The Project 05 - The Tesla Secret

nose was large, Roman looking, a noble nose. His skin was light brown with an underlying reddish tint that got darker during the sunny months. He had on one of his favorite shirts, a gaudy panorama of big-finned Cadillacs full of joyous surfers cruising the Hawaiian sands.
    A silver pen that had belonged to FDR lay on Harker's desk next to a picture of the Twin Towers on 9/11. She picked it up and twirled it in her fingers.
    "No question this was a concerted attack," she said. "There were no IDs on the people who came after you, in California or here. But we found out who most of them were."
    "How?" Selena asked.
    She looked fresher than Nick, but not by much. Her face showed lines of fatigue, her violet eyes were bloodshot. She wore jeans and a blue sweatshirt and hadn't bothered with makeup. Her red-blonde hair was pulled back in a short ponytail held by a rubber band. She was letting it grow out.
    A long way from when she first walked in here, Harker thought. She's changed. No more rich girl look.
    "The three in California were ex military. Their prints were on file. We couldn't get prints from the one who burned up, but the others used to be with Langley."
    "Mercenaries," Nick said, "and ex spooks."
    "Yes."
    "I don't like that. Where did we see this before? Spooks and mercs?""
    "In Texas," Ronnie said. He still felt the effects of the wound he'd taken there. "You think it's the same people, Director?"
    "Yes. There was one incoming call on the phone you found. It traced back to a company called Endgame Development. They design interactive, violent video games. Think Friday the 13th in 3D and high definition. Endgame is a subsidiary shell of a subsidiary of an entertainment company owned by Malcolm Foxworth."
    "Foxworth runs AEON."
    "That's why I think it's the same people."
    "What do you want us to do?" Nick asked.
    "Endgame is in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. I want you and Lamont to go there and see what you can find out." Elizabeth fiddled with her pen. "This could have been a preemptive strike, so we don't get in the way of something. They'd go after you four because you're the guts of the fire team. Steph and I were probably on the list after they got the shooters handled."
    "Big mistake." Lamont smiled. "They don't know you two very well."
    Lamont had retired from the Navy Seals just before joining the Project. A shrapnel scar ran from his forehead down across his nose and cheek. It made a thin ridge of pink against his coffee-colored skin. He had pale blue eyes, a gift from his Ethiopian grandfather.
    Selena said, "What could they be planning?"
    Harker tapped her pen. "If the past is any indication we'll find out soon enough."

CHAPTER FIVE

    The man who led AEON looked out from his penthouse windows over the city of London. The view took in most of the city. It was a good spot to contemplate power.
    Malcolm Foxworth was a small man with a large presence. His hair was black with streaks of silver and carefully styled. His ears were a little too large for his head. His eyebrows formed thin, black streaks over flat eyes blue as glacier ice. Foxworth's face was unremarkable, common even. When he was angry, his complexion turned red. When he was very angry, his face turned chalk white.
    Foxworth had started out with a small newspaper inherited from his father. Over the years he'd created a world-wide media empire by telling angry people what they wanted to hear. He controlled radio stations, newspapers, magazines and television outlets, all with one thing in common. Each worked to feed and strengthen the ominous cloud of divisiveness and fear spreading over the globe.
    Fear was Foxworth's stock in trade. Fear overwhelmed reason. Fearful people became angry and could be manipulated. The world's leaders had always used fear to get what they wanted. They congratulated themselves and imagined themselves masters of the world. But few knew who pulled the strings that made the world dance.
    Foxworth knew, because he was one of them. The conspiracy theorists were right about a hidden group seeking world domination but they'd gotten most of it wrong.
    AEON had been called by many names over the centuries. The Illuminati. The Secret Masons. The Hidden Masters. The New World Order. The Trilateral Commission. The Bilderberg Group. Those were useful red herrings, shadows thrown up against the screen of human paranoia, psychological sleight of hand. No one had ever managed to expose the real conspiracy.
    In the past year