Mirage

“It’s beautiful,” Juan remarked.

“And a nightmare to maintain,” Te

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 Te

“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 Te

“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,” Te

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

“No,” Te

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 Te

Te

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

Te

“What was he trying to do?” Juan laid the shovel aside to give Te

“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?”

Te

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

“I’m not sure,” Te

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

His gaze still fixed on an object only he could see, Te

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.”

Te

“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, Te

“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.