The Tesla Legacy

Chapter 43

Ash was in his panic room. He’d installed it so he’d have a place where he could be truly alone. None of the servants could penetrate here without the eight-digit access code, and he’d given the numbers to no one. If he died in here, they would be able to retrieve his body only by taking apart the room itself.

He had furnished the room as a gentleman’s library. Unlike the simple, ecologically sound designs that he used to make a statement in the rest of his homes and offices, this one secret place could reflect his heart’s desire.

An antique Persian rug covered golden oak planks. He had rescued them both from a nineteenth century house that was being demolished upstate. That house had also given him a red leather wingback chair that Jules Verne himself could have sat in. He’d had to look for the oversized mahogany desk, but it was worth the effort. Pigeonholes held notes and plans and curious objects he’d gathered over the course of his life.

Right now, the desktop was covered by a giant leather blotter with one item sitting in the center: the Oscillator. The device had rested there for a week. Every night he came in to check on it.

After he’d found Quantum and dealt with him, he’d been forced to wait again because Quantum’s stunt at the airport had prompted scrutiny of the man’s accounts, and Ash wanted to be sure that Quantum’s connections to Spooky, and to Ash, were not revealed. So far, there was no hint that they had been. Quantum hadn’t left any little time bombs for him after all.

That meant that Ash could act now, but first he was going to take the device apart so that he would know how it was made. He picked up his camera and filmed the outside casing, then put the camera down to concentrate on the device.

A few choice curse words and banged knuckles later, he had removed the metal plate that covered the bottom of the device. When he looked inside, he saw gears and pistons and wires meshed together in inexplicable complexity. He was a software guy, not an electrical engineer. Joe Tesla had always tinkered with gadgets, but Ash never had. He regretted that now.

This left him with a dilemma. He could hire someone to disassemble the device and draw up plans for making another one — and be discreet while doing so. Then, after that person built the new device, Ash could have him eliminated so nothing could be traced back to Ash. It would all take time. The alternative was to view this as a one-time event — this Oscillator would destroy one building and that would be the end of it.

He didn’t like either of those options.

Not sure what to do, he picked up the steel plate he’d removed. The outside was painted gray, probably to blend in with its surroundings in the basement, but the inside was bare metal with designs on its surface.

He brought the plate closer to the light to reveal figures etched into the metal’s surface. They were too tiny to read, so he photographed them and zoomed in on the photographs. At a larger magnification, their purpose was clear — the metal was covered with plans that showed how to build the entire device. Nikola Tesla’s secrets were laid bare in front of Ash.

He could hire someone to build ten or a hundred at some remote facility with no Internet connectivity. A plane crash on the way home would solve the traceability problem. It was all possible.

For now, he needed another metal plate to replace this one. He’d keep the original plate in the safe embedded in the floor of the panic room so that he would always be sure to have the plans that it carried on its surface. The photographs were useful, but he wanted the original, too.

He might not be a tinkerer, but he could definitely screw a new plate onto the bottom of the device. Then, he would use it on the Empire State Building, even though it housed his own office. No one would expect that.

He could take out the Breakers, cash in on his insurance, and be completely in the clear after the Empire State Building collapsed.

On Sunday, so that there would be minimal loss of life.

So thoughtful.