“They just pulled up,” Gloria informed him.
“Good,” said Bucky. “I hate it when things don’t make sense.”
“If you want to avoid them,” suggested Gloria, “you can take the elevator down to the basement, walk the tunnel to the factory, and I can have a car waiting for you.”
“I’m not avoiding anyone. I’ll let Camden talk to them for maybe five minutes, until the stupidest questions are out of the way, then I’ll go down and meet them.”
A tall, slender woman with incredibly thick bifocals stood in the doorway to the office and rapped her knuckles against the molding.
“Not now, Sabina,” said Gloria. “He’s just leaving.”
“It’s all right, Gloria,” said Bucky, getting to his feet. “Come on in, Sabina. Did you find what I want?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Blackstone.”
“Kill the ‘sir’ and the ‘Mister.’ I’m just Bucky.”
“Yes, Bucky.”
“Good. I’ll be back after I face the mad dogs of the free press,” he said. “But start tracking him down. In fact, do it from here. Then I won’t have to hunt you down to see how we’re doing.”
“All right,” she said, looking around.
“There’s only one desk,” said Bucky. “Sit down and use it.”
“Yes, sir . . . Bucky.”
“Okay, I’m off to slay the dragons, or at least hold them at bay.” Bucky walked to the door. “I’ll be back when they run out of dumb questions and dumber threats. Gloria, get her set up on computer number three.”
Then he was walking to the elevator. Jason Brent joined him as he left the office and fell into step behind him.
“Let me guess,” said Brent. “You’re gonna save Camden from the press?”
“Fair’s fair. He thinks he’s saving me right now.”
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into a Kevlar vest?”
“Not today,” answered Bucky. “Hell, the ones who hate me most will have the most vested interest in keeping me alive so everyone knows I’m a kook and a liar.”
“I never looked at it that way,” said Brent. He smiled at Bucky. “Are you?” he asked, only half in jest.
“What difference does it make as long as your paychecks don’t bounce?” replied Bucky. “But for what it’s worth, something did happen up there on the Moon, and I am damned well going to find out what it was.”
“You mean we are going to find out,” said Brent.
“Not to worry,” Bucky assured him. “No one’s going to attack me on the Moon.”
“Most of those guys from 1969 are dead.”
“Most of those guys from 1969 would be in their nineties,” said Bucky. “They’re entitled.”
The elevator reached the ground floor, and they got out, walked through the front entrance, and found themselves facing a dozen cameras and twice that many reporters.
Bucky stepped forward to where a series of microphones had been set up. “I trust Mr. Camden has been treating you all with the dignity and decorum that becomes your occupations?”
“We love you, too,” said the reporter from The New York Times.
“They been getting vicious?” Bucky asked Camden under his breath.
“Anxious and eager, anyway,” said Camden.
“Okay, take off. Then when I leave, they won’t have anyone to talk to.”
“Except each other,” said Camden. “These days they’ll interview each other, and that’ll pass for news.”
“Don’t worry about what you can’t change. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Camden left, and Bucky faced the assembled reporters. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. Here are the ground rules. If you have a question, raise your hand. If you speak without being recognized, I won’t answer. Second rule: If you ask the same question twice, or the same one someone else asked, I won’t answer.
“Third rule: If you use any insulting pejorative toward me, this press conference is over, and none of my staff will lift a finger if your colleagues choose to tear you apart.” He paused long enough to make sure his instructions had been heard and understood. “Okay, ABC first.”
“Have you any comment on Maria Carmody’s statement, or her plea to you to leave her father alone?”
“I’ve never even met her father,” said Bucky. “My understanding is that he’s been dead for quite some time, so I can hardly be bothering him.”
“She denies that anything untoward happened on Sidney Myshko’s January 1969 flight,” said Fox News. “What have you to say to that?”
“That I’m sure it’s a comforting thought to grow up with,” answered Bucky. “How old was she when he flew to the Moon? And if he was a willing part of a governmental cover-up, do you think he’d have confided in a young daughter, however many years later?”
“All you’re doing is uttering denials!” yelled CBS. “How about some facts?”
“You did not have your hand raised, sir, and I did not recognize you. I will answer no further questions or comments from you.” Bucky turned to NBC. “You’re next.”
“You can’t shut me up!” bellowed CBS.
