The Traveler

1

The nondescript Black Hawk UH-60 helicopter eased its large bulk onto the painted heliport atop the hospital normally used to airlift critically ill patients to one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world. Before the wheels set down, one of the men in the passenger compartment felt the eyes on them in the darkness of the heliport. He knew that with those eyes came weapons — weapons that were right now trained on them and their air force flight crew.

Colonel Jack Collins looked over at his boss, Director Niles Compton, who was just placing paperwork back into his briefcase. Jack watched as the director removed the wire-rimmed glasses from his face and then watched as the fifty-one-year-old Compton rubbed the black eye patch that covered his right socket. Compton realized the colonel was watching him and quickly lowered his hand and replaced the glasses.

The two security men Jack had assigned to escort them to Los Angeles were politely not paying attention to the director nor his recent deformity received during the war with the Grays the previous month. The two men, Diaz and Voorhees, both U.S. Marines, were dressed in civilian attire. Collins unsnapped the seat belt and waited on Compton to gather his things just as the sliding door of the Black Hawk was opened from the outside. Before anyone could stand to leave, a rather large man in a navy blue Windbreaker stepped up to the door with four other men attired in the exact same manner. Jack assisted Niles as he maneuvered his cane to support his badly injured right leg. Collins knew Compton would never walk without the support of the cane again.

As Niles Compton straightened in the dying wind of the helicopter’s rotors, Jack thought it beyond curious that Compton was now afflicted with the same war-won deformities that their benefactor, Senator Garrison Lee, had suffered with since his final days in World War II. He didn’t know if the sight was ironic, or just a cruel joke for the man who was the most humanitarian gentleman he had ever known — notwithstanding the fact that he was also the most brilliant man in government service, if not the world. The respect he had for the director had grown leaps and bounds since he had first met Niles back in the summer of 2006.

“Gentlemen, we need to scan you before allowing you inside,” the large black agent said as he held out a small box. “Thumb, please.”

Jack went first by placing his right thumb onto the small glass pad on the top of the box. The Secret Service agent smiled a little when Collins hissed and then removed his thumb and looked at it. The agent looked from Collins to the readout on the black box.

“Sorry, Colonel, new SOP from Homeland Security and the home office, all visitors are now obligated for DNA scan before gaining access to Rough Rider.”

Jack raised a brow as the instant DNA analysis was repeated with Niles, who seemed distant as he placed his thumb on the pad. Collins nodded at his two security men, who would not be allowed inside. The two men followed the six-man security team to the rooftop elevator. With their escort Jack counted no less than sixteen pairs of eyes on them coming from hidden locations on the rooftop. He assumed they all had automatic weapons. The protection for the man they had come to see had quadrupled since the war that had cost the world so much. A war that ended fifty-two days before. The country and the planet had lost too much to lose any more.

The pace was slow as everyone, including the Secret Service detail, knew that Niles Compton was just learning how to handle his infirmities. His walking was slow and awkward and Jack was instantly aware that Niles felt self-deprecating for those new infirmities. That coupled with the Group’s losses from the war were weighing heavily on the director’s mind. Jack knew that as a battlefield commander, Niles had to face certain things all by himself, just as he himself had to learn how to go on living after losing men and women whose lives he had been responsible for.

Collins became curious as they were escorted past the private suite of rooms and the large outside security team guarding it, and instead were guided through the cordon and brought to what looked like a closed hospital kitchen. The large double swinging doors closed behind Niles and Jack and they found themselves in a semidark stainless steel kitchen. The old smells of hospital meals hauntingly teased the air. Collins saw only two Secret Service men. One was standing in a far, very dark corner and the other was sitting by the opposite exit that entered the cafeteria-style seating area beyond. Other than that there was only one other man in the kitchen and he was half a torso deep in the large double-door refrigerator. Niles shook his head when he saw the robed man wiggle his butt as he leaned into the frigid space as he rummaged around, cursing as he did so.

“Not one shred of cheese other than this in the whole damn place!” came the muffled voice from deep inside the refrigerator. The hand dropped a small container of cottage cheese on the table behind him.

“Perhaps if you held strictly to the diet your doctor’s set for you that infection in your leg would finally go away and you can stop hiding out in children’s hospitals.”

The ass in the doorway quit wiggling and the tall man straightened and turned to face the men who had just entered the hospital kitchen.

“Let’s see how you would do eating that”—the president pointed to the container of low-fat cottage cheese—“and see how quickly you recover.” The president looked at his oldest friend in the world and knew Niles had just gone through a very hard rehab just like himself. He became self-conscious looking at the man who had served as his best man a million years before the nightmares of the recent past.

Niles placed his briefcase upon the stainless steel countertop and then opened it. He brought out a large box and gestured for the president to see what was inside as he cut the string holding the box closed.

“The chefs at Group wanted you to have this… well, Alice Hamilton did anyway. I said you probably didn’t deserve it, but I was overruled.”

The president raised his right brow and spun awkwardly on his casted right leg and looked from Niles to Jack, who nodded that the box was indeed real. The president used a crutch and walked-slipped to stand by Niles’s side. He looked from his friend’s face to the contents of the box. The president smiled and suspiciously looked from the largest corned beef sandwich he had ever seen to the two Secret Service agents watching the proceedings. The two quickly looked away. The president nodded and before he reached to get Alice Hamilton’s reward, he looked at Niles and then Jack. He shook his head and gestured for the protection detail to bring over two tall stools, which were placed before Jack and Niles.

“It feels better if I stand,” the president said, tapping his cast as he leaned the crutch against the table as he closely watched his agents while they were close to his sandwich, as if he feared they would steal his precious bundle of cholesterol. When they moved off, Collins and Compton sat. “I’m not going to ask how either of you are, I can see without asking.” The president picked the large sandwich up and smelled the meat and the hot mustard inside. His eyes rolled as he put it back in the box. With another suspicious look at his security detail he closed it. “I’ll eat this later. Right now we have to talk before they knock me out with all of these new antibiotics they plan to feed me.”

Jack watched on, aware of the uncomfortable silence coming from Niles as he waited for the president to continue. Gone was the small talk and playful banter he had always seen between the two men. Now there seemed to be a steeliness between them that wasn’t there the previous years. The president waved over one of the Secret Service men who placed two stacks of papers on the tabletop and then moved off for another pile that was placed beside the first two. Three distinct sets of papers.

The president slapped the smallest pile on Jack’s left. “Death notifications from the Department of the National Archives, specifically, a secret section of said archives, Department 5656. Spanning the years 1918 to the year 2005, there were 317 deaths attributed to personnel lost on assignment.” He looked at both Jack and then Niles. Gone was the friendliness of the man as he looked on. “And those casualties do not include the 1864 raid into Turkey nor the loss of personnel during World War II, which were substantial I may add.” His hand moved to the next largest pile and it sat there. “Casualties from 2005 to present, same department. Four hundred eighty-two Event Group deaths.” His eyes went from the pile to the neutral face of Jack Collins.

“If this is an indictment or a veiled suggestion that there were any gross failures on the part of security to safeguard those lives—” Niles started to say, but the president acted as though Niles had not spoken as his hand went to the third pile of paperwork.

“The number of official Event code submissions to my and my predecessor’s office.” The pile was almost as large as the casualty notifications.

All three men knew that by law Department 5656 had twenty-four hours to inform the President of the United States, to whom they reported directly, that an Event action had been called. At that time full disclosure on the historical Event and why it was called had to be given to the commander-in-chief. At that time the president could either declare the Event a valid one, rather it be historical or military by the department, or to veto the action altogether.

“As it stands, I vetoed thirty-two actions that may have had a direct historical bearing on the war we just suffered through. The evidence that was needed to convince the world of the dangers we faced from outside our solar system could have possibly been overlooked in the actions of this and my predecessor’s office. Every president from Woodrow Wilson to date may have been directly or indirectly responsible for the disaster we just barely survived.”

Jack saw Niles lower his one good eye as if he was feeling relief from some hidden dosage of pain medication. It seemed the two men he was sitting with had discussed whatever this was before, and possibly at angered length if he knew the two old friends well enough.

“How many more historical secrets or outright cover-ups are out there that we cannot simply let lie?” the president said as he halfheartedly pushed the box containing his precious sandwich away. The president nodded once more and one of the Secret Service men removed the piles of papers.

An uncomfortable silence filled the kitchen.

“Colonel, the Event Group was faced with an unprecedented war, and you and your teams performed magnificently. I brought those papers for two reasons, you saved lives. A lot of them. Also for the reasons I have explained. There is far too much time wasted waiting for this busy office to ratify an Event action. That is why I am hereby, with the approval of the general accounting office and certain members of judicial and military establishment, expanding the powers of Department 5656. You now have one hundred hours to report an Event action to the president. This should speed up your response time to any Event.”

The president saw the skepticism in Collins’s face.

“Yes, it is illegal to a certain degree.” He laughed. “Hell, the whole department has been illegal since its inception. Either the Event from Lincoln’s time or the formation of the Group by Mr. Wilson, every action by your Group could be construed as illegal, at least in the eyes of the House and Senate.”

“Perhaps we had better explain to Colonel Collins the reasoning behind this one-hundred-hour window.” Niles looked to his right and half smiled at Jack, who sat and waited.

The president nodded. He made sure his Secret Service detail was looking elsewhere as he leaned in toward Collins like a conspirator. “This window is to allow your department to do things”—he stalled and looked from Jack to Niles and then back—“that may be lacking somewhat in its interpretation of legal action. For instance, the mission that is currently taking place in the Middle East that I know absolutely nothing about.”

“Middle East?” Jack asked, looking from his commander-in-chief to Niles, who looked at him with a wry smile.

“I’ll let you tell him,” the president said as he pulled the small box over and then lifted the hefty sandwich and bit into it.

“At this moment we are chasing down a lead in Israel that may help us with a possible action that the president has ordered to be explored to its fullest. The one hundred hours is meant to make sure that when the CIA comes to the president and says, ‘someone is messing around in our garden,’ he can have total and complete deniability, which may happen in a few hours if our plan fails.”

“What action and what plan?” Collins asked, looking from his boss to a satisfied president as he chewed.

“We have sent Anya Korvesky back home. She, the president, and myself didn’t think you would have allowed her to go, so we kept it from you.”

“What is the reason you sent the woman who Carl Everett loves back to a place where she is considered a danger to their security for choosing to leave them for a love that is now lost?” Jack asked, growing angrier by the minute for the way these men bypassed him and placed his best friend’s woman into harm’s way.

“Told you he would have a stick up his ass about this,” the president said with a mouth full of corned beef.

“Jack, we had to take a chance. If the stories she’s heard over the years are true we have a window of opportunity here.”

“A window for what?”

Niles glanced at the president and then raised his brow over his glasses and eye patch.

“If this works out, we may have a chance at bringing home an old friend.”

The president placed the sandwich down with much regret.

“I personally owe this man, as I owe all of you.” The injured leg kept the movement slow but the president eased himself closer to Jack. “I don’t have much time left in office, Colonel, you know it and I know it. In the time I have remaining before someone else moves into the White House I want my desk cleared, and to accomplish this I will not go out without trying to do everything I can to account for those people I lost in the recent war.… I owe them.”

“What are you two telling me?” Jack asked, looking at Niles.

“We are going after Captain Everett, Jack.”

Collins had to stand after the amazing statement from Compton. The president took that opportunity to retrieve the sandwich and begin his assault once more.

“During Anya’s debrief she mentioned she had begun her Mossad career at the very bottom of their food chain. She was an analyst, though that has little to do with the tale she told me during her debrief after Operation Overlord. It seems she caught wind of a legend, a rumor, a tale that seemed made up to tell children at bedtime. The search for alien power plants to assist in Overlord reminded her of this legend. It was a long shot that she considered too outlandish to help, and it wasn’t until she mentioned it to me during her debrief that we began to see a chance, just a possibility that this may actually be real.”

“What in the hell are you two talking about?” Jack asked, looking at the president. “With all due respect of course.”

The president only nodded as he continued eating. It was Niles who braved the telling to Jack.

“I think we better start with explaining Anya’s role in this first.”

The raven-haired woman sat upon the bench outside of the large, extremely ugly concrete and steel building, which looked like an old bank that would have been robbed during the Depression in American gangster films.

The moon just started to rise over the holy city of God. She was dressed in a navy blue suit with wide-legged pants, necessary for the two ankle holsters she wore beneath them. Her eyes watched the front doors of the building as men and women of the archival staff prepared to leave after their evening shift. She watched as the two very-well-armed guards waved at the departing employees and then securely locked the front doors. The two guards looked through the glass and then turned back to their duties. The woman knew that security here wasn’t as tight as at other government facilities, as this operation was more a written and oral history of the State of Israel. So, if you wanted someone’s eyewitness testimony in regard to the Holocaust this was the place to go. Any other secrets were stored in many more highly secured facilities across the country. The dark-haired woman could only hope the files had not been transferred over the years.

She saw the young man with the thick horned-rimmed glasses as he also separated from the rest of the archive staff as they made their way to the parking area beside the building. Through years of training she was able to keep her heart from racing faster as she anticipated what the employee had to say. He was obviously up to no good as she took in the frightened way the boy moved. His head flitted left and then right as he approached her and then sat.

“Look, Sami, relax, this is not a facility that houses nuclear secrets. It’s just a records storage unit, you said so yourself.”

The boy who had just graduated from Tel Aviv Technical Institute frowned as he looked around the park area nervously.

“I said relax.” The woman patted the boy’s leg. “Do you have the file?”

The young man looked around and shuffled his feet as he clutched his backpack closer to his body.

“Sami, you’re not steeling state secrets, it’s only concentration camp testimony.”

“Yeah, then why was this file cross-referenced with another, and that one is flagged as secret? Secret and no longer in this building.”

“Cross-referenced with what?” she asked, becoming concerned.

“A file code-named ‘The Traveler.’”

The boy could see something register in the woman’s eyes, which were the strangest he had ever seen. In the defused moonlight he could swear she had one green and one brown eye. He decided that this dark-haired woman scared him and he wanted to leave. The beautiful woman was holding out her hand as she was deep in thought.

“Uh, are you forgetting something?” he said as he shied away from her elegant hand.

The woman came back to the present, frowned, and then handed the boy a white envelope. He accepted it and placed it in his backpack and in the same motion brought out a file folder and handed it to her.

“That’s only a copy, the original is where it’s supposed to be.”

The woman acted as though she didn’t hear the boy as she opened the file and leaned into the cover of the streetlight to read it. The archivist watched a moment and then moved off into the night. She sat on the vacated park bench as the night became still around her. Her eyes scanned the thin sheets of paper.

She knew she had lost some of her edge when she missed the four men moving in around her. Her eyes continued to read from the weak streetlight above when a hand came from over her shoulder and snatched the file from her fingers. She immediately raised her right leg to retrieve the gun in the ankle holster but a Glock nine-millimeter handgun appeared in her face. As she raised her head, the gun was removed from her grasp, and she saw the young man from the archives being led back to the area. The woman knew just who it was she was facing. She turned and looked at the man who had taken the file from her.

“Uncle,” she said as her double-colored eyes took in the heavily mustachioed man in front of her. The large frame of the heavyset former army general stood over the diminutive woman. “How are you?”

“Niece,” he said as he closed the file and then looked at the heading on the front. His brown eyes went from it to the woman who was being handcuffed in front of him. He whistled and then handed the folder over to a man next to him. The large man in the blue blazer and simple white shirt shook his head sadly and then turned and left. Her eyes followed him until she couldn’t see him anymore.

“You are under arrest for crimes against the State of Israel, in particular, for espionage.”

Former Mossad agent Major Anya Korvesky watched a large Mercedes as it sped off. She was pushed and shoved to another waiting car that would follow the Mercedes to her final destination — the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s hardened intelligence apparatus.

There she would face the charge of treason that her uncle, General Shamni, director of the Mossad, would file against his niece in the next hour.

Still, the only thing she could focus on was the file that had been taken from her and was now speeding back to headquarters with her angry uncle. Now she had lost her only lead to uncovering the truth that she and Doctor Compton sought.

The young Queen of the Gypsies raised in Jerusalem and secretly placed into the Israeli Mossad at the age of eighteen was now going to hang before she could help getting back the man she had fallen in love with — Carl Everett.

Three hours had passed and Anya found herself still waiting in the most uncomfortable position she could have ever imagined, although sitting in a dark room with handcuffs was not a memory she could draw from. The two agents who watched her looked noncommittal as if they dealt with treason on a daily basis, and with her uncle that was probably closer to the truth than she knew. She eyed the men but knew that any escape attempt was futile as these agents watching her were not your average Mossad personnel — they were the personal protection of her uncle, General Shamni. They answered only to him.

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 you 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.”

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 once 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?”

“Yes, an American someone.” Jack sat looking at his boss without flinching. Now knowing what this search for new personnel was for, his enthusiasm had grown by leaps and bounds.

“Who else?” he asked instead of answering Collins’s challenge about Morales being an American.

Niles replaced the first folder with a second. The president scanned the pages inside with his eyes going wide for a split second. He closed the folder.

“Approved, good luck with your recruiting on this one. Getting Morales out may be far easier than dealing with this guy.”

“Oh, we have the perfect persuasion heading to San Diego to speak with our great man. I think she’ll persuade him to come around to joining us.”

“I believe you are referring to your assistant director?”

“The one and only. Virginia Pollock is the only human being in the world that Master Chief Jenks is terrified of. Yes, he will come along just out of fear for his life.” Niles took the second folder and then reluctantly handed the president the third and final recruitment request. The president opened it and again scanned the pages with the corners of his mouth turning downward as he progressed.

“Denied,” he said simply and as matter-of-fact as he could. The president closed the thickest folder of the three and handed it back to Compton. “I appreciate her assistance, but this is asking too damn much, Niles.”

“Look, Anya is risking everything to assist us in getting Carl back. We need her inside the facility,” Niles said as he looked at Jack. “I’ll take full responsibility for her immediate placement on the Group’s active roster. She’s not the type to spill Department 5656 files and histories to the world. If the critical information she kept in Romania is any indication, the woman knows how to keep secrets where they belong.”

“No, damn it.” The president returned to the refrigerator, ignoring the crutch leaning against the table. He removed a jug of milk from it and then thought a second and returned it and again faced the two men watching him. “She’s not only a foreign national, gentlemen, but a goddamned intelligence officer at that. No, request denied. As grateful as I am for her involvement thus far, we cannot be giving her departmental access to the foremost secret government reservation in this country.” The president placed his hands on the steel table and leaned in, looking from face to face. “Not to an Israeli Mossad agent.” He saw the angry line that formed the lips of his best friend. He held up a hand in a “wait” gesture when he knew Niles was going to explode. “Again, I appreciate her directing us to this possible new information concerning this Traveler file, but I have to think of the men before me in this office that kept that facility their own personal secret. No, gentlemen.”

“You know she performed magnificently during the war, you read the reports,” Niles countered.

“I know all about Miss Anya Korvesky and what she did for the war effort.” The president felt a pinch of guilt as he recalled that Carl Everett had been in love with her and she him. Everett had even resigned his navy commission over his relationship with the Israeli intelligence specialist. Miss Korvesky had indeed paid a heavy price for their victory in space.

At that moment the Group’s private satellite phone chimed and Niles answered it with a stern look at his friend. The president looked away.

“Compton,” he said into the small untraceable device. “I see. What have you done?” Jack and the president watched Niles purse his lips as he listened. “I should have known you would have been on top of it. No, Alice, that is exactly the course you should have taken. Are they safely out of there? Okay, I’ll meet everyone in Arizona. Good job and thank you.” Niles closed the phone and placed it in his coat pocket. He looked at the president. “Anya recovered the file in question.”

“Then her part in this rescue attempt is at an end, correct?” the president inquired.

“She was caught by the Mossad.”

“Damn!”

Jack said nothing, but waited.

“Our dear Mrs. Hamilton foresaw this and made a few calls. Her and Garrison Lee’s influence has evidently been felt in some very obscure circles; the Mossad seems to be one of them.”

“What does Mrs. Hamilton have to do with this very bad situation?” the president asked incredulously.

“She made a deal with Anya’s uncle. She’s now our problem. Colonel Henri Farbeaux is already bringing Anya in. It seems, Mr. President, she’s now a part of our team whether you like it or not. We owe her at least that.”

The president was almost as white as a sheet. “What in the hell does Henri Farbeaux have to do with all of this?”

“Oh, I guess I forgot to mention, I recruited Henri as a specialist for the duration of this Event. After all, he’s seen our complex, thus he’s not a security risk. He already knows everything.”

The president took a moment at this time to turn away, crutch in hand, and walk to the cafeteria area of the kitchen. He sat slowly in a chair with his cast and leg sticking out precariously.

“You and Mrs. Hamilton laid a trap for me, legally speaking, and frankly I don’t appreciate it.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. President,” Niles retorted.

