Cunningham nodded, signaling he’d heard. “Let me know,” he said quietly, “if we get anything.”

—

This wasn’t the first time, of course, he’d faced the media under trying circumstances. A strike against Somali pirates during his second week in office had gone wrong and eleven hostages, including five kids, had died. That one still kept him awake at night. Always would. And there’d been the FEMA lack of response when the quake hit South Carolina. Cunningham had put one of his staunchest supporters in charge, a guy he’d always thought competent but who, he realized belatedly, thought public relations was the solution to everything. And then there’d been the Ethiopian massacre.

The pressroom wasn’t big enough to accommodate everyone. Reporters were standing in back, and the crowd had spilled out into the passageway. The place was buzzing when he came through the side door, but it immediately fell silent. He took his place at the lectern. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I guess we all recognize that this story keeps getting stranger.

“At the moment, I don’t have any kind of definitive statement to make, other than to admit that the images Morgan Blackstone sent back from the far side of the Moon are as puzzling to me as they are to everyone else. I don’t know what this is about, or how those vehicles could have gotten there, or why the United States might have landed twice on the Moon in 1969 and kept it secret. We’re conducting a thorough investigation in an effort to get some answers. And we will, I promise you, find out precisely what happened. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait to see what Mr. Blackstone has.” He looked into the TV camera at the back of the room, then down at Stan Huffman from the A.P., and smiled. “Keep in mind that I don’t have any answers. Having said that, the floor is open to questions.” Huffman’s hand went up. “Stan?”

“We understand you have no answers, Mr. President, but you must have a theory. Assuming these flights actually happened, and it looks now as if Blackstone was right, and they really did, do you have any conceivable explanation, any idea at all, why NASA might have done this?”

“None whatever, Stan. I haven’t heard one from anybody else, either. It’s why I’m still not entirely sure I’m buying in.”

“Follow-up please, Mr. President. You’re suggesting Blackstone faked the pictures.”

“I’m not suggesting anything, Stan. I just don’t know. I feel as if I’m living in an episode of The Twilight Zone.”

Bill Kelly of The Washington Post was next. “Are there any plans to have NASA send something to the Moon to confirm that the pictures we’re getting are valid? That those descent modules are really there?”

“Not at the moment, Bill. I think we can be confident that Bucky Blackstone would not perpetrate a fraud on the American people. No, I’m pretty sure that he found precisely what he says he did.” Rick Hagerty, of Fox News, caught his eye. “Rick?”

“Is there any kind of hidden vault that presidents have to keep secret information, and make it available to one another? Stuff that nobody else can see?”

“Is that a serious question?”

“Until these last few days, Mr. President, it wouldn’t have been. But yes, is there anything like that? And if there were, would you be willing to tell us that it exists?”

“The answers to your questions are no and yes.” He looked around the room with the boyish grin that had been so effective with voters. “There’s no hidden vault. Look, everybody, I’m sorry to admit this, but I doubt many residents of the White House have been that good at looking beyond their own terms in office.” He hadn’t yet finished the sentence before he knew it was the wrong thing to say. But there was no breaking off, or calling it back. At least, they’d have to concede his honesty, and for a politician, that was a major benefit. Maybe worth the headline he’d just created.

Meredith Aaronson, from NBC, got the next question. “Mr. President, why has NASA sat back while a private company went to the Moon? Is our space program dead?”

“No, Merry,” Cunningham said. “Maybe we don’t need a government-funded system anymore. We built this country on individual initiative, and I think we owe Mr. Blackstone a debt of gratitude for the action he’s taken.” And a good kick in the rear as a bonus.

The press conference, he thought, went extraordinarily well. The Florida Times-Union even sympathized with him. “I’m not supposed to do that,” Danny Link said, “at least not publicly. I’m assuming that, when you find out what it’s about, you’ll release the information.”

That will depend. “Of course, Dan. I mean, anything fifty years old can’t possibly involve national security.”

—

Ray was happy with the outcome. “Considering what you had to deal with, you did about as well as you could, George. I suspect, though, that you won’t be getting many invitations to the annual ex-presidents’ barbecue.”

Cunningham grinned. “I love barbecue.”

Ray sat down. “Got a minute, George?”

“Sure. What’s going on?”

“We heard from Milt while you were in there.”

“Did he find out anything?”

“He says that, according to Martinez, they weren’t really there to bug the place.”

“Really?” That made no sense. “Then what was it about?”

“Cohen.”

“Say again, Ray.”

“Cohen had a briefcase with some notes in it. Apparently, part of it was in a foreign language. Anyhow, somehow or other, it got into the Democratic office at the Watergate. That’s what the burglary was about. They were trying to retrieve the briefcase.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t know. But if we can believe Martinez, the administration took the heat for trying to bug the DNC headquarters rather than tell the truth.”

Cunningham rubbed his head. “That would have been three years after the Myshko flight.”

Ray held up his palms in surrender. “I don’t see how it could possibly be connected.”

“I don’t either,” said the president.

32

“So what the hell is happening down there?” said Bucky impatiently.

“We won’t know for another few minutes, until we’ve gone a little farther around the back side,” said Gaines. “Can’t you just relax and spend a couple of minutes luxuriating over your performance? After all, you just called every president from Nixon to Cunningham a liar, and you did it in front of, I don’t know, maybe three billion people.” He smiled. “You want something to worry about? Forget what Marcia and Phil might find. Consider the fact that the U.S. and Russia may be in a race to shoot us down when we return. After all, Washington’s not the only city that hid this. They had a lot of help from Moscow.”

“I know,” said Bucky. “I’m just eager to find out why, and I have a feeling we’ll know as soon as we can contact Marcia and Phil again.”

“In the meantime, just lean back and enjoy your notoriety,” said Gaines. “I hate a nervous passenger.”

“You’re fired.”

“You fired me a few hours ago. You have to rehire me to fire me again.” Gaines looked at his instrument panel. “About five more minutes. We’re in no-man’s-land; can’t signal to Earth, can’t contact our people on the back side.”

“Why do you call it the back side?” asked Bucky. “I always thought of it as the dark side.”

Gaines shook his head. “It doesn’t show itself to Earth, but it’s not always dark. Now and then, the sun hits it.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Gaines stared at him and grinned.