The Kremlin's cinema room smelled of ozone and hot plastic.
It used to be a place for Stalin to watch cowboy movies. Now, it was a high-tech forgery workshop.
The captured IBM Mark V synthesizer—the "Voice of the Ghost"—occupied the center of the room. It was connected to a tangled mess of copper wires that ran directly into the movie projector.
Jake Vance stood over the machine. He felt like Dr. Frankenstein.
"Ready?" he asked.
Oppenheimer adjusted a vacuum tube. His hands were shaking.
"This is dangerous art, Jake. We are rewriting the cultural DNA of a superpower."
"It's just a movie, Robert."
"Not to them," Oppenheimer said. "To them, Gone with the Wind is a religious text. It justifies their history. If you corrupt it... they won't just be angry. They'll be traumatized."
"Good," Jake said.
He looked at the screen. A frozen frame of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara hovered there. She looked defiant. Beautiful.
"Yuri," Jake said.
His son was sitting on the floor, coloring with crayons. He wasn't connecting to satellites anymore. He was drawing a house.
"Do you like the pretty lady?" Jake asked.
Yuri looked up. His eyes were clear, childish. The ice-blue computer glare was gone.
"She looks sad, Papa."
"She is," Jake said. "We're going to give her a new reason to cry."
Jake turned to Taranov.
"Divert power from the Aurora Dome to the transmitters. All of it."
"The city will freeze, Boss."
"For ten minutes," Jake said. "We pulse the signal. We blast it so hard it burns out every receiver on the East Coast."
Taranov nodded and keyed his radio.
Outside, the massive neon dome protecting Moscow flickered. The violet light dimmed. The snow began to fall through the gap, landing on the dark streets.
But the radio tower atop the Spassky Tower ignited with blue lightning. It hummed with the force of a nuclear reactor.
"Injection started," Oppenheimer whispered. "God forgive us."
He pressed the Enter key.
New York City. Times Square. 8:00 PM.
It was the premiere night. The war in Europe felt far away. The neon signs for Coca-Cola and Chevrolet buzzed with electric optimism.
A massive screen had been erected above the Astor Hotel. Thousands of people packed the streets, wrapped in wool coats, waiting for the film of the century.
Hoover wanted them distracted. He wanted them dreaming of the Old South, not worrying about the drafts or the ration cards.
The projector whirred. The opening credits rolled. The crowd cheered.
For three hours, they were mesmerized. They watched the burning of Atlanta. They watched the romance. They wept.
Then came the end. The famous scene on the stairs. Rhett Butler was leaving.
Rhett turned to Scarlett. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
The audience gasped. The profanity was shocking.
Scarlett sat on the stairs. She was supposed to say, "After all, tomorrow is another day."
The film stuttered.
The image of Scarlett distorted. Her face shifted—subtly, terrifyingly. The IBM Mark V was actively repainting the frames in real-time.
On the screen, Scarlett stood up. She looked directly into the camera lens. She broke the fourth wall.
Her voice wasn't Vivien Leigh's Southern drawl. It was sharper. Colder.
"Rhett is right to leave," the Deepfake Scarlett said.
The crowd in Times Square went silent. Popcorn bags dropped.
"The plantation is burning," Scarlett continued. "And it should burn. We built our paradise on the backs of slaves. Just like you are building yours on the backs of the poor."
A ripple of confusion moved through the crowd. Was this part of the movie?
On the screen, Scarlett walked through the ruins of Tara. But the background changed. It wasn't the Georgia countryside.
It was a montage of 1940 New York. Breadlines. Hoovervilles. Police beating strikers.
"You think you are free?" Scarlett asked. Her eyes glowed with a faint, unnatural violet light. "You are just waiting for the whip. Wake up. The South didn't die. It just moved to Wall Street."
Then, the image dissolved into a single, stark symbol.
A red hammer and sickle, superimposed over the American flag.
The screen went black.
For ten seconds, Times Square was dead silent.
Then, the screaming started.
The White House. The Private Theater.
J. Edgar Hoover stared at the blank screen.
His drink had spilled onto his lap. He didn't notice.
He was trembling. Not with fear. With a violation so deep it felt physical.
"He ruined it," Hoover whispered.
His aide, Smith, was frantically turning dials on the projector.
