The Cassandra Project (10 page)

He counted the seconds as he toyed with the glass, handed it back to Gloria—who again walked in a kind of half squat so she wouldn’t be seen on camera—and once again faced the red light. “I trust you’re all back,” he said. “Now I have a question for you. What were the first words spoken by the first man to set foot on the Moon?”

He paused to give them time to mouth the answer. “I’ll wager all of you said, ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Am I right?”

He smiled, the way a schoolteacher might smile. “I regret to inform you—oh,
how
I regret it—that that answer is not correct. ‘One small step for man’ were the first five words spoken by Neil Armstrong—
but they were not the first words spoken by the first man on the Moon!
”

He waited for the impact of what he had said to strike home.

“That’s right,” he continued. “Apollo XI was
not
the first American ship to land on the Moon, and there is an excellent chance, almost a certainty, that a man named Sidney Myshko, and not Neil Armstrong, was the first American to walk on its surface.
That
is what the government has been hiding since 1969!”

He had to pause again for the buzzing among the studio staff to die down.

“I have had near-certain proof of this in my possession for more than a day, but I—and others—have had our suspicions about it a lot longer. I will be making certain things public once I’m sure that innocent parties are insulated against the fallout.

“I have one more announcement, and that is that
I
will be on the ship that flies to the Moon this summer, and I will bring back further proof of what I said. Hopefully, I can also determine
why
, when we were in a race with the Russians to reach the Moon, we went out of our way to hide all proof of our initial landing, only to then make Apollo XI’s accomplishments available to the entire world as they were happening.

“Whatever the answer is, whatever the reason for the cover-up—and make no mistake about it,
cover-up
is the right term—it happened almost half a century ago, and the reason is surely no longer valid. It’s my own guess that the secret is like most Washington secrets, kept by inertia rather than necessity.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I wanted to say to you tonight. Either I or one of my spokesmen will be available to the press starting tomorrow. Thank you for your attention, and good night.”

“You have seventeen minutes left!” hissed the director in a panic.

“I bought them, they’re mine. Run a test pattern until the half hour’s up.”

The director frowned. “What’s a test pattern?”

“Ask somebody,” said Bucky, walking off the soundstage.

Brent hustled him to a waiting limo, accompanied by Gloria and Camden. It peeled off just before the paparazzi could surround them.

“Back to the hotel?” asked Brent.

Bucky shook his head. “We’re registered there under my name. They’ll find us in five minutes. Have the driver take us over to a nice hotel in Jersey, and get us a suite and a couple of rooms in your name.”

“Right,” said Brent, sliding the glass barrier behind the driver’s seat and giving the instructions to the chauffeur.

As they drove, Camden turned on the small TV in the passenger section. “They won’t break into basketball, or any of the sitcoms, but I’ll bet you’re on every cable news show.”

He switched the channel, and suddenly the president’s press secretary was facing the camera.

“No, of course it’s hogwash,” she was saying. “There are always paranoid conspiracy theorists out there. You think being a billionaire disqualifies you from buying into this drivel?”

Another channel, and the vice president was speaking: “Next thing you know, he’ll be telling you that Obama was born in Kenya and that George Bush was a cokehead.”

Another, and this time it was the Majority Leader of the Senate: “We don’t need another witch hunt at this time, and especially for such an unlikely, make that impossible, witch. Mr. Blackstone has made a fool of himself, which is his privilege, but he has also doubtless convinced a number of gullible Americans, as well as America-hating foreign powers, that our government has propounded the most unbelievable lie for half a century. Accordingly, I am instructing my staff to return all of his campaign contributions . . .”

“Turn it off,” said Bucky.

“It bothers you?” said Camden. “You had to know what their reaction would be.”

“No,” said Bucky. “It bores me. Every one of them is protecting a secret they don’t even know exists. I’ve never been a fan of sheep.”

Camden turned it off.

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Brent registered them at an upscale hotel, made sure Bucky had his face buried in a handkerchief as he walked through the lobby, and a couple of minutes later the four of them were ensconced in the parlor of the presidential suite.

“See what room service has and order enough for the four of us,” Bucky told Gloria, and she picked up a menu, studied it for a moment, then walked to the phone and ordered.

“Well, at least we’re free and clear for the rest of the night,” said Camden, relaxing on a leather recliner.

“You really think so, do you?” asked Bucky, amused.

