The Traveler Page 5

  A man looking more the academia-type, thin and proper, entered from the large office fronting the empty reception area.

  “The general will see you now,” the young man said in his perfectly pressed suit, which was a great accomplishment at two in the morning. The man nodded, indicating that the two guards should assist the prisoner to her feet. They did so, far gentler than she could have hoped for. They fell in line behind the first man and soon she found herself in a large and very dark office with no windows. There was a single lamp burning on the large desk of the head of the Mossad—her uncle’s desk. The two men stood on either side as the first man brought the general another folder and then with one last disturbing look at Anya, he left the office.

  Her eyes went to the general, who was busy reading a file folder report. He absentmindedly held out the small silver key that would free her hands. The agent on the right loosened and then removed the cuffs. Both men turned and left the office. Anya looked for a chair and when she saw one started to move toward it.

  “Remain standing in front of me, please, Agent Korvesky.”

  Anya froze and didn’t move as the general kept reading. She watched his large hands as he flipped a page and read some more.

  “You have placed me in what the Americans say is ‘between a rock and a hard place,’ young lady, you know that?”

  “I hate that I had to do that, Uncle.”

  The large rotund man closed the file and finally looked up at her. “Yet here we are. The head of the Mossad and his lovely niece, who was just arrested for espionage.”

  “This is the last thing I wanted, was to embarrass you, Uncle.”

  “But again, here we are.” He slid the yellow file across his expansive desk and then looked up at his niece as she rubbed her wrists after the uncomfortable cuffs. She watched her uncle’s eyes move to a far, darkened corner of his office. “With the world getting even crazier than before this war in space, this is not the time to be a treasonous agent in a paranoid country. The men in charge have certain knee-jerk reactions to things like that. The order of the day would be that you are taken into the desert and shot.” His dark eyes settled on Anya. “Believe me, many a person has left this office from the very spot you are now standing and were immediately executed—shot on my direct orders.” He slammed his hand down on the desk and the file folder.

  “Uncle—”

  He held up his beefy hand, stilling her voice.

  “Do you think you could keep secrets from me, niece?”

  “I—”

  “I am the gatekeeper, young lady. I know what is going on in my own home, and the Mossad is my home. Israel is my home.” His eyes again flitted to the far corner. She saw nothing but the blackness of the room. “I keep the secrets.” He shoved the file forward until it was perched on the edge of the desk. “Do you think for one minute your returning to our little family satisfied me enough to lower my guard, even where my niece was concerned?” He shook his head. “Sit, Anya.”

  With her heart aching for the pain she was causing her only living relative, Anya sat with lowered head.

  “I have read a few of the briefing reports to the American security council. I know why it is you want these files so dearly. I’ll tell you now, not that it matters much, that the information you are seeking is not viable. It’s a dead end as we ourselves found out three years ago in our cooperative search with the rest of the world as we scanned every archive file for technological information. That’s why I can say to you in no uncertain terms that what you seek is just not there.”

  Anya felt her hope to find the file fall through her stomach as she realized that this was just another dead end.

  General Shamni reached down and brought out another file and placed it on the first.

  “This is the file you are looking for.”

  The file was bordered in purple and read “Top Secret” in bold red letters in the Hebrew script.

  “It’s all there.”

  “But I’m under arrest,” Anya said as the general stood from his high-backed chair.

  “We believe the person you seek is no longer alive, at least not in Israel. Moira Mendelsohn no longer exists, I’m afraid, and this is the only record recovered from what is secretly known in certain circles as ‘The Traveler’ file. One of the most guarded secrets held by this government, so secret that it failed to turn up in our technology search conducted by the Americans. The file ‘The Traveler’ is only useful in who the Traveler was, not what the project was about. The young woman was never fully compliant when questioned by our people when she was in Israel after World War II. The only reason my predecessor thought the Traveler file was relevant was because of who financed the original project in 1943, and also the man responsible for conducting the experiments.”

  “The names?” she asked, pushing her bad luck even further. But if she was going to be shot or hanged for treason she wanted to know all there was on the rumored testimony of the Traveler.

  “Heinrich Himmler and engineering professor Lars Thomsen, one of Adolf’s favorite technology philosophers and a correspondent and contemporary of one Albert Einstein.”

  “Uncle, if I am to be charged with treason, why are you telling me these things?”

  “When I said I was the gatekeeper, evidently I wasn’t as good at finding out secrets as keeping them, my dear niece.”

  She felt her heart slip as she realized just how good her uncle’s intelligence service really was.

  “Or would you prefer the future Mrs. Carl Everett?”

  “No, that adds a certain charm to these proceedings, doesn’t it?” a voice from the darkness said.

  Anya, after the initial shock of learning that her secret engagement to Carl was now an open secret, was now trying for damage control that was not going to be there. She had indeed become involved with a foreign national, which was another crime against the state considering her job in intelligence. What was one more charge considering her predicament? She turned and faced the darkness where the familiar voice had come from. The man turned on a table lamp and sat with crossed legs.

