“Deceased,” Zhukov answered. “Your office carpet will need changing; it has stains on it.” The Red Army officer didn’t say anything for a while. Molotov didn’t care for the way Zhukov was studying him. If he had an unfortunate accident about now, who would stop Zhukov from seizing the reins of the Soviet Union? No one at all, Molotov thought bleakly. Zhukov lit a cigarette, inhaled, coughed a couple of times, and said, “Well, well, good to have you back.”
Molotov breathed again, and didn’t even notice how his ribs twinged. He’d known the habit of subordination was deeply ingrained in Zhukov, but he hadn’t known how deeply. Maybe Zhukov himself hadn’t known, either, not till the test came. “Good to be back,” Molotov said, no more emotionally than he said anything else. He raised an eyebrow. “And how did you become involved in the drama?”
“Beria announced your indisposition over Radio Moscow this morning,” Zhukov answered. “He also announced mine. Mine would have been fatal, except that my bodyguards shot faster and straighter than his assassins. I suspect he had a puppet waiting to take over the Army, but the rank and file are fond of me, even if some officers and apparatchiks aren’t. And, while the NKVD is strong, the Red Army is stronger. I have made very sure of this. We suppress the Chekists everywhere.”
“Good,” Molotov said. Beria had aimed to kill Zhukov at once, but had been willing to keep Molotov himself alive for a while. That spoke volumes about whom the NKVD chief had thought more dangerous. The way things had turned out proved he’d had a point. Molotov chose not to dwell on it. He said, “The NKVD man who came out with me-his name is Nussboym-deserves reward, not punishment. He got me out of my cell. Without him, Beria’s men might have liquidated me even with Red Army troops filling Dzerzhinsky Square.”
“So they might have,” Zhukov said-wistfully? Molotov chose not to dwell on that, either. Zhukov went on, “I leave it to you to tend to that, then, Comrade General Secretary. Meanwhile, we have retaken the Radio Moscow transmitter and announced that all is well, but you might want to think about broadcasting a message yourself, to show that you are well and in control.”
“Yes, I will do that,” Molotov agreed at once. Chloroform? Beatings? He shrugged them off. That he hadn’t eaten since before Beria’s thugs seized him? He shrugged that off, too. “Take me to a broadcast studio.” Only after he was on his way did he realize he hadn’t asked about his wife. He shrugged once more. That could wait, too.
As she set a boiled brisket of beef on the table, Bertha Anielewicz said, “I wonder what really happened in Moscow the other day.”
“So do I,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered, picking up the serving fork and carving knife. While he cut portions for his wife, his children, and himself, he went on, “I ran into Ludmila this morning. She doesn’t know any more than we do, but she was almost dancing in the street to hear that Beria’s dead.”
“She ought to know,” Bertha said.
“That’s what I thought,” Mordechai agreed. “She said the only thing she was really sorry about was that Molotov didn’t go with him.”
“Can’t have everything,” his wife said. “The way things are, sometimes you can’t have anything.”
“And isn’t that the truth?” After a moment’s gloom, Anielewicz brightened. “David Nussboym ended up in the NKVD, remember. He ought to be sinking like a stone about now. Nu, can you tell that that breaks my heart?”
“Oh, of course,” Bertha answered. “Twenty years ago, he would have sunk you like a stone, too, if we hadn’t beaten him to the punch.”
Their children listened with wide eyes. Anielewicz wasn’t in the habit of hashing over things that had happened before they were born. He didn’t do it now, either, contenting himself with a nod. “We’ll have to see what goes on in Russia,” he said in an effort to pull matters back toward the present. “They say Molotov is on top again, but they say all sorts of things that turn out not to be true.”
Before Bertha could answer, the telephone rang. She got up and went into the parlor to answer it. After a moment, she called, “It’s for you, Mordechai.”
“I’m coming. At least it waited till I was almost finished with supper.” Anielewicz equated telephone calls with trouble. A lot of years had burned that equation into his mind. He took the handset from his wife, who returned to the table. “Hello?”
“Anielewicz? This is Yitzkhak, up in Glowno. We’re going to take the sheep to market tomorrow. Do you want a last look at them before they go?”
“No, you can send them without me,” Anielewicz said, to confuse anyone who might be listening despite the Germanand Lizard-made gadgets he’d had installed on his phone line to defeat would-be snoops. He operated on the assumption that, whatever the Reich and the Race could manufacture, they could also find a way to defeat. If he’d admitted wanting to go up to Glowno, Yitzkhak would have known something was badly wrong. To make things sound as normal as they could, he went on, “How’s your cousin doing?”
“Pretty well, thanks,” Yitzkhak answered. “She’s up on crutches now, and the cast will come off her leg in another month. Then it’s just a matter of getting the strength back into the muscles. It’ll take time, but she’ll do it.”
“Of course she will,” Mordechai said. “That’s good news.” He’d seen enough wounded men during the fighting to know it might not be so easy as Yitzkhak was saying, but only time would tell. After stepping in front of a bus, the other Jew’s cousin was lucky to have got off with only a broken leg.
After a little inconsequential talk, Yitzkhak got off the line. Anielewicz went back to the supper table. When he sat down, his wife raised a questioning eyebrow.
“That miserable flock of sheep,” he said; he couldn’t be quite sure who was listening to what he said inside his flat, either. “Yitzkhak wanted to know if I needed to check them before he got rid of them. I told him to go ahead; I’m sick of the foolish things.”
His children stared; they knew he owned no sheep and had no interest in owning any. He held up a hand to keep them from asking questions. They understood the signal, and refrained. Bertha knew what he was talking about. “Well, we have some leftovers here,” she remarked, by which Mordechai knew he’d be taking them with him for lunch when he went up to Glowno.
Sure enough, his wife had a sack waiting for him when he headed off early the next morning. He took it with a word of thanks, kissed her, and climbed aboard his bicycle. He could have ridden the bus and arrived faster and fresher, but he and his colleagues had been talking over their plans ever since the Polish nationalists tried to abscond with the explosive-metal bomb. The Jews hadn’t intended to sneak it out of Glowno in the dead of night. Anielewicz grinned-very much the opposite.
And he always liked to measure himself by exercise. His legs began to ache dully before he’d got very far outside of Lodz, but he settled into a kilometer-eating rhythm and the pain got no worse. After a while, it even receded. That marked the day as a good one. He hoped it would prove an omen.
He was not the only Jew on the road with a rifle or a submachine gun on his back. That would have been true any day, but was more true today than most. And motorcars and even lorries full of armed Jews rolled past him. Some of the men in those cars and lorries, recognizing him as one of their own, waved when they went by. Every now and then, he would take a hand off the handlebars and wave back.
By the time he got to Glowno, Jewish fighters filled the town. Signs in the windows of shops owned by Jews welcomed the militia to town and invited the fighters to come in and spend money on food or drink or soap or clothes or any of two dozen other different things.