“Sure. The press is probably still nosing around the last hotel.”

“I wasn’t referring to the press.”

And ten minutes later, a bellhop knocked on the door.

“What can I do for you?” asked Camden, opening the door.

“Is one of you a Mr. Blackstone?” asked the bellhop.

Camden was about to deny it when Bucky spoke up. “One of us is,” he said.

The bellhop walked over to Bucky and held out a silver tray with an envelope on it.

“You’re in the habit of hand-delivering notes, are you?” asked Bucky.

“From this particular source, yes, sir,” said the bellboy nervously. He turned and left the room before anyone could tip him.

“So what have you got?” asked Brent.

“Why guess?” asked Bucky, opening the envelope, unfolding the letter, and staring at it. “They’re
good
, I’ll give them that.”

“What is it?”

“From the White House,” answered Bucky. “Received four minutes ago. That means they knew we were here about a minute after we walked into the suite.”

“And the message?” asked Gloria.

“About what you’d expect,” said Bucky, laying it down on a coffee table for everyone to see. The stationery said: Office of the President, and the handwritten note read:

Bucky—

We have to talk.

George Cunningham

“So are you going to talk to him?” she asked.

“Sure,” replied Bucky. Then he smiled. “Eventually.”

A presidential visit to the Space Center was a rare event. The last one had occurred in 2011, when Barack Obama and his family followed through with their plans to watch the launch of the
Endeavour
despite receiving news that the mission had been scrubbed because of problems with a heater system. It was, probably, an appropriate conclusion for what some described as man’s most epic achievement.

But George Cunningham was coming. “He’s going to stay overnight,” said Mary.

That was a surprise. “Will Lyra be with him?” The First Lady.

“No,” she said. “She’s on a peace mission to the Middle East.” She grinned. The First Lady, like most presidential wives in recent years, was an active player in the administration. And Lyra had proven herself a decent diplomat. But peace in the Middle East? That was a loser’s game. “He wants to stay at the Beach House.”

The Beach House was an unassuming cottage out on the Space Center shoreline. In another era, it was where the astronauts and their families stayed before a mission. It was where they’d said good-bye to each other. But that was a long time ago. Now it served primarily as a conference center. “He can’t stay there,” Jerry said. “The place doesn’t even have a bedroom anymore.”

Mary glanced briefly at the ceiling. “Last time I looked,” she said, “he was the president. He can probably stay wherever he wants.”

Jerry shrugged. “Okay. I’ll talk to Tom.” Tom Bergmann, who’d refitted the place.

“No. He wants it as is. Don’t touch anything.”

“But—”

“Jerry, the president has a taste for history. The word we got is that he’ll sleep on the sofa. Leave it alone.”

“You’re sure?” Presidents don’t sleep on sofas.

She sighed. “Stop pushing.”

“All right.” He looked out at the palm trees. “Why’s he coming? Going to announce a flight to Mars?”

“They didn’t say. My best guess is that he’s going to try to boost morale. You know how he is. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to stay over at the Beach House.”

“I hope,” Jerry said, “he’s not coming in to close us down.” That was a dumb thing to say, and they both knew it. If he was shutting the doors, he’d do it from the capital.

“That’s not really fair, Jerry. He’s done what he can for us.”

“I expected more.”

“Let’s try to be reasonable. Anyhow, I want you to arrange a press conference for him. We’ll use the theater at the Visitors’ Center.”

“Okay.”

“He’ll be coming in Saturday morning.” Four days. She smiled. This White House never gave you much warning.

—

Ordinarily, assisting with the preparations would have been at the top of Jerry’s priorities, but he’d allowed the business with the Myshko and Walker missions to obscure everything else. Nevertheless, he had Vanessa set up the theater for the press conference. That would have the additional advantage of allowing a formal luncheon. Earlier in the day, the president would make an appearance at an orphanage. There would also be a Saturday evening reception. Jerry was charged with putting together a guest list.

He was trying to organize everything when Mary called. “He wants to attend services Sunday morning at the First Presbyterian Church in Titusville. Do you by any chance know the pastor?”

“No,” said Jerry.

“Okay. Contact him. Let him know what’s going to happen. Find out what time the services are, okay? We want something around nine o’clock. Whatever’s close to that, we’ll go with. Tell him there’ll be some people who will want to talk to him about security details. They’ll be in touch.”

