The Traveler (31 page)

The house was quiet as the grandmother and daughter began to place dishes on the table for a late supper after the long day checking out of the hospital.

The light knock on the back door caught the two women unawares as they exchanged curious looks.

“The back door?” the daughter asked.

Just as the grandmother turned, the door opened and three men stepped inside. Her eyes widened when she saw the guns in the men's hands. The young woman gasped and before the strangers could react ran into the living room. She came to a sliding stop when she saw the second set of three men in the hallway holding the same menacing weapons as the ones at the rear door. Her eyes frantically went to the living room where she saw her husband standing with their newborn and her father staring wide-eyed at the intruders.

“Benjamin Koblenz?” the only black-clad man without a handgun asked politely.

“Yes,” answered the silver-haired man, who took a step backward to shield his son-in-law and new granddaughter. He turned when he saw his daughter standing in shock and then suddenly run to be with her husband and daughter. His wife was moved from the kitchen to the living room with a gun politely sticking in her back.

“And this must be Mrs. Koblenz, the former Natalie Freiburg.”

The husband remained silent as his wife came to his side. She was shaking and this infuriated the older man.

The talker placed a piece of paper into his coat pocket and then nodded to one of his men.

“My associate will assist you in gathering anything you may need for your child. Dress her warmly, we have a bit of a drive ahead of us.”

Panic spread rapidly across the daughter's face like a wild flowing river as she removed her daughter from her husband's hold and sat hard on the couch, holding her child tightly to her heaving chest. “You can't take my baby,” she cried as her frightened husband tried his best to shield them as he too sat.

The man shook his head. “We are not in the habit of killing children,” the man lied as he had done just that a few months before with a freeloader and his family in Staten Island. “We need twenty-four hours of cooperation and then we will return you and your family to your home.” He smiled. “Completely intact and unharmed.”

“Who are you and why do you need us to go with you?” the grandfather asked as a diaper bag was tossed to him by one of the intruders.

“I will let Miss Mendelsohn explain that to you.”

Both Benjamin and Natalie Koblenz exchanged worried looks.

“Who is that?” the daughter asked as she and her young husband were brought to their feet.

The silence that greeted the question was unnerving as the six men went about preparing to abduct the entire family.

A small portion of the Traveler's secret and extended family was being rounded up.

KATONAH, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK

The darkness had eaten most of Sarah's enthusiasm as she thought about how Jack and Niles were going to fly off the proverbial handle when they learned that she and Anya were in the process of going rogue on them. All of this after the director had allowed them all back in after being caught trying to manipulate the young Morales. No, this was not going to sit well at all.

“There it is,” Anya said as she saw the address and the name on the black gate and the surrounding brick masonry that guarded the monstrous Gothic building.

Sarah slowed the car down and stopped at the chained gate and looked at the large mansion beyond. The darkness was complete. “Well, it sure as hell looks abandoned,” Sarah said and then nearly screamed when a knock sounded on her window. Embarrassed, she turned her head and saw the uniformed security guard standing just outside of the car. He had tapped on the glass with a flashlight. The man stood straight when the car's dome light came on when Anya stepped outside and walked to the side of the car where the old man waited.

“You young ladies know this is private property?” he asked as he watched the gorgeous woman with jet-black hair approach. He was appreciative of her figure as his locked and loaded eyes made obvious.

“We just need some information,” Anya said as she stepped closer to the older security guard, whose frame looked as if it hadn't missed any meals of late. “How long has the”—she looked at the brass name on the gate—“Briarson Home for Children been closed?”

“Oh, gosh, even before I got out of grade school. The town was sad to see it go, I do know that. The firm that supported the school and home was very generous to the local community. Let's see, 1983, maybe '84.”

