“Got a cable from our man in Vladivostok,” Danny said once the doors were closed. “A large contingent of high-ranking NKVD officers left the city about twelve hours ago in three different NKVD-flagged vehicles, along with a Red Army cargo truck. They apparently came in the night before from Chuguyevka, an airfield north of the city, and ended up taking over the local NKVD headquarters for the evening.”
“Did they catch a glimpse of Beria?” Mrs. Stevens asked.
“No, but the report says all NKVD officers were summoned to headquarters before the caravan arrived, and stayed there all night. But it gets better,” Danny said. “Four hours after the contingent left, an entire Red Army battalion roared into town and headed straight for the NKVD, setting up a perimeter and everything.”
“That’s our boy,” Frank said. “Anything else?”
“Nope, that’s it. But it’s consistent with what I’ve been sensing, that they’ve been heading east for the past three days. Vladivostok is as far east as east goes. So now they have to make a decision,” Danny said, laying out a map of eastern Asia on the conference room table. “Thoughts?”
Everyone stood to get a look at it, but as had become habit, they waited for Mrs. Stevens to speak first. “He’s not hiding, that’s for sure,” she said after a while. “Russia’s a big place. If he wanted to hole up somewhere and hide, you don’t go through Vladivostok to do that. You go to Siberia, somewhere you can set up shop with nobody caring. He’s got a lot of Variants with him. He could have easily taken over a small town and built up a power base out there, or just waited until things cooled down. It’s a huge country, and he went to a major population center instead.”
“And then left,” Sorensen noted.
Frank paced around the table. “So you have a traveling menagerie of at least a dozen Variants, some of the most powerful people on the planet, and you’re not holing up anywhere — you’re at the ass end of the Soviet Union. If you came in from Chuguyevka, that’s, what, four hours north of the city? So they weren’t heading back north. And you’ve got two major borders within a short drive from there — China and North Korea.”
“Maybe he’s going to hand everything off to Mao,” Danny said. “Convince the chairman that Russia’s fallen to rogue elements, and that the Chinese have to help him?”
“That’s a tall order,” Sorensen quipped.
“Beria does not ask for help,” Ekaterina offered. “He is… pig-head. Stubborn.”
“Arrogant,” Frank added.
Mrs. Stevens nodded along and pointed again to the map. “And you don’t need to go all the way to Vladivostok to get to China. You go through Kazakhstan or Mongolia. And you could’ve been there by yesterday.”
“So he’s going to Korea,” Danny said. “But why? If you’re trying to protect your Variants — the only real resource he has left — do you drag them into a war zone?”
“Maybe he’s doing a deal with the North,” Sorensen said. “You know — we’ll win your war for you, you give us a home for a while. Or maybe he thinks he can just take over or something.”
“That’s assuming his goal really is to just protect his Variants,” Mrs. Stevens said. “It’s a priority, sure, but again, if that’s the sum total of his plan, he wouldn’t have been seen. So there’s something else up his sleeve, and yes, I think he’s going to North Korea to do it, whatever it is.”
Ekaterina studied the map and thought back to her time at the Bekhterev Institute, and the creepy man who could shoot flames from his hands and called her “daughter” in a very disturbing way. She was sure Beria was as sick as he was arrogant. He would not run and hide. He would run and do something else, but what could he do with three cars full of Variants and….
“Excuse me,” she said. “But do we know what’s in the truck?”
Danny, Frank, and Mrs. Stevens traded looks around the table. “Red Army cargo truck,” Mrs. Stevens said. “The Red Army isn’t just going to up and give that to him.”
Frank nodded. “Dan, maybe see if our man in Vladivostok can take a little drive north to Chuguyevka, see what that place looks like. Meanwhile…”
Danny finished Frank’s sentence for him. “Pack your things. We’re out of here in two hours. Move.”
Night gently descended on the forested mountains around Songbul-sa, punctuated by the growing sounds of cicadas in the trees. Cal had just finished another meal with Hei Feng, and now walked slowly around the temple courtyard, with Kim in tow to translate and a couple guards keeping a respectful distance. Yamato and Padilla had joined them for dinner, then begged off on the walk.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the two guards shadowing each of them, weapons at the ready, Cal would’ve really enjoyed the stay. Well, that and missing his family. And failing in his mission. But Cal was always one to make the most of it, and while the Variants waited for the Reds to slip up and give them a window to escape — and maybe rescue those POWs before they were all killed in retaliation — he’d grown to appreciate the slower pace. Especially as his own pace had slowed.
Cal was very much feeling his real age — for the first time in years. In fact, he swore he felt older now. He should have been around fifty-seven, in a body that had seen a lot of miles and hard work and was getting a little arthritic before his Enhancement took hold. But today he felt — and looked — older than that, maybe early sixties. A little more gray, a little stiffer and achy. The thought worried him slightly, but given that he’d always kept himself younger and healthier than his real age, who was to say what his real age should be?
His captor noticed. “Your ability keeps you younger. And without it, you grow old,” Hei Feng said through Kim. “Is that true?”
Cal smiled as they walked past some kind of statue or stele in the middle of the court yard. It wasn’t the first time Black Wind had asked about their abilities, and he wasn’t sure if the young Chinese was probing again or just being kind. “Well, seeing as we’re not really on the same side, and with all due respect, I don’t feel right talking about it.”
Hei Feng nodded. “If you hold to our agreement, I may be able to let you slaughter some of the chickens we’ve gathered for food. Would that help?”
That sounded really, really good to Cal, and he was sorely tempted. But… “No, that’s all right. Appreciate it, though.”
“I understand. Your loyalty to your people is admirable, especially when… well, your people, Africans, they are not treated as well as they should be, yes?” Hei Feng asked.
“Nobody’s ever treated as well as they should be, but yeah, we have a ways to go. But I’ve been a lot of places, and I can tell you that if you look different, no matter how it is that you look different, people gonna treat you different. Black folk in Africa, they don’t like white folk much at all. Understandable. Indian folk don’t like Chinese folk. Arabs don’t like Jews. The French, well, they don’t like anybody. But America’s home. And I think it’ll get better, as long as we keep at it, keep trying to make a difference.”
Hei Feng took all this in as Kim translated, then pondered it for several paces before replying. “And how do they feel about Chinese people?”
Cal could only shrug. “I don’t rightly know. Most Chinese folks I know of tend to stick to their own kind in the cities. I don’t think they have it as bad as black folk in the South, but I really don’t know.”
“I have no family left to speak of, and the farmers and peasants are treated as well as you can expect, I suppose,” Kim translated. “Perhaps — what’s that?”
Cal turned to look at the Korean, pretty sure that he wasn’t translating anymore, and saw why a moment later when three Chinese Army jeeps sped into the tiny courtyard, filled with soldiers and at least three ranking officers.