absorbed by German Intelligence. But before he died, he sold something. To the Americans."
Jake opened the envelope. It contained blueprints. Not for a tank. Not for a gun.
For a centrifuge.
"They know," the Finn said. "The West knows about the atom. They don't know how to build the bomb yet, but they know the theory. Ipatieff's papers... copies got out."
Jake stared at the drawings. The spinning cylinders meant to separate uranium isotopes.
The timeline was accelerating. In his old life, the Manhattan Project didn't start until the 1940s. But his presence here, the early use of Ipatieff, had tipped the hand of history.
The race wasn't starting in twenty years. It was starting now.
"Who has these?" Jake asked.
"Everyone," the Finn said. "British MI6. French Deuxième Bureau. And the Americans."
Jake slammed his hand on the desk.
"We are behind," Jake hissed. "We have the ore in the Urals. We have the scientist in the Gulag. But we don't have the industry to refine it."
He looked at the Finn.
"I need machines," Jake said. "Precision milling machines. High-grade steel. Electronics."
"The embargo blocks everything," the Finn said. "You can't buy a screw from the West legally."
"Then we steal it," Jake said.
He opened his drawer. He pulled out a stack of gold bars. The Tsar's gold.
"Go back to Berlin," Jake ordered. "Go to New York. Build a network. I don't care about spies who steal secrets anymore. I want spies who steal technology."
He pushed the gold across the desk.
"Buy engineers. Buy blueprints. Buy the machines piece by piece and smuggle them out labeled as farm equipment."
The Finn looked at the gold. He looked at Jake.
"This will take years," the Finn said.
"You have five," Jake said. "If I don't have a working centrifuge by 1925, don't come back."
The Finn put the gold in his bag. He stood up.
"You've changed, Koba," the Finn said softly. "You used to fight for the people. Now you fight for the machine."
"The machine protects the people," Jake said.
"Does it?" the Finn asked. "Or does it just eat them?"
He walked out.
Jake sat alone in the closet. He touched the blueprints.
The world was gearing up to kill him. He could feel it. The gears were turning in London and Washington.
He needed to build a fortress. A fortress of iron and fear.
Lenin's Quarters.
It was late. The Kremlin was asleep.
Jake walked into the sickroom.
Lenin lay in bed. He was awake. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling.
Jake pulled up a chair.
"We won," Jake said to the paralyzed man. "The Whites are gone."
Lenin didn't blink. He couldn't.
"I am starting the Five Year Plan," Jake continued. "I am going to starve the peasants to build factories. Bukharin is crying about it."
Jake leaned forward.
"You would have hesitated, Vladimir. You loved the theory too much. You wanted the world to make sense."
Jake took Lenin's limp hand.
"It doesn't make sense. It's just a brawl. A knife fight in a dark room."
He squeezed the hand.
"I miss you," Jake whispered. It was the truth. "I miss having someone to fight. Everyone else is just... terrified."
Lenin's eye twitched. A tiny, microscopic movement.
Was it anger? Was it fear?
"You can die now," Jake said gently. "It's okay. I have the wheel."
He stood up. He smoothed the blanket.
"I will make you a god," Jake promised. "I will preserve your body. I will build a tomb for you in the square. The people will line up for miles to see you."
He smiled. A sad, crooked smile.
"They will worship you. And they will obey me."
He turned off the lamp.
"Goodnight, Comrade."
The Hallway.
Taranov was waiting.
"Is it done?" Taranov asked.
"He is resting," Jake said.
He walked down the hall. The echo of his boots was loud in the empty corridor.
He stopped at a window. He looked out at the Red Star atop the tower.
He had saved the Romanovs only to kill them. He had saved the Revolution only to strangle it. He had saved the world from himself... by becoming the very thing he feared.
He touched the glass.
His reflection stared back. The mustache. The eyes.
Jake Vance was a memory. A ghost haunting a dictator's body.
"Taranov," Jake said.
"Yes, Comrade Stalin?"
"Find a wife," Jake said.
Taranov blinked. "Comrade?"
"I need a wife," Jake said. "A young one. Ideally with connections to the old Bolsheviks. Someone innocent."
"Why?"
"Because a monster needs a human face," Jake said. "And the people need to see that I am a man, not a machine."
He turned away from the window.
"Find her. And bring me the list of architects. We need to start designing the tomb."
Jake walked into the darkness of the Kremlin.
The war was over. The nightmare had just begun.