Tesla Secret, The (22 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Nick put down the phone. Selena watched him.

"That was Harker. Foxworth's dead."

"How?"

"His security chief shot him. Foxworth's assistant went out for a smoke break and when she came back they were both dead."

"Both of them?"

"Foxworth killed him. It looks like they both fired at the same time."

They were in Nick's apartment. Miles Davis played in the background. He took down a bottle of Jameson from a cabinet over the wet bar and a glass.

"Get me one," Selena said.

He got another glass and brought the bottle and glasses over to the counter where she sat.

"I love this album," Nick said. "
Kind of Blue
. Davis, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane. Bill Evans. There's no one like them around anymore."

"It's a different world now." She drank. "What do you think Elizabeth is going to do?"

"You mean about the Project?"

"Yes. Where will the new headquarters be?"

"She's not happy with all the publicity. Maybe somewhere away from the city."

"I never thought it would be like this."

"Yeah." He looked at her. "What are you going to do? About the Project? About us? No one would blame you if you stayed out of the field after what happened in Mexico. Or if you left."

He looked down at his drink as he said it.

"I won't be ready for the field for months." She considered her words. "Would anyone blame you if you got shot and left?"

"What do you mean?'

"It sounds like you think there are different rules for me than there are for you."

"That's not what I meant at all."

"You didn't answer my question. Would anyone blame you?"

"It's different for me."

"See? That's how you and Ronnie and Lamont think." She poured herself another drink.

Nick could feel tension settling on his shoulders. What she'd said was true. He did think it was different for her.

Selena said, "It's important. Do you think getting wounded makes any difference? Excuses me if I quit?"

He looked at the ice melting in his glass. "I don't know."

She took a breath. "We're a team. If I quit, I'd be letting you and Ronnie and Lamont down. And I resent the fact that you think I might do that."

He was silent. She toyed with her glass, turning it on the smooth stone countertop.

"I admit, getting hurt like that scared the hell out of me. More than Pakistan. But I'm not quitting."

"You almost died."

"I didn't. Because you saved me. Just like I'd do for you." She looked at him. Her voice betrayed her emotion. "The team is important to me. It's not just what we do. It's everything. We depend on each other. We're a family. How could I give that up? You think I don't understand after what we've all been through in the past year?"

Nick reached out and took her hand. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"All right, then. So shut up about not going back in the field." She took her hand away.

"You didn't answer my second question. About us.

He waited. She was working up to saying something.

"I'm not sure about us right now. How do you think I'd feel if you were killed? Did you ever think of that?"

The words stunned him.

"No. I never thought of that."

"Well, I do. I pushed it away, before. Mexico changed that. It's made me look at my fears in a different way. Not only about me, about you dying. Then you almost don't come back from Russia."

"But I did."

"This time. What about the next?"

"It's the risk we take."

"Yes, it is. That doesn't make it easier."

She stood.

"I think I should go now."

"Why don't you stay," he said.

"I'm sorry, Nick. I can't, right now. Give me a little more time to work it through."

The door closed behind her.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Three days later Harker called an evening meeting at Selena's. Nick was ten minutes late. He got out of the elevator and went to Selena's door. Since the night they'd talked he'd only seen her at the meetings. He used his key and went in.

The door opened onto a wide hall that led to the great room on the right. He walked to the end of the hall and turned the corner.

"Surprise!"

Selena, Elizabeth, Ronnie, Stephanie and Lamont stood in a group under a wide red banner that shouted Happy Birthday! The room was festive with balloons. The dining table was loaded with food. A cake with candles waited.

He stood speechless.

"Happy Birthday, Nick." Selena came forward and kissed him. She whispered in his ear. "I love you," she said. "It's all right. I'm not going anywhere." She kissed him again.

Lamont said, "Gotcha, man. Surprised you. Happy birthday."

"One more gone," Ronnie said.

"Just like a Scorpio." It was Stephanie. "Late to your own party."

Elizabeth smiled. "Good thing you were. We couldn't get all the food out in time."

They were all smiling at him. The team. His family.

"You guys..." He stopped.

In the end, this was what mattered. This was what he fought for. Not just flag or country, but for the people in his life. That was what was important.

He looked at Selena. Suddenly, life felt good again.

About the Author

Alex Lukeman is the author of the award-winning Action/Adventure thriller
The Tesla Secret
. He likes riding old, fast motorcycles, sipping Barbados rum and playing guitar, usually not at the same time

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The Project Series

White Jade

The Lance

The Seventh Pillar

Black Harvest

The Tesla Secret

The Nostradamus File

The Ajax Protocol

Author's Notes

I like to mix fiction and fact in my stories.

Telluric currents are real, an inexhaustible source of energy with no environmental effects. Nikola Tesla invented alternating current, bladeless turbines and wireless transmission. He patented designs for the transmission of free electrical energy based on the use of the earth's geomagnetic field. We might have that free electricity today if J.P Morgan had not pulled Tesla's funding. It could still be done, which ought to give us all something to think about.

The Mafra Codex does not exist except in my imagination. There are no Mayan books from the period of 500-600 CE. The Mafra Palace in Portugal and it's famous library are real. So is the large and extensive sewer system beneath it.

