MJ-12: Endgame

by Michael J. Martinez

  “State,” Frank corrected.

  “State. Of course. United States,” Beria said with a smile. “And so we began to move our resources here to Moscow. That was our mistake, and my men paid for it. The murder of our men has accelerated our timetable. The Champions may introduce themselves to the Party ahead of schedule.”

  “That could happen even earlier than you’d like,” Frank said, taking a seat on one of the couches. “They could end up parked in front of Malenkov’s dacha tomorrow. Or Khrushchev’s. With a little note explaining just who they are and what they can do—and who they answer to.”

  Beria chuckled. “Oh, Comrade Lodge. Do you think they are so poorly trained as that? They will keep their abilities to themselves, swear fealty to whomever they must, blend back into society, even go to Siberia and work in the camps until the time is right. None of my Politburo colleagues would even begin to entertain such a fanciful story.”

  “I’m not your comrade,” Frank said, quietly but with a sharpness of his own. “I came to deal.”

  Beria stood with his teacup and walked around his desk toward Frank. “Ah, now I understand. Of course.” He took a seat opposite Frank. “You want to trade.”

  “One for one,” Frank said. “I’ll even let you pick. Whichever ‘Champion’ you want in exchange for ours.”

  “I didn’t know you were so sentimental,” Beria said. “But then, Margaret has a certain proletarian beauty to her, rather like our beautiful Russian peasant women.”

  “We look after our own,” Frank countered. “Do you?”

  Beria shook his head and smiled, a serpent’s grin merely in need of a forked tongue. “I very much care for my own, Mister Lodge. But I think we define things differently. Margaret is one of my own. You are one of my own. All of us, whether you call them Variants or Empowered or Champions of the Proletariat—we are one people. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can embrace your gifts and take your proper place in the world.”

  Frank stood. “You’re obviously not serious, Comrade Beria. I’ll be in touch. Think about it.”

  You should join him. Maggie did.

  A single voice in his head—Frank couldn’t tell which one—was quickly followed by a chorus of others. Join him. Think of what you could do. The world is crap. Join him. He may have a point. You trust Maggie; look at her now.

  JOIN HIM.

  Frank stopped and looked around, wide-eyed. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement—that shadow Variant of Beria’s maybe? But there was nothing, except for the clamor in his mind.

  Beria just smiled a little wider. “Things are different lately, aren’t they?”

  “Wh—what?”

  “Your abilities. ‘Enhancements.’ It is a phenomenon we have seen over the past several weeks. Our abilities have begun to change. They are more insistent, angrier if you will. We both know there is something behind the phenomena that gave us these abilities—ours in Leningrad, yours in, oh, what is that place called where you moved it? Idaho?”

  Frank shook his head to clear it. “You have good sources.”

  “Of course we do. And if your teams had been as diligent in their study of the phenomena as ours, you would’ve noticed some changes. Perhaps they have and you’re not being told. But there is something coming, Lodge. It feels … like a storm. I intend to act before it strikes.”

  JOIN HIM.

  “I … I really don’t know what you’re talking about, pal,” Frank said. “Do you want to trade or not?”

  The doors to the office opened again, and Frank’s jaw nearly hit the floor.

  “I don’t think we’re doing a trade, Frank,” Maggie said in her passable Russian as she walked in, wearing the uniform of an MGB officer, then switched to English. “Heya, buddy.”

  You really should’ve brought the null generator, Boris said.

  April 30, 1953

  Danny really wanted to tell Sorensen to floor it, drive faster, dodge traffic—anything to get to the Lubyanka—but getting pulled over by the local cops would delay them further, if not blow their covers entirely. But now that they were closer to the city center, Danny could feel Frank’s presence in the general direction of MGB headquarters—and he could sense someone else as well.

  “Are you sure it’s Maggie?” Sorensen said as he cruised through a traffic circle. “I thought she was in Leningrad.”

  “I’d know her presence anywhere,” Danny said. “She’s there with Frank, and another Variant, too. I’m betting Beria. It’s his office, after all.”

