The Traveler Page 28

  “The odds just went down … it’s Antarctica calling back. She’s calling collect, but she is calling!”

  A cheer erupted and even Niles Compton smiled through his discomfort, and then he realized that the science fiction of the past had become a sudden reality. Most stomachs in the room rolled as they realized what a potential world changer this could become.

  The Einstein-theorized time machine became operational at 0210 hours and forty-six seconds.

  The presidential protection clock was still running. And that was one thing the machine could not control.

  * * *

  Jenks tried his best to inventory the team’s supplies and at the same time avoid the accusing eyes of Virginia as she glared at him from the sealed-off area where the extraction team prepared. The master chief finally huffed and then removed the cold cigar stub and returned the look.

  “You’re the one who brought me into this historical menagerie, and now that I might get a boo-boo you want me to back out?”

  “You’re too damned old for this crap and you know it,” Virginia said as she picked up a case of MREs and handed it to a questioning Jenks.

  “So you want me to stay behind with the broads and the geeks and let you go in my place?”

  “I am more capable of getting the doorway in Antarctica up and running far better and faster than you.”

  “Well, that dog just won’t hunt, Slim. Call me all the names you want, but I will not let someone who I care”—Jenks stumbled—“I won’t stay behind and let you go in my place. I don’t care if it’s what you call, ‘not very PC,’ but you can go to hell.” He angrily placed the stub of cigar into his mouth and then reached past Virginia for the illuminating signal devices and plopped it hard onto the trailer transport. “I suppose you have a retort or whatever you eggheads make for an argument?”

  Virginia was silent as she stared into the eyes of the graying master chief. She nodded just once and remained quiet.

  “I’m sorry I was too much of a caveman to make it work with us, Slim,” Jenks said as he kicked at an invisible object and then angrily tossed the dead cigar away.

  The assistant director was taken back by the hastily worded comment. The master chief lowered his eyes and then reached quickly for the next set of signal devices that were wrapped heavily in the manufacturer’s packaging. Virginia placed a thin fingered hand on Jenks’s own, stilling his movement. He looked into her green eyes and held them for as long as he dared.

  “After all of the degrees I have gathered, the accumulated knowledge of centuries, I have come to one immutable fact of life, Harold, and that is that you are allowed two great loves in the span of one’s life. We just happened to be two people who loved not only each other but also the work we do. No ones’ fault, but the love is still there regardless.”

  “I … I…” Jenks stalled.

  “When you get back to this dimension, we’ll have to make a choice, Harold.”

  “But—”

  Virginia leaned over and kissed the gruff old master chief.

  Jenks watched as Virginia turned away but then hesitated.

  “Besides, I want to see if you can follow the directions on the doorway’s instruction manual. I personally think you’ll be like a father trying to put his son’s bike together on Christmas Eve.” Virginia waggled her fingers behind her in farewell as she left hurriedly.

  “Damn, she always has to have the last word.”

  The master chief continued to load the transport but at least for the time being the gruff old engineer was smiling.

  * * *

  “Will we have any problem maintaining a locking signal on the beacon until the doorway is constructed in the past?” Niles asked for the second time. He was showing his doubts and concerns in the past twenty minutes by grilling everyone in the conference room. Asking the same questions over and over to the very same people.

  Virginia looked at Niles and simply shook her head as her thoughts remained on the master chief and his age. This mission was not for him and she knew it. SEAL instructor or not, he was just too old and too damn stubborn to admit that fact. Morales answered for her when she remained mute.

  “The signal as of this moment is very strong.”

  “Target area—they aren’t going to be put down in the water or released twenty thousand feet into the air, are they?” Niles asked as he was furiously writing down notes.

  Morales again spoke up from Nevada. “The comp center has pinpointed the exact location and according to the British geological survey of 2014 it’s right on the edge of the newly named Durnsford Sea, approximately six hundred and twenty feet from the suspected edge of the inland shore. We’ll compensate by a mile east of the sea; that should be a safe guess as to a landing area. Equipment and men will be prepared for a mis-landing regardless. Heady, especially since the sea level landing is at this moment two miles below the surface of the ice. Europa says she can do it plus or minus one millimeter in height.”

  On the large monitor Europa was projecting the star chart used to determine the exact time and location of the jump. Niles reached out and struck the button that activated the installed holographic system. Around the conference table the room illuminated with a ceiling full of star constellations. They revolved, stopped, and revolved again as Europa triple-checked her own figures. It was like the Event Group was sneaking a peak at the supercomputer’s arithmetic. The stars would expand outward from the time they suspected Everett had disappeared into the wormhole until they settled into their current position. Again and again Europa ran her model and she came up with the same results.

  “Europa knows that lives are on the line,” Morales volunteered from the desert.

  “Excuse me?” Niles said with a jolt, looking from the simulation and into the large monitor.

  “Europa has learned the hard lesson of human loss. It had never been explained to her that her work could possibly send men and women to their deaths. I have since explained it to her. She knows what’s on the line now; she never did before.”

