Final impact

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.

It wasn’t a simple thing to make an atomic bomb. Not a simple thing at all. If only the Vozhd would realize that.

Beria had a piercing headache and was sick with worry precisely because Stalin refused to accept this fact. The general secretary sat across the desk from him, regarding the NKVD chief with a cold, implacable stare. It was a look as empty of human feeling as the expression on a bronze statue. Indeed, any sculptor who produced such a likeness would probably be shot. None of the other men in the room gave him the slightest hint of sympathy.

“I have been pushing and pushing, Comrade General Secretary,” Beria protested. “I even had a couple of laggards and their families removed from the program and transferred to a punishment camp, just to encourage the rest.”

“Really?” Stalin said. His expression didn’t change. No one else dared speak.

Beria was about to reiterate how stern and uncompromising he had been in pursuit of the business of state, but something in Stalin’s tone stopped him.

The supreme leader of the Soviet Union spoke again in a chillingly flat manner.

“Perhaps you should not have done that, Laventry Pavlovich. Your methods have been somewhat crude, yes? If you had not been so heavy-handed with those few British sailors who survived the Emergence, perhaps we would not be having this unpleasant conversation. Perhaps we would be toasting the victory of the workers in Berlin. Or London. Or Washington.”

This was intolerable! Stalin accusing him of being crude!

Beria was only too aware that every eye in the conference room was now resting on him. The chill in Stalin’s gaze was repeated a dozen times around the table as the other members of the Stavka, the supreme Soviet war council, weighed the risk of incurring his wrath should he survive this meeting.

Clearly they found his chances wanting. The military officers remained stone-faced, but he could see all too well the shameful joy in the eyes of the civilian ministers, especially Malenkov. That fat freak was practically wetting himself with suppressed mirth.

Standing in his place at the table, struggling to control the tremors that wanted to turn him inside out, Beria fought for his life.

“Comrade General Secretary, it was necessary to adopt the harshest measures with the captives. If I might be allowed to remind you, they attempted to destroy their own ship when apprised of its situation. And there was no way for us to know that they possessed the inserted devices that allowed them to withstand so much pain. Indeed, we did not even know we were killing them! Our methods seemed to yield few results until it was too late.”

Stalin did not shout. He didn’t respond at all. He played with his empty pipe, which Beria knew from long experience was infinitely more worrying.

Finally he spoke. “And the last of them, the Negro woman. You knew about her inserts. Did you not?”

“Yes, we knew,” he cried. “And we tried to remove them. I have written authorization from you, approving the procedure. Nevertheless, it was no easy thing to dig such a device out of a woman’s spine. Little wonder that she died on the table.”

“For which you jailed the doctors, if I remember correctly,” Stalin replied. “They failed and they were punished.

“You failed. So?”

A grin slithered across Malenkov’s ugly face, like an eel, but Beria concentrated on bargaining with the Vozhd. “The bomb we dropped on Lodz did not fail. It wiped the city from the map and sent the Germans into full retreat toward the Oder.”

“Yes. And where are the follow-up attacks?” Stalin asked. “I was assured that we would pave the way to Berlin with these weapons.”

“And we shall. We shall,” he declared, using a cuff to wipe away the sweat that was leaking from the top of his head, plastering down what was left of his hair. It was a warm summer’s day outside, but the heavy purple drapes in the room remained drawn, on his own recommendation. He had read about sound guns that could be pointed at a window to pick up the conversations being conducted within. Presumably the heavy drapes would act as a baffle.

“How shall we?” Stalin asked. “How shall we press the advantage, when you tell us you cannot deliver the weapons?”

“That is not what I am saying,” Beria replied. “We have three more warheads under construction right now, as we speak. But these are not gasoline bombs. They are horribly complicated devices. One slip and the entire facility could be destroyed. And where would we be then? At the mercy of Churchill, who wants to use his own bombs on us. At the mercy of Truman, soon enough, who has proven in the other world that he will act with utter ruthlessness, when the occasion calls for it.

“We already know that the Allies are planning war with the Soviet Union. They will not allow history to take its course. If we strike, and our assault is a failure, they will sense weakness and they will act. Have no doubt about it. They…will…act.