MJ-12: Endgame

by Michael J. Martinez

  “What is it, Franz?” Max said, wrapping his arm around Frank’s shoulders. “We did it! We are here, now, finally standing up for ourselves. For the first time in my life!”

  Frank nodded and gave the young man a half-hug. “It’s beautiful, my friend. I just hope they listen to you. To us.”

  “Of course they will,” Max said, raising his beer skyward. There was a lot of beer out there. “We are the proletariat! We are the workers and farmers and laborers. It is our government. They will listen to us!”

  Frank’s stomach shifted a little as he thought ahead to what might come. Communist rule in the Eastern Bloc hadn’t really been tested before. For years after the war, people seemed satisfied with any government that would just get them some food, a roof, and a job. But that was eight years ago now. Maybe this was it. The start of something bigger. Maybe all the missions in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Syria, Guatemala, Egypt, China … maybe he and his fellow Variants really had made a difference. Maybe it all led up to this moment, where the people finally took matters into their own hands.

  “Yes, Max,” Frank said, clinking his bottle with Max’s. “Maybe this is it. I hope it is.”

  Max gave Frank a full-on hug that squeezed the breath out of him, then went off to find others with whom to celebrate. Frank downed the remainder of his beer and went to go look for another one. But before he found one, his wallet began buzzing—four short bursts from the radio hidden inside it.

  Four bursts. Rendezvous point ASAP.

  Frank looked around immediately for signs of trouble, tamping down on his Enhancement to avoid unwanted commentary. A few snippets slipped through, though. No change in police numbers. Only two obvious Stasi infiltrators in sight. He half-expected another “kill them all” to come through, but nothing this time. It felt like the voices wanted to be heard, but also useful. Like they were on their best behavior.

  Frank shook his head and slowly meandered toward the rendezvous point, a park on the corner of Charlottenstrasse and Krausenstrasse. He weaved around various groups of protesters and celebrants, finding a way to constantly check his back, to make sure he wasn’t followed. It took a good twenty minutes to get there, but by the time he arrived, he was certain nobody had tailed him.

  Danny was there, sitting alone by a fountain, away from revelers. Even dressed like a poor student, he somehow managed to stick out with nervous energy. Danny’s head was on a swivel, and he checked his watch three times from when Frank saw him until he finally walked up and took a seat.

  “This can’t be good,” Frank said in German.

  “It’s not,” Danny replied in Russian; his German wasn’t that great, and Frank knew he’d been using Russian and English to get by. “Flash message from West Berlin. Red Army and Volkspolizei are being mobilized outside the city. Soviet Army forces are in the vanguard. They’re going to move against the protesters.”

  “Shit,” Frank said, his heart sinking. “I thought the team in Moscow was going to handle that.”

  Danny shrugged. “They did. Put the squeeze on Beria. Might not be long for this world. But they put Zhukov in charge of the revolt here. He’s not going to be subtle.”

  Georgi Zhukov was a military genius and a three-time Hero of the Soviet Union. He was also as much a true believer as anyone in the Soviet Union these days. He hated Beria with a passion, stemming from a little war profiteering Zhukov had done immediately after the fall of Berlin. Most Soviet commanders looted the place while the Party turned a blind eye, but Beria was gunning for him. Returning the favor by quashing the revolt would be a nice bit of revenge.

  “We have to warn people,” Frank surmised.

  Danny’s eyes widened. “No. Our orders are to get across to West Berlin immediately. I have our papers ready.”

  Frank took the forged documents Danny offered him, skimming through them absently while thinking of Max and Ernst and the rest of his work cohort. “Where’s the extraction?”

  “Chauseestrasse, over in Mitte. About a half hour walk.” Danny got up. “Come on. We need to go. Now.”

  Frank rose and started following, but then grabbed Danny by the shoulder and pulled him back. “I’ll meet you at the corner of Schlegelstrasse. Something I have to do first.”

  Danny fixed him with a hard look and switched to whispered English to drive his point home. “Don’t you dare blow this, Frank. We have agents on the other side to cause a distraction and let us get through. If I have to, I’ll leave you here.”

