Daniel stared at their puzzled faces and his mouth twisted into a humourless smile. ‘You’re still not getting what this is all about, are you? Tell me, what other hidden items of Claudine’s did you find? Perhaps a small electronic device, metallic, oblong, about seven inches long?’
‘Her Tesla oscillator?’ Roberta said.
Daniel looked gravely at her. ‘You found it, then. I knew Claudine would have hidden it. Do you have any idea what it’s capable of?’
‘We had an interesting taster,’ Ben said.
‘Which is why we don’t have it any more,’ Roberta said. ‘It got buried under a thousand tons of rubble that we only just managed to get out of ourselves.’
‘Then you understand what this is all about,’ Daniel said. ‘Or perhaps you still don’t want to, because it’s too terrible to imagine.’
‘Start from the beginning,’ Ben said. ‘What’s your involvement in all this? Are you a scientist like Claudine?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘I was a freelance investigative journalist. For some time I lived in the States, then for the next several years my investigative work took me from place to place around Europe.’
‘Investigating what?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘Environmental concerns, ecology, green issues, things like that. I spent time with protest groups, demonstrated against motorway construction, hung out with alternative types, anarchists, people with way-out causes. I guess a lot of it rubbed off on me. In time I started getting deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories. I became convinced that the reality the citizens of the modern world are presented with is really no more than a carefully designed tissue of lies intended to hide the truth of what our global ruling elite are really doing, the future they’re creating for all of us. I became involved in a whole network of people who devote themselves to studying and investigating the secret goings-on that most people never hear about. My main interest back then was the global warming controversy and the growing evidence that the entire thing was invented purely to generate massive revenues in so-called green taxes, hijack the ecological movements for purposes of gain and impose more controls on us all. Whatever money I could make I spent travelling around Europe to meet up with like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, that world draws a lot of cranks and crazies.’
‘That’s not such a big surprise,’ Roberta said. Ben had met his fair share of those, too, but he was getting impatient with Daniel’s account. ‘Get to the point,’ he said.
‘I’m coming to it. It was at one of those meetings, an alternative science conference in London, that I met Claudine. I saw right away that she wasn’t one of the crazy ones. She was different, and she was serious. Before long, we found what we had to say to one another more interesting than the conference. So we left. A drink turned into a meal. We talked and talked until the restaurant closed and we went to her hotel to talk some more. I was attracted to her, but that was only part of it. She had so much to tell about the research she’d been doing that I suddenly realised my global warming crusade was like nothing compared to what she was uncovering. I was hooked, even though some of it seemed impossible to believe. She described to me how she had built this machine based on Tesla’s original. I was pretty incredulous at first, but she told me she could show me an actual demonstration. The very next morning I found myself going back to France with her. We stopped in Paris, then she drove me out into the countryside, to where she had come across an isolated, derelict farmhouse.’
Ben remembered the picture of the old house they’d seen on the computer hard drive. He could guess what was coming next.
‘The walls were still standing, though nobody had lived there for years. I stood back and watched as Claudine attached her machine to an outer wall. I didn’t know what to expect. Then she switched it on.’
‘We’ve seen how this works,’ Roberta said. ‘The device auto-tuned to the resonant frequency of the building and started to shake it?’
‘It was unbelievable,’ Daniel said, with a look of awe. ‘One wall fell in, then another. Then what was left of the roof, right before my eyes. If she hadn’t turned the machine off in time, the whole thing would have been turned to rubble. That was when I became completely persuaded that what she had discovered was true, no matter how terrifying it seemed.’
He paused for another long gulp of vodka, swallowed it down and looked at them with a leaden expression. ‘The most terrifying thing of all is what ruthless people could do with a technology like that. Here are the facts. Shortly after Tesla’s death on 7 January, 1943, two US Secret Service agents who may have been one Bloyce Fitzgerald and one Ralph Doty, removed key items from his safe at the New Yorker Hotel as well as safety deposit box 103 at the Governor Clinton Hotel, leaving phoney benign material behind in their place for the investigators of the subsequent Trump Inquiry to find, so that everyone could be satisfied that Tesla wasn’t working on anything of potential military interest to enemy spies at the time of his death. The Trump Inquiry concluded that Tesla had been increasingly eccentric and possibly mentally ill during the last ten years of his life, producing nothing but useless gibberish that had no practical or scientific value.’
