“You couldn’t do that,” Maggie said. “Preview night at the Bolshoi for the diplomatic corps—you have to be there. If they see you’re missing, they’ll read even more into what’s going on. It’ll undermine you further, and we’re so close. So very close.”
Maggie pulled in a little tighter and pulled a few emotional strings in Beria’s head to bring his attention to the curves of her MGB uniform. “Yes, we are,” Beria said. “Close indeed.”
The car stopped before things progressed further, and Maggie waited for Comrade Illyanov to get out and open the rear door for them. Although he continued to look well past his prime, Boris Giorgievich Illyanov was as fast as ever when he needed to be, and Beria preferred to keep him close. The bodyguard’s reaction times and speed would easily thwart most assassination attempts, while his elderly appearance made Beria look unprotected—and also helped with his public image, since many of those who saw Boris Giorgievich thought he was a pensioner from the Revolution, kept on as driver as an act of kindness.
Maggie got out and scanned the crowds heading into the Bolshoi, both visually and with her Enhancement. Most people looked on at Beria’s arrival with mild curiosity, a little excitement, a few pangs of fear, but nothing she hadn’t seen before. She nodded at Illyanov, who gave the all-clear to Beria. The First Deputy Premier emerged from the car to a smattering of applause and a few flashbulbs, and he waved to the crowd as he proceeded into the Bolshoi, Maggie and Illyanov on his heels.
It was only inside the lobby where Maggie got her first glimpse that something was up. In the corner of her mind, she felt a surge of surprise, recognition, anger, and fear. And when she turned, she saw Rose Stevens there, dressed to the nines in a conservative, dark-green gown alongside Jacob Beam, that embassy peon they’d been stuck with at the funeral back in March.
And they were approaching.
“First Deputy Premier,” Beam said as he drew near, hand extended. “I wanted to thank you, on behalf of the United States Embassy, for hosting such a fine evening of culture. I hope it’ll be yet another way our two nations can come together in appreciation and respect.”
Beria smiled and shook his hand. “Of course, Mr. Beam. I am most pleased to see you as well. Your Russian is improving. Have I met this lovely woman yet?” he said, turning to Mrs. Stevens and smiling.
Mrs. Stevens jumped a little bit, then extended her hand. “I’m Jacob’s sister, Susan,” she said in English, and Maggie couldn’t help but smile at her enhanced Midwestern accent and volume. “This is such a lovely, lovely place, Mr. Beria. I must say, I’ve never been to the ballet before!”
Beria looked around blankly; his knowledge of English wasn’t common knowledge, and he preferred to keep it that way. Maggie stepped in instead, quietly speaking in Russian. “The woman here says she is Mr. Beam’s sister. She says the theater is lovely and she’s never been to the ballet before. She is also a spy.”
To her credit, Mrs. Stevens—who spoke decent Russian—barely flinched, and Maggie noticed it only because she was looking. Beria, meanwhile, spoke in rapid, sotto voce Russian. “Tell her I am pleased to meet her, and then we will talk, you and I.”
Maggie turned to her former colleagues. “The First Deputy Premier is very pleased to meet you as well, Susan Beam,” she said, trying on a Russian accent to go with her English. “If you’ll excuse us?”
Mrs. Stevens wasn’t having it. “Oh, darling, do you happen to know where the ladies’ room is? I’d hate to have to get up during the show.”
There was a time, not too long ago, when the prospect of field work terrified Mrs. Stevens. And now, here she was, brazen as all get out, right in front of the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. “Here, let me show you.” She turned to Beria. “I will join you in a moment, after I’ve interrogated this one,” she whispered in Russian.
Beria nodded and took his leave, while Maggie escorted Mrs. Stevens toward the ladies’ room. Before they got there, though, Maggie took her arm and pulled her through a maintenance door. The corridor beyond was vacant and dim, the chatter of the crowd dulled by stone walls.
“What the hell are you up to, Rose?” Maggie demanded.
