“I am ready to meet with von Ribbentrop,” Molotov said-not eager, but ready. “As for matters of shiphandling, that is why you are here, is it not?”
“Yes, Comrade Foreign Commissar.” The captain met icy sarcasm with wooden obedience. “I shall have them convey the foreign minister to this vessel.”
“You had better,” Molotov answered. “Anyone who thinks I am going to board that-scow-is sadly mistaken.” The Soviet ship in Lithuanian colors was a rust-bucket freighter. Next to the fishing boat now sidling up to it, it seemed a decadent capitalist luxury liner by comparison. A strong odor of stale herring made Molotov wrinkle his nose-or perhaps, he thought, it was only Ribbentrop and his Nazi policies he was smelling.
A couple of sailors let down a rope ladder to the deck of the fishing boat. The German foreign minister scrambled up to the Soviet ship like a monkey, closely followed by his interpreter, who rather resembled one. Molotov’s own interpreter appeared at his elbow. Each side guarded itself against twisted meaning from the other.
Ribbentrop turned his complacent pop-eyed face, marbled with fat like expensive beef, toward the Lithuanian flag. Half sketching a salute to that banner of a country which no longer existed, he said, “I honor the brave Lithuanian people.”
Molotov was more than a little surprised his opposite number remembered that flag represented Lithuania rather than Estonia or Latvia. He was also coldly furious, though he kept his face and voice expressionless as he replied, “If you honor them so much, why did Germany include Lithuania in the territory designated as a Soviet sphere of influence in the Soviet-German nonaggression pact of 1939, which you helped negotiate? You do recall that clause, I trust?”
Ribbentrop coughed and spluttered and turned a mottled shade of red. Thanks to Hitler’s favor, he could bluster his way through the Nazi hierarchy, but that meant nothing to Molotov. “Well, let us speak of the present and not of the past,” Ribbentrop said with the air of a man making a great concession.
“You would have been well-advised to do that from the beginning,” Molotov said.
“Do not take that tone with me,” Ribbentrop snapped, the bluster returning to his voice. What was the old saying? —
“Your nerve gases, you mean,” Molotov said. Reluctantly, Ribbentrop nodded. Molotov remarked, “You Germans seem as reluctant to speak of your successes gassing Lizards as you were of your earlier successes gassing Jews.”
The eyes of Molotov’s interpreter slid to him for a moment. Maybe he shaded the translation, for Ribbentrop’s man murmured into his principal’s ear afterwards. Ribbentrop said, “I am given to understand that the chemical weapon bureau of the Red Army has made inquiries as to the formula for these gases-both kinds.”
Molotov changed the subject, the closest he would come to acknowledging the hit: “Let us detail the ways in which our two governments can cooperate in our common struggle against the imperialist aggressors.” Stalin was nervous about the Germans’ poison gas. Nuclear bombs, as yet, were too bulky to fit into any rocket mere humans could build. The same did not hold true for gas. Only the stretch of Lizard territory in what had been Poland kept the soil of the Soviet Union from being vulnerable to German rockets loaded with invisible death.
Ribbentrop said, “This is why we were to meet here in this way. The rudeness that has gone on is distracting.” He seemed blithely unaware he had begun the rudeness himself. That probably was no affectation, either. The Nazis had a remarkable knack for ignoring their own flaws.
“Let us try to be polite to each other for the rest of this meeting, then.” Molotov was not sure that was possible, but he would make the effort. “Since the
Ribbentrop gave a fishy stare, as if suspecting sarcasm. Molotov doubted he would recognize it till-or perhaps even after-it chewed out the seat of his pants. The German foreign minister said, “Indeed yes. The