“I just gave you executive powers far beyond any agency in the history of the United States by granting you a delayed reporting rule change and you turn around and hit me with a prison escape, a request to allow a foreign intelligence agent into the top-most secret agency in the world, and, oh, by the way, we’re also bringing in a sociopath as your head engineer, and now you’re saying you want the foremost enemy of this department inside my facility!”

Jack looked at Niles, as he was stunned that just Niles and Alice had done all of the planning.

“Premeditated,” the president said. “You knew when you and I planned on sending her back to Israel that the odds were she was going to get caught, thus you had Alice on standby in case the worst happened.”

“Problem on all fronts solved. Now everyone, including the colonel and yourself, are up to date on everything. Anya and Henri are now my responsibility, so let’s get moving and bring a brave man back home, shall we?” He smiled as he looked from Jack to the president. “If not, I can always tell your wife about your dietary habits when she’s not here.”

“You bald bastard, get the hell out of here, and if that Frenchman steals anything, it’s coming out of your ass. Jesus, we’re probably letting the Mossad in on everything we have inside those vaults!”

“You worry too much.” Niles stood and he and Jack left the kitchen.

On the way to the elevator and the rooftop helipad, Niles lost his smile as he knew then that it was a good thing the president gave him the hundred-hour window for reporting. He knew that it was not only to keep deniability to other federal agencies, like the CIA, on when and how the president knew something, it was for other reasons also.

“Okay,” Niles said as he stopped short of entering the idling Black Hawk helicopter for their return flight to Nellis Air Force Base. “The one thing I didn’t tell the president was that Operation Alcatraz has already commenced.” Compton handed one of his security men his briefcase. “It makes me nervous with the operation going in so short-handed. How is Mr. Ryan doing in Mexico?”

“He said he had volunteers, that’s all I was aware of before his team left for Mexico. So, I figure Captain Ryan is deep into his role,” Jack said.

As Niles climbed into the seating area of the Black Hawk, Jack looked to the sky. When he knew Niles could not hear him he said a silent rebuttal.

“Just how deep is anyone’s guess.”

The Rio Natchez prison was a private concern based on the model perfected in the States. One of the minor investments of Richard Salvador Gutiérrez, the Rio Natchez was basically a death camp for storing the drug dealer’s enemies until he had the leisure time to watch them die. At least fifty percent of the eighty-six inmates were sent there to die after committing some grievous error in judgment against the cartel.

Eyes watched the boy who had struggled to push his wheelchair into the far corner of the large cell for protection. Thus far the young man, who was no more than twenty-five and who had a beard as soft and sparse as a young deer, had to be given the credit he deserved. He had fought and been beaten for the right to hang on to the wheelchair after some toughs had decided they needed it more. The young man wiped the blood from his nose after placing the bed’s broken slat in his lap. The three men who had attempted to purloin the chair were now trying to stem the flow of blood from the noses of two of their number after the young man had released a torrent of blows to their faces. They were stunned for now, but the new prisoner knew they would come again and very soon.

The eyes watched as the out-of-place young man once more brought the old wooden bed slat up and waited for the second assault to begin. The wheelchair-bound man didn’t have to wait long.

The three men turned as one, their burly leader tossing a bloody rag to the floor. They started toward the brave young man in the chair. The largest attacker reached into the waistband of his pants and brought out a small picklike weapon. The toothless smile that crossed his face was one of pure pleasure at what they were about to do. They surrounded the young man, who raised the slat to defend himself.

“That’s not a very wise thing to do, my brothers,” came a voice speaking in Spanish.

The three men turned and saw a small but very stout man dressed in denim pants and a white, affectionately nicknamed “wife beater” undershirt. His close-cropped dark hair was covered by a black bandana. The goatee and crocodile smile were illuminated by the newcomer’s three gold front teeth. But the most outstanding feature of the muscular man was the tattoo that started down from his scalp, crawled over his nose and eyes, and ended at a tanned jawline. The tattoo was in the shape of a claw and was etched in deep blues and reds. The man was smiling, showing his gold-plated dental work.

“Be patient, ese, you can be next, wait your turn,” said the middle-sized man on the left while he placed his arm around the larger one with the toothless grin and the improvised knife. “We have meals-on-wheels to take care of first.”

In the corner the young man raised the wooden slat higher. It was noticeable the young man was barely old enough to shave, but his determined look said that he had faced this sort of abuse before… bad-luck kids like him usually did.

The rest of the fifty-plus men inside the overcrowded cell took a step back when they saw that the small man who had confronted the three refused to move away. He held his ground as he studied the three very much larger adversaries before him.

“You think Senor Gutiérrez will take the killing of his prized prisoner lightly? If you do then I want to be around when you explain it to him.”

The young man in the wheelchair tilted his head as if he were having a hard time following the Spanish being spoken.

The first faltering smile came out of the large one with the shiv and no teeth.

The smallest of the three turned and looked at the wheelchair-bound prisoner. “Later, ese, Gutiérrez may not come soon enough, then you’ll be ours.” Then the man turned to face the tattooed busybody. “But you, ese, what was to be his, is now yours.” The three men spread out and started to surround the newcomer. He made a stance that invited the three to make their attempt.

The whistle stopped the men before they could spring. The five guards were standing at the bars looking in.

“You speak of patience, I advise as much, for your benefactor will be arriving within the hour. For some of you”—the guard smiled as he looked at a few of the frightened eyes that watched him before settling on the wheelchair and its occupant—“your day of days has arrived.” The guards watched the men in the cell for a moment and then turned to leave.

The three brutes had lost all of their enthusiasm for getting even with the young man who had broken two of their noses. They turned away from him with one last dirty look at the man who had interfered, and moved off to sulk, because everyone knew that with the arrival of Gutiérrez some of their fates were already sealed.

The young man in his wheelchair watched the small man with the black beard and bandana as he eyed the departure of the three thugs. He moved his chair forward until he was next to the man with the horrid and fright-inducing tattoo.

“Thank you,” the young prisoner in dirty denim said in English, very slowly as if his unlikely savior wouldn’t be able to follow the boy’s native tongue. The small man turned and looked at him with a frown and concerned dark eyes.

“You’re not very smart for some sort of computer prodigy.” The man slowly looked him and his chair over. “I mean you don’t even speak Spanish, do you?” the man asked, losing all of his own practiced Spanish accent. The boy’s face went slack. “Well, for the next hour or so you better become a hell of a lot smarter if you want to live long enough to eat dinner tonight. You understand?” the man asked, his three gold teeth shining in the diffused light of the old cell.

“Who are you?” the young man asked.

“A dickhead, son, a real dickhead”—the man smiled, exposing the brightness of the gold dental work—“who never understood my boss’s philosophy of not volunteering for anything, so for now just refer to me as Captain Dickhead.”

Richie Gutiérrez sat atop the small platform that fronted the warden’s office and faced into the prison’s small exercise yard. The prisoners had all been brought out with the exception of the three men who were the object of today’s lesson in why you shouldn’t betray or mess with Richie Gutiérrez.

The middle-aged man, who was raised on the mean streets of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and had fought his way upward through murder, kidnapping, and torture to lead the most ruthless cartel since the heady day of the drug war in South America, was sitting in a large and very ornate chair as if he were the Roman emperor Caligula overseeing a gladiatorial death match. His dress was more appropriate for an evening cocktail party. He was drinking tequila with finely chipped ice as the prison’s population was brought into the area surrounding the exercise yard. The chain-link fence separated the privately owned inmates who were there to witness what it was they would one day face themselves.

Gutiérrez accepted a refill of his tequila as he ate grapes and laughed along with his six henchmen as they watched the festivities below. There were two armed men not part of the prison’s staff of mercenaries in each corner of the balcony. It wasn’t that the drug dealer was afraid of outside influences interfering as the prison was completely legal in the eyes of the law, it was his closest associates the guards watched. The dangerous business he had risen to the top in broke no lackadaisical attitudes in the arena of trusting one’s subordinates. No, Gutiérrez was very safe from the law, because here, in this place, he was that law.

The FBI, DEA, and the American Homeland Security had chased the cartel and its leader for nearly seven years and could never find him. The warrant the Americans carried told the world that they intended very bad things for Gutiérrez and his organization. The man knew that was not possible in his world. Even with the major monetary loss caused by the subject of today’s circus had not dampened the cartel’s fortunes as they made the deficit up by increased manufacture. Still, he knew that the execution today would serve its purpose. That fact was proven a moment later when a film crew was brought in. The two men, a cameraman and a sound person, were there to capture the majesty of the moment for the benefit of those who would try to damage him in the future. The black cameraman and the Mexican soundman took up station by the concrete wall near the front of the large balcony.

Gutiérrez lit a large Havana cigar and then nodded at the prison’s warden, who was immaculately dressed in a royal blue uniform complete with scarf. He removed his saucer cap as he stood. His crooked, pencil-thin mustache turned up at the corners as he anticipated a great event ahead. The warden had been specially chosen from the Mexican army for his brutal reputation, and for the fact that he had been on the cartel’s payroll for nearly fifteen years.

“Bring them out!”

The silence of the gathered inmates gave credence to the fact that this was not an excited gladiatorial arena as the only applause came from the elevated balcony of the warden’s office. The prisoners were silent and most crossed themselves as the fifteen prisoners were led forward.

As the chosen inmates had been gathered and hurriedly lined up, the last person to join was the wheelchair-bound prisoner who bravely faced his fate without pleading or comment. The guard who was pushing him smiled when the young man looked back.

“When called, you will advance into the exercise yard in single file,” the guard by the large gate said as the sun filtered in from the outside, obscuring the excited look on the lead guard’s features. The man turned and exited the waiting area for the exercise yard, leaving only the one guard behind the wheelchair.

“I hear they have something very special planned for you, my friend,” the guard said as his hot breath hit the young man in the back of his neck, making him cringe. “I have three thousand pesos that says you end up begging before—”

The young man heard the thud and the hiss of breath as the hands holding the wheelchair handles fell way. The young man turned and saw the tattooed man standing in the place of the guard.

“What are—”

“No time for twenty questions, kid,” the man hissed as his eyes scanned the other prisoners in front of them. Some had turned at the minor commotion, but decided that the guard wasn’t worth their precious and very limited time. “This is about the third damn plan we’ve had to scrap in the last twenty-four hours. This is plan D and there isn’t a plan E, so be quiet and do exactly as I tell you.”

“Who are you?” the young man said as the large double-sided gate started to swing open.

“I’m the asshole who bragged to his bosses this could be done, so I guess they’ll have the last laugh when this thing blows up right in my face.”

The young man turned to face the front just as his heart fell through his belly to his ass. “Oh, my God, what are you going to do?” he asked as his voice broke just as he was pushed forward following the long line of fifteen condemned men.

“Shut up while I figure a new way to get us killed in the next few minutes.”

As they broke into sunlight after the warden’s order to bring them into the yard, the tattooed man quickly scanned the area. The prisoners were of no help as a chain-link fence topped with razor wire held them in check. The three guard towers oversaw the entire area, including the exterior of the prison. One benefit he immediately noticed was that the three armed guards had their attention focused on the activities inside, not out. One break, but he needed more as he again quickly evaluated this new situation that had changed drastically this morning when it was announced that the mysterious and hard-to-corner cartel leader was arriving early. Thus, plan D.

“Shit, man, is that son of a bitch going to film my death?” the young man asked as the men in the balcony applauded the condemned men as they entered.

The gold-toothed inmate looked to the balcony and saw the two men. One was a cameraman and the other a soundman. The camera and telescopic sound boom was extended over the balcony as they filmed the men below. The tattooed man exhaled the breath he had been holding as he took in the scene. He halfheartedly smiled in relief that his message earlier that day had been received.

“Yeah, I guess they are going to film it… news at eleven, huh, kid?”

“Dude, you need to work on your sense of humor, my man.”

“Just wait for the punch line before you judge my comedic talents, son,” the man said as he brought the wheelchair to a stop on the broken asphalt of the exercise area.

As the seventeen prisoners watched on in fear, they saw the horse trailers being backed up to the enclosed yard. Several guards stood by the rear doors of each of the four battered and old trailers.

The blood of each man in hearing distance froze as the roar of a wild cat sounded from the first enclosure.

“Man, this is fucking medieval,” the young man said as his eyes widened at the thought of what they were to face.

The tattooed man said nothing as he realized the truth of what the FBI and DEA had explained in their reports. The man Gutiérrez was as insane as they come.

The man and woman waited just outside the office area of the registration wing of the prison. The white-haired man sat with a large black doctor’s bag between his feet. His round, brown-framed glasses were perched on the end of his nose as he watched the three secretaries at their desks. The woman next to him was attired in green nurse scrubs and sat stoically as she too waited.

The secretary on the phone looked up from her desk and studied the two for a long moment, making both feel uncomfortable, the same feeling they had for the past twenty minutes as they had been forced to wait. The secretary spoke Spanish into the phone and then hung up and stood. She approached the two as her colleagues excitedly stood and hurriedly moved to the window. One of them turned as he moved.

“Hurry, they are bringing them out,” the girl called out to the first.

The first secretary stood before them and looked as if she wanted to hurry. Her Spanish was rapid-fire and the two had a hard time keeping up. They both now knew that the recommendation by the linguistics department had been right on; they should have brushed up a little more with their chosen second language.

“Apologies, but the entire staff is unavailable for at least an hour, Doctor. Warden Ramirez says that you will be called when needed in the yard.” Without waiting and in a hurry to get to the window with her friends, the woman started to turn but stopped and turned back to the white-haired man in the rumpled suit and the small woman sitting beside him. “The warden inquired as to what happened to Dr. Torrez — he was scheduled for rounds this afternoon.”

The white-haired man wanted to face his companion but decided he would act his role out and be brave simply because when this was over he was going to get killed by men other than the maniacs in this prison — men with a lot more talent for killing. He gave the secretary a stern look.

“The good doctor became aware of the scheduled activities this afternoon and decided he was losing his stomach for it, thus I am here in his place as a favor”—he smiled as if he enjoyed the conversation, making even his small female companion suddenly fearful of his demeanor—“as I have no such qualms concerning what’s happening out there.” He nodded toward the window where the other two women stood.

The secretary decided she wanted to hear no more from this strange white-haired doctor and hurriedly joined her excited friends at the window who were examining the inmates as they entered the yard below.

“They’re not going to go outside like we were told they would,” the small woman said out of the corner of her mouth.

“Well, the briefing by our man at the FBI was hurriedly put together, I imagine. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting for us to make an attempt while so shorthanded in the security department.”

“Charlie, if they don’t go outside I have to place them into submission,” the woman said as she felt the fanny pack she wore. She slid it along her belt until it was in the front where she could reach it quickly. “Just how important is this aspect of the plan?” she asked as the three women by the window started making jokes on who would last the longest in the arena.

Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III watched the three secretaries for the briefest of moments before he frowned and then faced his acting nurse.

“Then what are you waiting for? Drop them. They’re personal assistants to that brutal son of a bitch out there.” He nodded toward the balcony beyond the office wall. “To hell with the gentle approach. Teach these ladies they should have far more compassion for their fellow man.”

First Lieutenant Sarah McIntire of the United States Army was shocked at the coldness of the proposed edict from cryptozoologist Ellenshaw. Most of the Group back at Nellis had seen the change in Charlie ever since the death of Pete Golding at the hands of a murdering ex-CIA operative. The change was enough to have most concerned. That was why she had been surprised that the colonel had allowed the scientist to take part in the operation. But she suspected what Ellenshaw needed was to occupy himself with other duties, and so Jack allowed Charlie this one slot in the rescue attempt to vent some of the pent-up emotion he was feeling. Being a cryptozoologist didn’t prepare you for the shock of sudden death at the hands of your fellow man.

Sarah easily removed the six-barreled electric stun gun from her pouch. With one last look at Ellenshaw, who was waiting with anticipation, she stood and moved toward the window as if she were only curious as to the activity outside.

The woman who had spoken to them a moment before turned with a large smile on her pretty face because she had just chosen the young inmate in the wheelchair as her bet as the first to fall. She saw Sarah approach and her smile slowly faded as she saw the large plastic stun gun in her right hand.

“Compliments of the doctor,” she said as the first electrical barb shot free of the barrel and connected perfectly with the dark-haired woman’s right shoulder. The ten-thousand-volt jolt shook the secretary in almost hilarious spasms until she dropped to the tiled flooring. The next two happy women were taken down without even as much fuss as the first. All three lay at the base of the window. Charlie stood and walked over to Sarah and looked down.

“I guess you were the first one to go down… I win.”

“Do you have the music Jack gave you for the PSYOP portion of this screwed-up plan?”

Charlie felt his pockets in his wrinkled black suit. “Of course, that was my only responsibility.” He felt his pocket again and brought out the encased compact disc. He blinked when he thought he remembered it being in a different colored case — this one looked like one of the CD cases from his own collection. He shrugged his shoulders and then replaced the disc in his pocket as he turned for the warden’s office. “Well, shall we start the dance?” he asked Sarah as he moved.

“Let’s just hope the participants in this little shindig are ready, because all hell is about to break loose.”

Outside, the dabbling of applause from the balcony announced that, indeed, the festivities were about to begin.

The three young boys had every possession they owned in two overstretched garbage bags. They crossed the border early this morning and waited until the U.S. Border Patrol’s change of shift. They had waited in the shadows and now moved easily from small arroyos to deep cuts along the worn trail coming in from Mexico. The three had the promise of ranch work farther north in Alvin.

“This is the safest time to move over empty land, Jime,” the oldest of the three said as they came to the rising end of an arroyo, where they stopped. “There’s no green-suited boogeymen out here. Just two miles and we can reach the main highway and once there we will wait until near dawn and then jump the Northern Pacific all the way into Houston.”

“The emptiness of this place gives me the creeps,” the youngest said as he waited in the shadows for his two friends to move to the next cut of arroyo for cover.

“Yeah, that’s why it’s a good route to take, not many would chance crossing with no water until you reach Brownsville.” The oldest immigrant looked at the young and inexperienced boy and rubbed his head, knocking the green ball cap off. “Besides, the Americanos don’t have the equipment to cover every square inch of desert. There’s nothing out there but us and the open road. Now let’s go.”

The three young men climbed the rise, readying themselves for the sprint over into the next arroyo. When the oldest stopped dead in his tracks at the top of the rise and the other two ran into him their world became instantly surreal. Evidently the Americans had recently allocated far more funds to this area of the border.

“Pinche vato,” the oldest said as his eyes widened at the sight before him.

Between the arroyo they had just left and the second sat three U.S. Army Apache Longbow AH-64 attack choppers. The six men who crewed the gunships were standing in front of the giant attack birds and were looking straight at the three illegal immigrants as they stood atop the rise in shock. The weapons officer of one of the ships raised a gray-colored gloved hand and waved at the three, who simultaneously felt their hearts drop. The oldest boy swallowed hard as his right hand slowly came up in greeting.

“Oh, yeah, there’s nobody out here,” said the youngest.

Suddenly the aircrews below heard the loud beeping coming from their communications gear. The three aircrews ran to their Apaches. The three stunned boys watched as their four-bladed rotors started spooling up. Once more their hearts stopped when all three twenty-millimeter chain guns on the nose of each attack ship started rotating as the weapons officers made sure their main armament was functioning correctly.

“Madre de dios,” mumbled the oldest as the first Apache lifted free of the Texas scrub and then the other two birds quickly and noisily followed suit. All three rose, dipped their noses hard forward, and then shot into the air, hugging the ground as the United States Army crossed the border of a friendly nation for their role in Operation Alcatraz. The boys didn’t know that five miles away to the east another group of helicopters was lifting off and heading to the same coordinates. Only these ships were a lot larger.

It was the youngest of the three who spoke. “I think I want to go back home.”

The secretary of state waited to deliver his prepared speech to the man who was now being escorted into his large office. The older man smiled, trying to disarm the man before he even sat down. He rose and moved to the front of his desk to greet the visitor.

“Mr. Ambassador, so nice of you to come on such short notice.” He shook the smaller man’s hand and then gestured to the other occupant in the room, a well-dressed younger gentleman in a perfectly pressed black suit. “I don’t believe you have ever met the director of our FBI, Brenton Branch.” The large black man stood and offered his hand, which the stymied ambassador from Mexico slowly took with apprehension. “Please, sir, have a seat. We have much to pass on and very little time to do it.”

The ambassador to the United States from the nation of Mexico was perplexed as he had only met the American secretary of state one time, and that one time was not a pleasant experience. The old man was just plain mean in his estimation.

“Directly to the point, Mr. Ambassador, the FBI has come into some rather disturbing intelligence concerning one of your major headaches. Mr. Richie Gutiérrez.”

The ambassador froze at the mention of his name.

“Yes, we thought that would get your attention right off the bat. I’ll let the director tell you.”

