MJ-12: Endgame

11

Light bathed the grand hall of Leningrad’s Moskovsky Station, a welcome respite from the concrete-and-brick gray of more recent Soviet architecture. A bust of Lenin, stern and visionary, welcomed Danny into the building, but the authorities somehow deemed the station’s mid-nineteenth-century facade and interiors worthy of preservation, even after a recent renovation that somehow failed to overshadow the building’s grandeur. It reminded Danny of Grand Central in New York, or Union Station in Washington — a temple to the idea that everyday people could escape their place of origin and see more of the world than their parents and grandparents could ever imagine.

Of course, this was the Soviet Union, and travel was still highly regulated and monitored. Thankfully, a different shift was working security today than had been on duty last night when Danny arrived. This was intentional, of course, but there was a risk that there would be someone putting in some overtime or covering for a sick comrade. Danny had different papers today, ones that said he’d arrived in Leningrad two weeks prior to provide assistance to the Ministry of Agriculture as a student of the Moscow Agricultural Institute. Yesterday, he’d been a dockworker newly assigned to one of the shipyards.

The student papers at least got him into a slightly better berth on the return train to Moscow, which he looked forward to greatly after yesterday’s journey on a hard wooden bench, pushed against the window by a couple of pensioners who took up generous amounts of pine. But Danny lingered over a cup of tea near the track, carefully watching the train through the reflection of a distant window, an old tradecraft trick, while pretending to read today’s Izvestia newspaper. Izvestia meant “News” in Russian, and was paired with Pravda (“Truth”) at most newsstands. He was reminded of the phrase heard constantly all over the Soviet Union: V novostyakh net pravdy, i nikakikh novosti v pravde net. “There is no news in Truth, and no truth in News.”

For all the rallies and slogans spouted off at every corner, it felt good to know that most of the Russians still weren’t buying the Party line wholesale. Most of the people milling around him were just regular Joes and Janes — well, Ivans and Ioannas — trying to get through the day. That gave him hope. Maybe, one day, even Variants would be accepted with that sort of collective shrug. But not if Beria had his way. Danny knew, as surely as he knew his own name, the Joes and Janes and Ivans and Ioannas would quickly turn on Variants around the world if they believed they were trying to seize power, no matter how careful they were. The best Variant paradise would be one in which they could live like everyone else, drinking tea and reading newspapers and catching trains to wherever they needed to be.

The sounds of heavy bootsteps echoed down the track, and Danny looked up at the window to see a squad of uniformed men walking behind him toward his train. He couldn’t see the uniforms in the dim reflection, but he concentrated a moment and felt the presence of three Variants very close by. Turning to throw his newspaper in a rubbish bin, Danny looked up to see that, yes, the men were wearing NKVD uniforms, and were boarding the fifth car of the train. Danny was in the seventh car. Perfect.

Slowly, in the slightly tired manner of your typical Soviet Russian, Danny trudged toward his assigned car, papers in hand. He looked up idly at the cars as he passed, referring back to his ticket as if he were trying to find the right car, but instead peering through the windows to ensure that his targets were indeed where he thought they’d be.

As he passed the fifth car, an unfamiliar face stared blankly out the window, and Danny felt his presence in his mind — a Variant, one he’d never seen before. There was no sign of the man’s Enhancement, not that he expected him to be on fire or anything, but a physical cue might have helped. Regardless, Danny made note of the man’s appearance — brown hair, lean, midthirties, captain’s rank.

Then something began to stare back.

Danny nearly froze in his tracks as a ghostly face seemed to somehow detach from the NKVD officer’s head to look right at Danny. It was only for a split second, but Danny could’ve sworn that the face of a woman was looking at him, one with Asian features and a poisonous look of malice.

Then it was gone.

“Problem, Comrade?”

Danny jumped and turned around to find one of the station’s security men standing behind him. Apparently, Danny had stopped dead in his tracks, a goddamn rookie move. “No, Comrade, I’m sorry,” Danny stammered in Russian. “I am very tired and misplaced my car.”

“Papers.”

