MJ-12: Endgame

17

It didn’t take Frank Lodge long to see what everyone in East Berlin was grumbling about in the coffeehouse that morning. The front page of Neues Deutschland spelled it out perfectly. “Economic Reforms Approved by Council of Ministers,” the headlines read. “Workers Will Achieve New Heights Under New Socialist Program.”

Sounded great, of course, but as the newspapermen liked to say, the story buried the lead — the East German government had just increased work quotas by ten percent in order to help the country dig itself out of an economic slump. Any worker who didn’t meet the quota would see their pay docked. Oh, and they were raising prices, too, which amused no fewer than three economists in Frank’s head.

Frank closed his eyes and concentrated to silence the voices. He really, really wasn’t interested in hearing from them. Not after what happened last month in Moscow. Instead, Frank used his own know-how, honed by the lessons received through the years from the memories of those who had died, to scan the room. It was a good exercise, using what he had already learned in the past rather than continuing to rely on the real-time expertise of those now-suspect personas in his mind. And he saw plenty of discontent, especially from the men — and a handful of women — dressed as factory workers. The guys in suits were less perturbed, but even they were talking intently, a few making reference to Neues Deutschland or its young persons’ counterpart, Junge Welt.

They had good reason to be unhappy, even beyond the latest government indignity. The East German plan for postwar recovery was to turn the country into the preeminent industrial powerhouse of the Eastern Bloc. Problem was, however, that they had to import far more raw materials than they had before, since West Germany drew the lion’s share during the post-War divorce. And because they kept busing in all the young men to work in those new factories, the agricultural sector was in sharp decline. So they had to import food, too, and so prices for even the basics were high. And now the government was going to raise prices again, while making the workers meet higher quotas.

So basically, work more to get less. Even without a PhD in economic theory, most folks could see how that would make zero sense. But then, Frank always felt that Communism was an exercise in hand-waving the details anyway.

Folding the newspaper, Frank paid his tab and, grabbing his hard hat and lunch pail, headed off to work. For the past two weeks, Frank had been working in construction in East Berlin’s burgeoning building sector — probably the only part of the economy where supply and demand still worked, given the massive amount of reconstruction still necessary eight years after the war, combined with the drive to build all kinds of factories and warehouses. When he’d gone to the job site to ask about work, the foreman had barely scanned his forged work papers, instead eagerly asking him about his qualifications. Having kicked around Europe for a few years after the war while trying to get his voices straight in his head, Frank had plenty of construction experience. By noon, he’d been riveting girders together, and his cohorts seemed happy to have another hand.

Honestly, the work was a welcome distraction, a little oasis of calm amid all the other crap that had happened. Frank and Danny had spent a week smuggling themselves out of the Soviet Union, at one point walking two entire days just to avoid a popular train station. They’d bugged out near Leningrad, using a pair of Mrs. Stevens’s body suits for the still-cold swim to Finnish territory. Frank had hoped to be welcomed by Cal and Rick Yamato in Helsinki — they’d been out of contact with Washington during their travels, and Frank thought they might have finally put Korea behind them — but there was no sign of them, and it turned out Washington was assuming the two were MIA. Frank had been in favor of heading to Korea to find them, but Danny was adamant that they continue with the approved East German op.

So, after a luxurious night at Helsinki’s Hotel Seurahuone, they liaised with the CIA station there and wrangled passage aboard a Finnish trawler to Stralsund. Frank was covered as a farmhand seeking better work prospects, while Danny came in as a Russian academic. The Stasi, East Germany’s answer to the MGB, didn’t have much of a presence in Stralsund, so they were able to come ashore outside the town, walk to the train station, and buy tickets to East Berlin without anybody once checking their forged papers. Danny busied himself by hanging out in the beer halls and coffeehouses around Humboldt University, trying to gauge the level of academic resistance to Communist rule. There wasn’t much thus far, as best he’d been able to tell, but Frank had found fertile ground among his fellow construction workers.

“Come on, Franz,” one of his new colleagues said as he arrived at the work site. “Those quotas won’t fulfill themselves.”

Frank just smiled. “I heard the quotas may increase.”

The other worker just grimaced. “The foreman is furious about it, but there’s nothing he can do, so he takes it out on us,” the other man whispered, in case there were unfriendly ears nearby. “Better get moving. I’d like to see my family before they go to bed tonight.”

Once they climbed the superstructure and began riveting in earnest, the words flowed more freely; the men had known each other a while, and Frank had already let slip some of his own “discontent” with the working conditions. He enjoyed losing himself in the rough-and-tumble community of iron workers, and did his level best to subtly encourage their conversations. Most of them were young men — too young to have fought in the war, but old enough to remember the Nazis and their depredations. Nearly all of them had lost someone during the fighting, and remembered well how the Russians had treated them during the initial occupation. The current government was seen as a collection of Soviet stooges, selling out the German people to yet another dictatorship. Some had family in West Berlin or West Germany, and told stories of the largesse enjoyed by their relations on the other side of the Iron Curtain — easy access to food and jobs, good education, the freedom to travel and speak one’s mind.

