MJ-12: Endgame

18

Danny watched with a deep and abiding satisfaction as a throng of workers marched toward Potsdamer Platz along Leipziger Strasse. There were hundreds of them — thousands — and they even somehow managed to find the time and materials to create banners. “Lower work quotas!” “Listen to the workers!” “Unity is Strength!” Some bold souls were hoisting a bed sheet tied to poles that read “We want free elections!”

This was, of course, far more impressive than Danny could’ve dreamed of, and he knew well enough that this wasn’t entirely due to their meddling. At best, he and Frank had simply given it a nudge, and fueled the rumor mill that made the coordinated effort possible. Frank had discovered the date for new pay cuts and higher quotas, and he and Danny had simply spread the word amongst the workers and students. When the cuts and quotas were announced, the construction workers at Frank’s site had rioted and began marching on the Free German Trade Union Federation, gathering workers from other worksites as they went. When the protests at the federation went unheeded, the throng then marched on the government itself at the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, just a handful of blocks from the East-West border.

From Danny’s perch three stories above Potsdamer Platz, he could see both the protestors at the government building as well as a growing number of West Berliners gathering on the other side of the barbed wire and barricades that separated them from their former countrymen. Would the East Berliners try to break through? Would the West Berliners join them? The Stasi and East German military were conscious of both possibilities, reinforcing the barricades while sending troops to Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus as well. But they were already spread thin — the protestors were growing in number by the minute, and Danny could hear the volume of their chanting increasing as well. Before Danny headed up to his lookout post — a disused corner office of a faceless government building — he saw some of his student cohorts joining the crowd.

It was exciting. It was freedom at work. He couldn’t help but be happy for the East German people, and could only hope that their numbers would be too big to ignore or suppress.

Danny turned away from the protest to the other window, looking toward West Berlin. Off in the distance, he saw a window with an “X” taped on it. He backed away from the window toward the corner of the room and pulled a flashlight out of his satchel. He aimed it at the West Berlin “X” and began flicking it on and off.

A moment later, a series of dim lights answered from the same window.

Contact.

Danny began reporting in. He hoped Mrs. Stevens had everything lined up. It was time to make some noise.

“Ma’am, secure cable coming in.”

Rose Stevens practically launched herself from the sofa outside the secure communications room at the American Embassy in Moscow. The Embassy had already received a handful of unconfirmed reports, mostly cribbed from radio and the wires, that something was going on in East Berlin. Mrs. Stevens knew full well that any spark Frank and Danny created might very well not catch. But her analysis of the economic and political environment in East Germany all pointed to opportunity.

She dashed past the communications clerk and into the secure room, closing the door and flipping a switch. The teletype immediately burst into action, churning out line after line of encoded text. On the face of it, the string of letters and numbers meant nothing. But Mrs. Stevens had looked up the codes of the day and committed them to memory. The rest she did in her head, on the fly, which would’ve made the clerk faint dead away if he saw it.

“AEGIS is go,” she muttered. “Situation optimal for immediate action. Revise timetable and execute ASAP.”

She couldn’t help but smile broadly. They wouldn’t be asking her to speed things up if things were going badly, that’s for sure. Something had caught fire in East Berlin, and it was her job to fan the flames all the way to Red Square.

Good thing she’d planned for this contingency.

Turning on her heel, Mrs. Stevens strode out of the communications room and headed to the embassy’s secure conference room, home to every electronic countermeasure known to man. There, in the windowless room amidst the hum of signal jammers, Sorensen and Katie were waiting. “Good news and bad news,” she said. “Things are going well in East Berlin. Looks like our boys lit the fuse on something big.”

Sorensen nodded. “Heard a couple of the embassy guys talking. UPI is reporting a large protest at the East German government building. Thousands of people. Pretty amazing.”

“So what is the bad news?” Katie asked, nonplussed.

“We’ve been asked to move things up. Tonight. As in right now.”

Sorensen and Katie looked at each other in disbelief. “Right now? We only finished getting everything in place this morning.”

Mrs. Stevens put her hands on her hips and gave them a tight-lipped smile. “Well, then we’re ready, aren’t we? Contingency plan Beta-Beta. Let’s move it!”

