Dangerous Betrayal

by Bill Blowers

  And then, to Viko’s astonishment, all the faces began to twist and bend grotesquely until only one face could be seen, the face of his uncle, Nikola Tesla, and with one voice they cried out: “Viko, avenge us!”

  The demon on the throne spoke to him. “You little pissant. Did you think for one moment that you could get to me? How pathetic you are, almost as pathetic as that fool you call your uncle. The name Tesla will be buried in the rotting dung of history.”

  Viko shouted back, “I’ll see you in hell, you bastard!”

  The demons evaporated, the black clouds receded. The sound of his voice reverberated off the walls of the conference room, dissolving into silence as the image of a laughing, taunting Morgan, standing on the gleaming white deck of a huge black ship, faded away, disappearing into the mist that clung to the room.

  “Viko, are you all right?”

  A hand appeared through the wall of fog and touched his shoulder. “Viko, look at me, Viko, can you hear me?”

  The white fog around him cleared, and standing there were Robert and Clarence Delmont. Robert’s secretary held a glass of water.

  Viko was drenched in sweat. His clothes clung to him as if he had just climbed out of a pool of water. He was cold and his skin had the pallor of white alabaster. His throat was sore and he spoke in a rasping whisper.

  Robert said, “Viko, you frightened the hell out of us. What happened, did you have a seizure?”

  Robert and Delmont had just witnessed the catatonic behavior that ran through the Tesla family. Viko had been as still as death. His eyes were open but unseeing. He had been like that for nearly twenty minutes when he screamed out “I’ll see you in hell, you bastard!”

  “What happened, why are you staring at me?” Viko rasped. He had no recollection of the scare he had just given everyone. “Why is it so cold in here? Have I been in the rain?”

  Robert helped Viko out of his suit jacket and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. They gave him a cup of hot coffee with a touch of brandy to soothe his raw throat. He sipped it and offered a whispered “Thank you” to Robert’s secretary for her kindness.

  As color returned to Viko’s face, he sat there with a look of serious determination. Robert and Delmont sat across from him; it was obvious to them that the news Delmont had given him had pushed him over an edge. To Robert, the frightening similarity to behavior he witnessed from Nikola Tesla was alarming.

  One word kept running through Viko’s mind, repeating itself in several languages: revenge, la vengeance, venganza, la vendetta, rache, over and over.

  In those few minutes of psychotic hallucination, he saw the solution. He knew how to get Morgan. He knew the Achilles heel that could bring Morgan down. How simple, how beautiful, how unexpected this would be! Morgan would be forced up against a wall, unable to find a way out, unable to do anything but admit his miserable little attempts to hurt Tesla. He would be forced to give Tesla the public accolades he so much deserved, forced to admit Tesla’s superior intellect, and forced to confess that it was he, J. Pierpont Morgan, who directly ordered the destruction of Tesla’s facilities, and who deliberately set out to ruin this phenomenal genius.

  A smile spread across Viko’s face.

  “Well, Viko, that’s better,” Robert said. “Take another sip of coffee; it is good for your throat.” Viko sipped the hot coffee and its warmth, aided by the brandy, soothed his sore vocal chords.

  There was a knock on the conference room door. Robert’s secretary opened it slightly and announced that the doctor had arrived.

  “Dr. Braun, thanks for coming on such a short notice,” Robert said.

  Robert introduced them. “Viko, this is Dr. Braun, our family physician. I called for him when we feared that you were having some type of epileptic attack.”

  Speaking in a raspy whisper, Viko replied, “Well, doctor, I hope this isn’t a waste of your time. Robert may have called you a little prematurely. I’m fine.”

  “Based on the sound of your voice, I disagree with you. You don’t sound well at all. I want to examine you.”

  Viko’s throat hurt like hell, he had a blanket wrapped around him, and his clothes were beginning to smell from the perspiration that had soaked into them. He didn’t want to be poked and prodded by a doctor.

