It would have been altogether disastrous, but Molotov didn’t have the nerve to tell that to Stalin. No one had the nerve to tell Stalin such things. The Moskva Hotel had two wings that spectacularly didn’t match. The architects had chosen to show Stalin their plans, expecting him to pick one design or the other. He’d just nodded and said, “Yes, do it that way,” and no one dared do anything else.
The doorman tapped on the door. Stalin and Molotov looked at each other in surprise; they weren’t supposed to be interrupted. Then the doorman did something even more surprising: he stuck his head in and said, “Iosef Vissarionovich, the officer here bears an urgent message. May he deliver it?”
After a moment, Stalin said,“Da,” with clear overtones ofit had better be.
The officer wore the three red squares of a senior lieutenant and the green backing on his collar tabs that meant he was from the NKVD. Saluting, he said, “Comrade General Secretary, Lizard propaganda broadcasts report-and Japanese radio confirms-that the Lizards have detonated an explosive-metal bomb over Tokyo. They say this was because the Japanese were engaged in nuclear research there. Casualties are said to be very heavy.”
Molotov waited to see how Stalin would react, intending to match his own response to his leader’s. Stalin said, “The Germans were inept, and blew themselves up. The Japanese were careless, and let the Lizards get wind of what they were about. We can afford neither mistake. We already knew that, but now we are, mm, strongly reminded once more.”
“Truth, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin did have an eye for the essential. Not for nothing had he dominated the Soviet Union these past twenty years. Molotov wondered where-or if-the USSR would be in another twenty.
5
The engineer in the room next to the broadcast studio gave theyou’re on signal through the large window the two rooms shared. Nodding, Moishe Russie began reading from his Yiddish script: “Good day. This is Moishe Russie, coming to you by way of the BBC’s Overseas Services. Another great world capital has fallen to the malice of the Lizards.”
He sighed. The sigh was part of the script, but also heartfelt. “When the Lizards destroyed Berlin last year, I confess that I was not altogether brokenhearted. The Germans had done dreadful things to the Jews under their control. I thought the Lizards, who helped the Jews of Poland escape the Nazi yoke, were our benefactors.
“I was wrong. The Lizards used us, too. They were willing to let us live, yes, but only as their slaves. And that holds not just for us but also for all mankind. When the Lizards destroyed Washington, they made that plain for anyone with eyes to see. When they destroyed Washington, they showed they were fighting freedom.
“And now Tokyo. The Lizards no longer even try to pretend. They come straight out and tell us they dropped one of their hellish bombs on it because the Japanese were seeking to build weapons there that could meet them on even terms. That some hundreds of thousands of human beings, most of them civilians, died in the bombing is to the Lizards of no consequence.
“Mankind has employed one of these bombs, against a purely military target. The Lizards have now incinerated three historic cities, seeking to terrify humanity into surrender. London, from which I am broadcasting, has already been bombarded by both Hitler and the Lizards, yet still endures. Even if, in their madness, the Lizards treat it as they did Tokyo, the British Isles and the British Empire will continue not only to endure but also to resist. We hope and expect that all of you who are unfortunate enough to live in territory overrun by the aliens, yet can hear my voice, will continue to resist, too. In the end, we shall prevail.”
He came to the end of the script just as the engineer drew a finger across his throat. Beaming at the good timing, Nathan Jacobi took over, in English rather than Yiddish: “I shall translate Moishe Russie’s remarks momentarily. First, though, I should like to note that no one is better qualified to judge the perfidy in the Lizards’ promises than Mr. Russie, for he watched them turn what he’d thought to be liberation into the enslavement and wholesale murder they bring to the entire world. As he said…”
Moishe listened to the introduction with half an ear. He was picking up more English day by day, but remained far from fluent: by the time he figured out what most of one sentence meant, two others would go by.
Jacobi went through an English version of Russie’s speech for Eastern European listeners who had no Yiddish. Since Moishe already knew what he’d said, he did better at following that than he had with the introduction. When the engineer signaled that they were off the air, he leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.
Switching from English to Yiddish for Moishe’s benefit, the newsreader said, “I do wonder at times whether any of this does the least bit of good.”
“It does,” Moishe assured him. “When the Lizards had me locked up in Lodz, it wasn’t just my English cousin who helped me get out, but plenty of Jewish fighters from Poland. They need encouragement, and to be reminded they’re not the only people left in the whole world who want to stand up to the Lizards.”
“No doubt you’re right,” Jacobi said. “You would know better than I, having been on the spot. I just seem to have spent almost all of the last four years broadcasting messages of hope into occupied Europe-first Nazi-occupied Europe, now Lizard-occupied Europe-with what looks like very little return for the effort. I do want to feel I’m actually contributing to the war effort.”
“The Lizards don’t like truth any better than the Germans did,” Russie answered. “Next to what the Nazis were doing in Poland, they looked good for a moment, but that was all. They may not be out to exterminate anyone, but they are aiming to enslave everyone all over the world, and the more people realize that, the harder they’ll fight back.”
“All over the world,” Jacobi repeated. “That takes thinking about. We called it a world war before the Lizards came, but the Americans, Africa, India, much of the Near East-they were hardly touched. Now the whole world really is in play. Rather hard to imagine.”
Moishe nodded. It was harder for him than for the British Jew. Jacobi had grown up in London, the center of the greatest empire the world had ever known and also closely linked to the United States. Thinking of the world as a whole had to come easy for him. Moishe’s mental horizons hadn’t really reached beyond Poland-indeed, seldom beyond Warsaw-until the day von Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet friendship pact and guaranteed that war would not only come but would be disastrous when it came.
Through the glass, the engineer motioned Russie and Jacobi out of the studio. They got up quickly; another broadcaster or team would soon be taking over the facility.
Sure enough, out in the hall stood a tall, skinny, craggy-faced man with a thick shock of dark hair just beginning to go gray. He was looking at his wristwatch and holding a sheaf of typewritten pages like the ones Jacobi carried. “Good morning, Mr. Blair,” Russie said, trotting out his halting English.
“Good morning, Russie,” Eric Blair answered. He slid off his dark herringbone jacket. “Warm work closed up in the coffin there. I’d sooner be in my shirtsleeves.”
“Yes, warm,” Moishe said, responding to the part he’d understood. Blair broadcast for the Indian Section of the BBC. He’d lived in Burma for a time, and had also fought and been badly wounded fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Somewhere there, or perhaps back in England, he’d picked up a wet cough that was probably tubercular.