  “Any others?”

  Danny closed his eyes and concentrated. “I think … yeah, there’s a couple others heading toward the Lubyanka, like us. But I only get those three in the actual building right now.”

  Sorensen sped up. “So it’s a race. Great.”

  Danny ran through the contingencies in his head. He’d left Katie and Mrs. Stevens behind, to prepare to bug out if everything went sideways. Their worst-case scenario—and this was looking more and more like it might very well become that—was to gather what they could carry, burn the entire safe house to the ground, and make for the U.S. embassy with all due haste. They all had code words that would get them past the Marine guards and safely onto U.S. territory.

  The Soviet Variants were another story. Danny’s orders were to try to get them to the embassy as well and, barring that, deny them to Beria—permanently. He honestly wasn’t sure if he could do that.

  “So is Frank really off the reservation here?” Sorensen asked. “I mean, do we have to take him down? Is he flipping to Beria? Or is this some kind of super-secret wrinkle in the plan?”

  Danny shrugged and gave Sorensen a tired smile. “We’ll find out in a few minutes, I guess. I really don’t know. They don’t always tell me everything.”

  Sorensen frowned, but said nothing and kept driving. Even with all of his experience in the field—four-plus years—the former mechanic from Minnesota still had problems adapting to changes in operational plans.

  Granted, this was a doozy.

  Sorensen sped past the Bolshoi Theatre and, within a few blocks, tore into Lubyanka Square, the MGB headquarters hulking over the place. “Now what?” he asked.

  Danny pointed toward the left. “There—Ulitsa Bol’shaya Lubyanka. Pull over there and—oh, shit. Stop the car!”

  Sorensen veered toward the curb and hit the brakes while Danny watched a glass window explode and shards fall from the corner of the building’s third floor. A second later, he saw someone jump out, seemingly trying to rappel off the side of the building without a rope, almost bouncing off the wall and grabbing onto the building’s ornamentation to momentarily arrest his fall. To his surprise, the man landed on his feet and began to run, off in the direction of the Bolshoi.

  “Wrong way, Frank,” Danny muttered, then turned to Sorensen. “Go dark and head back to the house. Prepare to bug out. Stay by the radio.”

  Sorensen vanished.

  The driver’s side door opened and the driver’s seat relaxed outward as Sorensen invisibly left the car. Danny scooted over to the driver’s seat and gunned the engine, taking off while keeping Frank’s location firmly in his mind’s eye. Teatral’nyy Proyezd was one way, so Danny swerved past the Lubyanka building in the opposite direction, then took a hard left onto Pushechnaya Ulitsa and took off back in Frank’s general direction.

  There were flashing lights in the rearview mirror now, and the sound of sirens. Beria apparently wanted Frank back. Badly. As he drove, Danny concentrated a moment on Maggie, but she was no longer in his mind’s eye. He hadn’t traveled out of his usual range, so that meant one thing—she was back in a null field of some kind.

  And likely still in Beria’s grasp.

  Danny focused back on Frank, only to find that he’d stopped moving, roughly four blocks north of the Bolshoi. Danny immediately recognized the location as one of the dozen or so caches that had been hidden around Moscow in the first few days since the team arrived. In aba
ndoned alleys, damaged buildings, disused basements, and other forgotten places, the MAJESTIC-12 agents had stored spare clothes—nearly all were proletarian outfits designed to blend in—and forged papers. To Frank’s credit, he intuitively understood the need to get out of his MGB uniform. He also likely knew to sit tight and let the dragnet spread out well beyond the Lubyanka building.

  Danny pulled over on a side street, killed the engine … and waited. That was the worst part, sometimes. Just waiting. But it was necessary—patience was an unheralded but critical part of espionage. So he sat and leaned back in his chair, pretending to doze off while keeping an eye on his mirrors. The police activity continued for a while, but then died down. After about a half hour, Danny keyed on his radio, cannily hidden inside his wallet, an innovation only Mrs. Stevens could make possible. “Misha, this is Alexi, did you make your delivery? Over,” he said in Russian, should there be other ears listening. Sorensen, are you back at the safe house?

