“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.”