“We’re working on a few things.”
“Get ’em up and running, and then I’ll sign off on ’em for your people. The move to Mountain Home is approved along with the rest of your recommendations. Let me know what that Dubinsky girl gets out of the PAPERCLIP man. I already feel sorry for him.”
“I don’t.”
“True enough. Anything else?”
Hillenkoetter stood. “Just one more thing. Didn’t want to put it in the report. You remember Mrs. Stevens?”
“How could I not?” Truman said, rising from his seat. “Fine lady. Kind of an odd duck, though.”
“Geniuses are like that. I want to put her on the vortex study in place of Schreiber.”
Truman’s good humor evaporated. “She’s a Variant.”
“She is. But she’s also the smartest person we have. She might just be the smartest person ever.”
“And if …” Truman paused, searching for the words. “Look, if there are people of some kind—aliens, whatever—on the other side of that white light, and they’re actually responsible for creating Variants, how do you know she won’t be compromised?”
Hillenkoetter picked up his briefcase from the floor, then just shrugged. “Mr. President, none of them have been compromised by any outside influence that we know of. But yes, that can happen. But if that’s the case, I can think of several other Variants far more dangerous than Mrs. Stevens. And I genuinely think she’s the best one we got to try to crack this nut.”
Truman locked eyes with Hillenkoetter for several moments, leaving the DCI feeling like he was a midshipman again, undergoing inspection. “Fine. But she answers to Bronk, and all major experiments or whatnot go through all of us—you, me, Bronk, Vandenberg, everyone. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Truman extended his hand. “Well done, all around, Hilly. Thank you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hillenkoetter walked out of the Oval Office, past the secretary, and out onto the veranda. He took a seat on a bench and sat down to admire the Rose Garden for a bit, trying to feel better about it all. The operation had been a success, and his people had landed him several prime intelligence coups. His position as DCI and the de facto head of MAJESTIC-12 was assured, for at least a little while longer.
But there were shadows everywhere now. The Russians and their A-bomb, Lavrentiy Beria and his “champions of the proletariat.” And even his own Variants … If he was being honest with himself, Wallace’s little revelation had cast a long shadow of suspicion over them as well.
Which was why they were all going to be moved to Idaho.
* * *
October 12, 1949
Frank walked out into the crisp morning air with a cup of coffee in hand, taking his now-customary seat on the porch of his little craftsman cottage. Idaho was warmer than he’d expected, and even in mid-October, he only needed a sweater to stave off the chill.
His house was one of many on a little block in a little neighborhood just off the main road inside Mountain Home Air Force Base. The units had been slapped together during the war, and there were enough little maintenance jobs to keep Frank busy, at least for the first few weeks. Now it was actually feeling like a home. He had even picked up a couple of knickknacks at the post exchange for decor, which Maggie—living three doors down—mocked him for incessantly. If she wanted to keep her house bare—“minimalist,” as she called it—that was her business.
They’d moved in about a month before. At first, Frank had resented MAJESTIC-12 for corralling them all together like this; they called it “operational efficiency,” but he and the others knew it for what it was—mistrust. They didn’t want all the Variants roaming around unsupervised. Even now, Frank had to check in with Detlev Bronk before driving into Mountain Home itself—population maybe two thousand on a good day—or making the hour-plus trek to Boise to get a decent restaurant meal. And he knew full well he was being followed, of course. It didn’t take CIA training to spot a government-issue vehicle in your rearview on the empty roads of southern Idaho.
But now, having settled in, Frank much preferred base life to his shoddy D.C. apartment. He’d made friends with a couple of the Air Force sergeants who ran physical training, and wrangled himself an invite to join up whenever he liked, as some of the younger officers did. He’d also got approval to work with Major Hamilton on training new recruits, and had been working with a team of four new Variants over the past couple weeks. He found himself enjoying the process of whipping them into shape while he waited for his next overseas assignment.
