Havoc

Postscript May 6, 1937 Princeton, New Jersey

The rain continued to fall as evening turned to night. It wasn’t a fresh spring storm but something darker and uglier that kept people indoors and huddled under blankets. The residential street on Princeton’s campus was deserted. The only motion was the swaying of naked branches and the flutter of sodden leaves stripped from the trees by the wind.

A shadow detached itself from where it had cowered behind a parked car, and approached a white two-story house. Its street number, 112, was affixed to the steps leading up to the broad front porch. The home was an unassuming Greek revival with black shutters and just a tiny patch of front lawn. The man who approached had never been there but had corresponded with its occupant numerous times.

He knocked on the door. His suit was soaked through and because he wore no hat his longish hair hung past his collar in greasy strings.

A woman opened the door. She was in her fifties and slender, with dark hair just turning to gray and a pinched, severe expression. She had the look of a guard dog and said nothing when she eyed the unkempt stranger with the thick mustache and crazed eyes.

“Is he here? I must speak to him.” The stranger spoke in a heavy accent that was more guttural than the woman’s native German.

“He is not seeing anyone tonight. Go away.” She made to close the door and the stranger blocked her by slamming his hand against the wood and sending the door crashing back to its stops. Glass rattled in the windowpanes.

“You cannot come in,” she said forcefully.

The stranger ignored her protests and stepped into the entryway, his shoes squelching on the floor. He looked around, his eyes narrowing. “Are you here?” he called.

A gentle voice called from further in the house, “Wer ist, Helen?”

“A man, Herr Doctor,” Helen Dukas said in German. “I do not know who he is and I don’t like the look of him.”

The most celebrated scientist of his day emerged from the kitchen wearing baggy trousers and a cardigan. His hair was a wild tangle atop his head and he smelled of pipe tobacco. While he was normally an affable man, there was concern and sorrow etched around his eyes and mouth.

He studied the stranger dripping rainwater on his carpet but didn’t seem to recognize him. Then his eyes went wide as he realized who the man was.

“How could you do it, Nikola?” Albert Einstein thundered in an accusatory tone.

Nikola Tesla met his piercing gaze. “I had to stop you, Albert. I couldn’t let you unleash that horror on the world.”

“As soon as I heard the news on the radio I knew you had done it.”

“I know an anarchist, a Croatian immigrant who was more than willing to help me,” Tesla said defiantly. “You left me no choice. Writing to you about natural transuranic elements was just an intellectual exercise. You were never supposed to try to find them.”

“Are you mad?” Even as he said it Einstein knew the Serb inventor was. “Do you think blowing up an airship full of innocent people will stop others from seeking out such elements? My God, man, in a few years we will be able to create them in a laboratory.”

“To what end?” Tesla shot back. “We both know there can be only one outcome of such research. You and I are the only two people in the world who can foretell the death and destruction. We can not spread that knowledge.”

“Nikola, you must understand that a war is coming, a war for the very soul of humanity. We have to be ready. It is only a matter of time before Hitler grabs more territory Germany lost after the Great War, and a clash between America and Japan over the Pacific is inevitable. Teller and Fermi and Szilard and I have seen this coming and have been working on a plan so we have a weapon before the Nazis. We could stop such a world war from even starting with a single demonstration of its power but we need that plutonium. Otherwise it might take us a decade to create a bomb. We were planning on telling the President as soon as we verified the sample Bowie was bringing us from Africa. If we started work right away Teller thinks that with a couple pounds of plutonium we could have a working weapon by 1939. Now we must wait and pray that somehow Bowie managed to ship some ore separately. If he didn’t then all is lost because only he knew the mine’s location.

“Without an atomic deterrent there is nothing to stop that Austrian paper hanger from taking over all of Europe or the militarists in Japan from continuing their expansion. You not only killed the passengers of the Hindenburg, you’ve sentenced millions more to die needlessly.”

Already close to the breaking point because others had profited from his genius while he languished in a Manhattan cold-water flat, Tesla said nothing, his lips working like a fish gulping air.

A string of saliva dripped unnoticed from the corner of his mouth as the enormity of what he’d done echoed in his fractured mind and the last vestiges of sanity slipped quietly away. He started to sob.

“Come inside and warm up,” Einstein said softly. “Let us get you some dry clothes.”

He placed a hand on Tesla’s shoulder. Tesla shoved him away, his expression feral. He said nothing as he raced from the house and back into the storm.

“Who was that?” Einstein’s longtime secretary asked.

“The man who has prevented me from averting a second world war.”