MJ-12: Endgame

by Michael J. Martinez

  Finally, the fourth one. Bronk picked it up and read it through again. He had no idea who had sent it, but his money was on either Rose Stevens or Frank Lodge. It reported that Danny Wallace had died in the line of duty, which saddened Bronk greatly. Danny was a good man, one who always advocated for his kind while still loyal to the United States—a massive balancing act if there ever was one.

  It also gave a brief rundown on what Beria had done and why—and a theory as to the source of the vortex itself and the intelligences behind it. Or within it. Beyond it. Whatever.

  It made keeping the jammers up and running seem perfectly reasonable indeed. As for the rest …

  Bronk got up from his desk and headed toward the hangar and the newly constructed “black box” which now housed the vortex. The first thing he’d do would be to send Kurt Schreiber as far away as possible. St. Elizabeths Hospital in D.C. would be perfect—they had plenty of rubber rooms there. Let the bastard rant and rave to his heart’s content.

  After that, he figured he’d gather his engineers and get to work on a more permanent solution to keep the vortex from ever communicating with anyone ever again.

  As for the Variants …

  June 27, 1953

  The night sky blended into the calm waters of the Black Sea, making it difficult to see where one stopped and the other began. But it was an excellent view, one that had drawn Nikita Khrushchev to the sleepy little Georgian town of Pitsunda years ago. One of the benefits of his position was a vacation dacha, and he had chosen this one as an escape from Stalin’s overbearing madness—and yet, at the same time, to curry favor with the old Georgian as well.

  Perhaps, one day soon, his colleagues would move their vacation homes here to curry favor with him.

  But there were matters to manage first—one of which had shown up at his door not twenty minutes past.

  “I cannot forget what I have seen,” Khrushchev said to his visitor as they stood sipping vodka on the back balcony of the dacha. “I saw Lavrentiy Beria somehow produce flames out of nothingness. We have yet to be able to penetrate the basement vaults of his Leningrad institute. And now you come here and tell me all this. What am I to believe? You are not even Russian!”

  The man next to him smiled. “How do you know this, Comrade?” he said in an impeccable Leningrad accent, his Red Army colonel’s uniform perfect in every regard, right down to the shine on his shoes. The visitor lacked the roundness of many Russian faces, yes, but that was not a universal trait.

  “Your teeth, Comrade,” Khrushchev said. “They are too perfect, and you do not have the aristocratic bearing of someone who has known comfort enough in the Soviet Union to enjoy fine dentistry.”

  The visitor chuckled. “You’re good. So why invite me in for a drink?”

  “Because you brought me such a fine gift. And I would like to know why.”

  They turned around to see Lavrentiy Beria, bound and gagged and unconscious, dumped unceremoniously on the floor of Khrushchev’s study. The strange visitor had stored the former secret police chief in the trunk of his car, and had also provided photographs and documentation of the weapon Beria had somehow commandeered. That, of course, would result in months of investigations and interrogations before they had the truth of it, but given Beria’s involvement in the Soviet nuclear program, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he might have diverted a weapon away from the military into his own hands. It would be a masterstroke of bureaucracy, of course, but Khrushchev knew the Soviets were getting quite good at putting the Red in “red tape.”

  “People with Beria’s abilities should not place themselves in positions of power,” the visitor said. “Indeed, perhaps they should not be trusted at all.”

  Khrushchev nodded. “We recovered some files from the Lubyanka and the Behkterev Institute, enough to know of these individuals. Should we find them, they will be taken care of. But what of the others outside the Motherland? It is likely America has some.”

  At this, Khrushchev saw a flicker of anger on the visitor’s face. “America, Comrade, has similarly ended its involvement with such people,” the visitor said. “Like you, they will be hunting down these people whenever possible.”

  “People like you?”

  The visitor paused, giving Khrushchev a sidelong look, before taking another sip of vodka. “As I said, Comrade, you’re good.”

