right, Diego. Until the police track down the bastard, come home before dark! That’s an order!» grimly asserted his father.
«Don’t worry so much, ma-papa,» the boy hurriedly blurted out, pushing aside his plate, and planting a kiss on his mother’s cheek. Already fleeing to his room, he added, «It’s not like I go out alone in the evenings, I’m always with friends…»
Diego undressed, turned off the old desk lamp and climbed into bed. Outside, cicadas itched in a monotone voice, the neighbour’s window slammed shut, and a car passed by, rattling on potholes. An empty bucket suspended from the chassis characteristically tapped on each bump in the road. Cats cried out occasionally. The huge city was slowly preparing for sleep. For a while, Diego lay motionless. Behind one wall – his parents were talking quietly, behind another – Maria was turning and muttering something in her sleep. On the table among the books, the black and white sides of the gift Diego received from his father gleamed in the moonlight. Diego crawled out from under his blanket and while making a step in the dark, suddenly stumbled and nearly hit his head on the table. Stooping, he picked up his little black ball. Diego stood still in the middle of the room; his head leaned to his shoulder. At this moment, tears began to flow down his cheeks. I’ll never leave you, Kuluangwa! Never! He swung and fell on his bed, hugged the old ball tightly and with it turned towards the wall, pulling his knees to his chest.
Pressing the ball in his palms made him feel light, almost electric bites. He was already used to them. They appeared every night. Completely painless at first, they gradually became more and more insistent. However, Diego was not afraid of them. On the contrary, he waited for these sensations with unconcealed trepidation and deep joy. At this point, a hard, warm lump always appeared in his throat, making him want to cry – to weep bitterly. That’s what the boy often did, firmly wrapped in his blanket. He tore off the blackened patch off the palm of his left hand. Curled in pain that he suffered every night, he whispered, «Now, now, wait…»
Clenching his teeth, Diego pressed his right thumb on the wound. He was so twisted in pain that he grabbed the edge of the pillow with his teeth, holding back a moan. A large drop of blood emerged from the cut and spread out over the palm of his hand. Carefully, so as not to stain the linens, he put his hand to the ball. The small hand went into the black surface, like into melted wax, and the soothingly warm ball firmly accepted it into its fold. It will hold Diego’s palm until the morning, caressing and massaging it until the bleeding will stop. Now the boy was asleep. A happy smile roamed on his lips.
CHAPTER 10
To: Head of Intelligence Directorate,
General Staff of the Red Army, General I.I. Ilichev
From: Head of Second Chief Directorate,
Anglo-American Residence,
Lieutenant K.M. Litvinov
January 20, 1943
OPERATIONAL REPORT
Comrade General,
On the substance of the operation carried out to extract the secret dossier of Mr. Tesla, I inform you of the following:
FROM THE INTERROGATION RECORD
As per investigatory case No. 877, Lt. Aleksey Trofimovich Ivasenko (agent «Jack») and Lt. Pavel Magomedovich Goyev (agent «Hispanic») have been questioned.
Lt. Ivasenko and Lt. Goyev conducted a swift operation in New York with the objective of extracting Mr. Tesla’s document archive, which is in development. The operation involved a multiple-turn game, which did not lead to the intended outcome. We became aware that Abwehr agents stationed in the U.S. (Admiral Wilhelm Canaris personally oversees the operation) are actively interested in Mr. Tesla’s achievements. We have noted a high degree of activity of known German agents («Ron», «Stein», and «Arab») seeking to take possession of Mr. Tesla’s designs in the near future (in one-two weeks’ time), as part of the Vergeltungswaffe program («Weapons of Vengeance»).
Given these developments, we decided to accelerate our efforts to capture, copy, and destroy the materials before Abwehr agents manage to do so. I present the main points of the explanatory memorandum on the merits of Lt. Ivasenko as the group leader.
To: Head of Second Chief Directorate, C/A №174
Lieutenant K.M. Litvinov
Given that the object of our interest, Mr. Tesla, has lived a very secluded lifestyle in recent years, being completely devoid of all public and even friendly contacts, we made several attempts to infiltrate Mr. Tesla’s surroundings as service personnel of the New Yorker Hotel where Mr. Tesla has spent the recent years in solitude. However, we established that Mr. Tesla communicated only with the hotel staff he knew well. In their absence, his breakfast, lunch, and dinner were delivered to his room personally by the hotel manager.
On January 7 at 6:47 a.m., we successfully entered Mr. Tesla’s room (No. 3327) in the guise of stokers and chimney cleaners. In the evening of January 6, we were able to block the chimney of room no. 3327 from the roof, and through Mr. Colin, the concierge whom we bribed, we were invited as the repair team «J. Jameson & Co.» to examine and fix the chimney.
We decided in the first place to copy the archive and only then, being sure that we possess all necessary documentation, to try to persuade Mr. Tesla to cooperate. We established the location of the safe beforehand thanks to the concierge. The complexity of the lock did not present any problems.
We repeatedly asked Mr. Tesla to temporarily leave the premises, for a half hour at most, for the length of the «repairs» (so we could open the safe and copy the documents in his absence). Mr. Tesla was wearing a brand new, expensive black suit despite the early morning hours. He also wore a tie, as if going to a business meeting. However, Mr. Tesla refused to leave the room, seemingly suspecting something. He even wanted to call the hotel staff to get rid of us.
In lieu of the situation, we used force to neutralize him for a moment. Mr. Tesla showed remarkable resistance for his age. At one point during the ensuing battle, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, Mr. Tesla consumed an unknown chemical drug, a small piece of material that he pulled off from a porous black cube. He always held this object, a black dice, in his hands. (Attached is a 2x2x2 mm sample taken from the original for chemical analysis – it is sent to P.A. Sudoplatov at the NKVD7 Laboratory, 5th Section of the 9th Department of the Chief Directorate of State Security).
Mr. Tesla’s death was instantaneous. We moved his body to the sofa in the living room and folded his hands on his chest to give the impression of self-poisoning, or suicide by sleeping pills. All evidence of struggle was thoroughly destroyed, including traces of cracking the safe, fingerprints and so on.
We successfully opened the safe and photocopied the documents. By the instructions of the Second Chief Directorate, all technical documentation containing the data for the production of «super energy» was destroyed (burned in the fireplace). Only original documents of a philosophical and aesthetic character, which do not represent any intelligence value, were left in the safe. Copies of the documents are attached.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
At the moment we left the room, we noted that Mr. Tesla’s body
The NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) was the Soviet Communist Party’s law enforcement agency from 1934 to 1946.
