Mehmet stood staring for several long moments before he could bring himself to reply. “I might, but only if you know how to fish and you don’t get seasick.”
Frank smiled and completed the sequence. “Uncle Baki used to take me out in his sailboat, years ago. I won’t make a mess on your deck, I promise.”
The man sighed and nodded, waving Frank inside. Clambering aboard and ducking into the cabin, Frank came face to face with a young, strapping Turk looking at him with deep suspicion. “This is my son, Alif,” Mehmet said. “We were going to spend a few days on shore. The fishing is terrible right now.”
Mehmet sounded tired, and Frank felt bad that he was putting the old man in a spot. Nonetheless, he put his suitcase down, opened it, and withdrew an envelope filled with lira. “I’m sorry. This will help, I hope.”
Mehmet reached out and took the envelope in his weathered, calloused hand, weighing it. “It will,” he said, eyes wider now. “Where?”
“Three miles off Foros. I’ll swim the rest.”
Alif and Mehmet traded looks. “You’re going to swim the Black Sea in winter?” Alif asked.
Frank smiled. “Technically, it’s spring. But yes. We don’t want to get you in trouble. Three miles is enough. I’ll be fine.”
Actually, Frank was pretty pissed he had to do it, but at least his suitcase was a Mrs. Stevens special, totally waterproof and buoyant. That, combined with a special wetsuit she’d developed, would get him to shore. Thankfully, Mehmet and Alif simply shrugged and showed him to a bunk, promising to set off in the morning. Frank settled in and within a half hour was sound asleep.
He awoke to the sounds of seagulls and a battered diesel engine, and saw that someone had left him some bread, sardines, and cheese on the table. It wasn’t flapjacks and bacon, but there was tea on the small stove as well, and it filled his stomach. They spent the day heading north-northeast, Frank acting as lookout and checking their position on Mehmet’s battered maps. Thankfully, most Black Sea traffic was well to the west, between Istanbul and the ports of Odessa and Sevastopol, and there were no sightings other than a few large commercial barges.
By nightfall, they were about fifty kilometers out, and Frank went around the boat to douse the lights, unscrewing lightbulbs in a few cases. Alif seemed as though he would complain, but all it took was a look to silence him. He was young and strong, sure, but Frank had faced a lot more in life than a fisherman’s son could imagine. He also asked Mehmet to cut his speed, to muffle any noise that would carry across the water, and calculated their position by the flame of a cigarette lighter.
Finally, at 2 a.m., Frank could see a very faint light off in the distance. His navigation told him it was Foros, a small resort town about thirty miles away from the bustling Crimean port of Sevastopol. There would be security there, certainly—many Party higher-ups had dachas in and around the town. But there was also a small army of proletarian workers and peasants who supplied those same dachas and lived around Sevastopol in decidedly less luxurious accommodation.
The fisherman and his son, they could blow your cover, one of the late MGB men said inside Frank’s head—he was still sorting out who was who and couldn’t place it. Eliminate them and send the boat off on a random course.
“What?” Frank muttered quietly.
Concur. Operational security is paramount. If Beria gets a whiff of you in Russia, no one will be safe, General Mark Davis, U.S. Army, added. No loose ends.
Frank’s brow furrowed and he thought for several long moments about the advice he was getting—unsolicited advice, which in and of itself had been unusual but was becoming more common. Rare enough that a U.S. military expert and a Soviet goon would agree on anything, but this … ?
Shaking his head, Frank put the voices aside, changed into his wetsuit—a stretchy thing that made him suddenly aware of a growing middle-age paunch despite his P.T. regimen—and stuffed everything into his suitcase, tightly sealing it. There would be no “eliminations” today.
“Head back due south and keep your lights doused and your speed low for at least an hour,” Frank warned Mahmet. “Let’s get you home in one piece.”
The old man nodded and, to Frank’s surprise, extended his hand. “Go with God.” Frank shook and turned to Alif, but the younger Turk simply scowled. Shrugging, Frank left the little cabin, lowered his suitcase gently into the water, and then clambered down the side of the boat until he could slip in without making a splash.
For a moment, Frank watched the fishing boat turn and head back while he clung to his suitcase, wondering for the millionth time in his life how he’d gotten himself to that particular moment, this time as a mote of a person bobbing in the Black Sea. But then a chill struck him; the wetsuit was doing its job, but the sea was cold regardless. He started swimming for a point just to the right of Foros, hoping it would take him to the secluded bit of shoreline he’d identified earlier from surveillance photos in his briefing packet.
The suitcase made for easy going, to Frank’s surprise. He flung his body over it and used his legs to kick, and managed to make good time. There was one nerve-racking point when Frank saw a light leaving Foros and heading out to sea—a fishing boat getting an early start or a patrol boat, he couldn’t tell—but thankfully it headed east instead of west, and Frank waited in the water until it was well out of sight. By then, he could see the hills of the Crimean peninsula rising over the horizon, and could pick his spots better. Sadly, he was further west than he’d expected, but was able to change course without too much difficulty. The coastline was rocky and, to his annoyance, covered only in short trees and scrub. Nonetheless, he found his tiny cove and slowly hauled his suitcase to shore at around 4:30 a.m. More than anything, he wanted to build a fire and warm up, but had to settle for dry clothes out of the suitcase instead. He stashed the wetsuit under a large rock in an out-of-the way corner, then slowly trudged his way up the hill toward the main road, passing within sight of a handful of large houses. No lights, though, which was a very good sign.
