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But diplomacy without hypocrisy was almost a contradiction in terms. Molotov said, “Let us review the present state of our alliance and plan our future moves against the common foe.”
“Not all such planning is practicable,” Lord Beaverbrook put in. “The damned Lizards have plans of their own, as we found out to our sorrow this past summer.”
“We were invaded first by the Nazis, then by the Lizards,” Molotov said. “We know in great detail what you have experienced.”
“Russia being a large state-” Lord Halifax began.
Molotov corrected him with icy precision: “The Soviet Union being a large state-”
“Yes. Quite. Er, the Soviet Union being a large state,” Lord Halifax resumed, “you enjoyed the luxury of trading space for time, which allowed you more strategic options than were available to us.”
“Thus your immediate use of poison gas,” Molotov said. “Yes. That, like our bomb from explosive metal, does seem to have been something which found the Lizards ill-prepared.”
He watched Halifax and Beaverbrook preen, as if they’d been personally responsible for throwing mustard gas at the Lizards. Maybe Beaverbrook actually had had something to do with the decision; he’d been active in weapons development. Molotov reckoned poison gas an altogether mixed blessing. Not long after the English started using it, the Germans also did-a more lethal species, too. And the Germans had rockets to throw their gas farther than they could directly reach. Not for the first time, Molotov was glad the Lizards had landed in Poland. He would have liked their landing in Germany even better.
The Nazis’ poison gas also seemed to be on Beaverbrook’s mind, for he said, “Technical cooperation among the allies is still not all it might be. We have yet to receive from Berlin-”
“You won’t get anything from Berlin, any more than you would from Washington,” Cordell Hull said. “Or Tokyo, either, come to that.”
“From the Germans, I should say,” Lord Beaverbrook replied. “Ahem. We’ve not received from the Germans the specifics of their new suffocating gas, nor indeed any word from them on their progress toward nuclear weapons for some time.”
“We and they were enemies before; our present alliance with them is nothing more than a convenience,” Molotov said. “We should not be surprised when it creaks.” The Anglo-American-Soviet alliance against the Hitlerites had also been one of convenience, as had the Nazi-Soviet pact before that. You didn’t stay wedded to an alliance because it was there; you stayed because it was useful for you. What had Austria said, refusing to help Russia during the Crimean War after the Romanovs rescued the Hapsburg throne? “We shall astonish the world by our ingratitude”-something like that. If you were in the game, you knew it had slippery rules. The British had some clues along those lines. Molotov wondered about the Americans, though.
Because he still worried about the Germans almost as much as he did about the Lizards, Molotov said, “We have reports that the Nazis will be ready to begin using those bombs next spring.” He didn’t say he’d heard that himself, straight from Ribbentrop’s mouth. The United States and Britain endangered the future of the Soviet Union hardly less than the Nazis.
“We can match that,” Cordell Hull said placidly. “We may even beat it.”
That was more than Molotov had heard from Ribbentrop. He wondered if it was more than Ribbentrop knew. For that matter, he was always amazed when Ribbentrop knew anything. “If that is so, the war against the Lizards will take on an entirely different tone,” he observed.
“So it will,” Hull said. “You Russians should have more of these weapons coming up soon, too, shouldn’t you?”
“So we should.” Molotov let it go at that. Unfortunately, just because the Soviet Union should have had more explosive-metal bombs coming into production didn’t mean itwould have them. He wondered how long the physicists would have before Stalin started liquidating them out of frustration. The Great Stalin’s virtues were multifarious-he would tell you as much himself. Patience, however, was not among them.
Lord Halifax said, “If we show the Lizards we are their match in destructive power, my hope is that we shall then be able to negotiate a just and equitable peace with them.”
Once an appeaser, always an appeaser,Molotov thought.“My hope is that we shall drive them off our world altogether,” he said. “Then the historical dialectic can resume from the point where it was interrupted.”And its processes can finish throwing Britain onto the rubbish heap.
“That would not be easy under the best of circumstances,” Lord Beaverbrook said. “And circumstances are not of the best. The Lizards, as you will probably recall, have a colonization fleet traveling toward Earth, much as theMayflower brought Englishmen and — women to what we then called the New World. Will their military forces flee, leaving the colonists nowhere to land? I think not.”
Molotov hadn’t considered it from that perspective. He was certain Stalin hadn’t, either. And yet it made sense, even in dialectical terms. The Lizards were imperialists. So much was obvious. But what did the imperialists do? They didn’t just conquer locals. They also established colonies-and would fight to protect what they saw as their right to do so.
Slowly, he said, “I do not wish to accept the permanent presence of these aliens on our world.”
“I daresay the Red Indians weren’t overjoyed at the prospect of Pilgrim neighbors either,” Beaverbrook answered. “We must first make certain we aren’t simply overwhelmed, as they were.”
“That’s an important point,” Cordell Hull said. “And one of the reasons the Indians got overwhelmed is that they never-or not often enough, anyway-put up a common fight against the white men. If a tribe had another tribe next door for an enemy, they wouldn’t think twice about joining with the new settlers to clear ’em out. And then, a few years later, it would be their turn, and they probably wondered what the devil happened to them. We can’t afford that, and we have to remember it. No matter how bad we think our neighbors are, living under the Lizards would be a damn sight worse.”
Molotov thought not of Red Indians but of the tsars expanding Russian might at the expense of the nomads of the steppe and the principalities in the Caucasus. The principle, though, remained the same. And Hull was right: all the world’s leaders, even the Great Stalin, needed to remember it.
“I shall convey your thoughts, and my agreement with them, to the General Secretary,” Molotov said.
Cordell Hull beamed. “Thank you, Comrade Foreign Commissar. I hope you won’t mind my saying that this is, I believe, the first time you’ve expressed a personal opinion in all our talks.”
Molotov considered. Slowly, he nodded. “You are correct, Mr. Secretary,” he said. “I apologize for the error. It was inadvertent, I assure you.”
Heinrich Jager accepted three francs in change from a shopkeeper after he bought a couple of meters of twine. Two were solid prewar coins. The third, instead of Marianne on the obverse, had a double-headed axe, two stalks of wheat, and the legendETAT FRANCAIS. It was made of aluminum, and felt weightless in his hand.
The shopkeeper must have noticed the sour stare he sent the franc. “Vichy says we have to use them,” the fellow said with a shrug. “So do the Lizards.”
Jager just shrugged and stuck the coin in his pocket. The less he had to put his halting French on display in Albi, the happier he was. He and Otto Skorzeny had already been here longer than they wanted. Other raids Skorzeny planned had run like clockwork. Here, the clock was slow.
He rolled up his twine and walked out of the shop onto the Avenue du Marechal Foch. As always when he looked about in Albi, a line from some English poet sprang to mind. “A rose-red city half as old as time.” Pink and red brickwork predominated hereabouts, though brown and muddy yellow added to the blend. If one-or, here, two-had to rusticate, there were worse places than Albi in which to do it.
The aluminum coin from Marshal Petain’s mint went when he bought a kilo ofharicots verts. He carried the beans back
to the flat he and Skorzeny were sharing.
He hoped his comrade in arms hadn’t brought home another tart. When Skorzeny had a mission directly before him, he was all business. When he didn’t, his attention wandered and he needed something else to keep him interested in the world. He’d also been drinking an ungodly lot lately.
But when Jager got back to the flat, he found Skorzeny alone, sober, and beaming from ear to ear. “Guess what?” the big SS man boomed. “Good old Uncle Henri finally shipped us the last piece we need to put our toy together.”
