Ernst nodded. “It’s…harrowing.”
Indeed. Charles Atkinson—if such a person truly existed—told his tale in a plain-spoken, matter-of-fact tone that compelled belief. Ernst looked for a place to drop the envelope with the damning memoir but every horizontal surface was occupied.
“Just drop it on the floor,” Slootjes said.
Ernst did that, then leaned over the desk.
“Tell me you’ve debunked this travesty.”
Ernst wanted nothing more than to hear a resounding Yes. Instead, Slootjes gave his head a slow, sad shake.
“Just the opposite, I’m afraid.” He indicated a loose-leaf binder. “I checked with your grandfather’s reports to the Council and he often mentions a ‘Charles’ as being close to Tesla.”
“Anyone working with Tesla at the time might have known of this Charles and impersonated him.”
“True. But Atkinson’s dates regarding the Order’s takeover of the financing of the tower experiments jibe with the Council’s financial records.”
“But—”
“The Council kept its involvement secret, Ernst, and we know Tesla never went public with it. The records show they spent a considerable amount of money to keep Tesla going—to the tune of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Which sounds like a pittance these days, but when you adjust for inflation it comes to three and a half million. That’s what the Council poured into the Wardenclyffe project.”
“So that part’s true,” Ernst said. “How did they justify the expense?”
“According to the minutes of the Council meetings in 1903 and thereabouts, the members had read newspaper reports of strange occurrences that sounded like intrusions of Otherness in the Shoreham area along Long Island’s North Shore. They investigated and found good reason to believe that Tesla’s tower was not only transmitting wireless energy, but thinning the Veil as well. That was why they put up the money.”
“And got nothing in return.”
“You can’t blame them for thinking it a good investment. Look at this.”
He led Ernst to the far side of the room where a large map running from Manhattan to the tip of Long Island lay spread out on a ten-foot table. He tapped a spot on the North Shore.
“This was the location of Tesla’s Wardenclyffe tower. You will notice that, whether by accident or design, it’s also the location of a nexus point. As you know, the Veil is particularly thin at a nexus point. Everything pointed to funding the Serb’s experiments as being a worthwhile investment.”
Ernst noticed a number of little red bull’s eyes scattered on the map.
“What are those?”
“Those are the locations of the area’s signals. I don’t know if you’ve been reading the daily updates but all the wavelengths are on the verge of synchronization.”
Ernst was well aware convergence was imminent. “I’m surprised there’s not a signal at the Wardenclyffe location.”
Slootjes shook his head. “The signals didn’t begin until 1941, long after Tesla had abandoned Wardenclyffe and the tower was torn down.” He tapped the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “There is, however, a signal in Alphabet City, right where that Winslow hack lives. Has he been dealt with yet?”
Ernst didn’t care about Winslow now. He placed his hand over the Wardenclyffe location on the map. He could almost feel a part of his family history pulsing there.
“So they sent my grandfather out to oversee the project.”
“Yes. As the top actuator in the Order, he was transferred from Germany specifically for that purpose. He set everything in order, and when he showed the council two dead chew wasps from the other side, it only bolstered their confidence that they were on the right track. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but Atkinson describes the chew wasps perfectly, even describes the broom-handle Mauser C-96 Rudolph Drexler used to shoot them.”
“We have photos of my grandfather with the chew wasps and the Mauser right here in these archives. A spy could have seen them.”
“Agreed,” Slootjes said. “But what these archives don’t have is the slightest hint that Rudolph Drexler was involved with Gavrilo Princip.”
Ernst had seen that mentioned in the memoir. He knew from his father that, before leaving for America, grandfather Rudolph had been stoking the fires within a young Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip. The Order eventually relocated the young man to Sarajevo where he assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and precipitated the First World War.
Ernst’s own father had saved Hitler’s life during the Munich putsch in 1923. Good thing, too: Had the “strutting little Austrian Gefreiter,” as his father called him, died then, World War II might never have happened.
The brothers of the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order had spent millennia manipulating people and events to maintain a certain level of dread, despair, and chaos in human affairs, all in an ongoing effort to make the world a more comfortable place for the One and pave the way for the Change. They learned later that they had started the two world wars for nothing. The One had been imprisoned all that time—locked away by an agent of the Enemy for five hundred years. The instant his prison was compromised in the spring of 1941, the signals began.
And now the signals were indicating that the One’s time of ascendance was at hand.
Now.
Slootjes was rattling on… “I had to call the Munich Lodge to check on Rudolph Drexler’s involvement with Princip, and they confirmed it. Charles Atkinson could have learned of it only from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”
Ernst felt his stomach coiling into a knot. “So…the memoir is accurate.”
“Everything I checked has been verified.”
“Which means I have to accept his description of my grandfather’s horrible death as accurate?”
“I’m afraid so. And not only that: When Atkinson says he and your grandfather witnessed horrors beyond the Veil, and that your grandfather concluded that the Order had been duped, I see no choice but to assume he’s telling the truth.”
“He could have misinterpreted whatever he really said.”
Slootjes nodded slowly. “Possible, possible.” He looked up at Ernst with a tortured expression. “But if Rudolph Drexler was right, then my whole life has been a lie.” He looked away. “I have some deep
