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What sort of madman will I have to deal with next? was how Molotov phrased the question in his mind. American presidential candidates, at least, spelled out what they had in mind before taking office. You could plan for a man like that, even if he looked likely to be unfortunate. But the only qualification for Fuhrer that Molotov could see was a quick, sharp knife.
He did not dwell on how a German politico might view the process of succession in the USSR. He took his own country, his own system, for granted.
His secretary looked into the office. “Comrade General Secretary, the foreign commissar is here for his ten o’clock appointment.”
As usual, Molotov glanced at the clock on the wall. Gromyko was precisely on time. He always was. Few Soviet officials imitated him. Despite two generations of Soviet discipline, most Russians seemed constitutionally unable to take the notion of precise time seriously. “Send him in, Pyotr Maksimovich,” Molotov said.
Gromyko, craggy features impassive as usual, strode past the secretary and into the office. He leaned across the desk to shake hands with Molotov. “Good day, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” he said.
“And to you, Andrei Andreyevich,” Molotov replied. He waved Gromyko to a chair. They both lit cigarettes, Molotov’s Russian-style in a long paper holder, Gromyko’s an American brand. After a couple of puffs, Molotov said, “You will, no doubt, have a good notion of why I want to see you.”
“What ever gave you that idea?” Gromyko had a good deadpan, all right. “It’s not as if the Reich were of any great concern to us.”
“No, of course not.” Molotov wouldn’t let the foreign commissar win the palm for irony without a fight. “Why, for the past generation Germany has scarcely mattered to us at all.”
“Even so.” Gromyko stretched out an arm to tap his cigarette into an ashtray on Molotov’s desk. After another drag on the cigarette, his manner changed. “I wonder what we do have to look forward to.”
“That is the reason I asked to speak with you,” Molotov replied. “You will be flying off to Nuremberg for the state funeral day after tomorrow. I await your impressions of the potential German leaders.”
“Goebbels we know,” Gromyko said, and Molotov nodded. The foreign commissar went on, “Manstein we also know. He is the likeliest of the generals to come to the top. By all accounts, an able man.”
Molotov nodded again. “Zhukov respects him,” he said. By his tone, by his expression, no one would have known how much having to acknowledge Zhukov’s opinion pained him. “As you say, he too is a known quantity.”
“But the SS officials under Himmler…” Gromyko’s voice trailed away. He stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one.
“Yes, they are the trouble,” Molotov agreed. “None of them has been able to show what he can do, for Himmler has held power there firmly in his own hands. If one of them can grab it, who knows in which direction he might go?”
“It could be worse,” Gromyko said. Molotov raised an eyebrow. The foreign commissar explained: “The Lizards might have landed a few days earlier. Then, perhaps, the British would not have assassinated Heydrich.”
After pondering that, Molotov discovered he had to nod. “Yes, you are right-although I doubt Heydrich would have waited for Himmler to die of natural causes before making his bid for the top spot. Go on to Nuremberg, then, Andrei Andreyevich. Learn what you can and report back to me.”
“Very well, Comrade General Secretary.” Gromyko’s shaggy eyebrows twitched. “I do hope the Nazis can keep from starting their civil war until Himmler’s funeral is over.”
“Yes, that would be good, wouldn’t it?” After a moment, Molotov realized the foreign commissar hadn’t been joking. He glanced at the smoke spiraling up from his own cigarette, which he hadn’t crushed quite well enough. “Do you really think it will come to that?”
“I hope not,” Gromyko answered. “But in the Reich there is only one way to tell who is the stronger: by conflict. When Hitler died, Himmler was inarguably the strongest man left. Who is strongest now is not so clear, which makes struggles over the succession more likely.”
