MJ-12: Shadows

1

Lt. Rudolf Schmidt of the Vienna Polizei had seen many things over the course of his short but eventful career. From the Anschluss to liberation to occupation, crime continued no matter who was in charge in the city of Mozart, Beethoven, and Freud. There had been crimes when the Turks were at the gate, he was sure, or when the Romans fought off the barbarians.

But he was pretty certain there was no crime quite like this one.

“I tell you, it is impossible,” said Josef Franz, director of security for the Österreichische Postsparkasse, the Austrian Postal Savings Bank. “These vaults are ten meters below the subbasement, and the walls are lined with foot-thick steel. The elevator is manned at the top and at the bottom, and the stairwell is right next to it. All the exits are covered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There is no way this could have happened!”

Schmidt looked around the bank’s main vault, where only Vienna’s wealthiest could afford to keep their valuables — for all the good it did them. Money and valuables were strewn about haphazardly — jewels, bank notes, coins. It looked for all the world like someone had thrown a surprise party in the vault, but used gold and jewelry for confetti.

“Well, Herr Direktor, it did happen, so we must figure out how that is. You say that this happened today? Between when and when?”

“Noon and two p.m. We check the vault itself every two hours,” Franz said. He was short and altogether too fat for his position, Schmidt thought. Likely a retired police officer, or even an old Austrian Army veteran who retired before the Nazis came to power. He didn’t look like he could secure a shopping bag, let alone a bank. Perhaps he was smart and had others do his bidding. It didn’t seem likely, though.

“We are searching the guards’ homes, but you say they never left,” Schmidt mused, half to himself. “Top-to-bottom search of the bank building itself, of course. Rooftops. Neighboring buildings. All employees and their vehicles.” He turned to face the director. “This is no way to spend Christmas Eve. Though perhaps it was the best time to try such a thing. Minds are elsewhere.”

“My guards are among the best in all the country,” Franz protested. “And I personally performed the noon check of the vault. All was in order. No one was inside.”

Schmidt walked gingerly around the looted vault as bank employees attempted to sort through the scattered treasures, pairing them with their private security boxes.

Adding to the mystery was the fact that either the thieves had carefully closed all the looted security boxes before leaving, or had somehow gained entry to them without opening the locks.

“Who would go to the trouble to re-lock all the boxes, yet scatter everything around?” Schmidt wondered aloud. “Takes far too much time.”

A different voice answered him. “Perhaps someone who didn’t need a key.”

Schmidt turned to see two smartly dressed people walking toward him with intent. The man was tall and broad, wearing a suit with a severe, American-style cut. He had short-cropped brown hair and a slight smile, and his dark brown eyes looked as though they’d seen quite a lot — not uncommon after the War, of course. The woman with him — a rarity in and of itself — was thin and pale, with intense green eyes and a mouth that seemed like it might never smile at all. A very dark dress suit with a white blouse added to her funereal aura. She walked right past them into the vault, her heels clicking on the concrete floor, while the man stopped and held out his hand.

“Special Agent Stanley Harper, United States Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said. “We heard this was a crime of… particular interest. We’re helping out the occupation authority with similar incidents.”

Schmidt’s eyebrows rose. “Lieutenant Schmidt, Vienna police. A G-man? You have seen other crimes like this?” he asked as he shook the proffered hand.

The FBI man looked around. “Secure room, locked containers… yes, we have,” he said, his German accent nearly perfect to Schmidt’s ears. “Though not on this scale. Whoever is doing this, it seems they have found a new level of ambition.”

“Where else?” Schmidt asked.

Harper gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I really can’t say. Some very interesting places, though. I assume nothing large was taken?”

Schmidt couldn’t help but do a double take. “You are very well informed, Agent Harper. Nothing large is missing. There is a Gustav Klimt here worth millions. Vases and urns and other valuables. Only things that are small, easily palmed; those are the ones missing.”

“Palmed…” the American said, his eyes suddenly lost in thought. He then stooped down to pick up a few coins from the floor, wrapping them completely in his meaty fist. “Huh.”

“You have an idea?” Schmidt asked.

Harper smiled and made a show of dropping all the coins — as if he didn’t want to be accused of taking anything. “Just an idle thought, Herr Leutnant.”

