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He’d also-cautiously-tried to open the eyes of some other officers, Skorzeny among them. Without exception, everybody else had stayed willfully blind, not wanting to see, not wanting to discuss. He understood that. He even sympathized with itif you refused to notice the flaws of your superiors and your country, you could go on about your daily routine a lot more easily.
As long as he was fighting just the Lizards, Jager had no trouble suppressing his own doubts, his own worries. Nobody could doubt for even a moment that the Lizards were deadly foes not only to Germany but to all mankind. You did what you had to do to stop them. But the explosive-metal bomb in Lodz didn’t have only the Lizards in mind. It didn’t even have the Lizards primarily in mind. Skorzeny knew as much. He’d set it there after the nerve-gas bomb he’d intended for the Jews of Lodz failed. It was his-and Germany’s-revenge on the Jews for thwarting him once.
Try as Jager would, he couldn’t stomach that.
Skorzeny walked away, whistling. When he came back, he was wearing a pack like the one a wireless operator carried. In fact, it undoubtedly was a wireless operator’s pack. The handset that went with it, though, was anything but standard issue. It had only two elements: a bar switch and a large red button.
“I make the time 1100 hours,” Skorzeny said after yet another glance at his watch.
The other SS man brought his right wrist up toward his face. “I confirm the time as 1100 hours,” he said formally.
Skorzeny giggled. “Isn’t this fun?” he said. The other SS man stared at him: that wasn’t in the script. Jager just snorted. He’d seen too many times that Skorzeny was indifferent to the script. The big SS man flipped the bar switch 180 degrees. “The transmitter is now active,” he said.
“I confirm that the transmitter has been activated,” the other SS man droned.
And then Skorzeny broke the rules again. He reached up and gave Jager the handset, asking, “Do you want to do the honors?”
“Me?” Jager almost dropped it. “Are you out of your mind? Good God, no.” He handed the device back to Skorzeny. Only after he’d done so did he realize heshould have dropped it, or else contrived to smash it against the side of the panzer.
“All right, don’t let it worry you,” Skorzeny said. “I can kill my own dog. I can kill a whole great lot of sons of bitches.” His thumb came down hard on the red button.
XVIII
Even had the weather been cool, Vyacheslav Molotov would have been steaming as he stood around in the lobby of the Semiramis Hotel waiting for a Lizard armored personnel carrier to convey him to Shepheard’s.
“Idiocy,” the Soviet foreign commissar muttered to Yakov Donskoi. Where von Ribbentrop was concerned, he did not bother holding his scorn in check. “Idiocy, syphilitic paresis, or both. Probably both.”
Von Ribbentrop, waiting for his own armored personnel carrier, might well have been in earshot, but he didn’t speak Russian. Had he spoken Russian, Molotov would have changed not a word. The interpreter glanced over to the German foreign minister, then, almost whispering himself, replied, “It is most irregular, Comrade Foreign Commissar, but-”
Molotov waved him to silence. “But me no buts, Yakov Beniaminovich. Since we came here, the Lizards have convened all our sessions, as is only proper. For that arrogant Nazi to demand a noon meeting-” He shook his head. “I thought it was mad dogs and Englishmen who went out in the noonday sun, not a mad dog of a German.”
Before Donskoi could say anything to that, several personnel carriers pulled up in front of the hotel. The Lizards didn’t seem happy about ferrying all the human diplomats to Shepheard’s at the same time, but von Ribbentrop hadn’t given them enough notice of this meeting upon which he insisted for them to do anything else.
When the negotiators reached Atvar’s headquarters, Lizard guards made sure Molotov did not speak to Marshall or Eden or Togo before entering the meeting room. They also made sure he did not speak to von Ribbentrop. That was wasted labor; he had nothing to say to the German foreign minister.
Precisely at noon, the Lizard fleetlord came into the meeting room, accompanied by his interpreter. Through that male, Atvar said, “Very well, speaker for the not-empire of Deutschland, I have agreed to your request for this special session at this special time. You will now explain why you made such a request. I listen with great attentiveness.”
