MJ-12: Endgame

21

Lieutenant General Bill Harrison was on the short side, compact, and seemed to wear a permanent scowl. Surprisingly, it made him the perfect negotiator at the armistice talks with North Korea in the contested village of Panmunjom. Danny Wallace thought Harrison would make one hell of a poker player, though word was that the general was quite the upstanding Christian, and would probably frown on gambling.

He was certainly frowning at Danny at the moment.

“Commander Wallace, I recognize you have orders here from General Vandenberg. I know Hoyt. Good man. But what he’s asking me to do is next to impossible,” Harrison said from behind his desk at U.N. Command Headquarters. “Those Koreans, they notice everything. They’re gonna notice new faces at the table. I don’t care how good your Major Lodge is. I’m sure he’s a damn fine negotiator, though nobody I know seems to have heard of him. We keep track of people in the Army, you know. We know the good ones.”

“Yes, sir. Major Lodge has been on detached duty for some time,” Danny responded, standing ramrod straight in his Navy whites, even though he stuck out like a sore thumb on the nearly all-Army base.

“And I can imagine to whence he’s been detached,” Harrison replied, carefully enunciating each word. “I’m well aware what happens to good military men on detached duty. And I remember when Hoyt was over at CIA. I can put two and two together just fine, Commander. But let me tell you, we are so close. So close to an agreement that could stop the fighting here and maybe get our boys home. If you and yours get in the way of that, I swear to God Almighty himself, you’ll spend the rest of your days in Leavenworth.”

“Sir, with respect,” Danny began, “we’re here because there’s a chance that someone else may try to get in the way of that agreement. We want to prevent that from happening.”

Harrison held up Vandenberg’s orders again. “So I see. ‘Rogue elements from the Soviet Union.’ I didn’t know the Soviets had rogue elements to begin with.”

“It’s a new development, sir.”

“And I suppose you’re not at liberty to tell me who or what these rogue elements are?”

It was all Danny could do to keep looking Harrison in the eye. “Sir, no, sir. I am not.”

“And the rest of your people will be off doing something else, which you’re also not at liberty to disclose.”

“Correct, sir.”

Harrison threw the paper down on the desk again. “I mean it, Commander. We’re trying to stop a war here. If you mess this up with your antics, I’ll have your head. I don’t like saying it, but by God, I mean it.”

Danny straightened up even further, so much so it felt like his spine would independently launch itself toward the ceiling. “Understood, sir.”

“Have Lodge and this other person — Stevens, is it? — report to the staging area tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred. Dismissed.”

Giving his best academy salute, Danny turned and walked out of the office, allowing his back to relax only when he left the building entirely. Outside, the rest of the Variants were waiting for him, all dressed in U.S. Army uniforms. Even Katie had been made a rather young-looking private, with a secretarial post as cover.

“Well?” Frank asked.

“You and Rose are reporting for duty with the delegation at 7 a.m. You remember how to spit-shine and polish, right?” Danny asked with a smirk.

“Like riding a bike. What about the rest of you?”

Danny pulled a map of the area from his pocket and unfolded it. “I’m getting the biggest concentration of Variant activity from somewhere in this direction,” he said, drawing a line with his finger to the north and east. “I’m thinking they’re near Kaesong. It’s only seven or eight miles from Panmunjom, where they’ve been holding the talks. If they’re going to disrupt things, it’s a good staging area.”

“What’s the plan?” Sorensen asked.

“Russian observers,” Danny said. “We still have some uniforms we can use, and the motor pool here has a couple Chinese jeeps to choose from.”

“And the language barrier?” Frank asked. “Maybe I should come with you instead.”

“No can do. You’re the only one here with real military experience, and this is a high-protocol thing. And if shit happens, nobody’s gonna listen to Rose here, sad to say.”

Mrs. Stevens harrumphed at that, straightening out her uniform. “Well, you made me a major. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Frank smiled at her apologetically. “Not when you’re a woman, and not in a room full of generals. Sorry. In that room, a major is the one getting the coffee, man or woman.”

Mrs. Stevens opened her mouth as if to say more, but thought better of it. Danny knew she’d quickly weigh all the angles before doing anything — which made her a good counterpoint to Frank’s impulsiveness. Frank’s plethora of talents, combined with Mrs. Stevens’s genius and caution, should put them in position to handle anything that might threaten the armistice talks.

“Just remember, you two — you’re there to observe, and only intervene if there’s an absolute direct threat,” Danny said. “And if things really go south, you make sure you save the North Korean delegation — and ideally, get seen doing it.”