Handing over his papers and ticket, Danny looked up to see that the man requesting them was familiar — one of the guards working late the night before. It wasn’t one that had dealt with Danny personally, but he was around. A supervisor, maybe. Shit luck, for sure.

Yet the man simply handed the papers back. “You are in the seventh car. Two down. You can — wait a moment.”

Shit. “Yes, Comrade?”

The man — a dark-haired, burly fellow filling out his uniform to good effect — gave Danny a disconcerting once-over. “When did you arrive in Leningrad, Comrade?”

“Two weeks ago,” he replied. “I was helping Oblast Collective Farm Number Twelve with planning for the planting season, soil testing, that sort of thing.” Danny put down his suitcase. “I can show you some of the soil samples if you like, Comrade.”

The man stared intently at him. “I could swear I’ve seen you sooner than that. Let me see your hands.”

“My hands?” Danny asked, heart fluttering.

“Hands.” It was nothing short of an order, and an imperative one at that.

Danny held his hands out in front of him, and the security man took his right one and held it up to his face. “Hmmm. Yes. All right.” The guard dropped Danny’s hand and gave back his ticket and papers. “Seventh car. Hurry up.”

Trying not to seem horribly relieved, Danny grabbed his suitcase and, with a quick spasiba, hustled for his car. Only when he found his seat — padded this time — did Danny look down at his fingers.

At the time, it had seemed like an unnecessary bit of theatrics, but now, Danny was immensely grateful he’d had the foresight to jam his hands into the dirt of a freshly planted flowerbed at his hotel that morning. The dirt under his nails may have just saved his life.

This spy shit is gonna give me a heart attack.

The police station on Pervomayskaya Street in the little town of Skhodnya was tucked into a brick apartment block, across the street from another brick apartment block and about six blocks up from the local train station — perfect for commuters into Moscow. It was a sleepy little burg that, as Frank and Ekaterina got out of their car, would soon wake up in a big way.

“This is stupid,” Katie said as they walked up to the front door. “I am too young to be an NKVD cadet or assistant or whatever you say I am.”

Frank just smiled. “You look older than you are,” he said quietly, noting that the uniform Tim had stolen fit her perfectly, as did the colonel’s uniform he now wore. “And quit with the English. Pa Ruskiy, pozhalsta.”

Katie frowned, but kept quiet as Frank unceremoniously barged into the station. “Where is the chief of police? I need to speak to him now,” he demanded in perfect Russian.

The desk officer looked up lazily, then launched to his feet as if he had a rocket strapped to his ass and gave a salute that wouldn’t have passed muster in basic training anywhere in the world. “Hello, Comrade Colonel! The chief is on patrol with another officer now!”

Frank put on his best senior officer glare. “You have a radio, do you not, Comrade?”

The officer, a pudgy man in his midthirties, swallowed hard. “Yes, Comrade Colonel. We have a radio.”

“Then pick it up and call him in immediately. And do not, for the love of the Motherland, tell him who is here!”

The officer practically dove for the radio and made the call, greeted at the other end by a peevish older voice. It took some doing — the chief wanted to know why he had to come all the way back to the station — but the officer held fast, and soon the officer looked up with a sycophantic smile. “The chief will be here in five minutes.”

“If you wish to make yourself truly useful, you will call in every single officer from this town for a briefing. Every shift. I want them here and ready in thirty minutes,” Frank said. “Where is the chief’s office?”

The officer quickly paled. “Everyone?”

Frank leaned in menacingly. “Is there a problem with your hearing, Comrade?”

“No, Comrade Colonel. Every officer. Thirty minutes. The chief’s office is the second door down the hall to the left.”

Frank immediately marched off, Katie in tow, and let himself into the shabby, wood-paneled office, closing the door behind them. The desk was stacked high with papers, covering every square inch not occupied by a small blotter, a typewriter, or a telephone. “What a shithole,” he muttered in English, looking at the photos on the wall showing a corpulent man in a policeman’s uniform next to several other corpulent men in suits, shaking hands and smiling. “What is it about the locals that they all have ‘love-me’ walls like this?”