  Robert said, “Viko, you may be the second smartest person I know, but I just witnessed every symptom of a seizure. Shut up, stop arguing with this man, and let him do his job. You are almost as pigheaded as your uncle.”

  This last statement made Viko laugh, which triggered a coughing fit that brought up phlegm tinted with blood.

  A half hour later, he jokingly said, “Well, am I going to live?”

  “Young man, you have ruptured a blood vessel on your vocal chords. Your blood pressure is 190 over 120. Your body temperature is two degrees below normal, and your heart rate is over 100 beats per minute. If you were thirty years older, you very well might have died from heart failure just now. You have suffered some kind of serious event. You need medical attention, and most likely you need to take a regular medication to prevent something like this from happening again.”

  Putting it all together, the doctor concluded that Viko suffered an epileptic event triggered by the emotional shock of hearing the news about Morgan, confirming Robert’s suspicions. He left them with the instructions that Viko was to come to his office the next day for a complete physical.

  Viko knew better. He didn’t question the doctor’s advice or his analysis; he knew exactly why his heart rate was so high and his blood pressure was off the charts. It was the excitement of knowing that Morgan was finally going to be exposed! It would be he, Viktor Tesla, who would bring it about.

  Any consideration that Morgan may have been innocent, that the arguments put forth by Robert and his attorney may have had merit, dissolved into the fog of insanity that surrounded Viko.

  Viko had given up control to his inner demons. Mr. Hyde shoved Dr. Jekyll brutally aside, and a path that would lead to the deaths of over fifteen hundred people began to be paved with hatred and cunning that knew no bounds.

  BOOK 7

  CHAPTER 38

  Targeting Titanic

  From that life-altering moment onward, Viko focused his energies on one thing only: revenge against his perceived enemy, Morgan. To Viko’s distorted mind, Morgan’s Achilles’ heel was the ship RMS Titanic. With his photographic memory, he knew every detail of Titanic, especially the weaknesses in the ship’s design.

  He and Thomas Andrews were on a first-name basis and had worked side by side for weeks. Andrews had great respect for Viko and on more than one occasion had told Viko that if he ever wanted to join his staff of ship designers, he was more than welcome; it was an open-ended job offer.

  Viko had crossed the Atlantic many times on the Californian. He spent hours on the bridge with Captain Lord and received a good education in sailing and in ship operations. On several occasions, when he was not busy in the wireless room, the ship’s engineer used him as an assistant, performing everyday maintenance and repair.

  Viko had his own supply of money, nineteen thousand dollars, funds deposited in banks after learning of Morgan’s plans to take away the lamp production. He could operate independently for a very long time and put the money to work as he saw fit to carry out his plan for revenge.

  Viko had sent a telegram to Colorado the morning after the fire, and as soon as it reached his hands, Nikola Tesla made arrangements to return to New York, reluctantly shuttering his operations in Colorado Springs—for a third and final time.

  After being met at Grand Central Station by Viko late on a Tuesday evening, Tesla stayed up all night listening to Viko relate the terrible events from the time of the fire up to the discovery of the perpetrator’s identity.

  Tesla was deeply shaken by the news. He had faced Morgan’s wrath in the past, he knew of the man’s power and his total grip on the financial institutions in New York, but he never suspected that the man would stoop to s
uch a dastardly act. He could accept hard-nosed business decisions, but violence? Tesla in fact had misgivings that Viko’s suspicions were anything more than that, just suspicions in the mind of a very angry and revenge-driven young man.

  Viko’s pain was obvious, and Tesla found himself more in the role of surrogate father rather than a colleague. He did his best to try to convince Viko that not all was lost, that they would move on, and that new and exciting days lay ahead. “Remember Viko, we still have the two original prototypes of the new wireless. I took them with me to Colorado so that I could use them in my wireless power experiments.”

  Viko had forgotten about the two early transceivers; they were not of the most recent design like the ones stolen during the fire, but they worked quite well. He also knew there was no way these could lead to a delivery to White Star Line, but perhaps they could serve another purpose.