Frank felt for them. Sure, he remained under MAJESTIC-12’s thumb, but America was still America, and he’d long ago resigned himself to his own circumstances, knowing that his work was helping his countrymen preserve their freedoms. Here, if anything, the East Germans suffered more than even the Soviet people. The Muscovites could at least enjoy some simple pleasures and, since Stalin’s death, were even beginning to speak a little more freely. The East Berliners saw the shadows of Stasi informants nearly everywhere — except eight stories up, dangling from girders above the city.

The late spring sun was well on its way down when Frank and his coworkers descended to the ground again, their quotas met and their bodies exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to go back to the crappy flat he shared with Danny, eat some crappy food, and get some sleep on a crappy mattress. But instead, he accepted an invitation to drink beer at the flat of someone named Ernst, one of the older veterans of the iron workers’ cohort. So he threw some money and ration stamps into the pool and went with another young man, Max, for the beer run. It took forty-five minutes, all their ration stamps, most of their money, and two bribes to get enough beer, but soon they were heading back to Max’s flat with enough alcohol to drop a horse.

Max had a young wife and a baby boy, Lucas, who slept in his mother’s arms as she hosted six burly, sweaty iron workers, sitting around the tiny apartment wherever they could find room — the little kitchen table, the ratty couch, the floor. Cigarette smoke filled the room, and Frank couldn’t help but worry for the baby’s lungs. Blessedly, Max’s wife put the little one down for the night after about a half hour.

“So what do we do if they raise quotas again?” Max asked. “All of you heard the news. They are now talking about pay cuts if we don’t meet quotas. I can barely afford to feed my family as it is.”

There were nods around the table, and many swigs of Radeberger beer — a surprisingly good pilsner, despite the brewery being nationalized by the East German government shortly after the war. “What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’” answered Ernst, one of the grizzled old hands in their work group. “We work harder to make sure we meet the quotas. There’s nothing else to do.”

Frank sized up the group — nobody was really happy with that answer, even Ernst. “Are we not the workers?” Frank said when nobody else spoke up. “All of this talk about Communism, where the workers are in charge of the means of production. Doesn’t that mean we’re in charge? That we’re the ones they have to listen to?”

Ernst shook his head and took a long drag off his cigarette. “You look too old to be so stupid, Franz. The Party says the workers are in charge, but these are the same bureaucrats who ran the Nazi government. They answered to Hitler, then rolled over, and now they answer to Stalin — or whoever replaces Stalin in Moscow now. Those bureaucrats haven’t worked a day in their lives. They sit in offices and write reports and have meetings and make all the decisions, and then hope and pray Moscow allows them to do what they planned. Or they figure out how to make Moscow’s demands work. We don’t matter.”

“We should matter,” replied another young man named Manfred, a wizard with rivets who almost singlehandedly boosted them over their quotas each day. “If they could just see how bad things are, maybe they would adjust the quotas, or increase pay, or fix things. Maybe they just don’t know what it’s like.”

“So how do we show them?” Frank prodded. “We are the workers. We’re the backbone of the State. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ Our abilities are stretched to the limits, and our needs aren’t being met!”

The youngest of their circle, a fresh-faced boy named Gunter, shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Comrades, we know the Americans and their allies brought us low during the war. We had nothing after Hitler was removed. Don’t we all have to make sacrifices in order to bring our Fatherland back? We are starting from nothing. And there are still those far worse off than we are, those who can’t even afford beer!”

There were nods around the table at this, and Frank saw the power of propaganda at work. Tighten your belts and work for each other, not for yourself. Work toward equality for the collective. Even if we’re all starving, we’ll be equal. “The bureaucrats can afford beer. They get more ration stamps and better pay, and they skip the queues at the stores to get the best cuts of meat and the best produce for their families. How is this a sacrifice?”

There were more nods now, more grimaces and grumblings, and Frank knew he had them. He might not have had Maggie’s emotional manipulations, but experience certainly counted for something. By the time the beer was gone and the men were stumbling out of Max’s flat, their rage was well stoked. Frank walked old Ernst to his flat, then walked another mile to his temporary home. Danny was already there, and there was a plate of potatoes and a bit of sausage waiting for him.

“Actual meat?” Frank asked. “Where’d you get that?”

“The students sometimes use ration stamps when they’re playing doppelkopf. I had a good hand tonight,” Danny said. “Where’ve you been?”

Frank plopped down at the tiny table and tucked into his food. “Fomenting dissent. You saw the news this morning. The workers are pissed. Quotas are going up, and they’re worried that the pay cuts are gonna follow soon. If that happens, well… these people are strapped, Dan. I blew most of my wad on beer to get them loose and talking. They can barely feed their families, and if they get their pay cut for failing to meet quota, I think that’s our shot.”