Schmidt turned around to see the man’s partner — it was strange; he didn’t know of any police agency who had women investigators — running her hands across the various safe deposit boxes. She finally stopped and turned back to Harper, giving him a nod.

Harper held out a business card. “Once you’re done here, if you wouldn’t mind keeping us informed as you proceed?”

“Of course,” Schmidt said, taking the card. “You do not wish to look any further?”

“When you’ve seen what we’ve seen, you get a lot from one look,” the agent replied. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

The two turned to leave, but Schmidt hurried after them. “Can you at least give me an idea of what I’m looking for?” he asked, almost plaintively. “The diamonds taken here are worth several million marks.”

The woman turned and, to Schmidt’s great surprise, did actually smile. “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you.”

The two FBI agents walked out of the Austrian Postal Savings Bank — a beautiful, marble-clad Modernist ode to money itself — and onto the evening hustle and bustle of Biberstrasse. “Well? What’d you get?” the man who’d called himself Harper said in English, a slight Boston accent breaking through.

“It’s her,” the woman replied, stopping to look up at the bank building itself. “Thick walls, small girl. She didn’t even need to enter the front door. Only question I have is where she put her clothes.”

The bank occupied an entire block in Vienna’s historic core. There were no alleys, no place to really hide. If the bank really was hit between noon and two p.m., like the cops said, their suspect’s M. O. definitely would’ve been noticed.

Unless…

“She parked,” the man said, looking at the cars lining the block. He quickly walked around the corner and saw that there were several cars angled in, with just a couple feet between the fenders and the building’s facade. “Here,” he said. “She parked here, got ready, and probably just went straight down.”

The woman next to him frowned. “There’s got to be thirty cars here, Frank.”

“Just on this side, too,” he replied. “Let’s get to work, Zip.”

Zipporah Silverman smiled wanly, pulled her coat tight around her, and started walking down the street, running her fingertips idly along the hoods of the parked cars. Zippy was a unique individual — a Variant. Like the very few other Variants in the world, she possessed a paranormal ability. In her case, she could gain a psychic impression of past activities by touching an object, an ability called psychometry. So, she went down the row of cars, looking for the image of the woman she’d seen when she touched the safety deposit boxes in the vault. She stopped at the sixth car in the row. “This one wasn’t here until late afternoon,” she said. She then crouched to the ground, placing her palm on the asphalt beneath the fender.

Ten seconds later, she stood. “Not here.”

They walked farther down the street, finding two others potential candidates, but with the same result. It was only when they turned onto Dominikanerbastei that Zippy found something. She stayed crouched beneath the front hood of a Tatra T87, a beastly V8 luxury sedan with a Deco body and enough wear and tear to place it as a pre-war model.

“She was here,” she said softly, both hands pressed to the pavement. “And she didn’t go in through the side. She went under.”

Frank Lodge swore under his breath. “That’s new,” he muttered. “You get a look at her face?”

Zippy stood and smiled. “Yep. She’s a real looker, too. You’d like her.”

“Yeah, I go in for the thieving types,” Frank cracked. “Let’s get moving. Maybe now we can finally track her down.”

The choir at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral sounded truly Heaven-sent. Voices of angels, raised in praise of God Almighty, and with a harmony that Calvin Hooks had never even thought possible, his time in the churches of Tennessee notwithstanding.

He supposed they could use a little rhythm, if he was going to be picky about it, but almost immediately chided himself. He was sure God would be plenty pleased with such a hymn.

The church itself had just reopened a couple weeks prior; fires set during the Soviet takeover of the city had severely damaged the ancient church’s roof. And with it being Christmas Eve, there was a fair amount of folks taking refuge against the chill outside. Even the hardest hearts, Cal knew, would find solace in a beautiful old church like this on Christmas.

Then a woman walked by, her heels snapping sharply on the checkerboard marble floor, and Cal’s mind immediately shifted. He held a small cigarette case to his mouth. “Got eyes on her, I think,” he whispered. “Walking in now, center aisle, right side.”

The case vibrated twice in acknowledgement. A few seconds later, a slight blond man wearing glasses brushed past him to follow. Cal watched him go briefly… until he realized that the couple across the aisle were staring at him in something akin to shock.

