"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 Roma—he'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 device—they 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 about—that 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 course—I 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 kid—always 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."
"Lemme see that," Zaleski said. He peered closely, tilting the lid back and forth. "For once I agree with you, Miles. Look at the facets there. That's definitely some sort of crystal. Big one, I'd guess."
"Anyone seen a large crystal anywhere?" Canfield said, lifting and shaking the spread on the nearest bed.
"I have," Jack said, wondering at the surges of excitement suddenly pulsing through him as he remembered a basement…and an old desk…and on it, three large, oblong, amber quartz crystals…
"Where?" Kenway said.
"Out on Long Island…in a little town called Monroe."
2
Jack checked out the moonless sky as he followed Ken way's pickup truck north along Glen Cove Road. Dawn was still hours away and they were all headed for Monroe.
But what a job to get to this point.
First the debate on whether or not to send someone out to fetch a crystal and bring it back. Eventually it was decided that that would take too long, so they all agreed to haul the mini Tesla tower out to Monroe. Canfield, still convinced that the crates had come from Melanie, said that seemed fitting.
But how to get it there?
Canfield reluctantly volunteered the back of his specially outfitted van—reluctantly because he didn't see any need for Kenway and Zaleski to come; he and Jack could handle everything just fine.
But no way were Kenway and Zaleski going along with that.
So they separated the dome from the tower and loaded both sections into the back of the van.
But that wasn't the end of it. Zaleski didn't want to ride in Kenway's truck, Kenway didn't want to ride in Zaleski's car. Neither wanted to ride in Canfield's van, and Jack had had enough of them all for one night.
Finally they got underway—a four-car caravan with Canfield in the lead, chugging through the wee hours of Sunday morning. At least they had the road pretty much to themselves.
Jack felt a raw uneasiness wriggling through his gut, a vague awareness that he was riding toward big trouble. But he couldn't turn back now. He sensed that the end game was at hand, and wanted this crazy weird gig over and done with—tonight.
He'd tried to call Lew out in Shoreham to tell him where they were going and ask him if he wanted to meet them in Monroe. But all he'd reached was the Ehler answering machine. He'd tried Lew's hotel room again, but still no answer.