Mirage tof-9 Read online

  When he was still two streets shy of his destination, he parked in the lot of a small apartment building and used the hood of the car to shield him while he slipped on a shoulder holster and then shrugged into a black single-breasted blazer tailored to hide the telltale bulge of the FN Five-seveN semiautomatic pistol. Beneath it he wore a white broadcloth oxford with the collar open. He clicked the holster’s lower loop around his belt to secure it in place and carefully closed the Porsche’s hood.

  A minute later, he rolled up to a Queen Anne — style house that was all brightly painted gingerbread, narrow dormered roofs, and peaked turrets. Had it actually been made of gingerbread, he wouldn’t have been surprised. The hundred-year-old house had an attached garage that was an obvious add-on, but whoever had done the work had strived to match the original building’s delicate architecture. In a word, the place was “charming.” And it looked to be the perfect hole-up for a retired MIT professor.

  Cabrillo slid from his seat and walked across the stone path to the front porch and the door. There was an electronic bell, but it felt right to use the ornate brass knocker instead.

  “One moment,” a muffled voice called from within.

  If Juan could pin down exactly how long a moment lasted, that’s how long it took for the door to swing open.

  “Yes?”

  Professor Tennyson had gained some weight since the photo Cabrillo had seen was taken. His face was fleshier, but with a healthy glow. Atop his head he wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, and he sported rubber boots and had a pair of gardening gloves tucked into his belt. That he’d left a trail of dirty footprints from his open back door and across the polished cherry floor of his living room was lost to the man.

  “Professor Tennyson?”

  “Yes,” he repeated. “May I help you?”

  “I certainly hope so, Professor. My name is John Smith, and I’d like to talk to you about Nikola Tesla.”

  Tennyson blinked and looked a little guarded. “Are you writing a book?”

  “No, sir. I’m doing research purely for myself.”

  “And what do you do, Mr. ah…?”

  “Smith, Professor Tennyson. John Smith. I’m an analyst with a think tank that consults with the government on foreign policy and security.” This could go one of two ways, he thought. Either Tennyson would abhor anything to do with the government and would shut him out or he would like the opportunity to talk about his favorite subject no matter who was listening.

  “Security, eh? Are you one of those people who believe that some aspect of Nikola’s work could be turned into a weapon?”

  “Actually, sir, I’m here to make sure someone else hasn’t already done it.”

  That seemed to pique Tennyson’s interest. He opened the door fully. “Sure, we can talk, for a bit, but it will cost you.”

  Judging by the size and age of the house, Tennyson didn’t look like he was wanting for money, so the comment threw Cabrillo until the man went on.

  “I’ve cut down a small elm tree out back, but I’m afraid I’m not up to the task of digging out the stump. A strapping young man such as yourself can have it out in no time.”

  Juan grinned. “I think we have a deal if you let me use your restroom first. It’s been a long drive.”

  “You drove all the way from D.C.?”

  “I’m based in New York,” Cabrillo said as he stepped into the house. The furnishings were spotlessly clean and looked as if they were the original contents of the home. An ornately carved banister rose up to the second story. Juan noted that, as in many homes of this era, there were two-foot-square grates set between the floors to allow heat from the main hearth to reach the bedrooms above. To the right of the entrance was a hallway with a small table next to the door that would lead to the garage. He saw that the bowl sitting on the spindly legged table appeared to be an antique Tiffany.

  Tennyson noted Cabrillo’s interest in the furnishings. “This house belonged first to my grandparents and then a spinster aunt,” he explained. “She kept it exactly as it was as a personal shrine to her father and mother, and when she passed a few years ago, I couldn’t bring myself to change it either.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Juan remarked.

  “And a nightmare to maintain,” Tennyson said with a small laugh. “I often wonder if I am the house’s occupant or its servant.”

  The fixtures in the bathroom looked like they’d come out of a plumbing museum. After using the toilet, with its tank mounted high up on the wall, Juan shrugged out of his coat and removed his holster. There was no way he could dig out a stump wearing the rig without Tennyson spotting it, and it was his experience that civilians were wary around firearms. He folded the pistol into his jacket, placed the jacket under his arm, and joined Tennyson on the back brick patio. The gardens were just starting to bloom, and by summer would be a riot of colors and aromas.

  “Is gardening a hobby?” he asked.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, it was my aunt’s, not mine. I personally hate it, but what can one do?”

  He led Cabrillo over to the left side of the fenced-in yard, where a three-inch-diameter stump stuck up through the grass. Next to it was a shovel and an ax. A pair of robins were building their nest in a nearby tree and squawked at their approach.

  Juan set his hidden gun bundled in the jacket a short distance away and took up the spade.

  “So tell me, Mr. Smith—”

  “John, please.”

  “And I’m Wes. What sort of weapon do you think Nikola invented?”

  Cabrillo liked how Tennyson used Tesla’s first name, as if he were a friend and not a long-dead stranger. “That’s just it. We’re not sure. We think his research is tied into a defense program, but we don’t know exactly what.”

