The First Casualty (7 page)

15

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Re: Nikola Tesla

File No. 2121-70

TOP SECRET

Date: October 21, 1941

To: J. Edgar Hoover, Director

From: Tim O'Flaherty, Director, Manhattan Field Office

Interception of subject's mail at the request of British Secret Service Bureau and authorized­ by secret Presidential Directive 42 indicate frequent mail contact with family members in the Independent State of Croatia. The director will recall this small country became a signatory to the Triparte Pact on 6 June of this year, thereby becoming a formal ally of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as well as Imperial Japan and a number of smaller countries, although Croatia has been considered a Nazi puppet state under the N.D.H. since the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April of this year.

Since subject holds a number of patents of a scientific nature with possible military implications, the possibility exists of his family being used as hostages by the country's pro-­Nazi government in an effort to obtain access to subject's inventions for use as potential weapons. Subject's nephew, Dari, has volunteered to join the 369 Reinforced Croatian Infantry, the troops Ante Pavelić, Croatia's “leader,” has promised to send to aid in the German invasion of Russia. Whether this young man has done so out of a love of the Nazis or the long-lived Croatian hatred of Russia is unknown.

The director will recall subject attempted to sell some sort of ray to the British military and succeeded in doing so to the U.S.S.R. for a reputed $25,000.

So far, there is no evidence subject's communications contain anything more significant than family news. Surveillance will continue.

16

Excerpts from Nikola Tesla: Genius or Mad Scientist
by Robert Hastings, PhD

Tesla liked to retell the story of how, as a young man, he was taken ill at school in Carlsbad and hospitalized. The physicians, according to Tesla, were unable to cure his mysterious ailment. One day, a nurse handed him several publications, including several articles by the American writer and humorist Mark Twain. Tesla so enjoyed them that he effected a miraculous­ recovery. From that day forward, Mark Twain became someone Tesla wanted to meet. The fact that, historically, Twain had written little of note and nothing worth translating at the time of Tesla's supposed illness never dissuaded him of his claim the writer had saved his life.

In 1884, the scientist succeeded in meeting Twain through mutual acquaintances who were members of Manhattan's Players Club. Though the two were never close friends, Twain was a frequent visitor to the lab at 48 East Houston Street, where the writer once observed, upon watching an experiment that involved twenty-foot electrical arcs and bolts of homemade lightning, “Thunder is impressive, but it's lightning that does the work.”

Later, Twain was to praise Tesla's AC polyphase system as “the most valuable patent since the telephone.”

Twain took great pleasure in standing on a platform above one of Tesla's inventions, the mechanical oscillator, feeling it sway back and forth in response to electrical impulses­. On the first such experience, Tesla suggested his guest had ridden long enough and he should come down. Twain declined, saying he found the motion “invigorating” and “healthful.”

Minutes later, he scrambled down, shouting, “Tesla, where is it?”

He meant the toilet, of course, having learned what Tesla's lab assistants had already painfully experienced: Riding the machine too long had a definite effect on the bowels.

In 1896, Twain was traveling in Europe, keeping up a sporadic correspondence with the scientist. From Austria, he wrote a letter, which, in part, read, “Have you Austrian and English patents on that destructive terror you are inventing?” Twain had his own ideas as to peace and disarmament: “. . . invite the great inventors to construct something against which fleets and armies would be helpless and thus make war thenceforth impossible.”

Twain went on to offer his services in marketing the patents to European powers and rulers he had met in his travels, including Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, presumably on the theory that if all nations possessed such a weapon, war would be impossible. Exactly what the nature of this “destruc­tive terror” was is not mentioned, nor is the method by which Twain learned of it.

A final and rather sad note to the relationship between sci­entist­ and writer: In 1942, shortly before his death, Tesla summoned a messenger, giving him a packet to be delivered to a Mr. Samuel Clemens at an address in Manhattan. When the messenger returned, unable to find either address or addressee­ (the street had changed names), Tesla flew into a rage.

“Mr. Clemens is a famous writer,” he howled. “He writes under the name Mark Twain. Someone will know where to find him!”

The frustrated messenger returned a second time, informing Tesla that Mr. Clemens had been dead some time.

“Impossible!” the scientist protested. “He was here last night.” He pointed. “He sat in that very chair! He is need of money, and I am sending it to him!”

