“Do you think he knew, Andy?”

Lyra touched his arm. “You’re all over the Internet, George, and you’re on every channel.”

“No, I don’t think he had a clue,” said Andy. “Look, we’re talking about the biggest bureaucracy in the world here. Things get lost. But that won’t help him—”

Lyra killed the sound. “So what was the break you got?”

“It looks as if Dick Nixon might have left us a message after all.”

“Really? Are you serious?”

“The director of the Nixon Museum is on her way here now with a locked box of some sort.”

She smiled up at him. The tension was obviously wearing on her. Things had been going so well until this Moon thing had shown up. All she wanted was to get the world back the way it had been. Lyra had been dazzled at the prospect of living in the White House. Of being First Lady. Had it not been for her, Cunningham probably wouldn’t have pursued it. He didn’t have what the pundits liked to call the fire in the belly. He’d have been just as happy living on a mountaintop somewhere, living the casual life, reading, fishing, playing bridge on weekends.

But she’d insisted the country needed him. And she was right. When he’d assumed office, the United States had still been spread around the world, wasting resources trying to maintain an imperial status for reasons no one understood. President after president came into office, and nothing ever changed. The troops stayed in Germany. And Japan. And several dozen other stations around the world. And then Cunningham had arrived, and everything changed.

He’d resolved major disputes as governor of Ohio, and had gone on the CBS Round Table one evening, where he’d said that the country would not see prosperous times again until it took down the empire. “We’re still positioned as if World War II hasn’t quite ended,” he told the host. “That needs to change.” Next thing he knew, he was riding a tide that carried him all the way to the White House.

It had been a good run, culminating in the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenal. Ray hadn’t approved of the antinuclear initiative. Nor had the party. In fact, neither party liked it. And opposing politicians used the issue to win back twenty seats in the House during the off-year elections. What happens, they asked, if one rogue nation succeeds in hiding a few H-bombs?

The answer, to Cunningham, was simple enough. The vast military the U.S. had at its disposal didn’t need nukes to take down anyone on the planet. But it had been an emotional issue, a scary one, and as his advisors had expected, the fearmongers had won out. When people get seriously frightened, don’t expect them to pay much attention to logic.

“She’s flying in?” asked Lyra.

“Yes.” He checked his watch. “She’ll probably be here about two.”

“Two this morning?”

“Yes. Sorry about that.”

“George, couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Probably.” He leaned toward her. Stroked her hair. “Lyra, I need to find out what this is about.”

“Okay. I’ll have Al make something up for her.” A door opened in back. He could hear his sons talking. And the TV screen was suddenly showing a smug Bucky Blackstone. He reached for the remote, but Lyra restored the sound.

“—will be our guest,” Angela was saying, “Sunday morning on Meet the Press.”

“He’s doing pretty well,” Lyra said. She switched over to the Newshawk website, where three million people had posted thumbs up for Bucky.

Cunningham looked at some of the comments.

The most trusted man in America.

You think we can talk him into running for president?

What the hell were they doing on the Moon anyhow?

You know what scares me? There’s the biggest science project of the last century and the nitwit in the White House doesn’t know anything about it.

Give him a break, Harry. He’s a government worker.

Thank God for Bucky.

The racetrack sounded. “George.”

“Yes, Ray?”

“They’re in the air. On the way back. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Okay. Good. I assume Weinstein will check in again when they land?”

“Yes, he will.”

“Are you actually going to stay on?”

“I’ll be here, George.”

“All right. When they’re on the ground, let me know. Have we arranged a hotel for Ms. Morris?”

“It’s pretty late. I thought we’d put her in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

“Okay. That’s a good idea.”

“I was thinking, as an alternative, we could install her over at the Watergate.”

Cunningham was silent for a moment. Then: “This is why you’ll always have a job with me, Ray.”

Jon Stewart started his show by assuring everybody that there was nothing to worry about, that the president had everything under control, had known from the beginning about the Myshko and Walker flights. Had undoubtedly known what Blackstone would find because, hey, do you think everyone in the White House is an idiot? Then he ran a clip from the Beverly Hills fund-raiser. A guy whom Cunningham remembered only vaguely, Michael Somebody, asking for his reaction to the Blackstone TV show. And the president’s brush-off response: “Look, Michael, I really don’t know how to respond to his comments. I think you’ll have to ask him. While you’re at it, you might check with Mr. Blackstone to see if he’s figured out what’s going on in the Bermuda Triangle.”

And, of course, Stewart responded with shock.

It was certainly not the first time Cunningham had been a target on The Daily Show. There had been times when the president had said one thing and done another. Like during the campaign, when he’d blamed the country’s economic woes on the sharp decrease in population growth at the same time he was arguing that overpopulation was draining the country’s natural resources. And again, when he’d reassured the nation that blue sky science was part of who we were, then proceeded to delay funding yet again for the Webb Telescope.

Normally he was able to laugh off the flubs. A foolish consistency and little minds. Everybody understood that. But this one hurt. It wasn’t really his fault that secrets had been kept. Nothing he could have done about that, no way he could have known. But nonetheless, he looked ridiculous at the moment.

Arthur Stiles, on The Late Show, commented that historians had recently uncovered evidence that an Englishman named Joseph Pettigrew had actually been the first European to arrive in America. “Almost sixty years before Columbus,” he said, shaking his head in mock astonishment.

“Holy cats, Arthur,” said his bandleader, who also doubled as a straight man, “how come we never found out about it?”

Stiles shrugged. “Apparently, Henry V—he was king at the time—wrote it down somewhere, then forgot about it.”

“Well,” said the bandleader, “I guess it could happen to anybody.”

The audience broke up.

“Want some coffee?” asked Lyra, getting off the sofa.

“Please. And a donut would be good, too.”

—

Vanessa Hodge, on CBS Late Night, was also enjoying herself at his expense. “We have a late-breaking story,” she said. “The White House has just announced that the Russians have the bomb.”

“Now that,” said Lyra, bringing in the coffee, “is clever.”

Cunningham nodded. “I suppose.”

“George, you need a better sense of humor. You know that?”

“I know, Lyra. And I don’t mind getting bushwhacked when I deserve it. And sometimes even when I don’t. But this thing has come out of nowhere. What the hell was Nixon up to?”

“We’re also getting word,” said Hodge, “that the administration won’t have to worry about a negative reaction to canceling the funding for the Webb Telescope project. NASA is reporting they can’t find the telescope.”

“The only thing that makes any sense,” said Cunningham, “is that Myshko and one of his partners, Peters, I guess, made an unauthorized landing. Wanted to be first on the Moon. Nixon was under a lot of pressure at the time, couldn’t get clear of the war, so he panicked and ordered a cover-up.”