The blast furnace at Magnitogorsk roared like a captured dragon.
It was a terrifying sound. A low, constant thunder that shook the frozen ground of the Urals. Orange light spilled out, painting the snow in violent hues of copper and blood.
Jake stood on the catwalk. The heat was blistering, battling the sub-zero wind cutting through his coat.
Below him, thousands of workers moved like ants. They weren't slaves. They were Komsomol volunteers—young communists who believed they were building utopia.
"Production is up forty percent," the Factory Director shouted over the noise. He looked proud. "We are pouring steel faster than Pittsburgh!"
Jake looked at the workers. They were thin. Their boots were wrapped in rags. But they were singing.
"And the accident rate?" Jake shouted back.
The Director hesitated. "Acceptable, Comrade Stalin. Industrialization has a cost."
Jake gripped the railing.
In his history books, Magnitogorsk was a triumph built on bones. He had sworn to change that. He had sent better rations, warm clothes, safety protocols.
But looking down, he saw a man slip on an icy girder. The man fell into the darkness. There was no safety net. The singing didn't stop.
"It is not acceptable," Jake snapped.
He turned to the Director.
"Build a heated barracks," Jake ordered. "Not next year. Now. Divert the concrete from the third furnace."
"But the Quota—"
"Dead men don't make steel!" Jake roared. "If I see men sleeping in tents next month, you will join them. barefoot."
He walked away.
He was fighting a war against Russian fatalism. They accepted death too easily. As a modern man, he couldn't accept it. He needed them to survive, not just to be martyrs.
The Schoolhouse.
The classroom smelled of chalk and wet wool.
Fifty children sat in rows. They were peasant children, the first generation to learn to read.
Jake stood at the back. He was the Ghost in the Grey Coat. The teacher, a young woman named Elena, was trembling so hard she dropped her pointer.
"Continue," Jake said softly.
"We... we are learning the alphabet, Comrade Stalin," she stammered. "A is for Apple. B is for Bread."
Jake walked to the front. He picked up a textbook. It was filled with slogans about the Revolution. Lenin is our Father. The Party is our Mother.
Useless.
Jake tossed the book into the trash can.
The children gasped. The teacher looked like she might faint.
"A is for Atom," Jake said to the class. "B is for Blueprint. C is for Concrete."
He turned to the chalkboard. He picked up a piece of chalk.
He wrote: E = mc².
"Forget the slogans," Jake said. "The slogans won't save you from the British tanks. Mathematics will."
He looked at the teacher.
"Teach them physics," Jake ordered. "Teach them chemistry. I don't care if they know who Marx is. I care if they can calculate the load-bearing capacity of a bridge."
He walked out.
He was changing the soul of the nation. He was stripping away the mysticism, the religion, even the political theory. He was turning the Soviet Union into a massive engineering school.
Because in ten years, these children wouldn't be debating philosophy. They would be building the Bomb.
The Kremlin. The Politburo.
The mood in the room was poisonous.
Vyacheslav Molotov sat with his arms crossed. He was the new rising star—dull, loyal, and fanatical. He stared at the paper on the table.
Decree on the Private Garden Plots.
"This is a retreat," Molotov stated flatly. "We are allowing private property. We are creating a new class of petty capitalists. The Kulaks will return."
"The Kulaks are broken," Jake said from the head of the table. He was drinking water. "This is about calories, Vyacheslav."
"It is ideological weakness," Molotov insisted. "If the peasants grow their own potatoes, they won't work on the Collective fields. They will hoard."
Jake stood up. He walked over to Molotov.
He remembered teaching the famine of 1932. The Holodomor. Millions dead because the state took everything. He wouldn't let it happen again.
"Have you ever been hungry?" Jake asked.
"I have sacrificed for the Party," Molotov deflected.
"That's not what I asked," Jake said. "Have you ever watched your children eat grass? Because that is what is happening in the Ukraine."
He slammed his hand on the table.
"I will not rule a graveyard!" Jake shouted. "The Collective farms grow the grain for export. The garden plots grow the grain for life. It is a symbiosis."
"It is a compromise," Molotov sneered.
"It is an order," Jake said. His voice dropped to a lethal whisper. "Do you want to debate ideology? Go to the Gulag. There are many Trotskyists there who love to debate."
Molotov paled. He adjusted his glasses. He looked down.
"I... I will implement the decree, Comrade Stalin."
"Good," Jake said.
He sat back down.
He had won the argument, but he felt the tension. The hardliners hated him for being soft. The peasants hated him for being hard.
He was walking a tightrope over a pit of spikes.
The Apartment.
Nadya was crying.
She sat on the sofa, a newspaper crumpled in her hand.
Jake hung up his coat. He was exhausted. He just wanted to sleep.
"What is it?" Jake asked.
"My friend," Nadya sobbed. "Svetlana. She was arrested today."
