Next to her, Beria read through a series of documents in a plain folder provided by Chinese intelligence. It was a testament to Beria’s charisma and manipulation, and the sway the Soviets still had over the Chinese and North Koreans, that they’d gotten the full cooperation of the officials in charge of the war — and the peace talks. By all accounts, they had complied with Beria’s resource requests — demands, really — and also his admonition that they not communicate his presence in North Korea to either the Chinese or Soviet governments. They were on, he said, a most sensitive mission to uphold Communism against these heathens, and his actions could help bring the war to a rapid and victorious end.
That last part worried Maggie — and had a similar effect on the Koreans. It took quite a bit of emotional manipulation on Maggie’s part to keep the government officials in Pyongyang compliant. But she was good. Very good, to the point where she could play a person’s emotions like a violin, and she was getting to be quite the Mozart. The personalities of those she affected blurred together by now, remarkable only for a pang of fear here, an unusual bout of courage there, a little bit of extra resistance or a surprising degree of compliance.
It was easy. The sheep, it seemed, really wanted to be led by a shepherd.
Maggie thought she had ingratiated herself well into Beria’s circle, but there were still things the former First Deputy Premier kept close to the vest — like the knowledge of other Variants in the Korean theater of war. She’d spent the last few days going out of her way to avoid being seen by Cal and Yamato, “until the time was right,” according to Beria’s orders. She wondered why she hadn’t been told to give her former colleagues the recruitment pitch, but she knew it would be fruitless. Yamato was too young and headstrong; he’d have told her to go to hell just for the fun of it. And Cal…
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the pines began to give way to buildings and streets — they were entering the outskirts of Kaesong, a former capital of Korea and once a bustling center of commerce. The emotions lately were disconcerting. Maggie thought she’d become numb to her own emotions the more she played with those of others, but lately she’d fallen prey to pangs of regret and sadness that truly unnerved her. Cal was just another sheep in need of a shepherd, and yet she wished she could just send him back home to his wife and kid and let them live out a simple, peaceful, long — very long, in his case — life.
That just wasn’t in the cards.
Beria knew Cal, of course, having held him prisoner in Kazakhstan four years ago, and they had a decent dossier on Yamato as well. The Koreans and Chinese gave up the Chinese Variant easily enough — he was a kineticist, focused on pushing things away, to the side, etc. Nobody was a hundred percent sure about the Latin guy, other than he was said to be an excellent shot. Maybe another kineticist, like the Black Wind guy.
Their caravan — now ten vehicles strong, including a full platoon of North Korean infantry — drove through the largely empty town and finally stopped at the site of a bombed-out factory complex. Beria apparently had extensive contacts within the Chinese and North Korean governments, because the area was already under guard by a squadron of soldiers, several of whom saluted crisply when they got out of the cars. A relatively undamaged building with a loading dock had already been prepared, and the cargo truck that had been with them since Chuguyevka backed up to it. Inside was Beria’s biggest play yet, a Hail Mary like none other.
Beria stood with Maggie, watching the soldiers carefully place the large wooden crate onto a rolling pallet. “The more I think about it, Margaret, the more I realize just how important it is for things to have happened this way,” Beria said quietly.
What a self-aggrandizing prick, Maggie thought. “What makes you say that, Comrade?”
“We tried to work within the power structure, to ease our way into positions of authority, so as to keep our blessings secret and ensure we were protected,” Beria said. “We were fools. We are Empowered. The proletariat does not need to be coddled, nor should we coddle them. Each according to his ability — and we have such ability. It is only natural we should lead, and now we will.”
Maggie nodded slowly. “A lot of people are going to die.”
“There is no greater tool of revolution than death,” Beria said simply. “Regrettable, but it is true. The world must be shocked out of its complacency, and we must take our positions as their Champions when that happens.”
The crate was wheeled into the factory building, and the two Variants followed it inside. The future awaited.
Detlev Bronk ran a hand over his face, resisting the urge to check his watch. He knew it was well past midnight, and any greater precision on that account was unnecessary and likely depressing. But the work needed to be done. Vandenberg had been absolutely clear on that point, and with good reason — there was something new going on with the vortex.
Bronk looked up at the impossible fissure in space-time, swirling three feet off the ground like a milky whirlpool. The unnerving thing was, no matter which angle you looked at it from, the center of that vortex was always within line of sight. It was an utter paradox, a thing that modern physics simply could not explain. The greats in the field — given only enough information, and through subtle means — all agreed that the vortex should not be. The very few who were cleared to see it firsthand were uniformly confounded. Einstein himself grew visibly angry and agitated after watching it for just a few minutes.
The new sensors were doing their job. They continued to confirm a steadily increasing pattern of low-level radiation coming out of the thing, going in various directions, though mostly to the west and north. Tracing great circle routes on a globe found that many of the bursts were headed for Moscow, before suddenly shifting toward the Pacific.
What’s more, the equipment was detecting even fainter, yet similar, patterns all around the vortex. They didn’t seem to be coming from the phenomena, but were received nonetheless. They were coming from somewhere else, but were too faint and diffuse to triangulate.
“Dr. Bronk?”
Bronk looked up to see Kurt Schreiber at the door to his office, a large sheaf of papers and readouts in hand. In the days since his forced rehabilitation — during which time he had been under constant armed guard — Schreiber had reviewed reams of data and observations about the vortex, with an intensity that Bronk found utterly scary. The German had to be reminded to eat and sleep, and at one point had literally pissed himself because he’d forgotten to go to the bathroom in the midst of his work. He was absolutely nuts, completely certifiable. And yet Vandenberg insisted he be allowed to analyze the work, to seek out patterns that perhaps only his disjointed mind could see.
The excitement on the former Nazi’s narrow, gaunt face was evidence he’d found something.
“It’s about timing,” Schreiber said, entering the office and dropping his papers all over Bronk’s already cluttered desk. “The new patterns we’re detecting. We needed to look at the timing. That’s the key.”
Plucking two separate wave patterns off the desk, Schreiber circled the time stamps above each. “This one came from the vortex yesterday at 2:37 a.m.,” he said. “And this one was found in the radiation background at 2:38 a.m. Look at the patterns.”
Bronk leaned in and put on his glasses. “They’re different patterns, Schreiber.”
“Not entirely!” Schreiber used his pen to circle similarities within the two patterns, snippets within the wavelength that looked similar. “There are pieces that are nearly exactly alike amidst the differences. It is like a call and a response. I’ve seen this in nearly every time stamp pairing I could find within the data.”