by Jack Du Brul
After a pause Cali asked, “What does this mean?”
“Other than the fact he sacrificed himself to stop Poli and Al-Salibi,” Mercer replied, “we’ll never know who he was.”
“Consider this,” Harry said. “They guarded their secret so closely that the world expert didn’t know about them. Now they’ve gone back to ground.”
“Our government is negotiating the location of Alexander’s tomb with the Egyptians so we get the alembic, so hopefully they’ll never need to emerge again.”
“Well I do have something else,” Harry said in a brighter tone. “After I transcribed Chester Bowie’s notes about adamantine I finished the rest of his letter. As we all know he was partially right about the mythological ore and was dead bang on about how the ancient Greeks created mythological monsters out of fossil bones. He has another theory that might be worth checking out.”
“What’s that?” Mercer asked warily.
“He believed that the story of Jason and the Argonauts is true, sort of. He believed that the Golden Fleece Jason sought was actually a treasure barge used to pay for the protection for a queen of Thessaly’s children when she sent them to live in the kingdom of Colchis. He thinks the barge sank in a storm on the Black Sea off the coast of present-day Turkey.”
Mercer and Cali broke out in laughter.
“What?” Harry said, looking from one to the other.
“No more adventures, my friend. Chester Bowie’s got his place in the history books. If someone else wants to prove the rest of his ideas they’re welcome to it. I’m done.”
“That goes double for me,” Cali agreed. “I want nothing more to do with Bowie, ancient legends, or myths.”
“Hey, come on,” Harry wheedled. “There could be a fortune out there for us. Think about it, a treasure barge loaded with loot. We’d be rich.”
“I’ve got everything I want right here.” Mercer put his arm around Cali as he spoke. She nestled into his embrace.
“Oh great.” Harry threw up his hands. “You end up with the girl and I’ve got nothing.”
“You’ve got the satisfaction of knowing you helped mankind,” Cali said sweetly.
“That don’t pay the bar tabs,” he groused.
“And I’ll pay you back the twenty grand I borrowed in New Jersey,” Mercer added.
Harry suddenly looked like he wanted to be anywhere but in this room. “Ah, you, ah, don’t have to bother.”
Trepidation crept into Mercer’s voice. “Why? What did you do?”
“You know I was on a roll, right, at the craps table, I mean, and if you’re on a streak you keep going, right? Well, Tiny knows a guy who floats a game. It was a sure thing. I couldn’t lose so I sort of borrowed something of yours for collateral.”
“You didn’t?”
“I did.”
“Did what?” Cali asked, switching attention between the two men.
Harry looked at her with an expression more pitiful than anything Drag was capable of. “I used Mercer’s Jag to cover my marker.” He turned to Mercer. “If it makes you feel any better I lost the rest of my thirty grand, too. Besides, Ira promised to cover all your expenses. We can get your car back no problem, or better yet buy a new one. And I swear on my soul Tiny and I will never borrow it, either.”
Mercer’s head was cradled in his hands. “Harry, when the vodka and Percocets wear off, you and I are going to have a very long talk about boundaries-like how I need to set some. Drinking twenty grand worth of my booze over the years isn’t the same as hawking my car.” He looked at his old friend with a rueful smile. “And you don’t have a soul.”
Knowing he’d be forgiven, Harry’s old face scrunched up in a matching grin. He lofted his highball in a salute. “You’re a prince and I don’t care what anyone else says about you.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Cali said. They both downed their cocktails and as Cali went behind the bar to recharge their glasses she said, “There’s something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?” Mercer asked.
“We’re pretty sure the Janissaries sank the Wetherby on the Niagara River but we discounted them being behind the destruction of the Hindenburg. Was it the Russians who blew it up or the Nazis themselves who sabotaged it?”
“I’m afraid that’s one more mystery piled up on all the rest. Hell, it really could have been an accident after all.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“Not really. I’ve never liked coincidences. Someone wanted to stop Chester Bowie from telling the world about the plutonium. We’ll just never know who.”
Postscript May 6, 1937 Princeton, New Jersey
The rain continued to fall as evening turned to night. It wasn’t a fresh spring storm but something darker and uglier that kept people indoors and huddled under blankets. The residential street on Princeton’s campus was deserted. The only motion was the swaying of naked branches and the flutter of sodden leaves stripped from the trees by the wind.
