The Project 05 - The Tesla Secret

I pushed it away, before. Mexico changed that. It's made me look at my fears in a different way. Not only about me, about you dying. Then you almost don't come back from Russia."
    "But I did."
    "This time. What about the next?"
    "It's the risk we take."
    "Yes, it is. That doesn't make it easier."
    She stood.
    "I think I should go now."
    "Why don't you stay," he said.
    "I'm sorry, Nick. I can't, right now. Give me a little more time to work it through."
    The door closed behind her.

CHAPTER SEVENTY- TWO

    Three days later Harker called an evening meeting at Selena's. Nick was ten minutes late. He got out of the elevator and went to Selena's door. Since the night they'd talked he'd only seen her at the meetings. He used his key and went in.
    The door opened onto a wide hall that led to the great room on the right. He walked to the end of the hall and turned the corner.
    "Surprise!"
    Selena, Elizabeth, Ronnie, Stephanie and Lamont stood in a group under a wide red banner that shouted Happy Birthday! The room was festive with balloons. The dining table was loaded with food. A cake with candles waited.
    He stood speechless.
    "Happy Birthday, Nick." Selena came forward and kissed him. She whispered in his ear. "I love you," she said. " It's all right. I'm not going anywhere." She kissed him again.
    Lamont said, "Gotcha, man. Surprised you. Happy birthday."
    "One more gone," Ronnie said.
    "Just like a Scorpio." It was Stephanie. "Late to your own party."
    Elizabeth smiled. "Good thing you were. We couldn't get all the food out in time."
    They were all smiling at him. The team. His family.
    "You guys..." He stopped.
    I n the end, this was what mattered. This was what he fought for. Not just flag or country, but for the people in his life. That was what was important.
    He looked at Selena. Suddenly, life felt good again.

Author's Notes

    I like to mix fiction and fact in my stories.
    Telluric currents are real, an inexhaustible source of energy with no environmental effects. Nikola Tesla invented alternating current, bladeless turbines and wireless transmission. He patented designs for the transmission of free electrical energy based on the use of the earth's geomagnetic field. We might have that free electricity today if J.P Morgan had not pulled Tesla's funding. It could still be done, which ought to give us all something to think about.
    The Mafra Codex does not exist except in my imagination. There are no Mayan books from the period of 500-600 CE. The Mafra Palace in Portugal and it's famous library are real. So is the large and extensive sewer system beneath it.
    Zaslon exists. It is composed of the cream of the Russian Special Forces, which makes it a very formidable unit. It is part of Department S of the SVR, which also exists.
    Cold launch technology is real. It would allow a missile to be fired from the deck of a freighter lying off our shores. We'd better hope no one does that. A missile fired at the Capitol from close to the Virginia coast would be almost impossible to intercept.
    The premise of lost plans for the death ray design is based on fact. Tesla did indeed demonstrate a small device operating in a vacuum, reported in the press as a "Death Ray". Channels exist under the Egyptian pyramids that would have flowed with water before the Nile shifted course. In the Great Pyramid there are no smoke stains from torches on paintings deep inside the structure. What did the builders of the pyramid use for light? Why are the inner walls of the pyramid constructed in such a way that they would serve as a perfect insulator? Why are there illustrations that look exactly like light bulbs of some kind? And why do respected Egyptologists say that the Great Pyramid may not actually have been a tomb after all? If it wasn't a tomb, what was it for?
    Tesla saw World War Two coming and made a serious effort to sell his idea for a super weapon to the US and the British governments. Both FDR and Churchill turned him down. Tesla believed his weapon would make war obsolete because of its great destructive power. By this time he was notably eccentric. They didn't believe him. He died in 1943, in poverty and alone, an eccentric old man dismissed as irrelevant and disturbed. Hoover's FBI seized all of his plans, papers, documents and models. These were finally released nine years later and shipped to Serbia. They are in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
    If he was so irrelevant, why did the FBI grab all his effects?
    We can already build