Grigory Zinoviev lost his shoe in the snow.
Two Chekists dragged the screaming man across the courtyard of his dacha. He kicked and thrashed, his black sock leaving a streak in the fresh white powder.
"I am a member of the Politburo!" Zinoviev shrieked. "Call Stalin! Call Koba! This is a mistake!"
Jake sat in the back of the Packard limousine, watching through the tinted glass. The heater hummed softly.
He didn't roll down the window.
"He was your friend once," Menzhinsky noted from the seat beside him.
"He was," Jake said. "Then he wrote a telegram that threatened the state."
Taranov stepped forward in the snow. He struck Zinoviev once with the butt of his rifle. The screaming stopped. The Founding Father of the Revolution went limp, dragged like a sack of potatoes into the back of a black van.
Jake felt a phantom pain in his stomach. He remembered Zinoviev laughing at a party meeting in 1917. He remembered the man's passion.
But passion didn't build tank engines.
"The lie is now truth," Menzhinsky murmured. He checked his pocket watch. "By morning, the radio will announce he confessed to being a British agent."
"Will he confess?" Jake asked.
"Everyone confesses eventually," Menzhinsky said. "It is just a matter of sleep deprivation."
Jake looked away from the van.
"Let's go," he ordered the driver. "I have to sell a soul to buy a factory."
The Metropol Hotel was the only place in Moscow with reliable hot water and French champagne.
Jake stood in front of the mirror in the presidential suite. He adjusted his tunic. It was plain, devoid of medals.
"Charles Sorensen," Jake recited. "Henry Ford's right hand. Known as 'Cast-Iron Charlie'. Danish-born. Obsessed with production lines. Hates unions."
Menzhinsky stood by the door, holding a file.
"He arrived an hour ago," Menzhinsky said. "He thinks he is here to inspect our primitive workshops and leave laughing."
"He won't laugh," Jake said.
"How will you convince him?" Menzhinsky asked. "Ford hates communists. He thinks we are part of a global conspiracy."
"Ford hates Jews and bankers more than he hates communists," Jake said dryly. "But more than anything, he loves efficiency."
Jake picked up a charcoal pencil. He grabbed a napkin from the table.
He closed his eyes. He visualized the Ford Flathead V8 engine.
In real history, Ford wouldn't release it until 1932. It was a secret project. A single-cast block that would revolutionize the auto industry.
Jake began to sketch.
The cylinders. The valve placement. The exhaust ports.
He wasn't an engineer, but he had restored a '32 Coupe with his grandfather in 2018. He knew every bolt.
Menzhinsky watched him draw.
"Another prophecy?" the spy chief asked.
"Copyright infringement," Jake corrected.
He finished the sketch. It was rough, but the geometry was unmistakable.
"This is the bait," Jake said. "We aren't begging for a factory, Vyacheslav. We are offering a partnership."
Sorensen looked bored.
The American executive sat in the hotel restaurant, poking at a plate of caviar. He wore a sharp grey suit that cost more than a Soviet worker earned in a lifetime.
Jake walked in. He walked alone. No guards. No fanfare.
Sorensen didn't stand up.
"Mr. Stalin," Sorensen drawled. "I was told you were taller."
"And I was told you were smarter," Jake said, sitting down.
Sorensen's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"
"You are wasting time with Model T thinking," Jake said. "Four cylinders. Separate casting. It is obsolete."
"The Model T is the best-selling car in history," Sorensen scoffed. "And what do you Russians have? Horse carts."
"We have titanium," Jake lied. "We have the Urals. And we have this."
He slid the napkin across the table.
Sorensen glanced at it dismissively. Then he froze.
He picked up the napkin. His hands started to tremble.
"Where did you get this?" Sorensen whispered. "This... this is the monolithic casting. Mr. Ford has only just discussed this concept. It is top secret."
"I have good spies," Jake said. It was easier than explaining time travel.
"This is impossible to cast," Sorensen muttered, studying the exhaust routing. "The cooling issues alone..."