Cal seemed to be settling in pretty well too. Frank had just been over to his house, a block away, two nights ago for dinner. It all seemed very civilized, and Cal’s wife Sarah was an amazing cook. The community wasn’t all that welcoming—there were still some people who felt Negroes shouldn’t be posted in officers’ quarters—but Sarah was busy volunteering at the base hospital, and Cal of course was actively working with MAJESTIC-12. He seemed to be Mrs. Stevens’s go-to guy for experimental help these days.
Mrs. Stevens was being kept incredibly busy with her new responsibilities studying the vortex, which had been moved to Idaho using the same electromagnetic rig that originally got it out of Japan. She was so busy, in fact, that Frank would see her walking home down the street toward her house at nine or ten o’clock. This wasn’t really a problem for Mr. Stevens anymore, though. Word had it that he’d filed for divorce before the move to Idaho. Frank felt bad for her, of course, seeing as she was a devoted wife and all. But Frank could certainly understand the problems that might crop up, being married to a genius. It was a shame all around, but Frank figured that was how it was going to be for all of them. Being a Variant meant being different. Being normal was no longer an option.
Mrs. Stevens shared her house with Zippy Silverman, who had been an instant hit at the officers’ club on base, what with her being young and attractive and all. She’d become quite the regular there, already at the bar every time Frank stopped in for a drink. She’d wear a nice skirt, get all dolled up, and have those kid gloves on all the time—couldn’t blame her for the gloves, given her Enhancement. Frank had ended up walking her home a few times when she’d overdone it. He figured she was in the hopeless, get-drunk phase of coping with her ability. At least, he hoped so.
Maggie jogged by the house and waved at Frank, which he returned with a smile as he sipped his coffee. She’d been the most vociferously opposed to relocating, alongside Danny, but ultimately came around. She still spouted off now and then about unfair treatment and “Variant rights,” which Frank imagined could become a real thing at some point if more of them continued to crop up, but overall, Maggie seemed to be rolling with it now.
Of course, she had a much more interesting job at the moment than most of them.
* * *
“Good morning, Herr Doktor. What are we gonna talk about today?”
Maggie walked into Schreiber’s cell and plopped down on a chair, smiling right at the German scientist as he immediately retreated to the far corner of the room, opposite his government-issue bed, and balled himself up on the floor.
“Go away,” he whimpered quietly.
“Why?” she asked sweetly.
Schreiber pulled his legs closer to his chest and began rocking but didn’t answer. If he wasn’t a Nazi scumbag, even Maggie might have started to feel bad for him. But as it stood, she was perfectly fine with things the way they were. In fact, over the past five weeks, she’d rather enjoyed seeing just what her abilities could do.
They could do a lot, actually.
Kurt Schreiber, to his credit, had been a really tough nut to crack. His emotional discipline was absolutely impressive—so much so that Danny had had him tested to see whether he was actually a Variant, even though Danny couldn’t mark him as such with his Enhancement. But no, Schreiber was just a steely guy.
It had taken three weeks of intensive emotional manipulation to break him.
First, Maggie tried anger—anger at her, at MAJESTIC-12, at Variants, at the Nazis, at anybody she could think of. Anger and vengeance were powerful motivators, but while she managed to get Schreiber to rail at just about everybody she brought up, he didn’t spill. He even attacked her in a fit of rage, but her training was more than up to the task of fending off a pissed-off pencil-neck.
Then there was fear. So much fear. Even Maggie started having nightmares after a solid week of inflicting terror on the poor guy. He screamed, cried, soiled himself on several occasions, tried begging for his life, even begged for her to end his life a couple times. But when she asked him to spill his guts in exchange for safety, he shut down. He’d scream more or pass out entirely. But he wouldn’t budge.
The less said about lust, the better. Maggie only tried two days of that before she felt the need for a month-long shower.
Finally, she’d hit upon love. At first, she’d kind of gone for romantic love, but when that didn’t work, she tried a more maternal bent. Lo and behold, Schreiber responded just a little bit, giving a few details about how Julia Meyer had come to him during his house arrest, how they’d compared notes about the Variant condition, how they’d sought to escape together. It wasn’t romantic with Julia, Maggie found, just a shared interest.
