Wardenclyffe

by F. Paul Wilson

  WARDENCLYFFE

  F. PAUL WILSON

  Copyright 2018 © F. Paul Wilson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-947654-59-4 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-947654-60-0 (ebook)

  JournalStone rev. date: December 14, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957155

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Art & Design: Mihai Costea

  Ebook Layoutby Lori Michelle

  Edited by Vincenzo Bilof

  Proofread by Sean Leonard

  ALSO BY F. PAUL WILSON

  Repairman Jack*

  The Tomb

  Legacies

  Conspiracies

  All the Rage

  Hosts

  The Haunted Air

  Gateways

  Crisscross

  Infernal

  Harbingers

  Bloodline

  By the Sword

  Ground Zero

  Fatal Error

  The Dark at the End

  Nightworld

  Quick Fixes Tales of Repairman Jack

  The Teen Trilogy*

  Jack: Secret Histories

  Jack: Secret Circles

  Jack: Secret Vengeance

  The Early Years Trilogy*

  Cold City

  Dark City

  Fear City

  The Adversary Cycle*

  The Keep

  The Tomb

  The Touch

  Reborn

  Reprisal

  Nightworld

  Omnibus Editions

  The Complete LaNague

  Calling Dr. Death (3 medical thrillers)

  Ephemerata

  The LaNague Federation

  Healer

  Wheels Within Wheels

  An Enemy of the State

  Dydeetown World

  The Tery

  Other Novels

  Black Wind*

  Sibs*

  The Select

  Virgin

  Implant

  Deep as the Marrow

  Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)

  Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)

  Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)

  Sims

  The Fifth Harmonic*

  Midnight Mass

  The Proteus Cure (with Tracy L. Carbone)

  A Necessary End (with Sarah Pinborough)

  The ICE Trilogy

  Panacea*

  The God Gene*

  The Void Protocol*

  The Nocturnia Chronicles

  (with Thomas F. Monteleone)

  Definitely Not Kansas

  Family Secrets

  The Silent Ones

  Short Fiction

  Soft & Others

  The Barrens and Others

  Aftershock and Others

  The Christmas Thingy

  The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium*

  Quick Fixes Tales of Repairman Jack*

  Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong

  Editor

  Freak Show

  Diagnosis: Terminal

  The Hogben Chronicles (with Pierce Watters)

  * see “The Secret History of the World” (page 141)

  To Eugene Johnson

  Thanks for the spark.

  OCTOBER 12, 1937

  As I watched for him to exit the New Yorker, I wondered if he still blamed himself for all those deaths in San Francisco.

  I hadn’t wanted to call up from the front desk or be associated with him in any way—for both our sakes. So I loitered outside the hotel where he’d lived for the past three years and waited, leaning against an Eighth Avenue lamppost and reading the Herald Tribune.

  None of the news was good. What the world was calling the Great Depression had seemed to be easing last year, but government “adjustments” had ratcheted unemployment back up to 17 percent, creating an Even Greater Depression. The international scene looked worse. As a former British citizen, I was distressed by the news that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had boarded a train in Paris for a trip to Nazi Germany. The Nazis repulsed me as much as I would repulse them.

  And then a story about the Lindberghs making their second visit to the Nazis. What was wrong with these people?

  The stories and their implications absorbed me to the point where I almost missed him. I might have missed him anyway, considering how he’d changed.

  Well, what did I expect? Three decades had passed. The twentieth century was still in its infancy when we’d last stood face to face. Of course I’d seen him on the cover of Time in celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday. Even then he’d looked quite different from the man I’d known, though he’d still sported that thick mustache and much of his hair had retained its dark color.

  But this gaunt, sunken-cheeked, white-haired gent with the clean-shaven face…could it really be? He wore a dark gray three-piece suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. He used to wear spats when I knew him, but not today. Probably not for a long time. He’d always liked to stay in style and spats were long passé. He glanced at me with no sign of recognition, but I knew those dark eyes and that strong nose.

  He walked with a limp and used a cane, and that made me sad. But again, what did I expect? The man was eighty-one after all.

  The looming tower of the Empire State Building jutted into the sky ahead as I followed him two blocks west on 34th Street. Along the way we passed a sad array of shabby men holding signs begging for jobs. I counted myself so lucky to still have one. I worked for Chicago and the city needed electricity to light its offices and run the trains around the Loop. As an electrical engineer, I’d been kept on while so many others had been let go. My heart went out to all of them.

  The man ahead of me seemed oblivious. Just as he’d been oblivious all those years ago to the doom he’d allowed into this world. I’d managed to seal off those memories…the horror gushing from the ground and climbing toward the stars…but seeing him again in the flesh caused a stirring behind the walls.

