Join the CIA and see the world, he thought. What a great idea.
To be fair, it was a great cover. The actual street cleaners only worked from nine in the morning until six in the evening, but nobody seemed to notice or care that someone was working late, nor would they bother to question it. It was his fourth night on the job, and the NKVD men posted around the square were already ignoring him. The first night, one came up and questioned him, but his cover story — that one of the Party men wanted an extra shift to cover the square to improve cleanliness and prevent vagrancy — passed muster, as did the work order and papers Sorensen had lifted from the Kremlin’s maintenance offices the week prior. The NKVD man let him be, and he’d been free to roam ever since, complete with limited access to the bowels of the Kremlin itself, thanks to a stolen key to the janitorial department.
It was all going according to plan, including Sorensen’s nightly forays into the most secure, secretive parts of the Kremlin itself. For the past week, MAJESTIC-12’s very own Invisible Man had gained access to the entire building, thanks to momentary lapses in security, unlocked doors, and, of course, his Enhancement. He’d been able to rifle through Beria’s desk drawers, take photos of Malenkov’s personal diary, listen in on phone calls between high officials, and lift hundreds of forms and papers that would help MAJESTIC-12 wreak havoc on the Soviet Union.
Danny wondered if the Soviet Variants had gained similar access to the White House. Their shadow Variant — a man who could project a shadow image of himself anywhere in the world — could very well have gotten into the White House or Defense Department with ease, but he wasn’t invisible, and more importantly, it didn’t seem like he could actually move material objects without becoming material himself. If he was the best Beria had, Danny felt pretty good about keeping American secrets safe.
“Shouldn’t you be cleaning, Comrade?” came a voice from behind him, speaking Russian.
Danny smiled and didn’t bother turning around, but he did pick up the pace a little. “Your accent needs work, Tim,” he muttered in English. “Any problems?”
“None whatsoever,” the voice replied. Danny could feel Sorensen standing next to him, but saw nothing. “Thank God it’s a warm night. Mrs. Stevens says she can’t insulate this suit. Gonna get the flu or something.”
“How’d the bag work out?”
“Halloween is on. See you back at the house, Comrade Colonel.”
Danny chuckled and went back to his cleaning. “The bag” was a new innovation from Mrs. Stevens. Sorensen’s Enhancement allowed him to be invisible — but in the beginning, only when he was buck naked. MAJESTIC-12’s resident genius had created a kind of mesh suit for Sorensen to wear, which gave him some limited protection from the elements and certainly helped with modesty. She was able to create small pockets in the suit so he could squirrel away papers and keys, even a small pistol when warranted. But bigger items still eluded them, resulting in the sight of a satchel or bag being carried around by invisible hands — which was hardly covert by any measure.
After another half hour spent sweeping up, Danny carried his garbage bin back inside and locked up for the evening, then took his usual roundabout way home, using two separate subway lines and three buses that took him an hour out of his way. At least he got to sit — Sorensen would walk the entire way home, invisibly.
By the time Danny arrived back at the safe house, Mrs. Stevens had a dinner of chicken, potatoes, beets, and carrots ready. Danny had offered to create a rotation to cover meal prep, but Mrs. Stevens insisted on cooking — though she was happy to surrender dish duty in the process. Sorensen had already arrived and unpacked his bag, judging from the pile of documents on the table next to the food. There were also three NVKD uniforms thrown over one of the chairs — a key resource for any future operations that they’d been itching to get their hands on.
Danny immediately shucked his coat and took a seat at the table, while Mrs. Stevens gathered some documents and stood at the head to give her now-nightly briefing. “All right, couple things,” she began. “Let’s start with the back-burner stuff. Tim here found a number of communiqués from Eastern Europe, complaining to other members of the Politboro that Beria’s MGB has been, for want of a better word, slacking off in keeping their people in line.”
“How so?” Danny asked.
“Diplomatic relations are handled through Molotov, but Beria is charged with working directly with the secret police in the Eastern Bloc countries, like the Stasi in East Germany,” Mrs. Stevens said. “Most of them are afraid to take any initiative without consulting with Beria first, and he hasn’t been keeping up with their requests for guidance lately. So they’re worried that they’re going to see some dissent. With Stalin gone, some are even wondering if that’s permissible. Of course, the Politburo says it’s counterrevolutionary, so no.”
“Why does this matter?” Ekaterina asked. “We’re in Moscow, not other countries.”
“If we want to undermine Beria, encouraging dissent elsewhere could be a possibility,” Danny said. “Any good candidates, Rose?”
She shuffled through several papers. “I like East Germany for that, maybe Hungary. Both have economic issues that could light a fuse if things get worse. But they’re not quite ready yet.”
“Okay, keep an eye on it,” Danny said. “What else?”
“This is the good one,” Mrs. Stevens said. “Obviously, Beria keeps his most sensitive stuff at the Lubyanka, MGB headquarters, not at the Kremlin. But he’s also first deputy premier, so his office at the Kremlin handles some things for him. Tim found a request for the transportation minister to add an additional train car on a Leningrad-to-Moscow route three days from now to accommodate a ‘special NKVD project’ based in Leningrad.”
Frank shrugged as he helped himself to more potatoes. “That could be anything.”
“Except there’s a roster that includes twenty names. Any of them look familiar?” Mrs. Stevens asked, handing Frank a sheet of paper.
“Yeah, there’s a Variant in there, Victor Smirnov,” Frank said, handing the list to Katie. “Our old friend Yushchenko says the swimmer’s there. Maybe two others, not sure. If so, unknown abilities.”
“Here is another,” Katie said. “Alexei Ivanovich Rustov. He can create water out of thin air. Lots of water. Like Beria does with fire.”
Frank and Danny traded a look. “Our old friend from Istanbul,” Frank said. “It’ll be nice, punching him in the face.”
Danny nodded. “Best as I can tell, there’s only a few Variants left in Leningrad. Seems like he’s cleaning the place out, consolidating them here.” There were looks around the table, and Danny knew that this was their best chance yet to hit Beria where it hurt. “Rose, we’re gonna need a plan.”
She smiled and opened another folder. “Already thought of that. It’ll take some doing, but I think we can grab ’em. Or if not, well… we can at least deny them to Beria.”
“I’d much rather capture them,” Danny said. “I think we can all agree there. What are the variables?”
Mrs. Stevens scanned the list of names and pulled out a railway map. “Obviously, unknown powers is a big one, but worse comes to worse, we can use null generators to even our odds. There’s a lot of rural space in Russia, even right outside the city, so time and place isn’t an issue. But there’s a lot of MGB people here. We’ll have to figure out what to do with them. If we have to use Enhancements, well, they’re going to run straight to Beria to tell him what they saw.”