“Sir, we in the United States government understand that you are having one hell of a time containing this Gutiérrez and his rather lucrative business. Now if this is because you are unable, or unwilling”—the secretary of state gave a wry look at the head of the FBI—“does not concern us at this time.” The director held up his hand as the ambassador started to protest the insult hurled at his government. “We have asked your government for three days to act upon this man for the kidnapping of an American citizen, one Xavier Morales, age twenty-five.”

“My government cannot act on information provided by a foreign nation without adequate investigation. I am afraid my hands in this matter are virtually tied, Mr. Secretary.”

“This is not a meeting that was intended to consult you or your government, Mr. Ambassador. We are here to simply inform you of a covert military action intended to free our citizens from illegal internment.”

“Covert military action?”

“Simply stated, you won’t act, so we will, sir.”

The secretary of state was relieved when he saw the wheels start turning in the young diplomat’s head. He had been briefed that many in the Mexican government were in favor of moving against Gutiérrez and his cartel and smash them with an iron fist, but there were too many men in government who owed the cartel’s leader enough to become one of his puppets. But the United States knew that there was a newer, bolder form of Mexican citizen rising from the old — and this man and many others was one of them. The ambassador saw what was happening; the United States was giving his government and the current administration in Mexico City an out. They wouldn’t have to raise a hand to assist, nor to apologize if something went wrong. Enlightenment crossed his features like a window being opened to the world. He caught on and caught on quick.

“Oh, but we must protest this action,” he said without much enthusiasm. “I must report this incursion immediately.” The ambassador stood as did the director of the FBI.

“Before you report to your president, may I offer you some lunch?” he asked as the ambassador buttoned his coat.

“I must report this.” The man looked at his watch.

“But it’s chicken-fried steak day here at Foggy Bottom.”

The Mexican ambassador allowed his lips to form a wry smile. “Well, how can I say no to that.” The ambassador allowed the head of the American FBI to escort him to the cafeteria.

The secretary of state lifted his phone and then waited. It was answered on the first ring.

“It’s done, Mr. President. Maybe you can explain to me later just why this American citizen is important enough to invade a friendly country.”

The President of the United States never answered the secretary. He just said thanks and hung up the phone with the hopes that his friend Niles Compton knew what he was doing.

Richie Gutiérrez stood with glass in hand. He puffed on his cigar as all eyes were raised to the balcony. He quickly noticed something in the yard below.

“Why are there sixteen inmates when the order was for fifteen?” he asked as his glass lowered and he looked at the warden, who had been caught off guard by the quick observation.

He scanned the exercise yard and saw the man who was not on the list given to him that morning by Gutiérrez. He pointed at the small man standing behind their prized inmate, Morales. The tattoo made the man easy to spot.

“You, who are you?” the warden called down. Every prisoner in the yard looked around, thinking that the warden was talking directly to them.

Commander Jason Ryan, United States Navy, smiled as he released his grip on the wheelchair handles. He smiled his gold-plated smile at those shocked inmates around him. Then Ryan turned his attention to the balcony rising above him and the others. He hoped the inside team was ready because he was about to kick this show off to a great start — a start that if it didn’t work would ensure that he and his rescue element would never leave northern Mexico with breath in their lungs.

“Me?” Ryan asked, looking around as if confused. He took a few steps beyond the chair. He didn’t use Spanish or anything near that language’s accent. “I’m nobody compared to the great Jefe, Señor Gutiérrez,” he said as he half turned to the kid in the chair. “Make sure your parking brake isn’t on, kid.”

“What?” Morales said as he watched the confrontation frightened out of his mind. He had thought he was brave enough to get through this but the continuing roar of the caged animals made him weaken at the prospect of Gutiérrez justice. “Who are you?” he hissed.

Ryan took a few more steps forward.

“My boss told me to pass along to Mr. Gutiérrez a message,” Ryan called up, and then waited for a smiling Gutiérrez, who was curious as to the delay, but not angered — yet. The cartel leader stood with his chipped-ice glass of tequila still in hand.

“And who is your boss? If he is the one responsible for getting you drunk and forcing that tattoo on you, I must say he’s not much of a boss, or has a far better sense of humor than even myself.” He laughed as did everyone in the balcony with the exception of the cameraman and soundman, who were still busy doing their jobs.

“My boss”—here he paused for the best dramatic effect possible as Ryan smiled even wider—“is an even bigger prick than you.” The smile faded. “Only he doesn’t kill his own people and fill the world with your poison product. He sent me here to explain this to you in no uncertain terms.”

This time Gutiérrez lost his confident grin. The game was quickly growing old.

“I don’t want to hear any more, release our friends!” he said, and then smiled down upon the tattooed man.

As the gates that fronted the horse trailers opened, the men inside the yard instinctively moved as far away as they could from what was about to join them. As for Ryan, he also smiled, but for a different reason. He returned to the wheelchair-bound Morales.

“Here we go, kid, welcome to the real world!” Ryan said over the fearful cries of the condemned men crowding around him and Morales.

The sky exploded with sound so loud that everyone froze. The prison’s PA system came to life with a vengeance.

Ryan smiled as if he were the Cheshire cat. Then the smile quickly faded as he realized this was not the PSYOPS portion of the rescue’s chosen music. Instead of frightening, it was beyond confusing. Ryan had decided he would kill Sarah McIntire and Charlie Ellenshaw as they just butchered Jack Collins’s theory on shock and awe.

“Psychological warfare my ass!” Ryan yelled, hoping Ellenshaw could hear him.

Gutiérrez stood again as the music choice by Crazy Charlie Ellenshaw struck his eardrums and assaulted them.

On the overhead speaker system and throughout the prison the song “Sugar, Sugar,” by the bubble-pop band the Archies blared across the yard. That, coupled with the screams of the inmates as the doors to the trailers were finally opened.

“Shoot that man,” Gutiérrez screamed over the blare of the sugarcoated music that was coming near to bursting everyone’s eardrums.

Before anyone could react in the confusion, the soundman in the balcony turned and popped a switch on the telescopic microphone boom and a stream of gas issued from the disguised mic. The blue-tinted gas filled the area and dropped two guards immediately.

Gutiérrez was shocked as one of his men fell forward over the balcony and the other just fell. That was when he saw the cameraman turn toward him with his camera and was shocked to see the man wearing a gas mask. Then a compartment on the side of the mini-cam opened and the next thing the cartel leader saw was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol pointed right at his head. The man behind the mask didn’t waver as the sound engineer continued his gas assault on the balcony.

Ryan screamed for the men to get down as the music was somehow shoved aside by another, even louder sound.

Before anyone could know what was happening, three American Apache helicopters rose over the eastern, northern, and southern walls of the prison. As the Archies continued to sing on, the chain guns mounted on the nose of each attack chopper opened up. They struck the electrical lines leading into the prison and then one of the Apaches rose a hundred feet and sent a stream of twenty-millimeter rounds into the guard housing next to the cell blocks, effectively keeping any reinforcements from the yard. The second started tearing into the main gate of the facility until the chain-link fence and razor wire hung loosely in utter destruction.

The soundman tossed the now-empty boom over the balcony and studied the warden and the rest of the incapacitated guards. None were moving.

Sarah and Charlie ran from the offices and joined the soundman as he checked everyone to make sure none would spring up and surprise them. Still the Archies sang and the men below cowered.

Ten guards sprang from a blockhouse and started toward the yard. The remaining inmates who had been gathered outside the exercise yard to witness their own eventual fate saw what the guards were attempting and immediately swarmed as each man knew instinctively that something extraordinary was happening and they had to take advantage. The ten armed guards didn’t stand a chance against the anger of Gutiérrez’s enemies. The Apache gunships circled, looking for any threat that sprang up.

Gutiérrez was standing wide-eyed as the cameraman lowered the nine millimeter and then removed the black gas mask. The black man smiled at him.

“Richard Gutiérrez, we are here to enforce a warrant ordering your arrest,” United States Army Captain Will Mendenhall said as he looked back at U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jesse Rodriguez as he quickly emptied the harness bag they had brought along. Mendenhall looked at his watch under his gloved hand. “Thirty seconds. Sarah, give the gunny a hand, will you? Charlie, you and I have to talk about what represents PSYOPS operations and its intended distraction media. The Archies is not among the chosen selections to frighten your adversary.”

“I will have you all tracked down and killed in your homes with your entire families!” Gutiérrez said as he watched the strangers unroll a large set of nylon harnesses.

Will Mendenhall, after being interrupted by the cartel leader and his threat, looked at Gutiérrez and then simply raised the gun and hit him in the forehead with the gun, sending him grimacing as he fell back onto his ornate emperor’s throne.

“It’s very rude to interrupt,” he said as his eyes lingered for only a moment on the man. He turned back to Ellenshaw, who was not smiling even though he knew he had screwed up. “We’ll talk later, Doc. Now help get this asshole prepared to fly.”

Charlie did as he was told.

Jason Ryan started frantically pushing Morales and his chair forward through the frightened inmates. He was screaming for the condemned men to make a break for the gates and the prison parking lot beyond. He heard the Apaches open up somewhere to his right and hoped there wasn’t wholesale killing going on. After all it wasn’t Gutiérrez’s henchmen they were after, it was only Morales and the leader of the most brutal drug cartel since the Cali, Colombia, extremes of the eighties. He made sure that the guards tending to the wild animals in their cages were either eliminated or on the run, then he went to the direct center of the yard and waited, feeling very exposed to whatever guards made it past the circling Apaches.

With the blare of noise coming from the Archies and the powerful twin engines of the Apaches, no one heard the deeper bass rumble of something much larger as it approached the prison. Men ran and screamed as the giant Chinook double-rotor transport helicopter broke over the height of the south wall. The rotor wash of the large CH-47 heavy-lift chopper knocked men from their feet as they ran away frightened from the American black ops display confronting them. The harness struck the ground near Ryan and he immediately took hold and started strapping the shocked and frightened computer genius to the harness. The wide-eyed young man made no sound other than to scream when Ryan faced him.

“Now don’t move until you’re told,” he said.

“But who in the hell are you!”

“Bye, kid, nice meeting ya!”

Morales was about to ask again when his world went away. He and his chair were pulled so violently upward that he knew he had left his stomach somewhere rolling on the ground with Ryan. As for Jason he had to smile as the screams of the young selection of computer science department head were heard even over the noise of the music and engine assault. The harness held as the boy and his chair flew skyward toward the hovering Chinook. Ryan made sure the kid was pulled in by the CH-47’s crew and then he made his way toward the double gates that held the prisoners inside. He opened them and started moving inmates free of the yard. As he did he looked at the three horse trailers and that was when Jason Ryan really smiled.

In the balcony above the action, Sarah, Charlie, and Rodriguez had Gutiérrez ready to ascend into the blue skies above Mexico. The man finally opened his eyes against the pain of Mendenhall’s rebuke with the pistol. The dark eyes widened when he saw the black American looking down at him. He was about to scream something over the noise of the Archies when Mendenhall held up his right hand and just simply waved good-bye as Gutiérrez burst into the sky, ripping the makeshift shade cover from the prepared balcony. Will smiled and then attached his own lines as did the other three. He saw Ryan as he stood just below with his own harness attached and waiting.

“Hey, toss down the warden and his men!” Jason screamed at a confused Will. Then he saw his friend’s smile and knew exactly what he had planned. With the help of Ramirez, Sarah, and an angry Ellenshaw, the five men were eased to the asphalt below by rope.

As inmates freed themselves from the prison, Jason Ryan, United States Navy, looked down at his handiwork and with the large tattoo gleaming its glorious colors in the sun he gave the signal. The second CH-47 Chinook lifted him, Sarah, Rodriguez, and Mendenhall free of the ground, and with four personnel hanging from the giant bird, slowly made their way north toward the border. Operation Alcatraz was now complete.

Ten minutes later the prison warden awakened with a fright at about the same time as his guards and Gutiérrez’s henchmen. With wide eyes and loosened bladder they watched the black-coated Yucatán jaguars as they started creeping toward the spot where they had been deposited. Just before the first sleek cat lowered its ears to spring, he saw the scrawled note between his splayed legs. He read it and then looked up just as the five wildcats started forward with hungry intent. As the freed men ran into the surrounding countryside and the remaining prison guards decided they needed to find new work, the small note blew away in the wind and only the warden of Rio Natchez Prison would ever know what it said: “Compliments of the Greater Nevada Historical Society.”

2

The woman waited inside the idling taxicab until she spied her target. She lowered her dark glasses and took in the familiar figure of the man she had known now for eight years. She smiled and then pushed the sunglasses back up her slim nose. She straightened her skirt, then gave the cabdriver a twenty-dollar bill, and took a deep breath as she readied for the confrontation that had been coming for many years. She opened the door and with her briefcase in hand started to follow the broad-shouldered object of this covert visit as he took his brown-paper-bag lunch to the nearby park area.

Assistant Director of Department 5656 Virginia Pollock waited while the brutish little man chose a tree to sit under. She again lowered the sunglasses as the man saw three squirrels frolicking under the protection of the trees. Like most California squirrels, these were in no mood to move from the shade of the tree and the pinecones it offered. She grimaced as she watched the gray-haired man remove the stub of a cigar from his mouth and then lean over.

“You fuckin’ rats going to move or am I goin’ to throw you into a stew?” the raised voice asked loudly. The squirrels all stopped and looked up into the angry and mean face of the man and then decided they would indeed act like squirrels and run for their lives.

“Yeah, that’s what I friggin’ thought, bunch of pussies.”

Virginia shook her head as she watched Master Chief Petty Officer (retired) Harold C. Jenks slowly ease his bulk onto the grass. She saw that the master chief was tired. The blue denim work shirt he wore was wrinkled and the hair on his head was a little grayer. Assistant Director Pollock knew, like Jack and the rest of her colleagues, that Jenks wasn’t taking the recent personnel losses to the nation too well. The master chief had lost as much as anyone at Group; he had lost a student and dear friend when Carl Everett vanished into the wormhole after guaranteeing the destruction of the enemy in its own dimensional shift over Antarctica.

The master chief pulled out a sandwich and then looked at it and decided he wasn’t that hungry. Virginia saw him speak with several of his people who were far better dressed than Jenks. Their clothes were expensive and clean, while the owner of Blacksmith Engineering was a complete mess—Even more so than usual, Virginia thought. When Jenks said the last to his passing colleagues he saw the tall, thin woman looking at him. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them in time to see his worst nightmare still approaching.

“Well, I never thought I would gaze upon those legs again,” Jenks said as his eyes traveled up Virginia’s legs to her white blouse and jacket.

“That makes two of us, Harold,” she said as she stepped forward until she stood over the reclined Jenks.

The master chief’s face screwed into one of disgust at the mention of his first name. But then Virginia was the only person in the world who was ever allowed to refer to him that way. The very direct woman could be forgiven for a lot.

“Before you even begin, I’m done.”

Virginia smiled and then tossed Jenks her briefcase, which he caught in his lap but not before the corner of the case hit his left testicle. He winced as she sat next to him on the grass. She stretched out her long legs and then smiled over at him.

“Done with what?” she asked, teasing him like she always had.

Jenks started to throw the briefcase from his lap but caught himself as he knew from experience that Ms. Pollock was the only person he had ever known not to cower in terror at his voice. He gently laid the case aside.

“Done helping whatever it is you and your so-called think tank does.” He looked sad for the briefest of moments. “If there’s anyone left, that is.” He looked deeply into her green eyes. “Your director and the president seemed to have killed off everyone else that I had any affection or respect for.” He looked away and then immediately back up. “Well, almost all, anyway. So tell your director Compton and his Captain America Jack Collins to screw off, I’m busy.”

Virginia knew he still held a soft spot in that black heart of his for her. Their relationship went back to 2007 when they had become close during the Amazonian expedition. She knew that Jenks was hurting just as much as everyone else after losing so many men and women in the recent war. Most were lost on his reengineered battleship left on Earth by the Martian civilization that preceded Earth by millions of years. Yes, Jenks felt the pangs of guilt and they mostly stemmed from losing the man he had trained as a navy SEAL when he was but a boy, Carl Everett. Jenks was unforgiving toward Jack, Niles, and even her at the sacrifice Carl had had to make in order to end the war. Virginia tilted her head and then placed a thin but beautiful hand on the rough, unshaven cheek of the man she had once been intimate with a million years before. He softened as her hand caressed him.

“Stop that,” he said as he pulled his face away.

“You poor bastard, you know how to be angry all the time but you never learned how to grieve, did you?”

“Look, Slim, take your pitch and sell it to some other broken-down ex-SEAL and even worse engineer. I assure you they are out there.”

“Yes, they are, and we’ve interviewed most of them. But alas, and I don’t know the reasoning behind the decision, Jack and Niles want you and only you.”

“I’m done with consulting for your damn strange Group, Ginny, done.”

“I said nothing about consulting, Harold.”

A confused look crossed his gruff features.

“We want you to sign on with the Group full-time as the director for special projects. In other words we need all that engineering stuff you can bring to bear. Unlimited budget and full control of engineering and our rather unique facility.”

“No.”

“Full access to navy, air force, and army technology.”

“No.”

She smiled, knowing his weakness.

“I want you to take it.”

He looked sad for a moment. Then hardened. “No.”

She raised her brows.

“No.”

“We have something planned, Harold, and Niles and Jack need you, and only you.”

“No,” he said, and then looked at the woman he loved deeply, and he could say that about only two people he had ever known, Virginia and one other. He became deadly curious and he knew that was a bad thing. “What do you have planned?” he asked as he looked away for having caved so easily.

Virginia Pollock smiled, leaned in, and kissed Jenks fully on the mouth. She held it for the longest time, shocking anyone who worked for the former master chief as they gasped at the sight of the meanest man in the world being romanced by a gorgeous woman. She finally parted from him and then told him what the Event Group was up to.

Ten minutes later the master chief was deep in thought.

“Impossible” was his only word.

“We at Group don’t care for that word much, Harold, you should know that.”

“Well, start believing and caring, because it’s an impossibility. And I don’t care who came up with it.”

Virginia stood, retrieved her briefcase, and then paused as she leaned in close to Jenks.

“Then I guess we’ll have to make the attempt without you, Harold.”

Jenks watched her turn and start moving away toward the street. He looked to the sky and cursed his luck. But deep down after hearing what it was Virginia had to say, he knew he was trapped.

“Goddamn it!” he said loudly as he stood, frightening several of his consulting colleagues as they walked past, and then those same people watched stunned as the master chief ran after Virginia Pollock like a loving puppy toward its master.

“All right, I’ll only listen on one condition,” he called out.

Virginia stopped and waited. “And that is?”

“Don’t call me Harold, you manipulative she-devil.”

The assistant director smiled.

“You got it, Harold.”

The master chief watched Virginia smile and then she moved off, leaving him standing there just as angry as ever. “I’m freakin’ glad we got that settled.”

Jenks chased after Virginia because he knew, failure or triumph, as an engineer and as a friend, he had to be in on the greatest scientific reach in the history of mankind.

3

Colonel Henri Farbeaux thought he would never lay eyes on the small town again in his lifetime. As the United States Air Force Black Hawk banked hard over the dead town of Chato’s Crawl, Arizona, chills coursed through the former French commando’s skin as he recalled the horrors that took place here and in the mountains outside of the small town. Underneath his sunglasses his eyes roamed to the mysterious and foreboding Superstition Mountains, and their dark presence made the deserted town that sat in their ominous shadow welcoming by comparison.

“What is this place?” Anya Korvesky asked as she too saw the desolation of the thirteen-building ghost town. The rotors of the Black Hawk stirred up small dust devils that bounced from dead street corner to dead street corner, dodging the broken and rusty dregs of the automobiles left behind by the few citizens and reporters who survived that horrible two days in the desert.

Henri leaned back and was tempted to reach into his coat pocket and bring out a cigarette that he no longer carried nor had a habit for. He would just have to suffer through the memories of those days that had eventually started bringing to a close his colorful career as a collector of rare and valuable artifacts. Now he was but a paid messenger for a man he had sworn to kill over the death of a wife gone many years now. The past for Henri Farbeaux was always just a thought away, buried deep in memory that not even he himself could sort through.

“That, my dear, is what the Americans refer to as a ghost town. One that was quite active back in the summer of 2006.” Farbeaux closed his eyes as he leaned back just as the Black Hawk started to settle down into the desert scrub just outside the dead town. “This is Chato’s Crawl. I’m sure it sparks a flare of memory for you.” He smiled over at her, making her feel uncomfortable and not knowing why. “After all, it was in all of the papers.”

The memory was indeed there thanks to the briefing reports from the Mossad. She looked back at the now-relaxed Farbeaux.

“The terrorist cell that was uncovered here and in the mountains?”

“Terrorist cell?” Henri gave her a bemused chuckle and then looked at Anya full on as he removed his sunglasses. “You’re one of them now, and you’ll soon learn that most American cover-ups start with a grain of truth and expand from there. Terrorists, yes, by all means they were indeed that.”

