So pleased was the Vozhd that he ordered breakfast served in the conference room. Even Admiral Kuznetsov looked more relaxed. It seemed that, today at least, he would benefit from Stalin’s capricious moods.

The main table was littered with official papers and dossiers, with plates of half-eaten food, pots of coffee, and bottles of champagne. Beria used a glass spoon to scoop dollops of Beluga caviar onto hot buttered black bread. Stalin threw grapes and hunks of cheese down the table.

“It is a great day, Comrades. A great day,” he declared. “Today we change history. Today the correlation of forces shifts back into alignment. I knew. I knew-did I not tell you?-that there was a mechanical inevitability about all of this. We may not understand the physics yet, but the laws of dialectical materialism would not allow the revolution to fail. And so, as antihistorical pressures built up, they ruptured history itself, delivering us the means to…”

Beria tuned him out. The old fool was talking nonsense again.

The NKVD boss well remembered the shock and fear that lived on Stalin’s face in the first days after the Emergence. They all expected Nazi storm troopers to burst through the gates of the Kremlin in some sort of invincible supertank, firing death rays and wonder rockets. Stalin had claimed that the Emergence was a product of an unstable history on the other side of the event, but it was all so much eyewash.

As information had trickled in, Beria had been briefed by his best scientists about the experiment that had been conducted by the madman called Pope. About what he had been attempting to do, and the theory behind it. He had tried to explain it to the Vozhd and the rest of the war cabinet, but had backpedaled when it became obvious that Stalin needed an explanation for why all of his statues would have been pulled down.

For Stalin it was simple. History was wrong.

And since history was subject to determinist laws, just like an apple falling from a tree, it had corrected itself. Now the workers’ revolution would proceed as nature intended.

A couple of Red Army guards appeared pushing one of the electronic boards retrieved from the Vanguard. A nervous technician followed them.

“Excellent. Excellent. Bring it in,” Stalin roared. “Turn it on, man. Quickly,” he continued. “We have the business of state to carry out.”

Beria chased the last of his caviar around the bottom of the bowl while the shaking apparatchik attempted to do as he’d been ordered. When the dull white screen winked into life, you would have thought he’d just given birth. The technician handed Stalin a small black, handheld device and attempted to instruct him on its use. The general secretary tossed it back at him.

“You do it,” he instructed.

How fortunate for the poor bastard, Beria thought. Stalin has enough trouble making an old gramophone play. It wouldn’t be worth one’s life to embarrass him with a complicated piece of equipment like this.

After a few seconds’ fiddling with the remote control, a map of the world appeared.

“Marvelous,” Stalin said. “Can you-what is the correct word-define Berlin and Tokyo? Make them flash or something?”

He could.

“Good. Very good,” Stalin said. He was positively beaming. “Marshal Timoshenko, can you see those two cities?”

The defense minister nodded, unsure what this was about.

“And if necessary, do you have a bomber that could reach them?”

Timoshenko appeared to think it over. “The Tu-Sixteen could easily make it to Berlin and back, if we staged the flight out of a Polish base,” he conceded. “Tokyo would be more difficult. It could certainly be reached from Vladivostok. But the return trip is too far.”

“But the pilots could reach the Japanese capital?”

“Oh yes.”

“Then if you wish to purge yourself of blame for the disaster at Okhotsk, you will take the bombs that Laventry Pavlovich has made, and you will drop them. Two on Berlin, and one on Tokyo. And then you will do whatever is necessary to break through at the Oder and to relieve your forces on Hokkaido.

“Do you understand? Whatever the cost, you will pay it.”

“Whatever the price, gentlemen, Do you understand?”

Each of the Joint Chiefs nodded, Army Air Force commander General Hap Arnold the most emphatically.

“All right. Thank you, then. General Groves, you have preparations to make.”

The general thanked the president and excused himself, accepting the plaudits of the chiefs as he departed with rare humility.

While he was waiting for Groves to leave, Roosevelt rolled a pencil between his fingers, a poor substitute for the cigarettes he had given up. He no longer suffered from the physical cravings-the tiny insert in his arm had taken care of those. But he still found himself longing for the familiar ceremony of smoking, the soothing effect of the ritual itself. At times like these it was almost impossible to resist the urge to just go through the motions. He was going to write a long letter to Truman, who was campaigning in Iowa at the moment, telling him exactly what he thought of the tobacco companies and what should be done about them. Assuming Harry won in November.

“You have admirals Spruance and Kolhammer via audio relay,” an aide told him.

“Put them on the speaker box,” Roosevelt instructed him. “Everyone needs to be in on this. Lord Halifax, you should stay, too. His Majesty’s government will have a say in this matter.”

The British ambassador smiled and brushed some cookie crumbs from his lap with his one good hand.

The speaker set on the president’s desk crackled before settling back into a sibilant hiss.

“Admiral Spruance, can you hear me?” Roosevelt said.

“Yes, sir,” came the slightly distorted reply. “I’m sorry for the lack of a video link, Mr. President. We’re too far out. I have Admiral Kolhammer with me.”

Kolhammer’s voice crackled out of the box. “Mr. President.”

“And I have the Joint Chiefs and the British ambassador with me,” Roosevelt responded. “Now, tell us about this message from Yamamoto.”

It was Kolhammer who answered.

“The Havoc picked up a wide-area datacast a few hours ago, Mr. President. A few hours after the Soviet Pacific Fleet was destroyed. It was a personal message from Admiral Yamamoto to myself, seeking to make contact to discuss the possibility of a cease-fire, prior to the immediate withdrawal of all Japanese forces to the Home Islands.”

Every man in the room reacted. Admiral King, the U.S. Navy chief, cursed volubly. Lord Halifax raised his eyebrows theatrically. Hap Arnold snorted and General Marshall, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, shook his head in amazement. Roosevelt, whose whole life had been spent cutting one deal after another, merely bobbed his head up and down.

“I see,” he replied. “And what details do we have of this offer? Is Yamamoto acting on his own? Can he deliver the rest of his general staff? Does he think this is a way to avoid reparations, and trials for war crimes? Will the Japanese submit to occupation?”

It was a hot and brutally humid summer day outside the Oval Office. Hardly a leaf stirred in the still, heavy conditions. Roosevelt wondered what time it was in Kolhammer’s part of the world as he waited for the slightly delayed response.

“On the last matter, Mr. President,” Kolhammer replied, “I would hazard a guess that the Japanese would be only too willing to submit to occupation by our forces, if only to avoid a Soviet takeover.”