Mrs. Stevens’s face was a mask of anger, and her emotional state was one of pure rage. To Maggie’s surprise, she was beginning to feel a little remorse. Was that what it was? Regret? Sadness? She and Rose were friends. Weren’t they?
“I could ask the same of you, Maggie Dubinsky,” Mrs. Stevens replied. “Shame on you. Shame on you! Do you know how much Frank and Danny are worried about you? And we’ve lost poor Cal and Rick, too, somewhere in Korea. They’re MIA! In a war zone! Your friends needed you, and you went and flipped on us. All of us!”
Maggie’s eyes widened. “Cal’s MIA? He never got out of Korea?”
“And if you were here, we would’ve bagged Beria by now and gone to Korea and got him back! Instead, Danny’s off to … Danny’s away. We’re all busy trying to do our jobs, and now we have to contend with you, too! You’re a traitor, Maggie! How could you!”
Maggie felt some genuine anger build inside her. “Shove it, Rose. You know why I’m here.”
“Because you think this will be better?” Mrs. Stevens countered. “You think we’re supposed to rule over people instead of help them? Because that’s what this is all about. Once you start thinking you’re better than everybody else, you’re already far worse. You know better than this, Maggie!”
“Shut up!” Maggie hissed. “What’s going on? What do you have planned? Are you behind the East German revolt? Spill it, Rose, or so help me, I’ll—”
Mrs. Stevens actually shoved Maggie backward. “You’ll what? Go ahead. Do it. Go ahead and turn me into a puppet or give me a heart attack or make me love you. Whatever you do, it’s fake. It’s not real. And don’t think for a minute that I haven’t accounted for this. Anything you drag out of me, it’s already worthless. You can’t stop what’s coming. Nobody can. I’m too smart for that and you know it! So go ahead. DO IT!”
Maggie stared hard and long at Mrs. Stevens, who was beginning to tear up. As much as she wanted to plunge her former friend into the worst sort of nervous breakdown, she knew it would be useless. There was no doubt Rose Stevens had planned for every single possible contingency, including capture and interrogation by Maggie. And there was no point in drawing it out any longer.
“Goodbye, Rose,” Maggie said quietly. “Take care of yourself. Next time we see each other, it’s not going to go well. I promise.”
Maggie walked back out into the lobby and stalked off toward Beria’s box. The lights were dimming, and the performance was about to begin; she took the empty chair right next to his.
“Well?” Beria asked.
Maggie swiped a hand across her face to wipe away the surprising tears that had formed. “They’re planning something. I think we need to get to Lubyanka as soon as possible.”
“What are they planning?” Beria demanded. “Who was that woman?”
“Nobody,” Maggie said. “A minor go-between with very little field experience. But because she’s here, that means everyone else is very busy right about now. Which means we need to go.”
Beria turned to her, anger in his eyes. “This is all you have? For all your abilities?”
Maggie just shrugged. “There was no time. But I do know that they lost two of their people in Korea. You may want to get in touch with the Chinese, see if they have them. It’s Calvin Hooks and Richard Yamato. I told you about them.”
That softened him up a bit. “Yes, they are powerful Champions indeed,” Beria said. “Good. We’ll exit after the opening number. Have Boris get the car and bring it to the service entrance. We don’t want to make a scene leaving.”
* * *
Ekaterina watched from the top of the Bolshoi Theater as her brother—her poor brother!—got into the limousine and began to drive to the back of the building. Another car followed; those would be the rest of Beria’s security men. Ekaterina’s radio
already buzzed with chatter—the First Deputy Premier was leaving to go back to Lubyanka. Full security. Back entrance. All units on alert.
She turned off her radio and slid over to the side of the building where the service entrance was located. From above, she watched as the two cars settled into position.
Why did it have to be Boris? she pleaded with whoever would listen. But she got no response, so she waited for the right moment to get to work.
The second car pulled to a complete stop. She would have five seconds before the armed men inside got out.
The drop from the top of the building took three.
Ekaterina landed right on top of the black sedan, puncturing the metal hood and crushing the engine block under her feet. She lifted the rest of the car—with four shouting men inside—and hurled it back down the street. It traveled thirty-five yards and landed on its roof. The men inside were no longer shouting.