Jake froze. "Svetlana? The typist?"
"She made a joke," Nadya whispered. "About the Garden Plot decree. She said... she said Stalin is planting turnips because he ran out of ideas."
She looked up at Jake. Her eyes were red.
"They took her to the Lubyanka, Koba. For a joke. You have to let her go."
Jake walked to the window. He looked out at the dark square.
He knew Svetlana. She was harmless. A giggling girl who liked poetry.
But she had spoken against the Decree. And the Decree was the only thing standing between the peasantry and starvation. If people mocked it, they wouldn't follow it. If they didn't follow it, the system collapsed.
"She broke the law," Jake said.
"It's a joke!" Nadya screamed. She stood up and grabbed his arm. "She is twenty years old! She isn't a counter-revolutionary!"
Jake looked at his wife. He loved her. She was his connection to humanity.
But he was Stalin. And Stalin couldn't have favorites.
"If I release her," Jake said slowly, "then I have to release everyone. The discipline breaks. The fear evaporates."
"I don't care about discipline!" Nadya cried. "I care about mercy!"
Jake pulled his arm away.
"Mercy is a luxury," Jake said. "We can't afford it yet."
"Then you are a monster," Nadya whispered. She stepped back, looking at him with horror. "My father was wrong. You aren't a hero. You are just... cold."
She ran into the bedroom and slammed the door.
Jake stood in the silence.
He picked up the phone. He dialed Menzhinsky.
"The prisoner Svetlana," Jake said. His voice was steady.
"Yes, Comrade Stalin?"
"Do not shoot her," Jake said.
"Understood."
"Send her to the Urals," Jake ordered. "To the secret city. She can type for the physicists. She can make herself useful."
He hung up.
It was the best he could do. He had spared her life, but he had exiled her to a hole in the ground.
He walked to the bedroom door. He heard Nadya weeping.
He didn't go in. He couldn't comfort her. Not with hands that signed death warrants.
The Secret City. One Week Later.
The Finn was waiting at the railhead.
The train hissed to a halt. It was a special transport, unmarked.
Jake stepped out. Taranov followed, scanning the perimeter.
"We have a problem," the Finn said immediately. No pleasantries.
"The centrifuge?"
"The physicist," the Finn said. "Heisenberg."
Jake stopped. "Werner Heisenberg? You recruited him?"
"I bought him," the Finn corrected. "Gold speaks louder than patriotism. We smuggled him out of Munich in a coal truck."
They walked toward the bunker.
"So what is the problem?" Jake asked.
"He says the math is wrong," the Finn said. "He says Ipatieff was wrong. He says you can't build a bomb with U-235 in a dirty mine. He needs heavy water. And he needs a cyclotron."
They entered the lab.
Heisenberg was there. He looked arrogant, impatient. He was smoking a pipe, looking at the crude Russian equipment with disdain.
"Herr Stalin," Heisenberg said in German. "This is a junkyard."
Jake walked up to the chalkboard. It was covered in equations.
"It is a start," Jake said in Russian. The Finn translated.
"It is a toy," Heisenberg scoffed. "You are trying to split the atom with a hammer. I need precision. I need a laboratory in Switzerland, not a cave in Siberia."
Jake looked at the German scientist.
He needed this man. This man was the key to the lock.
"You have a cave," Jake said. "But you have something else."
He signaled Taranov.
The giant placed a heavy briefcase on the table. He opened it.
It wasn't gold.
It was a stack of files. Intelligence reports.
"I know about the American project," Jake lied. He didn't know the details yet, but he knew it would happen. "I know about Einstein. I know about Oppenheimer."
Heisenberg stiffened.
"They are building it," Jake said. "They are ahead of you."
He leaned in close.
"Do you want to be the second man to discover fire? Or do you want to be the first?"
Heisenberg's ego flared. He hated the idea of being second.
"I need resources," Heisenberg said sullenly. "Unlimited electricity. Rare earth metals."
"You will have them," Jake promised. "I will starve a nation to give you electricity. I will tear down mountains to give you metals."
He pointed at the machine.
"But you must build it here. And you must build it now."
Heisenberg looked at the crude centrifuge. He looked at the determination in Jake's yellow eyes.
"We need a cyclotron," Heisenberg said. "To accelerate the particles."
"Draw it," Jake said, handing him the chalk. "We will build it."
Jake watched the German start to draw.
He had lied about Oppenheimer. The Manhattan Project hadn't started yet. But the lie had sparked the competition.
He walked out of the lab.
The air outside was crisp and cold.
He had saved the peasants from total starvation with the Garden Plot. He had saved the future with the German scientist.
But he had lost his wife's smile.
Jake looked up at the grey sky.
"Balance," he whispered. "It's all about balance."
But he knew the truth. You couldn't balance the world. You could only tip the scales and hope you didn't fall off.