All their false papers had checked out fine, and Maggie had just been starting to relax inside the train to Moscow when she’d looked out the window to see at least four dozen MGB officers with rifles swarming the station, headed straight for the train.
There were contingencies for this, of course. “You should go to the bathroom before we depart,” Maggie had said in Russian. Katie had nodded quickly and nervously, then gotten up and headed for the toilet, her papers in hand. The contingency plan was to rendezvous in twelve hours at Leningrad’s Summer Garden — ironically, just a few blocks from the Big House where she was now. Maggie’d watched nervously out the window, finally spotting Katie well behind the column of guards that were now busy boarding the train. Katie, of course, was just a teenager, and had been easily overlooked by officials. And even if they had been looking specifically for her, they only had photos from when she was a baby-faced ten-year-old. Plus, she’d had her own MGB training to fall back on. Maggie hadn’t felt very guilty about letting her be on her own for a while; hell, she’d have pitied anyone who might have tried laying a hand on the girl. She would have removed said hand at the wrist with only the slightest of tugs.
Once Maggie had been certain Katie was in the clear, she’d decided to make her move as well, getting up and heading for the toilet. She’d left the suitcases in place — they’d only have called attention to herself when she eventually left the train — and had headed down the aisle, only to see four guards enter the car in front of her. She hadn’t even needed to turn around to hear the door at the other end of the car open behind her.
That had been fine. She could have taken ’em.
But when she’d reached for the mental threads that would have activated her Enhancement, she’d found nothing there.
Null zone.
The sting at the base of her neck had barely registered, and she’d been knocked out cold by the time she hit the floor of the train car.
She’d awoken in the cell she found herself in now. She’d been briefed on all known MGB and police facilities in Leningrad and Moscow, and she’d guessed she was in the Big House long before she ever heard a guard say the words Bolshoy Dom. She had to assume that, despite the null-zone generators around her at all times, she’d been tagged by Maria Suvovra, the Soviet Variant with the tracking ability. Even if she hadn’t been, it was wise to assume so anyway. That meant that even if Maggie managed to escape, her mission was effectively over. She didn’t know the range of Suvovra’s abilities, and so she had to further assume they were global. Her only real option for survival now was getting back to the United States before the MGB put a knife in her back.
Of course, escape remained a pipe dream. But it kept her going. No matter what they did to her, she wanted to be ready. Hope, she found, was a weird thing. When her Enhancement was available to her — which was nearly always now — she found hope to be particularly debilitating. It made people do stupid things, she thought. But maybe she was wrong. Right now, she figured hope and alertness were the two best things she had going.
It was late afternoon when her cell opened and eight MGB men, all armed with rifles, swarmed into the room, barrels trained on her head. She decided to hold off this time, let them perhaps get a little complacent before she decided to strike, so she allowed them to shackle her wrists and ankles and lead her, shuffling in chains, wearing nothing but a prison gown, down the hallway and onto an elevator.
The courtyard again. She closed her eyes briefly to prepare herself. That’s where she’d been beaten the day before. It would hurt, but at least they were getting repetitive. There was pride in that, too. When torture becomes rote, it becomes less torturous.
The lift descended past the ground floor, past the basement, and into a sub-basement. This was… new. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, and she tamped down on the rising fear that had wormed its way into her chest, squeezing her heart and empty stomach. Adrenaline was running through her now, and her eyes went from the dull glaze of a beaten prisoner to the shining alertness of someone looking for an edge.
The guards led her down a long dark hallway, past several closed wooden doors. Finally, they opened one and thrust her inside a small room with stone walls, a dirt floor, and a flickering fluorescent light humming loudly from the ceiling. The only furniture was a couple of hard points on one of the walls, to which they affixed her chains, leaving her to kneel awkwardly on the floor, her arms not quite at her sides. She watched carefully as they unshackled and shackled her again, and maybe, just maybe saw an opening in the process. A lot would have to go right, of course, including snapping the neck of the guy with the keys in such a way that he fell toward her, and not away, but…
“Thank you; that will be all.”
The MGB men ducked out of the room quickly, only to be replaced by a small, balding, bespectacled man in a nice suit. Of course, Maggie had met Lavrentiy Beria before, but she couldn’t help but register surprise at seeing him in front of her now.
“Don’t you have a country to take over?” she said quietly. “Or am I just that special?”
Beria chuckled. “You have no idea how special you are, Miss Dubinsky. May I call you Maggie?”
“Can’t stop you,” she said, moving her chained arms slightly. “May I call you Baldy, Comrade Deputy Premier?”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Beria’s face — ah, so good to see — before his smiling, placid countenance returned. “I can’t stop you either, Maggie, though I would hope we might dispense with such ploys. They’re so very typical, and we are anything but.”
Maggie shrugged calmly, but her mind was going a mile a minute. MAJESTIC-12 had indeed planned for every contingency — there were three or four options she could play with here — but she was still rather surprised this particular contingency had come to pass. “So what can I do for you, Baldy?”
Beria began to slowly walk around the room. “Do you know what I am trying to build here, Maggie? Here in the Soviet Union?”
“Dictatorship of the proletariat,” she replied. “Funny, though, how some members of the proletariat have dachas in the country and some still have to travel fourth class on the train.”
Beria shrugged. “We have an embarrassment of choices in the Soviet Union. Some of our comrades may choose to spend their money on other things, should they decide to travel without certain comforts. Or they may forego theater tickets or a bottle of Georgian wine, should they want to mitigate the rigors of travel.”
Maggie shook her head. “I thought we were gonna dispense with the typical bullshit.”
This earned her the short bark of a laugh. “Ah, you are as every bit delightful as your file suggested. Very well. Are you going to tell me anything at all about your American colleagues? It is highly likely that your MAJESTIC-12 program has already initiated an operation to stop me.”
“Yeah, not telling you squat,” Maggie said. “But you know that already, too. Come on.”
Beria nodded. “Yes, indeed. Did you know that roughly seventy-eight percent of prisoners here capitulate after the third day of our interrogation program? And ninety-eight percent of women? Even without your Empowerment, you are truly remarkable.”
“Yes, I am. Your point being?”
“The Soviet Union needs remarkable people. We need you, Maggie Dubinsky. Step out of the shadows. Come into the light and assume the rights and responsibilities your so-called friends wish to keep from you.”
Are we really going down this road? Maggie thought, her heart racing. “Bullshit. You just want another puppet.”