The telephone rang at 3:00 AM.
In the Kremlin, that was never a wrong number. It was always a crisis.
Jake picked up the receiver. Nadya stirred beside him, mumbling in her sleep.
"Stalin," Jake said.
"Comrade," Menzhinsky's voice crackled. "We have a situation in the Caucasus. The Chechen uprising has spread to Dagestan."
Jake sat up. He rubbed his eyes.
"Is it the grain requisition?"
"No," Menzhinsky said. "It is the religion. The local commissars closed the mosques. They burned the Qurans in the square of Makhachkala."
Jake closed his eyes. Idiots.
He had sent a specific directive: Focus on economics. Leave the culture alone. But the local zealots, the "Godless League," couldn't help themselves. They saw a minaret and saw a target.
"How bad is it?"
"They have seized the oil pipeline," Menzhinsky said. "Baku is cut off. No oil is flowing to the refineries."
Jake looked at the dark window.
Without oil, the tractors stopped. The tanks stopped. The lights in the secret city went out.
"Send Budyonny," Jake said. "Send the cavalry."
"Budyonny will slaughter them," Menzhinsky warned. "It will be a bloodbath."
"No," Jake said. "Tell Budyonny to surround them. Do not fire. I am coming down there."
"You? To the Caucasus? It is a war zone!"
"It is my home," Jake said. "I speak the language. I know the mountains."
He hung up.
He looked at Nadya. She was sleeping peacefully, dreaming of a world where her husband fixed things with paper, not bullets.
He kissed her hair lightly.
"I have to go fix another mistake," he whispered.
The Mountains of Dagestan.
The air smelled of wild thyme and gunpowder.
Jake stood on a rocky outcrop. Below him, in the valley, a village was fortified. Green flags flew from the rooftops. Men with rifles crouched behind stone walls.
Behind Jake, five thousand Red Army cavalrymen sat on their horses, sabers drawn. General Budyonny, with his massive mustache, looked eager to charge.
"Give the order, Koba," Budyonny grunted. "We will sweep them into the sea."
"And destroy the pipeline?" Jake asked. "And create a thousand martyrs for the next generation?"
Jake took off his military greatcoat. He wore a simple Georgian tunic underneath.
"I am going down," Jake said.
"Alone?" Budyonny gaped. "They will cut your throat!"
"They are mountaineers," Jake said. "They respect courage. They hate cowards."
He grabbed a white flag. He started walking down the goat path.
The silence in the valley was heavy. A thousand rifles were aimed at his chest.
Jake walked steadily. He didn't rush. He didn't look afraid.
He reached the village gate. An old man with a white beard and a rifle stood there. An Imam.
"Stop, Russian," the Imam shouted.
"I am not Russian," Jake called back in Georgian. "I am Ossetian. I am a son of the Caucasus."
The Imam lowered his rifle slightly. "You serve the Russians. You serve the Godless."
"I serve the State," Jake said. "And the State made a mistake."
He walked up to the gate. He looked the Imam in the eye.
"The commissar who burned your books," Jake said. "He was a fool. He exceeded his authority."
"He acted in your name!" the Imam spat.
"And now I am here to correct him," Jake said.
He signaled to the hill.
Two soldiers dragged a man forward. It was the local commissar, bound and gagged.
Jake pulled out his pistol. He offered it to the Imam.
"Justice is yours," Jake said.
The Imam stared at the gun. He stared at the bound man who had desecrated his mosque.
"You give him to us?"
"He broke the law," Jake said. "Article 120. 'Insulting the religious feelings of the people.' I wrote it myself."
It was a lie. He hadn't written it. But he would write it tomorrow.
The Imam took the gun. He looked at the commissar. Then he looked at the massive army on the ridge.
He realized the bargain. A life for a life. A sacrifice for peace.
The Imam handed the gun back to Jake.
"We are not butchers," the Imam said. "Take him. Punish him your way. But open the mosques."
"Done," Jake said. "The mosques stay open. The pipeline stays open."
The Imam nodded. He extended a hand.
Jake took it.
"Call off your wolves," the Imam said.
"They are leaving," Jake promised.
He turned and walked back up the hill. His back was to the rifles. His sweat was cold on his spine.
It was a dangerous precedent. Showing weakness. Negotiating with rebels.
But he had saved the oil. And he had bought loyalty in the Caucasus for another year.
The Kremlin. One Week Later.
The headline in Pravda was bold.
COMRADE STALIN PROTECTS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. LOCAL OFFICIALS PUNISHED FOR EXCESSES.
Molotov threw the paper on Jake's desk.
"This is madness," Molotov said. "We are a purely materialist state! You are encouraging superstition!"
"I am encouraging stability," Jake said, signing a document. "The peasants in the Ukraine are calmer now. They think I am their protector against the local zealots."
"It is a trick," Molotov said.
"It is politics," Jake said.
He stood up.
"Now, the real problem. The British."
He walked to the map.
"British Intelligence has been sniffing around the Norsk Hydro plant in Norway," Jake said. "They know we are buying heavy water."
"How?"
"Because we are buying all of it," Jake admitted. "We are greedy. The price spiked."
The Finn stepped out of the shadows.