"It's the broadcast signal, Mr. President! It hijacked the national feed! NBC, CBS... everyone saw it."
"He defiled her," Hoover said. His voice rose to a shriek. "He put Bolshevik words in her mouth!"
The phone on the desk rang. Then another. Then the red secure line.
"Riots in Chicago," Smith reported, listening to an earpiece. "The unions... they're taking it as a signal. They're marching. They're burning movie theaters."
Hoover stood up. His left arm—the crippled one—throbbed with phantom pain.
"He wants a culture war?" Hoover hissed. "He wants to turn my own myths against me?"
"Sir, the Arctic drones... we should recall them. We need the bandwidth to jam this signal."
"No!" Hoover roared. "Let the drones kill the sub! I want Stalin's lights out! I want him sitting in the dark while I burn his city to the ground!"
"But the domestic situation—"
"Shoot the rioters!" Hoover ordered. "Declare martial law! I don't care if you have to burn Atlanta for real! Kill the signal!"
The Kremlin.
The lights in the room flickered back to full strength. The IBM machine smoked, its vacuum tubes glowing cherry-red from the strain.
"Broadcast complete," Oppenheimer said. He slumped against the wall. "We just shouted fire in a crowded theater. A theater the size of a continent."
Jake walked to the window.
The Aurora Dome roared back to life above Moscow. The violet shield re-formed, sealing the heat in. The snow stopped falling.
"Did it work?" Taranov asked.
"Menzhinsky reports chaos on the American teletypes," Jake said. "National Guard deployed. Curfews."
"And the sub?"
They looked at the radio.
Static.
Then, a voice.
"Moscow... this is K-1."
It was Ramius. He sounded exhausted.
"The clicking stopped. The drones... they froze."
Jake let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"They lost their guidance lock," Ramius said. "Whatever you did, you scrambled their network. They are drifting."
"Get out of there, Captain," Jake ordered. "Cut the line. Come home."
"If we cut the line, the Dome falls."
"We have enough oil in the reserves for a week," Jake said. "I'm not trading a crew for a light show. Come home."
There was a pause.
"Understood. Detaching drill. K-1 returning to base."
Jake lowered the radio.
He had won the round. He had saved the sub. He had slapped Hoover across the face.
But it wasn't enough.
He looked at Yuri. The boy was asleep on the floor, clutching his drawing of a house.
Hoover wouldn't stop. He would rebuild. He would find a new weapon. As long as Hoover sat in that Oval Office, Jake's family was a target.
Jake picked up a dossier from his desk. It wasn't a military plan. It was an intelligence report titled The Hoover Files.
"Menzhinsky," Jake said.
The spymaster stepped forward.
"Yes, Comrade?"
"Hoover fights with secrets," Jake said. "He blackmails his own generals. He spies on his own people. He keeps it all in a private vault in his basement."
"That is the rumor."
"It's not a rumor," Jake said. "It's his center of gravity. If I expose those files... he doesn't just lose the election. He goes to prison. Or the electric chair."
"Washington is a fortress, Jake. We can't get a team inside."
"We don't need a team," Jake said.
He walked over to the sleeping Yuri. He brushed the hair from the boy's forehead.
"We need a ghost."
Jake turned back to the men.
"Oppenheimer, can you fix the Turing code? Not the AI. Just the infiltration protocols."
"Maybe. But who would pilot it? Yuri is... retired."
Jake looked at his own reflection in the dark window. He saw the tired eyes of a historian who had become a tyrant.
"I will," Jake said.
"You?" Taranov laughed nervously. "You're not a hacker, Boss. You type with two fingers."
"I have the interface," Jake said, touching the scar on his neck where he had installed the neural link months ago—a redundant system he had never dared to use.
"It will fry your brain," Oppenheimer warned. "The human mind can't handle the data stream."
"I don't need to handle the stream," Jake said. "I just need to ride it."
He looked at the map of Washington D.C.
"Hoover tried to break my son," Jake said. His voice was low, final. "So I am going to break his mind. I'm going to log in."
"Target?" Menzhinsky asked, pulling out his notepad.
"The Black Dossiers," Jake said. "We're going to pull the biggest heist in history. We're not stealing money. We're stealing the truth."
He poured a glass of vodka and downed it in one swallow.
"Prepare the chair," Jake ordered. "I'm going to the White House."