The Traveler's Secret

CHAPTER 6: JEAN FULVER

Jean Fulver was suspicious. How could he trust his new traveling companions after what he had seen them do, after what they had done to him? His mind couldn't quite fathom yet what it was he had seen.

He remembered chasing the Russian spy into the alley. He remembered the feeling of vengeance and anger burning like a wildfire inside him, as he was determined to bring down the man who was responsible for the death of his friend Marius. As he had approached Sergei Krum, something fell over him like a shadow. A terrible cold had oozed into him, as hopelessness seeped into the darkest corners of his mind. He thought of Marius, and how he had died. Jean was thinking of that painful memory, feeling himself getting weaker and weaker, as it past through his mind over and over again. Near him, Sergei had fallen to the ground, and was shielded by another man, a large, crudely dressed man, surely American from his accent. Jean couldn't remember what the American had been saying as more horrible memories floated up from his consciousness. Then out of nowhere a third man popped out of the air, his emerald cloak swirling about the light shower of rain. Jean had thought it odd when this newcomer had pointed a wooden stick in his face. He was the same young man Fulver had seen earlier with Sergei.

Fulver heard the American shout, "Dumbledore watch out!"

Dumbledore jerked his stick away from Jean, and pointed it at the empty space behind the Frenchman. Fulver hadn't been sure what it was that the man, who was called Dumbledore, had seen, but the next moment, Dumbledore did something that Jean had never seen before nor thought had existed. He did magic. A bird of ethereal light burst out of, what Jean guessed was, a wand, arching its graceful wings, and speeding towards Fulver with a light beauty.

Jean had fallen to the ground as the bird swooped past him. As he did, he saw the American performing the same magic, except his was in a form of a monolithic bear. Stunned by the sight, Fulver felt as if his body was paralyzed in exhilaration and fear. Jean barely had time to say two words before the American yanked him off the ground, wrapped his arms around him, and did something Jean had never felt before. He sucked Fulver through time and space. That was the only way Jean could explain it to himself.

Terrified and angry with his new companions, not to mention frustrated that the man he had been hunting for months was going to escape, Jean fought against the American with every inch of muscle he had. But the Frenchman was no match for the much bigger American. And Fulver had not anticipated on the quick reaction of the man named Dumbledore. Dumbledore stunned his body, and the American did something that prevented Fulver from speaking.

So one could say, there were plenty of reasons why Jean would be enraged and frustrated by his new companions. For Sergei Krum, he felt downright hatred, the venom of it throbbing in his veins.

Whatever information Sergei had stolen or sold, had been the reason his friend Marius was not with Jean, and the French soldier meant to get his revenge.

Jean and Marius were an inseparable pair when they were younger, the local pranksters and terror of the neighborhood. Marius had come from a well-respected, and well-off family, whereas Jean came from a middleclass family who dreamed of being more. Needless to say he was always poorer than Marius, his clothes always out of style, and his schoolbooks to the prestigious academy he went to with Marius, secondhand. His parents did what they could for their son, scraping by to send him to the best school. But Marius never seemed to care that his friend wore hand me downs.

"Money is a materialistic, human idea. We should strive for more worthier items!" Marius used to say.

Both had gone into army for glory's sake, both wanting to stand and fight the biggest aggressor in the largest war of all time. They wanted to become immortal and legendary, Marius more than Jean. Marius was always the leader, the instigator. He was the brilliant one, who came up with all their crazy plans. Jean had only gone along for the ride, hoping to help stop the tyranny he saw all around him. When Marius had been accepted into the espionage business, he requested that Jean come along with him. Command could see the two could not be parted, and worked better as a team anyway. Marius could be a genius, but Jean was the one who brought sense to the pair.

It was a year before they went out on a joint mission together. Command had decided to test out Marius as a spy alone, and relegated Jean to desk duty, organizing the endless piles of mail. Marius had gone out into the world, fighting the war of information and misinformation.

Feeling slightly abandoned, Jean lived for the letters that Marius sent him, his fingers eager to feel the worn paper and imprinted adventures. At first, Marius wrote weekly, his letters full of rich details of the lands and people he had seen. He never gave away crucial information about a mission, but Jean could tell he was enjoying the adventure and danger. Then the letters came monthly with less detail, a different and disconcerting tone growing with every letter. Jean knew his friend well, and could tell that Marius had come across something that excited him, but also obsessed him.

From a young age Marius had gotten everything he ever wanted, sometimes waiting months, or even years until he attained it. Once an item or person became an obsession, he rarely lost interest in it. Jean had never seen something that Marius didn't, in the end, attain. Some would call it perseverance, but Jean saw it more as madness in a way. Marius could become fanatical, reckless and dangerous in his obsessions. Jean could read through Marius words, and his deteriorating penmanship, that whatever Marius had found, whatever had him this excited, was the strongest obsession that Jean had ever seen.

