15
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Re: Nikola Tesla
File No. 2121-70
TOP SECRET
Date: October 21, 1941
To: J. Edgar Hoover, Director
From: Tim O’Flaherty, Director, Manhattan Field Office
Interception of subject’s mail at the request of British Secret Service Bureau and authorized by secret Presidential Directive 42 indicate frequent mail contact with family members in the Independent State of Croatia. The director will recall this small country became a signatory to the Triparte Pact on 6 June of this year, thereby becoming a formal ally of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as well as Imperial Japan and a number of smaller countries, although Croatia has been considered a Nazi puppet state under the N.D.H. since the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April of this year.
Since subject holds a number of patents of a scientific nature with possible military implications, the possibility exists of his family being used as hostages by the country’s pro-Nazi government in an effort to obtain access to subject’s inventions for use as potential weapons. Subject’s nephew, Dari, has volunteered to join the 369 Reinforced Croatian Infantry, the troops Ante Pavelić, Croatia’s “leader,” has promised to send to aid in the German invasion of Russia. Whether this young man has done so out of a love of the Nazis or the long-lived Croatian hatred of Russia is unknown.
The director will recall subject attempted to sell some sort of ray to the British military and succeeded in doing so to the U.S.S.R. for a reputed $25,000.
So far, there is no evidence subject’s communications contain anything more significant than family news. Surveillance will continue.
16
Tesla liked to retell the story of how, as a young man, he was taken ill at school in Carlsbad and hospitalized. The physicians, according to Tesla, were unable to cure his mysterious ailment. One day, a nurse handed him several publications, including several articles by the American writer and humorist Mark Twain. Tesla so enjoyed them that he effected a miraculous recovery. From that day forward, Mark Twain became someone Tesla wanted to meet. The fact that, historically, Twain had written little of note and nothing worth translating at the time of Tesla’s supposed illness never dissuaded him of his claim the writer had saved his life.
In 1884, the scientist succeeded in meeting Twain through mutual acquaintances who were members of Manhattan’s Players Club. Though the two were never close friends, Twain was a frequent visitor to the lab at 48 East Houston Street, where the writer once observed, upon watching an experiment that involved twenty-foot electrical arcs and bolts of homemade lightning, “Thunder is impressive, but it’s lightning that does the work.”
Later, Twain was to praise Tesla’s AC polyphase system as “the most valuable patent since the telephone.”
Twain took great pleasure in standing on a platform above one of Tesla’s inventions, the mechanical oscillator, feeling it sway back and forth in response to electrical impulses. On the first such experience, Tesla suggested his guest had ridden long enough and he should come down. Twain declined, saying he found the motion “invigorating” and “healthful.”
Minutes later, he scrambled down, shouting, “Tesla, where is it?”
He meant the toilet, of course, having learned what Tesla’s lab assistants had already painfully experienced: Riding the machine too long had a definite effect on the bowels.
In 1896, Twain was traveling in Europe, keeping up a sporadic correspondence with the scientist. From Austria, he wrote a letter, which, in part, read, “Have you Austrian and English patents on that destructive terror you are inventing?” Twain had his own ideas as to peace and disarmament: “… invite the great inventors to construct something against which fleets and armies would be helpless and thus make war thenceforth impossible.”
Twain went on to offer his services in marketing the patents to European powers and rulers he had met in his travels, including Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, presumably on the theory that if all nations possessed such a weapon, war would be impossible. Exactly what the nature of this “destructive terror” was is not mentioned, nor is the method by which Twain learned of it.
A final and rather sad note to the relationship between scientist and writer: In 1942, shortly before his death, Tesla summoned a messenger, giving him a packet to be delivered to a Mr. Samuel Clemens at an address in Manhattan. When the messenger returned, unable to find either address or addressee (the street had changed names), Tesla flew into a rage.
“Mr. Clemens is a famous writer,” he howled. “He writes under the name Mark Twain. Someone will know where to find him!”
The frustrated messenger returned a second time, informing Tesla that Mr. Clemens had been dead some time.
“Impossible!” the scientist protested. “He was here last night.” He pointed. “He sat in that very chair! He is need of money, and I am sending it to him!”
The author relates the above anecdote as possible evidence Nikola Tesla was ever delusional, or, at his age in 1943, suffering dementia. He was dead weeks later.
17
Jason knew the good people of the island were proud of their small airport. The terminal, a glass toadstool, had won a number of architectural awards upon its opening in 2004. Meaning, in that year, there had been a paucity of avant-garde or just plain ugly new buildings.
But aesthetics were not his mind at the moment. He had barely had enough time to put funds in Mrs. Princes’s house account — to run the cottage; take care of Pangloss and Robespierre; and pay her wages for the next two weeks — and still have Momma and her borrowed yacht make the crossing from Sark to catch his flight to Heathrow. The BA CityFlyer Embraer 170 that would take him there was the only plane on the tarmac. At this time of year, the small but comfortable terminal was empty of tourists made cheerfully boisterous by the prospect of a fortnight of holidays on one of the islands. Instead, there was a handful of men, most in suits, whose interest in their watches and cell phones made Jason guess they were on various business missions.
Arriving just in time to clear security and board the plane, he shoved his single bag into an overhead bin and squeezed himself into one of a pair of empty seats. Of the seventy-six available, barely half were occupied. Although he had seen it dozens of times, he watched the winter-browned grass along the pavement move in the wind, waving a final farewell as the aircraft trundled out to Runway 32. This departure was different; Jason had no plans to return.
Now Sark, with its wind-bent fruit trees, rocky shores, and hardy cattle, was his most-recent former address. Maybe next time Jason would try a place on some mainland, someplace out of the way but not so remote as to make him conspicuous; someplace removed from civilization, but not too far removed; someplace that had nothing to attract anyone other than the residents.
Kansas suggested itself.
Thoughts for another day. He reached into a coat pocket and produced the book and envelope Momma had given him and began to read. He wouldn’t get a lot read in the eighteen-minute flight, but it was a start.
He came awake with a start, unaware he had drifted off to sleep, as the aircraft lurched forward, its twin General Electric engines screaming in reverse thrust. The short duration of the trip had obviated any in-flight service that might have disturbed his brief nap. He barely had time to reflect that this was the first time in memory he had actually slept on an airplane. He normally suffered in-flight insomnia, involuntarily attuned to every sound, every change in pitch of the engines. He knew it was absurd — what could he do if things went south at 35,000 feet — but some obscure, atavistic sense of self-preservation kept him awake anyway.