By dawn, he was walking into Foros itself, a pretty little town with a beautiful old hillside church that had, somehow, managed not to get bulldozed by the Soviets. Instead, it had been turned into a tourist trap and snack bar. Frank wished it had been open—he was hungry as hell—but instead made his way to the nearest bus stop without being observed. Soon, he was joined by a handful of other workers, most of whom seemed to know each other. Nobody remarked on his presence, though. Frank hoped it was because Foros was used to tourists, rather than someone making note of him so they could snitch later.
An old diesel bus rumbled up the road toward the bus stop, screeching to a halt with a symphony of squealing and grinding. Frank paid the fare—Look bored and tired, one of his voices whispered in the background—and settled into a seat in the back third of the bus, near a window. He wanted to drift off to sleep, which would’ve been a good look for a tired worker on an early bus, but the need to watch his back kept him somewhat alert.
Any one of these people could be an MGB agent. Develop an attack plan to take out this entire bus if need be, the voice of U.S. General Mark Davis said. All of them.
Frank sat up sharply, causing the man next to him to start. “Sorry,” Frank said in Russian, recovering quickly. “Thought I forgot something.” His fellow passenger scowled, but settled back into his two-day-old copy of Pravda as the bus rolled out of Foros, leaving Frank to his business, just like his voices.
The problem was, those voices had never really been in conversation with him before. They responded to what Frank saw, or a problem he faced, but never engaged with his idle thoughts, like simply reminding himself to stay awake. Outside stimuli had been needed, like an imminent attack or a problem that demanded his full attention. This was new, to some degree, wasn’t it? But then, Frank tried to reason, they did offer up opinions at times, and those opinions would sometimes contradict one another. There certainly were times when it seemed as though the voices had some sort of tho
ught behind them, especially as the years wore on. They argued, even, or at least seemed to.
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.
Tim took a few drags on the cigarette and, to Frank’s great amusement, turned a little pale as he fought the desire to cough. Frank really didn’t know if Tim was a smoker, but Russian butts would catch up to anyone fast, smoker or not. After a few more minutes, Frank got up and headed for the nearest subway. In the station’s men’s room, Frank entered a stall, dropped trow, and took the slip of paper from his pocket, noting the address: 25 Bolshaya Spasskaya. Frank concentrated a moment to try to place it on the map he’d studied back in Idaho but was interrupted by Boris, another of the Russians he had encountered in the park after Stalin’s funeral. It’s not far. I will guide you.
Frank scowled as he pulled up his pants and wadded up the note in some toilet paper before flushing it down the can. The help was nice, but Frank was used to being in control. Of course, maybe that was an illusion, and he wasn’t in control at all. Maybe the folks in his head were more directly guiding his hands when he shot, or drove, or piloted.
/> He shook his head and washed his hands before he left the restroom. There was no time for this. Maybe when he got back to Mountain Home he’d have a sit down with Danny about it. It felt like his relationship to the voices was changing, but honestly, it could have just as easily been the travel and lack of real sleep.
At Boris’s urging, Frank took the subway three stops, switched trains, and went another two stops to the Komsomolskaya stop—right back to the Kazanskaya train station, in fact. From there, it was a tram and a decently long walk to get to the little two-story townhouse at 25 Bolshaya Spasskaya. Frank gave it a good look as he approached, and approved of the choice—detached on one side with a driveway heading into the back, good sightlines up and down the street, a roof that looked easy to access, but without any windows overlooking it directly, and the featureless brick wall of a factory on the other side of the small back garden. Mrs. Stevens had done a fine job of finding a safe house.
Frank walked up and knocked on the door. A few moments later, Mrs. Stevens herself opened the door. “Dimitri, my brother!” she exclaimed, wrapping him in a hug. “Come in! So good to see you! Are you hungry?”
Frank laughed and allowed her to lead him inside, closing the door behind him. Mrs. Stevens turned toward him, her smile instantly gone. “Oh, Frank. We have a problem.”
“Shit,” Frank said, dropping his suitcase. “What’s wrong?”
Tim and Ekaterina entered the small reception room from what Frank assumed was a dining area. Both looked worried, particularly Ekaterina. “We had problems coming here,” the girl said quietly.
Frank looked past them into the other room, then turned back to Mrs. Stevens.
“Where’s Maggie?”
March 30, 1953
On Liteyny Prospekt in Leningrad, a mere block from the Neva River, a gray-and-beige building sat towering over the thoroughfare, casting shadows over the streets nearby. Leningraders hustled past its thick wooden doors with their heads down. Conversations ceased for the block between Shpalernaya and Zakharyevskaya streets. No eye contact was made with the uniformed MBG guards at the doors, nor with the three or four men loitering on the street near the bus stop or at the entrance across the street.
MJ-12: Endgame Page 8