‘While the genuine items were being whisked away to some secret government warehouse,’ Roberta muttered.
‘More than a warehouse, a laboratory,’ Daniel replied. ‘Claudine believed that this became the basis for a highly classified and massively funded research and development program to explore and expand the range of Tesla’s discoveries. For over seventy years they’ve been secretly furthering his work, amplifying the powers he discovered, fine-tuning them, perfecting them.’
Daniel paused to drink more vodka, the glass trembling in his hand. ‘Now do you begin to see what this is about? The seismological data, the graphs, the images – Claudine had spent years compiling them, analysing them, searching through them until she was completely certain, beyond reasonable doubt—’
‘Completely certain of what, Daniel?’ Roberta asked, in a tone of dread that showed she already knew the answer.
Daniel’s face turned a little paler. He wiped his mouth. ‘That not all of the large-scale disasters of recent times, the mass destruction, the loss of countless human lives … were necessarily down to such natural causes as we have all been led to believe.’
‘You mean—?’
‘They were caused on purpose, yes,’ Daniel said quietly.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
There was a silence in the room. Roberta turned to look at Ben, then at Daniel. The Swede nodded gravely. ‘Triggered. Deliberately. Using a highly refined modern-day version of Tesla’s exact same design principle.’
‘Hah! It’s what I told you, Ben,’ Roberta said in grim triumph. ‘The goddamn US government has been behind this all along.’
Ben said nothing.
Daniel waved his hand in a gesture of ambiguity. ‘Well, that’s a little simplistic, hmm? You need to understand that, basically, at this point in history, the concept of nations is nothing more than a public relations scam and a way to distract us all from what really goes on. Forget governments. The true rulers aren’t the guys you see on TV. They’re not the finger puppets we vote for. The New World Order. Call it what you will, it’s a reality. Do you understand the terrible, terrible power that’s involved here, the kind of people you’re dealing with? They will stop at nothing. I mean nothing.’
Daniel turned back to the computer and pointed at the image of the wrecked cityscape that had been in the background as he’d been talking. ‘Republic of Taráca, one of the smallest South American countries with a population of just 2.6 million people, but rich in copper and natural gas. For decades it’s been a one-party state run by General Alberto Suarez, pretty much a military dictator who enjoyed support from Russia and Cuba, then more recently from the Chinese who were very keen to tap into Taráca’s resources. There were increasing rumblings about the country slanting towards Socialism. Then the earthquake happened. Eight point fiv
e on the Richter Magnitude Scale, way more powerful than the one they had back in 1996. Much of the city was reduced to rubble, including the Presidential Palace. There was no warning. The quake struck so suddenly that General Suarez and his family had no time to get out. The palace collapsed right on their heads, killing everyone inside. In the crowded poorer districts, people had no chance at all. The final death toll was over thirty thousand.’
‘I remember seeing it on television,’ Roberta said. ‘It was awful.’
‘Oh yes, and of course our western rulers were quick to express the usual shock and sympathy for the victims. Almost before it happened, the United Nations were right there to help with the aftermath. A few quick backroom deals later and massive aid was being poured into the place, the Chinese were quietly ousted, five minutes afterwards a new democratic government popped up with just a little support from the CIA and other globalist agencies, and now Taráca’s up on its feet again and guess who controls the copper and gas industries?’
