Read Online The Project 05 - The Tesla Secret by Alex Lukeman - Free Book Online

Not the sort of thing you'd expect a bunch of ex FSB hatchet men to be reading."
    "A media conspiracy."
    "Yes."
    "Makes me think of Foxworth."
    "If it's him, he's got a weird sense of humor."
    "What did you find out?"
    "Brighton Beach was a central routing point for messages from all over the globe. Everything came in there and went out again. Since we broke up Endgame they've moved the routing station somewhere else. I ran a trace to find the main servers and got nowhere. If I can't find them, NSA can't either. "
    "Who's got that kind of technology?"
    "A government or someone with unlimited resources. They aren't as clever as they think, though. I was able to send a little something to them. It tells us when a new message is sent and captures it. A new one just came through. It ended up in Paris."
    "Go on." Harker picked up her pen.
    "It's about something called the Mafra Codex."
    Harker began tapping. "Talk to me, Steph. What is the Mafra Codex?"
    "I had to look it up. It's an ancient book from Mexico. Pre-Classic Mayan, probably around 500 CE. It's the only one that survives from that period."
    "A book."
    "Not a book like books today. It's made of bark pages with pictures and glyphs on them. The Conquistadors brought it back to Spain. King Phillip gave it as a present to a family that backed him when he took the Portuguese throne. It hasn't been fully translated."
    "Where is this book?"
    "In Portugal, in the Mafra Palace library. That's why it's called the Mafra Codex. It's in bad condition and not on display. They keep it in a special archival vault."
    "So, what's the message?"
    "An urgent order to steal the Codex from the library. The message says by any means. No restrictions."
    "What could possibly be that important in a Mayan book? Good work, Steph."
    Stephanie watched Harker tap her pen.
    "You're going to send everyone after it, aren't you?"
    "Am I that obvious?"
    "What else could you do? If it's important enough that the bad guys want to grab it..." She left the thought unfinished. "I'll be in the computer room if you need me."
    The door closed behind her. For the moment, Elizabeth was alone in her office. She took a labored breath and forced herself to relax. There were no lights flashing on her phones. No calls from CIA or the White House. No immediate crisis she was supposed to solve or comment on or stop dead in its tracks. There were plenty of potential problems in the pile of folders on her desk, but they could wait.
    She was tired.
    It wasn't just the illness that made her tired, the disease that almost killed her before the doctors found the drug that saved her life. It wasn't the frequent headaches, an after effect of the .22 round she'd taken in her head.
    She was just plain tired.
    She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. When was the last time you took a vacation? She thought about it. Years ago. She'd gone to the Bahamas and gotten the worst sunburn of her life. In the back of her mind she'd thought she might meet someone on one of those white sand beaches, someone to have a romance novel fling with. She'd never had a fling.
    She'd never been promiscuous, but she was no stranger to sex. The last time she'd let a man into her bed she'd been younger, still working at Justice. She'd thought he was the one. She'd had the classic hopes, a career, a family, a loving husband. Classic hopes had turned into a classic situation. He'd turned out to be a pompous ass. He'd left her for someone who didn't challenge his narcissistic image of himself, someone younger who ended up throwing him out.
    Since then there'd been no one she was really attracted to. Someone who could handle the reality of who she was, her job and all the ripples that went with it. If he was out there, she hadn't met him yet.
    The time was past for children. But she wouldn't mind having someone to share her life with, someone to hold on a cold night, someone to have breakfast with in the morning.
    For Christ's sake, she thought.