Ekaterina plopped down in a chair in front of the desk. “It is for when people like us come in, so we can see he is a proud member of the local Party, and loyal.”

Frank took the chief’s chair behind the desk. “Nice to know ass-kissing knows no borders. Timmy? How you doing?”

A voice came from the corner of the room. “The cleaning staff here needs to be fired.”

“They use inmates from the local jail,” Ekaterina said. “The drunks and the wife-beaters. You expect them to work hard for a man like this?”

Frank heard Tim chuckle, and let the matter drop as they waited. Four minutes later, the door opened and the chief himself — grayer and fatter than most of the pictures — barged in. “What is the meaning of — Oh.”

Frank rose stiffly. “Comrade, I am Colonel Pavel Andreyovich Petrov of the Ministry of State Security. And you are?”

The chief hustled over with a broad smile and a meaty hand extended. “I am Chief Mikhail Mikhailovich Mikhailov. It is an honor, Comrade Colonel.”

Most unoriginal parents ever, Frank thought as he shook the man’s hand and waved him to the seat next to Katie, which he took without argument. Like calling someone Michael Michaelson Michaels. “Understand, Mikhail Mikhailovich, the conversation we are about to have is of the utmost sensitivity. What I am going to ask of you is a critical matter of state security, and goes to the very heart of the Party and the Motherland.”

Frank could practically see the chief’s heartbeat increase before his eyes. “I am your man, Comrade Colonel. You may rely on my discretion fully.”

One of Frank’s voices entered his head — Andrei, one of Beria’s men from the park. This one is an opportunist. He will call to confirm your orders. Tread carefully.

“I am not sure you understand, Mikhail. I need your help. There are counterrevolutionary forces within the Party that wish to see the legacy of our beloved Stalin dismantled. There is talk of socialism’s failings — if there was ever such a thing! — and even a broadening of political discourse beyond the path shown us by Vladimir Ilych himself. So when I say I need your discretion, Comrade, I need to know that you will follow my orders to the letter over the next twelve hours. This is a critical point in my investigation and, I should note, a critical point in your career. Succeed, and you will be honored greatly for your contribution. But if word gets out and we fail, lives will be at risk. Possibly including both of ours. The enemies of the State cannot know we are about to score a decisive victory over them! Have I made myself clear?”

The chief nodded vigorously, his smile gone, replaced by the most serious — and worried — mien he could muster. “I understand, Comrade Colonel. What can I do to help you preserve our great Party and Motherland?”

“How many officers do you have in total?”

“Two dozen, Comrade Colonel.”

Frank smiled. “That will do, Mikhail Mikhailovich. I have your man up front bringing them all in. I have very precise instructions for them. I expect you to help me carry them out.”

“What will we be doing?” the chief finally asked. Took him long enough, Andrei noted.

“Stopping a train and capturing counterrevolutionaries,” Frank said simply. “And we cannot fail.”

Mikhail Mikhailovich Mikhailov nodded vigorously. “I swear to you, we will not, Comrade!”

Frank caught Katie giving the man a piteous look, and gave her a swift kick under the desk. She whipped her head around to glare at him, but quickly fell back into character, pulling out a sheaf of paper. “Comrade, we will need to gather the following materials in the next three hours, and do so without alerting anyone as to why. Can you make this happen?”

Mikhailov took the paper and scanned it, his eyebrows shooting upward several times. “This is… extensive.”

“We were told we could rely upon you,” Frank said, an edge to his voice.

The chief looked up and nodded again; Frank thought the man’s head would pop off at any moment. “It will be done, I promise you, Comrade!”

Ekaterina stood stock still, in a military at-ease, and watched as Frank and Mikhailov positioned the portable barrier across the train tracks, electric lights already blinking. She had to admit, the spot Mrs. Stevens had chosen was perfect — flat and lightly forested, with well over a mile of straight track and line of sight ahead. Even if the train didn’t have a working radio — always possible, given the Soviet Union’s notorious lack of efficiency — the train had plenty of time to stop before plowing into them. The dirt road that crossed the tracks there was well away from most everything else nearby — just a couple farms on either side, with farmhouses well away from the tracks themselves.