  “He was a remarkable man — Tesla, I mean. Mad in the end, and destitute, the poor bugger, but he was a certified genius. I’m sure I don’t need to give you a primer on all of his accomplishments in the field of electrical research — the induction motor, radio control, wireless communications, spark plugs. It was said that his ideas and inventions came to him fully formed in a flash of inspiration.”

  “What about weapons research?”

  “There is talk that later in his life he wanted to build a direct-energy ‘peace beam,’ but it is mostly known as the death ray. His treatise on the subject, The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, is in the Tesla museum in Belgrade. I’ve read it and it’s pure drivel. His theories are interesting, but the device would never work. He spent time trying to develop an aircraft that flew by ionizing the air under it. Perhaps that is what you’re looking for.”

  As he dug, Juan couldn’t see a fit between an ion-powered plane and George Westinghouse’s boat ending up in Uzbekistan. “He and Westinghouse were friends?”

  “Oh yes,” Tennyson nodded vigorously. “Though he was already a wealthy man, Westinghouse added to his vast fortune on their collaborations.”

  “Can you think of any experiment that Tesla would have performed aboard Westinghouse’s yacht, the Lady Marguerite?”

  “No,” Tennyson said quickly.

  Too quickly, to Cabrillo’s trained ear. “Something on or about August first, 1902?”

  “Nikola was working on the Wardenclyffe Tower in 1902, out on Long Island. It was intended to transmit electricity wirelessly.”

  “Funding for that project was pulled a month earlier,” Cabrillo shot back, silently thanking Murph and Stone for the briefing paper they’d prepared for him. “Please, Professor Tennyson, this is important. I found the Lady Marguerite buried in a desert that used to be the Aral Sea just a few days ago.”

  Tennyson went ashen, and he laid a hand on his chest, taking a couple of steps back. “My God.”

  “What happened that night?” Juan pressed. “What were they working on?”

  Tennyson moved to an Adirondack chair and lowered his bulk into it. “It was only a secondhand account. That’s why I never put i
t in my book.”

  “What was he trying to do?” Juan laid the shovel aside to give Tennyson his full attention.

  “It was an experiment they were going to show the U.S. Navy, had it worked. The idea was to use magnetism to bend light around a ship in such a fashion that anyone looking at it would not see light reflecting off of its hull. Their field of vision would pass over the ship and on to the other side.”

  “Optical camouflage?”

  “Exactly. They rigged the system to the Marguerite and sailed out from Philadelphia, where the work had been carried out in a dockside warehouse Tesla owned. Another ship went with them, for the observers. It was from a story handed down from one of the observers, a Captain Paine from the War Department, that I know any of this.”

  “What happened?”

  “No one was really sure. They were still steaming out past the shipping lanes when the Marguerite suddenly lit up the night sky with a strange blue aura. It lasted for about thirty minutes and then winked out. When they went to investigate, the yacht was gone. They assumed she had sunk.”

  “Did they report any anomalies on their ship? Anything to do with magnetic fields?”

  “You’re referring to the story of the Mohican?”

  Cabrillo nodded.

  “Of course I investigated that tale as best I could. Nothing like what that crew experienced happened on the observers’ boat, but, in full disclosure, I must say they were in a wooden-hulled sloop. The Aral Sea, you say?”

  “Yes. What do you think happened?”

  Tennyson went quiet. His eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses had gone vacant as he stared into the middle distance.

  “What is it, Professor? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tennyson finally admitted. “The Lady Marguerite vanished that night. Of that, there is no doubt. And you say you found her in Kazakhstan.”

  “The Uzbek side of the Aral,” Juan corrected.

  His gaze still fixed on an object only he could see, Tennyson said, “Nikola died in January of 1943. There was a rumor of a story that came out of Philadelphia later that same year — October, to be precise. It involved another Navy project using the ship the USS Eldridge.”

  Cabrillo knew enough of the subject, thanks to Mark Murphy’s rantings, to say, “You’re not talking about the Philadelphia Experiment, are you? That was completely debunked.”

  Tennyson turned his gaze on Cabrillo, his eyes fierce. “Debunked? You just found the Lady Marguerite in Uzbekistan and you’re willing to discount the story of a Navy ship vanishing from Philadelphia and reappearing in Richmond, Virginia? The tale goes on that the ship then returned to her home port with some of the crew fused to the deck in grotesque tableaux while others were driven mad by their experience.” He paused to get a grip on his emotions. “I’m sorry, John. This is all so overwhelming. There was so much more to Nikola than I could ever write about. He was a genius in the way Einstein was a genius except history has completely forgotten him because so much of what he accomplished has been dismissed as speculation and rumor.”

  “So what happened in Philadelphia?” Juan said softly to prompt the professor along.

  “Right… Philadelphia. Not long after Nikola’s death, the FBI took control of part of his estate under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover himself. They raided the hotel room he lived in in Manhattan and also seized property he owned on the Philadelphia waterfront. The story of the USS Eldridge is bull. But it remains the basis of what they discovered in that waterside warehouse. What happened to the Eldridge wasn’t the story. What they found in Nikola’s warehouse was.”

  Without a doubt, Tennyson had Cabrillo’s full attention. “What did they find?”