He knew it had nothing to do with his whispering and everything to do with the fact that he was probably one of maybe a half dozen black people in all of Vienna. And it wasn’t like German folk — and Austria, Germany… they were kind of all the same to him — were exactly keen on Negroes.

Cal sighed and put his eyes back on the target, the blond man, who had taken a seat one row behind the woman. He had to keep his eyes on the target. His ears, though, he’d save for that Christmas carol the choir was singing. Always good to keep a little bit of the Lord in mind, he thought.

Danny Wallace reached down for the kneeler, then got on his knees and folded his hands in front of him, leaning his arms on the back of the pew in front of him. The woman was less than three feet away. She immediately flinched and shifted, and Danny knew then they had the right target — as if the sensation in his mind wasn’t confirmation enough. She was a flaring beacon now that he’d been able to finally get close enough.

“Nice trick at the vault today,” he said quietly, trying to suppress a smile. “You’re getting pretty daring. You’re also starting to develop a pattern, though, and that’s a problem.”

To her credit, the woman kept herself composed, sitting stock-still with her arms folded and staring straight ahead. “Excuse me?” she said, sounding incongruously pleasant. She was petite and dressed conservatively but quite fashionably for church. Danny knew she could afford it.

“You’re rushing things. You think you need to get in and get out, so you’re making messes wherever you go. The bank today. The hotel safe in Davos last week. The museum storehouse in Graz two weeks ago. You’re just reaching in, grabbing for stuff, throwing it aside if it doesn’t interest you. You think you’re going to be interrupted at any moment. But you’re not thinking about what you could do if you were caught.”

The woman cracked a small smile. “I’m thinking about it right now,” she replied quietly. “But thanks for the tip.”

She’s going to run, Danny thought. He reached into his pocket and gave his own cigarette case radio three quick taps, the signal for everyone else to get in position. “You have a pretty unique ability, I’ll give you that. But I also think you’re wasting it on bank jobs and knickknacks.”

The woman’s smile grew wider. “Ah, so you know a little about me, then. And this is where you try to sell me on joining you for… what, exactly? Are you a gangster?”

Danny had to stifle a laugh at her pronunciation — she’d obviously picked up the word at the movie house. “Sorry, nothing so glamorous. But maybe something far more exciting. And useful.”

“Ah, a goody-goody,” she replied, another line lifted straight from the silver screen. “Let me guess. You want me to fight for you, whoever you are. Why should I? I like my knickknacks.”

“Because if you don’t, we’ll tell your husband exactly why you left him — and where he can find that car and all his mother’s jewelry you took on the way out. You want that, Julia Meyer?”

The smile finally faded. “My husband is a pig,” she spat. “And his mother is a witch from hell.”

“Good,” Danny quipped. “Come with me, and we’ll cover all your tracks. You’ll have to give everything back you haven’t spent yet, but you won’t be on the hook for it. And we won’t tell your family where you are. New life, clean slate.”

“I already have a clean slate,” Julia remarked. “Nobody can connect me to any of those crimes. And you don’t have enough to arrest me — if you did, you would. And you know that handcuffs wouldn’t hold me anyway.”

“I know, Julia. You’re a Variant. Over the past couple years, you’ve developed a kind of Enhancement that allows you to do extraordinary things. Did you ever in your life imagine that one day you’d be able walk right through walls, to reach through doors without opening them? You’re like a ghost. It’s a pretty incredible ability.”

She continued to stare straight ahead, but her eyebrow cocked up a bit. “A Variant? Is that what you call — do you mean there are others like me? People who can walk through walls?”

“There are others like you, but you’re the only one I’ve met who can do what you do, Julia. But we Variants, we can do extraordinary things.”

Julia stood up and made to leave, but Danny glanced over and saw that Frank had taken a seat at the end of the pew and was looking hard at the woman. On the other side, Cal had just taken his place, effectively blocking her in.

“We’re not here to arrest you, Julia, but we’re not going to let you go, either. Your best option is to come with us and we’ll get everything ironed out for you,” Danny said as he stood. “Let’s not make a scene.”

She turned to face him directly for the first time. “There won’t be any scene.”

And with that, she fell straight through the floor.

Danny quickly punched his radio key four times, then bent over to quickly pick up all her clothes. “I hate it when they run,” he muttered.