“Ekaterina!”
She turned to see her brother with a pistol pointed at her, his face anguished. She never wanted this confrontation, but knew when she arrived in Russia that it was possible. She knew she was going to hate it, but this was what she had chosen now.
“Hello, brother,” she said quietly. “I am sorry they have not found a way to fix you yet.”
The anguish turned to rage. “You traitor!” he shouted, his gun hand trembling. “How could you! You’ve betrayed our country! Our family! Me!”
“Beria betrayed us!” she shouted back. “He left us in Kazakhstan to die in fire! He says we are all his children, but we are disposable to him! You know this!”
The gun barked, and Ekaterina tensed. The bullet struck her in the shoulder, piercing her skin before bouncing off her muscles and down onto the pavement. The result hurt like a burn from a hot pan, but it was bearable. Boris’s eyes grew wide—this was something he didn’t know about her Enhancement. Even in the Soviet Union, nobody had thought to shoot a child to see if she survived, super-strength or not. She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure it would happen, but was glad it did.
“You had better run, brother.”
With a single leap, Ekaterina vaulted over her brother and onto Beria’s limousine. She began tearing it apart with abandon, steel and glass flying everywhere. She let out a scream—and it felt good to let it all out. By the time she threw the engine block through the wall of the Bolshoi, she felt a whole lot better.
She turned to find Boris just staring at her, numbly, his mouth agape.
“Come with me,” she said, pleading. “We can help. Get you out of here. We can have Cal heal you again, make you as you were. Please, big brother. Come with me!”
The service entrance burst open, and Maggie and Beria ran out into the alley, stopping suddenly when confronted with the wreckage of their cars and men.
“You!” Beria shouted. He raised his hand, and a gout of flame erupted toward Ekaterina.
Bullets were one thing, but flame—that would really hurt.
With a mighty leap, Ekaterina jumped four stories onto the building across from the Bolshoi and began running, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Boris was fast, but she knew he couldn’t run up the sides of buildings, and she changed direction a number of times to throw him off her trail as she headed to the next rendezvous point. Only then did she allow herself to cry—but only for a moment. There was still work to be done.
* * *
It had taken twenty minutes for a new limousine to come fetch Beria and Maggie, during which time the First Deputy Premier raged at Illyanov and commandeered a radio from a policeman to begin barking orders to secure the Lubyanka and the safe houses where his Champions of the Proletariat were hidden. Maggie knew it was a sure sign of his panic that he’d even mentioned the safe houses over a radio. Thankfully, he didn’t broadcast any locations.
Now in the car on the way to his office, Beria laid into her—and used a null generator to keep her from calming him down. “This is happening now, in Moscow! An attack on me! You said this was not in your plans!”
“And it wasn’t, Comrade,” Maggie replied calmly. “But I told you those plans might change. They are willing to give their lives to ensure you do not take Comrade Stalin’s place. So they expose themselves.”
“But we still do not know where they are!” Beria shouted. “I will have that woman with Beam arrested! And you, Dubinsky, you will go to work on this woman immediately and make her tell me what they will do next, do you hear me?”
Maggie grimaced as she felt a surprising, unnerving pang of sadness. “Of course, Comrade Beria. But first we must secure our fellow Champions.”
“We will do more than that,” Beria said. “We must move up the timetable. When we return to the office, we will start gathering. The rest of the Politburo will see this as weakness. We must strike, now, before they decide to come for us. We must—”
Beria was interrupted by the sound of an explosion, and a bright red light flared a couple blocks ahead of the car.
The Lubyanka.
Illyanov pulled over to the side of the road by Lubyanka Square, well away from the building. The third-floor corner office—Beria’s office—was now in flames, the facade crumbling to the ground even as they scrambled out of the car and looked on in horror.
Several uniformed NKVD officers rushed up to the car, forming a protective circle around Beria and Maggie, all shouting reports as to what happened. There was a power outage. There was the smell of gas. An electrical fire, perhaps.