Cunningham was routinely accused by his political enemies of showboating. He was, they charged, always visiting schools and shelters for battered women and A.A. meetings. They said it was okay up to a point, but they charged he did it for purely political reasons and therefore debased the very institutions he claimed to be helping.

It was all politics. Jerry knew the president well enough to entertain no doubts about his judgment and his intentions. He believed he had a responsibility to help where he could, and he enjoyed doing so. “If I can remind people,” he’d told Mary in Jerry’s presence one evening, “that these organizations need their assistance, I’m going to do it. Any way I can.”

The remark had stayed with him. Now, while he returned to assembling the guest list, he found his thoughts wandering back into history. To the Beach House and those long-ago Apollo flights. What had Myshko and Walker and their crews been thinking when they gathered out there with their families?

—

It probably wouldn’t have occurred to him to broach the Cassandra business with the president had Mary not cautioned him about bringing it up. “I know you, Jerry. I know how your mind works. And I’m warning you: Don’t even think about it.”

If something
had
happened here a half century ago, the president would be aware of it if anybody was. And he immediately began imagining himself confronting Cunningham. “Mr. President, what really happened on the Moon back in 1969?” Sure. “And while we’re at it, what about that Roswell business?”

You couldn’t get past the absurdity of it all.

The president came in on a Marine helicopter, designated Marine One. It descended onto the shuttle landing pad, where it was met by a small delegation of NASA executives. Ordinarily, Jerry should have been among them, but Mary found something else for him to do. She wanted him to set up a teleconference with people at NBC to arrange a tour of the facility by a group of TV celebrities. It could have been taken care of at any time over the last few days, but Mary had sat on it, set the timing to coincide with the arrival of the White House delegation, and pulled it out of her pocket at the last minute. “Forgot about meeting them,” she’d said. It was a lame explanation, as she knew it was, as she intended it to be. She was sending a message: Keep your distance while he’s here. Do nothing to remind him of the Moon-landing story. And especially, if you get close to him, don’t bring it up. In fact, don’t get close at all.

The entertainers were the cast of the popular science-fiction series
The High Country
, which was set in the distant future and pictured a well-funded NASA running flights all over the solar system. It had debuted as a three-part special, in which the world was threatened by an inbound asteroid. The asteroid, when last tracked, had been in a harmless orbit. Someone had apparently deliberately diverted it onto its lethal trajectory. (It didn’t seem to occur to the scientists in the series that it could have bumped into something, that the diversion could have been accidental.) They found the bad guys, who, despite various false leads, turned out to be not aliens, but deranged humans traveling back from the future. Their motivation for trying to destroy the planet was never made clear.

The lead characters, a scientist who’d developed a high-powered laser to be used to take out the asteroid, and a team of astronauts under the command of a Russian captain, Ivan Kolchevsky, played by the immensely popular Boris Vassily, got the job done in classic fashion. The special effects were spectacular. Everybody loved it, and the show morphed into a weekly series. It was not bad theater. The astronauts operated out of Moonbase. The world’s premier orbiting telescope was saved in a hair-raising episode in which one of Captain Kolchevsky’s team very nearly took the long plunge into the atmosphere. In another episode, scientists discovered life at the lunar north pole. Then a mission to a space station being assembled near Ganymede turned into a rescue effort for a ship that got into trouble when a jealous boyfriend seriously injured the pilot.

If the series was less than brilliant, it
did
avoid the usual chases after space aliens that the general public had come to expect from TV science-fiction shows. In the case of the lunar microbes, for example, it examined the social consequences of the discovery and set off a real-life debate about the literal truth of the Bible. Another episode demonstrated how a united effort to expand the human role in space advanced the cause of peace. (Arab and Israeli occupants living at the Ganymede station had to cooperate in order to survive after a massive power failure.) One show got involved, hilariously, with a virtual exercise intended to determine what the gender makeup of a crew should be on a flight to Uranus. The conclusion seemed to be that no type of crew, encased for a year or two with only each other, could possibly avoid major disharmony. To put it gently.

Jerry recorded it every Tuesday and usually watched it the same night. So, apparently, did everybody else at the Space Center. Engineers, computer specialists, astronauts, personnel managers, even the guys who swept the floors and manned the cafeteria inevitably discussed each episode the next day. For Jerry, for all of them, it was both exhilarating and painful.
The High Country
was an alternate world, where they were reminded once each week what NASA, given the chance, might have been.