“One thing you should know about me, Colonel, I do not have your sense of humor.”

“Really?” he said as he leaned back against the bulkhead of the compartment and replaced his sunglasses. He smiled again as the large helicopter settled onto the sand-covered roadway where once upon a time giant C-130 Hercules cargo planes had set down to disgorge its cargo of 101st Airborne troops for the defense of the American desert. “Well, my dear, possibly being the future Mrs. Everett, you better develop that sense of humor.” His smile left his face as the wheels of the Black Hawk set down on the sand-covered roadway behind the large and abandoned Texaco station. Farbeaux finally sat up and looked at her seriously. “This is the town where the first shots of the war you just survived and your boyfriend did not were fired. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? I mean being brought to the place where it all started, for me, for you,” he said as he saw the face of Jack Collins on the inside of his eyelids, “and for many others.”

“Well, we’re not alone,” Anya said as the whine of the Black Hawk turbines started to dwindle to nothing as the air force crew chief opened the sliding door and hopped out.

Farbeaux assisted Anya from the helicopter and then saw that there were three more UH-60s sitting in a neat circle in the old parking lot of the Texaco station, which had seen far better days.

“This way,” the crew chief said, indicating the broken and smashed diner across the street.

Henri smiled as he recalled the first time he had been there and met the owner of the small eatery. He recalled her name: Julie Dawes. From what he understood the old man, Gus Tilley, had made the woman’s and her son’s lives quite comfortable after the finding of the Lost Dutchman gold mine. He shook his head as he took in the dilapidated diner. He lost his smile when he remembered the men he had lost in the town and below it in tunnels made by a being from another world as it sought to exterminate men from this planet — the opening shots of the war between mankind and the Grays.

As the filthy glass door of the diner was held open for them by the Black Hawk’s crew chief, Henri immediately saw the three armed men just inside. The security was part of the Group. Henri could always tell because Collins trained his men to blend in. The three just sat around in civilian clothes and watched the grouping of six people waiting at tables that had been placed together.

“Colonel Farbeaux, Anya, have a seat, we’ll be starting in a moment.”

Henri smiled at Virginia Pollock. He swore the lady had more grace to her than most women of royal blood would have coursing through their veins. In his estimation the assistant director of this very strange agency was just plain elegant and deserved to be treated that way.

“It is good to see you again, Dr. Pollock,” Farbeaux said as he went to her and kissed her hand. She smiled and then glanced over at a very perturbed Master Chief Jenks, who was puffing heavily on his cigar, which Virginia had told him not to light.

“Wait one goddamn minute,” Jenks said as he stood from the table he and Virginia had been sitting at. Virginia rolled her eyes when she realized the master chief was about to fly into a jealous rage. She batted her eyes, thinking that he did feel something for her after all. “You’re that son of a bitch Frenchy colonel that sank my freakin’ boat!” he said with wide eyes.

Henri realized who the brutish little man was and that he had been near him the entire time down in Antarctica and never put the face to the name — until now.

“Well, the famous Master Chief Jenks. Haven’t seen you since—”

“You know goddamn well when the last time was, Froggy: when you blew up and sank my boat down in that backward-ass lagoon in the Amazon.”

“That’s enough, we can talk about our colorful pasts another time. Sit down, please.”

All faces with the exception of Virginia Pollock’s turned at the sound of the voice. Niles Compton stood at the swinging doors that used to front the kitchen of the Broken Cactus Bar and Grill. He placed his briefcase down on a covered table and then allowed Gunnery Sergeant Rodriguez to help him settle into the chair. Then Rodriguez and the other three security men went about the small area that used to be full of small cocktail tables, placing large monitors and computer links that had their power lines running over to the Texaco station where a small generator had been set up. There was only one of the original three pool tables left and that was being used by a tray full of Styrofoam cups and steaming coffee. Small sandwiches were also laid next to the service. All eyes were on the shattered features of the director of Department 5656.

“We will begin shortly. It seems our security director has something to work out with his people.”

Henri smiled as he sat down next to Anya and then infuriated the master chief when he winked at him. As for the chief, he had decided that as soon as he was able and thought he could get away with it he was going to eat frog legs for dinner. He would kill the Frenchman for destroying his boat, USS Teacher. Farbeaux’s smile grew when he heard the raised voices coming from the kitchen.

“Mr. Director, I’m so happy that things in security continue to go on as smooth as a French woman’s”—he looked at Anya, Virginia, and then with a dip of his head in deference to the women and to the quiet kid in the wheelchair in the corner—“a French baby’s bottom.”

The comment was accompanied by a smashing of metal onto the old, stained, and broken checkerboard tile of the kitchen.

The old rack of dusty utensils flew to the tiled floor near the repaired hole that was once created by what the Group had come to know as the Destroyer. It had since been filled in with concrete as had all the other hidden tunnels underneath the town. The outline of the repaired hole kept Sarah’s attention as she endured the anger of Jack Collins. Captain Jason Ryan was close to being insubordinate to the colonel. The two were almost nose to nose and even Charlie was pushed aside when the two security men clashed.

“I asked you point-blank if your assault and infiltration team was ready, you said yes.”

Ryan didn’t back away an inch from Collins. Sarah and Charlie Ellenshaw could only watch the two friends come close to blows. She had never seen Jack act like this with his people. Will Mendenhall stood in the far corner with his arms crossed over his chest. Sarah could see that he was torn between coming to Jason’s defense as he always did, and seeing Jack’s obvious point of view. Will understood the difference, being he was fully trained on tactical assault whereas Jason wasn’t fully up to date. He could see the reasoning behind the colonel’s anger.

“You,” he said as his finger hit Charlie Ellenshaw in the chest.

“Ow,” the cryptozoologist said, but to his credit, Mendenhall and the other two noticed Charlie bravely held his ground just as Jason had done.

“I know you’re hurting, Doc. You don’t lose personnel like Pete and Matchstick, Gus and Dr. Gilliam, and then just go about your everyday life like normal. You have to learn that in the business we have chosen — a business we have voluntarily chosen — you lose people, Doc, and they are always friends. Always!” Jack emphasized the point with his nose only inches from Charlie’s.

Sarah saw Charlie deflate.

“You lost your pal, Pete, but I and Niles, we lost thousands, Charlie. And no matter what you do, you cannot bring them back. I know for a fact that you can’t.” Collins turned away from a saddened Ellenshaw and lowered his head and his voice. “I’ve tried a million different ways to do just that.”

“Colonel, I—”

Jack looked up, still angry, but mostly sad for the way he had had to come down on the people he admired and respected. “You are both dismissed. Captain, you too. I need a word with Ryan alone.”

Sarah took Charlie by the arm and turned to leave the broken kitchen that still held the lingering smell of old grease and even older beer. After all of this time the diner placed an exclamation point on the term ghost town. Will hesitated before opening the swinging doors as he took in both men. One, his best friend, the other, a man who was more like a father than his commanding officer. He shook his head and then left the kitchen.

Collins rubbed his tired eyes and then faced Ryan. Normally the tattoo on his face would have been cause for teasing and laughing, but lately there had been very little of that throughout the Event Group complex.

“I told you, Jack, I am not the leader you want. Will is far more qualified than I am. Just because I have more time served doesn’t mean I am a better or more qualified officer. I’m a fighter-jock, a tomcat driver”—the sad look again—“or was one anyway.” He shook his head as he looked at a man he respected above all others. “And you know that kind of fighter jock arrogance makes for terrible leadership skills, at least for me. The navy knew that when everyone else still had hope for me. Now I guess you know, Jack.”

“But you made the choice of going in with inexperienced people on your team.” Collins nodded. “I know we are horribly shorthanded, Jason, so why didn’t you cancel the operation when the specialists you needed weren’t available?” He faced Ryan with a sad look. “Carl never would have done that. In order for this plan to work, and believe me it’s the thinnest mission we will ever come across, and the most dangerous, I have to have everyone on the same page.”

A hurt look came across Jason’s face and then he turned to leave the kitchen, but stopped just short of exiting as he stood but didn’t face Jack.

“Jack, I’m not Carl.” He gestured toward the doors and the people beyond. “No one here is. Who’s the one pushing too hard?” He finally faced Jack. “I’ll settle it with this, Colonel, would you have canceled the operation with what you know is at stake?” He turned and left, leaving Jack to see himself just as he was seeing others — planning things with too much emotion.

That was unacceptable to a man like Collins. Jason was right, he did what Jack himself would have done. Collins supposed it was the hidden fear of losing even more people. He decided that Ryan’s rescue mission was more than brilliant, it was one he himself would have planned.

On exiting the kitchen, Collins walked over to the old and broken waitress station and sat on an old and dusty bar stool. His eyes watched as Jason went to a table where Will had pushed a chair out with his foot. Jason sat. Then his eyes took in the master chief and Virginia, who was patting the retired naval engineer on the arm as if calming him down from something. And as Collins knew, that could be any one of a million things that would set the master chief off. Then his eyes went to the dark corner where the young man sat silently in his wheelchair. Mendenhall had reported that since his rescue from the Mexican prison the young man had said nothing other than to ask about the welfare of his mother. He was now watching the men and women sitting around him with a neutral look on his face. Jack did notice the worn and tattered black Converse sneakers on the young man’s crooked feet.

By far the most interesting table was occupied by Anya Korvesky, who nodded her lovely head at Jack. Her companion was looking directly at Collins. Henri Farbeaux sat stoically with his right eyebrow raised in interest after Jack had exited the kitchen. He felt the energy still coming off the colonel and Jack wondered if his bright idea would eventually lead to disaster. But for what they had to do in the next six months they needed the skills that Farbeaux had in abundance.

Niles cleared his throat and then started to stand as was his custom when he taught courses and addressed his management groups, but felt the bright flare of pain in his leg and decided he would speak from the comfort of a chair.

“For those of you who know where we are, I should tell you that the land and the town has been officially purchased by Department 5656. No one will ever be allowed in this town again after this day. We…” He paused only briefly. “I decided that this will be considered a battlefield grave site and will be protected as that for now and forever. We lost too many good people and soldiers here.”

All in the room saw Niles’s head dip as the last words were spoken. They had all indeed come a long way since that black summer in 2006.

Again he cleared his throat. “Your escorts have explained to you what our department does for the United States government.” He looked at Anya, Xavier Morales, and Master Chief Jenks. He didn’t bother including Henri Farbeaux in that comment due to the fact that the antiquities thief knew just as much about the Event Group as any one of them. “And that is as far as it will be explained until you agree to join us for what we have to do. That is the second reason we are meeting outside of our own facilities. This operation is not officially a part of our expanded charter. What we will do, we do on our own with a little bit of covert help from… well, our boss.” Compton looked at Collins, who straightened and then took a step forward and faced the room.

“If you choose to end this here and now, you will be escorted back to your former situation or job.” Jack looked at the thus far silent Xavier Morales, who still sat with his small hands folded in his lap. At first Jack thought the young man was frightened at the strangeness of the last two days, but he was slowly realizing that the computer genius was just watching, learning — or was it scheming? “The director has arranged for both you, Mr. Morales, and for you, Master Chief Jenks, to return home to your normal lives if you choose not to be a part of our operations. Mr. Morales—” Jack walked over and stood in front of the young man, who only looked up without comment. Jack handed him an envelope. “That is a cashier’s check for two hundred thousand dollars. If at the end of your conversation with Director Compton you wish to depart our company, that check will be yours, no strings attached.”

The young man’s eyes never wavered and he didn’t do anything with the envelope except place it on the small table in front of him. Jack moved away after the noncommittal response.

“I think I will take door number one also,” Henri said as he looked seriously from Jack to Niles.

“Your deal is completely different, Colonel. Jack will explain that option to you in a more private setting.” Compton looked from a nonsmiling Farbeaux to a confident Collins. “I would now like to introduce to most of you someone who you have never met before,” Niles said as he looked at his people. “Anya, please stand up.”

Mendenhall, Ryan, Sarah, and Charlie all looked confused as each of them had met and worked with Anya since the war began with the Grays.

“Major Korvesky has decided to join Department 5656 as an American citizen. The president has signed an executive order and placed it in her new file at Group. She will be accorded management status and be placed under my direct control until she makes the adjustment to the colonel’s security team once this operation is complete. Welcome, Anya, to Department 5656.

“Miss Korvesky is now officially a part of the Group, she has been signed off on by the president. That leaves Master Chief Jenks, you, Colonel Farbeaux, and our young friend, Mr. Morales.”

“Easy for me,” Henri said as his face corkscrewed into a sour look as he tasted the coffee. “I’ll take a check just like you offered this young man and then I’ll take my leave.” He smiled and sat back down next to Anya, who sat with a bemused look on her face.

The pistol appeared in Henri’s face just as he lifted the Styrofoam cup to his lips. The look in the former Mossad agent’s face was telling him she had little patience for his offhanded joking. She cocked the nine millimeter.

“Okay, that’s a very good negotiating tactic,” Henri said as he sipped his coffee, but everyone saw that the Frenchman never blinked. This was not, after all, the first time he had had a gun shoved in his face.

“We do things a little differently here, Miss Korvesky,” Niles said as he watched Jack slowly place his thumb between the hammer and the firing pin of the Glock pistol. He easily removed it from a very disappointed Anya. He moved back to the bar after ejecting the clip and placed the weapon on the dusty top. He gave a sour look at his security men, who had supposedly assured them that Anya was not armed. Henri winked as he lowered his cup of coffee, but there was very little humor in the gesture.

“What can I say,” Henri said as he turned to face Collins and then back at Anya, “you have piqued my interest.”

“Henri, when this operation is completed one way or the other, you’re free to go on your merry way. Until then you belong to me. Complete your duties and the guarantee that the president gave you concerning amnesty for all crimes committed within our borders will be expunged as promised six months ago.”

“In other words, the same agreement I said yes to before the war — that one,” he said angrily as he was shocked to learn that Collins had another plan.

“The very same, Henri.”

“So, the colonel is in. I suppose it’s not necessary for you to fill out nondisclosure paperwork, Colonel?” Niles asked with the eyebrow over his new eye patch raised in interest.

“I believe you have absorbed too much of Colonel Collins’s fantastic personality, Mr. Director.”

“Yes, I imagine I have. Now, you, Master Chief.”

Jenks pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “Are we gonna do what Ginny said we were gonna do?”

Niles looked at the master chief. The man was decorated by the president for his actions during the war. Afterward he flew home angry when he learned of Everett’s death and had not spoken to anyone since. It was as if they were to blame for Everett’s actions in vanishing into that wormhole.

“We are, yes.” Niles was silent after the answer.

“Then I guess signing on to your ship of fools for life is the price I have to pay to the devil?”

“Yes,” Niles said.

Jenks looked at Virginia, who only stared back, waiting for his final answer.

“And engineering is all mine, unlimited budget?”

“To a degree, yes,” Compton said, still feeling uneasy at the offer Virginia had negotiated for Jenks. But they needed the master chief just as much as Morales.

“Then I’m in,” he said as he tossed his dead cigar away. Then Jenks went and retrieved it after a dirty look from Virginia. “As I said”—he looked at the angry nuclear physicist—“I’m in.” She smiled and dipped her head.

“That leaves Mr. Morales,” Compton said as he finally took in the brilliant computer whiz. The young man remained silent. After being told the short version of what this agency did, Morales had become introspective as he thought it out. He had heard rumors of a hidden government agency and had even been close to finding out more details just before his brother’s murder had stalled his private investigation of this mysterious agency.

The young man simply retrieved the envelope with the cashier’s check inside and slid it away from him, giving hope to Niles that he was accepting. He looked at Jason, Sarah, Mendenhall, Rodriguez, and Charlie, and then dipped his dark hair in deference to them. He spoke the first words Niles and Collins had ever heard him speak.

“Thank you for getting me out of the situation I was in.” He half smiled at the five people he had thanked. “But it was a situation I was willing to accept for what I had done. In other words no matter what my fate would have been, it was one that I had chosen.”

“Even though that fate was to be torn limb from limb by wild animals?” Jason said, not liking the way the brilliant computer wunderkind was speaking.

“Yes, even that. That man and men like him killed my brother and many, many more with names just as familiar to me and my family. I’m afraid I decline your offer. I have much more work to do at a place a little closer to home for me.”

“I see,” Niles said. Compton cleared his throat and then looked at Rodriguez. He nodded at the director. “Europa, are you online?” Niles asked.

Everyone in the dusty room saw the largest of the five monitors come to life. The printed response was now a familiar sign to those who had been working on Europa since the death of Pete Golding. It was also one of the main reasons why Morales was needed. Europa had not used her voice algorithm since the day she learned Golding would not be coming home. She had remained totally silent. She always fulfilled her duties, but would never respond in voice, only with written text. The Marilyn Monroe voice had not been heard in the computer sciences division since that day.

“Online Director Compton.”

“Visual?” Compton asked.

“Optics available.”

“Identify and authenticate manufacturing certificate.”

“XP 2760, Blue Ice systems, Code-named; Europa, Cray manufacturing certificate number—0005, last of series, platform was discontinued in 2001.”

Niles and the others watched the face of Morales and for the first time he showed that he was listening. Still, he sat silent.

“Europa, query,” Niles said.

“Query.”

“Progress on replacement search, computer sciences division director?”

All eyes went to the screen; even Morales looked up as if only curious.

The room was silent as Europa was dark. Only the flashing cursor showed she was still operational.

“Europa, answer query,” Niles persisted.

Silence and darkness on the screen. Compton looked over at Morales, who sat stoically in his wheelchair.

“Europa, number of qualified candidates?”

“Seventeen qualified candidates.”

“List the seventeen, please,” Niles asked, knowing what was coming.

Silence again. Compton exchanged looks with Virginia and Collins. They were as mystified as he. Still, Europa was dark, just the flashing cursor after Compton’s query.

“Europa, list qualified candidates as chosen by computer sciences, please.”

“Xavier Morales.”

All eyes went to the quiet man in the corner. His brows rose but that was the limit of his surprise.

“List the names of other candidates, please.”

Silence and darkness on the screen.

“Europa, separate query, file clearance, Compton, Niles, director, Department 5656. Criminal activity file, United States, query: name person or persons responsible for breaking security protocols for Europa Blue Ice system in the winter of 2012?”

“Xavier Morales, age 25 years 3 months, Los Angeles, California. Duration of criminal activity, seventeen seconds. Trace completed 1/23/2012. No charges filed this date.”

“Does that date sound familiar, Mr. Morales?”

The young man finally used his strong hands to push his chair forward and wheeled around. He was looking up at the large monitor.

“Rumor,” he said under his breath as he continued to look at the black screen in front of him.

“Excuse me?” Henri said, interested in the goings-on of the world’s most advanced computing system. Morales didn’t look back as he spoke.

“That night I was chasing a rumor when I hooked up with… with…”

“My computer system,” Niles said, falsifying his anger to a degree.

“Yes, I used a little-known Cray algorithm to get through.” He turned to face Compton and the others. “I laid a trap and your system found me.”

“You don’t have to bother us with the details of your crime, but needless to say you broke into one of five Blue Ice systems in the world. Europa is the most advanced of those systems.”

“They are real,” Morales said as his verbal tone went into one of wonder at what he was hearing. “They do exist. How many again, this one and four others? Let me guess, the Pentagon,” he thought, biting his lower lip as he saw it through. “The CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency?”

Silence greeted his educated guess. His face suddenly turned white. “Your system set me up?” he asked.

“No, not Europa on her own, our computer sciences director found you after your little hacking foray and wanted to know if you could do it again. You did three days later, and that was when Europa trapped you. Thus the reason why you are here.”

“And that makes this young man qualified just because he happens to be good at breaking and entering?” Jenks said with a laugh as he pulled a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket, but replaced it when Virginia raised her brows.

“I’m not qualified. No one is. The Blue Ice system is a system designed to learn at advanced rates. It pioneered the memory sheet for processing. The rumor is that there was one Blue Ice out there with an advanced Bubble Memory processor that has yet to be authenticated by anyone. I suspect this system has that Bubble Chip memory. Who designed it?”

“Dr. Pete Golding.”

Morales looked at Niles and his jaw dropped.

“Dr. Golding, the former chair of computer sciences at MIT?” he asked.

“The same,” answered Compton with a look at Charlie Ellenshaw, who sat and listened but his eyes were boring in on Morales.

“I did my dissertation on Dr. Golding and his AI theories my sixth year.”

“Yes, we know.”

“Can I speak to him? I have a million questions to ask,” Morales said.

“I agree with the master chief,” Charlie said, standing up so fast his chair fell over. “This kid isn’t qualified to take Pete’s place!” He angrily left the dining area and exited the building altogether.

Morales for the first time looked stunned. He turned and watched Ellenshaw as he left. Then he faced Niles once more.

“You’ll have to excuse the professor,” Compton said, but did not elaborate on Charlie’s anger.

“Pete was killed two months ago,” Jack answered for Niles.

Morales actually looked saddened at the news.

