MJ-12: Endgame

by Michael J. Martinez

  April 30, 1953

  Three weeks can seem like an awfully long time when you’re a prisoner of war, even a Cold War. Especially when you’re cut off from the outside world and haven’t seen the sun in all that time. Especially when your food is day-old at best and rarely hot, and your prison is the cellar of some ancient, decrepit building in the worst part of Moscow.

  For all that, the three Soviet Variants captured by MAJESTIC-12 had remained stubbornly uncooperative since their capture on the train. Cut off from their abilities by no fewer than three different null-generators—redundancy being Mrs. Stevens’s watchword of late—the Variants were effectively trapped by the cellar’s stone walls and floor. The windows had been boarded up in several layers, and barred on the inside.

  The old townhome was abandoned—it was considered too bourgeois for current tastes, and the Moscow authorities were concentrating on apartment blocks and infrastructure with the limited resources available to them—mostly the shortage of strong men, victims of the Great Patriotic War eight years prior. A trip to the Moscow city records repository showed the owner of the house to be deceased with no other claims on the property, and surveillance of the block indicated there were just enough people still living there so that new faces wouldn’t be out of place, even though the side street had little in the way of traffic.

  So twice each day, at staggered times, a pair of MAJESTIC-12 agents dressed as construction workers entered the home to take care of the captives, bringing them food and ensuring they hadn’t gotten up to any trouble. The basement had just one electric bulb for light and, sadly, no heat, though Danny made sure the prisoners had plenty of blankets for their mattresses, which were on the floor. The captives used a bucket for a toilet, and others held water for washing and drinking, a system that the female Russian Variant found highly intolerable and vociferously complained about in the rare times when she did bother to speak. But that also meant shit-bucket duty twice a day for the Americans, who always went in pairs and with guns at the ready. Nobody was pleased with the situation, Soviet or American. But it was the best they could manage.

  Despite repeated attempts at everything from good-natured interviewing to light torture, the captured Variants weren’t talking, and knew well enough not to talk amongst themselves while left alone, either—the bugs Mrs. Stevens had placed in their makeshift prison perfectly captured their conversations about favorite foods and vacation spots, but nothing about Beria or the Behkterev Institute or the Soviet Empowered.

  Despite Danny’s doubts, Frank Lodge had to be pressed into service to help maintain the captives. Since Danny wasn’t quite ready to give him weapons, he usually took feeding and shit-bucket duty. He didn’t complain. In fact, he hadn’t said much at all lately, accepting his house arrest with a kind of troubled stoicism. Danny had known him long enough to know when he was out of sorts, and this was bad. Did he feel remorse? Was he planning something? Hard to say.

  Back at the safe house—well away from the townhouse used as a prison—more silence reigned. Frank mostly stayed in his room, emerging only for meals and the trips to see the captives. Ekaterina was even more sullen than usual, also confining herself to her room unless she was needed on a mission—and Danny purposefully excused both her and Mrs. Stevens from captive housekeeping duties at the other house. Ekaterina and Frank sat at opposite ends of the table during meals, neither speaking at all, which prompted Mrs. Stevens to talk at an exponentially higher and faster rate. Sorensen had taken to performing his invisible reconnaissance missions during meal times, likely just to get away from the awkward dynamics.

  Honestly, for Danny, it was all getting exhausting. But there had been some progress, at least, and more intel coming in each day, largely due to Sorensen. The Party elite, it seemed, did their best work after the rest of the apparatchiks left for the day, which meant Sorensen had an easier time moving quietly around the Kremlin’s halls of power. The ambush of Beria’s NKVD men had not gone unnoticed, and he’d received a sound talking-to from Malenkov, Molotov, and Khrushchev—separately and together—about making sure that counterrevolutionaries were being rooted out. Beria had responded by offering veiled accusations that his cohorts and rivals had been the ones who set up the ambush, and that the MGB and NKVD—as well as the merged agency they would become in short order—might find reason to investigate them.

  The quest for power in the Soviet Union was getting ugly, fast.

