The problem was that they didn’t know what abilities these Soviet Variants had, or anything about their training and talents. Mrs. Stevens was working on a number of capture scenarios, but there were far too many unknowns to make for a clean operation. They were all pretty reluctant to risk a repeat of the large-scale battle that had occurred on the train. So Danny watched them carefully, from a distance, and had managed to get photos of fourteen Variants — six women and eight men, ranging in ages from about fifteen to seventy, with most in their twenties through forties.
Beria was working hard to consolidate his resources — and his power. Bringing the Variants to Moscow en masse, combining the NKVD and MGB into a single, powerful political police and spying operation… those were big bets. But the others were betting big too. Malenkov and Molotov seemed to be working together to consolidate influence over the Red Army and the diplomatic corps, the outward-facing pieces of the Soviet apparatus, while Khrushchev was acting swiftly and surely to consolidate his control over the Communist Party itself. Party and government in the Soviet Union were nigh inseparable under Lenin and Stalin, so the recent ongoing developments were all kinds of interesting.
And Mrs. Stevens finally seemed to have found a place to throw a wrench in the middle of it all.
“The satellite states in Eastern Europe,” she began while ladling out mashed potatoes to everyone during the evening meal. “That’s where we can really weaken Beria.”
“I thought Molotov was the diplomat,” Danny said, eagerly spooning some beets onto his plate. Oddly, he’d developed quite a taste for the vegetable during his sojourn in Russia, despite having hated it as a child.
“Molotov is the diplomat to the West, and Asia, but the Eastern European countries are special cases,” she replied. “They’re treated less as separate nations and more as colonies or states, like back home. The Party here in Moscow gives orders to the Party in Bucharest or East Berlin or wherever. The secret police here, under Beria, is responsible for ferreting out traitors and counterrevolutionaries in those nations through the secret police there. So the centers of influence in Moscow extend into the Eastern Bloc, too.”
“So?” Sorensen said, his mouth full.
“So nobody’s really paying attention to the Eastern Bloc nations here in Moscow,” Mrs. Stevens said. “That’s why Mr. Dulles — well, both Misters Dulles, at State and CIA — are reaching out to those countries to see about helping out, being better friends. And we’re getting reports from Foggy Bottom that the lack of oversight from Moscow is leading to whispers of dissent here and there. East Germany is a big one, I think, a big opportunity.”
“How so?” Danny asked.
“The East Germans are being ordered to spend a ton on their military, and the Soviets are still taking reparations from them for the war. That’s something like twenty to twenty-five percent of their budget going to feeding the Soviets’ demands,” she explained. “Their economy isn’t growing fast enough. Everything’s being poured into industrial production, and industrial workers quotas are going up. Agricultural production is down because everyone’s going to the factories, which means food is getting imported and it’s getting expensive. But wages aren’t going up with the quotas. That’s a completely unsustainable scenario.”
For the first time in days, Frank spoke up. “Uprising.”
“Possibly!” Mrs. Stevens said with an encouraging smile; Danny could tell she was happy to hear him contribute. “The trade and labor unions there are pretty strong, and somewhat outside the Party apparatus. I have to see how things play out over the next several weeks — there’s a big Party meeting there at the end of June that could be pivotal, and if it goes the way I think it’ll go — more quotas, less help with costs and wages — we could really light the fuse on something.”
“So what’s that get for us?” Sorensen said. “I mean, great to help them out and all, but our target is Beria. He’s gotta go.”
Danny took this one. “Dissent is Beria’s portfolio. Any dissent here or in the Eastern Bloc reflects poorly on him. He’s already a little under the gun because of the stunt we pulled. If we pull off some kind of ruckus in Germany, maybe combined with another op here — maybe we blow up an MGB barracks or get some convincing propaganda aired — that could really push him hard. Maybe it’d be enough for Malenkov and Khrushchev to team up and end him, or maybe he overplays his hand in response and it achieves the same effect.”
“Or he goes all in, kills off his rivals and tells the world that the Variants are in charge now,” Frank offered. “That’s a possibility. Seems like we need another front to distract him, one more thing to take care of before he launches a coup. We need to hit him where it really hurts.”
“A Variant problem,” Mrs. Stevens said, nodding. “That’s interesting. If he feels his Variants are threatened at the same time as he’s dealing with political issues, he can’t use one to defuse or destroy the other. That’s not bad, Frank.”
At this, Ekaterina noisily got up from her place, put her half-full dish in the sink, and stalked off to her room, leaving the rest of the team staring at each other.
“My fault,” Frank said quietly. He, too, got up and cleared his plate, then headed off to his own room, leaving Danny, Sorensen, and Mrs. Stevens to quietly finish dinner, though not before Danny encouraged her to formulate some operational plans on three fronts — East Germany, Moscow secret police, and Variants.
As Danny dried the dishes — he and Sorensen had dish duty that evening — he figured it was time to sit down and try to hash it out with Frank. Admittedly, Danny had been putting it off, this reckoning, mostly due to sheer exhaustion. But they needed Frank’s savvy and his operational abilities. They needed another body to help with surveillance of the Variants and to tail Party leaders, to make sense of intel reports and to do something other than shit-bucket duty.
Above all, Danny needed to know why Frank had unilaterally decided to kill those men. If it was the voices in his head, then that would raise a big alarm bell, given what Danny himself had seen on the train. Because those faces had almost seemed like… ghosts. What if Frank’s voices were themselves ghosts of some kind, rather than just skill sets or memories? What if the voices and what Danny saw were related?
Danny headed upstairs to Frank’s tiny bedroom. The door was closed, as usual. Yes, Frank was largely confined to quarters, but even with that, he had been quieter than normal. Danny hoped it was due to guilt and reflection, but Frank always played things close to the vest, and as the years wore on, it seemed he was spending an increasing amount of time just communing with the memories in his head.
Danny knocked. “Frank, can I come in?”
Nothing.
“Frank, we need to talk.”
Nothing. No sense of movement.
On a hunch, Danny concentrated on his Enhancement.
Frank wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in the neighborhood.
“Shit.”
Focusing, Danny stretched out his senses to try to find him. With Variants he knew well, like Frank or Maggie or Cal, Danny could sometimes pinpoint them if they were within a certain distance — a few miles, give or take. Any further and they were just another Variant milling about the city. Further than about five hundred miles, Danny simply got a sense of direction on the compass, nothing more — and no sense of how many, either.
The problem was, Danny had last seen Frank maybe a half hour ago. Maybe he took the car. Or maybe…