by John Case
A Serb born in Croatia, Tesla was a prodigious inventor, responsible (as the desk clerk had claimed) for alternating current, the Tesla coil, and scores of other devices. His patents numbered in the hundreds, and he was obviously something of a cult figure – and not just in Serbia. Tesla enthusiasts considered it a travesty that he had not been awarded the Nobel Prize, calling him “the Leonardo of the twentieth century.”
After moving to the United States and working with Edison, Tesla became a rival to the American when he invented and championed alternating current, rather than the direct current that Edison favored. With the backing of the Westinghouse Corporation, Edison mounted a propaganda campaign to make alternating current appear dangerous. Dogs and cats, and even an elephant, were electrocuted onstage to make the point, while Edison asked men in the audience if they wanted their wives to risk their lives every time they plugged in the iron.
Edison’s argument was false. Not only was Tesla’s alternating current safer than Edison’s direct current, it was more efficient and easier to deliver. Eventually, and with the backing of J. P. Morgan, the nineteenth century’s quintessential robber baron, Tesla’s technology won out.
It was the Serb who lit up the towns around Niagara Falls, and who won the contract to illuminate the “White City” at the Chicago World’s Fair.
In his heyday, Tesla lived in New York and was considered a trophy guest at the lavish gatherings of the gilded age. He partied with the Morgans, the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers, and hosted them and their guests in his Manhattan laboratory. A close friend of Mark Twain’s, he astonished the writer and his friends with demonstrations worthy of Dr. Frankenstein. While Twain and other guests watched in amazement, Tesla would stand on an improvised platform, wreathed in lightning. He’d pace the lab with tubes of light that seemed to have no power source, while juggling balls of fire that left no marks on his clothes or skin. Where Edison was a chubby plodder, who wore his wife’s smocks while he worked, Tesla was elegant and thin, a six-foot-six genius who performed his experiments in waistcoat and tails.
As quirky as he was brilliant, the inventor lived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he dined alone each night in the Palm Room. There, he engaged in a ritual that involved a stack of linen napkins, with which he wiped clean every piece of cutlery, china, and glass on the table. That done, he could not eat until he’d calculated the cubic capacity of each vessel and, by extension, the volume of food before him.
It occurred to Burke that the Serb was a classic victim of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
And hypersensitive, as well. According to Tesla’s biographers, the inventor had almost supernaturally acute hearing. He could hear a watch ticking several rooms away, and could sense a thunderstorm in another state. Acutely sensitive to pressure, he could not walk into a cave, through a tunnel, or under a bridge without suffering.
He was so plagued by the city’s vibrations, by the passing of trucks and the rumble of trains, that the legs of his table in the Palm Room, like those in his laboratory, had to be sheathed in rubber. Sunlight pressed down upon him, and his vision was disturbed by flashes of light and auras that no one else saw. He counted every step he took, organizing the world around him in multiples of the number nine. He had a violent hatred of pearl earrings, and was horrified by the prospect of touching another person’s hair. But …
It was Tesla, rather than Marconi, who first patented a method for wireless broadcasting, and it was Tesla who harnessed the power of Niagara Falls. He worked for years on ways of transmitting energy wirelessly across great distances, and claimed that he could capture electricity – free energy – from “standing waves” at the earth’s core.
He died in 1943, while the Second World War was at fever pitch in Europe. At the time, he was living in reduced circumstances at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. According to reports, two FBI agents and a nurse were present at his death. When the inventor’s relatives came to the hotel, they found that his safe had been drilled and his papers removed. Soon afterward, the Custodian of Alien Property seized virtually all of Tesla’s papers, though the Custodian’s jurisdiction was questionable since Tesla had been an American citizen for decades. Those papers, which required a boxcar to transport, remained in limbo until the end of the war, when the American government uncovered Nazi documents in the course of an intelligence operation, code-named Paperclip. The Nazi papers showed that German scientists and weapons designers had been developing new and frightening weapons based on Teslan principles and inventions. In 1945, Tesla’s papers were officially classified Top Secret and taken to Los Alamos.
