“I don’t think he would expect mercy from you,” Monique said. “I don’t suppose he expected it from you the first time.” That was a dangerous comment, but she knew Kuhn was short on irony.
“And if the Lizards call you,” he went on, “you can tell them what we have told them before: if they want to have a war of drugs, we will fight it. We can hurt them worse than they can hurt us.”
“No Lizard has ever called me,” Monique exclaimed. “I hope to heaven no Lizard ever does call.”
“Your brother is conspiring with them against the Greater German Reich,” Kuhn said, sounding every centimeter the Sturmbannfuhrer. “Therefore, we must also believe you may be conspiring against the Reich. You are on thin ice, Professor Dutourd. If you break it and fall in, you will be sorry afterwards-but that will be too late to do you much good.”
Monique had thought she’d been alarmed when the SS man said he found her attractive. This inhuman drone of warning was infinitely worse. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she demanded. “If you hadn’t told me Pierre was alive, I never would have known it. I–I wish I didn’t.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but she wasn’t sure it wasn’t, either.
“I have said what I have to say,” Kuhn told her. “I will see you in class tomorrow. And if I ask you out with me, you would be wise to say yes. Believe me, you would find other watchers less desirable than me-and you may take that however you like. Good night.” He hung up.
“Damn you,” Monique snarled. She wasn’t sure if she meant Kuhn or Pierre or both at once. Both at once, probably.
She returned to the inscriptions-a forlorn hope, and she knew it. Latin seemed spectacularly meaningless tonight. She almost screamed when the telephone rang again. “Hello, little sister,” Pierre Dutourd said in her ear. “By God, it feels good to be on my own again.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Monique said, sounding anything but glad. “I’m on my own, too, but not the way you mean.”
As Dieter Kuhn had, her brother ignored her. “I had to play both ends against the middle,” he boasted, “but I pulled it off.”
“How lucky for you.” This time, Monique got the last word and hung up. But it did her little good. Thanks to Pierre, she was stuck between the Nazis and the Lizards, too, and the only thing to which she could look forward was getting crushed when they collided.
Vyacheslav Molotov wished for eyes in the back of his head. They might not have done him any good; plotters were generally too subtle to show up under even the most vigilant inspection. But that didn’t mean the plotters weren’t there. On the contrary. He’d found that out, and counted himself lucky to have survived the lesson.
Stalin, now, Stalin had seen plotters everywhere, whether they were really there or not. He’d killed a lot of people on the off chance they were plotters, or in the hope that their deaths would frighten others out of plotting. At the time, Molotov had thought him not just wasteful but more than a little crazy.
Now he wasn’t so sure. Stalin had died in bed, without anyone having seriously tried to overthrow him. That was no mean achievement. Molotov admired it much more now that he’d weathered an attempted coup.
His secretary poked his head into the office. “Comrade General Secretary, Comrade Nussboym is here to see you.”
“Yes, I was expecting him,” Molotov said. “Send him in.”
In came David Nussboym: Jewish, skinny, nondescript-except for the golden star of the Order of Lenin pinned to his breast pocket. He nodded to Molotov. “Good morning, Comrade General Secretary.”
“Good morning, David Aronovich,” Molotov answered. “What can I do for you today? You have asked for so little since the day of the coup, it rather makes me nervous.” From another man, that might have been a joke, or at least sounded like one. From Molotov, it sounded like what it was: a statement of curiosity tinged with suspicion.
“Comrade General Secretary, I can tell you what I want,” Nussboym said. “I want revenge.”
“Ah.” Molotov nodded; Nussboym had picked a motivation he understood. “Revenge against whom? Whoever it is, you shall have it.” He made a sour face, then had to amend his words: “Unless it is Marshal Zhukov. I am also in his debt.” And if I try to move against him, he will move against me, and the outcome of that would be… unfortunate.
“I have nothing against the marshal,” Nussboym said. “He could have quietly disposed of me after we came out of NKVD headquarters, but he didn’t.”
He could have quietly disposed of me, too, Molotov thought. Maybe it is that he is like a German general-too well trained to meddle in politics. In the USSR, that made Zhukov a rarity. “All right, then,” Molotov said. “I asked you once; now I ask you again: revenge against whom?”
He thought he knew what Nussboym would say, and the Polish Jew proved him right: “Against the people who sent me to the Soviet Union against my will twenty years ago.”
“I cannot order the Jews of Warsaw punished, you know, as I could with citizens of the Soviet Union,” Molotov reminded him.
“I understand that, Comrade General Secretary,” Nussboym said. “I have in mind the Jews of Lodz, not Warsaw.”
“That will make it harder stilclass="underline" Lodz is closer to the borders of the Reich than it is to us,” Molotov said. “Had you said Minsk, life would be simple. Infiltrating Minsk is child’s play.”
“I know. I have done it,” David Nussboym replied. “But I come from the western part of Poland, and that is where my enemies live.”
“As you wish. I keep my promises,” Molotov said, conveniently forgetting how many he had broken. “I give you a free hand against your enemies there in Lodz. Whatever resources you require, you have my authorization to utilize. The only thing you may not do is embarrass the Soviet Union’s relations with the Lizards. If you do that, I will throw you to the wolves. Is it agreeable? Do we have a bargain?”
“It is agreeable, and we do have a bargain,” Nussboym said. “Thank you, Comrade General Secretary.” Despite having saved Molotov’s life, he did not presume to address him by first name and patronymic. The USSR was officially a classless society, but that did not change who was on top and who below.
“Good enough, then, David Aronovich,” Molotov said. “So long as you do not embroil us with the Race, do what you will.” He realized he sounded rather like God sending Satan out to afflict Job. The conceit amused him-not enough for him to let it show on the outside, true, but he found very few things that amusing.
Nussboym also knew better than to linger. Having got what he wanted from Molotov, he rose, nodded, and took his leave. After he was gone-but only after he was gone-Molotov nodded approval.
Half an hour till his next appointment. Those thirty minutes might stretch, too; Khrushchev had the time sense of the Ukrainian peasant he’d been born, not of the West. He came and went when he thought it right and fitting, not according to the bidding of any clock. Molotov pulled a report from the pile awaiting his attention, donned his spectacles, and began to read.
He remembered memoranda wondering what the United States was doing with its space station. From the report in his hands, it appeared that the Reich and the Lizards were wondering, too. He scratched his head. Such aggressive work seemed more likely the province of the Reich than of the USA. President Warren had always struck him as a cautious and capable reactionary. He hoped the man would be reelected in 1964.
But what were the Americans doing up there? From the report in front of him, even some of them were wondering-wondering and not finding out. Molotov frowned. Secrecy was unlike the Americans, too, at least for anything less vital than their nuclearexplosives project.