Of course, if it had been her on the train, she would’ve set a watch among the NKVD men there, ensuring that they’d have plenty of warning against such an ambush. But it wasn’t a bad gamble on Mrs. Stevens’s part, thinking they’d be caught off guard on such a common route, in the heart of the Soviet Union and barely twelve miles from central Moscow.

That said, she figured they’d have twelve minutes, at most, before someone would come rolling up. Grab the Variants, deal with the rest of the NKVD, get the local police moving and get the train moving again — all in twelve minutes.

To think that most American girls her age were just sitting around their phonographs at home, listening to Eddie Fisher or the Four Aces and scribbling unsent love letters to high school crushes. More and more, Ekaterina found herself wanting to join them, to embrace being Katie the American Teen-Ager. To go to high school, whatever that was. It seemed… nice.

All that said, she figured she’d last maybe a week before getting frustrated with all the simplistic, ineffectual nonsense involved and punching someone into a coma.

Danny warned her that theirs wasn’t meant to be a normal life, at least not yet and not any time soon. He was right, but there were times she mourned a life never to be lived.

Mikhailov rushed up to where she and Frank were standing, Handie-Talkie at the ready. “I have reached the conductor! The train will stop for us!”

Frank nodded. “Position your men. Remember, I want every paper checked. Every passenger. They could be hiding anywhere. Every single potential counterrevolutionary must be detained. Understand, Mikhail Mikhailovich?”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel! It will be done!”

The chief rushed off and Frank turned to Ekaterina. “Twelve minutes, huh?”

She nodded. “Someone heard that radio call. They will look into it.”

Frank turned around and saw Tim Sorensen, now in an MGB uniform, by the truck he’d stolen from the local Red Army barracks. With a nod and a salute, Tim ducked into the back of the truck to shed his uniform and get to work.

The sound of screeching brakes and a growing bright light heralded the arrival of the train, slowly gaining volume and luminance as it ground to a halt. “Remember, Comrades!” Frank shouted. “Wait until I give the word to board the train! We do not want these traitors jumping out beforehand!”

The police — twenty-two in total, given the chief’s near-groveling request for someone to stay behind and man the phones, and another to patrol his town — took positions on either side of the tracks, pistols and war-vintage SKS carbines pointed toward the train.

With a gasp of steam and a final long, piercing grind, the train stopped just two feet away from the temporary barriers. Frank dashed forward, Ekaterina easily following, to come up beside the chief. “I have a man inside. He should be toward the back. My assistant will go to see him now. Have your men remain at their stations.”

The chief assented, and Ekaterina ran toward the back of the train as quickly as she could — which was pretty fast, considering her strength had her covering five or six yards at a stride once she was away from all the lights. She saw Danny clambering off the train, pinning a badge to his otherwise shabby suit.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Fifth car. Three of them,” Danny said. “Where’s Tim?”

The sound of footsteps came from behind them. “Dammit, Katie, I can’t run as fast as you!” Tim huffed from the darkness.

“Fifth car. You ready?” Danny asked him.

“Yeah. Just… yeah. Okay.”

Ekaterina turned to the direction of his voice. “Go!”

Sorensen’s footsteps retreated and, a moment later, the door leading to the back of the fifth train opened. Ekaterina and Danny watched closely and, a few seconds later, the car began to fill up with noxious smoke. There was suddenly a great deal of movement in the car, and some shouts, and the door in the back slammed shut. Sorensen appeared a second later out of thin air, coughing up a lung.

“Jesus, Tim,” Danny said, rushing over. “What happened?”

“Someone… some… someone bumped into me,” he said between outbursts. “Couldn’t… hold… breath.”

Before they could do anything more, the side of the train ahead of them erupted.

A huge gout of water at least thirty feet long burst out half the windows on their side of the train, spraying them with liquid and, more importantly, ventilating the car. A second later, gas began pouring from the now-broken windows, and the sounds of shouting and swearing were far more clear.

“Dammit,” Ekaterina swore in Russian. It was her turn.