  There were still very few hints about the state of the Soviet Variant program, but Danny was making headway. He could sense seventeen Variants in the city, not including the captives or the Americans themselves, which meant that two more of them had just come in over the past week. That had to be the bulk of the Variants in the entire Soviet Union, possibly even the Eastern Bloc. Danny was able to track down five different safe houses used by Beria’s Variants, all duly noted for whatever operation might come next. It seemed there were only two or three individuals, at most, left in Leningrad—one of whom, he hoped, was Maggie.

  The problem was that they didn’t know what abilities these Soviet Variants had, or anything about their training and talents. Mrs. Stevens was working on a number of capture scenarios, but there were far too many unknowns to make for a clean operation. They were all pretty reluctant to risk a repeat of the large-scale battle that had occurred on the train. So Danny watched them carefully, from a distance, and had managed to get photos of fourteen Variants—six women and eight men, ranging in ages from about fifteen to seventy, with most in their twenties through forties.

  Beria was working hard to consolidate his resources—and his power. Bringing the Variants to Moscow en masse, combining the NKVD and MGB into a single, powerful political police and spying operation … those were big bets. But the others were betting big too. Malenkov and Molotov seemed to be working together to consolidate influence over the Red Army and the diplomatic corps, the outward-facing pieces of the Soviet apparatus, while Khrushchev was acting swiftly and surely to consolidate his control over the Communist Party itself. Party and government in the Soviet Union were nigh inseparable under Lenin and Stalin, so the recent ongoing developments were all kinds of interesting.

  And Mrs. Stevens finally seemed to have found a place to throw a wrench in the middle of it all.

  “The satellite states in Eastern Europe,” she began while ladling out mashed potatoes to everyone during the evening meal. “That’s where we can really weaken Beria.”

  “I thought Molotov was the diplomat,” Danny said, eagerly spooning some beets onto his plate. Oddly, he’d developed quite a taste for the vegetable during his sojourn in Russia, despite having hated it as a child.

  “Molotov is the diplomat to the West, and Asia, but the Eastern European countries are special cases,” she replied. “They’re treated less as separate nations and more as colonies or states, like back home. The Party here in Moscow gives orders to the Party in Bucharest or East Berlin or wherever. The secret police here, under Beria, is responsible for ferreting out traitors and counterrevolutionaries in those nations through the secret police there. So the centers of influence in Moscow extend into the Eastern Bloc, too.”

  “So?” Sorensen said, his mouth full.

  “So nobody’s really paying attention to the Eastern Bloc nations here in Moscow,” Mrs. Stevens said. “That’s why Mr. Dulles—well, both Misters Dulles, at State and CIA—are reaching out to those countries to see about helping out, being better friends. And we’re getting reports from Foggy Bottom that the lack of oversight from Moscow is leading to whispers of dissent here and there. East Germany is a big one, I think, a big opportunity.”

  “How so?” Danny asked.

  “The East Germans are being ordered to spend a ton on their military, and the Soviets are still taking reparations from them for the war. That’s something like twenty to twenty-five percent of their budget going to feeding the Soviets’ demands,” she explained. “Their economy isn’t growing fast enough. Everything’s
being poured into industrial production, and industrial workers quotas are going up. Agricultural production is down because everyone’s going to the factories, which means food is getting imported and it’s getting expensive. But wages aren’t going up with the quotas. That’s a completely unsustainable scenario.”

  For the first time in days, Frank spoke up. “Uprising.”

  “Possibly!” Mrs. Stevens said with an encouraging smile; Danny could tell she was happy to hear him contribute. “The trade and labor unions there are pretty strong, and somewhat outside the Party apparatus. I have to see how things play out over the next several weeks—there’s a big Party meeting there at the end of June that could be pivotal, and if it goes the way I think it’ll go—more quotas, less help with costs and wages—we could really light the fuse on something.”

  “So what’s that get for us?” Sorensen said. “I mean, great to help them out and all, but our target is Beria. He’s gotta go.”

