“Yes, Comrade,” Molotov said. “The only real danger is becoming involved with the British to such an extent that the Germans will see weakness and jump on us.”
Stalin snorted. “You worry too much,” he said. Molotov quaked; he could be disappeared and replaced with someone more… accepting of Stalin’s quirks and whims. Not a trace of his fear showed on his face, but he knew that Stalin sensed it somehow.
“I live to serve the Revolution,” he said finally, and Stalin smiled. “It is my job to advise you.”
“Of course it is,” Stalin said, with trademark irony. Molotov knew that, in Stalin’s view, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would find it easier to get by without Molotov. “As it happens, we have made contact with both German supporters and Communists within both Iran and Iraq, and even supporters of Ibn Saud. We’ll keep the imperialists busy while we secure Iran.”
He waved a hand at the map. “Comrade Zhukov has more than enough firepower,” he said. Molotov nodded; Zhukov had even been given the prividge of accessing the files of his victories in the near-mythical other timeline. “He has one hundred and fifty thousand men and nearly five hundred tanks. Mainly old models, but far tougher than anything the Iranians have. He believes that he can secure Iran in a week to a month.”
“He knows his trade,” Molotov said carefully. Zhukov had been canny enough to give no precise timetable, but if Molotov agreed with him and the general failed, Stalin would remember.
“Of course he does,” the General Secretary said cheerfully. “While Hitler and the future Britain and the Japanese fight it out, we will secure our position in the Middle East.” He smiled. “The future is not yet written, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich; while the imperialists and the fascists grind each other down, we will position ourselves for the next round.”
Molotov nodded. Discovering that the Soviet Union was fated to lose in Afghanistan was a shock; Stalin’s response had been to order the Afghanis exterminated, sending in troops on slash and burn missions and showered Kabul with nerve gas. The waves of fleeing humanity were starting to have an effect on North West India, further confounding the British.
“With Iran, we will have secured Tsar Peter’s instructions, and then we will take all of the oil at our leisure,” Stalin continued. “If rag-headed holdovers from the days before the light of communism can threaten America, we can do the same – and our motives will be different. In our lifetime, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, we will see the world united under a red flag.”
With terrifying speed, his mode shifted. “And of our own nuclear program?”
“It proceeds,” Molotov said reluctantly. ‘Proceeds’ was an overstatement; the scientists were proceeding with ant-like speed. “We lack equipment and knowledge, and most of our sources in America have been silenced.”
“Then the fascists will have the superweapon before we will,” Stalin bellowed. “That is intolerable!”
Molotov, who privately agreed, winced. The resources of the USSR were vast, but its scientific base was sadly limited. Unfortunately, Stalin, not being a scientist, didn’t understand the need for research to establish how to build a weapon, nor the lack of the required equipment to build the prototype reactor.
“We could always ask our allies for assistance,” he said. “However, I suspect that Hitler will prove untrustworthy; it’s not in their interests to supply us with details like that.”
Stalin nodded slowly, his great head lowering. “We still supply them with strategic materials,” he said. “Were we to cut them off, they might give us information that we could check, or he might order an attack.”
Hitler had done that in the original timeline, Molotov knew, and had come within a hairsbreadth of success. Armed with foreknowledge and a reformed production system, might he succeed if he tried again?
“We can ask for the information,” Molotov said carefully. “Should he refuse, well, we’re in no worse a position, and we will soon dominate the oil wells of the Middle East.”
“I have thought about sabotaging the oil wells in Romania,” Stalin said. Molotov allowed himself one lifted eyebrow; the USSR had been planning to get their hands on the oil wells. “Unfortunately, that might tempt Hitler into an attack before we are ready to meet him.” He shook his head, lighting a new cigar. “No, for the moment, we have to play carefully.”
He grinned up at Molotov, a playful grin that had sent thousands to the gulags, or to the executioners’ block. “In time, Comrade, we will be able to dictate our own terms; for the moment, as the dialectic says, patience is required.”
Molotov relaxed and bowed; patience was indeed required. For Stalin to grasp that was a minor miracle, if Molotov believed in miracles, which he didn’t. Communism had shaped the world according to logic; there was no place for superstition, as the Christian Poles, the Jewish Poles and the Muslim Tatars and Afghanis were finding out.
USSR-Iran Border
Iran
17th September 1940
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, General of the Soviet Union and Hero of the Soviet Union, victor of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol against the yellow Japanese, and also victor of shadowy battles in a timeline that would never exist, examined his final dispositions with concern. He’d implemented as much of his strange other-self’s doctrine as he could, including concentrating the tanks and improving the logistics, but he knew that the army was short of many things it needed. Soviet industries were working as hard as they could, but the army was critically short of radios, trucks, rolling stock and countless other things.
“Comrade General?”
Zhukov schooled his expression into immobility as the man approached. He was a thin pale colourless man, which a pinched face like a creature out of myth, and he wore green tabs on his shoulder boards. He was NKVD; representative of Beria, and through him Stalin himself. He was also someone who should never have been allowed near a battlefield.
“Yes, Comrade Commissioner?” Zhukov asked, trusting in Stalin’s desire that he defected the Iranians to protect him. “You have a concern?”
“The Persians have hammered a couple of our cavalry patrols,” Commissioner Petrovich said. “Are we not going to punish them?”
Zhukov waved a hand at the lines of tanks, now preparing their engines for the charge ahead. He’d ordered the horse-riding patrols to locate the Iranian dispositions, knowing that the Red Air Force wasn’t up to the task. Two days after he’d given the order, he now knew where most of the Iranians were.
“In half an hour, comrade, we will be on the march,” Zhukov said. The plan was a modification of the one that had worked at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol; the first echelon would engage the Iranian positions directly, while the second echelon would swing around them and cut the Iranians off from support. Once the Iranian forces in North Iran had been destroyed, and there was the inevitable wait for logistics to catch up with them, they would proceed south to Abadan and Tehran.
“The politburo will not be pleased,” Petrovich said, but he swung away. Zhukov scowled inside; someone with so little training could get hurt on a battlefield. Time passed slowly; he continued to receive reports, and slowly marked out the location of the Iranian forces.
“Time to go,” he said, calling Petrovich back from where he'd been harassing the tank crews. “Are you ready, Comrade Petrovich?”
“Yes, Comrade General,” Petrovich said. “I give you my approval to advance.”