Grabbing Danny by the scruff of his uniform, she jumped up — at least ten feet — and grabbed the edge of one of the broken windows. Leaving Danny hanging from the edge of the window beside her, she tore open a gaping hole in the metal hull of the train car and proceeded inside, punching the first uniformed man she saw. He didn’t get up.

Then she was hit by a fierce wave of water, one that actually staggered her back a few steps. That was impressive, she thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been pushed back by anything.

The water abated, and Ekaterina surged forward, wiping her eyes. She saw a thin man in the uniform of an NKVD major, and recognized him immediately, despite the five years since she’d defected. He was Alexei Ivanovich Rustov, a Variant like her, one of the first found by Beria’s Behkterev Institute. And his Enhancement seemed to have improved considerably over the years.

“Ekaterina, is that you?” Rustov asked, a flash of recognition in his eyes. “Ekaterina?”

Grimacing, Ekaterina tromped toward her former comrade, shoving a would-be tackler into the wall of the train. She grabbed Rustov by his necktie and threw him back toward Danny, who managed to crawl into the car behind her. Many of the other men were still coughing, dazed but not unconscious as planned. Moving determinedly down the car, Ekaterina pummeled and slammed her way through the officers, trying not to take a grim sort of pleasure from it. They were Beria’s men, yes, but most of them were simply doing their jobs and trying to feed their families. That was, perhaps, not a very good excuse, but for her, it was enough to show relative restraint.

That is, of course, until a wave of vertigo washed over her, one so profound that it dropped her to her knees and brought her latest meal up onto the floor of the train.

“What?” she gasped, looking around. Most of the people in the train, including Danny and Rustov and the NKVD men still conscious, were similarly indisposed.

Except for one.

A woman three rows ahead of Ekaterina simply sat there, smiling, an eyebrow raised. She was young, though older than Ekaterina — perhaps in her twenties. Ekaterina had never seen her before, but the captain’s rank on her uniform — far too high a rank for the woman’s age — was enough to tell her that this new woman had to be one of Beria’s special recruits.

Suddenly, the woman’s head jerked to the side as her eyes widened, and she collapsed into the aisle, unconscious. At that moment, the nausea and vertigo evaporated like a mist, and Ekaterina shot to her feet once more, dashing forward to grab the woman and heave her bodily through the gash in the car’s side.

“Thanks, Timoveyish,” she muttered in Russian, using her pet name for Tim Sorensen. She’d seen enough of his handiwork to know when he was around.

“Guess she can’t target what she can’t see,” the invisible man whispered in English in her ear. “Let’s go.”

Ekaterina shouted over to Danny, in Russian. “Where’s the third? The swimmer?”

“Outside, heading toward Frank,” he replied. “Let’s move.”

Jumping through the hole in the side of the train, Ekaterina took off at a dead run, passing each car in just a few strides and quickly catching up to the man ahead. She took a great leap and landed right on top of him from a height of about fifteen feet. He didn’t get up.

Tough being a Variant whose Enhancement requires being submerged in water.

“Secure!” she shouted ahead.

The stolen Red Army truck surged forward from the temporary barrier, Frank Lodge at the wheel. “Let’s go,” he called out. “We need them all in there.”

“All of them?” Ekaterina asked. That’s not the plan.

“All of them,” Frank replied.

Ekaterina took the runaway she’d landed on and hurled him into the back of the truck, then jumped on the tailgate as Frank sped back toward Danny and the other NKVD officers. Danny had already secured the two other Soviet Variants, hands tied behind their backs as they lay unconscious on the ground.

“Frank wants them all,” Ekaterina muttered as she fetched Rustov and the vertigo woman.

Danny looked over to Frank, waiting impatiently in the truck. “There’s twenty men in there. Some of them won’t stay down for long,” Danny said. He then walked over to the truck and got in next to Frank. Ekaterina couldn’t hear what was said, but she could see the two of them getting pretty animated. After a couple minutes, Danny got out again and, looking angry and pained, walked over to Ekaterina. “Let’s get them in the truck. We’ll need to gas them when they’re inside.”

