Mr. Lincoln, however, did not offer an opinion. He simply excused himself and rushed to his workshop, pausing only for the copy of Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle he left on the table. Hours later, one of our wireless operators reported that Mr. Lincoln had been flooding the radio room with messages all day to and from Nikola Tesla in New York, and that some of their correspondence included phototelegraph images. I went to Mr. Lincoln’s workshop to discuss this only to find the door locked and my knocks drowned out by what sounded like classical music. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, second movement, I believe. Concerned, I went at once to the Oval Office and gave a full report to the President, but he only leaned back in his chair and said: “Let him alone. When Bob gets this way, it’s usually for the best of everyone.”
The President was correct.
That evening, I was summoned to the Oval Office for one of the President’s private salons. I arrived to find the delighted chief executive sharing a bottle of red wine with Mr. Lincoln. I also noticed one of the soldiers’ Browning Auto-5 shotguns resting on the President’s desk. When I asked what this was about, the President directed me to a sheet of paper underneath the weapon. It showed designs for a working, patentable invention Mr. Lincoln and Dr. Tesla developed over the telegraph and which Mr. Lincoln built that afternoon using equipment found on the airship.
I am including a facsimile of Dr. Tesla’s designs for this remarkable “electric rifle,” as well as Mr. Lincoln’s description of how the device works:
“Dr. Tesla’s electric rifle transfers an electric ‘bullet’ by shooting two wires from the barrel of the shotgun. The projectile itself is a hollow wax bullet containing a spool of wire that uncoils when fired. The wires are separated by insulated coating except at its pointed tip, where two exposed needles deliver a debilitating but nonlethal jolt of electricity. The high voltage is generated using the common form of circuitry for electric sparks (Fig. 1). To power the device, a modest electric current was obtained from an alternator attached to one of the airship’s propeller shafts (Fig. 2). This current enters a small transformer that is attached to the Tesla coil in Fig. 1 to generate the required voltage. A common condenser stores the transformer current to be fed into the Tesla induction coil. A rifle trigger (Fig. 3) is used to both shoot the electric bullet and electrify the Tesla coil by completing the electric circuit. For ease of use, this secondary trigger can be added alongside the shotgun’s existing trigger. Not only does this allow the electric rifle to operate almost identically to any rifle, but its wooden stock can be hollowed out to store the necessary equipment to power it.
“Unfortunately, only a single electric bullet can be shot from the rifle without a reload, which would be a long and cumbersome process this early into the development stage. However, if fired correctly at a range commensurate to the length of wire inside the bullet, Dr. Tesla’s electric rifle should be able to successfully electrocute an enemy into submission without killing or destroying them.” —Robert T. Lincoln.
As I said earlier, stunning. Simply stunning.
But I must go now and try to get some rest. We are expected to arrive in Morocco within the next few hours.
August 14, 1911.
We are in Africa.
Airship One landed in Casablanca at about 3:55 a.m. local time. We encountered no difficulties and all necessary arrangements were made by Fred Carpenter, the President’s former secretary and now U.S. envoy to Morocco.
Mr. Carpenter had some news for us: Mr. Wilkie finished his assignment in San Francisco. The chief met “Colonel” Henry I. Kowalsky, an attorney who briefly worked as a lobbyist for King Leopold II before he exposed the king and his atrocities to the New York American. Mr. Wilkie said Mr. Kowalsky did not have anything particularly useful to share and even fell asleep several times in their meeting, including one time when the two men were crossing a busy street. I can only imagine how frustrating Mr. Wilkie must have found Mr. Kowalsky’s narcolepsy during such a time-sensitive moment for our nation.
Nevertheless, Mr. Wilkie was able to take two things from his meeting, both of them potentially bad for us. It appears Leopold had a secret plan for the Congo in the event that his crimes were exposed, and it involved reaping vast amounts of natural resources before the international community could stop him. Unfortunately, it is far too late to curtail this operation since it has already been in motion for nearly a decade. Even worse, Wilkie learned there is no way we can ever know the full extent of this program due to Leopold having burned the entire archives of the Congo Free State in 1908.
In short, we are racing headlong into a conspiracy nearly a decade in the making, spanned across three continents, and involving nothing short of a diabolical aim known only to Leopold II of Belgium, deceased.
August 15, 1911.
A sad day.
We left Casablanca shortly after midnight and spent the entire day crossing the Sahara.
All seemed well until I was on my way to lunch with the President and Mr. Lincoln only to be handed some unhappy news: Major Henry Rathbone has died.
Below is the official report from Hanover, Germany:
“Major Rathbone, who was military aid to President Lincoln and who, in attempting to defend him on the night President Lincoln was assassinated, received a stab wound from John Wilkes Booth, died yesterday in Hildesheim Asylum for the Criminal Insane. He was incarcerated for the murder of his wife.”40
Understandably, the three of us immediately lost our appetite.
How could anyone have tortured themselves over the murder of President Lincoln more than Major Rathbone? I can think of no other, not even Mr. Robert Lincoln. No man in uniform was closer to President Lincoln that evening, and although he was badly injured, Major Rathbone never forgave himself for failing to prevent the unfortunate course John Wilkes Booth charted for our history.
