It made keeping the jammers up and running seem perfectly reasonable indeed. As for the rest…
Bronk got up from his desk and headed toward the hangar and the newly constructed “black box” which now housed the vortex. The first thing he’d do would be to send Kurt Schreiber as far away as possible. St. Elizabeths Hospital in D.C. would be perfect — they had plenty of rubber rooms there. Let the bastard rant and rave to his heart’s content.
After that, he figured he’d gather his engineers and get to work on a more permanent solution to keep the vortex from ever communicating with anyone ever again.
As for the Variants…
25
The night sky blended into the calm waters of the Black Sea, making it difficult to see where one stopped and the other began. But it was an excellent view, one that had drawn Nikita Khrushchev to the sleepy little Georgian town of Pitsunda years ago. One of the benefits of his position was a vacation dacha, and he had chosen this one as an escape from Stalin’s overbearing madness — and yet, at the same time, to curry favor with the old Georgian as well.
Perhaps, one day soon, his colleagues would move their vacation homes here to curry favor with him.
But there were matters to manage first — one of which had shown up at his door not twenty minutes past.
“I cannot forget what I have seen,” Khrushchev said to his visitor as they stood sipping vodka on the back balcony of the dacha. “I saw Lavrentiy Beria somehow produce flames out of nothingness. We have yet to be able to penetrate the basement vaults of his Leningrad institute. And now you come here and tell me all this. What am I to believe? You are not even Russian!”
The man next to him smiled. “How do you know this, Comrade?” he said in an impeccable Leningrad accent, his Red Army colonel’s uniform perfect in every regard, right down to the shine on his shoes. The visitor lacked the roundness of many Russian faces, yes, but that was not a universal trait.
“Your teeth, Comrade,” Khrushchev said. “They are too perfect, and you do not have the aristocratic bearing of someone who has known comfort enough in the Soviet Union to enjoy fine dentistry.”
The visitor chuckled. “You’re good. So why invite me in for a drink?”
“Because you brought me such a fine gift. And I would like to know why.”
They turned around to see Lavrentiy Beria, bound and gagged and unconscious, dumped unceremoniously on the floor of Khrushchev’s study. The strange visitor had stored the former secret police chief in the trunk of his car, and had also provided photographs and documentation of the weapon Beria had somehow commandeered. That, of course, would result in months of investigations and interrogations before they had the truth of it, but given Beria’s involvement in the Soviet nuclear program, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he might have diverted a weapon away from the military into his own hands. It would be a masterstroke of bureaucracy, of course, but Khrushchev knew the Soviets were getting quite good at putting the Red in “red tape.”
“People with Beria’s abilities should not place themselves in positions of power,” the visitor said. “Indeed, perhaps they should not be trusted at all.”
Khrushchev nodded. “We recovered some files from the Lubyanka and the Behkterev Institute, enough to know of these individuals. Should we find them, they will be taken care of. But what of the others outside the Motherland? It is likely America has some.”
At this, Khrushchev saw a flicker of anger on the visitor’s face. “America, Comrade, has similarly ended its involvement with such people,” the visitor said. “Like you, they will be hunting down these people whenever possible.”
“People like you?”
The visitor paused, giving Khrushchev a sidelong look, before taking another sip of vodka. “As I said, Comrade, you’re good.”
Khrushchev smiled. Of course he was good. He’d survived Stalin’s purges and had placed himself in command of the Party — and soon, he figured, the country. And he’d done so by understanding people, by reading the signs. He could come off as a smiling, pleasant, fat buffoon at times. That was intentional. “We could, of course, continue to use these people as Beria had used them,” Khrushchev ventured. “There is value in such abilities.”
“If you can find them,” the visitor said. “After the Korea incident, those on both sides agreed that the world might be better off if they kept to the shadows. Yes, you may yet have one or two show up and ask to serve the Motherland once more, and if you search, you may find one or two others. But between Beria’s program and the Americans’, they will be very, very hard to track down.”
“And perhaps that is best,” Khrushchev said. “Though of course we will still look. And what of the phenomenon you described?”
The visitor downed the rest of his drink and placed his glass on the railing. “I suggest, Comrade, in the strongest terms, that you keep the phenomenon buried deep. The Americans have discovered it emits low levels of electromagnetic radiation. You should assemble electronic jammers and shielding to keep it from doing so.”
Khrushchev nodded; next to Beria was a stack of folders on this subject as well. “You have given me an advantage. I’ll ask again: Why?”
With a sigh, the visitor turned to look Khrushchev in the eye. “I know you’re going to continue to oppose America and the West. I know you will fight these stupid proxy wars in Asia and the Middle East, Africa, South America. I know that peace is unlikely. But I hope that even as you do this, you will still want peace. Of all the leaders fighting for Stalin’s scraps, I see you as the best of many bad choices.” The visitor smirked at this. “So perhaps, Comrade, you’ll do better than Stalin did, or Beria would have. I hope I’m not wrong.”
The visitor turned to leave, but stopped at the door leading inside. “If you do revive Beria’s program, or decide to try to affect the phenomenon in any way, we’ll know about it. And we’ll put an end to it.”
“Who will? The Americans?”
“No, Comrade,” the visitor said. “People like me.”
With that the visitor walked back into the house and flipped a switch on a small device — a null generator, Khrushchev remembered. He then leaned in and spoke to Beria in English, even though the latter remained unconscious, and then walked out of the room and out the front door of the house.
Khrushchev smiled and finished his own drink. They’d recovered many more files than he let on, of course. And he would try to find a way, someday, to bring Frank Lodge and his friends into the fold.
“What do you mean, gone?”
Allen Dulles blanched as the President stared daggers at him from across the Oval Office desk.
“Sir, the Variants have disobeyed orders and are officially AWOL,” Dulles responded, summoning as much calm as he could. “The Variants in place in Asia all simply up and left, while the ones still at Mountain Home have escaped. Meanwhile, we have Soviet media reporting Beria’s arrest, with new photos.”
Eisenhower threw his briefing folder onto his desk with an angry slap. “What the hell kind of operation were we running here?”
“Mr. President, the Variants in Idaho weren’t being held as prisoners. They were given base housing according to family status and time of service, and they had as much right to come and go as anybody else on base. Yes, they were being constantly watched and tailed, but… well, we trained them well. Even without their Enhancements, they were among the most effective covert operatives in the world. Slipping away from some Air Force M.P.s would be child’s play. As for the ones in the field, well, sir, they’re spies. It’s what they do best.”