“The conspiracy theorists are missing the boat. Tesla attracted a lot of attention because he was such a flamboyant figure. The work of Lazlo Kovacs had far more potential for destruction, in my opinion. Like Tesla, he was a brilliant electrical engineer. He was from Budapest, where Tesla worked in the late eighteen hundreds, and picked up on his work in the 1930s, concentrating on extra-low-frequency electromagnetic transmission. He became worried about the possibility of electromagnetic warfare. He said that certain transmissions could be used to disrupt the atmosphere, and produce severe weather, earthquakes and all sorts of unpleasant results. He took Tesla to the next level.”

“In what way?”

“Kovacs actually developed a set of frequencies whereby electromagnetic resonance could be focused and thus amplified by the material surrounding it. They were called the Kovacs Theorems. He published his findings in a scientific journal, but he refused to make public the complete set of frequencies that would allow the device he described to be built. Other scientists were skeptical of his findings without proof.”

“It's lucky no one believed him,” Professor Adler said. “The world has enough trouble controlling the types of warfare we have already.”

“Some people believed him. The Nazis were very open to ideas of mysticism, the occult and pseudoscience. Those stories about Nazi archaeologists searching for the Holy Grail are true. They pounced on Kovacs and kidnapped him and his family. After the war ended, it was disclosed that they had put him to work in a secret lab on a project to develop a superweapon that would win the war.”

“They lost the war,” Austin said. “Tesla wasn't the only one with a credibility problem. Kovacs apparently failed too.”

Hibbet shook his head. “It's more complicated than that, Kurt. Papers uncovered after the war suggested that he was on the verge of an electromagnetic warfare breakthrough. Luckily, it never happened.”

“Why not?”

“The Russians overran the lab in East Prussia, where he was said to be working. But Kovacs had already disappeared. After the war, the Soviets carried out research based on the Kovacs Theorems. The United States was aware of their work, and would have loved to talk to Kovacs. The significance of electromagnetic radiation was not lost on our military. There was a big conference years ago at the Los Alamos lab to talk about applied weapons technology based on his work.”

“Home of the Manhattan Project? That was fitting,” Austin said.

“In more ways than one. The manipulation of electromagnetic rays could be more devastating in its own way than a nuclear device. The military took Kovacs very seriously. Electromagnetic pulse weapons were tested during the first Gulf War. Some people claim that those experiments and similar ones conducted by the Soviets caused earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and weather disturbances. That's why I was interested in the bright light flashes in the sky.”

“What's so significant about the bursts of light?” Austin asked.