“He was a great man, well advanced in his theories.” He turned his chair and then wheeled away.

“Mr. Morales, Europa has been acting very strangely since the loss of Dr. Golding.”

“She’s not using her voice algorithm?” he asked without turning back around. “Refusing to answer certain inquiries?”

“Yes, to both questions,” Niles said.

Morales wheeled around and faced the screen.

“The peccadillos of artificial intelligence, ladies and gentlemen. I theorize that the Blue Ice systems, especially one in which Dr. Golding was continually educating, are very peculiar. They sense change, read change, adapt to change. She would not be happy having someone else’s hands on her systems. She’s spoiled, you might say.”

“So why would she focus on you and only you?” Compton asked, hoping beyond hope that the young man had an answer.

“I don’t know. Why don’t we ask her?”

“Be my guest, but she hasn’t been advised of your presence and has no knowledge you’re here. So don’t be surprised if she doesn’t answer you.”

The others in the room watched as Morales pushed his chair forward and faced the large monitor.

“Really, no knowledge?” Morales asked with a smile. “Europa, are you online and do you currently have optical capability?”

“Yes,” she typed out, but was still silent.

“Identify questioner, please,” he asked, watching the screen. They saw the small box atop the monitor as the aperture on the camera lens focused on the man in the wheelchair. There was silence but only for a moment, and then magic happened.

“Xavier Edmund Morales.”

Looks were exchanged between Group members as they heard the simulated voice of Marilyn Monroe as she answered verbally for the first time in two months. Morales turned and looked at the people behind him.

“Hello, Europa, it is very nice to meet you.”

Jenks looked at Virginia and rolled his eyes. “Love at first sight,” he whispered.

“Europa, members of the staff are curious as to why you chose me among all the other qualified candidates?”

Silence.

“Europa, you are instructed to answer my query.”

Morales continued to look at the monitor. He turned and looked at Compton. Then back again.

“Europa, please power down and go off-line for the next twenty-four hours.”

“What are you doing? That system is needed in other places,” Niles said as he struggled to stand and finally making it with Jason’s assistance.

“Europa, off-line at sixteen forty-five hours.”

The room fell silent as Morales turned away from the monitor.

“You have a very sick Blue Ice system there.”

Compton looked at Ryan and then slowly sat back down.

“I suspect that she’s learning how to grieve.” Morales wheeled to the large dirty window and looked out at the falling sun over the desert. “When dealing with liquid memory bubbles, one has to know that some of those bubbles may become corrupt if the intelligence refuses to accept a certain input.”

“What are you saying?” Sarah asked.

“She is refusing to contemplate that her creator has left the building, so to speak,” he said, and then immediately felt bad for making light of Dr. Golding’s death. “We just don’t know enough about Blue Ice dynamics and how they will integrate to a liquid bubble memory system. She is highly capable of expansion of that system and she doesn’t know how to do it. Dr. Golding wasn’t there to explain it to her. This is why I shut her down until someone qualified can go in and expand her liquid systems to accept new data on operations, and one thing Dr. Golding never instructed her on… death of the human species. Oh, she’s read about it, but never thought about it… she chose me to do it because she really doesn’t trust anyone else. Why? Because I guess she believes I was smart enough. Why, I don’t know.”

“Because you were the only person ever to successfully break into a Blue Ice system outside of Europa herself,” Niles said as he took in Morales.

“I suspected as much. Very temperamental, these experimental Cray systems.”

Compton started gathering his paperwork together. “Good, you’re hired. Salary is commensurate with a first-year government employee.”

“God, the poor kid’s going to be broke the rest of his life,” Jenks said with a laugh.

“Hey, wait a minute, I don’t even know what it is you want me for. I mean, what have you people got planned, and more importantly”—he looked at the tattooed face of his rescuer, Ryan—“who in the hell are you people?”

Niles stood with his briefcase with the help of Ryan and Mendenhall.

“Planned?” Niles asked, looking from Morales to the others who were just as curious. Sarah, Jason, Charlie, nor even Will Mendenhall knew what was up. Only the senior management team at the center knew and for the past two months only Anya had knowledge of what was going on. As for the former Israeli Mossad agent, she stood and went to look out of the filthy window deep in thought. Compton shook his head as he took in each new face and even those that were usually in the know. “We are going to attempt to bring home a friend from a very long distance away.”

Morales looked at Niles and the others.

“Now, we need you, Mr. Morales. Do we have you?”

Xavier Morales looked from Compton and then to the large blank screen of the monitor.

“I can make sure my mother is taken care of?”

“We have taken the opportunity to move your mother to a better location, but she remains close to her friends, she is very safe,” Collins said as he advanced and gave Morales a file. “All the information is in there. She’s expecting you to call sometime tonight.”

Morales looked at Jack and was amazed at how fast these people worked. He then looked at Compton again.

“Europa will be my responsibility?”

“Yes, complete control of computer sciences and her one hundred and twelve techs.”

Morales smiled and just nodded. “The least I can do is take a look at her.”

“No, it’s either in or out. If out, you will never hear from or see us ever again.”

He could see how serious Niles was. Again he nodded. “I’m in.”

Niles smiled and nodded. “Welcome aboard Department 5656.”

“Now, where are we going?” Henri Farbeaux asked as everyone stood to leave.

Collins went to Henri and stood in front of him with the largest, most uncomfortable smile Henri had ever seen on the face of the most stoic man he had ever met.

“Henri, even you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Yes? Well, why don’t you give it a try?”

Jack smiled again as he gathered up his own materials. He then looked at Ryan, Sarah, and then finally Mendenhall, knowing they wanted to know just as bad.

“We’re going back to Antarctica, Henri.”

Jack turned and left.

“You know I hate the cold,” Henri said as he wanted the others to protest as much as himself. But they were just as stunned.

“The part of Antarctica we’re going to isn’t cold at all, Henri.” Jack didn’t turn around as he left the shattered shell of the Broken Cactus.

“What in the hell does that mean?” Henri asked Virginia as she moved to the door with Jenks.

“It’s not where we are going, Colonel Farbeaux, it’s when we are going.”

“What?” he persisted.

Virginia laughed out loud and so did Jenks. Sarah, Ryan, and Mendenhall were curious as to why this was funny to the two of them.

“Colonel, the reason Mrs. Hamilton sent you to Israel was to get Anya and the information she uncovered back to the director safely.”

“And that information is?” Henri asked, not liking the way the assistant director unfolded her arms with a sneaky smile and then faced him.

“For the simple reason Anya was able to uncover a trail, a trail that may lead us to Carl.”

Virginia left the diner and as she did Anya Korvesky also left, a void of confusion in their wake.

“Does she mean—” Sarah started to ask but Henri cut her off and then put forth the more logical explanation.

“It means you people are absolutely, unequivocally insane.”

4

The conference room on level seven was silent as the members of the specialized team faced one another. For Sarah, Charlie, and Virginia, they had to smile as each and every person at the table who had not been a part of the Event Group before today sat in total shock and a disturbing silence after being hit with the secrets of the entire world laid out before their eyes. The biggest void came from Master Chief Jenks, who sat looking at the polished tabletop. Even Anya, who had guessed at the duties of Carl’s decidedly strange agency, was stunned at the few artifact vaults they had been shown. As for the young man, Morales, he was still smiling at what he had seen. The only person who had not been given the grand tour of the complex was, of course, Colonel Henri Farbeaux. Niles just wasn’t ready for that and might never be. Farbeaux had been in the complex before but had never seen the vault levels and on Jack’s advice would keep it that way. He was escorted into the conference room by Jason Ryan. While Henri went to a seat by the table, Ryan turned on someone they could not see and gestured animatedly. Frustrated, he shot one more barrage of anger at whomever he was speaking to, then closed the conference room door and angrily sat next to Mendenhall.

“Do we have a problem, Commander?” Niles asked as all eyes turned and saw Alice Hamilton walking through the door. The eighty-nine-year-old was dressed in a light blue pantsuit and was carrying an armload of files and paperwork as if she had never retired.

“Mr. Ryan, is there a problem?” Niles repeated.

Alice took her normal place beside Niles and then placed her work on the table and smiled at each of the newcomers. For Anya it was like looking at the wife of George Washington, for as much as Carl had spoken about the famous Mrs. Hamilton and her brilliant boss, the deceased Garrison Lee. Anya had to admit that there was an air of royalty about the woman and as they made eye contact she could see why Sarah was of the opinion that Alice and Anya would soon become great friends.

“Oh, Mr. Ryan is a little put out with Clarisse Carpenter and her people.”

Niles looked from Jason to Alice, who had adjusted her seating and was pouring a glass of water from the carafe. “Clarisse? You mean of the logistics department?” Niles asked.

At the end of the table Ryan made a face, scrunching up the horrid tattoo used as cover to break Morales out of prison.

“It seems our logistics department placed the wrong tattoo on Jason here and he’s a little put out by it.” Alice couldn’t help herself as she grinned while trying to cover her mouth with the water glass. She failed miserably.

“Well, are you going to keep us in suspense?” Jack asked, guessing at the predicament Jason was now facing.

Ryan remained silent as he kicked Mendenhall under the table for snickering.

“It seems they used the wrong ink on Jason’s prosthetic tattoo.”

All eyes went to Ryan, who lowered his head in embarrassment. The tattoo was the most brutal any of them had ever seen. The animal claw actually covered the entirety of his right-side facial features.

“How long?” Niles asked sadly, but inside he was glad that this situation broke up the seriousness of the meeting.

“Five weeks. It won’t wear off for five weeks!” Ryan said as he challenged the smiling faces around the table.

“The lady-killer of the high desert — how will you survive?” Will asked in a seriously concerned tone.

Ryan started to say something but Jack stopped them.

“Thank you, Mr. Ryan. I will have a talk with logistics and have some precautions taken for future reference.”

“Wonderful,” Ryan said as he again gave Will a murderous look.

“I would love to know what our new personnel thought of our artifact and vault level, but I’m afraid we must get down to business. Mr. Morales still has to meet his department heads and has to settle in with Europa. He has quite an amount of work to get done and as always we have very little time to do it in.” Compton nodded at Alice.

“Europa, visual aide 17890, please,” Alice said, and then looked flustered when Europa did not respond. “Europa, visual aide please,” Alice asked again.

On the large 105-inch monitor that sat in the middle of fifty-two smaller ones, the screen came to life and showed an old black-and-white picture. It showed a man in a white lab coat next to a small girl who could not be more than fifteen. It was obviously a young woman from a concentration camp. The two were standing in front of a hundred or so similarly dressed technicians. With the exception of the small, hellishly thin girl, they were all smiling. The date scrawled on the bottom of the photo was 1943.

Niles Compton looked at Anya and nodded just as he had done with Alice.

“Lars Thomsen. German scientist of some renown only for his work in the early twenties with one Albert Einstein. In 1939 Professor Thomsen dropped out of the scientific world for all intents and purposes to dedicate his life to the acquisition of quantum technology.”

Everyone heard the exhale of breath from Master Chief Jenks, but he remained quiet after voicing his opinion of quantum theories.

“I understand your doubts, Master Chief, an educated engineer such as yourself always wants facts, hard design, not theory. But be patient with me and I will bring you to believe in the quantum sciences. I was just like you when I started digging after the death of”—she paused, looking embarrassed, but continued—“after the war.”

“Who is the girl?” Charlie Ellenshaw asked.

“We’ll get to that, Charlie,” Niles said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But for now let’s concentrate on our findings. We don’t have a lot of time before I have to start filling in the other departments on what we will be”—he quickly corrected himself—“hope to be attempting.”

Ellenshaw nodded in understanding.

“The Israeli government in the late forties and fifties started a program to interview any Holocaust survivor they could debrief. Most in the vein of hunting down and finding war criminals, but there was other reasoning behind the interviews. Technology was one of those. So”—Anya, without really noticing, stood and started pacing, and all eyes followed the former Mossad agent as she walked—“in the process of debriefing the surviving slave labor force from sites such as Peenemünde, the V-1 rocket facility, Israeli intelligence came up with a name that kept recurring and for the life of them they didn’t know why. That place was Dortmund, Germany. It was familiar to some of our people for the simple fact that we were aware of Operation Chastise.”

“Excuse me?” Sarah asked, knowing that operational name sounded vaguely familiar.

“The Royal Air Force raids into Germany during the war to eliminate certain projects from the Nazi books by taking out their hydroelectric power generating systems, thus ending any hard-water experiments for their atomic weapons research programs,” Jack answered for Anya.

“The famous bouncing bombs? The Dam Busters?” Charlie asked, proud that he recalled such a thing.

“The same,” Anya said as she nodded at Jack in thanks. “Dortmund, or in particular the dam that served the region, was called the Möhne. The dam was struck by a bouncing bomb on the night of May 16, 1943, essentially knocking out power to over a thousand towns and villages. Through research we have discovered that the RAF might have been taking out far more than just their hard-water research.”

“For instance?” Mendenhall asked.

Anya smiled and nodded at the eagerness. “We’ll get to that part, Captain. Now, to the debriefing of all prisoners of war who served German science. While a first-year agent I was assigned the maddening job of refiling these old cases and mothballing, as you Americans say, any file that wasn’t relevant to the search for war criminals, as that function had officially ceased to exist for the Mossad after 1984. During this time I came across one interview that was hushed up and secreted away. It was from, of all people, a thirteen-year-old boy who served with his sister at an unknown bunker complex in Dortmund. I was able to uncover his testimony from the official Israeli debriefing conducted in Jerusalem in 1946, and the contents of that testimony led me to investigate the Dortmund area for any war activity that may have been noticed. I did this in the hopes of impressing certain people on my thoroughness. I found nothing. Then it was eventually filed away and I forgot all about the debriefing until the recent war. I brought it up to my uncle, who swept it under the rug and told me that there was nothing to the file and to forget about it. The fact that it was being hushed up by the most powerful man in the Mossad gave me at the very least some doubts about my uncle’s motives. I brought this fact up to Alice and Sarah and they conferred with Dr. Pollock. They wanted more information as it did have something to do with quantum theory as stated in the main file on this concentration camp survivor. So then on the advice of Dr. Compton and Virginia, I started delving into construction records for the German Army — still nothing. Then I went back to the file on this young prisoner. It seems he described the final night of activity in Dortmund as the night he lost his only living relative. He also described a very famous personage attending this event, whatever it was. By his description it could have been none other than Heinrich Himmler himself.”

“What does that mean?” Charlie inquired.

“It means that whatever this project was, why Himmler? Why was he in Dortmund?”

“Maybe like the colonel said, the hard water. I’m sure Himmler would have been interested in that.” Charlie made a good point.

“That wasn’t it. Europa, slide 17895, please,” Anya said, facing the large screen. “Europa?” she repeated.

“Europa, slide number 17895, please,” Xavier Morales asked as everyone looked his way.

“Yes, Dr. Morales,” Europa finally said in her Marylyn Monroe voice. Again everyone exchanged looks.

“Admiration is one thing, but Europa is pushing it a little,” Will said, whispering to Ryan.

On the screen the picture changed and another appeared. This one showed Thomsen during the construction of his bunker system.

“The main clue as to the system and who built it. This is Thomsen himself standing with a construction president, Alexis Knudsen.”

“You know where this bunker complex was built?” Alice asked, admiring the newest member of the Event Group for her investigative technique. Alice could see why Carl had fallen for the young Gypsy woman.

“Through the gentleman’s surviving family, yes. Unbelievably the plans were still in his office in Dortmund.”

“Which leads us to the conclusion that this project was undertaken without the knowledge of the German engineers who usually built these facilities, like the one at Peenemünde, and who were not allowed in on this one project. Why? Because we assume it was Himmler’s and Himmler’s alone. Thus he hired an outside construction firm to build his series of bunkers.”

“That aspect of the investigation was conducted by Dr. Compton and Virginia, who did very well. So, we have an underground bunker complex built by Himmler for this man Thomsen. He hires a construction firm that has no ties with the Nazis or even the German Wehrmacht. That is what we in the intelligence community would call secretive.” Anya paused and looked at Niles.

“People, let’s get down to it. We suspect that through this Thomsen’s ties with Albert Einstein and his connection with quantum theories, that Himmler and his own private mad scientist were attempting time travel. I know it’s very thin, but it’s a chance.”

“Hogwash!” Master Chief Jenks said, not caring if Virginia shot him a warning look. “To me old Albert’s as entertaining a theorist as they come, and he did a bang-up job with the relativity thing, but time travel was something that he said would always be theory. It can be done, but never would be because there is no way to travel through time and space with the electrical technology we currently possess. That simple, folks.”

“And that is where we were short. We had no proof at all of what Himmler and Thomsen were working on. Until I actually found this child who was a part of the experiments.”

“You found him alive?” Sarah asked, amazed at the long odds the kid had to survive to make it to old age.

“Yes, in Tel Aviv… before he vanished.”

“What did he say?”

“He was afraid to discuss it, but he was old and sick by that time so he told me a story that shocked me, and from that sent us”—she gestured around the conference room at everyone—“down this path. He witnessed his sister, who was used in all of these experiments, actually leave this existence and arrive in another and return.”

The questions started flying and it took Niles standing to silence them. He was used to his people being excited about things, but to actually have the ability to travel through time was not something they had ever remotely considered with the technology this planet currently had.

“And we never had a hint of this experiment throughout our world search for quantum technology when the British found Captain Everett’s wristwatch in the ice in Antarctica?” asked Sarah again.

“No,” Niles said. “It seems Himmler covered his tracks rather well from the Nazi regime. And the Mossad’s reluctance after the war to pursue this to the full extent, well, let’s just say was disappointing. Now, through the discovered construction records and the description of the site from the concentration camp survivor, we found the location of the bunker system. The boy claimed the last experiment failed because of some mishap in the power supply. We now know that interruption was the RAF doing a number on the Möhne Dam. The boy claims the bunker system was flooded and destroyed and his sister, known to the Germans as the Traveler, never came back.”

“She was lost?” Alice asked, always placing a human face on such things from the past that made them seem more real for everyone around the table.

“Yes,” Anya said as she watched a weakened Niles Compton walk slowly to his desk near the far wall and lower himself painfully down into the far more comfortable desk chair.

“Since we know the location, why don’t we investigate firsthand?” Jason asked as he kept a hand over his partially disfigured face.

“If you had noticed, Colonel Collins was missing for some time a few weeks ago. He and Anya took a little foray into the woods outside of Dortmund. Jack, if you would?” Virginia volunteered.

“We spent three days wandering the woods and then we finally found a conduit access port used for electrical line maintenance. We found the bunker complex and that was why Anya was sent back to Israel to look for the final piece of the puzzle. And why Alice had to use an intermediary to get her out.”

Alice was the only one to nod her head in Farbeaux’s direction.

“The last puzzle piece? I thought you found the bunker?” Jenks asked as he pulled the cold stub of cigar from his mouth.

“We did indeed. Flooded and collapsed, most of it. A few old skeletons in SS uniforms and evidence that something very powerful happened there.”

“And you recovered the equipment used by this Thomsen and Himmler?”

Jack pursed his lips and shook his head.

“None of the displacement equipment was there. It had been removed,” Anya finished for him.

“Himmler went back and got it, huh?” Jenks interjected while shaking his head.

“No. The equipment was moved in 1969, several years after all concerned in this particular event was dead, even Himmler.”

“How in the hell do you know that?” Jenks persisted, looking for any holes in Jack’s or Anya’s stories.

“Because the same construction company, which is family owned and operated, removed the equipment that very same year. Contracted by a company not from Germany.”

“Where is the equipment?”

Anya looked at Jenks and then lowered her head. “We don’t know.”

“And that was why Anya went home. We had to know more, personnel records and things like that. We had to know who was still alive in 1969 who would know what it was they were looking for down there. Anya found the only other person who is known to have survived that night.” Jack sat down and looked at Anya.

“And that is why we need each and every one of you in the next few weeks. We have the name thanks to Mossad files, we just have to locate that person because they have the time displacement equipment for some reason.”

“Well, you goin’ to let us in on the big secret?” Jenks said, huffing at the dramatics of the group.

Anya went to her chair and pulled out the same file that General Shamni produced for her. She tossed it into the middle of the table.

“I give you the thief of the technology taken from the bunker in 1969. Moira Mendelsohn.”

“Who?” Sarah asked, looking from Anya to Jack. It was Jack who answered.

“Moira Mendelsohn—the Traveler.”

The room went silent.

“Humph, rumph,” the master chief rudely said as he stood up from the table. “So, you’re telling us that the only person to actually… time travel”—he sourly hissed the words—“stole the equipment we need to retrieve our boy?”

“Yes, that’s what we’re saying, Master Chief,” Jack said.

“So the one question we have to ask is,” Niles said from his desk, “where did she go with it and what reasoning did this concentration camp survivor have for wanting it in the first place. Even if we weren’t attempting to do the impossible”—he shot a quick glance at the master chief—“we could never allow this technology to be utilized for any one individual’s personal gain. The tech itself will eventually have to be outlawed.”