With a sigh, Ekaterina jumped back into the train car and started gathering unconscious NKVD men. Well, mostly unconscious — there were a couple groggy ones who needed a bit of reinforcement, but again, she restrained herself from being too rough with them.

Ten long minutes later, Ekaterina put the last officer in the back of the truck, and Danny followed suit with a second canister of gas, quickly closing and securing the canvas flap around the top. It wasn’t ideal — Ekaterina could see gas starting to flow out from around the edges of the truck bed — but those inside wouldn’t be in a position to complain much about their destination, wherever that was.

“Tim, you and I are in the truck. Katie, you go back with Frank. Rendezvous at Point B in an hour,” Danny said tersely.

Again, not the plan, Ekaterina thought as she followed Frank back toward Mikhailov’s policemen. There would be glad-handing and Frank acting imperious and commanding, more scraping and bowing by the police chief…

… and then what?

What the hell are we going to do with two squads of NKVD officers?

Danny rode silently in the truck while Tim navigated through the darkness of the Russian countryside outside Moscow. Their operation was, technically, one of the greatest successes MAJESTIC-12 had scored to date — the capture of three Soviet Variants in the middle of the Soviet Union itself.

But the other twenty guys presented one hell of a complication. And there were no good solutions.

Tim pulled onto a dirt road that led through a thick stand of trees. Pulling to a stop, Tim shut down the truck’s headlights and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight, then started down the rutted road again, the truck bouncing and straining in protest.

“The Ruskies don’t really believe in shock absorbers, do they?” Tim said quietly. “This thing handles like a goddamn battleship. And we’re low on gas.”

Danny sighed. “Gas won’t be an issue. Truck’s staying here.”

Tim nodded and kept silent for the next several miles, finally pulling into a small clearing where a couple of burned-out farm buildings — likely casualties of the Nazi invasion during World War II — sat squat and dark in front of the trees. They were easily forty miles outside Moscow now, and a good half hour from anything remotely civilized.

It would do.

Danny got out of the truck and reached back with his senses to check on their captives. All three were unconscious. He’d seen the water Variant’s work firsthand, and felt the woman’s vertigo, of course, but he still didn’t know what the third could do, though apparently the man decided running was a better option than using his Enhancement. Maybe his abilities weren’t particularly combat-effective, or maybe he was just a rookie. Or a coward?

Still, Danny didn’t feel like finding out suddenly, so he rifled through his rucksack for a null-field generator. Mrs. Stevens had managed to get the device down to the size of a smallish ashtray without sacrificing too much range.

Before he could turn it on, though, he felt a… rustling… in his senses. He looked toward the truck, and for a moment saw three pale swirling mists and, God help him, one of them formed an enraged face for a split second.

Watching carefully, Danny flipped on the null-field generator. The mists seemed to speed up and flail around before dissipating entirely.

They know? Dear God, do these… things… know when we’re about to cut them off? Have they… learned… about the generators?

Relatively early on, in 1949, Danny and the scientists working at Area 51 had discovered that there were indeed intelligences on the other side of the strange vortex created by the Hiroshima bombings. They had come to believe that Variants were created when one of these intelligences escaped the vortex and attached itself to a normal person. Each time the vortex surged with radiation, Danny believed, a new Variant was Enhanced. The correlation was too strong to ignore, even if they hadn’t always been able to locate every single Variant. Maybe the intelligences didn’t find a good “host” in time, or the Enhancement was too minor to pick up.

But it seemed the Variants were indeed hosts to these entities. Thus far, no Variant had ever showed signs of being controlled by these intelligences, or of being in contact or communion with them in any way. The entities just sort of tagged themselves to a person, and that person would manifest an Enhancement, along with a side effect or two.

The only two Variants known to the MAJESTIC-12 program who didn’t exhibit any side effects at all were Frank Lodge and Danny himself. Frank, of course, did seem to be in some sort of communion with the memories of the dead folks he’d absorbed, but no one was sure if that really counted or not. And as for Danny, his sole Enhancement seemed to simply be the ability to detect other Variants, sometimes at great distances.