  “Another ship. One that had been modified. It was an old Navy mine tender that Tesla had purchased with the help of Westinghouse. He had claimed that he had a new concept to make his optical camouflage work this time. But he never had enough money to complete the project, so the ship languished in the harbor for years until the FBI raided the facility.

  “They took every scrap of paper they could find, but they left the ship behind. Nikola died owing a great deal in taxes, so the ship was turned over to the War Department as scrap in order to pay off his debt.”

  “How do you know all this and why haven’t I read about it before?”

  Tennyson smiled. “Because of a little-known pact made during World War Two between the U.S. government and the Mafia.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me right. You see, the mob controlled the port facilities in the Northeast, from Boston down to Wilmington, Delaware. In order for the docks to run smoothly for the war effort, certain concessions were made to organized-crime figures, including Lucky Luciano, who was paroled from prison after the war for his cooperation.”

  “And how does this pertain to Tesla’s boat?”

  “Dockworkers first tried to fire up the ship’s boilers to move it to a wrecking facility on the Delaware River. They succeeded, and one worker inadvertently powered up the equipment Tesla had left wired to the ship’s hull. Two men were in the room when the machine went live. One of them was cut in half by an unknown force and his lower extremities vaporized. This is where the rumor of men fused to the deck of the Eldridge originates. It’s said the dead man’s torso was found erect and propped up on his hands as though he was lifting himself out of the deck.

  “The second man looked perfectly fine, but he too was dead, his skin turned as white as a sheet. It was later determined that the iron in his blood had been ripped free of its binding protein, and toxic shock killed him. These two men happened to be pretty well connected with the local mob boss — I can’t recall his name at the moment — but, needless to say, the workers were spooked and refused to work on the ship. They discussed a general dockwide strike until the Navy agreed to tow the ship out into the Atlantic and sink it.”

  “Did they?”

  “They had no choice. Philadelphia was one of the Navy’s most important facilities for both shipbuilding and repair. It wasn’t worth the scrap value of one old mine tender to put that in jeopardy.”

  “Why didn’t the Navy investigate the machine that killed the men?”

  “I’m sure they wanted to, but with twenty thousand workers threatening to walk off the job at the same time the Allies were marching up the spine of Italy, and matériel was being amassed for the eventual invasion at Normandy, they took the prudent course to keep the peace on the home front.”

  “How did what you just told me become the story of the USS Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment?”

  “In 1953, the author of an obscure book about UFOs named Morris Jessup received a letter from a man identifying himself as Carlos Allende. Allende singled out Jessup because in his book he speculated that UFOs were powered by electromagnetism and that during the war the Navy had experimented with such forces on a ship in Philadelphia. Allende claimed the research was based on Einstein’s unified field theory, though Einstein never could reconcile all the forces of nature into one elegant formula like he had for relativity.

  “They corresponded for a time until Jessup realized Allende was some kind of crank and stopped all contact. Who Allende really was has never been established, but I believe he was aboard Nikola’s old mine tender when those two men were so mysteriously killed and spun an even greater tale for a gullible dupe.

  “Interestingly, the Office of Naval Research contacted Jessup a few years later about an annotated copy of his book they’d been sent. He informed them that the cryptic notes were written by Allende. Then in 1959, Jessup set up a meeting with Dr. Manson Valentine, the man who later discovered the limestone formation called the Bimini Road in the waters off the Bahamas. Jessup never made that meeting. He was found dead in his car in Miami, with a rubber hose stretched from the exhaust to his closed window. That last detail is the lifeblood of conspiracy theorists the world over. They say it wasn’t suicide but that he was killed by French operatives.�
�

  Cabrillo scoffed. “French?”

  “It’s a conspiracy theory, after all.” Tennyson chuckled. “Why not the French?”

  “Where did you get the story about the mine tender and why didn’t you put it in your biography?”

  Before answering, the retired academic hauled himself to his feet. “I’m thirsty. Let’s get something to drink and then finish up with that stump. You almost have it out of the ground.”

  Picking up his jacket and securing the holstered gun when Tennyson had his back turned, Juan followed him across the lawn and patio. The house’s kitchen was tucked into the back corner overlooking the garden, and while there were “modern” appliances, the fridge looked like it had been converted from an icebox, and a box of extra-long matches next to the stove meant its pilot had to be lit by hand.

  Tennyson pulled two Cokes from the fridge and handed one over. “I’m sure you’d prefer a beer, but I don’t drink.”

  “This is fine.” Cabrillo popped the can and took a long draught, not realizing how dry his throat had become.

  The doorbell buzzed, and Juan’s thirst vanished as his mind flashed to the bullet striking Yusuf out in the desert where no assassin had a right to be.

  “Are you expecting anyone?”

  “Not really. But my birthday is this week, and I’ve been getting gifts from old students and colleagues,” Tennyson said as he ambled from the kitchen. Juan brushed passed him and looked out the front window. A delivery van was parked next to his Porsche on the street, its side emblazoned with a bouquet of flowers. His pulse slowed.

  “Looks like someone sent you flowers.”

  “Probably my old secretary. She sends peonies every year.”