The last letter Jean had ever received was the most rashly written, and the shortest one yet. It told him that his friend was somewhere along the Eastern front hunting down, what Marius called, a "lost and wonderful treasure". And then all contact stopped for months on end.

After that, the world had grown a lot darker for Jean. His closest friend had gone as well as the gusto in Jean's life. Now all that was left to Jean was the monotonous paper shuffling job he had been given.

Command began to question him about Marius. They, too, had lost track of him, which made them equally nervous if not more. Someone was leaking information, and command was determined to find out who it was. A spy who drops from sight is usually the first suspect. Marius' disappearance worried Jean. It meant one thing. His friend was in trouble.

It was at the apex of Jean's fear and anxiety, at the dead of winter that Jean finally received a telegram from Marius. It said that Marius was returning to France with new and important information for the allied side. He asked Jean to meet him.

So it was in a tiny French café, tucked away in the heart of Paris that Jean was to meet his old friend again. Feeling less than cordial towards Marius, Jean was almost tempted not to go, to give Marius a taste of Fulver's abandonment. But he was also curious, curious as to what Marius had been doing all those long months he had not written, and what information he could possibly have that turned him from suspect to hero.

It was at this fateful meeting that Marius had first mentioned the name of Sergei Krum. He had come back to France to enlist his old friend's help in tracking down the spy, who had stolen deployment schedules and battle plans, and was going to sell it to the enemy.

"Jean, he can't be allowed to succeed because if he does, all we know and love will burn. Beautiful France will burn. You have to help me stop him. If you do, I know of someone who will reward you with something beyond your dreams. We can share it together, and become immortal."

When Marius had finished, Jean saw a manic light in his friend's eyes, the same light he always saw when Marius talked of his obsessions, but this was a thousand fold stronger. This worried Jean. He agreed to go with Marius if only to slow his friend down, and keep him from doing anything too reckless.

They left the next night, leaving the lights of Paris behind by train. Jean could feel a change coming, and a part of him had a foreboding feeling. Something dark was coming in these already dark times. Traveling mostly at night, Jean and Marius worked their way across the war torn continent, helping where they could, and hiding when they must. They became masters of stealth, living off nature and generous hands, only resulting to stealing when no other option, but death was open to them.

Jean had found a courage inside him that he never knew he had, but also a stillness and a calm. He grew tired of having an adventure for the sake of an adventure, and the farther they traveled from France, the more he believed that this was one of those trips.

Marius, on the other hand, seemed to be having the time of his young life. He became more and more reckless. What he loved to do was antagonize the German army as much as possible, especially young German lieutenants out on a cigarette break, or taking a piss. He loved sneak attacks on sleeping encampments, and near death escapes. The closer they came to being caught, the more Marius seemed to like it.

Jean didn't find these skirmishes quite as fun, and, at times, pointless. Weren't they on the trail of a dangerous Russian spy? Jean often had to rein in Marius, and remind him what it was they were after. But Marius always acted as if he knew what he was doing, as if he was waiting for someone or something to happen.

And that something happened two months later in the middle of February. By that time, they had reached, and crossed over into Russia. Winter had settled on the land like an unrelenting iron fist of cold and death. Food was becoming scarce, and help even scarcer.

It was in Russia that the gulf between the two friends widened exponentially. They had made their way into a tiny, farming community holed up for the winter. Marius and Jean headed to the local bar, but as the two friends were about to enter it together, Marius had insisted to go in alone.

"Jean, my contact will only talk to me. If I bring you along, he won't meet with me. Trust me."

Jean had more than once been wary of this mysterious contact that was feeding information to Marius. It was the way Marius looked whenever he talked of his contact. That same madness, usually connected with his obsessions, blazed out of his eyes. Jean could see his friend slipping more and more into that chaotic darkness. Soon Marius would never be able to come back from it.

It was at the local bar that Marius had been given the location and details about Sergei Krum. Krum was the youngest son of a wealthy aristocratic family, who lived not too far from where they were. The Krum family resided in a large, medieval stone manor on a sloping hill that overlooked the village. Guarded on all sides by hedges and a wrought iron gate, and surrounded by thickly vegetated woods, it displayed its ostentatious wealth and dominance over the tiny village below proudly, even as the village fell to ruin.

Over the next week they planned out their attack. Marius planned on entering the Krum family estate alone, while Jean caused enough mayhem to get the family out of the house. Jean didn't like the idea of Marius going in alone, but Marius insisted. He said that only one person could get in unnoticed. To Jean, the plan seemed too simple, not creative enough of a plan for Marius. This worried Jean more than he thought it would. It wasn't like Marius to come up with something so simplistic.