"We solved the cooling," Jake lied again. "But we lack the tooling for mass production. That is why we called you."
Sorensen looked up. The boredom was gone. Replaced by the hunger of an engineer seeing the impossible made real.
"You want us to build the factory," Sorensen realized. "To build this engine."
"I want the Nizhny Novgorod plant to be the biggest in the world," Jake said. "I want 100,000 trucks a year. You bring the machines. We bring the labor and the raw materials."
"Mr. Ford will never agree to work with Bolsheviks," Sorensen said. But his grip on the napkin was tight.
"Tell Mr. Ford that if he doesn't build it with us," Jake leaned forward, "I will sell the design to General Motors."
Sorensen paled.
The threat was perfect. Ford hated GM with a burning passion.
"I need to use your telephone," Sorensen said, standing up.
"Make the call," Jake said. "And tell him I want the tractors too."
Sorensen hurried away.
Jake sat back. He took a sip of the American's untouched water.
He had just accelerated the Soviet automotive industry by a decade. He would have trucks for his soldiers.
But he didn't feel triumphant. He felt like a con artist running a long con.
The Kremlin apartment was silent.
Nadya was sitting on the floor in the living room. She was sorting through a box of old photographs.
Jake entered. He loosened his collar.
"It is done," Jake said. " The Americans are coming."
Nadya held up a photo. It was grainy, black and white. It showed a group of men having a picnic in a forest. Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin. They were smiling.
"Uncle Grisha gave me a doll once," Nadya whispered. "When I was a little girl. It had a porcelain face."
Jake looked at the photo. Zinoviev's face smiled back at him from the past.
"He was a traitor, Nadya," Jake said automatically.
"Was he?" Nadya asked. She didn't look up. "Or did he just disagree with you?"
"In these times, there is no difference," Jake said.
Nadya put the photo down. She picked up a pair of scissors.
She cut Zinoviev out of the picture.
The scissors made a sharp snip sound. A piece of history fell to the floor.
"There," Nadya said, her voice trembling. "Now the history is correct. Isn't that what you want?"
Jake felt a chill.
He had started retouching photos in his mind. Now his wife was doing it in her living room.
"Nadya, please," Jake said, crouching down. "You have to trust me. The world is trying to kill us."
"I trust you, Koba," she said. She looked at him with wet, hollow eyes. "But I don't know who you are anymore."
She stood up and walked to the bedroom, leaving the mutilated photo on the carpet.
Jake picked it up.
Now it was just Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.
Trotsky was next.
Jake pocketed the photo. He needed a drink.
Menzhinsky was waiting in the hallway. He held a new notebook.
"Sorensen is on the phone to Detroit," Menzhinsky reported. "He is screaming, but he is excited. He calls you a 'mad genius'."
"Good," Jake said. "Keep listening."
"There is something else," Menzhinsky said. "A detail from the intercept."
"What?"
"Sorensen mentioned a competitor. He said Ford must hurry because the Germans are buying heavy-duty hydraulics."
Jake stopped. "Hydraulics for what?"
"Launch rails," Menzhinsky said.
Jake closed his eyes.
Launch rails. For the V-2 rockets.
The Germans weren't just building the rockets. They were preparing to fire them.
"They are moving too fast," Jake whispered. "How are they moving this fast?"
"Perhaps," Menzhinsky suggested softly, "they have a prophet too."
Jake looked at the spy.
"What?"
"You changed the timeline," Menzhinsky said. "You pushed the world. Maybe the world pushed back. Maybe desperation created a genius in Berlin."
Jake felt a cold sweat break out.
He had assumed he was the only player with cheat codes. But what if the pressure he applied had forged a new enemy?
"Find out," Jake ordered. "Find out who is running the German program. I want a name."
"I will find him," Menzhinsky promised.
Jake walked to the window.
The lights of Moscow were still out. The city was a black ocean.
But somewhere in the west, a fire was rising.
Jake touched the pocket where he kept the cut-up photo.
"I need those trucks," Jake whispered to the glass. "And I need them now."