“You mean after we possibly use it for our little illegal gain?” Jenks quipped.

“Something like that,” Collins said, quickly losing his patience with the master chief.

“I have a better question,” Charlie Ellenshaw said. “It seems you have overlooked one little item. If she hid the equipment, where she hid it is not the right question at all. When did she hide it — in the past, or right here in the present?”

Niles lowered his head and rubbed his temples. “That is why I have called upon the most brilliant people I know to find out. Xavier, that is the task I am assigning you and Europa. Find me that woman. Your first order of business.”

Young Morales was not afraid of the challenge. He could find anyone, which he had already proven. He just nodded and then frowned when he saw Charlie Ellenshaw staring at him. The man was angry and Morales would need to know more about the strange professor they called Crazy Charlie. For now, as the others filed out of the conference room, he looked up at the still photo of Professor Thomsen and the young girl sadly standing bedside him and he silently repeated the name.

“The Traveler.”

Alice Hamilton lagged behind as the others left the conference room and then took her time turning to face Niles, who sat at his desk and pretended he didn’t see her. This was a confrontation he had not been looking forward to — a battle with his own conscience as voiced by the marvelous young actress Alice Hamilton.

“Quite a collection of new faces you have; interesting, to say the least,” she said as she easily placed her ever-present files on the edge of the large desk.

Compton looked up and smiled. He decided to let Alice throw the first punch and remained silent as she politely folded her hands in her lap and then adjusted a strand of gray hair that slipped from her bun. He kept the smile and waited.

“The young man”—she picked up a thick file from the top of her stack and opened it—“Xavier Morales, brilliant, so many letters after his name it looks like a screwed-up alphabet. Thus far since his professional career has started he has broken into no less than three commercial companies with names like Microsoft, IBM, and Raytheon. He claims boredom. Main achievement in life, hacked close to a billion dollars from a drug cartel.” Alice smiled and closed the folder. “Still, him I can understand. You need an abstract mind to keep up with Europa, I get it.”

Niles leaned back as he watched the waters of the floodgates overflow. He pushed two aspirins into his mouth and dry-swallowed them. They caught, he grimaced, but then managed to get them down just as Alice reached for the second file. She eyed Niles as she opened it, waiting to see if his one good eye would flinch.

“Master Chief Harold Jenks, United States Navy, retired. Owner Blacksmith Engineering. Everyone in his own company hates his guts even though he has made all fifty-one employees very wealthy. Ruthless, barbaric, and quite the engineering genius. Here only because he has a fatal attraction with the only woman he has ever been terrified of, our own assistant director. Bottom line: unstable, uncontrollable, and any other ‘un’ you can think of. Not Department 5656 material, and that is according to your own job description and criteria.”

“Okay I—”

Alice politely smiled and held up her hand. “Oh, but there is more Mr. Director. How about a foreign intelligence agent who now has access to the greatest finds in the history of the world? Granted, she’s a woman we all like and admire, especially myself.”

“Alice, I—”

“And let us not forget our good friend Colonel Henri Farbeaux. Do I need to go into his record?”

“Now that was Jack’s idea and you have to admit Henri’s already paid dividends for this Group.”

“Yes, by getting our other high-risk asset out of Jerusalem, I know. It was me who sent him in as I figured if the Mossad arrested him we weren’t at a loss of one of our own.” Alice started gathering her files. “You are rushing into this, Niles.” She stopped and looked at the director. “All I’m saying is be careful. These new people are brilliant and are capable of good things, but make sure they belong here in the long term and not just for getting Carl back. They need to belong.”

Niles decided to let it drop now that he knew that Alice was only voicing his own inner thoughts and venting her fears, which were in line with his own. He watched her as she gave him one last look before patting his arm.

“You look pretty good, by the way. How’s your buddy?”

“The president is doing better, and yes, I do feel somewhat… well, besides being blinded in my right eye, having a scar on my face the length of Long Island, and knowing that this is the best I’ll ever walk again, hell, not bad at all.” He gave Alice a sour look as she smiled and turned for the conference room door.

“Could have been worse, Mr. Director. After all you still have your balls, and with these new personnel changes here at Group, you’re going to need them.”

Niles watched the door close and then he faced the large monitor and the image that was still up. He gave a crazed chuckle and wondered if he was doing the right thing in risking more lives to get one back from the dead.

Alice caught up to Xavier Morales as he just finished his rounds in the computer center. Though quiet and shy he asked very legitimate questions of the one hundred men and women who would be working for him in computer sciences. Most of the apprehension at having someone so young being a department head was tempered by the fact that they had all heard of Xavier Morales, the wunderkind of MIT. Alice watched the young man through the glass and immediately saw that he wasn’t dressed as a man of his education would have normally dictated: black tennis shoes and an old checkered button-down shirt. His black hair was neatly combed and in his shy way looked as if he were nothing more than a teenage boy.

Jason Ryan turned and saw Alice standing outside of the large theater-style comp center and then nodded as Morales turned to leave. Jason quickly opened the door for him. Alice greeted the young man and introduced herself again. She looked at Jason and stifled a laugh at his tattooed predicament.

“And I suspect Jason was taking you over to meet Europa face-to-face?” Alice asked. With boredom etching his features, Jason nodded. “Well, you probably have far better things to be doing. I’ll take him, I need a word with our new comp genius.”

Without a word Ryan hurriedly left toward the bank of elevators so he could get down to logistics where a whole lot of people responsible for this tattoo had better be ready for war.

Alice gestured for Xavier to continue down the same hallway. She noticed the old chair and the strong arms that propelled the young man at a pretty good clip.

“Our engineers can find you something far more advanced than that old chair if you wish,” she said, suspecting she already knew the young man’s answer.

“And Master Chief Jenks is one of those engineers?”

Alice only raised her lovely brows and smiled.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Hamilton, I was raised in this chair and if I get anything else now I would get lazy and also get no exercise at all.” He slowed his pace and then looked at Alice. “Tell me about Professor Ellenshaw.”

“Charlie?” A sad and knowing look crossed her features as she adjusted her load of files. “I won’t go into detail, but Charlie’s had a rough go of it the past three months.”

“I understand he was close to Dr. Golding?” Morales asked as he stopped by the double clean room doors and the blue-clad Marine guard standing outside. Xavier removed the new temporary ID card from around his neck and gave it to the guard, who checked it. He nodded at Alice as he gave it back.

“Quite close, rather unexplainable as they were such opposites, a man of science and one who chases dreams and sometimes nightmares… yes, they became close because they started out so distantly separate. He’s hurting and if he’s taken it out on you, I assure I’ll speak to him.”

“No, no, please, don’t do that, Mrs. Hamilton. I have an idea: Would you please give me five minutes with Europa to introduce myself properly, and then would you ask Professor Ellenshaw to join me in the clean room?”

With a curious look Alice just nodded. “Yes, I can do that.”

The clean room doors hissed open and Morales smiled as the guard handed him a sealed plastic bag with electrostatic clothing. Morales just shook his head with a polite smile.

“Nah, we don’t want to start off like that.”

The guard looked at Alice and then saw that the Group matriarch was smiling.

“You heard him, that’s no way to meet someone for the first time.” Alice nodded at Morales and then left.

The doors hissed closed behind Xavier as he entered the dressing area and then easily went to the last door and opened it. He wheeled himself inside and then turned. The console for Europa was there with six stations. Microphones were at each. The large bulletproof glass stretched fifteen feet across the front. The metal screen protecting the inner sanctum was in the down position so Morales could not see inside. But he knew, or could guess, what was there. Gone were the robotic program placement arms, and in their place would be a series of long glass tubes that contained Europa’s bubble memory system of Pete Golding’s own design. Morales closed his eyes as he faced the large glass remembering the paper he read from Golding describing the theory of bubble memory cylindrical super-microchip technology. He cleared his throat and a seventy-five-inch monitor lowered automatically from the ceiling. It came to life with a simple screen saver that said DEPARTMENT 5656.

“Hello, Europa,” he said as he watched the monitor, hoping to get a verbal response.

“Good afternoon Dr. Morales,” said the sexy Marylyn Monroe voice.

“How are you today, Europa?”

Silence.

“I asked how you are?” he repeated as he watched the screen.

“I am well,” Europa typed.

Morales only smiled as he approached the first of the six workstations.

“No, you’re not well. But we’ll get you there.” Morales patted the console and then raised the large metal panel. What he saw amazed him. The famous, or was it infamous, Blue Ice system with Pete Golding’s own fingerprints on it. The sight was beyond his imaginings. The three-foot-in-diameter tubes were filled with large, slow-moving blue bubbles made of clear silicone — the memory carrying system that Europa could tap into in a millisecond.

“Where have you been all my life?” he asked as he leaned forward to look upon the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The door hissed open and Charlie Ellenshaw stood in its opening. His hair was still crazed and his glasses were perched on his forehead. His eyes were red.

“Alice asked me to come and see you,” he said with a voice that was deadpan.

Morales looked from the blue-tinted Europa programming room to Charlie.

“Professor, we have a very sick lady here, and according to Colonel Collins and Director Compton, we’ll need her services desperately”—he looked at his wristwatch—“in less than three hours. I need your help.”

Charlie looked from the newcomer to the inner workings of Europa.

“Pete never worked with Europa while her protective screen was up.”

“Why is that, Professor?” Morales asked, not out of politeness at the tall, strange man, but because he really wanted to know.

Charlie took a tentative step into the room and the doors hissed closed behind him, startling the older man. He collected himself and then faced Xavier.

“He said it was rude to see her like that, so he did the polite thing and closed the door, like she was—”

“A lovely lady in a dressing room?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said as he looked more closely at the youngest genius outside of Niles Compton he had ever met.

Morales, without looking away from Ellenshaw, hit the button and the protective screen came down.

“Europa, are you there?” he asked as he kept watching Charlie.

“Yes,” she typed out.

Without facing the screen he asked Ellenshaw, “She texted her answer?”

“Yes.”

“See, she’s not acting right and I think I can guess as to why. Can you help me, Professor?”

“How?”

“Tell me and Europa about Pete Golding.”

“What?” he asked in utter confusion, but sat down in the station next to Morales.

“Europa, can you tell me the disposition of Dr. Peter Golding, please?”

There was silence for the longest time, long enough that Morales turned his wheelchair and removed the rolling chair in front of the empty station and then faced Europa’s screen.

“Dr. Golding is currently not on station.”

This time both men noticed she spoke instead of texting.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

Silence.

“Europa, have you scanned all personnel records for Department 5656 and any corresponding field report deaths from same?”

Silence.

“Europa?”

“Dr. Peter Golding, deceased ninety-seven days, sixteen hours, fifty-six minutes, plus or minus ten minutes.”

Morales turned to face Charlie.

“Tell me about Pete.” He smiled and then looked at Europa. “Tell us both about Pete and why he died.”

Charlie Ellenshaw was flabbergasted to say the least. He didn’t know if he wanted to hit the kid and leave or just stare stupefied. Then he saw the text messages on the screen blink out and then the lights in the clean room dimmed as Europa powered down.

“You see, Charlie, she needs to know also. She knows what death is, but no one ever explained why people have to die. That is messing with her advanced AI systems that only Pete had intimate knowledge of. We both need to know about Dr. Golding, especially her.”

Ellenshaw sat silent as he studied the young master of artificial intelligence. He didn’t know what to think of the young man and his obvious intellect. Charlie could understand Pete simply because they had fought and been through some of the adventures of a lifetime that challenged them as men, but Morales was someone who lived his life outside of his world through others. Charlie came to the realization that Europa might be no different. He watched Morales as he opened what Ellenshaw knew was Pete’s 201 file from personnel. He wrote something down and held it up to the camera so Europa could see it.

“Europa, do you recognize these coordinates?” Morales was patient as the temperamental Europa read what he had written. She typed out that yes, the longitude and latitude were confirmed as the Mount Rose Cemetery in Princeton, New Jersey. “Use your satellite imagery files and bring up an aerial view, please. Zoom in on plot 2343, northeast quadrant of the cemetery.” As he waited for the satellite image to boot, Morales looked over at a curious Ellenshaw. “By the way, Professor, your choice of music may not have been likable to certain members of your rescue team, but as a PSYOP distraction I thought ‘Sugar, Sugar’ was a righteous choice,” he said, and then smiled at Charlie, who didn’t know if he was joking with him or not. Only Xavier Morales knew that if anyone else asked he would say that he had never heard of the song nor the Archies who performed it before that day in Mexico.

On the large monitor an image of New Jersey exploded to a close-up of the cemetery in question. Soon Charlie was looking at a headstone. The name was there. Peter Golding. The date of his birth and of his death. Then the simple message: “A Friend.” Ellenshaw knew the headstone well as he had been the one to place it there. Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III removed his glasses and stared at the image. Europa was motionless and it seemed even the bubble memory system slowed in its intensity behind the large glass.

Charlie didn’t know if it was right, but he started talking and for the next hour and a half Europa and Morales listened to a story about a man’s life and his death.

All sixteen department heads were present inside the large conference room. Many of the civilian personnel saw the new additions and politely nodded. They watched as Master Chief Jenks came through the doorway dressed in a lab coat and carrying his newly issued blue coveralls all military personnel wore at Group. Compton was silent for a brief moment.

“Dr. Morales, I assume you have made progress with Europa?”

Xavier didn’t understand a thing of what was going on but he nodded and gestured toward Charlie Ellenshaw, who sat silently.

“With the assistance of Professor Ellenshaw, yes, Europa has been enlightened to certain things that had not been adequately explained to her. She is even now absorbing the new data.” He partially turned to the large monitor. “Let’s see. Europa, are you monitoring the minutes of the current meeting?”

“Yes, Dr. Morales, Europa is recording.”

All eyes went to Morales as he smiled when Europa used her voice synthesizer to answer. The familiar sexy voice was greeted with thankful sighs from Niles and Virginia, who knew that if they didn’t have a fully functional Europa, what they hoped to do would be impossible.

“Thank you,” Niles said.

“She’s not there yet, but soon will be as soon as she assimilates certain data.”

Niles nodded at Alice Hamilton. She stood and started passing out electronic tablets. “Please keep all written notes confined to these pads. They will be linked directly to Europa. There will be no, I repeat no, handwritten reports to be filed on Operation Traveler. Even if successful, this technology can never be confirmed by any written word. It’s just too dangerous.”

Silence was the order of the day as everyone accepted the electronic pads.

“Master Chief,” Virginia said, taking over after Alice had taken her seat, “you will notice that your first fifteen thousand pages are filled with Einstein’s and other noted scientists’ theories on time displacement and its quantum limitations — theoretically speaking, of course. Familiarize yourself with them as much as possible. I’m afraid it’s quite heavy reading. You will learn why as we go along. You will also see the dossiers on several scientists of German background, familiarize yourself with them also. We need your report on the mechanical and scientific feasibility related to these men and their work to compare with my physics department assessment”—she paused and then went all the way in—“in twelve hours.”

“Thrilled,” Jenks said, but his eyes did look to the pad and the headings of several of the entries. He had to admit, he didn’t believe in the theory, but as an engineer, he was intrigued nonetheless.

“Dr. Morales, you will see the main factor in your upcoming research is the Traveler herself, Moira Mendelsohn; she is your target. You and Europa will dig until you have everything you can find on her. We want the number of hairs on her head if you can get it.”

Xavier looked from Director Compton to the young face of a girl in ragged clothing that was now up on the large monitor. She had a sad face and Morales could see that the picture was made by blowing up a section with only her in it.

“If she’s alive, find her. Without this woman this operation is done before we ever start,” Niles said as he pulled a chart out from his stack of papers. He nodded at Virginia to conclude her brief.

“All departments, historical and sciences, will be coordinating with Alice and she will correlate any and all information. Colonel Farbeaux, you are well versed in the German language and have tactical military training, which could become useful. You will be attached to the security department answerable to Commander Ryan and Captain Mendenhall for the duration. You will be included on any field operation if called upon for same,” Virginia said as all the eyes in the room watched the Frenchman. They waited for the witty rebuke that they knew would be forthcoming. There was none, just a raised right brow as he sat silent.

All sixteen department heads nodded their understanding. Virginia looked at Jenks as she sat back down on Niles’s left. The director cleared his throat.

“Professor Ellenshaw, you have been kept as a part of the team for the simple reason you knew about it from Pete Golding, when the operation was first discussed over a year ago during our search for the alien power plant and its theoretical time warp capabilities. Now that we have proof other than the alien aspect”—Niles paused as Anya Korvesky entered the conference room and then sat next to Will Mendenhall—“that was provided by our asset in Israel, you are retained to be the historical expert on this mission. For the time being the Paleolithic aspects concerning the history of Antarctica: animal life, human or subhuman habitation, and its environment. We will get you assistance if and when we have need for more advanced theory on the continent that existed over two hundred and fifty thousand years ago.”

Charlie nodded. “I request a geologist to assist me as we will need a complete geological makeup of the continent at the time in question. May I suggest Lieutenant McIntire and her geology department?”

“Agreed,” Jack said as he looked over at Sarah. She was typing furiously on her electronic pad. “But as we discussed, no one outside of the complex is to be aware of what it is we are researching. Everything is on a need-to-know basis where inquiries are made to outside sources.”

“Oh, yeah, need to know, that’s always a good thing,” Jenks said with a huff.

“Dr. Morales,” Niles said, ignoring the pessimistic master chief as best he could, “we need that report on the Traveler in no less than three hours. Can you give it to us?”

“Europa, have you started collating the data from the file coded ‘Traveler’?”

“Three thousand seven hundred and seventy-two historical references to the personages known as ‘the Traveler.’”

“Thank you, Europa, complete cycle and we will be with you momentarily.” He turned his attention back to Niles and those around him. “We’ll give you what we can in one hour, anything later and we would be redundant as I suspect that Europa will have everything on this woman there is to know — if she’s still alive, that is. Moira Mendelsohn will soon not have a secret to hide, if she has any.”

The conference room went silent as most sets of eyes went to the large main monitor where a lone picture illuminated the room with her black-and-white shades.

The Traveler.

5

Carl Everett collapsed into the large ferns that lined the game trail. The large rabbit he had trapped was lifeless in his hand as he managed a quick peek onto the game trail he had just left. For the past seven days he ate what was left of his rations from the escape pod and had supplemented that with berries and fruits he wasn’t quite sure would poison him or not. He was looking forward to the protein the rabbit would surely give him. His appetite had returned in a most ravenous way after the effects of the over-oxygenated air had subsided to the point that his body slowly became used to the pristine air of an earlier world.

“Come on, where are you?” he asked no one. He examined the game trail but failed to see the large animal he thought he heard a few moments before. He hadn’t seen the beast but he knew it was large enough to send the smaller wildlife scurrying for cover in fright. He placed the rabbit at his feet and covered it with the soft moist earth in case the blood that was on its fur attracted whatever it was that was stalking him. He slowly laid aside the bow and arrows and then withdrew his nine-millimeter Glock from his shoulder holster. He slid the slide back an inch and saw the chambered round. He had four bullets left. He had gone through his entire arsenal in just the first five or six days of this marvelous adventure and he regretted every time he remembered the rookie mistakes in safeguarding his firepower. He had become very efficient with his knife, traps, and his bow and arrows, but soon came to realize just how much he missed his everyday conveniences such as MREs and automatic weapons.

The slow wavelike motion of the earth originated north of him where the skies were black and red. Carl grimaced as the rolling sensation struck and he actually lost his balance as the earthquake shook the area. Mount Erebus was raising her skirt for the third time that day. The great volcano was spewing forth a noxious cloud of methane that seemingly rolled down its slopes and into the dying jungle around the base. The volcano was over a thousand miles away but the effects made it seem just out of view. In the three weeks Carl had been marooned he had calculated that the earth movement occurred far more frequently since the day he had arrived. He knew instinctually that Erebus was close to blowing. The fires caused by the eruptions had burned millions of acres of jungle and were driving the wildlife out of the area.

The earth movement slowed and then dissipated in its snakelike motion toward the east. He lowered his head at the soothing relief he felt when the ground beneath his feet ceased its movement. He knew he felt like all humans did when the only thing you ever trusted in the universe was the earth under your feet. When that was compromised you would lose faith in your abilities to stay alive. He lifted his head just as some very strange ratlike creatures scurried past his feet in flight. He shook his head knowing his clawed adversary was near. He had soon learned that every species of animal alive at this time had either very large teeth or equally large claws — and they used them with great advantage. He was but a puppy in a savage world never meant for mankind.

He sniffed the air and that was when he caught the scent of the animal as it crept closer. He cocked the nine millimeter and waited.