  Khrushchev smiled. Of course he was good. He’d survived Stalin’s purges and had placed himself in command of the Party—and soon, he figured, the country. And he’d done so by understanding people, by reading the signs. He could come off as a smiling, pleasant, fat buffoon at times. That was intentional. “We could, of course, continue to use these people as Beria had used them,” Khrushchev ventured. “There is value in such abilities.”

  “If you can find them,” the visitor said. “After the Korea incident, those on both sides agreed that the world might be better off if they kept to the shadows. Yes, you may yet have one or two show up and ask to serve the Motherland once more, and if you search, you may find one or two others. But between Beria’s program and the Americans’, they will be very, very hard to track down.”

  “And perhaps that is best,” Khrushchev said. “Though of course we will still look. And what of the phenomenon you described?”

  The visitor downed the rest of his drink and placed his glass on the railing. “I suggest, Comrade, in the strongest terms, that you keep the phenomenon buried deep. The Americans have discovered it emits low levels of electromagnetic radiation. You should assemble electronic jammers and shielding to keep it from doing so.”

  Khrushchev nodded; next to Beria was a stack of folders on this subject as well. “You have given me an advantage. I’ll ask again: Why?”

  With a sigh, the visitor turned to look Khrushchev in the eye. “I know you’re going to continue to oppose America and the West. I know you will fight these stupid proxy wars in Asia and the Middle East, Africa, South America. I know that peace is unlikely. But I hope that even as you do this, you will still want peace. Of all the leaders fighting for Stalin’s scraps, I see you as the best of many bad choices.” The visitor smirked at this. “So perhaps, Comrade, you’ll do better than Stalin did, or Beria would have. I hope I’m not wrong.”

  The visitor turned to leave, but stopped at the door leading inside. “If you do revive Beria’s program, or decide to try to affect the phenomenon in any way, we’ll know about it. And we’ll put an end to it.”

  “Who will? The Americans?”

  “No, Comrade,” the visitor said. “People like me.”

  With that the visitor walked back into the house and flipped a switch on a small device—a null generator, Khrushchev remembered. He then leaned in and spoke to Beria in English, even though the latter remained unconscious, and then walked out of the room and out the front door of the house.

  Khrushchev smiled and finished his own drink. They’d recovered many more files than he let on, of course. And he would try to find a way, someday, to bring Frank Lodge and his friends into the fold.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  Allen Dulles blanched as the President stared daggers at him from across the Oval Office desk.

  “Sir, the Variants have disobeyed orders and are officially AWOL,” Dulles responded, summoning as much calm as he could. “The Variants in place in Asia all simply up and left, while the ones still at Mountain Home have escaped. Meanwhile, we have Soviet media reporting Beria’s arrest, with new photos.”

  Eisenhower threw his briefing folder onto his desk with an angry slap. “What the hell kind of operation were we running here?”

  “Mr. President, the Variants in Idaho weren’t being held as prisoners. They were given base housing according to family status and time of service, and they had as much right to come and go as anybody else on base. Yes, they were being constantly watched and tailed, but … well, we trained them well. Even without their Enhancements, they were among the mo
st effective covert operatives in the world. Slipping away from some Air Force M.P.s would be child’s play. As for the ones in the field, well, sir, they’re spies. It’s what they do best.”

  “But how did they know?” Eisenhower asked. “When I ordered MAJESTIC-12 rolled up and shelved, part of that plan was to hold all those people. I saw the plans Truman and Hillenkoetter drew up. They were good ones. This shouldn’t have happened. Were they tipped off?”

  Dulles’s mind flashed back to the one-word teletype that appeared on his desk the morning after Eisenhower’s order. He didn’t know who sent it, but he could assume why. “We can’t say for certain. It’s possible that sympathetic elements within the MAJESTIC-12 oversight committee may have done that, yes, but I don’t know for sure. Remember, some of their Enhancements may have contributed to their escape as well.”

  Eisenhower grimaced as he picked up the folder and leafed through it again. “So what are we doing about it?”

  “I have teams looking for them now,” Dulles said. “Overseas, all CIA stations are on alert. Here, I went with the U.S. Marshals and Secret Service to begin a search.”