Eight years later, a nephew of Tesla’s succeeded in gaining the release of some one hundred fifty thousand documents, and this trove became the founding archive of the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
But the bulk of Tesla’s papers (including most of the scientific notebooks, research papers, and experimental notes) remain classified to this day. Since Tesla was such a cult figure, many researchers had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents concerning the inventor and his work. All had been rebuffed. On one website, a scientist wrote that while working at Los Alamos, he was permitted to view diagrams and papers concerning the hydrogen bomb, but not a page of Tesla’s work.
What could this scientist, who died more than sixty years ago, have to do with a bank account in the Channel Islands? For all Burke knew, Tesla was just a hobby, an interest of d’Anconia’s that was relevant to nothing and to no one. D’Anconia might just as easily have been interested in orchids. Or UFOs. Or Civil War reenactments.
Only he wasn’t. He was interested in Tesla.
Burke decided to take a break. Got to his feet and stretched. A girl with multiple piercings and blue streaks in her hair brought him a coffee that was strong and sweet. A pair of Israeli backpackers sat down at the terminal next to his.
Returning to his chair, he typed: “Tesla Symposium Belgrade 2005.” Twenty-three hits, most of them in a language he didn’t recognize. (Presumably Serbian.) But there were a couple in English.
The first was the home page for the Museum of Nikola Tesla, which contained a link to the symposium’s site. He wrote down the museum’s address, 51 Proleterskih brigada Street, then took the online tour, which guided him from room to room through the museum. Along with Tesla’s ashes, personal effects, and correspondence, there were many photographs, original patents, and models of his inventions. The museum also housed the Tesla archives, which included the documents his nephew had obtained from the U.S. government.
He returned to the Google list and clicked on the site “2006 Tesla Symposium, Belgrade,” which included details of the program. He scanned through, looking for d’Anconia’s name.
9:00–9:15:
I. Soloviev
Smolensk Institute
Patent #454622: A History
9:15–9:30:
D. DiPaolo
University of Perugia
Spark-Gap Oscillation: Implications for WirelessCommunication
9:30–9:45:
S. Oeschle
Gote University, Frankfurt am Main Geochronological Implications of Geomagnetic Decay
9:45–10:15:
J. Wilson
Stanford University
The Tunguska Incident: Calculating Vector Drag in Scalar Pair-Coupling
10:15–10:45:
James Re
Diathermapeutics, Ltd., Bern, Switzerland: The Debt of Ultrasound Therapies to Teslan Diathermic Technology
10:45–11:15:
S. A. Johnson
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Scalar Electromagnetics in Weather Manipulation: The Woodpecker Signal and Global Warming
11:15–11:30:
E. Grobelaar
King’s College, London
Tesla v. Marconi: A Short History
11:30–12:00:
A. Dobkin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ball Lightni
ng, Plasmoid Stability, and Nuclear Fusion: A Progress Report
And so on. Looking through the list, the vocabulary alone drove home just how far out of his depth Burke was. Nucleons, flux intensity, Fourier frequencies, “magnetostatic scalar potential.”
And no “Francisco d’Anconia.”
He didn’t get it. He could hear the desk clerk’s voice, indignant that Burke had never heard of Tesla. But d’Anconia had. “Your friend – he gives speech! At the symphony.”
Then Burke had one of those realizations that begins with duhhh. He wasn’t looking for “d’Anconia.” He was looking for the man who had used that name as an alias, a joke, or an homage. If the guy he wanted to find had given a speech at the symposium, then he was one of the scientists listed in the program.
Burke sat back and sighed. Geomagnetic decay? Scalar weapons? This was not at all what he had in mind when he came to Belgrade, tracking “Francisco d’Anconia.”
He printed a copy of the symposium’s program, logged out, paid for the time he’d used, and began walking back to the Esplanade.
