INFORMATION
Dr. Carl Laysler (one of the physicists on this project) has been in our employ since receiving the assignment. Dr. Laysler, according to our information, told a closed Congressional hearing on the case that U.S. military scientists planned to make a warship invisible to radar. A powerful electronic device was installed on board this ship. This device was able to produce energy, the power of which was enough to supply electricity to a small-sized city.
We have a verbatim transcript of his explanation:
…The experiment is remarkable, but terribly dangerous. It has too much influence on the people involved in it. The experiment used magnetic generators, the so-called «de-magnetizers,» which worked at resonant frequencies and created a powerful field around the ship. In practice, this could give a temporary withdrawal from our dimension and might mean a spatial breakthrough, if only it was possible to keep the process under control!
Curiously, Dr. Laysler has never seen this device. However, he believes that it would have taken up at least one-third of the vessel’s area. Nonetheless, he did not see a single loading of large-scale electrical equipment take place on board.
The intent of the experiment was for a strong electromagnetic field around the ship to serve as a screen for radar beams. Dr. Laysler was located on the shore to watch, record, and monitor the experiment. When the device was running, the ship disappeared. Sometime later, it reappeared with all sailors on board dead. Some of their corpses turned into steel – the material from which the ship was made. During our conversation, Dr. Laysler was very upset and it was evident that the sick old man still feels responsibility and guilt for the deaths of the seamen on board the «Aldridge.» Laysler and his colleagues on the experiment consider that they «sent the ship to a different time, with the vessel breaking up into molecules, and in the inverse process there was a partial replacement of organic molecules of human bodies by metal atoms…»
We have proposed a theory that Mr. Tesla may have participated in the project as a possible owner of the device, but Dr. Laysler categorically denied this. According to Dr. Laysler, the military did not inform the team of scientists involved in the project of who manufactured the device.
One week after the experiment, the «Aldridge» was put into reserve by the U.S. Navy. The logbooks of the «Aldridge» disappeared. To our knowledge, they are in the ownership of the 7th Operational Department of the CIA.
Lt. Col. K.M. Litvinov
***
DECREE
Immediately start operat… actions, …clarifying… …details of the Baltim… Expe… t. Confirm… facts and agents at our disposal… …rmation associated with the activit… ola Tesla in the… …military …rces of the U.S. to the exper…
Report …personally, daily.
Ilichev
CHAPTER 5
45° 31» 48» N
9° 5» 37» E
Milan, Italy
May 1991
The traffic jam seemed endless. Even considering that it was in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, in the capital of Italian and world fashion, sitting in the car in this sticky, hot, polluted air did not bring much pleasure.
Soli
La pelle come un vestito
Soli
Mangiando un panino in due
Io e te
Soli
Le briciole nel letto
Soli
Ma stretti un po’ di più
Solo io solo tu
The melodic song playing from the broken car radio, performed by a hoarse-voiced man and a bevy of beauties, did not brighten the trip either. Choking in the old Fiat of God knows what colour and year, with coffee and red wine stains as well as something unknown and repulsive on the formerly-velvet backseat, Rodion Karlovich Teichrib concluded that he was going to be late for his flight. Even in the best-case scenario, if at the behest of all the sleeping saints in Milan the highway to Malpensa Airport will immediately clear up, he still would not make it for Alitalia flight 560 to Moscow. This meant that his colleague, translator and assistant, Sergei Tikholapov, who had left to the airport two hours ago, will have to fly to Moscow alone.
The Twenty-Ninth Symposium of the European Society of Historians, held as always under the patronage of the Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom, was traditionally held in the old European cities like London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Lisbon. In late spring of 1991, that city was Milan.
Not yet an old man at fifty-four years of age and part of the so-called «new wave» of the perestroika era, Professor Rodion Karlovich Teichrib had early-grizzled curly hair and large eyes under similarly large and thick horn-rimmed spectacles. Among the students of the Moscow State University’s Faculty of History he went by the respectable nickname of «Doctor Zhivago.» The Faculty of History of the Moscow State University was the leader of the subject area in the Soviet Union, known for exhaustingly covering both geographical and chronological historical reality, and in fact – all human history. A dozen departments and a few hundred faculty members, including Rodion Karlovich, taught history in a fundamental way, with its own school and traditions. Even the study of the history of the Communist Party introduced in the thirties did not affect the quality of education. Repression of the professorial staff in these years only partially affected the university. The school remained a School.
Rodion Karlovich taught in two departments – history and art of archeology and ethnology as well as ancient fine arts. His «Doctor Zhivago» persona was complemented by the fact that he carried all his documents, books, and notebooks in an old doctor’s bag, which he inherited from his grandfather through his father. Such was the professorial dynasty of the «bag-carriers.»
The «Vesnin Brothers,» responsible for producing this daily necessity of a doctor as well as other suitcases and attributes for wealthy travelers in the early nineteenth century, did not spare the finest pigskins in the creation of their products, being such a benign manufacturer. The brown sides of the bag, obliterated by a century of wear and tear, had about a dozen small holes covered by bronze studs. So, with tight enclosure and long-term storage, the contents of the travelling bag did not dampen or suffocate. The lock made by «Vesnin Brothers» was so strong and shrewd that it would be envied by any modern travel lock. However, its key came only in one copy. The professor once tried to order a duplicate – as if it were possible! Upon seeing the manufacturer brand, no master took the task. «Hold on to it like the apple of an eye, but if you lose it, the sides of the bag will have to be cut open, ruining such a fine product!» But even this would be hard to do because the sides of the doctor’s travelling bag were reinforced with whalebone. That’s why Rodion Karlovich only took the key with him when he went on business trips, which had been recently becoming more often. Even when handing his bag over at check-in counters, he did not bother to have it wrapped around by plastic to protect it from the baggage handlers of Sheremetyevo Airport that were known for their autopsies of expensive suitcases arriving from capitalist countries. Firstly, this type of travelling bag did not look as polished as most of his fellow travelers’, and secondly, breaking it open would
