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“So they have,” Molotov said. Most of the glass in the windows of the tall, thrusting skyscrapers had been shattered. Black scorchmarks running up the sides of the buildings showed where fires had blazed out of control. A couple leaned drunkenly to one side, as if unlikely to stand much longer. Molotov surveyed the scene with a cold eye, then added, “Only fit that they be reminded they are in a war. Against the Germans, they did the building and we did the dying.”
A tugboat came puffing out to greet the freighter. A man with a megaphone stood at the bow and bellowed something in English. The interpreter translated: “He says, ‘Ahoy, Lithuanian ship! You’re a long way from home.’ This, I believe, is intended as a joke.”
“Heh, heh,” Molotov said, just like that. He’d forgotten his vessel still flew the extinct gold, green, and red banner of what was now, and rightfully, the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (he also managed to forget that the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic had been under Nazi occupation till the Lizards came, and still showed no delight at the prospect of bowing to the authority of Moscow).
“How shall I reply?” the interpreter asked.
Molotov was tempted to send the American greetings in the name of the Lithuanian Congress of People’s Deputies, but refrained. “Tell him I greet him in the name of the Soviet people and of General Secretary Stalin.”
More shouts in English. The interpreter said, “This time he replies correctly. He says we are to let him assist us in berthing.”
“Then we shall do so,” Molotov answered. “Take this up with the ship’s officers, not with me. I had thought they might bring proper diplomatic personnel to meet with us here, but if this is not the case, we shall proceed into New York.” He spoke as if he were about to enter some jungle filled with wild and savage tribesmen. That was how he felt: to him, capitalists were no more than predatory wild beasts, and New York their principal lair.
Following the lead of the tug, the freighter sailed into the East River. The battered ship left behind the Statue of Liberty, standing tall and proud on Bedloe’s Island. Molotov had nothing in principle against the ideals the statue epitomized, but thought the United States, with its exploitation of Negroes by whites, of poor by rich, of proletarians by capitalists (which was not quite the same thing), did a poor job of living up to them.
The freighter tied up at Pier 11, quite near the shore. The interpreter pointed to a sign in English. “Comrade Foreign Commissar, do you know what there is between this and Pier 12, the next one over?” he said, his voice quivering with indignation. “There is what is called the Municipal Skyport, where the rich capitalists can land their private seaplanes conveniently close to their Wall Street offices.”
“That any man should be rich enough to own his own seaplane-” Molotov shook his head. How many men went hungry so a handful could afford these useless luxuries?
But he had not come here to mock the capitalists, he had come to deal with them. He’d dealt with the Nazis; he could stand this. He looked around at the bustling activity on the docks. Even invaded, America remained formidably productive and economically strong. He even saw some petrol-powered lorries hauling goods away once they’d been taken off their ships. Back in the USSR, every drop of petrol and diesel fuel went directly to the war effort, to tanks and airplanes. Donkeys and horses and strong backs hauled goods from one place to another.
Waiting on the pier was, not a taxicab as he’d half expected, but a horse-drawn buggy of American design. Molotov was not insulted at failing to rate a motorcar of his own. The Lizards had a habit of strafing automobiles, on the assumption that whoever was in them was liable to be important. As a result, people who were genuinely important traveled for the most part in horse-drawn conveyances, like everyone else.
When Molotov and his interpreter climbed aboard the carriage, the driver surprised him by greeting him in good Russian:“Dobry den, Gospodin Molotov.”
“Good day to you as well, but I amTovarishch Molotov, if you please,” the foreign commissar answered.Gospodin was what you would have called an aristocrat before the Revolution. The simplecomrade showed proper egalitarianism.
“However you like,” the driver said, equably enough. Molotov did not think him a native Russian-speaker; he had a trace of the sibilant accent English gave to Russian. Perhaps his parents had come to the United States and he’d learned his ancestral language from them-or he could have been an American who’d studied Russian thoroughly, as Molotov’s interpreter had studied English.
The interpreter leaned forward in his seat as the carriage began rolling. He looked petulant. Molotov understood that: if the interpreter was not useful, he would soon be performing a function where he was, most likely a function that involved carrying a rifle, living on whatever he could scrounge, and trying to survive against superior Lizard firepower.
