Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

“He was a remarkable man—Tesla, I mean. Mad in the end, and destitute, the poor bugger, but he was a certified genius. I’m sure I don’t need to give you a primer on all of his accomplishments in the field of electrical research—the induction motor, radio control, wireless communications, spark plugs. It was said that his ideas and inventions came to him fully formed in a flash of inspiration.”

“What about weapons research?”

“There is talk that later in his life he wanted to build a direct-energy ‘peace beam,’ but it is mostly known as the death ray. His treatise on the subject, The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, is in the Tesla museum in Belgrade. I’ve read it and it’s pure drivel. His theories are interesting, but the device would never work. He spent time trying to develop an aircraft that flew by ionizing the air under it. Perhaps that is what you’re looking for.”

As he dug, Juan couldn’t see a fit between an ion-powered plane and George Westinghouse’s boat ending up in Uzbekistan. “He and Westinghouse were friends?”

“Oh yes,” Tennyson nodded vigorously. “Though he was already a wealthy man, Westinghouse added to his vast fortune on their collaborations.”

“Can you think of any experiment that Tesla would have performed aboard Westinghouse’s yacht, the Lady Marguerite?”

“No,” Tennyson said quickly.

Too quickly, to Cabrillo’s trained ear. “Something on or about August first, 1902?”

“Nikola was working on the Wardenclyffe Tower in 1902, out on Long Island. It was intended to transmit electricity wirelessly.”

“Funding for that project was pulled a month earlier,” Cabrillo shot back, silently thanking Murph and Stone for the briefing paper they’d prepared for him. “Please, Professor Tennyson, this is important. I found the Lady Marguerite buried in a desert that used to be the Aral Sea just a few days ago.”

Tennyson went ashen, and he laid a hand on his chest, taking a couple of steps back. “My God.”

“What happened that night?” Juan pressed. “What were they working on?”

Tennyson moved to an Adirondack chair and lowered his bulk into it. “It was only a secondhand account. That’s why I never put it in my book.”

“What was he trying to do?” Juan laid the shovel aside to give Tennyson his full attention.

“It was an experiment they were going to show the U.S. Navy, had it worked. The idea was to use magnetism to bend light around a ship in such a fashion that anyone looking at it would not see light reflecting off of its hull. Their field of vision would pass over the ship and on to the other side.”

“Optical camouflage?”

“Exactly. They rigged the system to the Marguerite and sailed out from Philadelphia, where the work had been carried out in a dockside warehouse Tesla owned. Another ship went with them, for the observers. It was from a story handed down from one of the observers, a Captain Paine from the War Department, that I know any of this.”

“What happened?”

“No one was really sure. They were still steaming out past the shipping lanes when the Marguerite suddenly lit up the night sky with a strange blue aura. It lasted for about thirty minutes and then winked out. When they went to investigate, the yacht was gone. They assumed she had sunk.”

“Did they report any anomalies on their ship? Anything to do with magnetic fields?”

“You’re referring to the story of the Mohican?”

Cabrillo nodded.

“Of course I investigated that tale as best I could. Nothing like what that crew experienced happened on the observers’ boat, but, in full disclosure, I must say they were in a wooden-hulled sloop. The Aral Sea, you say?”

“Yes. What do you think happened?”

Tennyson went quiet. His eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses had gone vacant as he stared into the middle distance.

“What is it, Professor? What are you thinking?”

“I’m not sure,” Tennyson finally admitted. “The Lady Marguerite vanished that night. Of that, there is no doubt. And you say you found her in Kazakhstan.”

“The Uzbek side of the Aral,” Juan corrected.

His gaze still fixed on an

object only he could see, Tennyson said, “Nikola died in January of 1943. There was a rumor of a story that came out of Philadelphia later that same year—October, to be precise. It involved another Navy project using the ship the USS Eldridge.”