The day before the attack, Jean had gone out at night setting charges around the Krum estate in strategic places where the explosions could be seen best from the manor. Next he parked the getaway truck in a copse that abutted the back end of the estate.

The next day, Jean waited in the truck, detonators in hand. The first explosion went off near the backside of the manor, bringing bright color to the drab, gray afternoon. The explosion shook the truck, and flames rolled up into the sky. Immediately servants ran out of the house towards the flames. The family, on the other hand, remained on the stone veranda. Dressed entirely in black, the dour family watched as the fire ate away at their terraced gardens. Jean noticed that Sergei wasn't amongst the crowd; he knew what Sergei looked like, after having seen a picture shown to him by Marius. Yet another thing Marius' mysterious contact had given him.

Jean set off the second explosion. This one was set next to an old out house on the opposite side of the first explosion. Jean couldn't see that fire as well as the first, but he watched as more servants filed out of the house carrying buckets of water. Marius should be in by now, hopefully securing the plans at that very moment.

Blankets of smoke thickened the air as the two infernos burned their way through the vegetation. The first fire raged wildly as servants dashed back and forth trying to put the flames out. But when Jean turned his gaze on the second blaze, he was shocked to see a small spiraling line of smoke. How did they get the second fire out so quickly? Jean jerked the binoculars that he had had in his hands back to the cellar door where Marius was suppose to come from. He had expected the second conflagration to last longer, splitting the servants up, but now throngs of servants ran back toward the first fire. Lines formed as buckets were passed hand by hand towards the flames. It wouldn't be long before the first fire would be put out. The family, which had been lounging on the stone veranda, began to slouch back into the house, bored already with the scene.

Jean's eyes ached from the constant race back and forth, from the cellar door to the diminishing blaze. His sweaty palms slid anxiously on the rough steering wheel, absentmindedly wringing its worn surface. Jean had one more charge he could set off, but this one could kill the nearby servants. He felt his hand edge towards the third button on the detonator. His eyes bore into the flaked and cracked cellar door, watching for the slightest movement.

The flames from the first fire had been tamed down to a mild bonfire. The entire family had disappeared inside the house, and the servants now were making their way in. Jean could feel his thumb massage the third button. He still wasn't ready to set off the third charge. That was the closest one Jean had planted next to the house.

The very second that Jean had decided to set the third charge off, several things happened at once. A loud, echoing boom shook the air as a gun was set off. Marius burst out of the cellar door, and huge, lumbering menservants jumped out after him, pistols in hand. Jean slammed the keys into the ignition, and yanked the gearshift as he stomped on the gas pedal. With squealing tires and flying mud, Jean sped towards Marius, who was weaving back and forth through the trees that made up the back end of the estate. Jean reached the road, a thin dirt route that ran alongside the perimeter, and pulled a pistol out of his pocket. Opening the door for Marius, he began to lay cover for his friend. Bullets sprayed up mud, bits of hedges and trees around Marius. Marius made it to the back end of the estate, which was only guarded by a low hedge. He was now only 10 feet from the truck. Bullets ricocheted off the truck, grazing the metal at a high pitched speed. The menservants were catching up to Marius.

Marius leapt over the hedge, but landed wrong. He stumbled, but managed to stay up long enough to make it to the cab of the truck, where Jean pulled him in, slammed the door shut and sped off.

It was at least thirty minutes later, and miles away from the Krum estate before Jean stopped the truck. Turning to his friend, expecting to see the brassy and mischievous smile he had seen so often lately, Jean was shocked to see Marius slumped in the seat. With a face as pale as winter frost, lips of lilac, Marius' head lolled, his bright eyes dimming with every passing second. Jean swerved the truck to a halt. After snatching every bit of clothing he could find on him, he pressed it down on the gut wound Marius had been grasping, trying to stop the steady stream of blood, which ran over the seat to the dirt encrusted floor.

"Jean, Sergei wasn't there. He got the plans out and will board train 24 in Moscow..." Marius grimaced as pain shook his body, the life draining out of him faster than Jean wanted it too.

Marius, for the first time in his life, looked afraid. His green eyes locked onto Jean's. His friend seemed to be trying to say something to Jean, the last of his will bent on being heard. After what seemed like a fierce battle inside Marius, his friend managed a soft whisper.

"I'm not M..."

But Jean never heard the last of the sentence. Those were the last words that Marius spoke before his body fell limp. A howling, discordant wind swept across the Russian steppe. Jean could feel the tempest inside him rage on, and for a moment he felt as alive and determined as the wind. He would find Sergei Krum, and he would avenge Marius. But something nagged at Jean. What was it his friend was trying to say before he died?