“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.”