The strategos nodded and raised his cup slightly. Hands appeared to fill it, add cream and sugar. “Myself and others,” he said. “The strategic situation makes cooperation between the Domination and North America necessary; given your system of government and social organization, that means a press policy as well. You have influence with ABS, an audience, and are suitably antiGerman. There was opposition, but the Strategic section and the Archon agreed that it was advisable.” He smiled thinly.
Dreiser nodded. “It’s reassuring that your Leader realizes the need for friendship between our countries at this critical juncture,” he said, cursing himself for the unction he heard in his own voice. This is a scary old bastard, but you’ve seen worse, he told himself.
Johanna hid a chuckle behind a cough. The elder von Shrakenberg grinned openly. “Back when our good Archon was merely Director of Foreign Affairs, I once overheard her express a fervent desire to separate your President from his testicles and make him eat them. Presumably a metaphor, but with Edwina Palme, you never know. That was in . . . ah, ’38. She’s a mean bitch, but not stupid, and she can recognize a strategic necessity when we point it out.”
He crumbled a scone and added meditatively: “Personally, I would have preferred McClintock, or better still, Terreblanche, particularly in wartime; he could have made the General Staff if he’d stayed in uniform. Just not on, though; the Party wouldn’t have him.”
Dreiser laid down his knife. “To be frank, General, if you hope to convert me, this is scarcely the way to go about it.”
“Oh, not in the least. How did Oscar Wilde put it, after he settled in the Domination? The rest of the Anglo-Saxon world is convinced that the Draka are brutal, licentious, and depraved, the Draka are convinced that outlanders are prigs, hypocritical prudes, and weaklings, and both parties are right . . . ”
Dreiser blinked again, overcome by a slight feeling of unreality. “The problem,” he said, “will be to convince the American public that Nazi Germany is more dangerous than your Domination.”
“It isn’t,” the Draka general said cheerfully. “We’re far more dangerous to you, in the long run. But the National Socialists are more dangerous right now; the Domination is patient, we never bite off more than we can chew and digest. Hitler is a parvenu, and he’s in a hurry; wants to build a thousand-year Reich in a decade. As I said, the strategic situation—”
Dreiser leaned forward. “What is the strategic situation?” he asked.
“Ah.” Karl von Shrakenberg steepled his fingers. “Well, in general, the world situation is approaching what we in Strategic Planning call an endgame. Analogous to the Hellenistic period during the Roman-Carthaginian wars. The game is played out between the Great Powers, and ends when only one is left. To be a Great Power—or World Power—requires certain assets: size, population, food and raw materials, administrative and military skills, industrial production.
“The West Europeans are out of the running; they’re too small. That leaves two actual World Powers—the Domination and the United States. We have more territory, population, and resource base; you have a slightly larger industrial machine.”
He wiped his fingers on a napkin of drawn-thread linen. “And there are two potential World Powers: Germany and Japan. Germany holds all of Europe and is in the process of taking European Russia; Japan has most of China and is gobbling up the former European possessions in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. In both cases, if given a generation to digest, develop and organize their conquests, they would be powers of the first rank. Germany is more immediately dangerous because of her already strong industrial production and high degree of military skill. This present war is to settle the question of whether the two potential powers will survive to enter the next generation of the game. I suggest it is strongly in the American interest that they not be allowed to do so.”
“Why?” Dreiser said bluntly, overcoming distaste. This brutal honesty was one of the reasons for the widespread hatred of the Domination. Hypocrisy was the tribute vice paid to virtue, and the Draka refused to render it, refused to even pretend to virtues that they rejected and despised.
The Draka grinned like a wolf. “Ideology, demographics . . . If National Socialism and the Japanese Empire consolidate their gains, we’ll have to come to an accommodation with them. In both, the master-race population is several times larger than ours. We’re expansionists by inclination, they by necessity. Lebensraum, you see. The only basis for an accommodation would be an alliance against the Western Hemisphere, the more so as all three of us find your worldview subversive and repugnant in the extreme. Of course, two of the victors would then ally to destroy the third, and then fall out with each other. Endgame.”
“And if Hitler and the Japanese are stopped?” the American said softly.
“Why, the U.S.A. and the Domination would divide the spoils between them,” the Draka said jovially. “You’d have a generation of peace, at least: it would take us that long to digest our gains, build up our own numbers, break the conquered peoples to the yoke. Then . . . who knows? We have superior numbers, patience, continuity of purpose. You have more flexibility and ingenuity. It’ll be interesting, at least.”
The American considered his hands. “You may be impossible to live with in the long run,” he said. “I’ve seen Hitler at first hand; he’s impossible in the short run . . . but an American audience isn’t going to be moved by considerations of realpolitik: as far as the voters are concerned, munitions merchants got us into the last one, with nothing more to show than unpaid debts from the Europeans and more serfs for the Draka.”
The general shrugged, blotted his lips and rose. “Ah yes, the notorious Yankee moralism; it makes your electorate even less inclined to rational behavior than ours. I won’t say tell it to the Mexicans...” He leaned forward across the table, resting his weight on his palms. “If your audience needs a pin in the bum of their moral indignation to work up a fighting spirit, consider this. You’ve heard the rumors about what’s happening to the Jews in Europe?”
Dreiser nodded, mouth dry. “From the Friends Service Committee,” he said. “I believed them; most of my compatriots didn’t. They’re . . . unbelievable. Even some of those who admit they’re true won’t believe them.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the younger von Shrakenbergs start at the name of the Quaker humanitarian group.
The general nodded. “They are true, and you can have the Intelligence reports to prove it. And if the Yankee in the street isn’t moved by love of the Jews, the Fritz—the Germans—plan to stuff the Poles and Russians into the incinerators next.” He straightened. “As a guest, of course, my house is yours—ask the steward for anything you wish in the way of entertainment or women. Good day.”
Dreiser stared blankly as the tall figure limped from the terrace. He looked about. The table faced south, over a courtyard surrounded by a colonnade. Cloud-shadow rolled down the naked rock of the hill behind, over the dappled oak forest, past fenced pasture and stables, smelling of turned earth and rock and the huge wild mountains to the east. The courtyard fountain bent before the wind, throwing a mist of spray across tiles blue as lapis. The two young Draka leaned back in their chairs, smiling in a not unkindly scorn.
“Pa—Strategos von Shrakenberg—can be a little . . . alarming at times,” Eric said, offering his hand. “Very much the grand seigneur. An able man, very, but hard.”