“Why do you say that?”

Tilghman put his elbows on the desk and rolled his shoulders forward in what looked like a blocking position. “Jerry, you’re connected with the stories about the Myshko flight. And with Blackstone. That puts you right in the middle of the Moon conspiracy.”

“I never said there was a conspiracy.”

“It’s hard not to read it that way. And being on the same side as Blackstone doesn’t help. Jerry, you’re radioactive right now. I’d take you in a minute if that weren’t the situation. But, listen, a lot of people owe me favors. I can get you something somewhere, if you like. The Scoville people are looking for someone like you.”

“Scoville? What do they do?”

“Firearms distribution. I think I can set you up—”

—

Most of the offers were coming from public-relations firms. McCrane and Whitney. Dobbs, Bannister, and Huffman. The big ones. He’d make far more money with them than he’d ever get in a government job. But the prospect of writing commercials did nothing whatever for him.

He and Susan went back to the Olive Garden for dinner. And drank the wine. “The library could use you,” she said with a smile. “Of course, we couldn’t pay you the big bucks like NASA.”

Thank God for Susan, he thought. That night he needed her. She felt like the only safe harbor in a world turned suddenly hostile. “I’d never given it much thought until recently,” he said, “but most of the jobs out there, the stuff I’m qualified for, I don’t really want to spend my life doing.”

The dark eyes were fastened on him. “But you’ve always done public relations, Jerry. I thought you enjoyed it.”

“That was before NASA. The job really meant something there. I don’t know. I bought into the mission. Like, I guess, everybody else. Except maybe Mary and the rest of the people on the sixth floor. And to tell you the truth, I’m selling them short. It’s the system, not the people. But I don’t think I could make a living hustling toothpaste.”

The pizza arrived. But Susan never looked away from him. When the waitress was gone, she finished her wine. “You know, Jerry, most of us don’t get to move the world. Just maybe a very small part of it.”

“You suggest I take a job with McCrane and Whitney?”

“Not necessarily. But you might want to lower your sights a little.”

—

In the morning he had a call from Leslie Shields, who identified herself as one of the producers at the Target Channel. “Mr. Culpepper, I can’t flat out offer you a position with us. But we’re preparing a series that we’ll be calling Serendipity. We’ve put together some films depicting how we got lucky, how historical events very easily could have gone the other way. For example, I’m sure you know that George Washington, when he was an officer in the colonial militia, applied for a commission in the British army. The Brits didn’t believe that colonials were especially competent, so they rejected him. Imagine a Revolution in which he’s on the other side.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Jerry, wondering why they were calling him.

“Then there’s the Kansas-Nebraska Act.”

Jerry was a little foggy on that. “What about it?”

“At the time it was passed, in 1854, Lincoln had served one term as a member of the House. But he lost interest in politics and returned to Springfield and a successful law practice. He would probably have stayed there had it not been for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have extended slavery beyond its original borders. So the idea is that we’d prep a film and bring in a historian. You and he would introduce it, and afterward, you’d do a discussion about the possible consequences. Had Lincoln not been in the White House, had there been someone more willing to compromise—say, Stephen Douglas—might the Civil War not have happened? And if so, where would we be today? And so forth.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Jerry.

“We feel it’s a great concept. It’s not the sort of issue that comes up in everyday conversation. Anyway, we’d like to have you come in and audition to host the show.”

“Why me? Wouldn’t you do better to get a historian?”

“No. We’ll have a historian each week. We need someone to ask the questions that an ordinary person would ask.”

“I see.”

“I guess I didn’t phrase that very well. Mr. Culpepper, we need someone who can put himself into the mind of the viewer and move the conversation in appropriate directions.”

Shields was blond, blue-eyed, about forty. She wielded the easy confidence of someone accustomed to success. To having people take her seriously. She flashed a convivial smile that promised good times ahead. The Target Channel logo, a bull’s-eye pierced by an arrow, occupied the wall space behind her. “You’d enjoy the challenge,” she said. “And the Target Channel is a good place to work. We have creative people and good management. You’d be at home.”

“I don’t think I’d be the right guy for the job,” he said.

“We also have a show about the Revolution.” She showed no inclination to let up. “If things had gone a little differently in the royal family, they’d have had a smarter foreign policy. The Americans would have been happy, and Lexington would never have happened.”

Jerry thought about it. “No Revolution?”

“There’d have been no United States. We’d be like Canada.”

NASA popped back up in Jerry’s mind. “That might have been a distinct improvement,” he said.

14

Jerry collapsed into a chair, switched on the TV, and sat back to watch the closing segment of Koestler Country. He didn’t particularly like the host, but he enjoyed watching him hassle politicians. They were on commercial, so he changed over to ESPN, and dialed in the Cincinnati Reds. They were in the third inning and already had a four-run lead over the Giants. First good news of the day.

But he watched Big Charlie Tinker walk two in a row, sighed, and went back to Koestler. The host was sitting in his book-lined studio with Brandon Janiwicz, one of the policy experts they were always trotting out. Koestler wore a skeptical frown, while Tinker was demonstrating his trademark smirk. “—Which is very strange,” Janiwicz was saying. He was pressing his fingertips together while gazing out of the screen with unrelenting skepticism. “It’s just an odd coincidence, that’s all I’m saying, that, at this particular moment, they had to pull him out of that assisted-living facility and run him over to Lackland. Where they’ve sealed him so nobody can talk to him.”

“So what does that tell you, Brandon?”

“Well, I’m not a conspiracy guy, Al. You know that. But obviously Bartlett’s hiding something. I don’t know what it is. But something’s not right.”

—

Jerry killed the sound. Froze the picture, Koestler leaning forward with that shopworn smile that suggested he’d uncovered another piece of corruption, and Janiwicz amused that anyone could have expected to fool him.

Outside somewhere, somebody was trying, without success, to start a car.

Bartlett, of course, was the sole survivor of the two lunar missions that might, or might not, have touched down on the Moon. Jerry googled him.

—

“Look, Maria,” said Jack Marquetti, host of The Morning Show, “the guy’s almost a hundred years old. And what have we got? The media going after him and claiming he’s hiding from them in a hospital. I’d like to see how well Al Koestler will be doing at that age. What we’re seeing here, and it embarrasses me to admit it, is the media trying to make a story where there is none. We have a deranged billionaire buying time to make silly claims, and sure, people get excited, and next thing we know everybody’s talking about a conspiracy. Neil Armstrong wasn’t first on the Moon. We’ve had it wrong all these years. It was really Harry Myshko.”