Sorensen, Maggie thought. He’s an electrician. He fucks with the power, which kills any hardwired null generators around the building. He goes in, messes with the gas. Heads up to Beria’s darkened office, and …
She turned to Beria. “What did you have in your office?”
“What?” Beria said absently as he gazed up at the burning building.
“What did you have in your office?” she pressed, getting in front of his face. “Papers, documents, records, any of it. What did you have there?”
He finally focused on her, looking quizzical. “Everything regarding the program was in my safe. It is fireproof and locked.”
“Is it?” Maggie asked. She turned and ran toward the burning building, scanning the ground in front of her as she went.
There.
On the sidewalk below the burning building was a hunk of metal, about three feet by four feet and a good six inches thick, with a combination lock on the front. The hinges on the side were twisted and ripped apart.
Katie. Shit.
Maggie turned back toward Beria, but saw several other limousines approaching, the flags of the Party and the Red Army flapping from the front fenders. The Politburo wasn’t wasting any time. She ran forward again, hoping she could help defuse the situation before everything fell apart.
By the time she rejoined Beria, Nikita Khrushchev was jabbing his finger at the First Deputy Premier, with Marshal Zhukov by his side. “If you cannot maintain your own personal security, and the security of your headquarters—let alone keep our socialist allies abroad in line—how do you expect to continue in your position?” Khrushchev demanded.
Maggie reached out with her Empowerment to try to calm Khrushchev down—the man had a notorious temper—but found she couldn’t sense the threads of his emotions. At all.
She quickly looked around—someone had a null generator going, she was sure of it, and the thought made her feel intensely vulnerable and jumpy. Yet in all the chaos—firefighters, NKVD and MGB men, Red Army officers, party officials, gawkers, and onlookers—she couldn’t make anybody.
Meanwhile, Beria was pleading his case—assuming he still dealt from a position of strength. Maggie cringed inwardly. This wasn’t going to end up well.
“Comrade Khrushchev, I promise you, all of this is a ruse. Yes, a ruse! There are counterrevolutionary elements within the NKVD and MGB who would seek to return the Motherland to its tsarist ways! All of this, I promise you, is part of an operation to flush out these elements, to bring them
to the light of day! Even now, I have agents fanning out across the city, tracking them down and bringing them to justice!”
Khrushchev looked nonplussed at best, while Marshal Zhukov—the Soviet Union’s preeminent World War II military hero—looked ready to haul off and punch Beria in the nose. “Comrade Beria, you will report to the Kremlin tomorrow at 9 a.m.—sharp—so that we may begin an inquiry into these events. And you will have proof of this operation, and results!”
“Of course, Comrade Khrushchev,” Beria replied with a practiced smile, and Maggie knew then, even without her ability, that Beria would make his move then.
“Marshal Zhukov has already taken command of the East German situation, on the orders of Comrade Malenkov,” Khrushchev continued. “The uprising will be put down immediately. You no longer have a role to play there, and will not impede this. Do you understand?”
Beria nodded, and Khrushchev turned on his heel and got back in his limousine, Zhukov in tow. The fact that Soviet policy had just been made, there on the street in front of a burning building, amazed Maggie. Score one for MAJESTIC-12, she thought. They’ll have a hard time getting another, though.
As the Party and Red Army cars sped off, Maggie went to Beria’s side. “Orders, Comrade?”
Grim-faced and seething inside—the null field was no longer active—Beria turned to Maggie. “We mobilize now. Tell Illyanov to get moving. We are all at the Kremlin by 8:30 tomorrow morning. All of us. Our time has come.”
June 17, 1953
It was a rare thing for Frank to feel good about his job. Everything about working for MAJESTIC-12 was, at best, morally gray, and always ended up as a collection of partial victories combined with sacrifice and stomach-churning worry.
So to watch thousands upon thousands of East Germans, camped out in Potsdamer Platz, with bonfires burning in the predawn light, singing and laughing and enjoying these tantalizing moments of promise and pride—it was enough to get him all teary-eyed.
MJ-12: Endgame Page 19
