“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.