  A moment later, the radio crackled to life. “Misha here, Alexi. Yes, delivery made. Receipt is signed. Over.” I’m back, and all is well here. No signs we’ve been made.

  “Thank you. I think that’s it for tonight, but keep your radio at hand. Over and out.” Put the bug-out on hold. Stay sharp and await further orders.

  So that was one positive sign. Whatever Frank had done at MGB headquarters, the Soviets hadn’t made a move on the safe house. Sorensen was trained to do a thorough, invisible surveillance of the immediate neighborhood to ensure the house wasn’t being watched, and by now he was getting pretty good at identifying which “casual bystanders” were actually carrying concealed weapons and radios. Danny figured that they had at least tonight to figure out whether or not the op was truly busted. He wasn’t worried about whether Maggie would flip on them—she didn’t know the location of the safe house, wouldn’t have been told until she made contact in Moscow.

  Danny closed his eyes and shook his head tiredly as he realized he hadn’t discounted the fact that Maggie really might’ve flipped on them. She’d been with MAJESTIC-12 since the beginning; Danny had personally recruited her out of a mental hospital near San Francisco. But she’d always been independent, and her emotional detachment—the biggest side effect of her Enhancement—had increased considerably over the years, to the point where the things she said and the choices she made seemed almost alien at times. But then she’d smile and end up doing the right thing. Was that genuine, or was she so accustomed to pulling emotional threads that she did it out of habit now? Would she ultimately see Beria’s power play, centered on Variant supremacy, as the way to go? Or was she simply playing along until she could turn the tables?

  Danny ran through the dozen or so contingencies in his head before finally giving up. He just didn’t have enough information to figure out what to do next, and wouldn’t until he talked to Frank.

  And Frank was moving again.

  Checking his watch and seeing seventy-four minutes had gone by since he pulled over, Danny started the car and slowly started driving again, heading toward Frank, who was now slowly walking northward toward the safe house. As he drove, Danny didn’t see any great increase in police or military activity. On the one hand, that was a little surprising, as Frank would be an extremely high-value target, but on the other, it was possible Beria wouldn’t want to create too much of a ruckus and show his hand politically. Just as Beria was sure to have informants in the Party and Red Army, his rivals likely would have their own people reporting on the First Deputy Premier as well.

  Five minutes later, Danny spotted Frank on a side street, dressed in a factory worker’s overalls and coat. Checking his mirrors and finding no other cars coming up behind him, Danny pulled over to the side and rolled down his window. “Dmitry! I haven’t seen you in ages!” Danny called out. “Can I give you a ride, Comrade?” Coast clear. Get in the car.

  Frank turned and gave a smile. “Alexi! How are you? How are Anna and the kids?” What about the safe house?

  “They’re well, thank you! I feel like I haven’t seen much of them, though. I’m working hard these days.” So far so good, but can’t say for certain. “Come, let me take you home.” Seriously, get in the car.

  Frank walked over and opened the passenger door. “That’s kind of you, Comrade. Thank you.” The door slammed and Danny pulled out, leaving Frank to slump back in his seat. “They got to Maggie,” he said, dropping the pretense.

  “I know. I sensed her.”

  “No, they got to her, Dan. She’s wearing an MGB uniform now.” Frank’s voice had a tinge of anguish in it, even as he tried to report matter-of-factly on his unauthorized excursion. “I went to talk trade, and to let Beria know we were behind the train job. And she just comes in and says ‘Heya’ and Beria’s all smiles about it. It’s bad.”

  Danny nodded. “Unless she’s doubling. What do you think?”

  “Possibly?” Frank said. “I mean, I could never read her very well, and the psych guy in my head can never make heads or tails of her. So who knows? She came in, Beria picks up his phone—probably to call the cavalry—and I decided to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Right. So what the hell were you thinking doing that?” Danny’s voice remained calm, belying his burning desire to reach out and punch him in the face.