Sorensen rolled his eyes and promptly disappeared, leaving only his civilian suit in place, which flopped to the floor seemingly of its own accord. Ekaterina, meanwhile, got up and dashed off to her embassy quarters to change into her outfit for the evening. Mrs. Stevens followed her to get into her own get-up, stopping by Jacob Beam’s office along the way. The chargé d’affaires wasn’t too pleased at being drafted into service with just two hours’ notice, but reluctantly agreed to the change in plans.

“Espionage doesn’t keep schedules,” Mrs. Stevens said cheerily. “Get your tux on. We’re out in twenty minutes.”

Lavrentiy Beria put on a game face, for sure, but Maggie Dubinsky could feel the tension inside him, ready to boil over at a moment’s provocation. She just needed to make damned sure she wasn’t the source of the provocation.

Instead, she hooked her arm into his and leaned over in the back seat of the limousine as they rode through the early Moscow evening. “Hey, it’s okay,” she said quietly. “Not your fault that the damn Germans can’t keep their own in check.”

Beria turned to her and gave her a small smile. “I told Molotov. I told him. Their economic plan was completely unsustainable. One cannot create entire industries out of whole cloth in just a few years. But the Party overruled me and let the Germans try. And now those fools have an insurrection on their hands.”

“Exactly,” Maggie said, watching his tension build further. “Not your fault, right?”

The smile evaporated. “Tell that to those fools, Malenkov and Khrushchev. It’s been less than twelve hours and they want heads to roll for this. Now I have my entire staff working through the night to determine the right levers to pull to quell the situation. I almost canceled tonight.”

“You couldn’t do that,” Maggie said. “Preview night at the Bolshoi for the diplomatic corps — you have to be there. If they see you’re missing, they’ll read even more into what’s going on. It’ll undermine you further, and we’re so close. So very close.”

Maggie pulled in a little tighter and pulled a few emotional strings in Beria’s head to bring his attention to the curves of her MGB uniform. “Yes, we are,” Beria said. “Close indeed.”

The car stopped before things progressed further, and Maggie waited for Comrade Illyanov to get out and open the rear door for them. Although he continued to look well past his prime, Boris Giorgievich Illyanov was as fast as ever when he needed to be, and Beria preferred to keep him close. The bodyguard’s reaction times and speed would easily thwart most assassination attempts, while his elderly appearance made Beria look unprotected — and also helped with his public image, since many of those who saw Boris Giorgievich thought he was a pensioner from the Revolution, kept on as driver as an act of kindness.

Maggie got out and scanned the crowds heading into the Bolshoi, both visually and with her Enhancement. Most people looked on at Beria’s arrival with mild curiosity, a little excitement, a few pangs of fear, but nothing she hadn’t seen before. She nodded at Illyanov, who gave the all-clear to Beria. The First Deputy Premier emerged from the car to a smattering of applause and a few flashbulbs, and he waved to the crowd as he proceeded into the Bolshoi, Maggie and Illyanov on his heels.

It was only inside the lobby where Maggie got her first glimpse that something was up. In the corner of her mind, she felt a surge of surprise, recognition, anger, and fear. And when she turned, she saw Rose Stevens there, dressed to the nines in a conservative, dark-green gown alongside Jacob Beam, that embassy peon they’d been stuck with at the funeral back in March.

And they were approaching.

“First Deputy Premier,” Beam said as he drew near, hand extended. “I wanted to thank you, on behalf of the United States Embassy, for hosting such a fine evening of culture. I hope it’ll be yet another way our two nations can come together in appreciation and respect.”

Beria smiled and shook his hand. “Of course, Mr. Beam. I am most pleased to see you as well. Your Russian is improving. Have I met this lovely woman yet?” he said, turning to Mrs. Stevens and smiling.

Mrs. Stevens jumped a little bit, then extended her hand. “I’m Jacob’s sister, Susan,” she said in English, and Maggie couldn’t help but smile at her enhanced Midwestern accent and volume. “This is such a lovely, lovely place, Mr. Beria. I must say, I’ve never been to the ballet before!”

Beria looked around blankly; his knowledge of English wasn’t common knowledge, and he preferred to keep it that way. Maggie stepped in instead, quietly speaking in Russian. “The woman here says she is Mr. Beam’s sister. She says the theater is lovely and she’s never been to the ballet before. She is also a spy.”

