Cal looked squarely at Kim. “That’s nice. That who we think it is? Hei Feng?”
The sergeant scowled at this and immediately started in again before Kim could translate back. “The sergeant’s name is Chen Li Jun. The name Hei Feng is one given to him by others, and he would prefer a simple address as Sergeant Chen,” Kim said.
“And how you doing, Kim? They treating you well?” Cal asked, trying his best not to sound too suspicious.
Kim offered up a small smile. “I wish I were home, Captain Hooks, but I have been treated well. I have a skill, and the sergeant here thinks I will be useful in finding out more about you.”
Yamato finally staggered to his feet again, prompting a wave of murmurs from the soldiers surrounding them. Cal held out his hand, motioning for the young man to save his strength, but it wasn’t necessary. “It’s okay, I’m out of it for a while,” he said. “So, Kim, did you sell us out? Told ’em everything?”
The Korean translator grimaced and turned slightly red. “I have family in the North, Sergeant Yamato. I was assured their safety would be guaranteed if I cooperated.”
Cal nodded. “What’s done is done, Kim. Ask Sergeant Chen here what’s gonna happen to us.”
Kim and Chen had a brief conversation in Chinese before the translator responded: “The sergeant has brought with him your confiscated possessions, including the electric generator you possessed which keeps his… blessings?… his ability from him. You will now be housed along with this generator to keep your own abilities from you. You will be given coats and boots, and the opportunity to bathe and eat well. Then the sergeant wishes to talk to all of you about your own blessings. Abilities. What do you call them?”
“Enhancements,” Cal said. “In America, we call ourselves Variants. We’re different. But we’re good together. Tell the sergeant we’d welcome all that. We’d like to talk to him, too.”
There was more conversation in Chinese, a few quick queries in English, and then the party broke up when Chen turned on the backup null-generator Cal brought with him. Immediately, Cal felt the years begin to pile back onto his body, though it would still take about an hour to get him back to his early sixties, age-wise. It wasn’t going to be pleasant.
But a shower and some food and some warmth was a good start, and if that Chen fellow wanted to have a chat, well…
Not every escape opportunity had to be a shoot-out, even if it might take a while longer to pull off.
13
Three weeks can seem like an awfully long time when you’re a prisoner of war, even a Cold War. Especially when you’re cut off from the outside world and haven’t seen the sun in all that time. Especially when your food is day-old at best and rarely hot, and your prison is the cellar of some ancient, decrepit building in the worst part of Moscow.
For all that, the three Soviet Variants captured by MAJESTIC-12 had remained stubbornly uncooperative since their capture on the train. Cut off from their abilities by no fewer than three different null-generators — redundancy being Mrs. Stevens’s watchword of late — the Variants were effectively trapped by the cellar’s stone walls and floor. The windows had been boarded up in several layers, and barred on the inside.
The old townhome was abandoned — it was considered too bourgeois for current tastes, and the Moscow authorities were concentrating on apartment blocks and infrastructure with the limited resources available to them — mostly the shortage of strong men, victims of the Great Patriotic War eight years prior. A trip to the Moscow city records repository showed the owner of the house to be deceased with no other claims on the property, and surveillance of the block indicated there were just enough people still living there so that new faces wouldn’t be out of place, even though the side street had little in the way of traffic.
So twice each day, at staggered times, a pair of MAJESTIC-12 agents dressed as construction workers entered the home to take care of the captives, bringing them food and ensuring they hadn’t gotten up to any trouble. The basement had just one electric bulb for light and, sadly, no heat, though Danny made sure the prisoners had plenty of blankets for their mattresses, which were on the floor. The captives used a bucket for a toilet, and others held water for washing and drinking, a system that the female Russian Variant found highly intolerable and vociferously complained about in the rare times when she did bother to speak. But that also meant shit-bucket duty twice a day for the Americans, who always went in pairs and with guns at the ready. Nobody was pleased with the situation, Soviet or American. But it was the best they could manage.
Despite repeated attempts at everything from good-natured interviewing to light torture, the captured Variants weren’t talking, and knew well enough not to talk amongst themselves while left alone, either — the bugs Mrs. Stevens had placed in their makeshift prison perfectly captured their conversations about favorite foods and vacation spots, but nothing about Beria or the Behkterev Institute or the Soviet Empowered.
Despite Danny’s doubts, Frank Lodge had to be pressed into service to help maintain the captives. Since Danny wasn’t quite ready to give him weapons, he usually took feeding and shit-bucket duty. He didn’t complain. In fact, he hadn’t said much at all lately, accepting his house arrest with a kind of troubled stoicism. Danny had known him long enough to know when he was out of sorts, and this was bad. Did he feel remorse? Was he planning something? Hard to say.
Back at the safe house — well away from the townhouse used as a prison — more silence reigned. Frank mostly stayed in his room, emerging only for meals and the trips to see the captives. Ekaterina was even more sullen than usual, also confining herself to her room unless she was needed on a mission — and Danny purposefully excused both her and Mrs. Stevens from captive housekeeping duties at the other house. Ekaterina and Frank sat at opposite ends of the table during meals, neither speaking at all, which prompted Mrs. Stevens to talk at an exponentially higher and faster rate. Sorensen had taken to performing his invisible reconnaissance missions during meal times, likely just to get away from the awkward dynamics.
Honestly, for Danny, it was all getting exhausting. But there had been some progress, at least, and more intel coming in each day, largely due to Sorensen. The Party elite, it seemed, did their best work after the rest of the apparatchiks left for the day, which meant Sorensen had an easier time moving quietly around the Kremlin’s halls of power. The ambush of Beria’s NKVD men had not gone unnoticed, and he’d received a sound talking-to from Malenkov, Molotov, and Khrushchev — separately and together — about making sure that counterrevolutionaries were being rooted out. Beria had responded by offering veiled accusations that his cohorts and rivals had been the ones who set up the ambush, and that the MGB and NKVD — as well as the merged agency they would become in short order — might find reason to investigate them.
The quest for power in the Soviet Union was getting ugly, fast.
There were still very few hints about the state of the Soviet Variant program, but Danny was making headway. He could sense seventeen Variants in the city, not including the captives or the Americans themselves, which meant that two more of them had just come in over the past week. That had to be the bulk of the Variants in the entire Soviet Union, possibly even the Eastern Bloc. Danny was able to track down five different safe houses used by Beria’s Variants, all duly noted for whatever operation might come next. It seemed there were only two or three individuals, at most, left in Leningrad — one of whom, he hoped, was Maggie.