"We need a cover story," the Finn said. "We need to explain why a agricultural nation needs heavy water."
"Fertilizer," Jake said instantly.
"Fertilizer?"
"Yes," Jake smiled. "Tell them we are developing a new super-fertilizer to solve the grain crisis. It requires deuterium. It's plausible. We are desperate for grain."
The Finn nodded. "It might work. The West thinks we are obsessed with farming. They won't suspect a bomb."
"Spread the rumor," Jake ordered. "Leak fake research papers. Make sure they think we are just trying to grow bigger potatoes."
The Secret City.
Heisenberg was ecstatic.
"The purity is increasing!" he shouted, waving a spectroscope report. "The new centrifuges... the tolerances are perfect. The German steel holds."
Jake looked at the sample. A tiny pellet of uranium metal.
"Is it enough?" Jake asked.
"Not for a bomb," Heisenberg said. "But enough for a reaction. A pile. We can create heat."
"I don't need a heater," Jake said. "I need an explosion."
Ipatieff wheeled himself over.
"Patience, Koba," the old man wheezed. "If you build the pile, you create plutonium. Plutonium is better than uranium. Easier to separate."
Jake looked at Ipatieff. The old man was fading fast. His hair was gone. His skin was paper.
"How long do you have?" Jake asked gently.
"Weeks," Ipatieff said. "Maybe days."
"Stay alive," Jake commanded. "I need you to see the fire."
Ipatieff smiled. A skeletal grin.
"I am already burning, Koba. Can't you see?"
The Apartment.
Nadya was happy.
"The mosques are open," she said, reading the paper. "You did a good thing, Koba. My father says the people in the mountains are singing your name."
Jake drank his tea.
He felt like a fraud. He hadn't opened the mosques because he cared about God. He did it because he needed oil for the tanks.
"I try to listen," Jake said.
"And the grain?" Nadya asked. "Is the famine over?"
Jake hesitated.
The American wheat had arrived. The cities were fed. The tractors were running.
But in the deep countryside, away from the model farms, people were still dying. The export quotas were still ruthless. He was trading peasant lives for German machines.
"It is improving," Jake lied. "The harvest will be better this year."
"I want to visit," Nadya said suddenly.
Jake choked on his tea. "Visit where?"
"The Ukraine," Nadya said. "I want to see the new schools. I want to see the children learning physics."
Jake felt a surge of panic.
If she went to the Ukraine, she wouldn't see model schools. She would see pot-bellied children. She would see the mass graves.
He couldn't let her go. He couldn't let her see the monster he really was.
"It is not safe," Jake said. "There are bandits. Typhus."
"I am not afraid of typhus," Nadya said stubbornly. "I am the wife of the General Secretary. I should be with the people."
Jake stood up.
"No," he said. His voice was too loud. Too harsh.
Nadya recoiled.
"Why are you hiding them from me?" she whispered. "What is happening down there, Koba?"
Jake grabbed her shoulders.
"Nothing," he said. "Just hard work. Mud. Disease. It is no place for you."
"You treat me like a child," she said, pulling away. "Or a doll."
"I treat you like a treasure," Jake said. "I keep you safe."
"Safe in a cage," she spat.
She ran to the bedroom.
Jake stood in the living room.
He looked at the bust of Lenin on the mantelpiece.
"She is asking questions," Jake told the statue. "She is looking behind the curtain."
The statue didn't answer.
Jake poured a vodka.
He knew what happened to Nadya in the real timeline. She shot herself in 1932. Because she couldn't live with the truth of what Stalin was doing.
He had vowed to save her.
But saving her meant lying to her. And the lie was getting heavier every day.
The Foreign Ministry.
Molotov looked grim.
"The French have rejected the pact," Molotov said.
Jake slammed his glass down. "Rejected? Why?"
"They don't trust us," Molotov said. "They say we are fostering revolution in their colonies. In Vietnam. In Algeria."
"I ordered the Comintern to stop!" Jake shouted. "I told them to play nice!"
"The French right-wing doesn't believe it," Molotov said. "They think Hitler is a better bulwark against communism than we are against fascism."
Jake laughed bitterly.
"Fools," Jake hissed. "They are inviting the wolf into the house because they are afraid of the dog."
He walked to the map.
"If France won't ally with us... we are alone."
He looked at Poland. He looked at Germany.
"We need a buffer," Jake whispered. "We need time."
He turned to Molotov.
"Invite the German ambassador," Jake said.
Molotov was shocked. "But you kicked them out! You closed the tank schools!"
"That was the stick," Jake said. "Now we offer the carrot."
"What carrot?"
Jake looked at the map of Poland.
"Tell them we are willing to discuss... spheres of influence," Jake said. "Tell them if they leave us alone, we might just look the other way when they tear up the Treaty of Versailles."
It was a dangerous game. He was flirting with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact years early.
But if France wouldn't hold the line, he had to make a deal with the devil.
"Just talk," Jake said. "Don't sign anything. Just keep them talking while I build the Bomb."
He looked at the calendar. 1924.
Heisenberg was building a pile. The peasants were eating potatoes. Nadya was crying in the other room.
And Hitler was getting out of prison next month.
The race was on.