  He turned downtown on Sixth Avenue; after one block he angled between a pair of granite columns topped with black iron eagles and entered a tiny, roughly triangular park. Wrought iron rails fenced it off from the sidewalks. A large statue of a seated man—Horace Greeley, according to the plaque—dominated the center, so I imagined the space carried his name. I trailed him to an empty bench where he pulled out a bag of seed and began feeding the pigeons.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I settled next to him. “Nikola Tesla, I presume?”

  He gave me a quick up and down. “You presume correctly.” His voice had aged too, raspy now, but his Serbian accent remained the same. “I am not giving interviews today.”

  “Don’t you recognize me?”

  He looked again, giving me a long squint, then shook his head. “Sorry, I cannot say that I do.”

  “It’s Charles…Charles Atkinson.”

  A longer squint, and
then a look of concern. “Charles! Is that really you?”

  “Really me.”

  “I didn’t recognize you. You…you have a mustache! You could never grow one!”

  I smoothed the dark silky strands along my upper lip. I was perhaps inordinately proud of the growth.

  “I was a much younger man back then—just barely twenty-five, remember? I’m middle fifties now.”

  A look of alarm flattened his features. He lowered his voice. “But why are you here? Is it about…you know?”

  I assumed he was referring to that night in 1906, the details of which we’d sworn to carry to our graves.

  “No-no,” I said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

  “You shouldn’t be here. Please don’t look around when I say this, but I am being watched.”

  It took every fiber of my will not to do just that. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s been going on for years. They haven’t contacted you?”

  I had no idea whom he meant. “No one’s contacted me. I’m here from Chicago on business.”

  His expression relaxed. “Then do not trouble yourself.”

  “Why would the government contact me?”

  “It is nothing.” His sudden smile looked forced. “Here on business, you say? Who do you work for?”

  I’d been dreading this question. “Don’t be angry: Commonwealth Edison.”

  He looked away and shook his head. “That name remains everywhere. Just last year New York Edison changed its name—to Consolidated Edison. Edison, Edison, Edison! He’s long dead and yet all these companies make millions upon millions under his name using my current!”

  I laid a gentle hand on his shoulder—he was all bone beneath the fabric—and let him stew a moment. Finally he reached up and patted my hand.

  “You are an electrical engineer, Charles. I realize it is almost impossible to work in your field without being connected to that name. But why Chicago?”

  Now we came to the reason I’d sought him out.

  “Well, because after you shut down the project, we agreed to separate and keep a low profile. Which is exactly what I did. However, I fear I cannot say the same for you.”

  “I tried,” he said. “Oh, how I tried. I declared bankruptcy and feigned a nervous breakdown after Wardenclyffe. I even moved to Chicago myself for a year—with no idea you were there—but I hated it. I thought I’d succeeded in finding obscurity when they dragged me out to receive the Edison Medal, of all things.” His mouth twisted as though he’d bitten into something rotten. “The Edison Medal.”

  Yes. How that must have rankled.

  I reminded him, “It’s perhaps the highest honor in our field.”

  “I know, I know. I would have seemed petty had I refused it. But after that, the spotlight kept falling on me. So I decided to hide in plain sight.”

  “I don’t see how saying you’d been contacted by beings from space and talking of death rays and such is hiding. And thought cameras, maestro? Thought cameras?”

  He started to laugh but it cut off as he winced and pressed a hand to the side of his chest. “Please don’t make me laugh.”

  This couldn’t be good. “What’s wrong?”

  “A few weeks ago I was struck by a cab crossing the street. My fault entirely. Many bruises and a number of broken ribs.”

  “Did you see a doctor?” I knew how he felt about doctors.

  “Of course not. What were they going to do? Strap my chest? I did that myself.”

  I could only shake my head. “Same old stubborn Serb.”

  He got a sly look. “No, not the same, not the same at all. I’ve seen to it that I’m now the world’s best known mad scientist. That’s why I publicly obsess on the number three, why I demand eighteen napkins at each meal. One cannot take a man like that seriously.” He pounded his fist on his knee to emphasize each word. “Which is just what I want.”

  “But your legacy—”

  “Is quite secure. That won’t go away. The electric power that lights all these buildings and moves the subways running beneath our feet—that is mine. I no longer earn a penny from it, but the fact that I invented it cannot be changed. The man named Nikola Tesla made an enormous contribution to human civilization. Using direct current, humanity could not be where it is now. Alternating current got us here. And I invented it.”

  Well, there he was, chuffed as ever about his accomplishments. I was glad to see his ego had not suffered from all his financial and professional setbacks since last we met. He’d dwindled physically, but two defining facets of his personality—his stubbornness and his self-regard—remained unchanged from our Wardenclyffe days.

  “But I have another legacy, do I not,” he added with a haunted expression.

  I guessed where this was going. “You’re not still blaming—?”

  “Thousands of lives, Charles. Three thousand of them, all on my conscience.”