  Viko’s plan was quite simple in concept, but complicated to carry out. It was to somehow stop Titanic mid-ocean and let her drift for days in the middle of the sea, filled with the world’s most influential families, especially that bastard, J.P. Morgan. His contemplation of all those powerful people, their wealth and influence suddenly meaningless, unable to do anything but drift aimlessly, cold and hungry, brought a wicked smile to his face. He imagined Morgan screaming at the captain. He pictured Morgan cornering and brutalizing Ismay.

  How fitting, the justice of it all. Would any of them realize that their own injustice to Tesla brought it down upon them? The person they should be screaming at and threatening to lynch would be right there among them, none other than the squat little man with the big red nose.

  The basics of his plan were delightfully straightforward. Disable Titanic, cut off her communication, and let her drift in the open ocean long enough to cause a major panic. Let her disappearance become major news, let it evolve to a fever pitch of emotion, and then step in as hero and save the day, all in the name of Nikola Tesla. The North Atlantic was a huge empty space. Even a ship the size of Titanic would be lost, impossible to find, like looking for a needle in a hundred stacks of hay.

  Viko moved ahead with a singular purpose as clear as the cool mountain air he had breathed in Colorado. No longer beholden to anyone, he began the deliberate and carefully planned steps to exact the revenge he so deliciously anticipated. As soon as the two transceivers arrived from Colorado, he took them to another building where no one but him would see them or work on them. He ceased shaving and grew a thick dark beard. He let his hair grow longer and obtained a pair of reading glasses. The natural disguise added ten years to his appearance and changed him just enough so that a casual acquaintance would not recognize him.

  Viko sent a cablegram to Thomas Andrews at Harland and Wolff, inquiring as to the availability of the job offer tendered during his last visit. He researched the sailing schedule of the Californian, noted all its planned crossings to Great Britain for the next eighteen months, and verified that Stanley Lord was still the ship’s captain.

  Working alone, Viko altered the function of the transceivers. He had copies of work done by Tesla years earlier for the 1900 World’s Fair at which Tesla demonstrated a small, remotely controlled underwater ship or “automaton” as Tesla called it. The transceivers were going to serve a new purpose, and Viko was altering them to become remote control devices, small complex “black boxes” that would bring a great ship to an unexpected destination in the North Atlantic and into a unique place in the history of ocean travel.

  Two months later he booked passage on the Californian under the name Viktor Gracac. He waited until they were a day out of New York and stood outside the door of the bridge late one evening. He approached the captain as Lord left for his room. Removing his glasses, Viko asked, “Tell me, sir, is this ship safe enough to cross the sea?”

  Lord began to reply, but something in the voice caught his ear. “Viko, is it you?”

  A huge grin spread across Viko’s face as the two exchanged warm greetings.

  Lord asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you would be on board? We have empty first-class cabins; I would have gotten you into one.”

  “I don’t want to be any bother; you have enough to do running the ship without looking out for me.”

  “Viko, you are never a bother. This ship is so solid, my crew so well trained, they could sail her without me. Now, what say we have a drink?”

  As they enjoyed glasses of warm brandy, they exchanged stories of the past year and lamented the death of their mutual friend Harold Wittington. Viko offered to be of any assistance he could while on board, including operation of the wireless if the operator needed a break.

  This was more than the renewing of an old acquaintance for Viko. He needed to be sure that he still had the friendship and camaraderie of Captain Lord. The use of the Californian was a critical part of his plan to disable Titanic, and he would need full access to the wireless room on some future night to carry out his plan.

  He bid farewell to Lord and the crew of the Californian at the docks in Belfast and walked across the wooden boards of the pier to a carriage and a smiling Thomas Andrews.

  After a hesitant moment looking at the heavy beard, Andrews said, “Viko, you have sailed so much, you look like an old sailor. Come on, let’s get you to a room and then how about a pint?”