He was trying to get his head around it.
One point he had to give to Kovalenko: Some of Aherne’s clients were a little dodgy. He was pretty sure one guy was running an online poker game. That was illegal in the States but not in Europe. He suspected that another client was bootlegging Microsoft DVDs. And there were dozens of customers engaged in “creative” accounting where taxes were concerned.
D’Anconia didn’t fit in with that crowd. In fact, Kovalenko had all but called him a terrorist.
But if d’Anconia was one of the scientists on the list, well, it just didn’t make sense to Burke. In his view, terrorists don’t think about things like “vector drag,” and they don’t present papers at symposia.
They just don’t.
Twenty-four
IT WAS DARK and cold, and as Mike Burke walked back to the Esplanade, the snow was sifting down like flour out of the sky. The streetlights swarmed with snow-flakes. Coming toward him, a woman in a long red coat walked with quick little steps, hunched against the cold.
The woman made him think of Kate and he found himself wishing that his wife was beside him. When the weather was like this, he’d put his arm around her, and pull her into the shelter of his shoulder. He could almost feel the warmth and weight of her. If she were here now, he would take her to one of the restaurants on the river, where they’d watch the light on the water, and drink red wine.
Snap out of it.
He turned the corner, and there was the Esplanade. He headed straight for the bar. Now that it was nighttime, half the little tables were occupied, with each one sporting a candle in a red glass. A brace of microphones on a tiny stage threatened live entertainment. He’d read in the guidebook that one of the musical specialties of Belgrade was a hybrid of techno and Serbian folk music called turbofolk.
The bar itself was more like a voodoo altar. A long blue mirror strung with Christmas lights looked down on dusty bottles of whiskey, gin, and vodka. Plastic cacti glowed green amid miniature Chinese lanterns, pink flamingos, paper angels, and bobbleheads of Marilyn, Jesus, and Elvis. A woman filled four mugs of beer, then turned to him with an inquiring look.
“I’m looking for Tooti,” Burke said, barely believing the words.
The woman behind the bar was forty, or maybe even fifty, with thinning hair and an unhealthy pallor. “You found her.”
“There was an American who stayed at the Esplanade in January. The desk clerk thought you might have seen him. About my age.”
She arched a plucked eyebrow.
“He wore a hat,” Burke added. “When I saw him, he was wearing a fedora, or whatever they’re called.”
She smiled. “He’s gay, this guy?”
Burke shook his head. “No. I mean, I don’t know.”
Her lips came together in a pout. “Then what do you care?”
He thought about lying, but the effort was almost too much. So what he said was: “It’s kind of complicated, but … my name’s Burke. I’ve come a really long way. Y’know?”
She looked at him for a moment, and then she nodded, as if deciding something. When she smiled, Burke realized that she must have been a very pretty girl. “His name was Frank.”
Burke lit up with surprise. “You remember him!”
“We don’t get so many Americans,” she explained. “Mostly, they go to the Intercon.”
“You want a drink?” Burke asked. He put a thousand-dinar note on the table. She poured herself a tumbler of Johnny Walker Black. Took a sip and frowned. “You’re not a cop?”
Burke shook his head.
“You don’t look like a cop.”
“What’s a cop look like?” he asked.
“Big muscles and little piggy eyes.” She leaned on the bar. “Last week, two guys come from the RDB. They ask about this ‘Frank’ guy.”
“RDB?”
She rolled her eyes. “State Security.”
“So what did they say?” Burke asked.
“Who cares? No one tells them anything.”
“Why not?”
“These same pricks are here two months ago. Arrest nice girls.” She paused. “Okay,” she admitted, “maybe they do prostitution. But no trouble, ever. Good tips, too.” She looked Burke in the eyes. “You tip?”
Burke nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’m always tipping.”
“Good! Because here, most people don’t tip. I blame communism.”
Burke nodded in sympathy. Tossed another thousand dinars on the bar.
