Tilting the Balance

One of the grunting, snorting machines rumbled by close enough for the commander to hear that cry. To Mutt, he was just a vague shape sticking up from the top of the turret He called back in unmistakable New England accents, “We’re friendly all right, buddy. We’re usin’ the rain to move up without the Lizards spotting us-give the little scaly sons of bitches a surprise if they come after you guys.”

“Sounds right good, pal,” Daniels answered, waving. The tank-he could tell it was a Sherman; the turret was too big for a Lee-rattled on toward the south edge of Riverview Park. In a way, Mutt envied the crew for having inches of hardened steel between them and the foe. In another way, he was happy enough to be just an infantryman. The Lizards didn’t particularly notice him. Tanks, though, drew their special fire. They had some fancy can openers, too.

The tank commander had to know that better than Mutt did. He kept heading south anyhow. Mutt wondered how many times he’d been in action, and if this one would be the last. With a wave to the departing tank that was half salute, he went back into the ruined auditorium to finish his chicken.

XIII

Vyacheslav Molotov jounced along toward the farm outside Moscow in a panje wagon, as if he were a peasant with a couple of sacks of radishes he hadn’t been able to sell. From the way the NKVD man driving the wagon behaved, Molotov might have been a sack of radishes himself. The Soviet foreign commissar didn’t mind. He was rarely in the mood for idle chitchat, with today no exception to the rule.

All around him, the land burgeoned with Russian spring. The sun rose early now, and set late, and everything that had lain dormant through winter flourished in the long hours of daylight. Fresh green grass pushed up through and hid last year’s growth, now gray brown and dead. The willows and birches by the Moscow River wore new bright leafy coats. Concealed by those new leaves, birds chirped and warbled. Molotov did not know which bird went with which song. He could barely tell a titmouse from a toucan, not that you were likely to find a toucan in a Russian treetop even in springtime.

Ducks stuck their behinds in the air as they tipped up for food in the river. The driver looked at them and murmured, “I wish I had a shotgun.” Molotov saw reply as unnecessary; the driver would likely have said the same thing had he been alone in the wagon.

Molotov wished not for a shotgun but a car. Yes, gasoline was in short supply, with almost all of it earmarked for the front. But as the number two man in the Soviet Union behind Stalin, he could have arranged for a limousine had he wanted one. The Lizards, however, were more likely to shoot up motor vehicles than horse-drawn wagons. Molotov played it safe.

When the driver pulled off the road and onto a meandering path, Molotov thought the fellow had lost his way. The thrill ahead looked like an archetypical kolkhoz, maybe a little smaller than most of its ilk. Chickens ran around clucking and pecking, fat pigs wallowed in mud. In the fields, men walked behind mules. The only buildings were row houses for the kolkhozniks and barns for the animals.

Then one of the men, dressed like any farmer in boots, baggy trousers, collarless tunic, and cloth cap, opened the door to a barn and went inside. Before he closed it after himself, the foreign commissar saw that the inside was brightly lit by electric light. Even before the Germans and the Lizards came, that would have been unusual for a kolkhoz. Now it was inconceivable.

His smile came broader and more fulsome than most who knew him would have imagined his face could form. “A splendid job of maskirovka,” he said enthusiastically. “Whoever designed and implemented the deception plan, he deserves to be promoted.”

“Comrade Foreign Commissar, I am given to understand the responsible parties have been recognized,” the driver said. He looked like a peasant-he looked like a drunk-but he talked like an educated man. Maskirovka again, Molotov thought. He knew intellectually he would not have a drunken peasant taking him to arguably the most important place in the Soviet Union, but the man played his role well.

Molotov pointed to the barn. “That is where they do their research?”

“Comrade, all l know is that that is where l was told to deliver you,” the driver answered. “What they do in there I could not tell you, and I do not want to know.”

He pulled back on the reins. The horse drawing the high-wheeled panje wagon obediently stopped. Molotov, who was not a large man (even if he was taller than Stalin), scrambled down without grace but also without falling. As he headed for the barn door, the driver took a flask from his hip pocket and swigged from it. Maybe he was an educated drunk.