  Danny took this one. “Dissent is Beria’s portfolio. Any dissent here or in the Eastern Bloc reflects poorly on him. He’s already a little under the gun because of the stunt we pulled. If we pull off some kind of ruckus in Germany, maybe combined with another op here—maybe we blow up an MGB barracks or get some convincing propaganda aired—that could really push him hard. Maybe it’d be enough for Malenkov and Khrushchev to team up and end him, or maybe he overplays his hand in response and it achieves the same effect.”

  “Or he goes all in, kills off his rivals and tells the world that the Variants are in charge now,” Frank offered. “That’s a possibility. Seems like we need another front to distract him, one more thing to take care of before he launches a coup. We need to hit him where it really hurts.”

  “A Variant problem,” Mrs. Stevens said, nodding. “That’s interesting. If he feels his Variants are threatened at the same time as he’s dealing with political issues, he can’t use one to defuse or destroy the other. That’s not bad, Frank.”

  At this, Ekaterina noisily got up from her place, put her half-full dish in the sink, and stalked off to her room, leaving the rest of the team staring at each other.

  “My fault,” Frank said quietly. He, too, got up and cleared his plate, then headed off to his own room, leaving Danny, Sorensen, and Mrs. Stevens to quietly finish dinner, though not before Danny encouraged her to formulate some operational plans on three fronts—East Germany, Moscow secret police, and Variants.

  As Danny dried the dishes—he and Sorensen had dish duty that evening—he figured it was time to sit down and try to hash it out with Frank. Admittedly, Danny had been putting it off, this reckoning, mostly due to sheer exhaustion. But they needed Frank’s savvy and his operational abilities. They needed another body to help with surveillance of the Variants and to tail Party leaders, to make sense of intel reports and to do something other than shit-bucket duty.

  Above all, Danny needed to know why Frank had unilaterally decided to kill those men. If it was the voices in his head, then that would raise a big alarm bell, given what Danny himself had seen on the train. Because those faces had almost seemed like … ghosts. What if Frank’s voices were themselves ghosts of some kind, rather than just skill sets or memories? What if the voices and what Danny saw were related?

  Danny headed upstairs to Frank’s tiny bedroom. The door was closed, as usual. Yes, Frank was largely confined to quarters, but even with that, he had been quieter than normal. Danny hoped it was due to guilt and reflection, but Frank always played things close to the vest, and as the years wore on, it seemed he was spending an increasing amount of time just communing with the memories in his head.

  Danny knocked. “Frank, can I come in?”

  Nothing.

  “Frank, we need to talk.”

  Nothing. No sense of movement.

  On a hunch, Danny concentrated on his Enhancement.

  Frank wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in the neighborhood.

  “Shit.”

  Focusing, Danny stretched out his senses to try to find him. With Variants he knew well, like Frank or Maggie or Cal, Danny could sometimes pinpoint them if they were within a certain distance—a few miles, give or take. Any further and they were just another Variant milling about the city. Further than about five hundred miles, Danny simply got a sense of direction on the compass, nothing more—and no sense of how many, either.

  The problem was, Danny had last seen Frank maybe a half hour ago. Maybe he took the car. Or maybe …

  Danny opened the room to find everything neat and tidy—Frank’s military background had never left the man. There was no sign of anything amiss. Dashing downstairs, Danny ordered everyone to assemble, and to account for every bit of equipment and intel they had.

  Fifteen minutes after that, Danny and Sorensen were out the door, heading for the car. He knew where Frank was going, and it was practically suicide.

  * * *

  The Lubyanka Building stood like a silent guard over its namesake square in the cold Moscow evening, poorly lit and imposing. Headquarters of the MGB and the seat of Beria’s power, the running joke was that the massive yet squat structure was, in fact, the tallest building in Moscow—because so many people could see Siberia’s prison camps from its basement cells. Its neo-Baroque facade, with pillars and all kinds of architectural flourishes, stood out amongst the brutalist buildings going up around Moscow, a grand old haunted house amid the city. Listen closely, and one could imagine the screams coming from the basement.