  “Then leave me here,” Frank said simply. “I gotta do this. Go.”

  With a final glare, Danny turned and stalked off, while Frank took off at a sprint for Potsdamer Platz. It took a good twenty minutes for him to find one of his coworkers, the grizzled veteran Ernst, sitting by one of the fires.

  “Young Franz! Come and have a beer!” Ernst said. “The radio says we’re going to have forty thousand tomorrow. Can you imagine? Forty thousand!”

  Of course, the American broadcasts would say that. They want these people to put their lives on the line. “Ernst, you have to listen to me. I don’t have much time. You have to get our cohort out of here. The soldiers are coming.”

  Ernst looked at him with disbelief. “What soldiers? Are good Germans going to shoot at fellow Germans now? Bah. We’re the people! We have a right to be heard, and that goes for soldiers too!”

  Frank squatted down next to the man and looked him right in the eye. “There are Russian soldiers coming. You remember them back in ’45, right? They hate Germans and they’re going to put down this protest quickly and efficiently. They’re going to shoot people. You need to find Max and the others, go home, lock the doors, and hide until this is all over. Do you hear me?”

  “How do you know this?” Ernst said, suspicion growing. “You’re not one of those Stasi bastards, are you?”

  Frank shook his head. “No, just a regular bastard. I’m telling you, this will all go to shit tomorrow. They’re coming with tanks and guns and God knows what, and we have to go now.”

  Ernst considered this, then took a gulp of beer and shook his head. “No. Fuck that. First Hitler, now the Party. Fuck them. Let them come. I’ll stand right in front of that tank and tell them to go to hell.”

  Frank opened his mouth to argue some more, but saw the look in the man’s eye and thought better of it. “Fine. But you find Max. He’s got a baby boy and a wife. Tell him to get the hell home. This is real, Ernst. You’re all in danger.”

  “We are all in danger,” Ernst corrected.

  Frank stood and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “No, Ernst. Just you. I have to go. For the love of God, tell Max to go home.”

  Before Ernst could say anything more, Frank took off at a jog, heading north toward the extraction point—and a freedom he knew Ernst would never enjoy.

  * * *

  Maggie wished the Russians had more of an appreciation for coffee. Tea just wasn’t cutting it.

  She sat next to Beria once more in a limo driven by Illyanov, this time heading for the Kremlin. At least three cars trailed them, all filled with Variants—Champions of the Proletariat, ready to make their mark upon the world.

  She’d long ago lost the words to describe feelings, but the feelings were there. Everything was coming to a head. An hour from now, they’d know whether the gambit would pay off, or if they’d all be arrested. Or executed on the spot.

  The cars pulled into the plaza past the low, colorful outer buildings and into the secured area where mere proletarians dared not tread. There, Maggie saw dozens of Red Army soldiers staking out the entrances—Khrushchev, apparently, wasn’t taking any chances. A Red Army colonel approached as they pulled up and got the door. “Good morning, Comrade Beria. They’re waiting for you.”

  Beria got out and looked at his watch. “I am early, Comrade Colonel.”

  The colonel gave a tight-lipped smile. “So are they, it seems.”

  Maggie got out behind him and followed him into the building, where the corridor
s were lined with more and more soldiers. The rest of the Champions, led by Illyanov and Savrova, were barred from entering. That was fine—there were contingency plans for that. She checked her watch. Twelve minutes.

  They walked through several ornate corridors and up marbled stairs until they reached the meeting room of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the seat of power within the Kremlin. Maggie had never been there, never dreamed she’d see the place. As the doors opened, she was slightly disappointed to find a rather drab room filled with standard-issue metal chairs, plain tables, and wood paneling. To be fair, the Central Committee rarely met under Stalin, and Khrushchev had apparently done a bang-up job revitalizing it while Beria and the other princelings were busy with their own games.

  There, seven old Russians in suits or military uniforms sat in a semicircle, with Malenkov in the center seat and Khrushchev and Zhukov on either side. In front of their desks was a lone chair. And no fewer than twenty armed guards stood stoically in the room. Really subtle.