  Frank just shrugged. “Beria was hunkering down, we’re stretched thin babysitting the Commies we got. Figured I’d stir things up. But Dan—we got bigger problems.”

  “Bigger how?”

  Frank rolled down the window a hair to let some cold, fresh air into the car, which smelled of spilled booze and cigarettes—one of the reasons they got it so cheap to begin with. “You know my memories, my voices, they’ve been growing more active lately, yeah?”

  Danny’s heart sank. He feared where this was going. “Yeah.”

  “Well … I killed those MGB men, from the train … I killed them based on their advice. Not just the Russians I took on the last time we were here. But from some of the guys who’ve been with me since the beginning, like Mark Davis. They were all insistent that those men had to die in order to keep our cover from being blown. I … I trusted them.”

  “You trusted them more than me,” Danny replied.

  Frank smirked. “Yeah, I guess I did. I mean, I feel like they know me and I know them, right? It’s … I don’t know … it’s intimate in a way that nobody else would really get.”

  “I have a hard time thinking General Davis and all those military guys you’ve absorbed would have encouraged you to disobey direct orders.” Danny tried not to sound peevish, and knew he was failing.

  “But that’s why I trusted them! Because you’re right, there’s a lot of respect for chain of command from some of those guys. But when I got the Americans and the MGB guys and the Red Army guys and even the academics and everyone else all on the same page? It’s … well, that’s the problem. Something else happened just now.”

  “What?”

  Frank took several long moments to reply, and Danny turned to see him staring out the window as the city went past. “They all wanted me to join up with Beria. All of them. Just now.”

  Danny absorbed this for an equally long time.

  “I have to ask,” Danny said finally. “Did you feel like they were exerting any control over you? Like, you had to fight them off in order to not join up with Beria?”

  Frank chuckled, surprisingly. “Am I possessed? No. I don’t think it works like that. There was never any surrender of motor control or anything like that. Just a big fucking shout in my head from everybody there. ‘Join him. Join him.’ Honestly, it was spooky as hell. And apparently I’m not alone. Before Maggie came in, Beria told me that the Soviet’s Enhancements were changing. Evolving. We seeing anything like that?”

  Danny thought back to the angry faces he saw on the train, emerging like specters from the Variants themselves. “I don’t know. I’m not sure the science team has reported anything like that. But we’ve been so busy with ops …”


  The two men looked at each other for a long moment.

  They don’t always tell me everything.

  May 5, 1953

  Hoyt Vandenberg grimaced with every jolt of the C-47 Skytrain as it cruised over the Northern Rockies. The transport wasn’t particularly well suited for comfort—Vandenberg was traveling below the radar, hence a seat on one of the Air Force’s mainstay troop and cargo transports. But each jostle sent a wave of pain through the lower core of his body, a reminder of the sentence he’d been given months ago.

  Cancer.

  And not just any cancer—prostate cancer, which he felt was the worst goddamn sentence he could’ve gotten. Every trip to the bathroom was an ordeal. Sitting down had to be managed very carefully, and standing up almost as much. He’d gotten good at wearing a poker face through the pain, but every now and then his body would come up with some new stab of agony, or some additional indignity that required him to change his habits or limit his activities. He missed golf like you wouldn’t believe, but the last swing he took with his driver had him doubled over in pain for a good ten minutes.

  He wasn’t going to give up the Scotch, though, despite what the docs at Walter Reed said about mixing booze with meds. It was the only goddamn thing that let him sleep at night. He wished he had a flask with him now, but Vandenberg had spent thirty years in the military without taking a drink on duty, and he was going to hold on to that distinction until he retired.

  That day was probably coming soon. He hated admitting it, but the pain was getting unmanageable some days. The docs gave him maybe six months if he stayed in uniform and kept trying to do his job, maybe a year or two if he gave in and retired. But what the hell would happen then? Bedridden and drugged? Vandenberg had flown combat over Africa and Italy during the war. He wanted a better end than that. He probably wouldn’t get it, though.