Daniel’s eyes flashed with anger as he went on, ‘That’s how it works. The old trick never fails. Knock them flat with one hand, then rush to their rescue with the other. And all the public sees of it are the sensational images of disaster and mayhem that the media keeps pumping into their numb brains, along with the message of what a cooperative and caring world we live in thanks to our benevolent leaders. Of course, every story needs a bad guy. Who better to lay the blame on than Mother Nature again? Meanwhile, behind the wall of lies, the deals are being made, their empire gets expanded, the balance of power shifts bit by bit in their favour and their grip on the whole world gets a little tighter.’
Daniel had been talking so furiously as the vodka loosened him that he now had to pause to gather his breath. ‘Let me get this right,’ Ben said, cutting into the gap. ‘You’d have us believe that this Tesla technology, this earth-splitting resonance gimmick—’
‘A little more than a gimmick, wouldn’t you say?’ Daniel shot back.
‘—or whatever the hell it is, has been weaponised by secret agencies to the extent that they can use it to destabilise whole countries? Destroying a city is a little bit of a step up from shaking a building apart, it seems to me.’
‘That’s exactly what I’d have you believe,’ Daniel replied emphatically. ‘The bastards have had decades to develop it. This is a tool designed to subvert nations. A weapon of limitless political potential, giving whoever can direct its power dominion over the world. They can use it to bend any country to their will.’ He grimaced. ‘Subtler and cheaper than war, twenty times quicker and more effective than old-fashioned espionage and subversion, and it brings their final goal one big step closer.’
‘Their goal?’ Roberta said.
‘To create a global state with themselves right at the top of the pyramid,’ Daniel told her, knocking back the last of his vodka. He leaned across to grab the bottle off the table, sloshed more into his glass and slurped it down. ‘That’s what they’ve wanted from the beginning, and now it’s theirs for the taking. The ultimate might gives them the ultimate right to do whatever they want, and they’ll always get away with it.’ He snorted bitterly. ‘Nobody’s going to complain, are they? Certainly not the good people of Taráca, not now that you can get a Big Mac on every other street corner of their rebuilt San Vicente. Fools. I saw it with my own eyes, when Claudine and I visited the place last year.’
As Ben wanted to doubt it, he couldn’t deny that what Daniel was saying seemed to fit perfectly with everything that had happened to Claudine, to Roberta and himself. In a globalist political game where innocent lives could be expended by the thousand without a second thought as mere collateral damage, the elimination of the odd troublesome scientist or potential whistle-blower was neither here nor there. Those with the power and resources to undermine an entire country could all too easily track an individual target from country to country, follow their every move and marshal the small amount of manpower necessary to wipe them out at will.
It was a compelling, frightening scenario. Did he want to believe it?
‘I hate to pour cold water on your theory,’ he said. ‘But earthquakes happen. They’ve been happening for millions of years before human beings walked the planet, and they’ll go on happening long after we’re gone. Even if the technology for this exists, there’s no way you can’t claim to know what’s a genuine natural disaster and what’s a deliberate attack.’
‘Oh sure, shit happens,’ Daniel countered angrily. ‘And it does: that’s the beauty of their scheme. The “forces of nature” bring a country to its knees economically, we go in to help them, and then they’re right in our pocket where we want them. Japan getting too powerful? China? No problem, we’ll zap them where it hurts, bring them down a peg, and nobody ever suspects a thing. How could a natural disaster be engineered? Anyone would think it was crazy. And they’ll systematically marginalise and discredit anyone who claims it’s possible, just like they’ve managed to turn Tesla into a joke now, to cover their own asses. But I’ll tell you this,’ he went on, glaring at Ben. ‘Claudine wasn’t some radical conspiracy nut who wanted to jump at any wild story going. She was a true scientist. She thought about every angle, looked everywhere for proof. Only a genius like her would have had the idea about the animals.’
‘The mule sanctuary video,’ Roberta said. ‘That was you working the camera, wasn’t it?’