“I don’t have to,” said Bucky. “Ladies and gentlemen, this press conference is suspended until you get the gentleman from CBS to agree to be silent for the remainder of it—and if he speaks out again after so agreeing, the conference is permanently concluded.”
And sure enough, it worked. No one, not even a colleague, was going to cost them a story.
“Is there any proof that Sidney Myshko actually landed on the Moon?” asked CNN.
“Almost certainly,” answered Bucky.
“That sounds like you’re hedging.”
“You want a stronger answer? Okay, yes, proof exists.”
“Then where is it?” asked The Chicago Tribune.
“Beats the hell out of me,” said Bucky. “I’m sure the White House could tell you, and I’m equally sure they won’t. But if it didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be working so hard to cover it up.”
“If it didn’t exist,” said MSNBC, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, “wouldn’t they be behaving exactly the same?”
I hate questions like that, thought Bucky. Aloud, he said: “I have proof of a cover-up in my possession. We’ve only been investigating this for a few days, and I’m not prepared to make what I have public until we’ve unearthed every piece of corroborating evidence.”
“What does the White House have to gain by lying about the landing?” asked The Wall Street Journal. “In fact, what did any of them have to gain?”
“That’s what we plan to find out.”
“This proof you keep hinting at,” said CNN. “Can you at least give an idea what constitutes it? Is it a document, a photo, something in a computer? Or”—he tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile—“could it be something on the Moon itself?”
“I have some of the proof in my possession,” answered Bucky. “We’ve just started hunting for the rest.”
“Will you be hunting on the Moon, too?” snickered MSNBC.
“Almost certainly.”
“How do you know your crew won’t be part of the cover-up?” continued MSNBC.
“I don’t,” answered Bucky. He paused and stared across the assemblage. “That’s why I’m going on the flight.”
Suddenly, there was excited buzzing, and, finally, Fox News raised a hand.
“Are you saying that you’re going on the Moon flight expressly because you don’t trust your crew to accurately report what they find?”
“What is there to find?” added CBS. “It’s a big, empty rock.”
“You, sir,” said Bucky, pointing to CBS, “have already been told that I will not answer your questions.” He turned to Fox. “In answer to your supposition—I hate to dignify it by calling it a question—I’m going because it’s my corporation and I can. I trust my crew implicitly, but I want to see whatever’s there with my own eyes.”
“And if nothing’s there?
” asked The New York Times.
“Then I’ll have had the trip of a lifetime, and every one of you will wish you’d been there instead of me.”
“And if you find out you were wrong, won’t there be any consequences?” persisted The Times.
“Yes, there will,” said Bucky. “I’ll have lost almost all credibility, and it’ll be a long time before anyone believes me again. But the beauty of a free society is that I can make a fool of myself, and each of you can—and doubtless have—done the same and survived it.”
He spent ten more minutes answering variations of the same questions, and the press started getting annoyed that he wouldn’t give them the facts they wanted, or admit he didn’t have enough proof to make such outrageous statements.
Finally, he closed it off, went back inside, and instructed Brent to lock the entrance so they couldn’t follow him all the way up to his office, as he was sure they wanted to do. Then he and Brent rode up to the penthouse, where his office overlooked the city.
“I saw you on the tube,” reported Gloria, when he entered the office. She smiled. “I’m amazed I haven’t quit and reported you to the local asylum.” Then: “Are you really going on the Moon flight?”
“I said so.”
“When did you decide? Today? Yesterday?”
“The truth?” asked Bucky with a guilty smile. “When I had my last checkup four months ago and my doctor said my body could handle it.”
“You never told us.”
“That was four months I didn’t have to argue with all my well-meaning staff members who thought the trip would kill me,” replied Bucky. He walked over to his desk, where Sabina was staring at his computer screen. “How’s it going?”
“I found one,” she responded, looking up at him. “The only one—Amos Bartlett.”
“He’s the only survivor from two Moon flights?”
“That’s right, sir. I mean, Bucky.”
“If you know that, the press has to know it, too,” said Bucky. “It’s been two nights since I made that speech. They’ve got to have tracked him down. What has he said?”
“Not a thing,” replied Sabina.
“Don’t tell me he’s a mute?”
“No, sir . . . Bucky. But he’s very sick and can’t have visitors. He’s living by himself in an assisted-living home. When the press found it, they camped out there. The home got a court order to get them off the property, but they surrounded it, and he’s been moved to a military hospital, where they can keep the press away.”
“How sick is he?” asked Bucky. “Likely to die before we can reach him?”