  Maggie closed her eyes at the door and concentrated, preparing to pull a great many emotional strings to get these clowns in line …

  … but there were no strings to pull. Anywhere.

  “Lavrentiy,” she whispered beside Beria. “Null fields.”

  Beria stopped at the doorway and looked down at his hands for a long moment. Maggie figured he was trying to summon his own Enhancement and discovering, just as she had, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

  “Recommendations?” he whispered back.

  Maggie looked around, trying to spy the source of the null field. Was it Mikhail Tsakhia, the Mongolian Variant who could create such fields as part of his own Enhancement? He’d been left down in the square with the others, but perhaps he’d turned? Unlikely. And she couldn’t see any overt display of any null generators.

  Then she spotted one of the guards along the wall smirking at her. Sorensen. Holy shit.

  “We need to go. Now. The Americans are helping them,” she whispered.

  Beria nodded. “Yanushkevich,” he muttered, the code name of their immediate retreat operation, before addressing the Central Committee. “Comrades! I have forgotten a critical file in my car. Give me a moment and I’ll go fetch it.”

  Khrushchev chuckled. “No need. We will have it brought to you.”

  “Ah, but Comrade, there is no one except those sitting here who is even cleared to carry this information, let alone read it. I’ll be but a moment.”

  Beria turned on his heel before anyone could say another word, and Maggie followed quickly behind. As they had predicted, it took the Central Committee a few seconds to realize what had happened, but by the time they were down the hall, Maggie could hear shouting, followed by boots clattering on the floor.

  They were coming.

  Maggie pulled a radio from the briefcase she carried, discarding the case onto the floor as they ran. “Boris! Yanushkevich!”

  Beria ducked into a little-used stairwell and began clambering down the stairs, Maggie close behind. They were relying solely on Beria’s memory at this point, and she caught a sharp pang of confusion on him as he paused before a door …

  They were out of range.

  “We’re back,” she said breathlessly. “Outside the null field.”

  Beria turned and smiled before kicking down the door. “Good.”

  And flames engulfed the Kremlin halls.

  June 20, 1953

  Despite having been in America for nearly four years, Ekaterina couldn’t help but be amazed at the largesse Americans enjoyed—and how much they took it for granted. The U.S. Mission in West Berlin, a large, white-washed manor house in a leafy, genteel part of the city, had all the luxuries of home, from Coca-Cola in the commissary to some of the most comfortable beds she’d ever slept in, and yet just that morning she overheard the staff there complaining about the quality of the pancakes and bacon for breakfast and the weak coffee. Even the Berliners working there knew better, having seen their city rise from utter destruction just eight years prior.

  She knew, intellectually, that the right to complain, to seek better things, was inherently American—and as far from the Russian mentality as could be. Russians made do with what they had. No matter who was in charge—the tsars, the Bolsheviks, the Party apparatus—Russians worked hard to get what they could and enjoyed what they managed to get without complaint. Who would listen, anyway? Certainly not the tsars, the Bolsheviks, the Party.

  Yet Ekaterina looked on with disbelief as some minor embassy functionary demanded a word with the cook about that morning’s breakfast, even as she tucked into hers with relish. One of the side effects of her Enhancement was a ravenous appetite, a condition shared with Boris. Their metabolisms skyrocketed after they became Variants, and both of them regularly ate meals that three normal people would have struggled to finish.

  Boris. The look on his aged, wrinkled face haunted her. He shot her. Did he guess she could shrug it off? She fervently hoped that might be the case. If not, what did that say about him? About her? Would they ever see each other again? Would he die before that happened? He looked to be about eighty. His Enhancement kept him quick, of course, but when would his body give out? Perhaps, when all was said and done, she would try to find Cal and bring him to Russia, to undo the damage he’d done back in ’48. As much as she hated Cal at times, she knew full well he was a good man, and if given the opportunity, he would indeed try his best to reach Boris and restore his youth.

  But Cal was missing, and Boris was with Beria. And Beria was gone—somewhere.

  “Join you, kiddo?”