By the time Jerry had finished talking with NBC, the president was tucked away in the director’s conference room. Secret Service guys stood guard at the door. When Jerry approached, they eyed him suspiciously and signaled that he was not authorized to enter. He wouldn’t have made the attempt in any case, of course. He’d never really considered looking for an opportunity to open up to the president about his concerns. That would be career suicide. Jerry knew President Cunningham to be a hardheaded realist. There was no way he’d be taking any of it seriously. Unless, of course, he had inside information.

That was a possibility.

But Jerry was inclined to believe that the president, like most people, bought the official story. And the reality was that no compelling evidence had surfaced to demonstrate that view wasn’t accurate. All he had were hints. Missing voices on old recordings, a curious journal entry, barely recalled memories of something called the Cassandra Project. If there were any truth to the early landings, what could they have been about? In an era when the U.S. was desperate to demonstrate its technological superiority over the Soviets, what could possibly have accounted for pulling off a landing but then keeping it quiet?

Nevertheless, Jerry decided he’d watch for an opportunity. And with luck, he’d get a break. Maybe when the president saw him,
he’d
be the one to bring up the issue. Jerry wouldn’t have to. And that would keep him out of trouble with Mary. After all, it had dominated the news for several days. Well, maybe not
dominated
, but it had certainly maintained visibility. And Cunningham knew he could trust his old campaign worker. It would probably only be necessary for Jerry to get close.

—

A small retinue of reporters accompanied the president to the Golden Apple Orphanage just outside Titusville. “No need for you to go, Jerry,” Mary told him. “It’s probably best that we maintain a degree of separation. I’d just as soon not remind him about the secret flights.” She smiled, suggesting it was a joke, but she got her point across. So Jerry went back to his office and spent the rest of the morning staring out the window.

The presidential party returned just in time for the luncheon. Jerry was assigned a table in back, where he sat with several visiting NASA managers, people from Huntsville and Houston. Jerry had met them all before, but in some cases he needed a furtive glance at their badges to recall names. One of them, Grant Tyler, an astrophysicist, immediately brought up Myshko and Walker. “Hard to believe anybody could have taken any of that seriously,” he said, apparently unaware that it was precisely how Jerry had been portrayed in the media. Or maybe he was just enjoying himself.

The president was seated at a rectangular table with a lectern at its center. It was set on a platform in the front of the room. Mary and three other NASA executives were with him. They seemed to be having a good time, trading stories and laughing at one another’s jokes. It was one of Cunningham’s considerable political strengths: He knew how to put people at ease.

Eve Harrigan, an engineer at Houston, sympathized with Jerry’s situation. “It
was
strange, though,” she told Grant. “I can understand why people might think something was going on.”

Grant got the message and changed the subject.

The menu choice was between catfish and New York strip. Jerry went with the catfish, accompanied by mashed potatoes and a swirl of vegetables that he couldn’t identify. The conversation at Jerry’s table wandered onto the subject that currently occupied everyone’s attention: the future of NASA in an era of tight funding. The reality, of course, was that NASA had been put on hold during the Vietnam War, and had never really gotten off the dime afterward. Presidents came and went, promising great things, a new state-of-the-art vehicle, a return to the Moon, a Mars mission, a rendezvous with an asteroid. All the stuff they’d been doing on
The High Country
.

The catfish was good.

The waiters followed up with strawberry shortcake and vanilla ice cream. Jerry and his companions were still indulging themselves when Mary stood, went to the microphone, and adjusted it. She introduced herself, led a round of applause for the president, and welcomed the assorted guests. “Mr. President,” she said, “we know you’ve always been intrigued by spaceflight. And I have no doubt you’re going to help us move forward with plans to send a manned mission to Pluto.”

She’d intended it to be funny, but a hush fell over the room, and she realized immediately the remark hadn’t gone well, wouldn’t be interpreted as she’d intended, but would instead sound like a criticism of the administration. But it was too late, and she did the only thing she could, turning it into an
oops
moment. “I have a talent for blowing my lines,” she said, with a tight smile. That, at least, brought some laughs.

Cunningham waved to her. It was okay. She waved back, finished the introduction, and turned the microphone over to him. He thanked her and looked out at the audience. “If we could manage a voyage to Pluto,” he said, “I can think of a few people in Washington who’d enjoy making a reservation on it for me.”