The Traveler (19 page)

“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.