“Wow, that has been awhile,” Anya said with a quick look into the driver's side window at Sarah. Then the plastic Taser came up and into the man's large belly. His eyes went wide and he became rigid as the electrical charge coursed through his body. “Sorry,” Anya said as she tried in vain to ease the unconscious guard to the ground but cursed when he crashed anyway due to his unexpected weight. She quickly rummaged in the man's pockets and then stood and looked at a shocked Sarah McIntire. “We don't have a lot of time here for Q and A,” she said as she turned and ran for the locked gate. She quickly had the chain removed as Sarah jumped out and started dragging the moaning security guard through the now open barrier.

“I think Carl and Jack are a bad influence on you,” Sarah said as she used the officer's handcuffs to secure him to the inside bars of the ornate gate as the semiconscious man kept mumbling incoherently. Sarah reached down and removed the guard's radio and threw it five feet away into a stand of overgrown bushes lining the gate. Both women went back to the car in silence and then drove through and closed the gate to keep outside curiosity to a manageable level.

The mansion was large and only a few lights burned purely for fire department safety. Moira, through her management firm, had kept the grounds immaculate and they hoped the same could be said for the interior. They parked the car in the front and used the large set of keys stolen from the guard to open the double front doors. The dreams of finding the inside as glorious as the outside were quickly and distinctly quashed.

“Boy, the housekeeping staff must have been the first employees let go when this place closed,” Sarah said as she ran a hand through thirty years of dust on a sideboard table near the front door. Sarah started to reach for the light switch and Anya stayed her hand. She just shook her head. She clicked on a flashlight and gave it to Sarah.

“The guard may have a few friends.”

Sarah nodded and they started looking—for what, they didn't know.

BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

The machine up close was gorgeous in its design if not daunting in its construction. Virginia, Jenks, and the entire nuclear sciences and engineering departments were crawling all over the doorway and its support systems. With the assistance of Europa they had devised that the time machine was in complete working order even though Europa was having a hard time saying the apparatus would or could actually work. The science was just too impossible, even for the Cray system as she was also having trouble without the right programs on quantum physics.

The daunting problems remaining were not in the control of Jenks or Virginia, but mostly fell to the responsibility of Morales and Europa in finding a corresponding signal from what might be as far back as 250,000 years, that coupled with the fact that they could not even power up the Wellsian Doorway without blacking out the entire eastern seaboard. Moira had explained that exact same thing had happened causing the famous 1969 New York blackout. She had even smiled when recalling the debacle she had spent millions upon millions of dollars to cover up.

The Event Group's duplicate, reverse-engineered, and far more portable Wellsian Doorway was now under construction next to the existing one. It would be able to be broken into components for transport to Antarctica to be reassembled there for the team's dimensional return—if there was one.

“Yeah, well I can't see anything working until we get some electricity in here that has enough umph to fire this damn thing up,” Jenks said as he removed the stub of his cigar and nearly spit the foul taste from his mouth until he saw Virginia waiting to pounce on him for doing so. He swallowed instead. “Well, are you going to let me in on your little secret on how you plan to accomplish that particular electrical miracle since the portable power unit we have at the complex has to go with the field team into the past”—he smirked at Virginia—“if that's even possible.”

The look down at Moira by an unbelieving Jenks was unmistakable as she sat and smiled at the master chief and his continuing doubts about the sciences involved. Moira knew engineers had very small imaginations.

“Look, there is only one portable power unit in existence capable of generating the output of the hundred and fifty megawatts we need. Bringing in the power lines from the city will cause a lot of eyes to look our way and even then we would probably blow every circuit from here to Montreal in doing so. So, maybe you should let old Jenksy in on your solution, huh, Slim?”

Virginia shook her head while she used a nonconductive acrylic wrench to twist a bolt on the old doorway as they were now in the process of adding their own features to the technology. “I'm working on that, Harold.”

“What did I tell you about calling me—”

“Virginia, you're needed outside, the harbormaster is waiting on you.”

Both Virginia and Jenks stopped bickering and turned to see Niles Compton and Jack Collins standing by the wheelchair of Moira Mendelsohn, who was looking up at them.