  Niles thought that their new personnel move might have come a little too hastily as he listened. It was Alice who reached out with her hand and placed it on top of Niles’s and stilled him from questioning the new computer genius too harshly. He relented and moved on.

  “Now, where is my missing geological specialist and our little Anya Korvesky?”

  Coincidentally timed, a moment later the door opened and standing there were the two missing women. Sarah’s eyes went to Jack and then to Niles as she started to apologize for her sudden departure. She had several items in her hand as Anya accompanied her inside the conference room. They all noticed the way both Sarah and Anya made eye contact with Moira before sitting down.

  “You know we are desperately short on time and you decide to take off without so much as a good-bye. You broke protocol by shutting down your cell phones’ geo locator. If you think we—”

  Sarah cut Niles short. “I think we should get the entire story from Madam Mendelsohn about just how many people know about the existence of the doorway.”

  Niles looked from Sarah toward the Traveler. He refrained from saying anything more about broken procedures as he studied the old woman. He didn’t have to broach the subject of security to a woman who had understood the need for it since 1942.

  Sarah slid the disturbing charcoal drawings she had found inside the incinerator to the middle of the table. Charlie Ellenshaw stood and spread them out so all could see. Before Charlie realized it his hand moved quickly away after seeing the drawings in their half-incinerated state.

  Niles raised one of the drawings and examined it. The depiction of children inside a concentration camp was vivid, unlike most camp drawings Niles had ever seen before inside the Holocaust museums. The detail was as if the artist was picturing the scene from memory. The one problem with that was the dates were handwritten by the artist in the lower right-hand corner.

  “Nineteen seventy-one,” Niles said alou
d.

  “Nineteen sixty-seven here,” Charlie said as he was unable to touch the drawings again.

  The images were stark and black. Children crying. Other children being led away to their deaths made most wince at the scenes all done in very disturbing charcoal. Anya turned away, knowing that this was her heritage being shown to her by the memory of some child who had lived through the nightmare.

  It was Jack Collins who stood and turned the pictures over on the tabletop. Jack was one of those soldiers who found anything concerning the holocaust far beyond the imagination of a professional American soldier. The images always made him furious as to how a modern society or soldier could ever allow that to happen.

  “How many did you bring back, Moira?” Anya asked. “How many children did you smuggle out when you couldn’t find your brother?”

  Moira smiled as she looked at the faces around her. “All that I could. I know I changed the destinies of so many, but then again, Albert Einstein never had to look into the eyes of children on their way to mass slaughter. Yes, hundreds.” She braved the shocked looks of those around her. She saw no meanness in those looks, but one of awe and understanding … to a point.

  Niles swallowed and calmed his scientific wariness at her actions but it was then that he realized the Event Group was about to attempt the same thing, on a smaller scale perhaps, but no less guilty of changing the destiny of one of their own.

  At that moment an Air Force sergeant walked in and gave Niles a message and then made his way out. Compton read the note and then his good eye found the Traveler.

  “This is from our contact in the FBI. It seems your entire board of directors has had a mishap over the East River tonight. They were all killed.”

  Moira stared at Niles for the briefest of moments, not really understanding.

  “How many of your board of directors were children of the Holocaust?” Virginia Pollock asked.

  Moira didn’t have to answer as all of them saw it in her face. She lowered her head.

  “They all grew up at your privately funded orphanage, didn’t they?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes.” She looked up and the briefest of sad smiles crossed her lips. “Can you imagine the magic they believed brought them out of those camps? We intercepted the largest contingents from transports, but most had already seen the insides of smaller camps, so they knew for the most part what the Nazis had in store for them. As I said, most were very, very bright.”

  “Now some of those brightest are dead. Perhaps you better enlighten us as to why and who would want that,” Jack said as he waved Ryan over and told him quietly to make sure the outside watch was aware of the situation. Ryan quietly left.

  “I don’t know who this could be. The board always had complete autonomy to act in the best interest of the children and their security.”

  “We’re not real big believers in coincidence,” Niles said as he turned to Jack. “Colonel, I’ll leave it up to you for a go, no go. This was clearly an assassination at a very inopportune moment in our plans. This could bring those other sister agencies charging in and I don’t think the president can stop the avalanche.”

  Collins looked at Moira and decided she didn’t know anything more than what she had said. The only thing Jack figured her guilty for was being human enough to save kids from a fate worse than what history had planned for them.

  “Master Chief, Henri, Charlie, I can’t order you to go.”

  “I didn’t bust my ass building that thing and then nearly come to blows with Slim, er, uh, Dr. Pollock here, not to go. I figure whoever is out there threatening this thing is going to act regardless if we go or not,” Jenks said as he avoided the stark eyes of Virginia.

  Ellenshaw looked up from the table and then slid the glasses back up on his nose. He looked directly at Niles. “I have to go.”