  “Good. Keep Hoover out of it,” Eisenhower said. “Last thing we need is for him to stick his nose into this.” Eisenhower flipped through the summary pages on each of the Variants missing—which was all of them. “We’re not gonna find ’em, are we.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Not likely, sir. Between their Enhancements and their training … not likely at all.”

  “And how likely is it they’ll be coming back for us? Revenge against the government, all that?”

  Dulles could only shrug. “Hard to say. We have full contingency plans to recapture or eliminate each and every one of them should we ever come across them again. We know their strengths and weaknesses. But they know we know. We might get one or two, but we estimate that most of them will simply vanish, try to live out their lives. We’ll redirect the remaining MAJESTIC-12 resources toward finding them, but I think we’d have to get awful lucky.”

  Eisenhower stood and buttoned his suit jacket; he had some Boy Scouts coming in for a photo in a minute or two. “That’s not good enough, Allen.”

  “I know, sir.”

  With a grimace, Eisenhower motioned the CIA director to the door. “Clean it up as best we can. If any of them ever shows their face anywhere in the world, I want to know about it ASAP.”

  Dulles gathered his things and stood. “Understood, Mr. President. But …”

  Eisenhower relented slightly. “I know. Truman should’ve never let them out. But it is what it is. Thank you.”

  Dulles nodded and left the room, striding past a veritable platoon of Boy Scouts waiting to visit the President. He’d follow his orders to the letter, of course, and knew the United States would spend millions of dollars searching for their wayward Variants, and others.

  But without Subject-1, it would be a wild goose chase. A big one. And maybe that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing at all.

  January 12, 1954

  Hoyt Vandenberg sat in an easy chair in his robe, pajamas, and slippers, with a pillow underneath him that wasn’t helping one whit, and tried to focus on the newspaper as he drank a cup of tepid tea. An intravenous unit hung from a stand next to him, slowly dripping chemicals into his bloodstream that might—just might—stem the tide of cancer inside him. It was a long shot, and if the latest round of therapy didn’t work, the folks here at Walter Reed would begin a round of “palliative care.”

  What a pleasant-sounding death sentence that was.

  They were already doing everything they could to make him comfortable, knowing that it was likely this would be the last room he ever slept in. There was a sitting area with his chair and a couch and coffee table, and the bed on the other wall was made up with quilts and blankets taken from home. His wife and family were already in and out, trying to give the place homey touches—yesterday, they had put up some photographs on the wall and on the nightstand next to his bed. But while he appreciated the effort, Vandenberg knew that this was the ultimate in window dressing. He had months, on the outside. Weeks if his body wasn’t in the mood to cooperate.

  The phone rang, and while he desperately wished it would go away, he relented and picked it up on the fourth ring. “Vandenberg,” he said curtly.

  “General, this is Calvin Hooks. You remember me?”

  Vandenberg smiled, despite himself. “Of course, Mr. Hooks. I hope you’re well.”

  “I am, thanks. Took a little bit, but I got me and Sally all settled in nicely.”

  “I suppose asking where would be counterproductive,” Vandenberg said.

  There was a gentle chuckle on the other end of the line. “Let’s just say it’s nice and quiet, and the folks here don’t care much about the color of my skin. I fit in just fine. And I’m not calling from there anyway. Just in case.”

  Caribbean, maybe. Or up in Canada somewhere. Hooks wasn’t much for languages. “Well, that’s smart. And I’m glad to hear it. You deserve a break. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, General, I wanted to see if you wanted some help.”

  Vandenberg’s heart started to beat a little faster. “With what?”

  “Heard you were laid up some. Heard the docs aren’t being optimistic. Might be something I can do.”

  Vandenberg’s mind raced as he recalled Cal’s file. “I didn’t think you could do that.”

  “There’s things I can’t cure, sure. But I can roll back your age a bit. Give you a little more time. Figure it’s the least I can do for the heads-up you gave us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Hooks,” Vandenberg said, his smile growing a little wider even as his voice took on a tone of warning.

