Unknown 9 Layton Green (reading e books TXT) 📖

behind a file cabinet, wedged against the wall, where no one could see. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was something.

After debating a return to the Casa San Márquez to gather his belongings, he decided to stay where he was and expedite the search. He booked a room for the night so he could roam the grounds with impunity. The staff informed him it was impossible to discern what room a specific guest had occupied back in 1939, so he searched the hotel for another clue.

So far there was no sign of Hans, but the German might be on his way to the Cloisters, or the Ascendants might have sent someone else. Any of these guests could be watching me at this very moment, Dr. Corwin thought as he strolled through the tropical courtyard, trying to appear nonchalant.

The converted monastery was unlike any hotel he had ever visited. Except for the balconies ringing the courtyard, the layout of the rooms and hallways was convoluted and illogical. Long silent corridors that seemed to stretch on forever would suddenly dead-end or lead to a section of short, stubby hallways arranged around a central staircase that wound down to the edge of the gardens. Luxury suites occupied an old bell tower, a sunken bar was built into the choir pit, and the atmospheric crypt beneath the courtyard was open for viewing.

Just before lunch, after peering into every nook and cranny he could find, he wandered into the wine cellar, a brick-floored chamber honeycombed with bottle cubbies. Black-and-white photos of musicians, politicians, and other luminaries adorned the walls, interspersed with bottles of rare vintages, displayed upright on little shelves. Off the main room was a rough-cut tunnel, lined with old casks and cobwebs, which disappeared into darkness.

A waiter with a white towel draped over his arm was servicing a tasting table. Dr. Corwin did not have to feign enjoyment as he browsed the rare vintages. A Romanée-Conti here, a Château Lafite there. He took a closer look at the photographs, most of which depicted one or more celebrities lounging in various parts of the hotel. Nothing caught his eye until one of the black-and-white photos made him gape.

The photo had been taken in the wine cellar itself. A tall, slim man with a bushy mustache and penetrating eyes was holding a glass of wine, engaged in conversation with someone very few people outside of academia would recognize: a Mexican-born physicist named Ted Taylor, who had made great strides with fission bombs and reactors, but who spent his later years campaigning against the use of nuclear weapons. Like Ettore, his intellect had been far ahead of his time.

As accomplished as Taylor was, both his fame and his contributions paled in comparison to the other man in the photo, a Serbian-born inventor and futurist whose sanity near the end of his life might have been questionable, but whose genius no one disputed.

Nikola Tesla.

The mysterious, invisible world of electromagnetic waves and radiation that permeated the universe had always fascinated Dr. Corwin, and Tesla was a virtual god in the field, making discoveries and predictions so prescient it was almost as if divine intervention had occurred.

The photo shocked Dr. Corwin because of the date—May 1939—scrawled in the bottom left corner.

Earlier in Tesla’s life, he had developed the concept of the alternating current, famously feuding with Thomas Edison—who championed the direct current—over how to power American households. While both AC and DC would become integral components of the electrical grid, Tesla, a better visionary than businessman, failed to monetize his work as Edison did. By the late 1930s, Tesla was virtually impoverished, living in Manhattan at the New Yorker Hotel, with no means of support other than a small stipend from the Westinghouse Electric Company—likely paid to avoid the bad press of having their star inventor living on the street.

There was no known trip to Cartagena in May of 1939, or to anywhere at all. Tesla didn’t have two pennies to rub together. In fact, by that time, he had become known as something of a quack. In 1935, he infamously claimed to have invented a cosmic death ray, as well as an earthquake machine that could destroy the Empire State Building with five pounds of air pressure. His health was in decline, his serious work in his past.

Or so Dr. Corwin had thought before seeing this photo.

So the world had thought.

What did this mean? Had Tesla continued his work in secret? Could his late decline have been an act?

The thought sent a chill coursing through him.

Dr. Corwin wasn’t as well versed in Ted Taylor’s public appearances—and it was a bit odd that he shared a surname with Waylan Taylor—but Dr. Corwin was quite sure the nuclear physicist wasn’t known to have visited South America during this time. How had two men so famous managed to dodge the press?

On second thought, he realized Colombia in those days would have been an excellent place to avoid scrutiny.

In a flash of insight, he wondered if Tesla and Dr. Taylor were members of the Society. Tesla, especially, fit the profile: geniuses in their field who disappeared from public view, and sometimes disappeared altogether. As soon as Dr. Corwin returned to New York, he would make inquiries.

But he wasn’t finished with the photo.

Like most of the others on the wall, the date was handwritten, though no signature was attached. Strange. Dr. Corwin couldn’t tell who had written the date, and he didn’t think it was Ettore—but May 1939 was the same month and year that Ettore had signed the ledger.

Something else: in the upper right corner of the photo, part of another man could be seen. Someone with a slight build, dressed in a conservative brown suit and holding a wineglass in his left hand. The man’s face was not in view, as if he were deliberately leaning out of the photo. He was standing just inside the entrance to the rough-hewn corridor housing the wine casks, and his right hand was