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“Superior sir, may I speak?” Felless asked. When Veffani used the affirmative hand gesture, she turned both her eye turrets toward Sepp Dietrich. “Justice Minister, if under your laws it is not a crime to deal in ginger, we can and will revise our laws to make it no crime to deal in narcotics that appeal to Tosevites, and to make it legal and indeed encouraged to smuggle those narcotics into the independent Tosevite not-empires.”
As one of the ornaments on the wrapping around his torso, Dietrich wore a small silvery pin showing a Big Ugly’s skull with a couple of crossed bones behind it. His own features froze into an expression no more lively than that skull’s. “If you wish to play that game, we can play it,” he said through his interpreter. “No drug you can bring into the Reich will do as much to us as ginger does to you.”
“Truth.” Felless admitted what she could scarcely deny. “But you are already doing all you can to us with ginger.” She knew the truth in that to a degree Dietrich did not realize. “If you keep trying to do all you can to us with ginger, why should we do anything less to you?”
She waited until the interpreter put that into the language of the Deutsche. Sepp Dietrich’s jaw worked as he chewed on it both literally and metaphorically. He said, “This is not far from a threat of war.”
Veffani’s eye turrets slewed rapidly toward Felless. The ambassador was undoubtedly wondering what sort of trouble she’d got herself into. So was she, but she went ahead regardless: “Why is it a threat of war when we do it to you, but nothing of the sort when you do it to us?”
Dietrich grunted. “Perhaps you should be talking with the foreign minister and not with me.”
“Perhaps you should not evade your responsibilities,” Felless shot back. “This male Tosevite is in a Deutsch prison. An official from the Foreign Ministry has already refused to turn him over to the Race, as Ambassador Veffani said. That leaves him in your hands.”
“It also constitutes an act unfriendly to the Race,” Veffani put in. “From the actions of the Reich, someone might conclude that peace between your not-empire and the Empire does not matter to you. I think that would be an unfortunate and dangerous conclusion for anyone to reach. Do you not agree?”
Watching the Big Ugly squirm gave Felless pleasure approaching that of a taste of ginger. After coughing and wiping metabolic cooling water away from his forehead (a sign of distress among Tosevites, the experts agreed), Dietrich said, “I am not unfriendly to anyone. The Reich is not unfriendly to anyone except Jews and other racial inferiors, and Dutourd, whatever else you may say of him, is not a Jew.”
“He is an enemy of the Race,” Veffani said. “Keeping him in prison for a long time would be an act of courtesy to the Race.”
“I shall take what you say under advisement,” Sepp Dietrich replied. “The matter may have to be decided at a level higher than mine, though.”
“Who is higher than you, Justice Minister Dietrich?” Felless demanded. “If you cannot decide here, who can?”
“Why, Reichs Chancellor Himmler, of course.” Dietrich seemed surprised she needed to ask. She was surprised the head of the Deutsch not-empire would concern himself about the fate of a ginger smuggler. Dietrich proceeded to explain why: “The Reichs Chancellor yielded to the Race when he let you destroy an air base after the attack on your colonization fleet, though the Reich, he has insisted, was not guilty of that attack. To yield to you again might be taken as a sign of weakness, and we Deutsche are not weak. We are strong, and we grow stronger day by day.”
That was true. It was also, to the Race’s way of thinking, extremely unfortunate. From the point of view of the Reich, Dietrich’s words did make a certain amount of sense. Felless reluctantly admitted as much to herself.
But Veffani said, “Protecting criminals is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of criminality.”
“I did not agree to receive you to listen to insults,” Sepp Dietrich said. “Now I must bid you good day. And I remind you that this Dutourd has committed no crimes in the view of the Reich.”
“And I remind you that the Reich can also redefine crimes to suit itself,” Veffani answered as he rose from his chair. Felless imitated the ambassador, who added, “I shall report the substance of your remarks to the fleetlord.”
Dietrich made a sort of noise the interpreter did not translate. Felless followed Veffani out of the justice minister’s office. When she started to say something, he made the negative hand gesture. I am a fool, she thought. If the Deutsche are recording anywhere, they are recording here.
