The Project 05 - The Tesla Secret

At Srebrenica, Mladic's troops had murdered 8,000 Muslim men and male children and buried them in mass graves. Then they'd raped the women. Zoran and his unit had been enthusiastic participants in the events.
    Zoran was an assassin, what the West so quaintly called a "hit man". Over time he'd built a solid base of clients. In the criminal underworld he was called "The Scorpion", an acknowledgement of both his expertise and his wartime role.
    Prague wasn't the first time he'd worked for his present client. The first time had been in Belgrade, a few years back. The target had been an assistant curator at the Tesla Museum, a man with stolen papers his employer wanted. There had been other assignments since then from the same unknown source.
    Zoran watched the two Americans pretend to be tourists. His client had provided pictures and 100,000 American dollars as initial payment, with another 100,000 due upon completion. The operational details were left up to him. Zoran had been told the targets would come here, to the cafe. And there they were. It was good to deal with professionals. Good to have accurate intelligence.
    It wasn't any of his business why his employer wanted them killed. The woman was good looking, behind those stupid glasses. Maybe he and his partner would enjoy her before they killed them. He'd make the man watch. It would be like Srebrenica again, only just two instead of thousands.
    Zoran missed the old days.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    Far to the east of Prague, Irtysh Air Force Base was a crumbling memorial to the passage of the Soviet empire, acres of concrete and decaying buildings that sprawled like a cancerous sore across the Western Siberian plain. Few remembered it or cared. They would have cared, if they had known what was happening there.
    A man in a white laboratory coat stood in front of a gigantic hanger and watched a black Kamov helicopter hover like an uncertain bird before settling onto the cracked tarmac. The rotors slowed and stopped. An officer in full uniform climbed out of the helicopter.
    General Sergei Kaminsky was one of the most powerful men in the Russian military. The stiff rank boards on his massive shoulders bore four gold stars. He was a bull of a man, with thick black eyebrows that matched the color of his eyes. He had a fleshy face. His mouth was set in a perpetual downward curve, as if he had never learned to smile.
    The man in the white coat who came forward to greet him was the pride of Russian physics. Yuri Malenkov was thin and tall. He walked with his head tilted slightly to the side, as if listening to something only he could hear. He had a large, bulging forehead and an IQ topping out somewhere near 200. That made him a genius. It also made it difficult for most people to understand what he was talking about.
    The physicist and the general shook hands. Kaminsky looked at the sky and took a deep breath of the clean air.
    "A beautiful day. One can breathe here, not like Moscow." He looked closely at the scientist. "Shall we proceed, Yuri?"
    "Yes, General. Please come with me."
    The doors of the hanger stood open at one end. The Tesla device was mounted on a platform halfway across the hanger floor. Heavy electrical cables ran across the floor from four enormous diesel generators. The cables ended in junctions at the base of four tall rods of copper. A metallic core wrapped in tightly coiled wire protruded like a cannon barrel between them, pointing out through the open hangar doors. The air inside the hanger smelled of diesel and ozone.
    Yuri led Kaminsky to a concrete bunker that had been built at the back of the hanger. Inside the bunker, tables stacked with electrical equipment took up most of the space. A half dozen technicians watched the instruments, waiting for the test to begin. All eyes turned to the two men as they entered.
    The general and the physicist went over to a large viewing window in the forward wall of the bunker.
    "What have you accomplished? Explain what I am looking at." Kaminsky eyed the odd structure in the middle of the hanger.
    "Tesla's design is limited by the technology of his time, but it would have worked even back them. It has been a challenge to build it."
    "You have overcome the obstacles?"
    "Most of them. What you see here is a test device only, based on Tesla's prototype design with adaptations for modern materials. The plans for the actual weapon are different. It will be much bigger and requires a different power source."
    "How does it