  Ekaterina looked up and saw Frank Lodge smiling down at her, a tray of food in his hands.

  “It’s a free country,” she said with a tired smirk. “That is what you say, yes?”

  “Yep, that’s what we say,” Frank said as he slid into a seat across from her. “Heard you saw your brother again.”

  Ekaterina felt her face grow red. “I don’t wish to talk about it.”

  Frank nodded and started in on his pancakes. She hadn’t see much of Danny and Frank since they’d arrived last night in West Berlin, courtesy of a diplomatic flight out of Leningrad and a somewhat nerve-wracking border crossing from East Berlin. Of course, she and Mrs. Stevens and Tim Sorensen had carried official-looking papers, but using those always made her nervous. She was Russian—she knew the value of identity papers more than any of them.

  “So Leningrad was a bust?” Frank asked.

  “What is a ‘bust’?”

  “Nothing happening. Couldn’t get in.”

  “No, it was not a bust,” Ekaterina said. “We saw that the Red Army had taken control of the Bekhterev Institute. We could not go in, but we could see the building had been severely damaged—another fire. Mrs. Stevens believes Beria’s Variants took all their papers and studies and set the fire to cover their tracks.”

  Frank took a gulp of black coffee. “Yeah, but they have the other vortex.”

  “Maybe. It was kept in a basement much below the ground level. There were iron doors and locks and all different things protecting it. They bragged that it would take a month for anyone to break into the room where it is without the right keys and codes. So there is time, yet. I wish to find Beria. He is very dangerous.”

  “Tim said they used a code word in the Central Committee room. ‘Yanushkevich.’ That ring a bell?”

  Ekaterina smiled slightly. “I thought you knew everything, Frank. It is a name. Nikolai Yanushkevich, one of the tsarist generals during the First World War. He was in charge when the Russian Army had its ‘Great Retreat’ from Poland. I think it is code for retreat.”

  “Makes sense. Burn everything and get the hell out of Dodge. We really stuck it to him. You and Tim did a fantastic job, by the way. Danny’s giddy as a schoolgirl about all the records you got out of that safe.”

  “I am a schoolgirl. Or I should be. What is giddy?” she asked.

  Frank chuc
kled. “Giddy. Happy, in a cute kind of way. Like when a girl likes a boy or gets a present or something.”

  Ekaterina thought about this for a moment. “That’s not me.”

  “No, it’s not,” Frank agreed, looking a bit more somber. “Hey, question for you. Are your abilities changing? That’s been a concern.”

  Ekaterina thought back to throwing the car halfway down the alley near the Bolshoi. “Yes, maybe I am getting stronger? But it is hard to say. I am also young. Growing up. Why?”

  “Something Beria mentioned when I met with him, that’s all,” Frank said. He didn’t seem very convincing, and quickly changed the subject. “What did you end up doing with our visitors?”

  Ekaterina frowned. “I do not wish to talk about that either.”

  Frank nodded silently and focused on his food. The problem of the Soviet Variants was a profound one. Beria had done MAJESTIC-12 a massive favor by keeping his Variant program a secret from the rest of the Soviet government, but if the captured Variants were to be discovered by, say, the Red Army or other Party officials …

  Ekaterina had pleaded with Mrs. Stevens and Sorensen to spare them. They nodded and consoled her. And then they didn’t bring it up again. She hoped against hope that the three were somehow released or contained, but … that was unlikely.

  The awkward silence was broken a few minutes later by Sorensen, who quickly stopped by their table, coffee in hand. “Meeting. Secure room. We got something,” he said before rushing off. They quickly downed as much of their food as possible, and Ekaterina filled another plate with eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, and pancakes before heading up to the embassy’s secure conference room, where Danny and the rest of the Variants were waiting for them.

  “Got a cable from our man in Vladivostok,” Danny said once the doors were closed. “A large contingent of high-ranking NKVD officers left the city about twelve hours ago in three different NKVD-flagged vehicles, along with a Red Army cargo truck. They apparently came in the night before from Chuguyevka, an airfield north of the city, and ended up taking over the local NKVD headquarters for the evening.”