CHAPTER 330: REALITIES ARE WHATEVER MEN AGREE TO FEAR.

"Always so tidy," Beria murmured. "And when the Gestapo decides they would like to count your adjectives with you?"

Molotov replied.

"Then you will earn your salary, Lavrenty Pavlovich, and ensure our messengers are ghosts."

He watched Molotov and the way Molotov did not move his hands when he lied or when he told the truth.

Stalin lifted the little card at last and held it near the lamp.

He read the line once, then again, as if expecting it to change the second time. "Borders reflect realities," he said, half to himself. "Realities are whatever men agree to fear."

He set the card down. "Hitler will not shake our hand. He will count our fingers."

"Then let him count," Molotov said. "He will miscount if he is hungry."

Voroshilov snorted. "You build castles on wolves’ promises."

"I build scaffolds under our roof," Molotov said. "If the storm does not come, very well. If it comes, the men on the roof will fall without it."

Stalin took off his pipe and set it down gently, as if it might break. "We will not announce anything. We will not whisper anything. We will not even think anything where walls can overhear. But we will prepare for a conversation that might never happen."

Voroshilov opened his mouth.

Stalin’s head turned.

The Marshal closed it again.

"You," Stalin said to Molotov, "will open a door that does not look like a door. If a draft touches anyone’s neck, I will know who opened it." His gaze shifted. "Lavrenty."

Beria’s spine straightened almost imperceptibly. "Yes, Comrade Stalin."

"You will wrap that invisible door in shadows," Stalin said. "No one in this building hears a syllable that belongs to it. No clerk copies a paper. No typist remembers a name. If a rumor stirs in Moscow about friendship with Germany, you will pull the tongue that stirred it out by the roots."

Beria’s glasses flashed. "Of course."

"While you both play with air," Stalin continued, "the army will behave like a cat pretending to sleep."

He turned to Voroshilov. "Quietly rotate two divisions from the Volga toward the west. Not to the frontier. To a place that lets you claim you were visiting your grandmother if anyone asks. Move fuel. Move radio parts. Replace the tires on trucks that break a heart every ten kilometers. If Berlin looks south, we look at them through the curtains. If Berlin looks north, we look at them through different curtains. What we do not do is rattle anything."

Voroshilov spoke. "It will be done."

Stalin nodded, once, as if rewarding a child who had not cried. "And Warsaw."

He stared at the little capital on the map as if it might blink. "We do nothing that allows Warsaw to tell the world we are on their porch with a bowl. They will keep their pride. It will be useful to them while it lasts."

Beria allowed himself a chuckle. "Pride is warm. Almost as warm as coats."

"Do not mock them loudly," Stalin said. "The dead hear better than you think."

"You all think in your professions," Stalin said, voice lower, as if he had stepped closer though he had not moved. "Kliment thinks in brigades. Lavrenty thinks in collars. Vyacheslav thinks in commas. I think in winters."

He touched the map near Smolensk and then took his hand away, as if the paper were hot.

"We cannot fight a winter with boys who have not yet learned to march with their hunger. We cannot trade speeches for shells. We cannot pretend a wolf is a friend. But we can sometimes make wolves circle the wrong fire."

Molotov’s face did not change, but his breath lengthened. "Then I have permission."

"You have what you can keep secret," Stalin said. "Two weeks. No, three. If after three weeks your adjectives multiply, we will give them a noun. If they do not, we will burn the paper and say we were discussing grain tariffs." His gaze cut to Beria. "And there will be no record to prove otherwise."

Beria’s smile was delicate.

"Records are for museums."

Stalin reloaded his pipe.

"One more thing," he said, and now the room leaned forward though no one moved.

"This rests here." He tapped the table.

Once.

"If anyone beyond these walls speaks the word you are both trying not to say, that man does not make it to his pillow."

Voroshilov stood abruptly, as if action alone could warm him. "I will confer with the district commanders at once."

His jaw set. "Quietly."

Beria adjusted his spectacles. "I will speak with no one and make sure everyone listens."

Molotov gathered his folders, the corners aligned as carefully as a soldier’s blanket. "I’ll begin with Riga."

He paused. "Stockholm if we need a second theater. They like to believe they are invisible when they are neutral."

Stalin said nothing.

He had taken the little card again and was sliding it slowly across the map, not on Warsaw, not on Minsk, but back and forth between them.

At last he set the card down and pressed it under the boar.

"Go," he said.

They rose.

Beria slipped out first.

Voroshilov followed, shoulders broad enough to carry a wall if ordered.

Molotov was last.

At the door he paused.

He did not turn, but his voice softened a fraction. "Comrade Stalin."

Stalin did not look up. "Yes."

"Do you want me to avoid speaking with the Germans who enjoy being obvious?"

"I want you to avoid speaking with anyone who enjoys anything," Stalin said, and the line might have been a joke and was not. "Men who enjoy are careless. We do not enjoy."

Molotov inclined his head and left.

The door clicked.

Silence filled the room again, more honest than the men had been.

Stalin stood alone with the map.

He tapped the ash from his pipe into the ashtray until it made a small gray hill.

He put the pipe back between his teeth and stared at Poland until the borders blurred and turned into rivers and the rivers turned into veins.

"Time," he said, the word barely more than breath. "We will buy it with other people’s."