Danny nodded and cracked open a beer. “There’s a lot of sympathy for the workers among the students. They’re sitting in classes all day, getting an earful about the proletariat and the nobility of work and all that, then see all the bureaucrats walking by in good clothes and full bellies. They’re starting to whisper, but I don’t think they’ll take the lead. The Stasi is pretty well entrenched in the schools.”

“But if it starts up elsewhere? You think they’ll play ball?” Frank asked between bites.

“Some of them, sure,” Danny said. “Sure would be nice to know the whens and wheres, though. Hard to plan a rebellion when we don’t have control over when it kicks off.”

“Probably when they announce the pay cuts for not meeting quotas,” Frank replied. “That’s the rumor, at least. But there’s no telling when that will be.”

“Be nice to know. We could coordinate with Mrs. Stevens and try to pull something in Moscow at the same time. A revolt here and a black eye there would really whack Beria good. Latest intel reports say he’s struggling to keep up with Malenkov and Khrushchev. Starting to look like he might be outmaneuvered.”

Frank leaned back and ran a hand over his tired face. “If they’re not careful, Beria will go for broke. Unleash his Variants. Kill ’em all and just take over.”

You should’ve killed him when you had the chance, said one of the voices in Frank’s head, and a few others echoed the sentiment. Frank closed his eyes and willed them back into the dark corner of his mind.

Danny noticed. “More voices?”

“Opinions,” Frank said. “They’re second-guessing now. I’m really not listening to them much anymore.”

“Have your language abilities been affected?”

“Nope. Things like languages, skills that rely on muscle memory, that sort of thing — those kinds of natural, subconscious abilities, those aren’t really affected. Just don’t ask me to fix a car or perform surgery. I’d have to let them in to do that, and I honestly don’t know at this point how they’d react.”

“You think they’d refuse you?” Danny asked, eyebrows raised.

Frank just shrugged. “They never have, after nearly eight years of this. But then again, they’ve never really offered up opinions outside of a crisis situation. Now, though, it seems like they’re restless. Pushing. It’s really not fucking helpful at all.”

Danny took another swig of beer and looked Frank in the eye. “I gotta tell you, Frank, I don’t know what the powers that be will say to all this when we’re done. They’ve been conspicuously silent on our reports around our Enhancements. I can’t get any word on what the vortex in Idaho is doing. We’re in the dark here.”

“So what? You think they’ll put us under arrest when we come back?” Frank asked. “I mean, me, sure. I bombed that truck and went to see Beria on my own. I figure I’m in trouble when everything settles out. But you? Rose? Katie?”

“I’m the deputy director of MAJESTIC-12. I’m the operations guy. And they’re telling me nothing about the other Variants, about the vortex, no word on any new studies based on what Beria told you. We have a new administration now. We’ve been so busy, I’ve only met Eisenhower once, back in January, when we briefed him up. Can’t honestly say how he feels about us.”

“So what do we do?”

“We do the job,” Danny replied. “We get Beria out of there. After that… we’ll have to see how things go. But if you don’t have contingency plans, maybe think about that.”

Frank just smiled. “I’m forty-seven different people, Dan. I speak twenty languages. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about Katie. And Cal. And Maggie, if we can ever get her back.”

“So maybe those are your contingency plans, then.”

Frank nodded and finished his food in silence, the wheels spinning in his head. He could feel opinions from the others bubbling up, but he quashed them before the thoughts were fully formed. This was something he had to figure out on his own.

And he knew, if nothing else, how to get started.

“How was your weekend, Franz?”

Frank smiled at Max as they walked toward the worksite. “Quiet. How is your little boy?”

Max just shook his head. “We can’t sleep. He’s up at all hours, always wanting to be fed.”

“This is good! He’ll grow up big and strong like his father!” Frank said, slapping Max on the back. “I hear they eventually sleep through the night. You’ll get there.”

Max just nodded wearily and trudged toward the ladders that would take him to the top of the building where they left off Friday. Excusing himself, Frank made for the latrine — which was right next to the shack the foreman used as an office. The foreman himself was by the ladders, checking people in and exhorting them, as always, to make their quotas and work hard for the glory of the proletariat.

Frank ducked behind the building, rather than using the door, and looked up to see if the men were on the beams yet. They weren’t — but they’d be there in about three minutes, maybe less. Frank prayed the window at the back of the little shack was open — and it was. Deftly, he lifted himself through the window, diving into the office, landing on his hands and holding the position until he could safely place his feet back on the floor with a minimum of noise. It hurt — his arms protested greatly — but at least he retained a gymnast’s sense of balance. That gymnast was named Alan Reeves, and he had died in 1950.

Frank made his way behind the desk and started flipping through papers and folders. There were work orders and personnel folders and delivery receipts, but nothing important. Frank checked the drawers and found the one that was locked. A paperclip and twenty seconds later, the drawer was opened and he found what he was looking for.

Frank dove through the window head-first again, executing a perfect flip and landing on his feet. The conversation up on the steel would be a fruitful one today.