Only after the two members of the Race had left the Ministry of Justice could she say what she had in mind: “Congratulations. You showed them we are not to be trifled with.”
“And to you, Senior Researcher,” Veffani said, “for your able assistance.”
16
Vyacheslav Molotov woke with a head pounding like a mechanical hammer in the biggest steel mill in Magnitogorsk. By the devil’s grandmother, he thought blurrily, I haven’t had a hangover like that since I was a student before the Revolution.
Only gradually, as full awareness seeped back into him, did he realize how long ago the Revolution had been. For some reason, he remembered that before remembering he’d had nothing stronger than fizzy mineral water the night before. That alarmed him.
He sat up in bed, which forcibly brought his attention to its not being his bed, not being the one in which he’d fallen asleep. It was a cheap cot on which a newly conscripted recruit would have had trouble getting any rest. He looked around. He was not in his bedroom, either. Somehow, that didn’t hit him too hard. By then, it was scarcely a surprise.
He tried to figure out where he was and how he’d got there. Where quickly became obvious. If this wasn’t a cell, he’d never seen one. As cells went, it was fairly luxurious; most would have had straw on the floor rather than a cot of any sort, no matter how unsatisfactory. Watery sunlight dodged past the bars over the narrow windows.
Who would put me in a cell? Molotov’s mind was still slower than it should have been (someone’s drugged me, he realized, which should have been obvious from the start), but only two candidates presented themselves. Beria or Zhukov? Zhukov or Beria? The lady or the tiger? The drug-chloroform? — had to be what let that fragment of foolishness float up into the light of day.
“Guard!” he called, his voice hoarse, his throat raspy and sore. “Guard!” How many counterrevolutionaries had called out to their gaolers during the great days? How few had got even the slightest particle of what they wanted? How little Molotov had expected to find himself in the position in which he’d put so many others, both during the Revolution and throughout the endless rounds of purges that followed.
He wondered why he wasn’t simply dead. Had he been staging a coup, he would not have let his opponents survive. Lenin had thought the same way, and disposed of Tsar Nicholas and his family. With wry amusement, Molotov remembered how shocked the Lizards had been to learn that bit of Soviet history.
To his surprise, a guard did come peer into the cell through the little barred window set into the door. “Awake, are you?” he grunted, his accent White Russian.
“No, I always shout for guards in my sleep,” Molotov snapped.
He might have known the fellow would prove imperturbable. “Good thing you’re with it again. You have some papers to sign. Or maybe you could have done that in your sleep, too.”
“I am not going to sign anything,” Molotov declared. He wondered if he meant it. He’d dished out a lot of pain, but he’d never had to try to take much. People who weren’t on the business end of torture talked about withstanding it. People who were knew how rare an ability that was. Most men, once the anguish started, would do anything to make it stop. He dared a question: “Where am I?”
Beria or Zhukov? Zhukov or Beria? Zhukov, he judged, would not have left him alive if he ever decided to strike for the top. But he didn’t think Beria would have, either. Beria, though, might be inclined to gloat, and…
He didn’t get much chance to think about it. The guard answered, “You’re right where you belong, that’s where.” He laughed at his own cleverness, rocking back on his heels to do it. Then he shoved his face up close to the window again. “And you’ll do what you’re told, or you’ll never do anything else again.” He went on his way, whistling a song that had been popular a few years before.
Molotov’s stomach growled. It was ravenous, no matter how his head felt. He wondered how long he’d been drugged asleep. One more thing they wouldn’t tell him, of course. He looked at the window. Was the stripe of sunlight it admitted higher or lower than before? That would eventually tell him whether this was morning or afternoon. But even if he knew, what could he do with the knowledge? Nothing he could see.
Knowing in whose prison he sat… That could be all-important. And he didn’t need long to figure it out, either, once the cell took on a little more immediate reality for him. Here and there, previous occupants had scrawled or scratched their opinions on the walls. Quite a few were uncomplimentary toward the NKVD. None said a word about the Red Army.
