“This can’t be good,” Frank said in German.
“It’s not,” Danny replied in Russian; his German wasn’t that great, and Frank knew he’d been using Russian and English to get by. “Flash message from West Berlin. Red Army and Volkspolizei are being mobilized outside the city. Soviet Army forces are in the vanguard. They’re going to move against the protesters.”
“Shit,” Frank said, his heart sinking. “I thought the team in Moscow was going to handle that.”
Danny shrugged. “They did. Put the squeeze on Beria. Might not be long for this world. But they put Zhukov in charge of the revolt here. He’s not going to be subtle.”
Georgi Zhukov was a military genius and a three-time Hero of the Soviet Union. He was also as much a true believer as anyone in the Soviet Union these days. He hated Beria with a passion, stemming from a little war profiteering Zhukov had done immediately after the fall of Berlin. Most Soviet commanders looted the place while the Party turned a blind eye, but Beria was gunning for him. Returning the favor by quashing the revolt would be a nice bit of revenge.
“We have to warn people,” Frank surmised.
Danny’s eyes widened. “No. Our orders are to get across to West Berlin immediately. I have our papers ready.”
Frank took the forged documents Danny offered him, skimming through them absently while thinking of Max and Ernst and the rest of his work cohort. “Where’s the extraction?”
“Chauseestrasse, over in Mitte. About a half hour walk.” Danny got up. “Come on. We need to go. Now.”
Frank rose and started following, but then grabbed Danny by the shoulder and pulled him back. “I’ll meet you at the corner of Schlegelstrasse. Something I have to do first.”
Danny fixed him with a hard look and switched to whispered English to drive his point home. “Don’t you dare blow this, Frank. We have agents on the other side to cause a distraction and let us get through. If I have to, I’ll leave you here.”
“Then leave me here,” Frank said simply. “I gotta do this. Go.”
With a final glare, Danny turned and stalked off, while Frank took off at a sprint for Potsdamer Platz. It took a good twenty minutes for him to find one of his coworkers, the grizzled veteran Ernst, sitting by one of the fires.
“Young Franz! Come and have a beer!” Ernst said. “The radio says we’re going to have forty thousand tomorrow. Can you imagine? Forty thousand!”
Of course, the American broadcasts would say that. They want these people to put their lives on the line. “Ernst, you have to listen to me. I don’t have much time. You have to get our cohort out of here. The soldiers are coming.”
Ernst looked at him with disbelief. “What soldiers? Are good Germans going to shoot at fellow Germans now? Bah. We’re the people! We have a right to be heard, and that goes for soldiers too!”
Frank squatted down next to the man and looked him right in the eye. “There are Russian soldiers coming. You remember them back in ’45, right? They hate Germans and they’re going to put down this protest quickly and efficiently. They’re going to shoot people. You need to find Max and the others, go home, lock the doors, and hide until this is all over. Do you hear me?”
“How do you know this?” Ernst said, suspicion growing. “You’re not one of those Stasi bastards, are you?”
Frank shook his head. “No, just a regular bastard. I’m telling you, this will all go to shit tomorrow. They’re coming with tanks and guns and God knows what, and we have to go now.”
Ernst considered this, then took a gulp of beer and shook his head. “No. Fuck that. First Hitler, now the Party. Fuck them. Let them come. I’ll stand right in front of that tank and tell them to go to hell.”
Frank opened his mouth to argue some more, but saw the look in the man’s eye and thought better of it. “Fine. But you find Max. He’s got a baby boy and a wife. Tell him to get the hell home. This is real, Ernst. You’re all in danger.”
“We are all in danger,” Ernst corrected.
Frank stood and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “No, Ernst. Just you. I have to go. For the love of God, tell Max to go home.”
Before Ernst could say anything more, Frank took off at a jog, heading north toward the extraction point — and a freedom he knew Ernst would never enjoy.
Maggie wished the Russians had more of an appreciation for coffee. Tea just wasn’t cutting it.
She sat next to Beria once more in a limo driven by Illyanov, this time heading for the Kremlin. At least three cars trailed them, all filled with Variants — Champions of the Proletariat, ready to make their mark upon the world.
She’d long ago lost the words to describe feelings, but the feelings were there. Everything was coming to a head. An hour from now, they’d know whether the gambit would pay off, or if they’d all be arrested. Or executed on the spot.
The cars pulled into the plaza past the low, colorful outer buildings and into the secured area where mere proletarians dared not tread. There, Maggie saw dozens of Red Army soldiers staking out the entrances — Khrushchev, apparently, wasn’t taking any chances. A Red Army colonel approached as they pulled up and got the door. “Good morning, Comrade Beria. They’re waiting for you.”
Beria got out and looked at his watch. “I am early, Comrade Colonel.”
The colonel gave a tight-lipped smile. “So are they, it seems.”
Maggie got out behind him and followed him into the building, where the corridors were lined with more and more soldiers. The rest of the Champions, led by Illyanov and Savrova, were barred from entering. That was fine — there were contingency plans for that. She checked her watch. Twelve minutes.
They walked through several ornate corridors and up marbled stairs until they reached the meeting room of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the seat of power within the Kremlin. Maggie had never been there, never dreamed she’d see the place. As the doors opened, she was slightly disappointed to find a rather drab room filled with standard-issue metal chairs, plain tables, and wood paneling. To be fair, the Central Committee rarely met under Stalin, and Khrushchev had apparently done a bang-up job revitalizing it while Beria and the other princelings were busy with their own games.
There, seven old Russians in suits or military uniforms sat in a semicircle, with Malenkov in the center seat and Khrushchev and Zhukov on either side. In front of their desks was a lone chair. And no fewer than twenty armed guards stood stoically in the room. Really subtle.
Maggie closed her eyes at the door and concentrated, preparing to pull a great many emotional strings to get these clowns in line…
… but there were no strings to pull. Anywhere.
“Lavrentiy,” she whispered beside Beria. “Null fields.”
Beria stopped at the doorway and looked down at his hands for a long moment. Maggie figured he was trying to summon his own Enhancement and discovering, just as she had, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.
“Recommendations?” he whispered back.
Maggie looked around, trying to spy the source of the null field. Was it Mikhail Tsakhia, the Mongolian Variant who could create such fields as part of his own Enhancement? He’d been left down in the square with the others, but perhaps he’d turned? Unlikely. And she couldn’t see any overt display of any null generators.
Then she spotted one of the guards along the wall smirking at her. Sorensen. Holy shit.
“We need to go. Now. The Americans are helping them,” she whispered.
Beria nodded. “Yanushkevich,” he muttered, the code name of their immediate retreat operation, before addressing the Central Committee. “Comrades! I have forgotten a critical file in my car. Give me a moment and I’ll go fetch it.”