  Frank would be the first to admit he wasn’t the most imaginative guy, but as he flashed his falsified MGB papers and walked into the building, he couldn’t help but feel a bit like Daniel in the lion’s den. How’d that Bible story go again?

  Daniel was condemned to die by being thrown into a pit of lions, but an angel came and saved him, came the voice of Ibrahim, a Turkish scholar who had been with Frank for several years now.

  I thought the lions ate one of Daniel’s accusers instead, said Jan, an Icelandic fisherman.

  Doesn’t matter. Nobody comes out of this den, added one of the Russians Maggie had killed in the park last month. Frank still hadn’t sorted out all their names. You’re going to die. The office is on the third floor. And you really should’ve brought a null generator.

  “Everybody shut the fuck up,” Frank muttered under his breath as he straightened his stolen MGB uniform and made his way up the main stairs, throwing back salutes from the minor officers stuck with night duty. Yes, he should’ve brought a null-field generator, but they were valuable and expensive and, frankly, he’d done enough damage to the team without risking one of their key operational advantages.

  The Russian—Boris? Andrei?—led him to the end of a hallway and a corner office, the anteroom of which looked far too ornate. A rather attractive young woman in an MGB uniform looked up from her reading and regarded him with a cocked eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Here to see Comrade Beria,” Frank said.

  Her look grew more quizzical. “Is he expecting you?”

  “No, Comrade,” Frank replied with a smile. “You may tell him that the operative codenamed DOMIK is here.”

  The woman looked ready to send him packing, but eyed the insignia on his uniform and thought twice about it, instead picking up one of the three phones on her desk and pressing a button. “I am sorry … yes … there is an officer here to see you … he says he is an operative, code name DOMIK … yes, he is, in fact … yes … very well.”

  With a look of surprise, the woman hung up the phone. “Are you armed, Comrade?”

  Frank held up his arms. “No, Comrade. Do you wish to check?”

  The woman came around and efficiently frisked Frank, then nodded. “Go in.”

  Frank opened one of the two heavy wooden double doors behind the woman’s desk and entered an even more ornate corner office, brimming with fancy moldings, gold-paint trim, heavy red curtains, and a glittering chandelier. A pair of couches—late nineteenth century, very expensi
ve, came an unwanted critique—flanked a coffee table in the center of the room, and beyond that was a massive carved mahogany desk with a silver tea service on one side and four phones on the other.

  Lavrentiy Beria looked up and smiled. “Comrade DOMIK. It took me a moment, but that is very clever,” the man said in English.

  Frank closed the door behind him and slowly walked toward the desk. “I was hoping you’d get the translation right. I don’t really know how good your English is.”

  “Good enough to know what a ‘lodge’ is.” Beria waved toward a crystal decanter on the coffee table. “Drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m not here to be social.” Frank stopped about three feet from the desk, heeding several voices in his head telling him the right distance necessary to dodge one of Beria’s fiery assaults, should things come to that.

  Beria regarded him for a long moment, leaning back in his leather chair with his fingers pressed together—a perfect look for a matinee villain—before switching to Russian. “I did not know you had returned to the Soviet Union, Mr. Lodge. Am I to assume you are responsible for the recent attack on my NKVD men? And the loss of three of my Champions?”

  Frank smirked, but replied in his perfect Russian. “That what you’re calling them now? I thought you guys used ‘Empowered’ instead.”

  “Answer the question.” Beria’s expression didn’t change, but his voice was quickly layered with icy menace.

  A pair of voices rose out of the jumble in Frank’s mind, both agreeing that Beria was just as much on edge as Frank was. Small comfort. “Your people are fine. They’re taking a little break, getting away from it all. You know how it is. Stressful times.”

  “I was surprised at the fate of the others, Comrade Lodge. I didn’t think you Americans had it in you,” Beria said, slowly reaching over to pour himself a cup of tea from the small samovar on the desk. “Efficient. Cruel, but efficient. Of course, we knew you Americans had sent your ‘Variants’ here, but we had assumed your target would have been the Behkterev Institute. That is, of course, the heart of our operation, just as you once had yours at that base in the desert in … Nevada, I believe the province is called.”