“Mr. President, I’m not sure about any of it. But as far as we can tell, yes. Our people reported there was some kind of shift in their abilities, hard to define.”
“Where are they now? And what about the other Russian Variants?”
“Given the situation with the armistice talks, outright capture of any Russian Variants was deemed inadvisable. We had a couple defect. The rest have retreated back into North Korean territory. Our people say only a couple of them seem to want to head back to Russia. Apparently, Beria turned on them. The defectors and our people are back at U.N. Headquarters.”
“All right. Seems like they did a fine job.”
“Yes, sir, they did. Great work.”
“That doesn’t change my decision,” Eisenhower said.
Vandenberg felt his face go red, and it wasn’t just from the pain he felt from shifting in his seat. “Mr. President, once again, I urge you to reconsider. These people are Americans. Patriots. We’ve asked them for the impossible, and they’ve done it time and again. At great sacrifice.”
“I know, Hoyt. Really, I do,” Eisenhower said gently. “And I know you’ve gotten to know some of them over the years. I’m sure they’re fine people. But I have an entire country of fine people to think about.”
Vandenberg wanted to say more, but he’d tried to make his case earlier, and failed. “Understood, Mr. President. I’ll send out the orders first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you, Hoyt. Have a good night.”
The general hung up the phone and sat in silence, staring at the calendar on his wall. June 30th was circled — his retirement date. He supposed he was grateful to have made it that far — the docs were getting increasingly gloomy with his prognosis — but he still desperately wished to go out on his own terms. He’d fought the Nazis, helped create both the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency. His public legacy was assured.
And yet.
When Frank opened his eyes again, he was in a tent. From the open flap, he could see it was night outside.
“There he is.” Cal smiled down at him. He was looking younger and healthier now, which Frank took as a good sign.
“What happened?” Frank asked. He felt as though his head was floating three feet from his body.
Cal exhaled sharply. “Oh, boy. Where to start? Beria had an H-bomb and we stopped him, so that’s good.”
“Danny’s gone.”
“Yes, Frank, he is. We brought his body back. Gonna send him home proper, full honors.”
Frank sat up a little and felt his head swim.
“Beria. How’d we do that?”
Cal brightened up a little at this. “Couple of our new friends. The one Danny and I were after, his name’s Miguel, he’s a sharpshooter. Can’t miss from any distance no matter what. He shot Beria in the wrist. Then our other new friend, Chinese fella named Hei Feng, used his Enhancement to get the detonator away.”
Frank nodded. “Where’s Beria now?”
“We got him,” Cal assured him. “Rosie made sure the American brass was all cleared out by the time we caught up with him, so only the Reds know we have him — and the Russian Variants who didn’t defect are making sure Beria’s involvement stays under wraps. We have him bound, gagged, drugged up to his gills, and sitting with three null generators.”
With a thin-lipped smile, Frank swung his legs out onto the floor and sat up completely, then waited for the room to stop spinning. “We got defectors, then?”
“Some, but we got another problem.”
Cal’s tone got Frank focused fast. “What now?”
Cal held out a teletype. “Came in while you were out.”
It had just one word on it:
NIGHTINGALE
“Holy shit.”
Cal nodded. “Yeah. At least somebody still loves us.”
NIGHTINGALE was a code word Danny had developed back in ’49, after the Variants had been mistakenly implicated in the death of James Forrestal, Truman’s first defense secretary. Frank had hoped never to see it.
“Who sent it?” Frank asked.
“Hell if I know.”
“Are we sure this is real?” Frank said. “Did we get any other orders?”
Cal handed over two other teletypes, both with a lot more words on them. “Yeah. All Variants are to report to Mountain Home immediately. Drop what you’re doing and go back. Specifically, we’re to bring back Beria and any defectors, too. Other one is the report Rosie and I filed.”
Frank scanned the teletypes several times. “Well, shit.”
Cal got up and offered Frank a hand, pulling him up and steadying him. “Maggie’s gone already. She just up and left. She gonna take care of herself just fine. The others, I think they need to hear this from you.”
Frank got his bearings well enough to start heading for the tent flaps. “Why me?”
“’Cause Danny’s not here, and you’re next up. Simple as that. We took over one of the officers’ quarters. Everybody’s in there.”
The two left the tent and, with Cal leading the way, started walking. “They’ll listen to you, Cal. You know that.”
Cal shook his head sadly. “Frank, I’m an old Negro man, and fact is nobody listens to an old Negro man as much as they will a white fella with authority like you. Ain’t right, but it’s how it is. Come on.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Cal was right — it wasn’t fair. Frank hadn’t really given much thought at all to black people until he met Cal. After all this, though, he couldn’t imagine not listening to the man. Cal was committed, upstanding, and smarter than he ever gave himself credit for. Whether it was Prague, Syria, Guatemala, even here — Cal was their north star. If Cal had reservations about something, Frank listened. More people needed to, skin color be damned.
They entered the officer’s quarters to find it packed with people — Mrs. Stevens, Ekaterina, Yamato, Sorensen for starters. Cal introduced Frank to Hei Feng — who seemed grateful somebody could actually talk to him in Mandarin — as well as Miguel Padilla, a Venezuelan enlisted man who was part of the multinational force. And there were four Russians there, too, Mikhail Tsakhia among them. Illyanov and Savrova weren’t, however, and Frank didn’t know the other three, but greeted them warmly nonetheless.
“Okay, folks, settle down,” Cal said. Despite what he’d said to Frank earlier, everybody immediately stopped chatting and looked up expectantly. “I think Frank here should explain exactly what’s going on before we decide anything. Frank?”
Frank thought he might start by talking about Danny, and what he’d heard in the darkness. But that seemed like a tall order right now, and they had more pressing things to consider. “Okay. Let’s talk about NIGHTINGALE. We need to be clear on exactly what this means. When Danny came up with this code word, he said it was our worst-case scenario. He’d given it to a couple of folks higher up in the MAJESTIC program, folks he thought he could trust. I didn’t agree with that then, but looks like he was right.
“The long and short of it is this: the government is shutting down MAJESTIC-12.”
There were murmurs around the room as the words were translated and opinions made. Worries lined the faces of everyone there.
“Furthermore,” Frank continued, “we just got orders to drop everything and return to Mountain Home. All of us. We have four days to comply. Now, I can’t say for certain — none of us can — but if we follow these orders, there may be a chance that they’re going to keep us there. Permanently. Mrs. Stevens worked through any number of scenarios, and the chance of them just letting us walk away and return to normal life… well, it isn’t high. For our own safety and freedom, I think we have to assume that we’ll be locked up for good when we get back. We weren’t exactly at liberty in this program, after all — there’s always been elements in the government who’ve wanted us thrown in a hole and forgotten. And the government is now aware that a Variant tried to detonate an H-bomb and scuttle the armistice talks. That’s not gonna help our case.