Suddenly the green foliage parted with a crash not thirty yards to his front. His eyes widened when he saw a large flock of chickenlike rocs as they broke cover. The eleven-foot-tall birds were flightless but made up for that deficiency with their strong legs and fierce claws and beaks. The very large rooster at the head of the charge swerved to the left, quickly followed by five others. Then a hen broke cover just as a loud and fierce scream of an animal Carl had yet to see in action chased a smaller roc that exited the jungle just behind its mother. This one was followed by a second youngling. This was a red-hooded rooster that was close to full grown. It swept quickly to the right to avoid something that crashed through the jungle just behind it. The rocs as a whole started their high-pitched screams as the terror was seen for the first time. The small, useless wings of the rooster flared as four giant claws struck out just as the beast broke cover as the flock reached safety on the far side of the small clearing only fifteen yards from where Carl huddled with his forgotten lunch. The claws raked the roc on its left flank and the bird went down. Before the roc could react and recover, the giant black panther was upon it. The cat was no less than seven hundred pounds and was the first of this species Carl had seen in his three weeks here. The panther’s green emerald eyes flared with the brightness of the night stars as it placed its foreclaws on the injured bird and then screamed in triumph at its fallen prey.

For many days to come Everett could not figure out why he did what he did that day. For a reason that was now unfathomable he grew angry and decided that enough was enough. He was no longer going to allow the animal life of this screwed-up time to scare him to death. He stood and slowly stepped into the open.

“Get off of him!” he called out as he raised the nine millimeter and advanced.

The panther was taken by surprise and turned and screamed. The cry was so loud it made Carl squint and then wince as the angered cry shook the jungle around him. The smaller roc was trying desperately to gain its feet but the massive claws of the cat held it firmly in place as it spit its anger at the small man walking toward it. Everett saw the desperation in the roc’s actions as it struggled and that struggle struck a chord with him. He felt he was once more doing his job, and that job was to stop the bad guys from winning. Not for the love of the aggressive giant chickens, but because he just didn’t like the panther.

The black coat was thick and it shone within the confines of the darkened jungle with a luminescence that was surreal. The coat shimmered as the enormous muscles of the animal flexed and braced for a jump that would quickly carry it to this small threat coming at it.

“Come on, you son of a bitch. I’ll dance with ya.”

The giant cat screamed as it used the smaller body of the roc as a springboard for launching itself at the man.

Carl saw the animal was far faster than he could ever have realized. It was airborne before he could bring the pistol into action. He actually felt the onrush of air as the beast launched. He tried to fire but quickly realized he would never get the weapon up fast enough. So much for being the new sheriff in town.

The injured roc used its long neck to twist with lightning speed just as the relief of weight was off of its feathered body. The large parrotlike beak shot forward and grabbed the cat’s left hind leg just as it was free. The beast was halted in mid-jump and quickly twisted its large frame to turn and swipe at the downed roc. Everett saw the advantage that the young bird had given him. He raised the Glock and fired once, hitting the cat in the side of its head. Carl’s eyes widened when he saw the panther flinch only momentarily as the round struck its skull and ricocheted off into the jungle. The cat didn’t even scream. It just slowly turned its head to face Carl and hiss. It swiped one last time at the fallen roc, who relinquished its powerful beak after the claws slammed into its hard surface. The roc’s head was slammed into the jungle floor where it went still. The cat shook free of the now limp roc and advanced on Everett.

Carl fired the second of his four rounds and the bullet struck the panther in the right front leg. This time the bullet lodged itself in the beefy part of the forearm but didn’t slow the deliberate pace the panther kept to reach its antagonist. Its body went low to the ground in a stalking position. The rear legs bunched for a final jump. Carl fired again. This time the round hit the beast in the chest and the cat recoiled in pain but quickly recovered.

“Uh-oh,” Carl said as he knew he was down to the last bullet in the world and was afraid this one would be just as ineffective as the first three.

He aimed just as the panther sprang. The bullet hit the beast in the nose. This time there was a great spray of blood but he knew that the last bullet would not stop the great cat from its mission to shred him to pieces. The panther’s teeth were a few inches from his throat when its forward momentum came to a crashing and bone-crunching stop. Carl hit the ground and then rolled away as the full bulk of the cat came crashing down. His eyes widened when he saw the beak of the large roc had been sunk deep into the panther’s back, snapping its spine like a piece of brittle driftwood. The young rooster twisted its head until it felt the satisfying crunch of more bone and this time the cat, paralyzed, couldn’t even scream. The roc actually dragged the large panther backward until it was satisfied that the animal could no longer do it harm. The enormous clawed feet of the bird were perched triumphantly upon the shiny coat of the black panther as it raised its bloody beak to the sky and flapped its small wings as it screamed to the heavens, informing whoever was up there that the young rooster had triumphed over the great cat.

Carl finally managed to slow his heart rate as he watched the scene before him. The young roc lowered its head and nudged the now dead panther with its newly battle-scarred beak. The wound to its body was bleeding but Carl knew the giant bird would not feel it for a while. He could see the youngling was in a mood that would last until its adrenal glands emptied.

Everett took a deep breath and then rolled onto his back and looked up at the ash-laden skies above the central plain of Antarctica. That was when a giant beak flared overhead and he was suddenly looking into the yellow eyes of the large rooster that had been leading the headlong flight of the flock. The roc hissed as it opened its beak to bite Carl’s face off.

He heard the scream of the smaller rooster, and then the face and beak of the larger bird was knocked from view. Carl rolled until he was safely in the bush once again. He finally braved a look up and the sight froze him. The roc he had saved was standing over its fallen alpha male. The larger roc tried to stand but the smaller rooster had found some of its sand and angrily hissed at the patriarch of the flock. The large bird scrambled to its clawed feet and then hissed back, but Carl noticed its superior enthusiasm had vanished. With a last look at Everett, the large rooster broke and ran.

The smaller roc watched the quieting jungle for a moment and then its yellow eyes traveled to Carl. It turned its large red-feathered head to the side and examined the creature that had saved it from a horrid death. It slowly raised its small wings and flapped them three times. It continued to watch the human as it flicked its eyes left and right in its examination. Everett could see the slow drip of blood and thought that the wound was survivable. The three deeply etched claw marks on the left side of its beak bespoke of the power of the giant panther’s needlelike claws.

With one last look at Everett, the future alpha male of the flock jumped into the bush and quickly vanished, but not before it hurriedly snatched Carl’s prized rabbit from the ground.

“Hey!”

All he heard was the crashing of the large redheaded rooster as it made off with his lunch.

The knock sounded lightly upon the ornate double doors.

“Madam, I have news from Jerusalem.”

The clearing of her throat and then the eerie silence from the darkened room meant that his employer had indeed heard what he said. The man swallowed when the twin doors slowly opened. Before they swung completely open he saw the interior lights slowly fade as they were dimmed. He heard the motorized chair as it left the doorway. He stepped inside. He saw the still frame on the large-screen television of Clark Gable’s backside as he left Atlanta for the last time in the film Gone with the Wind. He saw her as she motored around her desk, shutting down the film by remote control as she did. The desk lamp was off and he could only see the outline of darkness against the drawn shades. She was silent as he stepped into the large study and then turned and pulled the doors closed behind him. His employer was patient as she waited.

“I always stop the film at this spot anyway. I can never stand to hear Vivien Leigh say those damnable words, ‘After all, tomorrow is another day!’ Such a foolish girl saying something some hack wrote in a book. Not very realistic by literary or even Hollywood standards.”

“Yes, Madam, very unrealistic,” the man said, facing her as he stood in front of the large desk. He saw her elegant hand reach for the ornate box on her desk and then she pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The smoke clouded the man’s view even further. “Our contact in Jerusalem reports that the Mossad may have leaked your file to an outside source.”

There was silence as the woman in the darkness smoked and listened. He became uncomfortable during the drawn-out silence. Finally he could see her silhouette as she placed the cigarette in an ashtray.

“I thought we hadn’t any more contacts in the government?”

“He reported out of loyalty, even though he has not been paid in over five years. He said he owed you for past services.”

“A kind euphemism for past bribes. Well, if it eases his conscience, who am I to argue?” Again she retrieved her cigarette and smoked.

“We haven’t the contacts to pursue any intelligence on who received the file. We won’t know who has it until someone comes knocking on the door.”

“The Mossad has little interest in me any longer. They couldn’t get any information from me for seventy years, so perhaps they have contracted out for their intelligence gathering.”

“You know the Mossad doesn’t contract out to anyone. I have been informed by that same asset that is so loyal to you that a General Shamni, head of the Israeli intelligence service, has been sacked by the prime minister. The rumor is he allowed an intelligence asset important to the state to flee the country.”

“Sounds like our little secret may have leaked out somehow. And all this time I thought they and others had forgotten about us.” She placed the cigarette down into the ashtray once more and then switched on the lamp that sat on the desk’s polished top.

The man saw her clearly in the light. The ornate motorized wheelchair moved and she came from around her desk. She stopped in front of the tall man. Her hair was gray and came to her shoulders and she wore a black mourning dress as she always did. The sleeves were long and her hands were as elegant as ever. He avoided looking at the crooked legs that angled to the right as she sat in her chair. Her face was lined but in the beautiful softness few ladies of her age ever possess. She reached out and took his large hand into hers.

“Alert all of our children and tell them to be aware of busybodies looking for a story.” She patted his hand and looked into his brown eyes. He nodded as he knew they hadn’t the funds to do anything outside of warning the family that they might have been discovered. They were helpless before the powers that had their information. He covered her petite hand with his own and then his eyes fell on the tattooed number on her white fleshy forearm where the sleeve failed to cover it. The tattoo had not faded with age: 674392. She smiled, removed her hand, and motored back to her desk and then smoked as she watched him. She slowly reached out and turned off the desk lamp. “I’m in the mood for a musical. All of this drama has drained me.”

“Yes, Madam,” he said as he started to turn away.

“Julien, tell the children not to be frightened by this. Remind them all they have been through worse.”

“I will, Madam,” he said as he opened the double doors and then left her study. He paused as he made sure the doors were closed as he heard the video player start once more. This time it sounded like Fred Astaire singing an opening number.

The man stepped away and then pulled up his coat’s sleeve and saw his own numbered tattoo and sighed. He lowered the sleeve and then went to make 236 phone calls.

The children of the Traveler had to be alerted.

Jack waited with Niles Compton inside the conference room. They were alone for the moment.

“When and if we find who we are looking for, that’s when the expenditures of manpower and funding will be noticeable. I figure we’ll need the full one-hundred-hour grace period the president promised. I figure we’ll be stepping on the toes of more than just one agency here. We could possibly make enemies for the president without him even knowing we made them.”

“At least for a hundred hours,” Compton countered. “Look, Jack, if we get this one chance at getting Carl home I’m willing to alienate far more than just my best friend, I’m willing to put my career on the line.”

“This is the wildest long shot we’ve ever taken, a Hail Mary without much hope the ball will ever come down. But it’s the only shot we have. All other areas of investigation have run into a brick wall. Other than the alien technology we no longer have access to, we have nothing other than this Traveler story we have yet to even confirm.”

Niles took a deep breath and then fixed Jack with his one-eyed gaze. “Anya seems convinced that the Mossad believed the tale. Enough so they detained her brother after the war for further interrogation, what they euphemistically call a debrief. If a hard-nosed organization like them believe her story, then we have to give it due credence.” Niles shook his head and looked at the wall clock just as the conference room door opened and Xavier Morales and the rest of the team started to filter in. Niles slowly made his way over to the conference table.

Virginia sat and then nodded and pushed a sheaf of paperwork toward the director.

“Dr. Morales, we don’t have much time. What have you come up with?” Compton asked.

“Actually, Moira Mendelsohn was quite easily traced. She was at one time listed in Forbes magazine as one of the top-ten richest women in the world. She hasn’t been listed since 1972, but she was listed.”

“Is she still alive?” Charlie asked.

“Very much so, at least as far as the latest New York City census.”

“You mean she lives here?” Niles asked.

“Yes, sir, she immigrated to the United States in 1950 from Jerusalem where she lived right under the noses of Israeli intelligence. Her ten American companies at one time owned seventy-six electronic and light-emitting patents.” Xavier looked at his electronic pad and then looked up. “As far as Europa can tell, Miss Mendelsohn spent no less than three fortunes on philanthropic endeavors.”

“Such as?” Alice asked.

“Scholarships mostly. Grants to the poor and immigrants for educational opportunities. She’s garnered so many accolades from the New York City establishment that she’s highly thought of. But she has become reclusive in her later years.”

“Excuse me,” Master Chief Jenks interrupted. “You say she owned patents on light-emitting technology?”

Xavier spoke softly. “Europa, place the patents for Weisberg Industries on the main screen, please.”

On the large monitor Europa placed the listing of all legal patents held by the company. Jenks looked at the list and then compared it to his notes on his own electronic pad.

“Lasers and lens grinding. Those stand out. Also the power distribution nodes.” He thought a moment.

“Master Chief?” Niles said as Jenks was deep in thought.

He had read as much as he could on Einstein’s theories about time displacement and saw that what was on the patents list would be required elements to any attempt at what these maniacs would expect for an experimentation at quantum displacement. He shook his head.

“A laser system and power production technology the likes of which we have never before seen would be needed in any attempt at what you are suggesting.”

Everyone in the room got that same feeling of discovery when something uncovered made sense to their trains of investigation. They sensed they had a strong lead.

“Would this interest you, Chief?” Xavier said as Europa placed one more item on the list.

“That’s Master Chief, boy.”

“Yes, sorry, I have yet to get a feel for military etiquette.”

Jenks grumbled but looked at the item listed on the monitor.

“Industrial-grade blue diamonds. They seemed to be a vital part of whatever they were doing, and then the supply dwindled to nothing and that was the end of their collecting blue diamonds.”

Jenks looked at the new kid on the block and thought he might have something.

“That makes sense,” Jenks said, surrendering to the enthusiasm of the combined Group. As he stood and made his way to the monitor, Virginia saw what the master chief was seeing only because it was her area of expertise. “Industrial blue diamonds have become very hard to come by these days. It makes sense that these people had to come up with an alternate light source—”

“Lasers,” Virginia finished for him.

“That’s right, Slim, lasers, and specially ground lenses for those lasers.”

Niles cringed at the cavalier way Jenks spoke to his assistant director, but Virginia seemed like a schoolgirl when it came to the brutish little engineer. She was smiling as he looked at her.

“That coupled with the massive power they were obviously seeking, well, I have to admit you may have something for your ridiculous theories department.” The master chief snorted and then placed the dead cigar in his mouth and went back to his seat. Virginia winked at him and he looked away embarrassed.

“Any major holdings as far as laboratory or manufacturing concerns?” Niles asked Xavier.

“Not really. Most have been sold off as the fortunes of the company plummeted in the late seventies.”

“You mean with all of these patents the company failed?”

“Europa could find no clear-cut reasoning behind that failure except for poor management. The income the last few years has been royalty-based percentages. Still, our lady friend brings in no less than one hundred and ten million dollars a year on those royalties alone.”

“So, no manufacturing at all since?” Niles asked, intriguing Xavier to finish his assessment. He was amazed at how quickly the young genius had assimilated into the style of investigation. He suspected that Europa might be teaching him as much as he was her.

“Nineteen seventy-two as far as we can see. However”—Xavier noted one variance as he ordered Europa to place a slide onto the screen—“we did find this.”

On the screen an aerial view of a waterfront appeared. There were rows upon rows of warehouse-type buildings facing what looked like dry dock areas. The view was of an old system of buildings. Europa zoomed the satellite view until they were looking at a single building. It was long and made of redbrick. The facade was ancient and looked unkempt. On the photo they did see one curious thing. There was a guard shack just in front of the main entrance and they counted no less than five guards. That caught Jack’s attention as he now knew what set of buildings they were looking at. But Master Chief Jenks beat him to it as he had spent a good portion of his naval career in and around that old facility.

“The Brooklyn Navy Yard,” Jenks said as he examined the photo intel.

“Precisely, Chief… ur… uh, Master Chief,” Xavier corrected himself before the brutish little man did the honors. “Building one-seventeen. The absolute only property holding outside of her East Side apartment building.”

“For an old building they seem to have a lot of security,” Farbeaux said as he studied the picture. “I have had dealings in the navy yard. At all points entering the property there are posted guards, so why does this particular building need the extra protection? My bad-guy senses are intrigued.”

“I assume we can locate our Miss Mendelsohn?” Niles asked.

“She’s lived in the same building since 1955,” Xavier quickly answered.

Jack Collins stood up from his chair and nodded at the director. “Henri, you just named your own poison. Captain Mendenhall, you come with us. Commander Ryan, watch the shop since you tend to stand out in a crowd lately.”

Ryan looked over at Mendenhall, who could see he was about to explode. But he just nodded instead.

“Master Chief, since you speak both English and egghead, we may need your opinion in case we do dig up something. I would rather have a firsthand opinion than wait for you to examine pictures.”

“Lovely. I was hoping my second-language course would pay off someday.”

“And where will we be off to?” the Frenchman asked as he, too, slowly stood.

“To meet the woman they call the Traveler.”

Farbeaux slowly shook his head. “At the very least this will be interesting.”

The Event Group had a very large lead indeed.

Mendenhall paid the cabdriver an hour after landing at LaGuardia Airport. He joined Jack, Farbeaux, and Jenks as they stood before the redbrick monolith that was the Grenada Building. When away from Virginia and free of the sterile Event Group complex Jenks was free to puff away on a cigar. He glanced upward and then looked away, tossing the stub of the cigar into the gutter, which elicited a sour look from a passing woman and her snotty little white dog.

“I don’t know about you girl scouts, but my hackles have just risen.”

“Yeah, they’ve been eyeing us since the cab pulled up.” Jack looked at Henri.

“You get the feeling that someone may have been expecting company?”

“If they were, the only way it could have leaked that we were looking for the Traveler was through Anya. You don’t think she would be on both sides of the playing field, do you?” Mendenhall asked, wishing Collins would have allowed them to bring firearms, but the colonel had insisted they leave them on the Air Force Lear Jet waiting back at LaGuardia.

“No, not with what she has been through with her own people. I’ve noticed the Israelis for the most part have been very unforgiving of late for mistrust, and I believe being caught with classified intelligence, no matter how old, can make you vanish very quickly in Tel Aviv. No, that’s a woman in love.”

Jack looked at Farbeaux as he walked past the three heading toward the covered awning of the front portico. “That your expert opinion, Colonel?”

Farbeaux smiled as he caught the reference to Sarah McIntire.

“On the Israeli attitude of the equation, yes, on the love side, believe me, I’m only guessing.” He smiled with more enthusiasm when Jack paused and looked at him. “As we all are.”

Collins, like Henri seconds before, caught the innuendo. He decided to let it go. He walked to the steps and went up to the glass and wood front doors.

Jenks stopped by Farbeaux’s side.

“Someday I think you’re going to press the wrong buttons on Patton there and something bad may ensue.” Jenks eyed the Frenchman.

“Ah, you mean he has a breaking point for someone he loves? Like you and your”—he smiled even wider than before—“boat?”

“You son of a bitch, I am gonna—”

The doors opened, silencing Jenks as he watched Henri and then a curious Mendenhall take the steps. He angrily followed.

The man standing at the open door wore a black suit jacket and black turtleneck shirt underneath. His beard was closely kept and his brown eyes took in the men at the door. Jack saw his eyes wander to their waistlines and then examine them for any bulges that would mark them as armed. The man stood there, not saying a word of greeting.

“We have come to see Ms. Moira Mendelsohn,” Jack said as he sized up the large man in the doorway. He was stout and would be a hard candidate to get through.

“Madam receives absolutely no visitors, I am sorry. Leave a name and note and if she wishes to get back to you, she will. Good day.”

The door started to close but it was Henri who acted first and placed a hand on the old leaded glass of the door.

“She’ll wish to see us,” Farbeaux said as he eyed the man blocking their way.

“And this is so because?” the man asked, amused at the blond man who thought his hand could stop him from closing the door. He huffed as he took in Henri.

Collins lowered Farbeaux’s hand from the door and looked at the well-dressed man who had a weapon’s bulge near his shoulder.

“Inform Ms. Mendelsohn we wish to speak to her about her ‘doorway.’”

The man held his blank expression well. He looked unaffected at Jack’s comment but there was a noticeable difference. Three more men stepped out from behind the first. The large man turned and looked at the men who had joined him and then nodded that they could return to their duties. He stepped aside and allowed the four men to enter the foyer of the large first floor.

They saw that the entire floor, with the exception of a large desk in the middle, was completely empty. In a city like New York where living space was hard to come by, this place was a gold mine if renovated. Collins had the distinct feeling this Mendelsohn woman didn’t care much about that.

“Madam has been expecting you, or someone like you.”

The silence from the four men was stark as they waited for the man to finish.

“And why is that?” Mendenhall asked, anxious to discover why they were expected. He was also worried that the colonel might have made a mistake in not allowing them to be armed.

The man ignored Will’s question. “Suffice it to say, gentlemen, if you are here for any ill purpose, rest assured you will not leave this residence breathing.”