Daniel nodded. ‘Claudine realised that interpreting animal behaviour could be a way to tell the difference between a natural event and one that was man-made. It’s been proven over and over that animals can tell when an earthquake’s coming, because they’re so tuned into every nuance of their environment. It’s almost like a psychic power they have. But Claudine was certain that when it came to a totally artificial phenomenon, the animals wouldn’t see it coming. And she was right. The same mules that seemed to have predicted the real quake of ’96 were taken as much by surprise as the humans, even though this was a far more destructive event. You figure that one out. Pretty damned suspicious, no? Okay, it wasn’t solid evidence. We still couldn’t be absolutely sure. It wasn’t until we met Zimm that we really knew we were on the right track.’
‘Who the hell’s Zimm?’ Ben asked, frowning.
‘An American called Barney Zimm. That’s what he told us his name was, at least. He made contact with us after we’d been going round San Vicente asking questions for a week. When we met in a hotel room, he wouldn’t allow us to film or record his statement and you could see he was rattled about talking to us. He told us he was a junior administrative employee with the US Embassy in Taráca, which was just a few streets from the Presidential Palace. According to his story, the day before the quake happened, he and his fellow workers had been visited by agents of FEMA – that’s the US Federal Emergency Agency—’
‘We know what FEMA is,’ Roberta said.
‘—instructing them to evacuate the buildings ahead of some emergency drill or other that was due to take place the following day. Their reasons sounded pretty vague, but they were extremely serious about the whole thing. According to Zimm, the agents gathered up all the key embassy staff, loaded them into these black vans and took them off to some undisclosed location outside the city. Next day, Zimm and the other lower-down staff took the advice they’d been given and didn’t show up at work. As it turned out, they’d have been flattened in the rubble of the embassy building. Of course, no such warnings ever reached the ears of the ordinary citizens of San Vicente.’
‘Jesus,’ Roberta said, shaking her head. ‘Those sonsofbitches.’
Ben wandered over to the window, smoked the last of his cigarette and gazed out at the peaceful forest as he tried to process all this mentally. A small flock of birds had flown down from the trees to peck at an object in the dirt a few steps from the parked Land Rover. At first he thought it was some dead animal, then realised it was the remains of the sandwich Daniel had discarded earlier.
Leaving the birds to their f
east, Ben turned away from the window. He walked back to the computer. Stubbing out his cigarette, he closed the image of the ruined South American city. In its place he opened the document file on the unexplained devastation that had taken place in the Altai mountains of Mongolia.
‘Explain something to me,’ he said to Daniel, pointing at the screen. ‘This location’s so remote, they didn’t even discover the incident until March. How does this fit your theory? Is undermining the thriving Mongolian tourist industry a part of the New World Order’s agenda too?’
Daniel sighed. ‘You still don’t want to believe this.’
‘I believe in what makes sense to me,’ Ben said.
‘Like religion, is that right?’ Roberta challenged him. ‘You need cast-iron evidence for faith in God too?’
Ben tightened his lips and ignored the jibe.
‘Let me explain it another way,’ Daniel said. He pointed at the pistol in Ben’s belt. ‘You seem to know what you’re doing with that thing. Am I right?’
‘I’m familiar with it,’ Ben said.
‘I’ll bet you’re really good with it. But how did you get so good?’ Daniel asked him. ‘I’m no expert, but I imagine it must take a great deal of drilling and repetition, when you want to get proficient with a weapon that must seem at first very unfamiliar. Just as this technology is still in its relative infancy, very new to its operators, a learning curve like any other.’
‘You’re saying Mongolia was just a practice exercise?’ Ben said.
‘Practice makes perfect, yes? Especially,’ Daniel added with a significant look, ‘Especially when you have ambitious plans. When you’re working up to …’ He paused. ‘The big one.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘What do you mean, “the big one”?’ Ben asked with narrowed eyes.
‘In energy terms, the Mongolia event is estimated at over nine point five on the Richter Scale,’ Daniel explained. ‘That far eclipses what happened at Tunguska in 1908, close on the equivalent of three gigatons of TNT. The biggest thermonuclear device ever detonated tips the scale at only fifty megatons. By comparison to this Mongolia incident, the Taráca quake was just a ripple.’