Maggie looked out the window from the back seat of the sedan at the pines and mountains surrounding the roadway. Here and there, signs of war were evident — a crater in an otherwise pristine farm field, a hulked-out tank by the side of the road, a series of graves marked by little more than piled rocks and bits of wood.

Next to her, Beria read through a series of documents in a plain folder provided by Chinese intelligence. It was a testament to Beria’s charisma and manipulation, and the sway the Soviets still had over the Chinese and North Koreans, that they’d gotten the full cooperation of the officials in charge of the war — and the peace talks. By all accounts, they had complied with Beria’s resource requests — demands, really — and also his admonition that they not communicate his presence in North Korea to either the Chinese or Soviet governments. They were on, he said, a most sensitive mission to uphold Communism against these heathens, and his actions could help bring the war to a rapid and victorious end.

That last part worried Maggie — and had a similar effect on the Koreans. It took quite a bit of emotional manipulation on Maggie’s part to keep the government officials in Pyongyang compliant. But she was good. Very good, to the point where she could play a person’s emotions like a violin, and she was getting to be quite the Mozart. The personalities of those she affected blurred together by now, remarkable only for a pang of fear here, an unusual bout of courage there, a little bit of extra resistance or a surprising degree of compliance.

It was easy. The sheep, it seemed, really wanted to be led by a shepherd.

Maggie thought she had ingratiated herself well into Beria’s circle, but there were still things the former First Deputy Premier kept close to the vest — like the knowledge of other Variants in the Korean theater of war. She’d spent the last few days going out of her way to avoid being seen by Cal and Yamato, “until the time was right,” according to Beria’s orders. She wondered why she hadn’t been told to give her former colleagues the recruitment pitch, but she knew it would be fruitless. Yamato was too young and headstrong; he’d have told her to go to hell just for the fun of it. And Cal…

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the pines began to give way to buildings and streets — they were entering the outskirts of Kaesong, a former capital of Korea and once a bustling center of commerce. The emotions lately were disconcerting. Maggie thought she’d become numb to her own emotions the more she played with those of others, but lately she’d fallen prey to pangs of regret and sadness that truly unnerved her. Cal was just another sheep in need of a shepherd, and yet she wished she could just send him back home to his wife and kid and let them live out a simple, peaceful, long — very long, in his case — life.

That just wasn’t in the cards.

Beria knew Cal, of course, having held him prisoner in Kazakhstan four years ago, and they had a decent dossier on Yamato as well. The Koreans and Chinese gave up the Chinese Variant easily enough — he was a kineticist, focused on pushing things away, to the side, etc. Nobody was a hundred percent sure about the Latin guy, other than he was said to be an excellent shot. Maybe another kineticist, like the Black Wind guy.

Their caravan — now ten vehicles strong, including a full platoon of North Korean infantry — drove through the largely empty town and finally stopped at the site of a bombed-out factory complex. Beria apparently had extensive contacts within the Chinese and North Korean governments, because the area was already under guard by a squadron of soldiers, several of whom saluted crisply when they got out of the cars. A relatively undamaged building with a loading dock had already been prepared, and the cargo truck that had been with them since Chuguyevka backed up to it. Inside was Beria’s biggest play yet, a Hail Mary like none other.

Beria stood with Maggie, watching the soldiers carefully place the large wooden crate onto a rolling pallet. “The more I think about it, Margaret, the more I realize just how important it is for things to have happened this way,” Beria said quietly.

What a self-aggrandizing prick, Maggie thought. “What makes you say that, Comrade?”

“We tried to work within the power structure, to ease our way into positions of authority, so as to keep our blessings secret and ensure we were protected,” Beria said. “We were fools. We are Empowered. The proletariat does not need to be coddled, nor should we coddle them. Each according to his ability — and we have such ability. It is only natural we should lead, and now we will.”

Maggie nodded slowly. “A lot of people are going to die.”

“There is no greater tool of revolution than death,” Beria said simply. “Regrettable, but it is true. The world must be shocked out of its complacency, and we must take our positions as their Champions when that happens.”

The crate was wheeled into the factory building, and the two Variants followed it inside. The future awaited.

Detlev Bronk ran a hand over his face, resisting the urge to check his watch. He knew it was well past midnight, and any greater precision on that account was unnecessary and likely depressing. But the work needed to be done. Vandenberg had been absolutely clear on that point, and with good reason — there was something new going on with the vortex.