It deeply disturbs me to imagine how I, or Mr. Robert Lincoln, or anyone would have fared if we had been in Major Rathbone’s place in that theater. Would we have suffered the same sorry fate as he did? Would our fiancée have been as doomed as the blood-splattered Miss Clara Harris that evening? I sincerely hope and pray not, for after twenty years of madness the retired Colonel Rathbone brutally murdered his wife with a knife and a pistol only two days before Christmas. He then turned the knife on himself and had to be subdued by police, claiming a “stranger” committed the murder. It was nothing short of a miracle that the couple’s children were not slain.
Of all the horrors of this episode, I was always most bothered by how Rathbone, in his madness, chose a knife and a pistol as his foul instruments: the same arms John Wilkes Booth carried into Ford’s Theatre. Is it possible Rathbone was driven mad like Macbeth by the visage of these terrible weapons? Or worse, that after twenty long years of torture, the late Major Rathbone had finally lost the war in his mind against that American savage from Ford’s Theatre. Back from the dead. For his wife.
But I must stop now. Listening too closely to these echoes from history will only drive me mad as well. My president is alive and needs my help. Also, on a day like today, so does Mr. Robert Lincoln. After Captain Young relieved me for the evening, I found Mr. Lincoln by himself in the main dining hall. He was standing at attention with his hands behind his back and his eyes honed on the enormous eagle engraved in wood on the hall’s central wall.
Then again, I do not know if he was focusing on the eagle or the words written in gold beneath it: “Una natio fatum unum,” the ship’s motto. Either way, I have no doubt his mind was absorbed on the grim reminder we received today about his father’s assassination.
August 16, 1911.
We have a serious problem.
The airship is stopped about two hundred miles southwest of Cameroon. We could be in Boma this evening, but we just learned that our arrangements for safe passage into the city have collapsed.
Our plan was to enter Boma by boat, which Mr. Wilkie’s special agent secured with the help of two contacts in the Congo Reform
Association known as “Tiger” and “Bulldog.” However, we are now told by our contacts that their associates in Boma have abandoned us. Their reason: fear of the “King of Beasts,” which Tiger and Bulldog explained was a code name for King Leopold. It sounds like news of Leopold’s death has not reached certain parts of the Belgian Congo. Perhaps deliberately.
Thus, King Leopold’s ghost has dealt a severe blow to our mission, since we are left with no viable entry into the city. Fortunately, these associates in Boma know nothing about our mission other than the involvement of Tiger and Bulldog, who are both based in Europe. However, this is little consolation after crossing a desert and an ocean only to be forced to a halt so close to our final destination.
Morale is steady for now, but it could take a turn for the worse pretty quickly.
August 17, 1911.
Still nothing. I have decided to keep the airship at its current position over the Gulf of Guinea. There is a very real possibility that we may have to turn back, and if we must, I need to conserve fuel.
Mr. Wilkie’s special agent, Miss Knox, is in talks with Tiger and Bulldog to find an alternate route into Congo that will not interfere with our manhunt for Basil Zaharoff or the “Gentleman from Boma.” No other news to report.
Captain Young is doing a fantastic job maintaining morale among the crew. Better than I could have hoped for. While I admit I was skeptical about his addition to the airship, his impeccable conduct has earned him my full confidence.
August 18, 1911.
Still no movement beyond the Gulf of Guinea, but there has been an unusual development over the wireless.
According to Miss Knox, Tiger and Bulldog have offered to put us in touch with a third person known as “the Colossus.” The President was outraged when he heard this and threatened to turn back, but Mrs. Taft convinced him otherwise. Apparently, the Colossus wants to examine the butterfly found in Basil Zaharoff’s briefcase to determine whether or not we even need to enter Boma to fulfill our mission.
This is most peculiar, but apparently Miss Knox knows something about the Colossus that she is willing to risk her credibility and, I am sorry to say, her career over.
Morale is steady. Again, thanks in large part to Captain Young’s stewardship.
August 19, 1911.
We are moving again.
Mr. Lincoln completed his conversation with the Colossus over the telegraph, during which he answered numerous odd questions about the butterfly. He even conducted what appeared to be some sort of chemical test in the wireless room at one point.
The Colossus believes the butterfly found in Basil Zaharoff’s briefcase was not a keepsake, but rather a stray insect that flew in there to its death. This means Zaharoff must have been in the native region to this butterfly, the Lualaba River, and recently. Maybe even immediately before the operation in New Haven. The Colossus deduced this because the butterfly was found in the same part of the briefcase where the President said the blood-covered parchment was pulled from. This might also explain why the executive order was written in blood despite there being no injury to the President’s son: the parchment came from the Congo as well.
After discussing these findings in a private conference, the President decided that we should bypass Boma altogether and journey directly toward the Lualaba in the heart of the Congo.
We are now flying east-southeast into Africa and are expected to cross into the Congo under the cover of darkness.
August 20, 1911.
The Congo—First Day.
We have officially entered the graveyard that King Leopold’s ghost continues to haunt.