  “You?” she said as startled as she had ever been.

  “I understand you two know each other from Antarctica,” the general said as he stood and stepped up to Anya as she felt her jaw drop even further when the big man stood up.

  “You know this man, Uncle?” she said without turning back to face the head of the Mossad.

  “Yes, we have worked together from time to time, just as he works for everyone else if the money is right … from time to time of course.”

  The blond man smiled, reached down, and took Anya’s right hand and kissed it, barely brushing his lips against her skin.

  “Honored to see you again.”

  Anya had lost her voice when Colonel Henri Farbeaux spoke and smiled that disarming smile of his. He straightened and then his brows rose three times in rapid succession.

  “But alas, I have been reduced to an errand boy by men and women I’m not real sure if I like or not, but they pay and pay well.”

  “I must admit you kept your secret concerning our dear Mr. Everett close to the vest. I would say you have a future in the intelligence-gathering business, but we both know that would be pushing it, don’t we?” her uncle said as he handed the two folders to his niece.

  “What are you doing, Uncle?”

  “Sending you home. You’re an American now, Mrs. Everett, and one that has made her choices.”

  Anya looked from the files in her hands to her uncle and then she dropped them and hugged the director of the most brilliant intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world. He allowed it, but only briefly. After a moment the large man forced her hands apart and brought them from his neck. She could see the tears well up in his eyes. The man who had so ruthlessly protected the borders of Israel was near to breaking down.

  “I have to turn my back on you now, niece. You can no longer return to these shores. As I said, choices have been made, choices y
ou cannot turn from now.”

  Henri Farbeaux retrieved the two files that had fallen to the carpeted floor as Anya stood there stunned. He read the smaller one. “The Traveler, Moira Mendelsohn.” He replaced the first with the second, far thicker file labeled simply “Doorway,” and in red letters below it, “testimony of participants.” He raised his brows and watched the two people in the room. The woman was still captivating in her exotic looks. He thought back to when they first met in the Antarctic three months before. Yes, the Gypsy woman was beautiful, and he could see the allure for Carl Everett to resign from the world in order to stay with her.

  “Go, and watch yourself, niece, there are men out there that are not as family-oriented as myself. Colonel, remove her from this office. Your flight to the States leaves in an hour. My men will escort you through customs and security.”

  “Uncle,” Anya started to say, but the man just placed a hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

  “For the record, I liked your naval captain. Through the prime minister’s office I am now aware of certain details as to his … disappearance. I am giving you over to your new and adoptive country for that simple fact. The world owes the man you married, this is Israel’s penance, the price we will pay for what was owed by the world to this man and his sacrifice.” General Shamni softened. “That and the fact that I love you so very much.”

  Anya started to cry for the first time since she learned that Carl was not returning from space. She took a tentative step forward but her uncle turned his back on her and returned to his desk.

  “Good luck in what it is you are searching for. Now I have to disavow you as blood, and as an Israeli citizen.” Shamni continued to stare at a small picture of him and a beautiful woman from the past. Anya knew this picture was of the general and his sister, her grandmother, the queen of the Gypsies. The picture was taken long before the general was shipped away as a boy to Israel to gain his education on the people his Gypsies used to be a tribe of. Now Anya realized that the general had no one left. She was the last of his blood and now he felt that blood being spilled.

  The former French army colonel, Henri Farbeaux, saw that Anya wasn’t moving so he took her elbow and steered her toward the door. Once out of the office she allowed the Frenchman to place an arm around her as they walked toward the elevator. She stopped and looked at the antiquities thief.

  “How and why are you here, Colonel?”

  The elevator doors opened and Henri stepped inside and smiled at her. “As your uncle said, to bring you home. It seems you have very high-placed friends, and a Mrs. Alice Hamilton is among them. She is the one who sent me … lucky for you. She oversees most of that strange little man Compton’s activities. She thought you may run into trouble.”

  Anya remembered Alice from Romania at the same time she had met Carl. She never thought the frail-looking old woman was so in touch with the people Carl worked for.

  Anya was still hesitant to step inside the elevator even with a death sentence held over her head if she didn’t.

  “And where is home now?” she asked as Farbeaux’s smile grew as he held the doors open. “I met with Dr. Compton in Washington when he debriefed me, that is why I’m here. So, where is home now?” she persisted.

  “Well, that’s a loaded question, especially for one such as myself who is not adequately informed.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question, Colonel Farbeaux.”

  The doors slid closed after she stepped into the elevator.

  “All I can say is I hope you are comfortable in the high desert of America.”

  “You mean—”

  “That’s right, you, like myself, have been shanghaied so to speak by a real Boy Scout. A man that is now being briefed on this outrageous investigation of yours.”

