Final impact

“Three bombs!” thundered Stalin. “Three puny little bombs to their, what, dozens? Hundreds? Does anybody have any idea? Any idea at all? No! And these planes they have flown from the middle of their deserts to the middle of Germany. What do we know about them? How many do they have? Can we shoot them down? Or does the Rodina now lie open before them like some drunken washerwoman with her ankles up around her ears? Nothing! You know nothing!”

Beria had to protest that. His life depended on it. “But we do know about these planes. They are called B-52s. Stratofortresses. They fly at over a thousand kilometers an hour, not much more than our Tupolevs. Perhaps even less. At best they have a maximum range of thirteen thousand kilometers, not much more than our bombers. We have always assumed they would build these things, and they have. It is not a surprise at all!”

Stalin hammered the desk with his fist, once, making a water jug jump two centimeters off the polished walnut surface. “You looked very fucking surprised when the Americans sent over a copy of Roosevelt’s speech. And anyone can read a computer file. I do not want to be quoted old Wikipedia articles about this new bomber. I want to know how many they have. How many they can produce. And how many atomic bombs can they put on them this very day.”

Mercifully, Stalin allowed his fearsome gaze to widen, encompassing the entire Politburo.

“I want to know if we can beat them now. Timoshenko, what say you?”

The Soviet defense minister, the formidable peasant warrior from the Ukraine, jutted his chin upward. He at least would not be cowed. “If they have no more bombs, yes. We can roll over them. If they have three to five, a parity of atomic force with us, it will still be possible. But if Roosevelt is speaking truthfully and they have ‘many’ more bombs, even double or triple our number, we cannot hope to prevail.”

The Vozhd turned his malign glare back toward Beria. “And does the NKVD have even the slightest idea of what remains in their atomic arsenal?”

Beria’s heart, already racing, lurched in his chest. Keeping his voice as calm as possible, he spoke quietly but forcefully. “We have all known that the reactionaries gained a great intelligence gift, the value of hindsight, from the libraries of Kolhammer’s ships. Dozens of our operations were instantly compromised. Our British networks with few exceptions were wrenched out root and branch. We lost our best sources who could have answered that question, and we have known that for years.”

Fear was giving his argument some impetus now. He had managed to stop gulping and stammering, and a sense of genuine indignation animated his speech.

“But we can still use our brains. Look at the Berlin raid. Three warheads used on one target, completely annihilating it. They would not have been so wasteful if they had no other weapons. And this demand of Roosevelt’s, that the Japanese surrender and submit to immediate occupation or face the systematic destruction of their cities. It is meant for us as much as them. But it cannot be a bluff because if a day passes and they cannot deliver on the ultimatum, we will know them to be lying. No. I suspect they have enough bombs to destroy at least three or four major Japanese cities, with still enough in reserve to employ on the battlefield against us if they have to.”

Timoshenko nodded his shaven head, lending Beria some unexpected support. “That is logical, Comrade General Secretary. The three bombs that hit Berlin convince me. It would be madness to have wasted them so if they did not have more. Yes, it sends a message to us. But I cannot see it as a bluff.”

Stalin appeared to hang on the edge of a precipice. He could have gone one way or another; exploding again, or taking the answer in calmly and reasonably. To Beria’s great relief, reason won out.

“So why, if they had some many bombs, did they wait until now to use them? They could have annihilated the fascists with one big raid.”

“And that would have left an empty Europe at our feet,” said Beria. “They needed forces on the ground to contest that ground with us. Plus, they have no stomach for anything that gets too hard. Would we send six million men to fight in a radioactive battlefield? Of course, if it meant victory. Would they? No. They could not. They are beholden to their bourgeois classes. They simply cannot act with our freedom. Plus, we must remember first principles. They are capitalists. To destroy a host of French and German cities is to destroy a vast storehouse of capital that they would otherwise seize for their own use. Like Timoshenko, I do not think they are bluffing. I believe they have many more atomic warheads.”

Stalin drummed his fingers on the table. “It is a poor correlation of forces we face-”