The lights flickered in the Kremlin office, then died.
Total darkness swallowed the room.
Outside the window, the Red Star atop the Spassky Tower went black. The streetlights along the Moskva River faded into nothing.
"It is done," Jake said in the gloom.
He didn't move. He sat in his leather chair, listening to the sudden silence of the city.
Across the desk, a match flared.
The flame illuminated the wild beard and manic eyes of Igor Kurchatov. The twenty-two-year-old physicist didn't look like a scientist. He looked like a Rasputin who had traded prayer for calculus.
"We have diverted the grid," Kurchatov said, lighting a cigarette with the match. "Every kilowatt from the Volkhov Hydroelectric Station is now flowing to the Urals."
"And Moscow?" Jake asked.
"Moscow burns candles," Kurchatov shrugged. "You wanted a sledgehammer, Comrade Stalin. Sledgehammers are heavy."
Jake watched the smoke curl in the matchlight.
He had just plunged two million people into darkness to power a hole in the ground.
"Will it work?" Jake asked. "The graphite pile?"
"It is ugly," Kurchatov grinned, his teeth yellow in the flickering light. "It is unstable. It is dangerous. But yes. It will breed plutonium like rabbits."
He blew smoke toward the ceiling.
"But we need more than power, Comrade. We need brains. The Germans have Einstein. They have Planck. I have graduate students who can barely read."
Jake leaned forward into the small circle of light.
"I will get you brains," Jake promised. "Even if I have to steal them."
The blackout caused chaos in the corridors.
Secretaries were running with oil lamps. Guards were shouting orders.
Jake walked through the shadows, flanked by Taranov. The giant had a flashlight clamped to his rifle.
They reached the Situation Room.
Molotov was there. He was holding a candle, sweating.
"Comrade Stalin!" Molotov squeaked. " The embassies are panicking! The British Ambassador demands to know if this is a coup!"
"Tell him it's a technical fault," Jake said, brushing past him. "Tell him a bear chewed the wires. I don't care."
He looked at the map table.
Menzhinsky was there. The Cheka head was calm, as always. He had set up a row of oil lamps along the border of Poland.
"The British aren't asking about the lights," Menzhinsky said softly.
He slid a telegram across the table.
Warsaw to London: Joint Military Exercises Announced. German Officers invited to observe Polish Cavalry.
Jake felt a cold knot in his stomach.
"Germany and Poland?" Jake whispered. "They hate each other."
"They hate us more," Menzhinsky corrected.
Jake stared at the map.
In real history, Hitler invaded Poland. That was the start of the war. That was the script.
But now, terrified by the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union, the West was forcing them together. An anti-Soviet wall.
"If Germany and Poland ally," Jake said, his voice rising, "there is no buffer. The Wehrmacht will be on our border tomorrow."
"And we have no officer corps," Menzhinsky added. "Because we shot them all in the Civil War."
Jake rubbed his temples.
He needed an army. A real one. Not a mob of peasants with rifles, but a professional force.
"We need to accelerate the military academies," Jake muttered. "Five years. I need five years."
"You have five months," Menzhinsky said.
The Cheka head reached into his coat. He pulled out a grey folder. It wasn't a Soviet folder. It had the double-headed eagle of the Tsar stamped on it.
"What is this?" Jake asked.
"A list," Menzhinsky said. "Of the 'Formers'. Tsarist generals. Artillery experts. Strategists."
Jake frowned. "They are enemies of the people. Most are in the Gulag. Or dead."
"Many are rotting in Siberia," Menzhinsky agreed. "But they are alive. And they know how to fight Germans."
Jake looked at the list. He recognized names. Brusilov. Svechin. Men who were brilliant, but politically toxic.
"If I bring them back," Jake said, "the Old Bolsheviks will scream. Trotsky will call me a counter-revolutionary. He will say I am restoring the Whites."
"Let him scream," Menzhinsky said. He leaned closer, his face half-hidden in shadow. "You aren't fighting a revolution anymore, Koba. You are fighting for survival."
