pen, dipping it into an inkwell but writing nothing. "Is that your concern?" he said after a long silence. "That we'll transfer our commercial allegiances to the Germans?"
"Why do you need to ask me that? You've already told me you see everything, you know everything."
Litvikov was silent again for several seconds. At last he turned to his aide. "Izvinitye!" he barked to the man, excusing him.
When the aide had left the room, Litvikov resumed speaking. "What I am about to say to you, Metcalfe, is enough to get me arrested, even executed. I am handing you this weapon in the hopes that you will not use it against me. But I want you to understand my situation our situation. And perhaps once you understand, you will be more cooperative. I have long trusted your brother; I do not know you as well, but I can only hope that you are as trustworthy as discreet, as you say. Because now it is not just trade that is on the line, but the lives of my family. I am a man with a family, Mr. Metcalfe. A wife and a son and a daughter. Do you understand?"
Metcalfe nodded. "You have my word."
Litvikov plunged his pen into the inkwell again, and this time he began doodling on the sheet of foolscap on the table in front of him. "Last August, a little over a year ago, my government signed a peace pact with Germany, as you know. Just one day before the pact was announced, Pravda published an anti-Nazi article about the persecution of Poles in Germany. For years, Stalin and all of our leaders had spoken out against Hitler and the Nazis. Our press was full of stories about how terrible the Nazis were. Then all of a sudden, one day in August all of it stopped! No more anti-Nazi articles. No more anti-Nazi speeches. A complete U-turn. No longer do you read the word Nazism in our newspapers. Pravda and Izvestiya now quote from Hitler's speeches, favorably! They quote from the Volkischer Beobachter." Litvikov's doodles had become a back-and-forth series of lines, a violent scribble that was becoming a heavy blot. "Do you think this is easy on us, on the Russian people? Do you think we can forget what we have read, what we've been told about the atrocities of the Nazis?"
Metcalfe thought but did not say, And what of Stalin's atrocities? What of the millions deported and tortured and killed in the purges? "Of course not," Metcalfe said. "It's a question of survival, isn't it?"
"Does a rabbit seek out the protection of a boa constrictor?"
"And the Soviet Union is the rabbit?"
"Don't misunderstand me, Mr. Metcalfe. If we are attacked, we will fight to the death and it will not be only our death. If we are invaded, we will fight with a vehemence the world has never seen before. But we have no interest in invading other countries."
"Tell that to the Poles," Metcalfe said. "You invaded Poland the day after you signed your treaty with Germany, am I wrong? Tell that to Finland."
"We had no choice in this!" the Russian said angrily. "It was a defensive measure."
"I see," Metcalfe said, his point made.
"My country has no friends, Metcalfe. Understand this. We are isolated. No sooner had we signed our pact with Germany than we began hearing about how Britain felt betrayed! Britain claimed that they had been 'courting' us, that they wanted us to join them in their fight against Nazi Germany. But how did they 'court' us? How did they woo us? They and the French sent a low-level delegation a retired British admiral and a doddering French general to Leningrad on a slow boat! It took them two weeks to get here. Not foreign ministers, but retired old military officers. This was a slap in the face to all of Russia. This wasn't a serious attempt at negotiating an alliance. Winston Churchill hates the Soviet regime and he makes no secret of it. And who did he send over here as his ambassador, London's most important foreign posting after Washington? Sir Stafford Cripps a radical backbencher, a socialist with no standing with the British government. What were we to make of this? No, Mr. Metcalfe, the signals from England were clear. They had no interest in an alliance with Russia." Litvikov's violent scribbling had torn through the foolscap. He let the pen drop.
"Yes," Metcalfe said, understanding. "The Kremlin really had no choice. So this agreement with Hitler