Virginia looked at Jenks and gave him a smug smile and then stepped down from the top of the doorway where she had been analyzing the lens cuts on the eighteen laser apertures in the rounded circle of the door's opening.

“Unlike engineers, my people know how the world really works,” Virginia said as she hopped down the last few steps of the erected scaffolding.

“Smart-ass,” Jenks grumbled as he snapped the last laser lens into place.

Niles watched the assistant director exit the platform area and then waited as Jenks climbed from the erected scaffolding and confronted Moira for further instructions on how the doorway operated. Niles then pulled Jack aside.

“I had to bring the president in on this request from Virginia and I'm guessing the Department of the Navy and General Dynamics are going to start asking some serious questions soon.”

“We knew it wouldn't last as long as we needed. Do we still have the eighty-eight-hour window the president promised?”

Niles pursed his lips and then limped to a chair and sat, staring up at the Wellsian Doorway and its newly born and much smaller reverse-engineered sister rising next to her.

“Yes, and those remaining hours are ticking away fast,” Compton said as his eyes roamed over the most amazing machine he had ever seen outside of the magical
Leviathan
, the futuristic submarine they encountered during a harrowing field mission a few years back that was so appreciated by the members of the Event Group.

“Has Morales and Europa had any luck with the escape pod signal?”

“He seems convinced if we can get the doorway up and running he and Europa can find a corresponding signal from Mr. Everett's escape pod. Pete Golding Junior says that according to Professor Mendelsohn's figures, Europa should be able to shoot signals into every dimensional plain, no matter how many that may be.” Niles smirked. “Hell, I don't know if the kid knows what he's talking about. I'm like Jenks there, this is so far beyond me that it hurts my head thinking about it.” Niles smiled and looked up at Jack. “Europa was right in her choice of her new boss, our Dr. Morales seems more than capable despite his youth. Pete was right to want him on his team.”

Jack knew discussing the replacement for Pete Golding always put the director in a funk. Pete was not only close to Charlie Ellenshaw, he had also learned most everything from the man sitting next to him—Niles Compton. Collins placed a hand on Niles's shoulder and then looked around the PIT and the hundred technicians who sat at consoles and had wrenches and welders in their hands.

“Have you seen Sarah and Anya?”

 

12

KATONAH, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK

The many upstairs rooms were divided into boys' and girls' dormitories that were appointed in richly woven carpet and had the finest built-in woodwork. Sarah and Anya could see that this was not your ordinary home for abandoned or orphaned children. The house was empty and as lonely a place as either woman could ever remember seeing before. The once childish laughter of its residents echoed in empty corridors and rooms. Not one stick of furniture was left behind and the office areas had been cleaned out of all paperwork and sent to the state offices of child welfare when the house closed its doors in 1982. With the last place they had to check being the basement, they were fast losing hope as to just what the Traveler had hidden from the Group, and for that matter, the world.

The stairs were steep and treacherous and by the looks of the gathered dust and mouse droppings, it had not had a cleaning visit in many years. The dampness was cloying in smell and in feel. Anya reached the bottom and Sarah joined her, adding both lights to the cluttered scene. There were a few boxes but it was mostly made up of stacked mattresses and old bedding that was piled everywhere.

“Boy,” Sarah said as her light picked out the shambles of the cavernous basement.

“I don't know what I was thinking. If Moira is as smart as we all believe, she would never have left anything behind she didn't want found.”

Anya slowly moved back to the stairs and Sarah was about to follow suit when her light briefly caught a water-worn box that had collapsed, spilling its contents. Sarah walked the few steps over and then lightly kicked at the spilled contents that were near ruin after years of water damage. She kneeled down and saw the names on the old assignment papers. She read names like Phizinberger, Rabinowitz, and Wachowski. There were more names as she scanned the old math pages. She looked up and that was when she saw the long dead incinerator. She stood and walked toward its open doors. Her light had spied something white inside.