Knowing a naked woman might drop from the ceiling at any moment was one thing. Actually seeing it was quite another. So, it took Maggie Dubinsky a few moments before she realized she was truly on deck.

“Wow, your clothes really don’t go with you,” Maggie said with a broad smile as the woman, now crouched on the floor of the cathedral’s crypts, looked up at her wide-eyed.

The woman — Julia Meyer, according to the dossier Maggie had read a few hours before in a nondescript hotel room — immediately took off in a sprint.

“Please stop!” Maggie shouted, her voice echoing off the low stone ceilings and columns of the church’s lower level as she took off in pursuit. “We need to talk!”

But Julia wasn’t having it, and she wasn’t bothering to stop or run around things like columns and tombs, either. Maggie had little chance of keeping up with her, so she had a couple of options — she could activate a device, initially developed by the Soviets, that would temporarily block any Variant from using their Enhancement, or she could simply use her own ability.

The way Julia was running through stuff, though, option one was out. For all Maggie knew, the gizmo could somehow trap her suddenly solid body in the middle of a column or something — and that seemed potentially messy.

Instead, Maggie paused a moment and reached out with her mind, grasping at the flailing red threads that, in her head, visually represented Julia’s frayed emotions. Maggie gathered a few of them in a twist… and pulled.

She was rewarded with a cry of panic and horror up ahead. Maggie saw that Julia had stopped running and was slowly turning toward her, the look of fear on her face amplified up to a level that few people could contemplate.

“Oh, shit,” Maggie muttered, then tried to adjust quickly, reaching for cooler threads of calm and happiness. But it was too late.

Julia ran straight toward Maggie, screaming and wild-eyed, then continued on through her and into the very wall of the catacomb.

“Shit shit shit shit,” Maggie shouted, keying her radio as she ran toward the stairs leading upward. “Subject on the move! Panicked and buck naked!”

Most of the time, a dose of fear administered from Maggie made her targets simply fold like a bad hand, collapsing in a heap and blubbering like babies. But for a scant few — maybe one in twenty or so — that abject fear that Maggie could project triggered a fight-or-flight reflex, and Julia had chosen flight.

Just her luck.

Danny, Frank, and Cal dashed out of the church, startling several well-dressed families heading into the arched doorway. Despite the bitter cold, the plaza around them was full of pedestrians, but Frank was grateful for both the crowds and the winter weather — it would make Julia Meyer a lot easier to find.

“Commander?” Frank asked, turning to Danny.

The young man’s eyes were screwed shut in concentration. “She’s… here. Under us. But moving really slow.”

Higher volumes may lead to reduced movement rates, came the voice of U.S. Army Gen. Mark Davis, who had died three years earlier but somehow also now resided inside Frank’s mind, standing at attention for whenever he was needed. Her Enhancement may have limits. She’ll have to surface soon. Keep on her.

“No shit,” Frank muttered. There were times when all the voices and accumulated expertise in his head — a rather morbid gift from those Frank had watched die — was incredibly useful. Other times, they stated the obvious with all the gravity of a Congressional decree.

Danny was already walking into the plaza, Cal at his side. Frank hurried to catch up, passing bakeries and coffeehouses with the most incredible scents coming from inside. Running around Vienna in the depth of winter on Christmas Eve was not how he expected to be living life these days, but then again, his life hadn’t been normal in years.

“Wait,” Danny said, holding up his hand. “She’s right here. She’s stopped moving.”

Frank started taking off his overcoat just as Maggie and Zippy came running over — Maggie had been in the basement, Zippy at the very back of the cathedral. “Looks like she’s reached the end of her rope,” Frank said. “Let’s hope she—”

Suddenly, the woman from the cathedral practically leapt straight out of the cobblestoned street between them, collapsing back down onto the cold stone, gasping for breath.

Frank immediately threw his overcoat over her. “Maggie, now!”

Maggie produced a small metal disk from her pocket, flipped a toggle switch on it, and slipped it into the pocket of Frank’s coat. A moment later, Maggie grimaced. “It’s working,” she said, distaste written across her face.

Julia Meyer looked up at the five people standing above her. “Who are you?” she gasped.

Danny knelt down next to her and smiled, handing over her clothes. “I’m Commander Dan Wallace, United States Navy. We work on a special project back in America called MAJESTIC-12. And like it or not, you just joined the team.”