The author relates the above anecdote as possible evidence Nikola Tesla was ever delusional, or, at his age in 1943, suffering dementia. He was dead weeks later.

17

Guernsey Airport

Guernsey, Channel Islands

The Same Day

Day 1

Jason knew the good people of the island were proud of their small airport. The terminal, a glass toadstool, had won a number of architectural awards upon its opening in 2004. Meaning, in that year, there had been a paucity of avant-garde or just plain ugly new buildings.

But aesthetics were not his mind at the moment. He had barely had enough time to put funds in Mrs. Princes's house account—to run the cottage; take care of Pangloss and Robespierre; and pay her wages for the next two weeks—and still have Momma and her borrowed yacht make the crossing from Sark to catch his flight to Heathrow. The BA CityFlyer Embraer 170 that would take him there was the only plane on the tarmac. At this time of year, the small but comfortable terminal was empty of tourists made cheerfully boisterous by the prospect of a fortnight of holidays on one of the islands. Instead, there was a handful of men, most in suits, whose interest in their watches and cell phones made Jason guess they were on various business missions.

Arriving just in time to clear security and board the plane, he shoved his single bag into an overhead bin and squeezed himself into one of a pair of empty seats. Of the seventy-six available, barely half were occupied. Although he had seen it dozens of times, he watched the winter-browned grass along the pavement move in the wind, waving a final farewell as the aircraft trundled out to Runway 32. This departure was different; Jason had no plans to return.

Now Sark, with its wind-bent fruit trees, rocky shores, and hardy cattle, was his most-recent former address. Maybe next time Jason would try a place on some mainland, someplace out of the way but not so remote as to make him conspicuous; someplace removed from civilization, but not too far removed; someplace that had nothing to attract anyone other than the residents.

Kansas suggested itself.

Thoughts for another day. He reached into a coat pocket and produced the book and envelope Momma had given him and began to read. He wouldn't get a lot read in the eighteen-minute flight, but it was a start.

He came awake with a start, unaware he had drifted off to sleep, as the aircraft lurched forward, its twin General Electric engines screaming in reverse thrust. The short duration of the trip had obviated any in-flight service that might have disturbed his brief nap. He barely had time to reflect that this was the first time in memory he had actually slept on an airplane. He normally suffered in-flight insomnia, involuntarily attuned to every sound, every change in pitch of the engines. He knew it was absurd—what could he do if things went south at 35,000 feet—but some obscure, atavistic sense of self-preservation kept him awake anyway.

As he liberated himself from the seat belt, he glanced out of the window where the much-heralded Terminal 5 was suckling a litter of Airbus 300 series and Boeing 700s: 80,000 tons of steel, 36,000 square yards of glass for a giant rabbit hutch. He had no idea why the numbers stuck in his mind other than the persistence of the British press in featuring every phase of its construction. There had to be a rule, known for certain only to the cognoscenti, that airport terminals, unlike the older, eye-teasing train stations of a century ago, must be either modern beyond attractive or tediously utilitarian.

He stood and removed his bag from the overhead as the plane docked at a somewhat less lionized, if equally unattractive, terminal and, like cattle to the slaughter, shuffled his place in line down the aisle to the exit into Terminal 1. Duty-free shops opposite departure/arrival gates lined the left side of the walkway, windows gleaming with expensive luxury watches, the latest in electronics, and other high end goods. Airport retailers are not known for bargain prices.

Jason's passing stare into the glass was rewarded by the reflection of a man as he stood up from one of the lounge chairs that lined the center of the concourse. He would have gone unnoticed had he not taken something from a jacket and folded it into the newspaper he held in the other hand. Gloved hand, Jason noticed. Most people who wear gloves indoors usually have a purpose other than keeping their hands warm. The guy wasn't Ronald McDonald. He maneuvered around a woman pulling a pair of roller boards to fall in behind Jason at a slightly faster pace. Alarm bells were clanging in Jason's mind, but he maintained the exterior of one fascinated by the gaudy retail display.

He picked his spot in front of a display of Rolex watches. Arms akimbo, he leaned forward as though to better see the timepieces. In reality, he was carefully watching the approach of the man with the rolled newspaper. Jason waited until the stranger was only a step away, reaching into the paper.

Jason took a step back. It was the move of a man suddenly tired of what he was viewing, or, perhaps, remembering something he had to do. The heel of his shoe came down on the stranger's instep hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain. At the same instant, Jason's elbow hit the wrist of the hand with the paper, knocking it loose.