  Anya Korvesky smiled when she saw the concerned look on the face of the Frenchman. The name that caused the man considerable consternation and the only moniker to ever make Henri Farbeaux frown in such a way as he was now.

  “Colonel Jack Collins,” she mumbled with a smile starting to cross her red lips.

  The elevator started down with a confused Anya Korvesky and a French antiquities thief who had yet to become resigned to his rather disturbing fate.

  “Yes, we are going into the barren desert to see Mr. Wonderful himself.”

  ST. JUDE’S CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  After the director had explained to Jack Anya’s quest for information inside the Israeli archives system, the task he had been performing for the past months of finding the new specialized manpower for the replacement personnel at Group became crystal clear. As the president finished his sandwich with a pleasurable sigh, he rubbed his hands together and looked at Niles.

  “Now that Jack knows we can also fall outside of the accepted rules of engagement, I received a partial list of personnel you wish to offer positions to. All have checked out security-wise with the exception of two.”

  Niles opened his briefcase and brought out two file folders. The first he opened and handed to the president.

  “This Xavier Morales.” The president raised his eyes and looked at Jack.

  “Not my choice,” Jack said.

  Niles had to smile as he knew what was coming, and he knew his old friend was going to be skeptical at the least and furious at the most.

  “The man listed here is picked to head the most advanced computer center in the world, picked over the thousands of qualified men and women in this country, including thirty-two staff members already on Group roles. And this”—he looked at the photo of the young Mexican American youth paperclipped to the file—“is the man, or boy, that you chose?”

  “As I said, Mr. President, I didn’t choose him to run the comp center and Europa.”

  The president just raised both brows while he waited.

  “Europa herself chose the kid, not me.”

  “Okay, you mind letting me in on the damn joke?”

  Niles shook his head and then looked at Jack and decided he would bail him out on this one.

  “Two years ago, Pete Golding”—Collins and the president saw the hurt come into Niles’s good eye as he spoke the name of the former computer genius who had been murdered the previous month—“suspected that Europa, the most sophisticated computing system ever created, had been hacked. Not hacked for evil purposes, but hacked just to see if it could be done. This kid was the one responsible and Europa herself was the one that tracked him down. She insists this kid is the only qualified candidate out there. It’s like she refuses to accept anyone else. This name always leads her list of qualified candidates. Every time.”

  “So you’re saying that Europa is developing programs that the other four Cray operating systems in use do not exhibit?”

  “Pete Golding and his constant refinements of Europa. She is learning on her own.”

  “Okay, your warped system wants this kid. Tell me about him.”

  “Xavier Morales, age twenty-five. Born with osteoporosis and has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of five. He has a mother whom he supports and a brother, deceased. He is a prodigy. Graduated high school at thirteen and MIT with a doctorate at twenty-one. Hell, even I heard of him coming up through MIT’s system. Pete was also aware of him … he was and is a legend. After college he dabbled in software design but it bored him. Then the murder of his older brother by a drug dealer sent our boy into another area of interest—finding and ruining everyone and anyone who had anything to do with his brother’s murder. He tracked down everyone from the man who fired the ill-timed shot that killed his brother, to the dealer’s connections, and then finally all the way to the source—the now-reorganized Nuevo Laredo Cartel in Mexico and its boss of bosses, Richie Gutiérrez.”

  “One bad hombre,” the president remarked as his memory recalled the ruthlessness of the man who ended the infighting in northern Mexico simply by killing anything that walked or crawled in the region.

  “Yes, a bad man who o
nce had far more money than he has now, because of young Morales.”

  “Explain.”

  “Our boy deciphered his banking codes, back-doored the security systems of no less than twelve Swiss banks, drained his assets into untraceable accounts in the greater Los Angeles area. Youth organizations, boys and girls clubs in East L.A., and finally the coup was when he transferred one hundred million, five hundred thousand dollars, roughly eleven thousand dollars each into the bank accounts of everyone in his mother’s old neighborhood, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back and got him caught by the cartel.”

  The president just looked at Niles, who had answered for Jack. “I don’t give the kid very good odds of a long life if he picks and chooses his enemies in such a manner.”

  “Well, sir,” Jack said, “you’re right on that point. Gutiérrez and his goons got to him through his mother.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He’s being held in the cartel’s own private prison in northern Mexico affectionately called the House Where Hope Goes to Die. Gutiérrez has something special planned for the kid’s demise as soon as he returns from South America after arranging new banking partners. We estimate our boy Morales has about six days left before the bastard has him torn to pieces in one of his prison gladiator shows he likes to put on.”

  “For a kid in a wheelchair?” the president asked, angered at the brutality of the cartel and Gutiérrez in particular.

  “Yes,” Niles said as he pulled the folder from the president’s hand and closed it. “And we want permission to go get him out, or rather, Europa wants him out.”

  “Europa wants you to literally invade a neighboring country and kidnap someone?”