To her credit, Mrs. Stevens — who spoke decent Russian — barely flinched, and Maggie noticed it only because she was looking. Beria, meanwhile, spoke in rapid, sotto voce Russian. “Tell her I am pleased to meet her, and then we will talk, you and I.”

Maggie turned to her former colleagues. “The First Deputy Premier is very pleased to meet you as well, Susan Beam,” she said, trying on a Russian accent to go with her English. “If you’ll excuse us?”

Mrs. Stevens wasn’t having it. “Oh, darling, do you happen to know where the ladies’ room is? I’d hate to have to get up during the show.”

There was a time, not too long ago, when the prospect of field work terrified Mrs. Stevens. And now, here she was, brazen as all get out, right in front of the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. “Here, let me show you.” She turned to Beria. “I will join you in a moment, after I’ve interrogated this one,” she whispered in Russian.

Beria nodded and took his leave, while Maggie escorted Mrs. Stevens toward the ladies’ room. Before they got there, though, Maggie took her arm and pulled her through a maintenance door. The corridor beyond was vacant and dim, the chatter of the crowd dulled by stone walls.

“What the hell are you up to, Rose?” Maggie demanded.

Mrs. Stevens’s face was a mask of anger, and her emotional state was one of pure rage. To Maggie’s surprise, she was beginning to feel a little remorse. Was that what it was? Regret? Sadness? She and Rose were friends. Weren’t they?

“I could ask the same of you, Maggie Dubinsky,” Mrs. Stevens replied. “Shame on you. Shame on you! Do you know how much Frank and Danny are worried about you? And we’ve lost poor Cal and Rick, too, somewhere in Korea. They’re MIA! In a war zone! Your friends needed you, and you went and flipped on us. All of us!”

Maggie’s eyes widened. “Cal’s MIA? He never got out of Korea?”

“And if you were here, we would’ve bagged Beria by now and gone to Korea and got him back! Instead, Danny’s off to… Danny’s away. We’re all busy trying to do our jobs, and now we have to contend with you, too! You’re a traitor, Maggie! How could you!”

Maggie felt some genuine anger build inside her. “Shove it, Rose. You know why I’m here.”

“Because you think this will be better?” Mrs. Stevens countered. “You think we’re supposed to rule over people instead of help them? Because that’s what this is all about. Once you start thinking you’re better than everybody else, you’re already far worse. You know better than this, Maggie!”

“Shut up!” Maggie hissed. “What’s going on? What do you have planned? Are you behind the East German revolt? Spill it, Rose, or so help me, I’ll—”

Mrs. Stevens actually shoved Maggie backward. “You’ll what? Go ahead. Do it. Go ahead and turn me into a puppet or give me a heart attack or make me love you. Whatever you do, it’s fake. It’s not real. And don’t think for a minute that I haven’t accounted for this. Anything you drag out of me, it’s already worthless. You can’t stop what’s coming. Nobody can. I’m too smart for that and you know it! So go ahead. DO IT!”

Maggie stared hard and long at Mrs. Stevens, who was beginning to tear up. As much as she wanted to plunge her former friend into the worst sort of nervous breakdown, she knew it would be useless. There was no doubt Rose Stevens had planned for every single possible contingency, including capture and interrogation by Maggie. And there was no point in drawing it out any longer.

“Goodbye, Rose,” Maggie said quietly. “Take care of yourself. Next time we see each other, it’s not going to go well. I promise.”

Maggie walked back out into the lobby and stalked off toward Beria’s box. The lights were dimming, and the performance was about to begin; she took the empty chair right next to his.

“Well?” Beria asked.

Maggie swiped a hand across her face to wipe away the surprising tears that had formed. “They’re planning something. I think we need to get to Lubyanka as soon as possible.”

“What are they planning?” Beria demanded. “Who was that woman?”

“Nobody,” Maggie said. “A minor go-between with very little field experience. But because she’s here, that means everyone else is very busy right about now. Which means we need to go.”

Beria turned to her, anger in his eyes. “This is all you have? For all your abilities?”

Maggie just shrugged. “There was no time. But I do know that they lost two of their people in Korea. You may want to get in touch with the Chinese, see if they have them. It’s Calvin Hooks and Richard Yamato. I told you about them.”