  “Has that anything to do with your mad-scientist charade?”

  He leaned back and seemed to deflate. “I fear the day when my mind starts to slip. What if I begin talking about all that happened? The consequences—”

  “Will be nil,” I said. “What happened is beyond the wildest imagination. Who in their right mind would believe?”

  “They would believe Nikola Tesla, the great thinker, the brilliant scientist and inventor.”

  I nodded, seeing where he was going. “But they won’t believe a mad scientist.”

  “Exactly. But I have a greater fear: What if someone convinces me to change the circuit diagrams back to their original configurations?”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “If they figure out why they were revised.”

  “You mean these government men you mentioned—our government, I assume?” Nazi agents were rumored to be infiltrating the States.

  “They seem to be. But there are others. That secret society wants to collect on a debt.”

  “What debt?”

  “The money they advanced me to keep Wardenclyffe going.”

  That did it. The walls crumbled and the memories came back in a rush, thundering loose and flooding around me.

  TESLA READY FOR BUSINESS

  HE HAS BOUGHT THE LAND FOR HIS WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY STATION AND LET THE CONTRACTS FOR THE BUILDINGS

  New-York Tribune

  August 7, 1901

  1903

  I first saw the Wardenclyffe tower from a train—in Connecticut, of all places. In late May, as I recall, we were gaining speed after a stop at New Haven when a young woman pointed out the window and said, “Oh, look. Tesla’s added a cap to his tower!”

  My ears pricked up at “Tesla.” I’d just been awarded my electrical engineering degree from MIT and so the name of the inventor of AC current, the induction coil, the man who harnessed the power of Niagara Falls to light the entire city of Buffalo, had a magical effect on me.

  “Tower?” I said, leaping from my seat across the car. “Where?”

  “Right there, silly,” she said, pointing again and smiling. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it before.”

  At first look I saw only scrub-filled marshland running down to the wharves that edged the gleaming expanse of the Long Island Sound. I was about to ask again when I saw it. There, on the far shore, the New York shore, a tall skeletal structure rose far above the trees. Squinting I could see how the crisscrossing struts and trusses of the sturdy tapering base resembled the upper section of the Eiffel Tower. They ran up to a flattened dome with copper fittings gleaming in the sun like fiery jewels. The tower reminded me of nothing so much as a long-stemmed mushroom with an amber cap.

  “Blimey,” I said, “that thing must be almost two-hundred feet tall.”

  The girl laughed again. “‘Blimey’? Are you a Brit?”

  Well, at least she hadn’t said “Limey,” which had been my nickname at MIT. She appeared about my age, with golden hair bunned-up beneath her hat. She wore a dark-red velvet jacket over a high-colla
red blouse, and a gown of the same material that ran all the way to the floor.

  I, on the other hand, was dressed in my best gray suit—my only suit, truth be known—white shirt with a Pembrook celluloid collar, and a maroon tie. I usually wore a derby but had doffed it for the train ride. In defiance of the current fashion, I was clean shaven and kept my brown hair short, especially the sides; a tad cool in the winter, but good for a quick wash-up in the summer.

  “Don’t be rude, dear,” said the older woman beside her in the window seat—her mother, I presumed.

  “Native of Manchester,” I said with a little bow, “and not rude in the least. To answer your question, this is my first trip to New York in years. So, no, I have not seen it before.”

  I could tell they both liked me right off. My slight frame and non-threatening baby face had that effect on women. But the tower laid claim to my interest and would not release me. I spotted a pair of empty seats three rows ahead.

  “Excuse me, ladies.”

  I made my way forward and slipped into the window seat where I stared at Tesla’s tower. I’d read about it, of course, and at university we’d often had late-night discussions about Tesla and his notions of wireless communication and wireless power.

  Wireless communication had become a reality—already two years now since Guglielmo Marconi had sent a transatlantic message consisting of the letter “S” from Cornwall to Newfoundland. Tesla was suing, claiming Marconi had used seventeen of his patents to accomplish the feat. I had no idea whether or not that was true, but I did know we were living in an age of electrical marvels. And I, with a degree in electrical engineering, stood ready to leap into the fray and create my own.

  But wireless power seemed an enormous leap. Still, if anyone could make it work, Nikola Tesla was the man.

  Wireless power…the concept inflamed my brain. The air above the streets of every modern city had become bird-nest mazes of wires strung from pole to pole and pole to building, running high, low, lengthwise, crosswise, diagonally. And every day the utility companies added more. At the current rate of proliferation, sunlight would soon stop reaching the pavements. But Tesla’s project would make all those wires obsolete. City dwellers could look up and see the sky again.

  I stared at that tower, obviously still under construction. Something about its shape, its height, its glinting mushroom cap. So tall, so…defiant. Like a fist raised in challenge to all the doubters. Something about it shouted to my brain.