Striking the Balance

Skorzeny giggled. “Isn’t this fun?” he said. The other SS man stared at him: that wasn’t in the script. Jager just snorted. He’d seen too many times that Skorzeny was indifferent to the script. The big SS man flipped the bar switch 180 degrees. “The transmitter is now active,” he said.

“I confirm that the transmitter has been activated,” the other SS man droned.

And then Skorzeny broke the rules again. He reached up and gave Jager the handset, asking, “Do you want to do the honors?”

“Me?” Jager almost dropped it. “Are you out of your mind? Good God, no.” He handed the device back to Skorzeny. Only after he’d done so did he realize heshould have dropped it, or else contrived to smash it against the side of the panzer.

“All right, don’t let it worry you,” Skorzeny said. “I can kill my own dog. I can kill a whole great lot of sons of bitches.” His thumb came down hard on the red button.

XVIII

Even had the weather been cool, Vyacheslav Molotov would have been steaming as he stood around in the lobby of the Semiramis Hotel waiting for a Lizard armored personnel carrier to convey him to Shepheard’s.

“Idiocy,” the Soviet foreign commissar muttered to Yakov Donskoi. Where von Ribbentrop was concerned, he did not bother holding his scorn in check. “Idiocy, syphilitic paresis, or both. Probably both.”

Von Ribbentrop, waiting for his own armored personnel carrier, might well have been in earshot, but he didn’t speak Russian. Had he spoken Russian, Molotov would have changed not a word. The interpreter glanced over to the German foreign minister, then, almost whispering himself, replied, “It is most irregular, Comrade Foreign Commissar, but-”

Molotov waved him to silence. “But me no buts, Yakov Beniaminovich. Since we came here, the Lizards have convened all our sessions, as is only proper. For that arrogant Nazi to demand a noon meeting-” He shook his head. “I thought it was mad dogs and Englishmen who went out in the noonday sun, not a mad dog of a German.”

Before Donskoi could say anything to that, several personnel carriers pulled up in front of the hotel. The Lizards didn’t seem happy about ferrying all the human diplomats to Shepheard’s at the same time, but von Ribbentrop hadn’t given them enough notice of this meeting upon which he insisted for them to do anything else.

When the negotiators reached Atvar’s headquarters, Lizard guards made sure Molotov did not speak to Marshall or Eden or Togo before entering the meeting room. They also made sure he did not speak to von Ribbentrop. That was wasted labor; he had nothing to say to the German foreign minister.

Precisely at noon, the Lizard fleetlord came into the meeting room, accompanied by his interpreter. Through that male, Atvar said, “Very well, speaker for the not-empire of Deutschland, I have agreed to your request for this special session at this special time. You will now explain why you made such a request. I listen with great attentiveness.”

It had better be good,was what he meant. Even through two interpreters, Molotov had no trouble figuring that out. Von Ribbentrop heard it through only one, so it should have been twice as clear to him.

If it was, he gave no sign. “Thank you, Fleetlord,” he said as he got to his feet. From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and, as portentously as he could, unfolded it “Fleetlord, I read to you a statement from Adolf Hitler,Fuhrer of the GermanReich.”

When he spoke Hitler’s name, his voice took on a reverence more pious than the Pope (back before the Pope had been blown to radioactive dust) would have used in mentioning Jesus. But then, why not? Von Ribbentrop thought Hitler was infallible; when he’d made the German-Soviet nonaggression pact the fascists had so brutally violated, he’d declared to the whole world, “TheFuhrer is always right.” In such opinions, unlike diplomacy, he lacked the duplicity needed to lie well.

Now, in pompous tones, he went on, “TheFuhrer

declares that, as the Race has intolerably occupied territory rightfully German and refuses to leave such territory regardless of the illegitimacy of that occupation, theReich is fully justified in taking the strongest measure against the Race, and has now initiated those measures. We-”

Molotov knew a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach. So the Nazi had had a reason for summoning everyone. The fascist regime had launched another sneak attack and was now, in a pattern long familiar, offering some trumped-up rationale for whatever its latest unprovoked act of aggression had been.

Sure enough, von Ribbentrop continued, “-have emphasized our legitimate demands by the detonation of this latest explosive-metal bomb, and by the military action following it. God will give the GermanReich the victory it deserves.” The German foreign minister refolded the paper, put it away, and shot out his right arm in the Nazi salute.“Heil Hitler!”