Though Danny sometimes wondered if his ability was changing, evolving. Ever since the Russian nuclear test in Kazakhstan in 1949, it seemed Danny was sensing more about these intelligences. Just glimpses, really, and they didn’t make much sense.

“I hate it when we use those,” Tim said, startling Danny slightly.

“Yeah, well, we don’t want our guests getting ideas,” Danny replied. “But I know how you feel.”

Tim nodded. “It’s like… being cut off from a part of yourself. There’s a comfort to having that ability there. It’s like a companion, almost. Weird, I know.”

“Not weird. Well… not weirder than things already are.”

“True that, son. There are days when I just want to go back to Minnesota and screw around with electronics for a living again,” Tim said. “I mean, I’m in the middle of goddamn Russia, in the middle of the night, wearing a secret police uniform with like twenty-plus Soviet officers in my truck, which I hot-wired and stole from the Red Army.”

Danny laughed at this, feeling a little better about things in general. “Well, when you put it like that. At least it’ll be something you can tell your grandkids about.”

Tim’s good humor waned as he dug around for a cigarette. “Dan, I ain’t gonna see my grandkids. And if you don’t have kids by now, you won’t have any either.”

“Kids were never in the cards for me,” Danny replied. “I’m not wired like that.”

Tim lit up and drew in deeply. “Married to MAJESTIC?”

“No. Just… not a family kind of guy.”

“Confirmed bachelor. Or… confirmed bachelor?”

The difference in Tim’s question was telling, but while Danny liked him just fine — there were some secrets Danny wasn’t prepared to tell anyone. There was a reason he was good at his job. Secrets came naturally.

“Never mind, you dirty bastard,” Danny replied jokingly. “Go keep watch down the road. I’ll keep an eye on our guests.”

Tim gave Danny a clasp on the shoulder before heading off back down the road, pistol in hand, while Danny cracked open the back of the truck. The gas had finally dissipated, but the canvas and enclosed space had kept it circulating in there for a while. Nobody was getting up any time soon. Mrs. Stevens had designed the gas to last three hours, and they were barely a third of the way there.

Still, Danny kept the null-field generator going. It was hard to battle Variants when you didn’t know their abilities, and the geyser guy threw things out of whack. The program had Rustov in its files since ’47, so they should’ve taken him and the others into account. Danny thought back to the close call they’d had in the cisterns under old Istanbul back then, and figured Rustov had to have been in on it. Only natural that his abilities might evolve during that time. Others certainly had.

Frank had confided to Danny that his dead-man memories were becoming more conversational in his head, and seemed to interact with him and one another in very self-aware ways. Cal could still glean life energy from living things to keep young and strong, or use that energy to heal others in exchange for aging himself back to normal, or beyond into old age. But the continued testing at Mountain Home showed that, over time, he had to take in and expend more and more energy to get the job done. In 1948, Cal could kill a steer and age himself twenty years younger. Now, it was maybe fifteen years. Where would it be a year from now?

Yamato had more difficulty with random sparks and arcs when he slept lately. Sorensen would occasionally phase in and out of sight — sometimes just a hand or leg, sometimes all of him — unless he kept a conscious grip on his ability. And Maggie… well, Maggie had just become more reserved, more cold and distant over time, even as she honed her emotional control over others into the most potent weapon MAJESTIC-12 had.

If he was being honest with himself — and being alone in the woods with a truckful of Russians that needed to be dealt with was a surprisingly good opportunity for introspection — it was clear to him that the Variants within MAJESTIC-12 would likely have a short shelf life for government work. Maybe ten years, maybe less. After that, Danny feared that Cal would require downright disturbing amounts of life energy to function; Frank would be overwhelmed by the voices in his head; Sorensen and Yamato would likely have to be hidden away from everyone as their Enhancements became uncontrollable. And Maggie…

Danny didn’t want to think about what Maggie might become.

A whistle from Sorensen — it was supposed to be a whip-poor-will call, but he never mastered it — dragged Danny’s attention to the road. There was a car coming, lights off. It should be Frank and Katie, but…

Danny drew his pistol and aimed it at the road just as the car pulled up. Katie and Frank were inside, but both Danny and Sorensen had their weapons drawn.

