The Moon, he knew, would be full that night. But he would have been happy if it never rose again.

18

“Okay,” said Ray. “I’ve sent Weinstein to talk to him, but I still think it’s a mistake.” He was not happy. “George, we can still back away. If you pursue this thing, it’s going to come back to haunt you. I can see the cartoons now. You’ll be running around the Moon with a flashlight peeking into craters. ‘Hello, anybody there?’”

Cunningham stared across the Oval Office at the pictures of his old friend Ruby O’Brien and himself standing outside an Iraqi schoolhouse, surrounded by kids. They were both in uniform. Ruby had died a few years later in an Afghan helicopter crash. Cunningham knew what it meant to be in combat, and those horrendous years in the Middle East had left him scarred. “So you’re saying there’s no chance it could have happened.”

“What I’m saying is to just stay away from it. If it turns out that there was some kind of plot, you can congratulate Blackstone and give him a medal. If it goes the other way, which it almost certainly will, you’ll be clear.”

“I’ve been trying to do that, Ray. Stay clear. Ever since Culpepper started all this. But it keeps getting worse.”

“Just ride it out.”

“I don’t see how we can do that.”

“George, we’re talking about a very old man. And yes, maybe he has lost his grip on reality. That’s a much more likely event than secret Moon landings. I mean, look, this guy is very likely frustrated because he came so close but didn’t get a chance to go down to the surface. So what happens? It eats at him for a lifetime. After a while, he invents his own reality. Let’s just not get in any deeper. And by the way, you might have the Army tighten security a bit so nobody else can get to him. Do that, and in a few months, when Blackstone makes his flight and doesn’t find a damned thing, the whole business will collapse. and everybody will be laughing at him. You want to be sure you’re on the right side of this. George, let the voters think you’re taking it seriously, and when it comes apart, your reputation will be gone. And I’m sure you noticed this will all be happening during an election season.”

—

Where the hell was the hidden vault containing secrets to which only the president had access? He’d seen it in the movies any number of times. It contained the papers concerning the truth about the Kennedy assassination, what Lincoln had been told about the probable cost of a civil war, what had really brought on the Japanese attack in 1941, and the offstage deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev that had staved off a nuclear exchange during the missile crisis.

There’d been a rumor during the fifties that the Cold War had been a cover. NATO and the USSR were in an arms race, but not against each other. The arsenals were being assembled for use against invading aliens. Yes, they were on their way. The nuclear standoff between East and West had been intended to prevent panic while everybody got ready to present a united front.

Cunningham smiled. Good way to keep everyone calm. He tried to imagine what it had been like to live under the imminent threat of hydrogen bombs arriving at any time.

And then there’d been the Philadelphia Experiment.

So why wasn’t there a provision to pass vital information from one president to another?

“Because,” said Ray, “every president leaves office with stuff he hopes people will forget. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush got us into pointless wars. You think they want to explain how it happened?”

Ray Chambers was a tall, quiet guy. Glasses, thin hair, nervous smile, always carrying an umbrella. Cunningham had found him difficult to take seriously at first. He was virtually unknown to the public in an age when anyone affiliated with the president was subject to scrutiny. Even the White House chef. But Ray had somehow managed to remain invisible. It was one of several reasons the president liked him. Another was his supreme political instincts. Ray had, incredibly, remained behind the scenes while directing the campaign that had brought Cunningham an unexpected nomination, then a victory against the charismatic Laura Hopkins, whose early poll numbers had been overwhelming.

—

Cunningham had not experienced an easy three years in the Oval Office. There’d been continuing problems in the Middle East as angry mobs overthrew dictators only to give themselves over to lunatics who were even worse than the guys they replaced. The United States was still plagued by debt. Unemployment was down, but not nearly enough. Energy costs had created a climate of ongoing inflation. The world had finally been forced to face the reality of a population growth that was outrunning resources. And oceans were rising as the poles melted.

“And now,” he said, “we’re dealing with lunacy on the Moon.”

Ray nodded. “It’s the derivation of the word.”

Cunningham frowned.

“Lunatic. We used to believe moonlight drove people crazy.”

His phone buzzed. “Mr. President, we have Stephen Goldman on the line.”

Goldman had been the NASA director during the final two years of the Obama administration.

Ray backed out of the way as Goldman’s intense features appeared on-screen. “Good morning, Mr. President,” he said. “I guess I wasn’t surprised to hear you wanted to talk with me.” Goldman had been a political appointee, who’d been used to signal that NASA’s days of usefulness were effectively over. Though, of course, he hadn’t realized that himself.

“Hello, Steve,” Cunningham said. “Yes. We seem to have fallen on strange times.”

“The world’s gone crazy, Mr. President. Blackstone’s always been something of a crank. But this latest business is over the top even for him.”

“So there’s nothing to it?”

Goldman frowned. “Are you serious? Of course not. It couldn’t have happened.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no way NASA could have kept a secret on that scale. It would’ve gotten out.”

“While you were at NASA, Steve, you never heard about anything like that? No rumors? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all, Mr. President.”

“Can you think of any situation that would have justified two secret flights?”

“No, sir.”

“None?”

“Well, maybe if aliens were camped up there somewhere, and they’d told us to bring them pizza or they’d attack. Look, Mr. President, I knew some of the NASA people from that time. The only thing that mattered to them was getting to the Moon, and the only thing that mattered to the politicians was beating the Russians. There’s just no way they’d have done a landing and not said anything.”

—

Cunningham was looking at a busy day. Even by White House standards. A Pentagon delegation was scheduled in at nine. Then there’d be a conference with his treasury secretary and his economic advisors. When that was finished, he’d be sitting down with a couple of governors and a small group of educators to try to figure out what was wrong with the school systems. The United States was still running weak numbers in contrast with other Western nations and China and Japan. American kids were at the bottom in almost every category. He knew what some of the problems were: Politicians devised educational systems as if students were in some sort of lockstep. The importance of parents in the success of kids was overlooked everywhere. There was still no reasonable system for grading teachers and rewarding the good ones.

Everything that might be done to help seemed to run into interference from local watchdog groups who thought they had the answers. Or from politicians who saw a chance to convert the issue into votes. Or from teachers’ unions. Or from advocacy groups with no experience in the field.