Zaslon exists. It is composed of the cream of the Russian Special Forces, which makes it a very formidable unit. It is part of Department S of the SVR, which also exists.

Cold launch technology is real. It would allow a missile to be fired from the deck of a freighter lying off our shores. We'd better hope no one does that. A missile fired at the Capitol from close to the Virginia coast would be almost impossible to intercept.

The premise of lost plans for the death ray design is based on fact. Tesla did indeed demonstrate a small device operating in a vacuum, reported in the press as a "Death Ray". Channels exist under the Egyptian pyramids that would have flowed with water before the Nile shifted course. In the Great Pyramid there are no smoke stains from torches on paintings deep inside the structure. What did the builders of the pyramid use for light? Why are the inner walls of the pyramid constructed in such a way that they would serve as a perfect insulator? Why are there illustrations that look exactly like light bulbs of some kind? And why do respected Egyptologists say that the Great Pyramid may not actually have been a tomb after all? If it wasn't a tomb, what was it for?

Tesla saw World War Two coming and made a serious effort to sell his idea for a super weapon to the US and the British governments. Both FDR and Churchill turned him down. Tesla believed his weapon would make war obsolete because of its great destructive power. By this time he was notably eccentric. They didn't believe him. He died in 1943, in poverty and alone, an eccentric old man dismissed as irrelevant and disturbed. Hoover's FBI seized all of his plans, papers, documents and models. These were finally released nine years later and shipped to Serbia. They are in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

If he was so irrelevant, why did the FBI grab all his effects?

We can already build futuristic beam weapons, including phasers (just like Star Trek- designs exist which would work perfectly in the vacuum of space), masers and lasers. The US is currently researching and developing a proton beam weapon. I assume the Russians and Chinese are as well. There are still problems, primarily with the power issue described in the story. All beam weapons must confront "blooming" and overcome the resistance of the atmosphere, if they are to be effective as weapons of war.

The Russians did invest a great deal of effort during the 50s and 60s at the Semipalatinsk-21 test site in Kazakhstan trying to develop a proton beam weapon. The theory behind such a weapon is well understood. Tesla's death ray is a developing reality. Imagine something that could make the atomic structure of a target destabilize. It is only a question of time until the obstacles are overcome.

For an excerpt from White Jade, Book One, please keep reading...

WHITE JADE

CHAPTER ONE

The dream splintered into shards of red and black, a kaleidoscope gone wrong. William Connor sat up gasping for air and waited for his heart to stop pounding. The green numerals on the clock by his bedside read two-thirty in the morning.

Something wasn't right.

Had he set the alarms?

After a moment he got out of bed and shrugged on a robe. He moved to the stairs of his San Francisco home. Below, a pool of yellow light from a single desk lamp spilled across the polished wooden floor. The rest of the room was in darkness.

His old body protested as he descended the stairs. He started toward the alarm box. A large man stepped from the shadows and blocked his way. Connor's heart skipped a beat and settled to erratic thumping.

"You! What are you doing here?"

Strong arms grabbed Connor from behind and wrestled him to the chair by his desk. Someone wrapped tape around him. The robe fell open, exposing his pale genitals. He was helpless.

"Is it money? I have money. Tell me what you want."

The large man loomed over Connor. He smelled unpleasant, a greasy smell of testosterone and stale sweat.

"Yes, money. And I want the book."

"What book?"

The large man slapped Connor across the face, a casual blow.

"The book. The one from Bhutan."

Connor tasted blood. "It's not here!"

"Then you will tell me where it is. First, the money. I want the account numbers and access codes."

William Connor was a rich man. Access to those accounts gave control over hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Who are you?"

"I am your worst nightmare. Tell me what I want or I will hurt you."

Almost as an afterthought, the man picked up and examined a delicate, antique porcelain vase covered with an exquisite design of flowers and birds. The soft glaze glowed in the dim light. He smiled.

There were only two things William Connor truly loved. One was his niece, Selena. The other was the joy of things old and beautiful.

"Please be careful with that," he said. "It's very old."

The man looked at the fragile vase and smiled again. He held it in front of Connor in his huge hand and squeezed. It shattered into dust. Connor felt his chest tighten.

"If I ask a question and you do not answer, I will hurt you. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"The numbers."

"I don't have them here. All that is in my office."

The man sighed. He went into the kitchen. Connor could hear him rummaging through the kitchen drawers. He came back with a small red-handled pair of pruning shears Connor used on the rose bushes in the garden.

He grabbed the old man's left hand and pinched the blades together and cut off the little finger.

Connor screamed.

The man dug the point of the shears into the bone below Connor's eye. Connor screamed again from the pain. Blood ran down his cheek.

"The fog is thick, outside. The house is solid. No one will hear you scream. Your right eye is next."

The old man's bladder emptied, soaking his robe and the chair. Someone laughed, behind him.

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you! Don't hurt me again!" He began babbling the numbers, blurting them out. Sudden pain started and spread to Connor's left arm, sharp and immediate, a burning, blossoming bolt of fire. He stopped speaking and tried to catch his breath.

"Where is the book?" The man was shouting.

Pain exploded in Connor's chest. As vision faded, his last sight was the terrifying, angry face of his executioner.