A shadow detached itself from where it had cowered behind a parked car, and approached a white two-story house. Its street number, 112, was affixed to the steps leading up to the broad front porch. The home was an unassuming Greek revival with black shutters and just a tiny patch of front lawn. The man who approached had never been there but had corresponded with its occupant numerous times.
He knocked on the door. His suit was soaked through and because he wore no hat his longish hair hung past his collar in greasy strings.
A woman opened the door. She was in her fifties and slender, with dark hair just turning to gray and a pinched, severe expression. She had the look of a guard dog and said nothing when she eyed the unkempt stranger with the thick mustache and crazed eyes.
“Is he here? I must speak to him.” The stranger spoke in a heavy accent that was more guttural than the woman’s native German.
“He is not seeing anyone tonight. Go away.” She made to close the door and the stranger blocked her by slamming his hand against the wood and sending the door crashing back to its stops. Glass rattled in the windowpanes.
“You cannot come in,” she said forcefully.
The stranger ignored her protests and stepped into the entryway, his shoes squelching on the floor. He looked around, his eyes narrowing. “Are you here?” he called.
A gentle voice called from further in the house, “Wer ist, Helen?”
“A man, Herr Doctor,” Helen Dukas said in German. “I do not know who he is and I don’t like the look of him.”
The most celebrated scientist of his day emerged from the kitchen wearing baggy trousers and a cardigan. His hair was a wild tangle atop his head and he smelled of pipe tobacco. While he was normally an affable man, there was concern and sorrow etched around his eyes and mouth.
He studied the stranger dripping rainwater on his carpet but didn’t seem to recognize him. Then his eyes went wide as he realized who the man was.
“How could you do it, Nikola?” Albert Einstein thundered in an accusatory tone.
Nikola Tesla met his piercing gaze. “I had to stop you, Albert. I couldn’t let you unleash that horror on the world.”
“As soon as I heard the news on the radio I knew you had done it.”
“I know an anarchist, a Croatian immigrant who was more than willing to help me,” Tesla said defiantly. “You left me no choice. Writing to you about natural transuranic elements was just an intellectual exercise. You were never supposed to try to find them.”
“Are you mad?” Even as he said it Einstein knew the Serb inventor was. “Do you think blowing up an airship full of innocent people will stop others from seeking out such elements? My God, man, in a few years we will be able to create them in a laboratory.”
“To what end?” Tesla shot back. “We both know there can be only one outcome of such research. You and I are the only two people in the world who can foretell the death and destruction. We can not spread that knowledge.”
“Nikola, you must
understand that a war is coming, a war for the very soul of humanity. We have to be ready. It is only a matter of time before Hitler grabs more territory Germany lost after the Great War, and a clash between America and Japan over the Pacific is inevitable. Teller and Fermi and Szilard and I have seen this coming and have been working on a plan so we have a weapon before the Nazis. We could stop such a world war from even starting with a single demonstration of its power but we need that plutonium. Otherwise it might take us a decade to create a bomb. We were planning on telling the President as soon as we verified the sample Bowie was bringing us from Africa. If we started work right away Teller thinks that with a couple pounds of plutonium we could have a working weapon by 1939. Now we must wait and pray that somehow Bowie managed to ship some ore separately. If he didn’t then all is lost because only he knew the mine’s location.
“Without an atomic deterrent there is nothing to stop that Austrian paper hanger from taking over all of Europe or the militarists in Japan from continuing their expansion. You not only killed the passengers of the Hindenburg, you’ve sentenced millions more to die needlessly.”
Already close to the breaking point because others had profited from his genius while he languished in a Manhattan cold-water flat, Tesla said nothing, his lips working like a fish gulping air.
A string of saliva dripped unnoticed from the corner of his mouth as the enormity of what he’d done echoed in his fractured mind and the last vestiges of sanity slipped quietly away. He started to sob.
“Come inside and warm up,” Einstein said softly. “Let us get you some dry clothes.”
He placed a hand on Tesla’s shoulder. Tesla shoved him away, his expression feral. He said nothing as he raced from the house and back into the storm.
“Who was that?” Einstein’s longtime secretary asked.
“The man who has prevented me from averting a second world war.”
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-e45bc2-bb8b-b144-8cbf-05c5-f997-6316c9
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 24.10.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.3, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Jack Du Brul
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/