Bronk looked up at the impossible fissure in space-time, swirling three feet off the ground like a milky whirlpool. The unnerving thing was, no matter which angle you looked at it from, the center of that vortex was always within line of sight. It was an utter paradox, a thing that modern physics simply could not explain. The greats in the field — given only enough information, and through subtle means — all agreed that the vortex should not be. The very few who were cleared to see it firsthand were uniformly confounded. Einstein himself grew visibly angry and agitated after watching it for just a few minutes.

The new sensors were doing their job. They continued to confirm a steadily increasing pattern of low-level radiation coming out of the thing, going in various directions, though mostly to the west and north. Tracing great circle routes on a globe found that many of the bursts were headed for Moscow, before suddenly shifting toward the Pacific.

What’s more, the equipment was detecting even fainter, yet similar, patterns all around the vortex. They didn’t seem to be coming from the phenomena, but were received nonetheless. They were coming from somewhere else, but were too faint and diffuse to triangulate.

“Dr. Bronk?”

Bronk looked up to see Kurt Schreiber at the door to his office, a large sheaf of papers and readouts in hand. In the days since his forced rehabilitation — during which time he had been under constant armed guard — Schreiber had reviewed reams of data and observations about the vortex, with an intensity that Bronk found utterly scary. The German had to be reminded to eat and sleep, and at one point had literally pissed himself because he’d forgotten to go to the bathroom in the midst of his work. He was absolutely nuts, completely certifiable. And yet Vandenberg insisted he be allowed to analyze the work, to seek out patterns that perhaps only his disjointed mind could see.

The excitement on the former Nazi’s narrow, gaunt face was evidence he’d found something.

“It’s about timing,” Schreiber said, entering the office and dropping his papers all over Bronk’s already cluttered desk. “The new patterns we’re detecting. We needed to look at the timing. That’s the key.”

Plucking two separate wave patterns off the desk, Schreiber circled the time stamps above each. “This one came from the vortex yesterday at 2:37 a.m.,” he said. “And this one was found in the radiation background at 2:38 a.m. Look at the patterns.”

Bronk leaned in and put on his glasses. “They’re different patterns, Schreiber.”

“Not entirely!” Schreiber used his pen to circle similarities within the two patterns, snippets within the wavelength that looked similar. “There are pieces that are nearly exactly alike amidst the differences. It is like a call and a response. I’ve seen this in nearly every time stamp pairing I could find within the data.”

“And how many was that?” Bronk asked tiredly.

“One hundred seventy-three.”

That got Bronk’s attention. “You went through all these and found a hundred and seventy-three pairings like this?”

“Of course. That is only over the past three days.”

Call and… response. “My God. It’s communication.”

“Exactly!” Schreiber said, actually jumping in the air slightly in celebration. “Directionally, the vortex is sending these pulses to specific places, because the vectors are highly similar. Until recently, they were largely going east and north. Now, they’re more concentrated toward the east. Where are our Variants now?”

Bronk frowned. “They’re ours, not yours, doctor. And that’s none of your business.”

“Yes, yes, of course, fine. But it is easy for me to surmise that there is a large concentration of Variants at the other end of these pulses, and that these responses are coming from the Variants themselves.”

He really, really wanted to dismiss the motion out of hand, but the sick feeling in his stomach told Bronk that Schreiber might be onto something. “None of our Variants have reported any kind of communication attempts with any intelligences that may or may not be inside that thing,” Bronk countered.

“Do you control how you dream?” Schreiber asked. “Does your mind wander from time to time? Of course it does. The human mind generates electrical impulses that can be detected, does it not? If the beings from beyond the phenomena have gifted our Variants with Enhancements, they may also have implanted something in their minds as well.”

“Like what?” Bronk demanded.

“I don’t know, but if I were to speculate, I would say that these Enhancements may have come with a piece of the consciousness inside the vortex. Something that might respond appropriately to these communications.”

Bronk looked at the wave patterns again and tried to ignore Schreiber’s words. He couldn’t. “Then it’s possible this thing has an agenda,” Bronk said quietly.

“I have no doubt it does,” Schreiber replied.

After another minute or two of checking Schreiber’s data, Bronk dismissed the German and picked up his secure line. He hoped Vandenberg was an early riser.

President Eisenhower looked over the two-page, hastily typewritten report in his private study in the White House residence, his first cup of morning coffee untouched and growing cold by his side. His face looked lean, tired — and it wasn’t just because of the early hour.

“Gentlemen, I have to ask. How solid is this?”

Allen Dulles and Vandenberg traded a look. Dulles looked as disheveled as the President in a wrinkled suit and coffee-stained shirt, though Vandenberg, as always, looked ready for inspection in his dress uniform, the dark circles under his eyes the only evidence of the rude awakening he’d gotten hours earlier.