That softened him up a bit. “Yes, they are powerful Champions indeed,” Beria said. “Good. We’ll exit after the opening number. Have Boris get the car and bring it to the service entrance. We don’t want to make a scene leaving.”

Ekaterina watched from the top of the Bolshoi Theater as her brother — her poor brother! — got into the limousine and began to drive to the back of the building. Another car followed; those would be the rest of Beria’s security men. Ekaterina’s radio already buzzed with chatter — the First Deputy Premier was leaving to go back to Lubyanka. Full security. Back entrance. All units on alert.

She turned off her radio and slid over to the side of the building where the service entrance was located. From above, she watched as the two cars settled into position.

Why did it have to be Boris? she pleaded with whoever would listen. But she got no response, so she waited for the right moment to get to work.

The second car pulled to a complete stop. She would have five seconds before the armed men inside got out.

The drop from the top of the building took three.

Ekaterina landed right on top of the black sedan, puncturing the metal hood and crushing the engine block under her feet. She lifted the rest of the car — with four shouting men inside — and hurled it back down the street. It traveled thirty-five yards and landed on its roof. The men inside were no longer shouting.

“Ekaterina!”

She turned to see her brother with a pistol pointed at her, his face anguished. She never wanted this confrontation, but knew when she arrived in Russia that it was possible. She knew she was going to hate it, but this was what she had chosen now.

“Hello, brother,” she said quietly. “I am sorry they have not found a way to fix you yet.”

The anguish turned to rage. “You traitor!” he shouted, his gun hand trembling. “How could you! You’ve betrayed our country! Our family! Me!”

“Beria betrayed us!” she shouted back. “He left us in Kazakhstan to die in fire! He says we are all his children, but we are disposable to him! You know this!”

The gun barked, and Ekaterina tensed. The bullet struck her in the shoulder, piercing her skin before bouncing off her muscles and down onto the pavement. The result hurt like a burn from a hot pan, but it was bearable. Boris’s eyes grew wide — this was something he didn’t know about her Enhancement. Even in the Soviet Union, nobody had thought to shoot a child to see if she survived, super-strength or not. She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure it would happen, but was glad it did.

“You had better run, brother.”

With a single leap, Ekaterina vaulted over her brother and onto Beria’s limousine. She began tearing it apart with abandon, steel and glass flying everywhere. She let out a scream — and it felt good to let it all out. By the time she threw the engine block through the wall of the Bolshoi, she felt a whole lot better.

She turned to find Boris just staring at her, numbly, his mouth agape.

“Come with me,” she said, pleading. “We can help. Get you out of here. We can have Cal heal you again, make you as you were. Please, big brother. Come with me!”

The service entrance burst open, and Maggie and Beria ran out into the alley, stopping suddenly when confronted with the wreckage of their cars and men.

“You!” Beria shouted. He raised his hand, and a gout of flame erupted toward Ekaterina.

Bullets were one thing, but flame — that would really hurt.

With a mighty leap, Ekaterina jumped four stories onto the building across from the Bolshoi and began running, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Boris was fast, but she knew he couldn’t run up the sides of buildings, and she changed direction a number of times to throw him off her trail as she headed to the next rendezvous point. Only then did she allow herself to cry — but only for a moment. There was still work to be done.

It had taken twenty minutes for a new limousine to come fetch Beria and Maggie, during which time the First Deputy Premier raged at Illyanov and commandeered a radio from a policeman to begin barking orders to secure the Lubyanka and the safe houses where his Champions of the Proletariat were hidden. Maggie knew it was a sure sign of his panic that he’d even mentioned the safe houses over a radio. Thankfully, he didn’t broadcast any locations.

Now in the car on the way to his office, Beria laid into her — and used a null generator to keep her from calming him down. “This is happening now, in Moscow! An attack on me! You said this was not in your plans!”

“And it wasn’t, Comrade,” Maggie replied calmly. “But I told you those plans might change. They are willing to give their lives to ensure you do not take Comrade Stalin’s place. So they expose themselves.”

“But we still do not know where they are!” Beria shouted. “I will have that woman with Beam arrested! And you, Dubinsky, you will go to work on this woman immediately and make her tell me what they will do next, do you hear me?”

Maggie grimaced as she felt a surprising, unnerving pang of sadness. “Of course, Comrade Beria. But first we must secure our fellow Champions.”

