Prologue (42 page)

“Wait!” Amanda’s sharp command startled even Paul.
Salisbury
halted, his hands poised to close his briefcase.

“Listen,” she continued. “We didn’t ride up from the Waldorf in
New York City
just to track you down to tell you time travel was possible. We come from
Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
in 2026.
Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
,
A.S.S.R.
, not
Cambridge
,
Massachusetts
,
U.S.A.
From a world in which the
Soviet Union
has won what you call the Cold War. All that’s left of the
U.S.A.
are three semi-autonomous trade zones. The rest of the old
United States
is all Red. With a capital
‘R.’ Straight
up Communist, blindly following orders from Yeltsengrad, which used to be
Minneapolis
. I risked my life to come back here and you WILL at least hear us out!”

Salisbury
stood frozen, his hands clutching his case. His eyes, however, darted from one to the other.

“
Minneapolis
?”
Salisbury
asked.
“My home town.
Are you guys John Birchers?”

“What?” Paul asked. He looked to Amanda.

“John Birch Society,” Amanda answered impatiently. “John Birch was an American missionary in
China
who was killed by Communist forces. He was considered the first American casualty of the Communist expansion, or at least of the Chinese Communist takeover. A group of right wingers in the
United States
formed an organization called the John Birch Society that was popular in the 1960s.”

She turned back to Harrison Salisbury. “No, we are not John Birchers.”

“She’s a history professor,” deVere added lamely.

For the second time that evening
Harrison
Salisbury
hesitated, and then he leaned back on the desk behind the podium.

“At MIT, right?”
Salisbury
asked. “So, tell me the rest of your story. Who’s our next president?”

Amanda nodded. “Bobby Kennedy.”

Salisbury
snorted.
“Not very inventive.
Everyone knows he has aspirations.”

Amanda ignored him. “There are two things going on right now. In October 1962, last fall, President Kennedy declined to invade
Cuba
during your so-called Cuban Missile Crisis. That was against the advice of just about everyone in his circle. Curtis
LeMay
, Senator Fulbright, Senator Richard Russell, everyone.”

“And how do you know what the advice of these people was last year?”

“Kennedy secretly tape records all oval office conversations. They’ll become public eventually.”

“I see,”
Salisbury
said. “So obviously you listened to them in the future.
At MIT.”

“
Cuba
is even now working to undermine
Central America
,” Amanda continued, ignoring
Salisbury
’s soft sarcasm. “Eventually, Southern and Central
America
will come under Cuban influence. Right up through
Mexico
. It will become another
Soviet Union
, right on our southern border. And Communism will expand over all of
Southeast Asia
and down the
Malay Peninsula
by the late 1960s.”

“During Bobby Kennedy’s administration?”
Salisbury
asked slyly, still eying the rear doors.

“Yes,” Amanda answered. “It gets worse. The
Soviet Union
makes a grab in the Balkans and
Europe
.
But long before all that we’ll be threatened right here with weapons of mass destruction along the
Mississippi
Valley
.”

“Interesting.
Are you saying it’s too late?”
Salisbury
asked.

DeVere shrugged. “We don’t know. Our plan was to come back to the summer of 1962, approach you, and tell you our story. We had newspaper articles to prove we are real time travelers. We wanted the New York Times and the Washington Post to push for a Cuban invasion last October. The
United States
would have won that war.”

“Yeah!
But at what cost?”
Salisbury
asked. “It wouldn’t have stopped there.
Russia
would have grabbed
Berlin
in a heartbeat and it might have been atom bombs on the
Hudson
after that.”

“Do you want to know the cost of Soviet occupation of most of the
United States
by 2026?” deVere asked quietly.

“How could the Soviets ever take over
America
?”
Salisbury
scoffed. “That whole Soviet philosophy would never be accepted here.”

“Philosophy?”
Hutch asked incredulously.
“Political philosophy?
Political philosophy had nothing to do with it. It was all about power. The Soviets re-invented themselves as neo-Soviets. They pandered to fringe political and religious groups unrelated to traditional Soviet values. Not that the neo-Soviets really gave a shit about these people. But they convinced enough ordinary Americans that they cared about their issues. Finally, they had a majority that supported them. But it had nothing to do with politics. Once they got into power they were able to make money, lots of money, in this country. And that’s all they really cared about.”

“Interesting.
So why didn’t you come back last year?”
Salisbury
asked.

“The CA,” deVere answered.
“The American version of the KGB.
They were onto us and we had to leave earlier than we planned. This was the closest wormhole we could find but it landed us back in 1963, and not 1962.”

DeVere closed his eyes as he pictured the scene in the lab, the Russian with a gun and the fire alarm blaring. Why had the fire alarm gone off? Ginter had said there was no fire.

“Nice story,”
Salisbury
said. “So, isn’t it too late now? Why would Kennedy invade
Cuba
now? Assuming your story is, eh…true.”

“It’s got to be stopped some place,” Amanda said. “With the Communists moving up through
Central America
and
Mexico
and down through the
Malay Peninsula
, the
United States
will be helpless to stop it all. After that, it’s all academic. Just like falling dominoes.”

“Dulles,”
Salisbury
answered.
“His containment theory.”

Amanda nodded. “Dulles.
But worse than he ever thought.
The
Soviet Union
and
China
will fight two huge wars. Millions die. The
United States
will get sucked in on the side of
China
, a bad choice, and when
China
goes down the
U.S.
will be threatened with weapons of mass destruction, not what you think of as hydrogen bombs but chemical, and what will be called dirty weapons. Some will cause massive casualties. That blackmail, combined with the million man army on our Southern border, missiles in
Cuba
with chemical warheads, will lead to a series of appeasement treaties.”

“War between
Russia
and
China
?”
Salisbury
thundered. “They are both Communist! But I’m not even the foreign affairs guy any more.
If you had a plan to recruit a drum beater last year, why me?”

“You will be,” Amanda answered. “Starting in about 1964 or so you will be
the
foreign affairs guy at the New York Times.”

“Flattering,”
Salisbury
said, but Paul detected a flicker in the man’s eyes.