“How clumsy of me!” Jason said, stooping. “Here, let me . . .”

Before the astonished man could protest, Jason shook the pages of the newspaper. A syringe rolled onto the tiles.

Jason snatched it up before the other man could close his fingers around it. The man bolted, shoving surprised passengers aside.

Jason's impulse was to give chase, but he held up. Like mice, the presence of one assassin meant there was a good chance more were around. He gently pushed the syringe's plunger, bringing a few drops to the hole in the needle and sniffed. No odor. Jason would have bet is was also tasteless. The really nasty stuff usually was.

Only then did he notice a small crowd of curious onlookers.

“My physician,” he explained with a forced smile. “He has his own way of delivering my annual flu shot.”

18

Terminal 4

London Heathrow Airport, United Kingdom

An Hour and a Half Later

Jason waited as long as possible before paying cash for his ticket, reluctantly showing his passport for identification. Absent false ID, there was no way he could keep his name off the passenger manifest, a document any moderately talented teenage hacker could get. His hope was that by the time his name was added, the flight would have departed.

In the waiting area, he selected a seat with a wall at its back. The thought of how easily the syringe's needle could have slipped through the fabric of the seat or those on an aircraft made him squirm. Easy, quiet, undetectable. Undetectable until one of the plane's flight crew discovered the passenger in 14F was dead, not sleeping, by which time the killer would be long gone. Equally disquieting was the certainty the attempt had been perpetrated by professionals, not one of Moustaph's disciples, filled more with religious zeal and hatred than talent. Not that the Al Qaeda leader didn't have capable killers available.

Another disturbing thought was the question of whether the men in Liechtenstein were connected to the shot fired through the bedroom window. Jason was fairly certain they were. Both the lack of subtlety and the blind shot through the window had an amateurish quality. Not like the would-be attack with the syringe.

The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he became. Two sets of assassins? One, the amateurs, acting out of revenge at the command of Moustaph, the other, the paid professionals with ready access to poison syringes and an arsenal of equally deadly weapons.

Not much he could do about it now other than to e-mail Momma and Narcom a list of what he needed so far. He had just finished when his flight was called.

Moments later, he was seated, iPod earbuds inserted as the violins of Scarlatti, the greatest of the Neapolitan Baroque composers, danced through his head. He ignored the scientifically dubious claim of possible interference with the aircraft's navigational system and began to read the material Momma had given him further.

19

Excerpts from
Nikola Tesla: Genius or Mad Scientist

by Robert Hastings, PhD

From letters preserved by present-day relatives of Tesla and shared with the author by surviving members of Tesla's family in Croatia, it becomes clear he was concerned about the welfare of his family there under Nazi rule. He was particularly distressed by the service of his young nephew, Darf, in a regiment of Croatian infantry fighting the Russians, along with the Germans at Stalingrad. His unhappiness came not from a political point of view, but from a fear of harm to Darf, harm suffered on behalf of the Germans whom he trusted no more than the Russians.

In September 1942, when the Stalingrad offensive had just begun, he wrote his sister, Ljerka, Darf's mother.

I fear for Darf. He is young, impetuous, and likely to take unnecessary chances on behalf of the country's current masters who care nothing for Croatia nor the fate of its youth. Besides, the lad suffers from asthma and may perish without his family to care for him.

It is possible I may be able to help secure his release from the military.

If so, it is my intent to do so.

Thereafter, Tesla corresponded with the U.S. Department of State, seeking to have the U.S. government intervene in some manner. Since America was already at war with Germany and its allies by this time, there was little the government could do. Tesla then contacted the embassies of neutrals Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal as well as the representative of the Holy See in New York (exchanges of ambassadors between the United States and the Vatican were not established until 1984). As an internationally known scientist whose inventions “benefitted all mankind,” he asked each, in the “name of humanity” to intercede with the Croatian pro-Nazi regime to free his nephew from military service.

As naive as his efforts may seem, Darf's children in Croatia today relate the story their late father told of his sudden release­ from the army just as the November 1942 Russian counter­-offensive began in some of the worst weather conditions known to modern warfare. He was flown home and given­ a job in his country's small war-production office. We may only speculate which neutral country succeeded in fulfilling Tesla's requests. Or, more puzzling, why the German army, desperate for every man it could muster, would acquiesce.