“We will do more than that,” Beria said. “We must move up the timetable. When we return to the office, we will start gathering. The rest of the Politburo will see this as weakness. We must strike, now, before they decide to come for us. We must—”

Beria was interrupted by the sound of an explosion, and a bright red light flared a couple blocks ahead of the car.

The Lubyanka.

Illyanov pulled over to the side of the road by Lubyanka Square, well away from the building. The third-floor corner office — Beria’s office — was now in flames, the facade crumbling to the ground even as they scrambled out of the car and looked on in horror.

Several uniformed NKVD officers rushed up to the car, forming a protective circle around Beria and Maggie, all shouting reports as to what happened. There was a power outage. There was the smell of gas. An electrical fire, perhaps.

Sorensen, Maggie thought. He’s an electrician. He fucks with the power, which kills any hardwired null generators around the building. He goes in, messes with the gas. Heads up to Beria’s darkened office, and…

She turned to Beria. “What did you have in your office?”

“What?” Beria said absently as he gazed up at the burning building.

“What did you have in your office?” she pressed, getting in front of his face. “Papers, documents, records, any of it. What did you have there?”

He finally focused on her, looking quizzical. “Everything regarding the program was in my safe. It is fireproof and locked.”

“Is it?” Maggie asked. She turned and ran toward the burning building, scanning the ground in front of her as she went.

There.

On the sidewalk below the burning building was a hunk of metal, about three feet by four feet and a good six inches thick, with a combination lock on the front. The hinges on the side were twisted and ripped apart.

Katie. Shit.

Maggie turned back toward Beria, but saw several other limousines approaching, the flags of the Party and the Red Army flapping from the front fenders. The Politburo wasn’t wasting any time. She ran forward again, hoping she could help defuse the situation before everything fell apart.

By the time she rejoined Beria, Nikita Khrushchev was jabbing his finger at the First Deputy Premier, with Marshal Zhukov by his side. “If you cannot maintain your own personal security, and the security of your headquarters — let alone keep our socialist allies abroad in line — how do you expect to continue in your position?” Khrushchev demanded.

Maggie reached out with her Empowerment to try to calm Khrushchev down — the man had a notorious temper — but found she couldn’t sense the threads of his emotions. At all.

She quickly looked around — someone had a null generator going, she was sure of it, and the thought made her feel intensely vulnerable and jumpy. Yet in all the chaos — firefighters, NKVD and MGB men, Red Army officers, party officials, gawkers, and onlookers — she couldn’t make anybody.

Meanwhile, Beria was pleading his case — assuming he still dealt from a position of strength. Maggie cringed inwardly. This wasn’t going to end up well.

“Comrade Khrushchev, I promise you, all of this is a ruse. Yes, a ruse! There are counterrevolutionary elements within the NKVD and MGB who would seek to return the Motherland to its tsarist ways! All of this, I promise you, is part of an operation to flush out these elements, to bring them to the light of day! Even now, I have agents fanning out across the city, tracking them down and bringing them to justice!”

Khrushchev looked nonplussed at best, while Marshal Zhukov — the Soviet Union’s preeminent World War II military hero — looked ready to haul off and punch Beria in the nose. “Comrade Beria, you will report to the Kremlin tomorrow at 9 a.m. — sharp—so that we may begin an inquiry into these events. And you will have proof of this operation, and results!”

“Of course, Comrade Khrushchev,” Beria replied with a practiced smile, and Maggie knew then, even without her ability, that Beria would make his move then.

“Marshal Zhukov has already taken command of the East German situation, on the orders of Comrade Malenkov,” Khrushchev continued. “The uprising will be put down immediately. You no longer have a role to play there, and will not impede this. Do you understand?”

Beria nodded, and Khrushchev turned on his heel and got back in his limousine, Zhukov in tow. The fact that Soviet policy had just been made, there on the street in front of a burning building, amazed Maggie. Score one for MAJESTIC-12, she thought. They’ll have a hard time getting another, though.

As the Party and Red Army cars sped off, Maggie went to Beria’s side. “Orders, Comrade?”

Grim-faced and seething inside — the null field was no longer active — Beria turned to Maggie. “We mobilize now. Tell Illyanov to get moving. We are all at the Kremlin by 8:30 tomorrow morning. All of us. Our time has come.”