There were nods around the table, and many swigs of Radeberger beer — a surprisingly good pilsner, despite the brewery being nationalized by the East German government shortly after the war. “What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’” answered Ernst, one of the grizzled old hands in their work group. “We work harder to make sure we meet the quotas. There’s nothing else to do.”
Frank sized up the group — nobody was really happy with that answer, even Ernst. “Are we not the workers?” Frank said when nobody else spoke up. “All of this talk about Communism, where the workers are in charge of the means of production. Doesn’t that mean we’re in charge? That we’re the ones they have to listen to?”
Ernst shook his head and took a long drag off his cigarette. “You look too old to be so stupid, Franz. The Party says the workers are in charge, but these are the same bureaucrats who ran the Nazi government. They answered to Hitler, then rolled over, and now they answer to Stalin — or whoever replaces Stalin in Moscow now. Those bureaucrats haven’t worked a day in their lives. They sit in offices and write reports and have meetings and make all the decisions, and then hope and pray Moscow allows them to do what they planned. Or they figure out how to make Moscow’s demands work. We don’t matter.”
“We should matter,” replied another young man named Manfred, a wizard with rivets who almost singlehandedly boosted them over their quotas each day. “If they could just see how bad things are, maybe they would adjust the quotas, or increase pay, or fix things. Maybe they just don’t know what it’s like.”
“So how do we show them?” Frank prodded. “We are the workers. We’re the backbone of the State. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ Our abilities are stretched to the limits, and our needs aren’t being met!”
The youngest of their circle, a fresh-faced boy named Gunter, shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Comrades, we know the Americans and their allies brought us low during the war. We had nothing after Hitler was removed. Don’t we all have to make sacrifices in order to bring our Fatherland back? We are starting from nothing. And there are still those far worse off than we are, those who can’t even afford beer!”
There were nods around the table at this, and Frank saw the power of propaganda at work. Tighten your belts and work for each other, not for yourself. Work toward equality for the collective. Even if we’re all starving, we’ll be equal. “The bureaucrats can afford beer. They get more ration stamps and better pay, and they skip the queues at the stores to get the best cuts of meat and the best produce for their families. How is this a sacrifice?”
There were more nods now, more grimaces and grumblings, and Frank knew he had them. He might not have had Maggie’s emotional manipulations, but experience certainly counted for something. By the time the beer was gone and the men were stumbling out of Max’s flat, their rage was well stoked. Frank walked old Ernst to his flat, then walked another mile to his temporary home. Danny was already there, and there was a plate of potatoes and a bit of sausage waiting for him.
“Actual meat?” Frank asked. “Where’d you get that?”
“The students sometimes use ration stamps when they’re playing doppelkopf. I had a good hand tonight,” Danny said. “Where’ve you been?”
Frank plopped down at the tiny table and tucked into his food. “Fomenting dissent. You saw the news this morning. The workers are pissed. Quotas are going up, and they’re worried that the pay cuts are gonna follow soon. If that happens, well… these people are strapped, Dan. I blew most of my wad on beer to get them loose and talking. They can barely feed their families, and if they get their pay cut for failing to meet quota, I think that’s our shot.”
Danny nodded and cracked open a beer. “There’s a lot of sympathy for the workers among the students. They’re sitting in classes all day, getting an earful about the proletariat and the nobility of work and all that, then see all the bureaucrats walking by in good clothes and full bellies. They’re starting to whisper, but I don’t think they’ll take the lead. The Stasi is pretty well entrenched in the schools.”
“But if it starts up elsewhere? You think they’ll play ball?” Frank asked between bites.
“Some of them, sure,” Danny said. “Sure would be nice to know the whens and wheres, though. Hard to plan a rebellion when we don’t have control over when it kicks off.”
“Probably when they announce the pay cuts for not meeting quotas,” Frank replied. “That’s the rumor, at least. But there’s no telling when that will be.”
“Be nice to know. We could coordinate with Mrs. Stevens and try to pull something in Moscow at the same time. A revolt here and a black eye there would really whack Beria good. Latest intel reports say he’s struggling to keep up with Malenkov and Khrushchev. Starting to look like he might be outmaneuvered.”
Frank leaned back and ran a hand over his tired face. “If they’re not careful, Beria will go for broke. Unleash his Variants. Kill ’em all and just take over.”
You should’ve killed him when you had the chance, said one of the voices in Frank’s head, and a few others echoed the sentiment. Frank closed his eyes and willed them back into the dark corner of his mind.
Danny noticed. “More voices?”
“Opinions,” Frank said. “They’re second-guessing now. I’m really not listening to them much anymore.”
“Have your language abilities been affected?”
“Nope. Things like languages, skills that rely on muscle memory, that sort of thing — those kinds of natural, subconscious abilities, those aren’t really affected. Just don’t ask me to fix a car or perform surgery. I’d have to let them in to do that, and I honestly don’t know at this point how they’d react.”
“You think they’d refuse you?” Danny asked, eyebrows raised.
Frank just shrugged. “They never have, after nearly eight years of this. But then again, they’ve never really offered up opinions outside of a crisis situation. Now, though, it seems like they’re restless. Pushing. It’s really not fucking helpful at all.”
Danny took another swig of beer and looked Frank in the eye. “I gotta tell you, Frank, I don’t know what the powers that be will say to all this when we’re done. They’ve been conspicuously silent on our reports around our Enhancements. I can’t get any word on what the vortex in Idaho is doing. We’re in the dark here.”
“So what? You think they’ll put us under arrest when we come back?” Frank asked. “I mean, me, sure. I bombed that truck and went to see Beria on my own. I figure I’m in trouble when everything settles out. But you? Rose? Katie?”
“I’m the deputy director of MAJESTIC-12. I’m the operations guy. And they’re telling me nothing about the other Variants, about the vortex, no word on any new studies based on what Beria told you. We have a new administration now. We’ve been so busy, I’ve only met Eisenhower once, back in January, when we briefed him up. Can’t honestly say how he feels about us.”
“So what do we do?”
“We do the job,” Danny replied. “We get Beria out of there. After that… we’ll have to see how things go. But if you don’t have contingency plans, maybe think about that.”
Frank just smiled. “I’m forty-seven different people, Dan. I speak twenty languages. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about Katie. And Cal. And Maggie, if we can ever get her back.”
“So maybe those are your contingency plans, then.”
Frank nodded and finished his food in silence, the wheels spinning in his head. He could feel opinions from the others bubbling up, but he quashed them before the thoughts were fully formed. This was something he had to figure out on his own.