“Anyway,” Tooti said, “nobody tells these cops nothing.”
“Y’know, your English is really good …”
“I’m in Chicago for twenty years. West side.”
“Really?! And then … what? You came back.”
“My mother was sick, so …” She threw back her scotch, as if it were a shot of tequila.
“She get better?” Burke asked. “I mean, is she all right?”
Tooti tilted her head and smiled, surprised that he’d asked. “Yeah,” she said. “She’s fine now. They cut it out.” She paused. “Look, I don’t mind telling you about this Frank of yours, but don’t get excited. I don’t know much.”
“You know his name. You call him Frank.”
She shook her head. “He called himself Frank. He’s coming in, has a couple of beers. He’s not so friendly.”
“So what did you talk about?” Burke asked.
“I said, ‘Hi. I’m Tooti.’ And he said, ‘Frank.’”
“That’s it?”
Tooti nodded. The dinars vanished.
Burke felt as if he’d been had. “He talk to anyone else?”
Tooti shook her head. “No. And it’s too bad. Good-looking boy like that. Some people flirt with him – girls, boys – he’s not so interested.” She thought for a moment. “Most of the time, he’s writing.”
“Writing?”
“He has notebook,” she explained. “Sometimes, he sits where you are, and I look. He’s writing letters.” She frowned. “But not Aunt Mary ‘letters.’ Letters and numbers.”
“You mean, like –”
“Algebra. I think maybe he’s a student.” She tapped her glass with a finger and looked at Burke with an inquiring expression. He nodded and she poured herself another drink.
“He never talked about himself?”
She shook her head. “One time, he danced.”
“Danced?” Burke asked.
Tooti nodded. “This night, the band takes break. Not too much business. But Frank, he is getting loaded. So … he dances.”
“By himself?”
Tooti laughed. “Yeah! And this dance, it’s not the Twist, y’know? I mean, it’s not like any dance you’ve ever seen! This guy Frank, he’s kind of humming. Turning around. It’s like he’s floating. Very graceful, but … Anyway, he dances for a long time – five, ten minutes. After a while, the band stood there, watching him. Me, too.”
She loo
ked at Burke. His expression told her that he didn’t know what to make of the story. She shrugged. “Anyway, when he stopped dancing, he gave me a big tip. Said he was going away.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.” She tipped her glass back and downed the rest of her drink.
Burke turned to go.
“Oh,” she said. “Wait. One more thing. He spoke Serb.”
“No shit …”
“The night he was drunk. His accent was terrible. I asked him if he was with NATO – sometimes, the soldiers pick it up. He just shook his head. So I thought, maybe he has relatives here. But no. He said he learned it from books.”
“In school?”
Tooti shook her head. “No. He said he taught himself.”
Burke thanked her again and went up to his room, where he looked out the window at the snow. It was coming down harder now, turning headlights into opalescent beams as the cars crossed the city’s bridges.
He lay in bed, watching the lights of cars slide up the wall and across the ceiling. It was all so weird. Nikola Tesla and Ayn Rand, talking Serb and crazy dancing.
With a sigh, he rolled over and closed his eyes. Beyond the window, a car was stuck in the snow, spinning its wheels. Tell me about it, he thought.
*
Seeing Burke in the lobby the next morning, the desk clerk nodded toward the doorman, a little guy in a magenta uniform with gold braid and epaulets.
Burke walked up to him. “Ivo?”
The doorman turned, surprised that Burke knew his name. “Yes?”
“Mr. Milic said I should talk to you.”
“Yes?”
Burke gave a little wave to the desk clerk, who returned the gesture with a smile. “Yeah, he said you might be able to help me. I’m looking for a friend.” Burke handed him a folded ten-euro note. “An American guy. Stayed here a while ago. About my age. Black hair.”
“This is Frank.” Ivo buried the ten euros in his pocket.
“Right! Frank. You know what happened to him? You know where he went?”