More and more, Maggie had used that maternal approval thing to draw him out. It quite obviously messed with Schreiber’s head completely—he’d tried to cut his wrists with a sharpened toothbrush last week after Maggie had expressed her utter disappointment in him—but it was working.
In fact, she’d managed to piece the whole thing together at this point. Julia Meyer had just wanted out—she wasn’t a Soviet spy, just a manipulative opportunist looking to get back to robbing banks and living large. She’d convinced Yamato and Sorensen—not the sharpest tools in the shed, to be fair—to help her disable the null-generators at their Area 51 training area, then moved under the earth incorporeally to shuttle between POSEIDON and Schreiber. She’d even managed to convince Schreiber that a Soviet agent would meet him in Las Vegas so he could sell out for a ton of money, which they’d split and then go their separate ways. There was no agent, though. Their best guess was that Julia just wanted an ally on the outside, someone she could leverage to sell secrets to the Russians later on after her own escape.
Danny and the others had undertaken an exhaustive search but found no trace of any contact with a Soviet agent. It was suspect, of course, but Maggie believed Julia had played Schreiber’s greed and vanity like a Stradivarius. And when she’d told Schreiber that, alongside a healthy dollop of motherly disapproval, the man had folded like a bad hand.
Nazi as mama’s boy. It was only because Maggie was a Variant that she’d seen stranger things.
“I don’t think I’m gonna fuck with your head today,” Maggie said. “I need a break. And you, pal, you really need a break.”
Schreiber’s eyes darted toward her briefly before looking down at the hard, concrete floor once more. “Then why are you here?”
“I want to talk to you about your theories. About the vortex.”
There was a long silence for several seconds … and then Schreiber started to actually chuckle.
Maggie tamped down hard on her annoyance. “What’s so funny?”
“You have no idea. You really don’t,” Schreiber said amidst the little laughs. “Oh, no. You really don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you’ll tell me.”
Schreiber looked up, scared for a moment, but to Maggie’s surprise, he held her gaze. “You know, I think I’ll tell you anyway. It won’t make a difference either way.”
“Tell me what?” Maggie asked, trying not to sound concerned.
“The vortex is death.”
The words hung in the air for long moments as Maggie tried to wrap her head around it. “Come again?”
“The vortex … is death. It is death.”
Maggie frowned. “You’re gonna have to be more specific than that, Doc. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to go heavy on you again, and nobody wants that.”
Schreiber leapt to his feet suddenly, laughing and shouting. “Death! It’s death! And it will come for you! For us all!”
Before Maggie could react, Schreiber screamed incoherently and ran headfirst toward the metal cell door. Ran headfirst into the metal cell door.
There was a sickening crack and then silence. His body slumped to the floor.
Reeling, Maggie slowly got up and made her way over to him, bending down to take his pulse. There was none. For once, she was glad of the camera in the room recording everything, because she doubted anybody would believe her otherwise.
She stood up and banged on the cell door to get the attention of the guards outside. “We’re done here,” she called out, then looked down at Schreiber once more. “Probably for the best.”
December 24, 1949
Christmas in Damascus was a surprisingly genial affair, Danny thought, given the numerous religions all vying for attention in the city. It seemed the Muslims had ceded the past few weeks to their Christian neighbors, allowing both tasteful manger displays and garish plastic Santas to be proudly shown off in homes and storefronts. There were even strings of electric Christmas lights here and there, and as Danny walked down Al Hamra Street, he stopped short when he spied an evergreen in someone’s window. Fake, undoubtedly, but still.
“I can’t believe he’s finally seeing us,” Miles Copeland said excitedly as they made their way toward Syria’s Parliament building. “I’m hoping we can maybe jumpstart something good here.”
Danny just shook his head sadly and walked on, Maggie and Frank bringing up the rear and, as usual, keeping an eye out for trouble. “Miles, Syria just had its third coup of the year. This whole thing has gotten way out of control.”