He tapped the map.
"The timeline you knew is dead. You need to use the pieces you have left."
Jake looked at the eagle on the folder.
It was heresy. It was political suicide. Bringing back the Tsar's generals was the ultimate betrayal of 1917.
But the lights were out in Moscow. And the German tanks were revving their engines.
"Do it," Jake said.
Molotov dropped his candle. "Comrade?"
"Issue the pardon," Jake ordered, his voice hard as iron. "Total amnesty for any officer willing to serve the Motherland. Give them their rank back. Give them their epaulets."
"The Party will revolt!" Molotov gasped.
"Then we will purge the Party," Jake said. "I would rather have angry communists than dead Russians."
He looked at Menzhinsky.
"Get them out of the camps. Wash them. Feed them. And send them to Kurchatov. He needs engineers."
Menzhinsky smiled. He closed the folder.
"A wise decision," the spymaster said. "The Empire strikes back."
The apartment was freezing.
Nadya was sitting by the window, staring out at the blackened city. She had a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders.
Jake walked in. He didn't turn on his flashlight.
"It is dark," Nadya whispered.
"It is necessary," Jake said. He sat on the arm of her chair.
"The nurses at the hospital..." Nadya started, her voice trembling. "They say the electricity was cut to the incubators. They say babies will die tonight."
Jake closed his eyes.
He hadn't thought about the incubators. He had thought about plutonium.
"It is a temporary measure," Jake said. The lie tasted like ash. "The grid is overloaded. We are fixing it."
Nadya turned to him. In the moonlight, her eyes searched his face.
"You are changing, Koba," she said.
"I am tired," he deflected.
"No," she said. She reached out and touched his chest, right over his heart. "You used to be angry. You used to be passionate. Now..."
She pulled her hand back.
"Now you are cold. Like a machine."
Jake looked at her. He loved her. He truly did. She was the only thing in this century that felt real.
But he couldn't afford to be human anymore. Humans hesitated. Humans felt guilt about incubators.
"The world is cold, Nadya," Jake said. "I have to be colder to survive it."
He stood up.
"I have to go back. The generals are arriving."
"Generals?" she asked. "I thought we had no generals."
"We do now," Jake said.
He walked to the door.
"Koba," she called out.
He stopped.
"Will the lights come back on?" she asked. It sounded like a question about more than just electricity.
Jake hesitated.
"Eventually," he said.
He walked out into the dark hallway.
The courtyard of the Lubyanka.
Snow swirled in the beams of truck headlights.
Men were climbing out of the back of the trucks. They were thin, ragged, coughing. Their uniforms were tattered rags.
But they stood straight.
These were the ghosts of the Imperial Army. The men Jake Vance had read about in history books. The men who were supposed to die in obscurity.
Menzhinsky stood next to Jake on the balcony, watching them form ranks.
"They look like skeletons," Jake muttered.
"They are hungry," Menzhinsky said. "Give them a war, and they will eat."
One of the men looked up. He had a long white beard and fierce eyes. General Brusilov. The hero of the Great War.
He saw Stalin on the balcony.
He didn't salute. He just nodded. A warrior recognizing a warlord.
Jake felt a shift in the universe. A heavy, grinding gear turning in a new direction.
He had broken the ideology. He had resurrected the old regime to save the new one.
Menzhinsky took a notebook from his pocket. He made a small mark.
"What are you writing?" Jake asked.
"Keeping score," Menzhinsky said crypticly.
"Score of what?"
"Of the things you change," Menzhinsky said. "Tonight, you erased the Revolution of 1917. You merged Red and White."
He closed the notebook.
"I wonder what you will erase next."
Jake looked back at the courtyard.
"Whatever gets in my way," Jake whispered.
Far away, in the Urals, the graphite pile began to heat up.
And in Berlin, a rocket engine roared to life.
The race was no longer against time. It was against gravity.