CHAPTER 329: SUSPICION IS FREE. WAR IS EXPENSIVE.

Inside Kremlin Molotov walked without hurry, counting the turns by habit, one hand in his coat pocket, feeling the smooth edge of a folded note.

He was summoned at nine.

It was nine when he reached the door.

The guard opened the door.

Stalin stood by the map table with his back to the room, pipe in the corner of his mouth.

Voroshilov sat around.

Two senior NKVD men stood near the wall.

On the table the map of Eastern Europe lay open.

Stalin did not turn when they entered. "Sit," he said.

They sat.

Molotov placed three neat folders on the green felt.

He looked at no one.

He had learned long ago that the shortest path in this room was a straight line.

"Speak," Stalin said.

He drew in smoke, held it, let it seep out through his nose as if testing the air for poison.

Molotov opened the first folder. "Sorokin’s reports from Berlin. Three sources. A professor in Leipzig. A typist in the Propaganda Ministry. A supply clerk in the Wehrmacht. None connected. All consistent." He tapped the pages with two fingers. "Troop movements to the east, not west. Depots in Silesia. Ammunition rail schedules altered. Propaganda shifting its vocabulary from ’Czech disorder’ to ’Polish injustice.’ Danzig mentioned more often. So is Poznań."

Beria leaned in. "Hearsay. Second and third hands. You know how Germans talk when they drink. They love the sound of their own boots."

"The trains are not talk," Molotov said.

Beria’s mouth curved. "Trains can be staged."

"Not for months, along every line," Molotov replied, still mild. "And propaganda is not staged in a day. They are printing Polish ghosts in their newspapers already."

Voroshilov rapped the table with his knuckles. "Then we reinforce our western districts. Warn Warsaw that we will not tolerate.."

"Warn Warsaw?" Beria’s eyebrows lifted like blades. "So the Poles can pen another editorial about Red danger? They hate us more than they fear Berlin. That is their hobby."

"Enough," Stalin said.

He took the second folder and flipped it open with his thumb. "This?"

"Contacts in Moscow," Molotov said, "under cover of trade. A German named Schneider. Smart enough to be cautious, not clever enough to hide that the word ’Poland’ sits behind his teeth. And a certain Keller in Riga, who floated phrases about ’flexibility.’ Their Foreign Ministry listens. Ribbentrop is. "

He hesitated, not for doubt but for precision. "..curious."

Beria’s voiced across the table. "Curious is not hungry."

"Curious men eat first," Molotov said.

Stalin closed the folder.

"And the third?"

"A note from our people in Prague," Molotov said. "German advisers arriving in the Sudeten towns in civilian clothes. Consolidation. Not conquest. They tighten the lid, then heat the water."

He set his hand flat on the map, palm hovering over Warsaw. "The pattern is not mist. It has edges."

Stalin studied his hand as if it belonged to someone else. "Edges cut," he said softly. "You would have us hold the knife with Berlin."

Molotov did not blink. "I would have us hold time. If Berlin marches into Warsaw without our interference, we can move west for once in our lives instead of being pushed east. The border shifts. We take what buffers we can. Vilnius. Lwów. Perhaps more, if the corridor opens."

Voroshilov surged half out of his chair. "You speak like a butcher at market!"

"I speak like a clerk adding columns," Molotov said, tone unchanged. "Columns of men, guns, factories. We are not ready today. We will be more ready tomorrow. The only calculation is how many tomorrows Berlin will give us."

Stalin turned his pipe in the ashtray twice, as if grinding a beetle. "Kliment Yefremovich."

Voroshilov’s jaw squared. "We build. Openly. We move divisions to Minsk and Kiev and let Berlin hear the earth shake. We speak with Warsaw and say we will not let German boots cross your threshold. We let London print it. We force Paris to squeal."

"And when Berlin decides a moving target is easier to shoot?" Beria said. "When their noise becomes artillery instead of radios?"

Voroshilov glared at him. "Better to die standing than live kneeling, Lavrenty."

Beria smiled with no teeth. "A slogan suitable for funerals."

Stalin’s palm came down on the table not hard, not loud, but final. "There is a time for parades and a time for factories."

He looked at Voroshilov. "How many of your new colonels can read a map under fire? How many of your tank brigades can drive at night without getting lost in their own dust? Tell me truths, not posters."

Voroshilov’s color rose. "We are improving every month."

"Improving is not ready," Stalin said, and there was no anger in it anger would have made it smaller. "Do not sell me courage as if it were steel."

He turned to Beria. "And you. Trap, trap, trap. You sniff like a dog at a door. Is there a man in this city you do not suspect?"

"No," Beria said cheerfully.

"Good," Stalin murmured. "Suspicion is free. War is expensive."

He lifted the pipe.

"We are not ready to fight Germany and we are never willing to invite Germany to fight us. Those are our two pillars. Between them is a bridge. We walk it with our eyes open."

Molotov slid a single paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and placed it by Stalin’s hand.

Not a letter.

Not even a full sentence.

A fragment, typed on a card.

Stalin did not touch it.

His gaze flicked.

"You and your weather words."

"They hear them," Molotov said. "Weather moves armies more than speeches do."

After a deep pause.

"Tell me how you intend to fish," Stalin said finally.

Molotov folded his hands. "Riga. Stockholm. Helsinki. No ambassadors. Trade. Culture. Men who know how to talk for an hour without saying a noun. We drop two phrases and wait for one to be repeated back to us with an extra adjective. If the adjective is ’mutual,’ we continue. If it is ’final,’ we stop. And while they think they are teaching us to waltz, we move three brigades one district west and test a mobilization timetable without naming it."