Hitler said, “You may thank General Secretary Stalin for sharing with Germany the possible explosive materials which were obtained by the combined German-Soviet fighting team.”
“I shall do so.” Molotov inclined his head in a precise nod. As well he had long schooled his features to reveal nothing, for they did not show Hitler the consternation he felt. So that damned German tankman had got through after all! That was very bad. Stalin had intended proffering the image of cooperation, not its substance. He would not be pleased.
Hitler went on, “The government of the Soviet Union is to be commended for thinking this explosive too valuable to be flown to Germany and letting it come by the overland route where even you, Herr Foreign Commissar, traveled here by air.”
The sarcasm there was enough to raise welts, not least because Molotov loathed flying of any sort and had been ordered by Stalin into the horrible little biplane that brought him to Germany. Pretending everything was serene, Molotov said, “Comrade Stalin solicited the advice of military experts and then followed it. He is of course delighted that your consignment reached you safely by the plan he devised.” A thumping lie, but how was Hitler supposed to call him on it, especially since the courier had somehow beaten the, odds of the journey?
But Hitler found a way: “Please tell Herr Stalin also that he would have done better to fly it here, as then we should not have had half of it hijacked by Jews.”
“What’s that?” Molotov said.
“Hijacked by Jews,” Hitler repeated, as if to a backward child. Molotov concealed his irritation in the same way he concealed everything not immediately relevant to the business at hand. Hitler gestured violently; his voice rose to an angry shout. “As the good German major was traversing Poland, he was halted at gunpoint by Jewish bandits who forced him to divest himself of half the precious treasure he was bringing to German science.”
This was news, and unsettling news, to Molotov. He could not resist a barb in return: “Had you not so tormented the Jews in the states your armies overcame, no doubt they would have been less eager to interfere with the courier.”
“But the Jews are parasites on the body of mankind,” Hitler said earnestly. “They have no culture of their own; the foundations of their situation of living are always taken from those around them. They completely lack the idealistic attitude, the will to contribute to the development of others. Look how they, more than anyone else, have cozied up to the Lizards’ back-sides.”
“Look why they have,” Molotov returned. His wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, was of Jewish blood, though he did not think Hitler knew that. “Anyone drowning will grab for a spar, no matter where he finds it.” So the British joined us in the fight against you, he thought. Aloud, he went on, “Besides, has not the Lizards’ former chief spokesman among the Polish Jews repudiated them and gone into hiding?”
Hitler waved that aside. “Aliens themselves in Europe, they find their fit place toadying to the worse aliens who now torment us.”
“What do you mean?” Molotov asked sharply. “Have they turned over to the Lizards the explosive metal they took from the courier? If so, I demand that you allow me to communicate with my government immediately.” Stalin would have to know at once that the Lizards knew for certain human beings were working to duplicate their much greater weapons so he could apply yet another layer of secrecy to his project.
“No, not even they were so depraved as that,” Hitler admitted; he sounded reluctant to make any concession, no matter how small.
“Well, what then? Did they keep it for themselves?” Molotov wondered what the Polish Jews would do if they had kept the explosive metal. Would they make a bomb and use it against the Lizards, or would they make one and use it against the Reich? That question would have been going through Hitler’s mind, too.
But the German leader shook his head. “They did not keep it, either. They are going to try to smuggle it to the fellow Jews in the United States.” Hitler’s little toothbrush mustache-quivered, as if he’d just smelled something rotten.
Molotov wondered how many of those Jews would have fled to the United States had the Nazis not forced them out of Germany and its allies. The tsars and their pogroms had done the same thing in pre-Communist Russia, and the present Soviet Union was the poorer for their shortsightedness. Molotov was too convinced an atheist to take any religion seriously as far as doctrine, but Jews tended to be both clever and well educated, valuable traits in any nation that aspired to build and grow.
With a scissorslike effort of will, the foreign minister snipped off those irrelevant threads of thought and returned to the matter at hand. He said, “I need to inform the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of this development.” It wasn’t as urgent as if the Lizards had learned what Stalin was up to, but it was important news. America, after all, not Germany or Britain, was the most powerful capitalist state and so the most likely future opponent of the Soviet Union… assuming such concerns kept their meaning in a world with Lizards init.
“Arrangements will be made for you to communicate,” Hitler said. “The telegraph through Scandinavia remains fairly reliable and fairly secure.”
“That will have to do,” Molotov said. Fairly reliable he could deal with; nothing could be expected to work perfectly. But fairly secure! The Nazis were bunglers indeed if they tolerated security that was only fair. Inside, where it did not show, the Soviet foreign minister smiled. The Germans had no idea how thoroughly agents of the USSR kept Stalin informed about everything they did.
“The nefarious Jews came close to preventing our brilliant Aryan scientists from having the amount of explosive metal with which they needed to work,” Hitler said. Molotov made a mental note of that; it meant the Americans also probably had a marginal quantity of the material-and it meant the Soviet Union had plenty. Stalin had a right to expect results from his own researchers, then.
But Hitler wasn’t thinking about that; what he had in mind was vengeance. “The Lizards must come first,” he said. “I admit this. They are the greatest present danger to mankind. But after them, we shall punish the Jewish traitors who, true to their nalure, aligned themselves with the alien against the Aryan essence of true creative humanity.”
His voice rose almost to a screech in that last sentence. Now, abruptly, it turned low, conspiratoriaclass="underline" “And you Russians owe the Poles a little something, eh?”
“What’s that?” Molotov said, caught off guard and stalling for time. Even though he needed the interpreter to follow Hitler’s words, he could hear the control the German leader had over his tone. That made him a formidable orator-certainly more effective there than Stalin, who was not only pedantic but had never lost his Georgian accent.
“Come, come,” Hitler said impatiently. “You must have heard the Lizards’ Polish collaborators going on about the so-called massacre of their officers at Katyn, trying to discredit the Soviet Union in the same way the Jews paint the Reich with a big black brush.”
“I do not trouble myself with the Lizards’ propaganda broadcasts,” Molotov said, which was true; he had underlings listen to them for him. As for Katyn, he thought, the Poles had little to fuss about. After the Soviets reannexed the eastern half of Poland (which had, after all, belonged to Russia for more than a century before the chaos of the Revolution broke it loose and let Pilsudski establish his fascist state there), what were they to do with the reactionary officers who had fallen into their hands? Turn them loose and let them foment rebellion? Not likely! By Soviet standards, getting rid of those few thousand unreliables was but a small purge.
Hitler said, “Both your government and mine have reason to be unhappy with those who dwell in the anomalous territory of Poland. We were wise to divide it between ourselves once. When the Lizards are dealt with, we can join in punishing the inhabitants of that land to the full extent they deserve.”