We crossed into the Belgian Congo at about four o’clock in the morning. Once we spotted the Congo River in the moonlight, we needed only follow it southeast until we reached the Lualaba River at noon.
It must have rained before we arrived because the vast jungle was cloaked in mist. Flying low at about forty m.p.h., the Lualaba led us on a steady course due south. Captain Young had sixty soldiers on watch with binoculars, but neither they nor I could see through the haze. At 1:30 that afternoon, the President said “enough” and I brought the zeppelin to a halt about one hundred and twenty miles down the river.
During our pause, Mr. Lincoln asked if he could use the observation car to take some air samples. I complied, and Mr. Lincoln braved the extreme heat and humidity to collect whatever he needed from outside the airship. However, before reentering, he spotted what looked like an abandoned station several miles ahead of us. A Corporal Williams confirmed this, so we turned our engines back on and moved down the river to the building. I then descended the airship as low as I could and dropped sixteen men to investigate with Captain Young commanding.
The men did not return until sundown.
According to Captain Young, the abandoned building was a telegraph station whose sole occupant was found dead inside. He was dressed in a Belgian military uniform and had been shot in the back of the head while seated, apparently at work. The body was significantly decayed and the Captain believes it had been exposed for a year. His assessment seems corroborated by a logbook he found underneath the sprawled body. Although covered with dried blood, the book shows that the station’s last transmission occurred in the early hours of July 16, 1910: the same date and time as the Tesla transmission. No date of termination was written.
Alarmed by this find, I gave Captain Young and his men the rest of the night off. The Captain declined, preferring to work at the bridge for his evening shift, but the soldiers graciously accepted.
It appears Dr. Tesla was correct when he said there was a mass murder following the transmission he intercepted. Everyone working at the relay stations carrying the message must have been killed. However, assuming J. P. Morgan is indeed the “Gentleman from New York,” why would he want to have Nikola Tesla murdered? Morgan was one of Dr. Tesla’s most generous financiers at one point. Furthermore, if the Belgians are involved in this conspiracy, why would they kill one of their own soldiers at this station?
Is it possible Mr. Morgan and Mr. Guggenheim made a deal with the devil that we are only beginning to see the full consequence of? If so, what could they possibly have in store for the country worse than what nearly happened at New Haven?
August 21, 1911.
The Congo—Second Day.
Who are these madmen?
The mists cleared this morning and we continued our expedition along the Lualaba River. Before we moved, the President and I asked Mr. Lincoln why he was taking air samples. He said he was testing for cesium in the atmosphere, but found none.
However, that afternoon we stumbled upon something even more disturbing than what we found inside the abandoned telegraph station. There was a vast expanse of jungle, maybe two miles wide, maybe more, that had been completely eradicated of any sign of life. There were no trees, no birds, no animals, no grass. Nothing. Just a lifeless expanse as barren as the Sahara we crossed earlier.
I considered landing the airship in the area, but Mr. Lincoln advised against it. Instead, he asked me to take us skyward to varying altitudes while he took additional air samples. Hours later, Mr. Lincoln asked the President and myself to join him in his laboratory, where he showed us the bright blue band in his spectroscope caused by large amounts of cesium. He added that the cesium, just like the cesium hydroxide our enemies tried to use at New Haven, was radioactive, and that the radiation appeared to jump the closer we moved to the ground. The President asked Mr. Lincoln if such high levels of radiation are dangerous, to which the latter replied he was not sure. He cited Mme. Marie Curie’s prolonged exposure to radiation and relative good health as a sign of the contrary. However, he added that our enemies’ reliance on heavily radioactive cesium hydroxide is most unusual. He said far more research will be needed to come to a conclusion about the full effects of radiation exposure. However, he said that it seems pretty clear that this vast field of desolation was caused by the same weapon Basil Zaharoff threatened New Haven with.
> As such, it appears our enemies were not bluffing. They do possess a weapon capable of not only destroying the population of an entire city, but all surrounding plant and animal life as well. New Haven, beautiful New Haven, was nearly wiped off the map of Connecticut, along with every bird in its skies, every leaf on its trees, and every one of the city’s more than 100,000 souls.
Tonight is my evening at the helm, but Captain Young offered to work my shift while I rest. I am most indebted to this man. He has outclassed me on this mission.
August 22, 1911.
The Congo—Third Day.
Horror.
Joseph Conrad was right. The devil is in these jungles. The devil is walking the Earth as a man.
I saw him.
We continued down the Lualaba until eleven o’clock this morning, when Sgt. Hazel spotted what appeared to be some sort of private estate. The house was located several hundred yards from a small dock on the river, but otherwise appeared completely isolated within the jungle.
Since we saw no signs of danger and were nearing the end of the Lualaba, the President insisted that whatever was down in that building was something he wanted to see for himself. I advised the President against this, but he overruled me, insisting that if he did not do something soon, “I might as well not have come.” I agreed to the President’s request, but only if I personally escorted him to the premises. He accepted, and I descended the airship along the river so that we could approach the dock by ladder.
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy: A Novel Page 23