“You could be right,” Molotov said. Guile and intrigue had got him the top spot in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. He wondered who would succeed him, and how. The question wasn’t idle-far from it. Now he did think about similarities between the USSR and the Greater German Reich. His own country had no more formal system for succession than did Germany. Beria’s failed coup had rubbed everyone’s nose in that. The failed coup had also made it all too likely that Molotov’s successor would be Marshal Zhukov, a distinctly unappetizing prospect for an apparatchik.
Smoking yet another cigarette, Gromyko left the office. Molotov lit a new one from his own packet. The Americans and the Lizards both claimed tobacco cut years off your life. Having already passed his threescore and ten, Molotov found that hard to believe. If tobacco was poisonous, wouldn’t it have killed him by now? In any case, he was inclined to doubt claims from the Race or from the USA on general principles.
He could have watched Himmler’s funeral on television. In these days of relay satellites, news went around the world as soon as it happened. He didn’t watch. He knew the Nazis were good at melodramatic spectacle. As far as he was concerned, their rule depended in no small measure on keeping the masses mystified through spectacle so they would have no chance to contemplate either their oppression or rising against it.
And, when Gromyko returned from the German capital, Molotov asked no questions about the last rites for the dead Fuhrer. Instead, he came straight to the point: “Who is in charge in Nuremberg?”
“Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, I do not precisely know.” Gromyko sounded troubled at the admission. “I don’t think the Germans know, either.”
“That is not good,” Molotov said, with what he judged considerable understatement. “Where no one is in charge, anything can happen.” It wasn’t a proverb, but it sounded like one.
Gromyko accepted it as if it were. “What they have in place now is something they call the Committee of Eight. It has soldiers on it, and SS functionaries, and Nazi Party officials, and a couple of Goebbels’ men, too.”
Scornfully, Molotov clicked his tongue between his teeth. “All that means is that they are putting off the bloodletting till someone is ready to start it.”
“Of course,” Gromyko agreed. No veteran of Communist Party infighting could fail to recognize such portents.
“Now we have an interesting question,” Molotov said. “Do we prod the Germans while they are weak and confused, or do we le
ave them severely alone till they sort themselves out?”
“If we prod them, we may gain advantages we could not have managed against Himmler.” The foreign commissar spoke in musing tones. “On the other hand, we may only succeed in uniting the members of this committee against us, or in bringing one of them to the top.”
Molotov nodded. Gromyko had laid out the alternatives as neatly as a geometry teacher proving a theorem on the blackboard. “If we leave them alone, they are likely to stay disorganized longer than they would otherwise. But so what, if we gain nothing from their disorganization?”
“In that case, at least, we do not run the risk of conflict with them,” Gromyko said.
“Conflict with them is inevitable.” There Molotov knew he was on firm ideological grounds. But, ideology or no ideology, he temporized: “With the weapons they and we have, conflict with them is also liable to be suicidal.”
“Yes,” Gromyko said, and then, greatly daring, “This is a problem I fear neither Marx nor Lenin anticipated.”
“Possibly not,” Molotov said. The admission made him as nervous as if he were the Pope airing doubts about the Trinity. He backed away from it: “But if we cannot rely on Marx and Lenin, on whom can we rely?”
“Lenin extended Marx’s doctrine into areas on which Marx did not speak,” the foreign commissar replied. “It is up to us to extend Marxist-Leninist thought into the new areas that have come to light over the past forty years.”
“I suppose so.” Again, Molotov thought of the Pope. “We cannot say we are changing the doctrine, of course-only strengthening it.” How had the papacy dealt with the theory of evolution? Carefully, was the answer that sprang to mind.
“Of course,” Gromyko echoed. “That was what Stalin said, too. It gave him the excuse he needed to do whatever he pleased-not that he needed much of an excuse to go and do that.”
“No,” Molotov agreed. Stalin was more than ten years dead now, but his shadow lingered over everyone who’d ever had anything to do with him. Molotov had never been shy about ordering executions, but he knew he lacked Stalin’s relentless ruthlessness. In a way, that knowledge made him feel inadequate, as if he were a son conscious of not being quite the man his father was.
