He grinned. “Who knows? We might manage to civilise and democratise the entire world,” he said. “There have been no people like you cursing the west with every breath here, not yet.”
Stewart scowled. “I understand your point,” she said. “I came with a proposition.”
“I’m already married,” Horton said. “What do you want?”
“A book,” Stewart said. “It could be a bestseller.”
Horton gaped at her, and then barked a laugh. “I imagine that you’ll make yourself into a hero and myself into a villain,” he said.
Stewart shook her head. “It will be jointly-written and it will be written under an agreement that it has to please both of us before it gets published,” she said.
Horton looked at her. “Tell me something,” he said. “Are you going to follow the army into Russia?” Stewart nodded. “Tell you what,” Horton said. “If I approve of your reports and newspaper articles and what-have-you, I’ll agree, understand?” Stewart nodded and held out a hand. Horton shook it solemnly.
Chapter Forty-Three: A Tiger By The Tail
Waffen-SS Camp
Brest, Belarus
21st June 1942
It was June, the height of summer for Belarus – which was a loyal and obedient component of the Soviet Union, according to Radio Moscow – and yet Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov had never felt so cold. The camp was heavily camouflaged, and yet the entire… concept of the camouflage was different from the Red Army’s. Black-garbed troopers, homeless, but not without weapons, stood on guard around a tiny shack.
“You may pass,” the guard said, after examining Molotov closely. Molotov took one final look around the camp, noticing the concealed King Tiger tanks hidden under netting, and stepped into the shack. Inside, it was reasonably comfortable; it had belonged to one of the Party’s most loyal servants within Belarus, who had not been happy when the NKVD had tossed him out to install the Germans.
“Herr Molotov,” a voice said. Molotov scowled; the voice was very like that of the recently departed Beria. Heinrich Himmler sat neatly on a stool, his eyes glinting with malice. He possessed nearly forty thousand fanatical SS men – survivors of the forces that Molotov was certain had been intended to turn on the Soviet Union – and he was homeless.
“Comrade Himmler,” Molotov said, his voice faintly mocking. “I trust that you find your accommodations to your liking?”
The question wasn’t entirely idle. Nearly two million soldiers of the Red Army – in theory – were stationed along the borders, but with the simmering unrest in the Ukraine and Belarus itself, many of them were tied down preventing further unrest. The SS were well-armed and very well-trained; they could cause a lot of trouble before they were hunted down and crushed.
“Should Belarus revolt against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants,” Stalin had said, “the Germans will soon convince them of the errors of their ways.”
Molotov shuddered, thinking of the device that the Germans had brought along with them. Stalin was playing a dangerous game; milking the nazi scientists for their technologies, while keeping the Waffen-SS alive as a German government in exile. If they decided to fight against Stalin, they could tear a gaping hole in the defensive line.
“They are adequate, for now,” Himmler said. “I trust that Comrade Stalin was impressed with the sciences that we have brought?”
“A single working nuclear warhead,” Molotov said. Stalin had been impressed; Molotov himself had been less impressed. One warhead didn’t mean that it could be duplicated, even in the German science cities.
“Something that will put us on equal terms to the cursed British,” Himmler said. “I imagine that Comrade Stalin enjoys that thought.”
Molotov showed no expression. Hitler and Stalin were the same, both people with a talent for creating a social structure that supported their control. Himmler, on the other hand, wasn’t anything like as capable as Hitler; his people followed him through fanaticism. Hitler could command loyalty; Himmler… couldn’t. The mere fact of his betrayal proved that.
We’re clutching a viper to our blossom, Molotov, never a very poetic man, thought coldly. Stalin didn’t understand that; he saw Himmler as an equal, rather than a far more dangerous version of Beria. And now that Beria was dead, Himmler had no equal. Would Stalin be stupid enough to give the fascist a role within the USSR?
“He wants to know how quickly it will be before you can produce more nuclear weapons,” Molotov said, not altogether truthfully. “We will need more than one to prevent Allied retaliation.”
“As one nuclear warhead might be a fluke,” Himmler agreed. “A reasonable precaution, indeed. We should be able to produce a second one in Science City Zero within a month, now that we know what we’re doing. The breeder reactor is up and running there, and we’re producing explosive metal as fast as we can.”
Molotov scowled. ‘Explosive metal’ was what some of the Soviet scientists called uranium; they hadn’t grasped the full details of the procedure. The Soviet Union was woefully short of qualified scientists, and the small German population was being careful about what they shared. Given time, he knew, one of the Soviet programs would duplicate the German success, and then the Germans could be liquidated.
He allowed himself a quick smile. He was looking forward to that day.
“A month,” he said, smiling. The expression seemed to reassure Himmler. “That might be enough. Now, how do you propose that we employ the bomb?”
Himmler seemed to consider. His eyes glittered. “We cannot hope to launch it in an aircraft,” he said. “From what we learned of their science, we may not be able to smuggle it through a checkpoint or into one of their cities.”
“So we have a useless weapon,” Molotov snapped. “We cannot use it for offensive purposes and…”
Himmler talked over him. Molotov was shocked; only Stalin did that. “We can use it for just that,” Himmler said. “Your defence forces will have to fight from their fixed positions, as manoeuvre war is impossible under the shadow of their air cover.”
Molotov nodded. Marshal Kliment Voroshilov spoke of using the thousands of planes that the Red Air Force had assembled, many of them older models flown by press-ganged subject races, to swarm the British and American aircraft. Practically, the Battle of the Netherlands had suggested that such tactics would be very costly indeed for the Red Air Force.
“That gives us an opportunity,” Himmler said. “They will have to swing around, trap and encircle their forces in a kessel, and then seal you off or crush you. In this, they will probably have the help of what Poles remain in their country.”
Molotov scowled. They’d slaughtered Poles or forced them to the gulags, they’d poisoned the land and destroyed the food supplies, but a handful of Poles still hung on to life, hiding in the marshes, forests and hills. The Germans had done the same, trying to enslave an entire nation, but even they had been unable to slaughter all of the Polish people.
“They will almost certainly try to pick a weak point in your lines, break through, and then circle round,” Himmler said. He waved a hand at the map, which displayed Red Army positions. Molotov felt his blood run cold; Stalin had given specific orders that such information was not to be made available to the Germans. Himmler tapped Lodz.
“Here is the most likely place,” Himmler said. Lodz had once held a large Jewish community; it didn’t anymore. Soviet troops had occupied it as Berlin fell to the Free German Army. Himmler’s fingers traced a powerful thrust moving at the most powerful Russian force short of the Stalin Line. “We place the nuke somewhere here,” he said. “They come up… boom.”