“Sir, it’s a theory,” Vandenberg said. “But it does confirm our suspicions that there’s an intelligence behind this phenomena, given the wave patterns we’ve seen. None of our own Variants have reported any sort of communication, but there have been some slight alterations in the experience of their Enhancements. We can’t say for certain they’re related, but…” The Air Force general didn’t need to say anything more.

“And Dr. Bronk and this Schreiber man think they have a way to stop the damn thing from transmitting?” the President asked.

“Yes, sir. It would work much the same way as the electronic jamming systems used in our secure conference rooms, but extended into the extremes of the electromagnetic spectrum so that these additional wavelengths would be affected,” Vandenberg said. “I’ve worked with him on this project for years, sir. I think he can do it.”

Eisenhower leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Do it. Now, Allen, we have to talk about our men in the field.”

“Mr. President, this is a critical time. We have every reason to believe Lavrentiy Beria is in North Korea right now, and far too close to the armistice negotiations in Panmunjom for comfort. We have two teams going soon as it’s daybreak over there — one to hunt down Beria and his people behind the lines, and the other to protect the talks.”

“Unless they’re already suborned and they’re going to sabotage the talks,” Eisenhower said. “That’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

Dulles could only shrug. “It’s anybody’s guess. Yes, possibly. But these agents have proven their loyalty time and again.”

Eisenhower looked down at the rest of his briefing papers, including the black-and-white images of the MAJESTIC-12 Variants in the field. He remembered Danny Wallace from his initial briefing on the project. Smart, calm, collected, repeatedly honored for his work. By all accounts, a loyal officer.

“Okay, I need to make a call. Hoyt, get on the horn to Mountain Home and tell Bronk to shut that thing down. I don’t care if they have to blackout the West Coast to do it,” Eisenhower said. “Allen, head down to the mess and grab some breakfast. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour.”

The two men departed, leaving Eisenhower alone in his study, feeling the weight of his office acutely for the first time since he was sworn in. There were only a handful of people who knew what it was like — and only one who had faced such a decision before.

Eisenhower picked up his phone and dialed a number. It picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Bess. It’s Ike. He up yet?”

“Oh, goodness. Hang on. I’ll get him for you.”

It took four minutes by Eisenhower’s count before the phone came to life. “Well, hell, that didn’t take long, Mr. President. Five months?”

Eisenhower smiled despite himself. “How are you, Harry?”

“I’m fine, Ike. Just fine,” Harry Truman responded. “I didn’t think we were on speaking terms after that election.”

“Some things go beyond politics. This is one of them.”

There were a few moments of silence on the other end of the phone. “This isn’t a secure line, Ike. Not sure how much help I can be if this is what I think it is. This is about that special project, isn’t it?”

Eisenhower drew a deep breath. “It is. I just need to know… well, I need to know about the people involved. The ones on the ground. There’s a possibility that their, oh, hell, how do I say this? That their blessings may not be blessings after all. That they might turn.”

“Have they wandered off the reservation?”

“No, not yet. But there’s a chance they may have been influenced.”

“And I assume they’re hip deep in something somewhere you can’t talk about?”

“Neck deep. I need to know if I can trust them.”

Truman took a deep breath. “Ike, at the end of the day, they’re people. They’ve been blessed and cursed in ways you and I can’t begin to imagine. Some of them manage real well. Others don’t.”

“And?” Eisenhower said, his patience wearing thin.

“Look, Ike. We use them, and they agree to it. If they wanted to, they could easily slip the leash. With their abilities, some of them, they could literally do anything, and nobody could stop ’em. It’s been five years since I approved that project. And in five years, they’ve been as patriotic as can be, most of them. Done everything we asked of ’em. The ones that didn’t play ball, well, we took care of those. So you got the best of the best, Ike. Now, I can’t say this influence or whatever is gonna affect them or not. We just don’t know. But if they have any say about it, I think they’ll pull through. Besides, can you even reach them right now?”

The President hadn’t thought of that. “Some of them, yes. Others… no, I don’t think so.”

“Then you let them do their jobs and hope for the best. A lot of being President is like that.”

Eisenhower chuckled. “All right. Thanks for that, Harry. Give my best to Bess.”

“If you need another opinion, reach out to Roscoe Hillenkoetter. I think he’s still up in New York, Third Naval District HQ.”

“Will do. Thanks.”

Eisenhower hung up the phone and downed his lukewarm coffee with one gulp. He’d need more before his day was done.