It had better be good,was what he meant. Even through two interpreters, Molotov had no trouble figuring that out. Von Ribbentrop heard it through only one, so it should have been twice as clear to him.
If it was, he gave no sign. “Thank you, Fleetlord,” he said as he got to his feet. From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and, as portentously as he could, unfolded it “Fleetlord, I read to you a statement from Adolf Hitler,Fuhrer of the GermanReich.”
When he spoke Hitler’s name, his voice took on a reverence more pious than the Pope (back before the Pope had been blown to radioactive dust) would have used in mentioning Jesus. But then, why not? Von Ribbentrop thought Hitler was infallible; when he’d made the German-Soviet nonaggression pact the fascists had so brutally violated, he’d declared to the whole world, “TheFuhrer is always right.” In such opinions, unlike diplomacy, he lacked the duplicity needed to lie well.
Now, in pompous tones, he went on, “TheFuhrer declares that, as the Race has intolerably occupied territory rightfully German and refuses to leave such territory regardless of the illegitimacy of that occupation, theReich is fully justified in taking the strongest measure against the Race, and has now initiated those measures. We-”
Molotov knew a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach. So the Nazi had had a reason for summoning everyone. The fascist regime had launched another sneak attack and was now, in a pattern long familiar, offering some trumped-up rationale for whatever its latest unprovoked act of aggression had been.
Sure enough, von Ribbentrop continued, “-have emphasized our legitimate demands by the detonation of this latest explosive-metal bomb, and by the military action following it. God will give the GermanReich the victory it deserves.” The German foreign minister refolded the paper, put it away, and shot out his right arm in the Nazi salute.“Heil Hitler!”
Anthony Eden, Shigenori Togo, and George Marshall all looked as shaken as Molotov felt. So much for the popular front: Hitler had consulted with no one before resuming the war. He and, all too likely, everyone else would have to pay the price.
Uotat finished hissing and popping and squeaking for Atvar. Molotov waited for the Lizard fleetlord to explode, and to threaten to rain down hideous destruction on Germany for what it had just done. The foreign commissar would have faced that prospect with considerable equanimity.
Instead, Atvar directed only a few words to the interpreter, who said, “The exalted fleetlord tells me to tell you he is looking into this statement.” As Uotat spoke, the fleetlord left the room.
He came back a few minutes later, and spoke several sentences to the translator. One by one, Uotat turned them into English. As he did so, Donskoi translated them into Russian for Molotov:
“The exalted fleetlord wonders why the negotiator for the not-empire of Deutschland has had us come here to listen to a statement bearing no resemblance to any sort of reality. No atomic explosion has occurred in or near Deutschland. No atomic explosion, in fact, has occurred anywhere on Tosev 3. No unusual military activity of any sort by Deutsch forces is noted. The exalted fleetlord asks whether your brain is addled, spokesmale von Ribbentrop, or that of yourFuhrer.”
Von Ribbentrop stared at Atvar. Along with the other human negotiators, Molotov stared at von Ribbentrop. Something had gone spectacularly wrong somewhere: that much was obvious. But what? And where?
Otto Skorzeny pressed down on the red button till his thumbnail turned white with the pressure. Heinrich Jager waited for the southern horizon to light up with a brief new sun, and for the artillery barrage that would follow. Over the intercom, he spoke quietly to
Johannes Drucker. “Be ready to start the engine.”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberst,”the panzer driver answered.
But the new sun did not rise. The mild Polish summer day continued undisturbed. Skorzeny jammed his thumb down on the button again. Nothing happened. “Christ on His cross,” the SS man muttered. Then, when that proved too weak to satisfy him, he ground out, “Goddamned motherfucking son of a shit-eating bitch.” He tried the transmitter one more time before throwing it to the ground in disgust He turned to the blackshirt beside him. “Get me the backup unit.Schnell”
“Jawohl, Herr Standartenfuhrer!”The other SS officer dashed away, to return in short order with a pack and transmitter identical to the ones that had failed.