  “If this is the only way I can get out from under the thumb of this Group, what choice do I have?” Farbeaux said as he shook his head at Ellenshaw and his weak answer to a life-or-death question.

  “If it’s a question of volunteers, I don’t—” Sarah started to say but Niles cut her off as he examined the clock on the wall.

  “It’s not. Dr. Morales, is Europa ready?”

  Sarah angrily looked from Niles to Jack, who just shook his head, angry that once more she tried to bully her way onto the team. He was going to have to put her in the same drifting lifeboat as Ryan.

  “Okay, Jack, get your team ready, we go in thirty.”

  The meeting broke up with the individual departments crowding around Jack, Henri, and Charlie as they sent a myriad of intelligence on ancient Antarctica their way. No one approached Jenks as he stood with Virginia. Instead of barraging him with warnings she simply placed a hand on his broad chest and patted him lightly.

  “Keep an open mind out there, Harold.”

  “I’ll just be another old fossil where we’re going, Slim. Besides, my carcass is too tough for anything to chew on for too long. I’ll just wait them out.”

  “Listen, animal life back then is probably a little more patient than any current species.”

  Jenks winked and then looked over at Collins, who was shaking hands with Niles.

  “Good luck, Colonel. Bring him back if you can, but lose no one else, or this whole thing is for nothing.”

  Collins nodded. He had no intention of losing anyone else. He turned and he faced a smiling Henri. He half turned to Compton as he was about to say that he couldn’t guarantee all of them were coming back, but just smiled back at Farbeaux instead.

  “Jack, er, uh, Colonel?”

  Collins and Farbeaux stopped and turned and saw Sarah standing with Anya.

  “You two are on my shit list … again,” he said as he eyed McIntire exclusively. “Now, I have given orders to Ryan to beef up outside security. Since you two don’t seem to perform a duty around here, and have time to saunter off on a Nancy Drew mystery tour, you will be assigned a post by the commander. We’re a little shorthanded. I hope it’s not too boring for you amateur sleuths.”

  Sarah fumed but turned and left with a stuttering Will Mendenhall close behind.

  Anya stood her ground. “Thank you for doing this, Colonel.”

  Jack stared at her before edging past the former Israeli agent. “I’m not doing it for you, Anya.”

  Henri smiled at the dark-haired woman and nodded. “Complicated, isn’t he?” Farbeaux left the office.

  The activity inside the newly and hastily renovated conference room slowly drizzled to nothing until only Alice Hamilton and Niles were left inside. Compton looked up into the large monitor and saw Xavier Morales looking at them. The activity around the computer genius was bustling as the comp center made ready for the dimensional shift of the doorway. Niles reached out and studied one of the disturbing pictures in charcoal. He let it slide through his fingers. Alice remained silent as she knew the director was debating something in his thoughts. It was these meanderings that etched a sad crevice of doubt on his lined face.

  “A morality play is at work.”

  Compton and Alice both looked up at Morales, who continued to see them from Nevada.

  “The right to change one’s destiny. I suspect that is what the director is concerned with.”

  Niles shook his head. “You would have liked Pete Golding,” he said with a small but sad smile. “You’re a lot like him.” He then looked over at Alice. “Only far less timid about voicing his opinions of my psyche.”

  Morales smiled. He knew some thought him far-thinking beyond his years, but he knew it was nothing more than a young man’s exuberance in experiencing everything he could inside of his limited and paralyzed world.

  “Sorry, but you never asked my opinion. I thought I would voice one.”

  “Voice it, everyone’s opinion is valued here,” Alice said as she was curious as to what someone so young could think about the changing of destinies.

  “Morally, I think we’re wrong. Just because we have the power to c
hange things, do we have that right? Don’t we learn from the harsh realities thrust upon us through adversity? I believe deep down that we could very well lose our humanity if we allow this as a viable practice beyond this one experiment. When I saw what those children had survived through those horrible pictures, I, like most in the room there or inside the comp center here, wanted to save them all. We have the power as I said, we could go back and stop it from ever happening. Colonel Collins seems like he would be more than capable of going back and placing a bullet into that maniac Hitler’s computer, simply avoid it all. But what will we have learned from that barbaric little man? After all, we have the power to do that, don’t we—the very power to change the world forever.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. What would you do in my place?” Niles asked as he slowly stood and with the help of Alice limped to the large observation window and the active scene below.

  “I’m easy, Director Compton, my world consists of this chair and my work. I would go in a split second if I could, morality play or not. I would go and get our man. That is why I disqualify myself from the problem of morality plays and leave it in your capable hands.”

  “Yes,” Niles said as he glanced up at the monitor before returning his good eye to the rush of personnel on the floor below, “you’ll fit in nicely round here.” Niles turned and limped from the room.

  “I will?” Morales said as Alice gathered her paperwork. She paused and looked at the monitor.

  “Yes, you fit in because you, like everyone else in our Group, would do anything to get into the field.”

  “He’s right on that point.”

  Alice smiled. “Thus the morality play in full bloom, Dr. Morales.”