“Lovely evening,” Tim said in Russian, the first part of the password.

“Yob t’vyu mat,” Frank replied as he got out. It was one of the vilest curses in Russian, and still not really used in polite company, and not so immediately in conversation. So oddly enough, it was a good rejoinder for the second part of the password.

Danny and Sorensen holstered their weapons. “Any problems?” Danny asked as he walked over to the car.

“Just an overeager police chief excited about his Order of Lenin medal, sure to come in the mail any day now,” Frank replied. “I told him to keep off the phones and radios for forty-eight hours, until I could ‘secure the NKVD and remove all the traitors to the Motherland.’”

“Will he do it?” Danny asked.

“So long as he doesn’t call tonight, we’re good, right?”

Danny nodded. Here we go. “Been thinking about the solution for these guys, Frank. I think there’s another option.”

“Dan, I’m sorry. Really. But you gotta expect at least one of these guys made Katie on that train. She says one of the Variants there recognized her and called her by name while there were still guys standing. So if even one says, ‘I got beat to shit by a teenage girl,’ and another says, ‘I heard someone say Ekaterina,’ then Katie’s been made as active here in the Soviet Union. Right here and now. She doesn’t leave. These guys can’t be allowed to go back.”

“And what if Maggie’s already told Beria about all of us?” Danny shot back. “What if Katie’s already been made? Killing these guys isn’t going make that better, Frank.”

Ekaterina quickly moved herself between the two men, facing Frank. “Wait. You want to kill all these men? There are twenty of them!”

Frank put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Katie, honey, I’m sorry, but Beria really can’t know you’re around. Do you know what he’d do to get you back?”

“I don’t care!” Ekaterina said, shoving Frank’s hand off her hard enough to stagger him backward. “You’re so worried about ‘Katie, honey,’ so why am I here then? I will not have these men die just because they may tell Beria something about me he likely already knows!”

Danny stepped forward again and looked Frank squarely in the eye, even though the latter had a couple inches on him. “Frank, get the Russian Variants secured. Decision’s been made. Time to move out.”

Frank stared hard at Danny for what seemed like an eternity, but Danny stood his ground, relying on their shared history and, yes, the privileges of rank. Finally, Frank stalked off toward the truck, and everyone else relaxed.

“What was that about?” Sorensen asked.

“Stress, probably. Let’s go,” Danny replied, hoping it was true.

Five minutes later, the unconscious Variants were piled into the car — two pretzeled in the trunk, one propped up in the back seat — and the keys to the Red Army truck were flung deep into the woods. Frank took the wheel and, with everyone else piled in tight, sped off into the night, headlights still doused.

Two minutes later, Danny saw a flash of light in the rearview, accompanied by a loud boom a second later.

He quickly turned to Frank, who just stared straight ahead on the unlit road. “What the hell did you do?”

There was an excruciating moment of silence before Frank replied. “I did what I had to.”

From the back seat, Ekaterina screamed and lunged forward, her hands going for Frank’s throat. Thinking quickly, Danny flipped on the null-generator before she could snap Frank’s neck and send the car careening off the road.

“You killed them! Those men! Murderer!” she shouted as Sorensen held her back — successfully, now that her strength was gone.

Frank said nothing. He kept driving.

When Ekaterina’s shrieks had died down to mere sobbing, Danny turned to Frank. “Why?”

“Because you were wrong, Dan. Every single expert jammed in my head agreed — they couldn’t live. We need the extra time, and we need to keep our covers secure. Simple as that.”

“Because of your voices? I outrank those voices!” Danny shouted. “You killed twenty men!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Frank snapped. “You think I like doing this shit? But if we’re gonna get Maggie back and win this thing, we have to do it right.”

Danny turned toward the darkness outside again and mulled it over for a few minutes. Finally, he made a decision.

“Major Lodge, for violating a direct order from a superior, you’re hereby relieved and confined to quarters until further notice,” he said calmly. “At the earliest possible date, you will be transferred back to the United States to face disciplinary charges. Now get us the hell home and don’t say another goddamn word.”

Frank said nothing. He just kept driving.