“You are going to the Subtreasury Building, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” the driver said. “Our first president, George Washington, took his oath of office in front of the old city hall that used to stand there. Inside, in a glass case, is the very stone he stood on.”
“How interesting,” Molotov lied.
“Comrade Foreign Commissar,” the interpreter said hoarsely, pointing to a sign on a corner, “we are traveling down Wall Street at this very moment.” He looked around in alarm, as if he expected an assault from a regiment of swag-bellied plutocrats in toppers, cutaways, and spats, each one sporting a diamond ring bigger than the last and puffing a fat cigar.
Molotov looked around, too. Some of the people on the fabled street did wear business suits, but more were in workmen’s clothes or uniforms. They didn’t look quite so shabby as men on the street in war-ravaged Moscow, but they didn’t seem wildly wealthy, or even prosperous, either.
In a helpful tone of voice, the driver said, “The Subtreasury Building is right across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.” Had Molotov’s interpreter had an apotropaic amulet, he would have taken it out and brandished it at the mention of that tool of the Soviets’ ideological devil.
The Subtreasury Building was a dignified structure in the Greek Revival style of the previous century. To Molotov, for whom socialist realism was as much an article of faith as the doctrine of the Incarnation was to Pope Pius XII, having a building pretend to be something it wasn’t summed up the dishonesty of the capitalist system. That the skyscrapers along Wall Street dwarfed the Subtreasury Building told him everything he needed to know about where economic power in the United States really lay.
A bronze statue of a man in outmoded clothing stood on the steps. As Molotov went past it, his interpreter said, “There is George Washington, the first president of the United States.”
Molotov dismissed the first president in half a dozen words: “He is dressed like an aristocrat.” The offhand condemnation made the man who had driven him to the Subtreasury Building mutter something under his breath. Behind the impassive mask Molotov always wore, he chuckled to himself.
Inside, a smiling flunky led him and the interpreter to a large, airy, well-lit chamber. The men waiting behind the tables there rose politely as he came in. “Good morning, Comrade Foreign Commissar,” Cordell Hull said. “Excellent to see you again.”
“I am pleased to have this opportunity to consult with my allies in the joint struggle against t
he imperialist aggressors from the stars,” Molotov answered, keeping any dealing on a personal level to a minimum. “It is also good to have representatives of Great Britain here, after the heroic resistance her people have shown against the aliens’ invading forces.”
“Do you know Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Halifax?” the American Secretary of State asked.
“I had the honor of meeting Lord Beaverbrook in Moscow two years ago, when he headed the Anglo-American mission on sending aid to the Soviet Union after the unprovoked and perfidious fascist attack,” Molotov said, nodding to the present British Minister of Supply.
“Good to see you again, Molotov,” Lord Beaverbrook said, sticking out his hand. He was a tall, ruddy, balding man in his mid-sixties, with a shrewd, blunt-featured face and an air of energy that would have done credit to someone half his age.
“You will introduce me to Lord Halifax?” Molotov said. “We have never met in the flesh.”
What he did know about Halifax, he did not fancy. The British ambassador to the United States had been Foreign Secretary under Neville Chamberlain before war broke out and during most of its first year, till the Chamberlain government fell in the aftermath of disasters in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France. All through his time in office, he’d advocated appeasing the Hitlerite beast by tossing one country after another into its ravening maw.
Now, though, he nodded civilly to Molotov and extended his right hand. The left sleeve of his coat hung limp; his left arm had been withered from birth, and lacked a hand. “A pleasure to meet you at last,” he murmured.
“Indeed,” Molotov said, looking up at him. He was taller and balder than Beaverbrook-he had to be within a few centimeters of two meters tall. Most men, though, were taller than Molotov; he refused to let that, or anything else, intimidate him. “Now that we have dealt with the formalities, shall we move on to the business at hand?”
“Yes, yes, by all means.” With his own hands, Cordell Hull pulled out a chair for Molotov, and then another for his interpreter. Molotov felt faintly scandalized; that was not proper work for a man whose rank matched his own. The American passion for showing equality of upper and lower classes even-sometimes especially-where that equality did not in truth exist always struck him as hypocritical.
