“But this is just the culmination point,” he interrupted, his expression twisting until he looked disgusted. “Because now it starts its descent, and it travels just above the speed of sound. Do you know what that means?” I shook my head, but he didn’t seem to notice. He brought his hand down sharply into a fist on the other side of his lap, then snapped it open, exposing his palm. “The accuracy and range will be beyond anything the world has ever seen. And the missile travels faster than the sound it produces, so there is no warning at all—certainly no time for an air raid siren. Say we launch this from the border, as a family in France or Poland or Belgium or Switzerland sits in their kitchen eating their breakfast. That family is gone before they ever knew something was coming for them. The mother has no time to scream to the father that she’s going to get the baby. The father has no time to push his son into the cellar to save his life.”

Jürgen had always insisted he didn’t remember anything about the morning his family died. He had been lying to me, or at least avoiding a painful truth.

“You were eating breakfast when the bomb hit your house?” I asked gently.

Jürgen suddenly sat up, as if shaking off the memory.

“My point is that scenario I just described to you would seem like a fanciful nightmare to most people, but it’s almost within reach.”

“We just have to keep playing the game,” I said. “Remember? Listen for the music. Ignore the dissonant notes?”

“So I build these bombs and let someone else care about where they land?”

“That’s what you have to do.”

“When I’m refining the design of a booster or I’m tinkering with the engineers or I’m planning a test launch, I don’t think about that theoretical family eating their breakfast. Sometimes I even manage to forget that the sum of all the moving parts is a weapon. But as soon as the work stops, that family is all I can think about.”

I looked to Gisela. She was kicking her legs impatiently, craning her neck to look behind her, eager to continue the journey through the park.

“We both know you don’t have a choice. The cost of anything but perfect compliance would simply be too high.”

He slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, planting a gentle kiss above my ear.

“I’m just following orders. I’m doing what I have to do to stay alive. To keep my family safe,” he murmured.

“Exactly,” I said.