Another Variant, Tim Sorensen, the invisible man, greeted Cal with a wave as he made his way to a seat. None of Tim’s clothes made the transition with him when he went invisible, so Mrs. Stevens had made him clothes that would. He’d started with something that looked to Cal like a pair of tight-fitting long johns, but Mrs. Stevens had been able to improve her designs so that he could wear normal-looking clothes and shoes that would disappear along with the rest of him.
Next to Sorensen was Rick Yamato, a Japanese American who’d spent his teenage years in the internment camps out West. Yamato could create electricity out of thin air, and could shoot bolts of lightning out of his hands or short-circuit a city block with a touch. The boy was with Cal down in Guatemala in ’51. Steady man, if a little too quick to fry first and ask questions later. Cal remembered the impetuousness of his own youth, of course, and could relate sometimes, Lord help him.
Ekaterina Illyanova sat up front without really acknowledging Cal, which was okay, as it seemed they’d never really get along. They first met in Czechoslovakia in ’48, when she was about ten. A year later she’d defected to the U.S. and MAJESTIC-12 when Lavrentiy Beria left her for dead during a mission in Kazakhstan. Now fifteen and called Katie by her new compatriots, she had become a sullen teenager — understandable, given the circumstances. She could also punch through walls and lift a jeep over her head, so most folks knew to tread carefully around her. Cal knew her enmity toward him ran pretty deep; Cal had aged the hell out of her brother, a Soviet Variant who could run fast as hell, when they’d met back in that Czech forest. Cal hadn’t meant to, but there was nothing for it now, and even a good Christian man could only ask forgiveness so many times.
Frank settled down next to Cal. “Where’s Zippy?” he asked.
“Think she told me she was leading a team out in Iran,” Cal replied. “Apparently CIA got something going on there with their Shah, trying to get him back on the throne.”
Frank shook his head. “God, we don’t learn, do we?”
Cal knew what he was thinking about: the horrible events out in Syria in ’49, where the CIA had overthrown a democratically elected leader only to install a strongman who ended up deranged as hell. “We’re human,” Cal said simply.
Cal thought back to the young boy whose Enhancement, they had ultimately discovered, had driven Husni al-Za’im mad. The boy could possess a person, just like the fire-and-brimstone preachers of Cal’s youth warned Satan himself could do. The third Syrian government to seize power in that horrible year had handed the boy off to the Americans, and warned the Variants not to return to the country — ever. That boy disappeared soon afterward, and Cal sometimes wondered just what had happened to him. He probably wasn’t cleared for finding out, and Lord help him, he figured he wouldn’t want to know.
“All right, let’s get started,” Danny announced, and the talking in the room quickly died down. “Yes, this is everybody. Most of your fellow Variants are off on assignment in places you aren’t cleared for, and the rest are still training. For the record, there’s twenty-seven of us now in the program. I’m real pleased about that.”
There were a few nods in the room, but otherwise silence reigned. Like Cal, most everyone — even Danny — had mixed feelings about MAJESTIC-12. It was nice to get trained up on Enhancements, and good to be valued by your country. It would’ve been nicer to get an actual choice in the matter, though. After all this time in the program, folks were starting to wonder whether getting out was even an option anymore.
“The President has just approved a new op for us, code-name TALISMAN,” Danny continued. “Most everyone here is going to play a role at some point or other. It’s pretty big. In fact, it’s going to make everything else we’ve done seem like the minor leagues.
“We’re going to undermine and ultimately depose Lavrentiy Beria from power within the Soviet Union.”
There were a few gasps in the room, and wide eyes throughout. Cal bowed his head and said a short prayer, because he knew this one was going to be bad.
“Now, unlike what we’ve tried to do elsewhere, we’re not going to actually support anybody else in the fight to replace Stalin,” Danny said. “That’s way too dangerous and, if you think about Syria and our first effort in Guatemala, we’re just not good at it. Plus, if anybody catches a whiff of us supporting, say, Molotov or Malenkov, those guys are dead and that strengthens Beria’s hand. So we’re neutral toward anybody else in the fight, and frankly, collateral damage against other interests in the Soviet Union is perfectly acceptable so long as Beria suffers the most damage.
“Our goal is to neutralize Beria’s power base within the MGB and state security apparatus. We’re also authorized to capture or eliminate any Soviet Variants working for him as part of his Bekhterev program. Now, I know some of you are uncomfortable with this — striking out against your fellow Variants — but I need to make this crystal clear. Beria is nothing short of a monster. He was ready to drop an A-bomb on some of the people in this very room, just to see if he could create another vortex or Enhance more Variants. We believe that if he seizes power in the Soviet Union, he will seek to create a Variant-led nation and reveal Variants to the world as his ‘Champions of the Proletariat.’ If you think it through, this is a spectacularly bad idea. Normal people aren’t going to be understanding and accepting of us. They’re going to be scared. And if the first group of public Variants are Communists aligned against America, well… we’re all gonna find ourselves in a lot of trouble.”
There were nods around the room, Cal included. Maggie, however, wasn’t one of them. Instead, Cal caught a glimpse of her turning around to look, gauging the room, and grimacing. Definitely need to have her over for a talk.
“TALISMAN is an all-hands-on-deck operation inside the Soviet Union. Every one of you will have a part to play. I’m serving as overall ops commander, and Frank is number two and commander on the ground when I’m not around. Mrs. Stevens will be with us in Moscow to serve as our strategist and analyst. Katie, Maggie, and Tim will round out the first-wave team. We’ve had contingency insertion plans in place for a while now, so we’re ready to get you in there.
“Tim, since nobody really saw you, you and Mrs. Stevens are going in under official cover with State and will be our liaison with the embassy. Frank, you’re going in through Crimea and up, covered as a minor Party functionary attached to one of the industrial committees. We’ll also give you a couple of other covers you can switch out of. Maggie and Katie, you’re a widowed academic and her daughter, moving to Moscow from Murmansk. We’ll insert you up north and you can make your way down. Since Beria knows my face as well, I’m taking the long way — I’ll be in from Vladivostok and make my way across as a migrant from Siberia, which means I’ll have the worst ride.” There were some chuckles around the room at this. “Rick and Cal, you’re heading with me for a bit, then out to Helsinki to be our on-deck hitters.”
Cal frowned. This was easily a six-month assignment. Sally wouldn’t be pleased, though at least Helsinki would be a fine enough place to hang his hat for a while. He wouldn’t be in the thick of it. It would have to do, all things considered, but it was still too far and too long to be away from his wife. Maybe she could come out for a vacation, though. He wondered just what Finland was like. Cold, probably.