  “Right. You didn’t do anything. Still want to thank you for it.”

  Vandenberg tried desperately to quash the growing hope inside him. “How much time?”

  He could envision Cal shrugging as he spoke. “Can’t rightly say. Months. Years. Depends on how healthy you want to look, how many questions you want them doctors to ask you.”

  “But how would you get here?”

  “Well, I thought about that, sir,” Cal said. “There’s places, nice and small, where I can come over without too much trouble. Then just take a bus into Washington. You’d have to set up a visitor pass for me, of course. Find me a name I could work with.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Oh, ain’t too bad. Lord knows I’ve been through worse. I can come through farm country first, take on a little juice from the livestock. Not too much trouble, really.”

  Vandenberg couldn’t find any words for several long moments. It was, without a doubt, the kindest, most generous thing anybody had ever offered him, and any doubts he had about providing the MAJESTIC-12 people with the bug-out code were immediately erased. He worked with the program from the very beginning, since Roscoe Hillenkoetter came to him in 1945 with news of strange vortexes and superpowered people. But they were, in the end, good people, he’d found. Or at least Cal Hooks was, and that was more than enough.

  “That’s a mighty kind offer, Mr. Hooks,” Vandenberg said, his voice cracking. “Mighty kind. But … much as I want to, I can’t let you do that.”

  “But, sir—”

  “No. Please,” Vandenberg pleaded. “You know they’re gonna be looking for you. I know you have some fine skills, Mr. Hooks. I figure you might even get in here and be able to do it. But getting out is another story. And they’ll notice my miraculous recovery. There’ll be questions, and there’ll only be so much I can do now that I’m retired.”

  “I know the risks, General,” Cal said, protest in his voice.

  “I know you do, son. I know you do. And …” Vandenberg paused to fight back the tears that were nonetheless coming through. “And I know what kind of man you are. You’ve earned your peace and quiet. Don’t jeopardize that. You go have a good life now, you read me?”

  There was a pause on the other
end of the phone. “I might just come anyway.”

  “Then I’m gonna put out an alert on you,” Vandenberg said, steel entering his voice. “Please. Don’t tempt me. I can’t have more time, knowing you could end up in prison for the rest of your life. Just … go on now. Thank you. Really. But you just let me be. Go enjoy yourself. Be with your family.”

  “Sir, really, I can—”

  Vandenberg didn’t wait for Cal to finish, instead replacing the phone on the cradle. Only then did he allow himself to break down.

  * * *

  January 21, 1954

  Frank walked through the McClellan Gate, an ornate red sandstone archway with an inscription in yellow-gold: “Rest On Embalmed And Sainted Dead Dear As The Blood Ye Gave No Impious Footsteps Here Shall Tread The Herbage Of Your Grave.” Frank thought it overwrought and maudlin, but it was built while the memory of the Civil War was still fresh, and the folks back then seemed to be a more florid bunch to begin with.

  He took a left and began walking, past rows and rows of simple white stone markers and leafless trees, looking at the paper in his hand. After about five minutes, he found what he was looking for.

  IN MEMORY OF

  DANIEL J.

  WALLACE

  MISSOURI

  MEDAL OF HONOR

  COMMANDER

  US NAVY

  WORLD WAR II

  MAR 3 1920

  JUNE 23 1953

  Frank shoved the paper back in his pocket, then folded his hands and stared down at the stone, at the dead winter grass, at the little American flag placed there by some school kids or ladies’ group or whatever. He thought maybe he should say a prayer, but after all he’d experienced, it seemed the entire notion of heaven and hell was just … off.

  Maybe Danny was in that other place, on the other side of the white light. Maybe not. Frank knew only that he didn’t know, and he’d never know until it was his time.

  “Heya, Frank.”

  He turned and smiled slightly as Maggie walked over. She was dressed in a long dark coat and a blue dress, heels, a hat, the whole nine yards. She even had those little formal white gloves ladies sometimes wore, and her red hair was done up nice. She really did look like Rita Hayworth when she wanted to.