Frank thought back to when he first started accessing the knowledge and abilities of the recently deceased, nearly eight years prior. At first, he’d had to focus and mentally search for the information he wanted. Over time, that information became easier to find and, if he thought about it now, was practically volunteered.
He had always thought he was accessing echoes of memory, not necessarily leveraging the minds of still-active, still-sentient people. Now… Davis’s comment had startled him, but it seemed more of a natural progression. And he wasn’t sure he liked it. He felt watched now.
Heads up, Davis’s voice came again. Company. I told you.
Frank looked up and saw the bus was coming to an achingly slow halt at a checkpoint outside Foros. That made sense; with so many apparatchiks with dachas in the area, security would be tight. Frank had contingency plans in place and quickly ran through the list in his head as three uniformed MVD men got into the bus. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was under Beria’s control, and there was some intel out of Moscow that MVD and the spy-focused MGB might merge into a single secret police/covert action ministry. Yet another reason why America might want Beria out of the picture — even if the bastard wasn’t also a Variant.
The MVD man went seat by seat, checking papers. Frank waited until the man next to him reached for his own before doing a slow, quiet three-count and removing them from his coat pocket as well.
“Papers,” the head MVD man, a lieutenant, said. Frank handed them over with a practiced look of attentive compliance. But not too attentive.
The lieutenant scanned the documents and looked up at Frank again. “What is your business in Foros, Comrade?”
“Agricultural inspection,” Frank replied simply. Never give them more than the minimum, Ivan Vladimirovich said in Frank’s mind. Let him ask the follow-up questions. That’s what Russians do. Don’t be friendly. Frank considered this good advice, as Ivan Vladimirovich had, until a few weeks ago, been one of Beria’s men.
“What is it that they grow in Foros at this time of year, Comrade?” the lieutenant asked. “It’s not even spring yet.”
Frank looked at the man dully. “Dairies produce milk throughout the year, do they not, Comrade? And there was a question among the Party leaders who visit Foros as to the quality of the milk and butter. I was sent to give them answers.”
The lieutenant scowled slightly, his eyes returning to Frank’s papers. Frank had a second set of papers on him as well — an MGB identification and forged letter of passage that would serve as a get-out-of-jail-free card if needed. But it felt too early to play that hand, and Frank knew he’d be marked and watched for the remainder of his trip to Moscow.
Stay calm, Ivan said. There is nothing there for which to detain you, and there will be other buses coming soon.
“Thank you, Comrade,” the lieutenant said, handing back Frank’s papers, which he took with only a slight nod. The MVD man continued on, and Frank simply put the documents back in his coat and looked out the window again, silently thanking Ivan for his input.
You’re welcome.
Shit. This was gonna get ugly if it kept up.
But it didn’t. The bus was waved on, and Frank settled in for the long ride to Sevastopol. The trip was uneventful from that point on, and without additional commentary from the people in his head. He arrived in time for lunch, which meant a big bowl of borscht and a half dozen varenyky dumplings filled with mushrooms and mashed potatoes. The waitress at the bus station café chided him for his appetite, but Frank just smiled and thanked her. He was tired, and his capacity for small talk was waning.
After that, Frank killed time walking around the port city, making mental notes about what was where. He didn’t have an eidetic memory, but training and some help from his voices would do the trick. Not many Americans made it down to Sevastopol, so he figured a little lay-of-the-land might be handy to have for other operatives at some point down the road. Finally, he boarded the 5 p.m. bus to Donetsk, mentally bracing himself for the fourteen-hour ride through the Crimean darkness. Thankfully, and to his great surprise, Frank was out like a light by sunset, and didn’t wake up until about 4 a.m. local time. He still felt folded up like a Japanese paper sculpture—It’s called origami, came one of the voices, almost chiding — but he still felt marginally better rested than before.
Another papers check in Donetsk went without incident, and Frank was able to hustle to catch the 9 a.m. train to Kursk, crossing the border between the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Russian Soviet Socialist Republics. Frank expected a sign, maybe, or even a little announcement by the conductor, but the passage went by without so much as a peep. In Kursk, Frank tried to get an overnight to Moscow, but found it was booked up. That was perfectly fine by him, however, because it meant a hearty Russian supper of beet-and-potato salad, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and more beets, and a pile of sliced rye bread at least six inches high. And, of course, the vodka. Frank was asleep by 9 p.m., and just managed to wake up in time to make a mad dash for the train station to catch the 7 a.m. train for Moscow.
The train pulled into Kazanskaya Station after 1 p.m., and immediately Frank went to the newsstand to purchase his cigarettes, one of the keys to identifying him at the park so that the rest of the team would know he was all right and unfollowed. In the men’s room, he took a thick black string and tied it to the handle of his suitcase in an easy-to-loosen knot — the other sign. If either the cigarette or the string was missing, the team would avoid him like the plague.
Finally, three different subway trains later, Frank was sitting in the park — a glorified median between two lanes of a busy boulevard — next to a statue of some Russian from the tsarist era who had, inexplicably, managed to stay ahead of the cycles of purges and erasures that condemned so much history to the trash bin.
Thirty minutes and three cigarettes later, a man sat down next to Frank, slumping against the back of the bench, his hands in the pockets of his factory worker overalls. Frank knew without looking that it was Tim Sorensen, doing an excellent job of playing the tired early-shift worker. The two sat in silence for about five minutes before Tim turned to him and spoke. “Do you have a spare cigarette, Comrade? I’m dying for a smoke,” he said in Russian.
Frank gave him a weak smile and reached for his cigarettes, shuffling one halfway out of the pack and extending it to Tim, who took it gratefully. Without being asked, Frank also offered his lighter. Tim took it with a tired smile and lit his cigarette, then handed it back to Frank — with a small slip of paper tucked in next to it. It was a smooth move, but then Frank expected no less at this point. Tim’s Russian, however… well, they’d have a chat about accents when they caught up later. Frank originally had thought to just have Tim tuck the note in his suitcase at some point, but Danny wanted Tim to practice some old-fashioned tradecraft now and then, for those times when invisibility wasn’t an option or particularly desirable.