Copeland frowned but let the matter drop. They were on their way to see Colonel Adib al-Shishakli, the new leader of Syria. Last week, al-Shishakli had officially deposed his fellow Syrian Army officer, the Soviet-backed Sami al-Hinnawi, the one who had deposed—and killed—Husni al-Za’im over the summer.
Za’im had been America’s man, of course, while al-Hinnawi had definitely been in the Soviets’ pocket. But nobody knew where al-Shishakli stood yet—and that was on Copeland and Stephen Meade, who had been trying desperately to regain a foothold in Syrian politics after Za’im’s death. Their failure had them on a short leash in Washington, though they’d managed to buy a little bit of time as construction began on the Trans-Arabian Pipeline within Syria. If nothing else, al-Hinnawi hadn’t canceled it, and no doubt Copeland would try to impress upon al-Shishakli the importance of honoring Syria’s agreements.
Normally—if anything could be called normal in Syria anymore—Copeland, Meade, and/or Keeley would be the ones going to see the new strongman. Al-Shishakli, however, seemed to have other ideas, not to mention a keen grasp of who was doing what in Damascus.
The invitation for an audience was specifically addressed to Copeland … as well as Danny, Frank, and Maggie. That in and of itself was highly disconcerting and had prompted a furious round of cables between Damascus and Foggy Bottom before they were finally given the green light to accept.
Danny had been in Damascus for six weeks now, looking desperately for whatever had crept onto the edges of his Enhanced perceptions back in the spring. Normally, when Danny sensed a Variant, that person stood out in his mind like a beacon, giving him an unerring sense of his or her nature as well as a general direction to follow. That was how he’d been able to find so many Variants back in the States—they’d get a few odd reports in the papers, then Danny would go to whatever city it was, close his eyes, and home in on the signal, so to speak.
The signal in Damascus was directionless and sporadic.
He’d spent the first week just walking the streets, playing tourist, even hauling a camera around for show. He’d stop in cafés and restaurants to sit and concentrate, extending his senses over as wide an area as he could—and he could ma
nage a hundred miles, give or take, when he put enough brain power into it. There was nothing.
Then one evening, while enjoying dinner at the Copelands’ house, a tiny flicker had appeared. He’d bolted upright and practically fled the house, running about the nighttime streets like an idiot—but he couldn’t pin it down at all. And after an hour, it was gone.
That sporadic sense came and went over the course of the next several weeks, popping up here and there, anywhere from three times a day to a week apart. Danny would go haring off in a direction but would ultimately lose the trail. He started fastidiously noting times and dates, cabling Mountain Home to see if there was any corresponding change in the vortex. There wasn’t.
Finally, two weeks before, there had been a massive flare-up, and Danny had finally caught a bead on the Variant in question—and it was a Variant. For a few brief minutes, that flickering sense had bloomed to life as a fully formed Variant, and Danny had dashed toward the center of Damascus as fast as he could—at first by taxi, then by foot when traffic jammed up.
Then the Variant had disappeared completely, as if winking out of existence entirely. It had been like nothing he’d ever sensed. That was when he’d called Frank and Maggie to come join him. There was definitely something going on.
Immediately after Frank and Maggie had arrived, al-Shishakli deposed al-Hinnawi—something Danny swore had to be related. Somehow. The three of them scoured Damascus for a full week, tracking down every single person who’d been arrested or “disappeared” since al-Shishakli had taken power. To be fair, there weren’t that many such people. It seemed Syrians were pretty happy to be rid of al-Hinnawi, and there wasn’t much dissent.
Then again, Danny figured if his own country had just had its third coup in a year, he’d be keeping his head down too.
Their activity must’ve prompted al-Shishakli’s invitation. Frank had spent months in Damascus and was well known to al-Shishakli, and even Danny and Maggie were known quantities, though to a lesser extent. Maybe the new boss just wanted to set some ground rules. Or maybe it was something else.
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