  In a corner table of the local pub, Andrews began, “God knows that I need your help, but what brings you here? There must be better things for you to do in New York than come here and hang around a dirty old shipyard.”

  “You know about the fire,” Viko said. “We have lost everything. I cannot tell you how disillusioned I am with America. It’s not the golden land that everyone yearns for, but rather a den of cutthroat barons who hide behind the law and their riches. Oh, there is the illusion of freedom, but try to tread on their turf, their land, so to speak, and you learn quite quickly just how much control they have.

  “I need a job. My association with Tesla in New York closes every door to me. I recalled your offer and, on a chance, sent the cablegram. Ships intrigue me, I am an expert in wireless and electricity, and I offer my services. And please note my last name is Gracac, not Tesla.”

  Although there were well over a thousand men working in and around the Titanic and her sister ships, the name Tesla would jump off the page if Morgan or his bean counters were monitoring employment records. Gracac would simply blend in, another nondescript name in a business where dozens of employees might be added or dismissed weekly.

  Over the course of the next several weeks, Viko completed tasks assigned by Andrews related to the installation of the new Marconi wireless built for Titanic.

  Viko saw the Marconi wireless assignments as providential. Another part of his plan was falling into place. Titanic’s Marconi wireless was the most powerful radio set yet manufactured for seagoing use. The large cumbersome size worked in favor of Viko’s plans. He needed a space where he could install a simple yet effective explosive device that when activated would sever the connection to the antenna and at the same time do significant damage to the transmit coils, damage that could not be repaired at sea. Titanic would be unable to send messages.

  He made a few subtle changes in the placement of the large cumbersome chassis and coils, creating the space he needed to fit in a small explosive charge. It would be connected to the ship’s antenna, the perfect receiving device for the detonating signal he would send on a future fateful night.

  The other part of his plan was not as easy to carry out. Viko needed to bring the ship to a stop, and do it so completely that the damage would be permanent, not repairable at sea. He recalled a conversation he had months earlier with Captain Lord. Lord had explained that a ship without a rudder would wander aimlessly at the mercy of the current. Protocol dictated that a steamship’s engines must be shut down and the ship call for help in the event of the loss of a rudder or rudder control mechanism.

  Viko focused his plans on the steering mechanism. The huge propulsion stea
m engines, with a combined output of fifty-nine thousand horsepower, were much too massive to disable. It would be impossible to take out all three. But the steering remotely controlled from the bridge—that was the weak link, made especially so because of Ismay’s meddling with the ship’s design. There was no redundancy. True, Andrews did everything possible to make it invulnerable to damage or failure, but a properly planned and executed destruction of a critical part could render the great ship uncontrollable.

  The responsibility for the steering mechanism went to Andrews’s most senior manager, Osgood Meineke, a German émigré renowned for his mechanical wizardry, with years of experience in the installation and design of ship rudder mechanisms.

  Viko needed to locate the weaknesses in the complex mechanisms of the steering system. He recalled seeing its basic outlines. A small steam engine, located in the stern, turned the rudder. If he could damage the engine, or somehow damage its controls, then he could render Titanic uncontrollable.

  Once again, the hand of fate took Viko and led him to the answer he was seeking.

  Thomas Andrews had many ways of motivating the work crews as they went about their dangerous daily work. There was a standing offer that any group which completed a major installation ahead of the already accelerated schedule would be treated to a Saturday night at one of the many pubs that thrived near the shipyards in Belfast. The effect of this offer was to create a competition among the many groups of men who scurried about the ship each day.

  As the twelve-hour workday drew to a close on Friday, August 22, 1911, shouts went up from two groups aboard the Titanic superstructure. Viko led one of those groups. His nine workers just completed the initial installation of the main wireless assembly, three days ahead of schedule. Meineke headed up the other group. They had installed the large steering wheel and connected it to the complex rheostat that would send the electrical control signals to the rudder-control steam engine, and like Viko’s group, were ahead of schedule.