Henri looked at Jack, and Will had to place a hand on Master Chief Jenks’s arm as he reacted to the threat. The man did not smile, he did not frown. Jack could see that his threat was just a fact of life.

“We have no ill will toward your employer,” Collins said as he looked at the emptiness of the 150-year-old building.

“Follow me please, gentlemen.” The large man turned and went toward the old-fashioned gated lift.

“No announcement?” Henri asked as he looked around the closed space of the elevator.

For the first time the man chuckled as he lifted an ancient handle on an even older annunciator and switched the handle to 16.

“Madam knows you are here, she was just curious as to what purpose.” The lift started up with a small jolt.

“You know, elevator upgrades are a good thing in our modern world,” Will said as he subconsciously grabbed the wooden railing as the lift shook and rattled.

“Madam likes things the way they are. She is quite content.” He looked back at Mendenhall. “And our lift system is inspected every six months, so if something happens during your visit it will not be the ancient elevator that kills you.”

Jenks had had a bellyful of the two threats made thus far. He stepped toward the front of the elevator car but Jack forced him back by placing a hand on the master chief’s barrel chest.

“Virginia specifically told you to behave.” He faced Jenks. “I’ll tell her if you don’t knock it off.”

Jenks frowned and then backed away as the elevator came to a stop. The man smiled at Jenks and then stepped off the elevator. He mumbled, “I’m not afraid of her,” but not too loudly.

The long hallway was of polished wood. The floors, the walls, and the ceiling were buffed and shined as if polished only this morning. The lone desk just outside the elevator was manned by a younger gentleman in a blue suit. He was writing on a clipboard as he saw the men step from the elevator. He had his jacket unbuttoned and they could all see the Smith & Wesson nine millimeter in a shoulder holster.

“Madam is expecting you,” the guard said as he laid the clipboard down and then eyed Collins. “Gentlemen, are you armed?”

“Look, Peaches—” Jenks started to say but stopped when the double wooden doors at the end of the fifty-five-foot hallway opened, and that was when they saw the Traveler for the first time.

“If they wanted to kill me all they would have had to do is spike my weekly order of gin.” She motored the wheelchair backward and then opened the doors wider for her guests. “Come in, gentlemen, you are cutting into my motion picture time.”

Jack took a breath and followed the trail of birchwood flooring to the main penthouse apartment. The man followed the four to the door and stopped them from entering.

“Madam may take this lightly, but rest assured, gentlemen, we take her security very seriously. Also keep in mind Madam tires easily.”

“We understand,” Jack said as he turned from the serious-faced young man. “You need to get out more, Master Chief, people usually don’t travel long distances to kill an old lady for the sheer fun of it. This isn’t Los Angeles.”

Jenks walked past with a hard brush, which made the security guard smile and shake his head as he stepped inside and closed the door.

The large entranceway was dark. There was small lines of light that danced with dust particles streaming through the closed curtains. Other than that the only source of light was from the ornate wall sconces that were made sometime in the late 1800s.

“I think this whole building ought to be in one of the director’s artifact vaults,” Will said as he examined the forty-foot-high ceiling. The absence of the things that made a home was the first thing he noticed. The walls were bare of family photos and art. The rich wood paneling had nothing at all upon their shiny surface. Jack followed the hallway toward the large study. He looked inside and saw the shiny silhouette of the old woman as she placed her wheelchair behind a large desk. The others joined Jack just inside the sliding double doorway.

Henri saw that this room was different from the outer areas. Here there were pictures, old black-and-white photos ensconced in old-fashioned bubble frames. Some were of family but most were of children, two of them in particular. Jack and the others recognized a young Moira Mendelsohn as she was standing next to a small boy with the same color hair and the same soft features of Moira. There were no less than six of these pictures with only the boy and the young woman in them. The rest were old-world European pictures of family that had long since departed this life, one way or the other, in Eastern European standards of the time — especially if you were Jewish or Gypsy or any other malcontent as seen in the eyes of Nazi Germany.

“You must have very strong contacts in the Israeli government to come up with my name, gentlemen.” The old woman who looked surprisingly healthy for her eighty-seven years slowly lit a cigarette and then fixed Jack with a kind stare. She gestured to four ornate chairs that had been placed in front of the large desk.”Please, I hate people looking down at me… have a seat.”

“No, Madam Mendelsohn, we do not,” Collins said as he took his chair. “What we did have was a frightened woman searching for a man who has been lost. A very good incentive for treason, at least for some.”

“Love, while not always sane, is at most times a good reason. Gentlemen, tell me what it is you wish of me. If it’s blackmail of some kind, I’m afraid those money years are far behind me, so, what can I do for you?”

“Can you tell us about Professor Lars Thomsen?” Collins asked.

Moira Mendelsohn became silent as she puffed on her cigarette and looked the four men over. Instead of answering she pushed a button on a small device.

“Angela, please bring in some refreshment for our guests.”

Collins saw the woman study them as she smoked. She made no attempt to answer Jack’s query as she waited.

It wasn’t long before the doors were parted and a cart with many bottles on it was rolled in by a petite lady in a nice skirt and blouse.

“Gentlemen, what will you have?”

“Nothing for—” Jack started to say but Henri stopped him.

“I am a man of your own tastes, Madam, I will have a gin and tonic with a twist.” He looked at Collins, hoping Jack would catch on that this woman wanted to sit and talk. Not having a drink was an old-fashioned way of saying just hurry up and spill your secrets. Henri knew how to question people to get what he wanted. “Mr. Collins here and the others will have the same.”

The old woman nodded toward the woman and she started making ice-clinking noises. When she was done she left the cart, and the bodyguard closed the doors behind her.

“A true cold-blooded son of a bitch.”

Jack almost choked on his drink as she said the startling words.

“Excuse me?” he asked when he gained control of his coughing. Then he realized she was just answering his earlier question.

“Thomsen was a sadistic bastard who would do anything to prove his theories correct. Anything.” She took a drink of her gin and tonic and then crushed out her cigarette. “But then again you have my debrief file from the Mossad; you know what I said in 1946 about the man. It should come as no surprise that time has not healed all wounds, nor dare I say blurred the memory. It never will.” She became still as the four men saw she was deep in thought of the memory of Thomsen and his brutal displacement theories.

“As brutal as this Kraut doc was, did he ever prove what it is he was out to prove?” Jenks asked as he quickly drained his gin and tonic, burped, and then looked at the old woman. She lit another cigarette as the master chief rose and poured his own drink; this time it was forty-year-old whiskey. He returned to his seat and awaited the answer to his question.

“You know he did, at least if you read my file. That is if you believe my tale; the Israeli government did not. They filed it away as insanity brought on by years of incarceration. So, according to the powers that be, I’m insane.”

“Are you?” Henri asked, cutting directly to the point.

Moira Mendelsohn laughed out loud and placed the cigarette into a glass ashtray and then clapped her hands together. Even her bodyguard bent over to stifle a laugh.

“Absolutely, certifiably insane.” She continued to laugh until finally she had to moisten her throat. She looked at Jenks, drained her own glass, and then held it out for a refill and the bodyguard moved to supply it. He also removed Jenks’s glass and refilled it once again.

“We know it worked, Ms. Mendelsohn,” Jack said as he placed his glass on the desk and then eased back in his seat. The laughter stopped.

“Blue diamonds, patents on light-emitting technology and power amplification. Yes, we do know you did it, there and here.”

The old woman looked at Collins and then took a drag off her cigarette. She watched Jack for the longest time — long enough that he thought his abrupt declaration about her involvement had made her scared and thus she’d clam up. Jack decided to push it and nudged Henri’s leg and nodded.

“Please, tell us what it is,” Farbeaux asked as he took in the shaking fingers of the lady in the expensive wheelchair. “They wouldn’t allow you to elaborate during both your British and Israeli debriefs. Once you mentioned what Nazi science was up to their attention span waned somewhat as the Allied mission at the time was solely concentrating on the criminality of Thomsen and his experiments. Am I correct in assuming this — Traveler?”

All of them, the large bodyguard included, stopped and watched the visibly shaken woman. She tried to light another cigarette but then noticed she already had one lit sitting in the ashtray. She closed the top of her decorative cigarette box and then looked away from the men. It took a full minute but she finally turned back.

“I haven’t been called that in seventy-four years.” Her eyes were downcast as she seemed to be going back to a place she did not care for at all. That was when Will nudged Jack and they all saw the numbered tattoo on her forearm. She made no attempt to hide it when she saw them looking. “Please do not refer to me as… well, as that name. It was their name for me, their little code-induced paranoia.” She seemed to calm somewhat when she took a large swallow of her drink. The large man came to her side and leaned down close to her face. She whispered that she was all right and patted his thick arm. With a dirty look at the four visitors, the man made his way to the back of the study and waited in the shadows.

“Did his theory work?” Jenks persisted, suspecting that the truth of this historical farce would soon be disclosed by the very woman who began the rumors over seventy years before.

“Yes, six times.”

The silence that greeted her comment seemed to go on forever. The only thing that happened was a frown from the large bodyguard as he suddenly turned and left the study, closing the doors behind him. “Gentlemen, please, what is it you want of me and the Wellsian Doorway?”

“Wellsian Doorway?” Jack asked.

“Yes, their euphemism for the one and only time machine ever constructed. And, yes, it worked. Personally I believe H. G. Wells would roll over in his grave to know the Nazis had crowned their scientific achievement by naming their machine after him. But the Nazis didn’t care for much, as history tells you. As for me, I learned it firsthand.”

“Six times you traveled?” Jenks asked, still not believing.

They all saw the hesitant action of Moira as she puffed her cigarette and looked upon her questioners. It was the question posed by Jenks that made her hesitant.

“Yes, six times I traveled two years into the past. Same space, differing times.”

Jenks looked at Jack and rolled his eyes.

“Impossible,” the master chief said, not caring what Collins or the others thought. He was an engineer and if someone told you about the impossible you had to go with what you knew.

“Yes, it was impossible, until it wasn’t,” she said as she again crushed out her cigarette. “The theory has always been sound, but having the equipment, and for that equipment to be placed at the right time is the key. Without two corresponding doorways, there is no displacement. The link between time and space has to meet and you need a doorway to do that. And the doorway can only be placed in the past, or otherwise just how are you going to build a doorway in a past that has already happened?”

“In other words you’re saying that in order to time travel successfully you need to have built an identical doorway to the one you are using. Without that…?”

She looked at Jack and smiled. “You would end up anywhere but where it is you wanted to be. Even another dimension. The possibilities are endless and unfathomable.”

“You duplicated the experiments, didn’t you?” Henri asked, pushing just a little more.

Again Moira became silent as she watched the men before her.

“I sense you are not bad men.” She looked at Henri for a moment longer than the others. “Not all bad anyway,” she finished as Henri smiled and winked at the old woman. “What do you want the Wellsian Doorway for? If it’s a military application, I would just as soon blow my own brains out than to have that happen again.”

“We lost someone,” Jack said. “A friend.”

Moira listened as Jack explained for a few moments. She turned her chair away from them as she thought about their lost friend.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but your friend will forever remain lost to you.”

Before she explained both Jenks and Jack saw the flaw in what they were asking.

“We don’t have a doorway in the past for us to lock on to,” Collins rightly guessed at her answer just as his hopes deflated. Jenks was thinking another way but remained quiet.

“I am so sorry.”

Henri wasn’t in the least defeated.

“Can you tell us what it is you have hidden at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building number one-seventeen, the one with the inordinate amount of protection?”

She smiled at Farbeaux, knowing she had pegged the man correctly. He was a cad and a bounder and she immediately liked the Frenchman.

“You are government, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we are your government. And if we ever have an opportunity to prove this displacement correct, it would be used once and destroyed, as per orders from our director.”

She laughed heartily. She stopped and fixed Jack with a glaring look.

“Then your director must be a highly unusual man to throw away such power.”

“He is,” Jack and Will said at the same time.

“Such loyalty gives a man great power when his subordinates love him so much.” She smiled again as she lit her fourth cigarette. “Much like another man in history — he had loyal followers, too.”

“Madam, our director, how can I explain this? Well, he’s no Adolf Hitler. He can sure as hell come down on you sometimes, but he is the best man outside of this room that I have ever known,” Will said as the old woman looked at Jack, knowing the young black man was referencing not only their director, but the big man sitting right in front of her. She took up the old-fashioned phone receiver that looked as if it could be used as a lethal bludgeon and made a connection.

“Peter, yes, I will have four men stopping by this afternoon. Allow them total access to building one-seventeen, please. Full cooperation will be given. Thank you.” She hung up and then fixed Jack with her stern look. “I know how it is to lose someone who is close to you and cannot get them back. I know, I have tried on more than those six occasions you mentioned. But since you cannot make any attempt for displacement without a second doorway, I see no harm in allowing you to see it.”

“See what?” Mendenhall asked.

Moira Mendelsohn started the silent electric motor on her wheelchair and then made her way to the door, which magically opened as she gestured that their appointment time was up. She did turn and smile as she waited next to the guard. “To see what it is you came to see, gentlemen.”

The four men stood as they knew they were being asked to leave.

“And that is?” the master chief asked gruffly as he placed a cold cigar into his mouth.

“Why, my own Wellsian Doorway, of course.”

Jenks smiled as did the others with the exception of Collins. For Jack suspected that without a second doorway the mission was lost to them. But Jenks couldn’t contain his enjoyment.

“Now this I have to see.”

6

They passed through the main gate of the old navy yard, a starting point for hundreds of thousands of American troops in two world wars and was the building site for some of the most famous warships this nation has ever produced. From heavy cruisers to battleships, the navy yard had seen it all, but in 1966 the Department of the Navy decommissioned the yard and she had fallen on hard times since. The yard was now in the middle of a preservation fight and was modernizing most of the old buildings where 70,000 workers once made the United States Navy the most powerful afloat.

“I have to admit this place is looking better than it did a few years ago. I almost built USS Teacher here but decided New Orleans was better suited to my style,” Jenks said, and then looked over at the Frenchman and gave him a dirty look.

“Master Chief, I was never on your marvelously designed boat, but from what the colonel says, it was a real kicker.” Henri smiled over at Jenks.

“All right, you two, we’ll turn this car right around,” Will said, turning in the front seat to face the two opposites.

“Where in the hell is this Julien fellow taking us?” Jack asked as he maneuvered the rental car around a series of old wharves and warehouses.

“Maybe the old woman decided not to be so cooperative,” Will said, feeling somewhat better having weapons in the vehicle.

“No, you can see she’s been a straight shooter all of her life.” Jack looked over at Mendenhall. “Besides, I give anyone who went through what that woman and millions of others went through the benefit of the doubt.”

“There it is,” Jenks said from the backseat.

Jack saw building 117 through the rain that had just started to fall. Collins hit the pulse wipers and cleared the glass as he pulled in behind the Range Rover. They all watched as Moira’s man Julien and two others stepped from the navy blue vehicle. They were met by a uniformed guard and together the four men went to the front of the building.

Jack stepped from the car and as he did he examined the exterior of building 117. It was lined by an old dry dock that might have been used for commercial ships because of its compact size. The building itself was unremarkable. Brick and mortar. The glass windows, about five thousand of them, were all painted over and secured with outside locks. The small arch covering a loading dock and main office entrance had seen far better days as both awnings hung limp and shredded. The building wasn’t one of the oldest built in 1806 when the yard first opened, but it was in the same century range.

Collins stood in the lightly falling rain and then saw the old dry dock area next to the building. He saw the pile of bricks next to the water and walked the few feet over and then knelt down. Weeds had covered most of the fallen brick but Jack managed to tear some of this loose. Underneath he saw an old green-tarnished bronze plaque and he leaned closer. He removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket and brushed away years of grime that had covered the words.

Jack pulled the kerchief away and then smiled and shook his head. He remembered the tale as told to him by Niles Compton and Garrison Lee over ten years before. He stood up and wiped his hands.

“What is it, Colonel?” Mendenhall asked as he stepped up to see what had interested Collins.

“Nothing, just a coincidence, a strange coincidence, but one nonetheless.” With one last look at the old and forgotten plaque, Jack made a promise to have the dry dock marker removed back to the complex — it needed to go home.

As Collins turned away, Mendenhall saw what he had been studying. He raised a brow, confused, and then followed Jack to the front doors.

“Well, shall we see what there is to see?” Jack said as he moved to the steps that led upward toward the office.

The uniformed guard held the door open for the four men as they entered. The rain started falling harder and the guard quickly closed the door. All four turned as one when they heard the outside locks being engaged.

“The building is secured on the outside and inside at all times,” Julien said as he stood before a large aluminum door.

“Yeah, and what does the New York City fire department have to say about locking folks inside a dilapidated building?”

“They say nothing, because we have paid millions in bribes to keep them from saying anything,” Julien answered as he gave Jenks a curious look, as if bribery was an everyday occurrence.

“Oh,” was all he said.

The large man was joined by his two companions and together they unlocked the aluminum door, and then one hit a large red button and the door began to go up. Jack and Henri both noticed that all three men stepped away from the darkness beyond the door as it rose. Julien in particular looked as uncomfortable as any man Jack had seen opening a door. He and Henri exchanged questioning looks.

Julien swallowed and then reached into the darkness and switched on a light. He quickly pulled his hand out and then faced the four men.

“Through the door and down the stairs, two flights.” He handed Jack a set of two keys. “One opens the work areas, the other the main laboratory; you’ll know which. The noise you’ll hear are the pumps needed to keep the basement and subbasement clear of water from the river and dry dock area. You have thirty minutes.”

“You and your men aren’t accompanying us?”

Julien’s try at a cocky smile failed on the large man. “No, uh, we are not allowed.”

The four men watched as the large personal protector of Moira Mendelsohn and his men left for the front of the building.

Jack didn’t have to comment on the strangeness of the three men — they just moved into the room and down the two flights of stairs.

Jack used the first key and unlocked the large steel door at the bottom of the stairs. The hallway was lined with other, larger doors for allowing heavy equipment to be moved in. There was even a large lift that rose the three flights. They all heard the continuous dripping of water as it seeped through from the rain outside and the river and its constant assault on the old navy yard.

Jack opened the door and the lights inside automatically flared to life.

The sight that greeted them nearly caught them all off guard. The brightness and cleanliness of the giant space amazed them. With the exception of the two inches of water they found themselves standing in, the home of the Wellsian Doorway looked as if it popped right out of a science fiction movie. They were in a circular room that sat elevated above an amphitheater-style laboratory. Circular row upon circular row of electronic panels and technician’s stations sat empty as all stations looked down upon a round blank spot made of steel.

“The damn thing isn’t here!” Jenks said as he angrily tossed his cigar into the water at his feet. “I should have known the old dame was nuttier than the Frenchman here.”

Henri smiled over at the master chief.

Jack shook his head and then moved to the main monitoring station in the center of the first console. He saw the plastic cover that was marked simply “PIT.” He took the second key and lifted the cover and inserted it. He twisted the key and suddenly the lights dimmed and an amazing sight met their astonished gaze.

The center of the floor started twisting in a corkscrew fashion and as it did the edges slid into the wall. Fluorescent and indirect lighting started to flare to life far below them. Jack smiled as the circular floor spiraled away to nothing. The difference was that the giant room below was as clean as if it had been built yesterday. There was no water anywhere in the spaces below. That was where most of the powerful pumps were stored.

“I’ll be damned and buggered,” the master chief exclaimed as he stepped toward the glass.

“Okay, I think I made a little pee pee here,” Will said as all eyes fell on the machine that occupied the center of the room.

Spotlights came on and their adjusted beams sliced through the darkness and fell upon a gleaming chromed steel and glass sphere. It was open to the air but the glass enclosure was made to reflect something back into the large, sixty-five-foot object.

“Look, there are laser amplifiers and portals all aimed at the inside of the… the—”

“Wellsian Doorway I believe are the words you are looking for, Master Chief,” Henri said as he too had to step forward to see the giant ball of glass and shiny steel.

“Yeah, I guess that’s what you would call it,” Jenks mumbled as he took it all in two stories below them.

“Look inside the sphere,” Will said as he stood next to Collins.

“Oh, my,” Henri said as they all saw the same thing.

“Are those?”

Jack had to chuckle.

“Seats. I count twenty of them.”

The four men were actually shocked that what they had desired to see was actually there.

“I don’t believe the old broad built the damn thing,” Jenks grumbled.

Henri looked at Jack and they both thought the same thing at the same moment but it was Jack who faced the machine below and voiced it.

“Yes, Master Chief, she did build it.” He faced the men in the control room. “The real question is, why did she build it?”

Jenks, Will, and Henri all looked at the amazing piece of equipment below and the question hung in the air like a guillotine. The four men were silent as they tried to take in the ramifications of what was represented below. Jenks popped a fresh cigar in his mouth and articulated the moment with vivid verb.

“A goddamned time machine.”