It was just after six o’clock in the morning. Two black Range Rovers
steadily churned the thick mud on a narrow track winding through the
misty Cornish countryside.
The first one stopped in front of a sturdy twelve-foot-high iron gate
which looked very much out of place in the middle of nowhere. Equally
high fences with coiled razor wire on top flanked the gate, disappearing
into the mist in both directions.
Thin, ice-cold rain permeated everything, including the expensive
garments of the three men who climbed out of the first vehicle. Two of
them helped the third one along as they approached a gate-side steel box
with a closed circuit camera on top. After placing the palms of their
right hands on a screen within, the men climbed back into their Range
Rover and both vehicles proceeded through the now-open gate, which
closed immediately behind them. There was a sign affixed to the gate
facing the outside world. ‘Property of ORMUZD LTD mining company,’ it
proclaimed. ‘This area is guarded. Trespassers will be prosecuted.’
The narrow track changed as soon as it rounded the bend, becoming wider
and paved. The Range Rovers picked up speed and within minutes reached
what looked like an old tin mine. In fact, it was one of a group of
three seemingly disused tin mines with two or three adits each. Near the
old lift towers there was a very new metal building about the size and
shape of a small aeroplane hangar, with six white Land Rovers neatly
parked alongside.
Well armed guards were visible on the platforms of each of the three
headgear towers around the metal building. Out of sight were the well
camouflaged armed men lying in five shallow dugouts within the security
perimeter encircling the cluster of disused mines.
Also out of sight was an ancient-looking man, wearing a black habit of a
monk, who sat on a rock beneath a gnarled and wind-bent tree on a hill
about one mile away from the fenced area, facing the old mines. His
hands were tightly clasped over a wooden equilateral cross, which he
wore on a long chain of prayer beads. Eyes closed, he was in deep
meditation. His mind slowly moved away from the rock in the direction of
the fenced-off compound, while his frail old body remained seated on the
flat rock.
The door of the metal building was open. The three men from the first
Range Rover and four from the second went inside. All were white and
between fifty and eighty years of age. They were well groomed and wore
expensive clothing.
A white machine, lying on its side, took up almost the entire space
inside the building. The machine, a turbine of sorts, was twenty feet
long and ten feet wide. Uniformed men, six on each side, flanked it,
each armed with a Heckler Koch machine gun.
An older, white-haired, slight man stepped out of the group and
approached the machine. With a confident and commanding voice coloured
by the steel-blue accent of an expensive private school education, he
asked one of the guards: “Do you have anything to report as far as the
security is concerned?”
The black-uniformed man, like the other guards, looked like a retired
member of the SAS or the Marines. He answered: “Nothing to report.
Everything is in order, sir.”
The old man said: “Take your men out of the shed and to their quarters,
Barter. We shall call you in about half an hour.”
“Very well, sir.”
With that, the guards left the building in single file.
The old man now turned to a tall, athletic man with a crew cut and said:
“Pearson, go ahead.”
Pearson stepped forward and wordlessly pulled a radio
transmitter-scanning device from a black briefcase. He proceeded to scan
every part of the building and machine. In the ten minutes it took him,
the rest of the group waited patiently, studying the turbine.
“All clear.”
The white haired man now turned to another of his group, a bespectacled
and nervous-looking middle-aged man, and said: “Drexler, the stage is
yours.”
Drexler stepped toward the white machine and said in a slightly
trembling voice: “This, gentlemen, is one of the thirteen oscillators
we’ve constructed from scratch, using Tesla’s blue prints. Reproduction
of this apparatus has been attempted before, but never on this scale. Of
course, every component had to be tooled as an original. We tested the
first prototype five years ago, in the Indian Ocean, within our deep-sea
explorations. It worked wonderfully. A very natural tsunami was the
result. Are there any questions, gentlemen?”
The old, white-haired man said: “There are no questions at this stage.
Thank you, Drexler.”
Then he added: “Time to go. Pearson, tell Barter to place his men back
into their positions.”
BJ Home
