The Project 05 - The Tesla Secret

shouting, his voice was hoarse, quiet. The calmness was strange after the rage. "Do you have anything to say?"
    "Sir, we kept them away from you. It's what you hired me for."
    "No, Healy, it isn't."
    Foxworth's eyes glittered. The pupils were huge.
    Those drugs Morel gives you, Healy thought. They're not working, mate.
    Foxworth said, "I hired you to make sure no one even got close to me. I hired you to take care of things. You haven't been doing that very well, have you? I think you should resign."
    Healy was done. He'd had enough, working for this arrogant asshole.
    "Sir, you have my resignation."
    "Good. I'm glad you agree."
    Foxworth took out a Walther PPK and shot Healy in the face. The body flew backwards and fell to the floor. Blood sprayed over Mandy's elegant silk dress. Foxworth stepped forward and fired three more rounds into Healy's twitching body. He put the gun back under his jacket and straightened his tie. He turned to Mandy. Her mouth was half open, her face drained of color. Morel didn't dare move.
    "Mandy, my dear. I am so sorry about your dress. Tomorrow we'll go to Florence and shop for a new one. Why don't you change and we'll breakfast on the terrace."
    She swallowed. "Yes, Malcolm. Right away." She glanced down at Healy's corpse and walked quickly from the room.
    Three guards ran into the room, guns drawn. They looked at the body, then at Foxworth. One of the men was broad shouldered and dark faced. Foxworth knew who he was. He knew all the life details of everyone who worked for him.
    "Sir, we heard shots. Are you all right?"
    "I'm fine. Dragonov, you are now chief of security." He gestured at Healy's body. "Take that out of here and get rid of it."
    "Yes, sir." Dragonov and the other two picked up the dead weight and hurried from the room.
    "Morel. I have a headache. Take care of it."
    Soon Foxworth was relaxed and out of pain. He dismissed Morel. He opened the library windows and stepped onto the balcony and looked out toward the river. The day was beautiful, the kind of day travel agents sold and vacationers dreamed of. Birds sang in the trees under brilliant blue sky that had inspired the greatest painters of the Renaissance.
    Foxworth took a deep breath of the warm Italian air. After breakfast he would indulge himself with Mandy. She would be insatiable after the morning's events. He was certain violence turned women on.
    The drugs coursed through his body. Yes, life was good.

CHAPTER FORTY- EIGHT

    Yuri Malenkov and Anatoly Ogorov contemplated the object recovered from the Yucatan ruins. A frigid blast of wind rattled the windows of Malenkov's laboratory at Irtysh, a warning of approaching winter.
    Yuri's voice betrayed his excitement. "This could not have been produced in a pre-technological civilization."
    "It's a crystal," Ogorov said. "What is so different about it?"
    The crystal was about a foot and a half tall, polished and transparent. It had a flat base and a perfect, tapered point. Yuri concealed his frustration at Ogorov's question.
    "I subjected it to electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography. It was shaped by some process I don't understand. There are no tooling marks of any kind. That alone makes it different."
    He took the crystal in both hands and placed it on a pedestal in the middle of the room.
    "The crystal is impossibly flawless," he said. "It acts to focus and direct energy. I've arranged a demonstration for you. If you look up you'll see a sheet of fire resistant material on the ceiling."
    Ogorov looked up.
    "Watch this, but stay away from the crystal."
    Ogorov stepped back. Yuri took a laser pointer from his shirt pocket, the kind lecturers used everywhere. He aimed and turned it on. The crystal turned deep, blood red. An intense beam of light shot straight upward and struck the asbestos sheet above. It began to glow with heat. Ogorov heard a low humming, a faint resonance through the soles of his shoes.
    Yuri switched off the laser. The humming stopped. The asbestos smoldered.
    "That was an ordinary pointer, a harmless laser. Imagine what it will do with Tesla's ray. This is what he lacked. An amplifier, a way to increase the power of his device. This solves that problem. With this, we can reach the moon." He looked up, as if he could see the universe through the roof of the building. "We will command space."
    "Why did you not think of crystal before?" Ogorov asked.
    "I did. But this is not ordinary crystal. I am not even sure it is from this