“Perform your duties well and you will soon be set free”—Doshnikov gestured around him—“to go about doing whatever it is you very strange people do. Do not perform them and I’m afraid there will be repercussions. Starting with that small child. And I know how you Americans can be so aghast when harm befalls children.” He gestured toward his men. “Take the family Koblenz to the observation room. Give me the detonator.”
The detonator to the explosives strapped to the baby’s carrier was passed to him and the family was moved back into the elevator once the threat was made and understood. It was then that a groggy Ryan looked at Mendenhall and then his eyes found the small detonator device in Doshnikov’s hand. Will nodded but at the moment there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Anya and Sarah were also watching and examining the detonator. The key here was to make sure that the baby and family were left unharmed. To every man and woman in the Group, that was now the priority, even beyond the safety of Jack and his team, Everett or themselves. Niles had explained time and time again: what they did was not worth one innocent life in their pursuit of historical acumen. Ever.
“Now, Mr. Jodle, please step forward.”
In the observation room Moira saw the traitor for the first time. Joshua Jodle. She had known the man was a weasel and the only child she ever regretted bringing out of Germany. Ambitious was a mild word for the cruel child. He had learned from the Nazis just how to get things done through intimidation. Sad that was the only lesson the boy had learned in the camps. The board had warned her of the man’s ambitions.
“Are you prepared?” the Russian asked.
Jodle held up an aluminum case. The prize was held chest high and the Wall Street genius nodded.
“If I may ask?” Ryan said as he rubbed the bump on his head and angrily looked at the guard who had delivered the blow. The tattoo made the Russian thug wary of the much smaller naval officer.
“Ah, finally some curiosity. Actually I was hoping you would ask. Inside this case”—he reached out and tapped it lightly on its top as the smiling little rat that held it did the same—“is the future, or should I say the past. This is the mythical Pandora’s Box and it is filled with the key to riches beyond measure.”
As Moira listened to the men speak through the speaker system, she cringed as she realized just what the traitor Jodle and the Russian were about to attempt. The thought that all of her wealth that her board of directors might have accumulated in the same manner over these many years made her physically ill.
“What are they up to, Moira?” Alice asked.
“They are simply going to change their destiny. I suspect that inside that case is a stock portfolio from sometime in the past, perhaps an exact copy of Warren Buffet’s. Or perhaps corner the market on Microsoft stock. My bet would be on Buffet or Gates.”
“Can they do that?” Niles asked.
“Yes, but they would have to use the doorway from building one-fourteen way back when it was operational, and since time and the dismantling of the doorway from building one-fourteen means nothing to the quantum jumper, it could be done. They would lock on to the signal during one of our operations just as you did tonight, and then they can travel all the way back to 1968 if they wanted. But they wouldn’t have to go back that far. I would guess they would shoot for the doorway’s last operation, when we brought back that little bastard Julien.”
“Industrious, I’ll give the poor bastard that,” Niles said as he eyed the monitor in the corner. It was still dark but he suspected that Xavier was there along with his entire staff. He was hoping he was thinking the same way that he was at that moment. Niles nodded at the monitor and the two Russian guards thought he had gone into some sort of spasm. Again he nodded at the monitor and then moved his head to the side toward the glass that separated the observation room from the doorway below. Compton quickly and deftly ran a finger across his throat.
At that moment both Alice Hamilton and Moira Mendelsohn knew what Niles wanted Xavier to do. The two Russians conversed in their native tongue at Compton’s strange behavior and that was when Alice broke the silence since the guards wouldn’t know what they were talking about anyway.
“What about our people?”
Niles shook his head.
“That’s just it, they’re our people and they will know what to do.”
Alice and Moira both looked at each other, knowing the director might have just ordered the death of all in that room.
The camera system had remained on but was set only as a one-way link. Xavier could see them but they couldn’t see him. Morales could hear them but knew the director was limited as to what he could say in the open. What Compton did manage shocked and astounded him. There was only one thing he could do to achieve what the director wanted and he hoped he was thinking along those same lines.
“Gentlemen, I need your attention and your expertise,” he said as he turned his wheelchair and looked out on the computer center floor. His 112 techs looked over at their new department head and listened.
“What do you need, boss?” Harvey Anderson from photo intelligence asked before the others could. The men and women had managed a growing respect for how fast the twenty-five-year-old thought.
“We cannot make adjustments to the settings from here, they can only do that in Brooklyn. But we can do something else.”
The large center waited as he thought a moment. He hoped beyond measure it was the same thing the director was thinking.
“What, sir?” Anderson asked.
“We can turn the doorway on. And do it on full power. We can’t adjust the settings from here, as I said, but we can sure as hell make that doorway burp a little. I need a direct link to the Los Angeles. We need that boat on standby for emergency power-up.”
“At full power that doorway will create a hurricane force inside that building, and then it will suck anything in front of it through to another dimension.” Anderson looked around him at the other techs that were just as shocked as he.
Xavier smiled. “And hopefully right into the waiting arms of a very pissed-off Colonel Collins.”
The light slowly dawned on the technicians’ faces and they knew that this man had just as much if not more brass balls than that had been demonstrated by none other than Dr. Peter Golding.
“People, let’s get ready to send this Russian jerk-off into a world he didn’t expect. Someplace his stock portfolio does little good.”
Joshua Jodle examined the new and improved design of the doorway. He went from the rectangle lining the doorway to the technicians’ stations behind the glass partition. One of the Group’s younger electrical engineers from UCLA watched the man and shook her head. He caught sight of this in his peripheral vision and turned on her.
“What is the minimum reboot time for this system?”
“You got me there, fella, they don’t tell me diddly around here,” she said in all seriousness.
“Unlike my Russian partner over there, I do not like to use threats, but you must know that they are not beyond my capabilities, young lady.” Joshua turned to face the girl and her colleagues sitting against the old brick wall. They all seemed to be enjoying his lack of knowledge.
“Yeah, we’re going to cooperate with a bunch of lowlife bastards who just strapped explosives to a sleeping baby.” The young blonde looked to her left at the other young technicians. They were all of the same mind and it was at that moment most realized just how much their chief of security had rubbed off on them.