He snatched up the receiver, suddenly fearful that Stalin could tell that the hand holding the phone had been wrapped around his engorged member just moments earlier. Keeping all trace of fear from his voice, he answered as briefly as he could. “Yes, this is Beria.”

Half expecting the general secretary to berate him, he was reassured by Stalin’s matter-of-fact tone, until he realized what the madman was asking. “I want the bomb tested under battlefield conditions. I’ve decided it would be a waste of resources to blow it up in Siberia where there are no Germans beyond the gates of our punishment camps. Arrange to drop it on Hitler’s Army Group East. Konev tells me they are trying to organize themselves around Lodz.”

Completely detumescent now, the lovely Irina all but forgotten, Beria felt an instant headache wrap itself around his temporal lobes. It was like being squeezed in the paws of a giant ape. His mouth opened and closed a few times before words finally came out. “But, I cannot. That is, Kurchatov says-”

“Do not tell me what is possible and what is not. You have boasted often enough about the impossible tasks you have achieved on Projects One and Two. Surely building the bomb was the major impossibility. I would have thought dropping it posed no problem at all. It is just a bomb after all, Beria. It is meant to be dropped upon someone, yes? And please do not tell me otherwise, or I shall have you nailed to the thing when it goes off.”

“No-no-no,” he said, vaguely aware that he was close to babbling. “It is not that…” Although in fact he had no idea if the bomb was ready to be used under field conditions. “It is…it is just that…the effects. Yes! The effects are not like a normal bomb. There is the radiation poisoning. If we drop it near our own armies, we will kill them, as well.”

Stalin’s voice came through the earpiece, cold and full of menace. “If you drop a bomb near anyone, Beria, you will kill them. So do not drop it near them. Use it when Zhukov and Konev are still a safe distance away.”

“But the poison remains,” he protested. “Possibly even weeks later, it will not be safe to walk through Lodz.”

“It is not safe to walk through Lodz now. And I did not say to destroy the city. The Germans have built many factories there. I do not want them destroyed. Just emptied for our use, when they have been cleaned of your atomic poisons. Do you understand now, Beria?”

And he did.

“It is a brilliant plan,” he gasped.

“Of course,” Stalin said. “It was mine. I am not a fool, Beria. I understand this new weapon. Talk to Kurchatov and Zhukov. Consult with the meteorology service. And drop the thing when the wind is blowing west. We shall destroy Army Group East and take Lodz without losing a single Red Army private.”

“Indeed we shall, a brilliant, brilliant plan,” he agreed.

“Then make sure it works,” said Stalin.

“Data links verified secure, Admiral. But they’re unstable. The relay is patchy and might drop out.”

“Thank you, Brooks. You did a good job just getting it through.”

Real-time global conferencing was only a happy memory for the surviving members of the Multinational Force. They were a day out of Pearl, still close enough for the Siranui to relay the signal back to fleet on Honolulu. From there a daisy chain of the new EC-121 Super Connies fitted out with both AT and salvaged twenty-first comm gear shunted the signal on to the National Command Authority’s dedicated ADSL network-a hack job constructed of new coaxial cable and a simple but ingenious hijacking of a portion of the old copper wire telephone network.

Kolhammer sat next to Admiral Ray Spruance in front of a flat-panel display with an attached web-cam. It was like being back at college again. Spruance had cross-decked from the Enterprise for the conference, a hookup that included the Joint Chiefs, British ambassador Lord Halifax, and the White House. The screen in Kolhammer’s ready room displayed only the conference participants-each in their own window-while a separate screen next to it ran a data package from Hawaii with the latest information from the new European front. He and Spruance managed to view that data before Lieutenant Brooks fully established the precarious link with the United States.

As he scanned the package, Kolhammer’s stomach felt as though he’d been force-fed a few pounds of molten lead. The reports were all text-based. There was no multimedia coverage of the Soviet attack, hopefully because no such capacity existed in the USSR, but more likely because they were hiding their true capabilities.

The Communists had hit the soft German eastern flank with a gargantuan assault, supported by some very sophisticated weaponry. The Sovs were back, and they were packing serious heat. Intercepted German signals spoke of jet fighters raking the skies clear of every plane they encountered, of great, lumbering, twin-bladed helicopters bristling with automatic cannons and rocket pods. Whole armies seemed to be outfitted with automatic weapons-doubtless they’d turn out to be AK-47 variants-and shoulder-fired rockets that proved lethal to all but the most heavily armored tanks and vehicles. Probably RPG-2s or even-7s. The speed of the Soviet advance testified to enormous fleets of armored personnel carriers, accompanying thousands of T-34 tanks.

It was like a nightmare from the 1950s.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’re ready.”

It was Henry Stimson, the secretary of war.

Kolhammer watched the other military officers bring themselves to a higher state of attentiveness. The picture was low res, but even so Roosevelt looked worn out and pinched. Lord Halifax seemed almost gray, and dark smudges stood out under his eyes.

“The latest news we have from Moscow,” said Stimson, “is that Konev’s Byelorussian front has advanced on Brest, annihilating the Wehrmacht forces stationed at the edge of the Pripet Marshes to guard their DMZ. The Nazis are pouring troops from Poland into Brest and Lodz. Zhukov seems to be maneuvering around Lodz, sending only a fraction of his Ukrainian front to probe the German defenses. Our own intercepts of German signal traffic confirm the broad outlines of the Moscow reports.

“In the east, the Russians have dropped airborne forces onto the southern parts of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido. Three army fronts have moved into Manchukuo, Mengjiang, and the northern parts of Korea. What’s left of Japan’s Kwantung Army is being destroyed. There are unconfirmed reports from OSS of irregular Soviet forces fighting in northern Indochina. Their eastern forces, at our best estimate, comprise one and a half to two million men, at least five thousand tanks, over thirty thousand artillery pieces, and four thousand aircraft, a small but significant percentage of which appear to be jet-powered. Both their eastern and western armies appear to be equipped with AT weapons and equipment.”

Nobody looked directly at Kolhammer, but it was only because they were all staring at the screen in their location where his image was displayed. Being more familiar with teleconferencing, he couldn’t miss the way everyone seemed to fix their attention on a single spot in front of them.

At least Spruance didn’t turn to stare daggers at him.

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” Roosevelt said. “Well, gentlemen, I am to meet with Uncle Joe and Mr. Churchill in Tehran. What am I to say? That we don’t want Stalin’s help?”

Admiral King, the U.S. Navy chief, spoke up before anyone else had a chance. “Pardon my French, Mr. President, but I think we need to tell him to stay the hell out of Western Europe. Once the Red Army gets itself settled in, I don’t imagine for a second they’ll make any move to leave.”