And Roma's monkey scampered in.
"Get that fucking oversized rodent outta here!" Zaleski shouted, tossing a pillow at the monkey.
It screeched and dodged the pillow, scampered a single circuit of the room, then fled. Jack slammed the door after it.
"Don't let that damn thing in again!" Zaleski cried, brushing his hair off his forehead. "Little fucker gives me the creeps."
"For once we agree on something," Kenway said. "It shouldn't be allowed to run free."
Jack was remembering what Olive had told him about that monkey, how she'd overheard it talking to Roma ... or whoever he was.
"Let's get back to business," Canfield said.
"Tesla got royally screwed by J. P. Morgan, you know," Kenway said after a few minutes. "Morgan promised to fund his broadcast power project back at the turn of the century. He let Tesla get the Wardenclyffe tower three-quarters built"
"That would be out on Long Island?" Jack said, glancing at Canfield.
"Yes, of course," Kenway said. "Morgan let him get to a certain point, then suddenly pulled the financial rug out from under him."
"Why do that?" Jack said. "Broadcast power would be worth zillions."
"Because Morgan was one of the bankrollers of the One World conspiracy, and he and his fellows came to realize that a cheap energy source like Tesla's broadcast power would rev all the world's economies into high gear. They figured that once the secret was out, they'd lose control of those economies. Tesla had a mysterious breakdown somewhere around 1908 and was never quite the same after."
"Bullshit," Zaleski said from the other side of the room. "He had a breakdown in 1908, but it wasn't caused by no J. P. fucking Morgan. Tesla had an in on alien technology, that's why he made all his breakthroughs."
Jack glanced again at Canfield who mouthed, I warned you.
"Back in 1908, with Morgan pulling the plug on his finances, Tesla needed a dramatic demonstration that his Wardenclyffe tower worked. Peary was making a second try to reach the North Pole at the time, so Tesla contacted the expedition and said they should be on the lookout for an unusual occurrence. On June 30, he aimed a beam of energy from Wardenclyffe to an arctic area where the explosion would be seen by the Perry team. But nothing happened. He thought he'd failed. Then he heard about Tunguska."
"What's Tunguska?" Jack asked.
"A place in Siberia," Canfield said. "Half a million square acres of forest were utterly destroyed by a mysterious cataclysmic explosion on June 30, 1908."
"Right!" Zaleski said. "The same day as Tesla's demonstration. And Tunguska is on the same longitudinal line as Peary's base camp."
"Researchers have estimated the force of the blast at fifteen megatons," Canfield added. "The boom was heard over six hundred miles away. It's never been explained."
Zaleski grinned. "But Old Nik knew the truth. His beam had overshot its mark."
"It was a meteor!" Kenway said.
"Really?" Zaleski's eyebrows floated halfway to his hairline. "Then how come no meteor fragments were ever found?"
"An antimatter meteor," Kenway said, not backing down an inch. "When antimatter meets matter, there's cataclysmic destruction, with total annihilation of one or the other."
"Uh-uh, Miles, old boy. Tesla did it, and the total awesomeness of the destructive power he'd unleashed blew his circuits. He had a nervous breakdown."
"Wrong," Kenway said. "J. P. Morgan's betrayal caused the breakdown."
"Gentlemen, please," Canfield said. "We're not going to decide this here. Suffice it to way that something happened to cause Tesla to stop communicating with people for a while and to sell his land and dismantle his tower. Let's just say that Nicola Tesla was never the same after 1908 and leave it at that."
"All right," Kenway said. "As long as there's no more talk about alien technology."
"Or New World Order bullshit," Zaleski said.
"Can we just build this damn thing!" Jack snapped. "I don't want to be at it all night."
He avoided looking at Canfield. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe including these two had been a bad idea.
10
"They're assembling it!" Mauricio cried as he rushed into the room. "And as I was listening at the door I heard Miles Ken way say something about a 'our fearless leader' being a 'phony!' It's all falling apart!"
"Keep calm," Roma said. "We knew the deception would not last forever."
Sal Romahe'd immersed himself in the character so deeply that he'd become comfortable with the name. Might as well keep up the pretense. He didn't care what name he was known by, as long as it was not his own.
"But this is too close. And we do not have the devicethey do!"
"Just who is 'they?'"
"Canfield, Kenway, Zaleski, and the stranger."
"Quite a crew. I wonder if this was what Canfield wanted to see me aboutthat he had learned about the device?"
"Who cares why he wanted to see you?" Mauricio screeched. "The device is ours! We are supposed to use it!"
"And we shall, dear friend. Without the bother of assembling it ourselves. This is all working out very nicely."
"You are insane! The plan was"
"Hush now, Mauricio, before you anger me. The plan is heading for the right place, it is simply taking a different courseI do not know why that is, but in good time I am sure I shall. We need only watch and follow, and step in when it is to our advantage."
Mauricio crouched on the bedspread, and wrapped his thin arms around his folded legs. His sulking pose. "This will come to a bad end, I tell you."
"A bad end ... " Roma smiled. "That is the whole point, is it not?"
SUNDAY
1
Assembling the Tesla gizmo turned out to be a much more complicated chore than Jack had anticipated, especially the dome. It was close to two A.M. when they finished.
The beds had been pushed aside and now a five-foot oil derrick topped with a giant, warty mushroom cap stood in the middle of the floor.
One weird-looking contraption, Jack thought.
Something about it gave him the willies.
Nothing terribly strange about the eight-legged base. A bitch to assemble with all those crisscrossing struts, but it functioned as nothing more than a supporting framework. The dome was a whole other story. Curved sheets of shiny copper studded with dozens of smaller copper globes, larger toward the perimeter, and getting progressively smaller as they neared the center.
Jack could almost go along with Zaleski about its having been inspired by alien technology. He'd never seen anything like it.
"This looks a lot like the Wardenclyffe tower," Zaleski said in an awed tone.
"Tesla never finished the tower," Kenway said.
"So we've been told," Zaleski replied. "But I've seen renderings of how it was supposed to look, and this is it."
"Swell," Jack said. "But what's it supposed to do? Broadcast energy? Blow up Siberian woods? What?"
"I doubt we'll know that until it's finished," Canfield said.
Kenway tapped one of the gizmo's legs with his booted toe. "What do you mean? It is finished."
"Not according to this." Canfield held up one of the lids and pointed to the diagram of the dome. "See here? There's supposed to be some sort of light bulb or something in the top center of the dome. Has anybody come across anything like that tonight?"
Jack shook his head, and saw Zaleski and Kenway doing the same.
"Kee-rist!" Zaleski said. "Isn't that fucking typical? Just like the model kits I used to get when I was a kidalways a piece missing."
"You sure that's a bulb?" Kenway said, taking the lid from Canfield. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses and studied the diagram more closely. "Looks more like some sort of crystal to me."