Sabina smiled. “He’s old, and he’s infirm, or he wouldn’t be in an assisted-living facility, but I don’t think he’s sick at all.”
“Music to mine ears! Tell me why you think that.”
“I did something that’s probably illegal, sir,” she said, so intent on her revelation she forgot to correct herself and call him Bucky. “I phoned the closest pharmacy to the facility on the assumption that that’s where they’d get their prescriptions, pretended I was the home, and said I was just double-checking to make sure they’d transferred Bartlett’s prescriptions to the hospital. They told me they’d transferred the Lipitor, but thought the hospital would be taking his blood pressure and might want to change the dosage on his Diovan.”
“Cholesterol and blood pressure,” repeated Bucky happily. “Hardly the sign of a dying man, especially since they didn’t change the one and didn’t seem to think the other was due for an instant change. Yeah, he’s healthy, all right. The only question is whether he’s in the hospital against his will or not.”
“I can’t tell that from the computer, Bucky,” said Sabina.
“No, we’ll have to ask him in person. Thanks, Sabina. You used your brains and your initiative, and that’s what I’m paying you for. You’ll find a pleasant surprise in your next check.”
“Thank you, Bucky,” she said, getting to her feet. “It was a pleasure. Anytime I can help you . . .”
“I’ll remember,” he said, escorting her to the door. When she’d left, he turned to Gloria. “How much is she making?”
Gloria shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Find out, and raise her two hundred a week.”
“Right,” she said, jotting it down in a notebook. “Anything else?”
“Find out what hospital they’re keeping Bartlett in, buy Camden a plane ticket, and send him out there to talk to him.”
“Just to talk?”
“If he’d like to come back here, and the hospital will let him go—don’t forget, it’s military—fine. But if he’s got something to say, have Camden buy whatever he’s got to say.”
“He’ll want to know how high he can go.”
“Whatever it takes. I’d like to send someone else—Camden’s face is pretty well-known—but he’s as good as we’ve got at spotting someone who’s lying.”
“You want to send someone else, someone with a real brain who isn’t known to anyone with a television set?” said Gloria. “Send Sabina.”
He considered it for a moment. “What the hell—why not? Send her back up here, and I’ll give her instructions—what to ask, what to look for, what to ignore. And what to offer.”
Late that night, after he’d sent Sabina on her way, and Jason Brent had driven him home, he walked out to the deck behind his villa, drink in hand, and stared up at the full moon in the cloudless sky.
Well, I’ve got the whole country talking about it now, he thought. I wonder what the hell really did happen up there.
A growing excitement encompassed him as he realized that he was actually going to find out.
10
After Morgan Blackstone signed off, Jerry’s phone started ringing. CBS, Fox, The Orlando Sentinel, The New York Times. What was his reaction to Blackstone’s comments? Did Jerry really believe there’d been secret landings? Could he imagine any reason why there might have been?
Jerry tried to respond by saying the story was impossible to take seriously and he’d have to let it go at that. But nobody cooperated. If he couldn’t take it seriously, what was the confrontation with Frank Kirby all about? “I just don’t know what the truth is,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “The conspiracy theory makes no sense. So no, I don’t agree with Blackstone. Sometimes I wonder if Walker and Myshko planned the whole thing just to give us something to talk about.” And when The Los Angeles Times told him that was crazy, he agreed.
Jerry would have been grateful to see Morgan Blackstone just go away. Retire somewhere to a mountaintop and fade from view. No, not fade. Vanish altogether. Exit stage right.
He’d watched Blackstone’s catastrophic TV appearance with a sense of growing horror. If the issue had been perceived as a trifle eccentric before, it was now outright lunacy. The guy came off as a thoroughgoing nutcase. Jerry had been munching a tuna fish sandwich when it started. Five minutes into the rant, he very nearly threw it at the TV. Then he began wondering whether this was how Mary perceived him. He and Blackstone were, after all, saying the same thing. But there was a difference. Jerry was more inclined to imply that something wasn’t right with the official story. Blackstone had taken an earthmover to it. Furthermore, Jerry was known to the general public. His was the face of NASA. People knew who he was, and they had no reason to doubt his good sense. Everybody trusted him. Blackstone, on the other hand, for all his money, had never been a public figure. Now he was becoming one of the best-known people in the country. MSNBC delivered an instant poll showing that 98 percent of those polled could identify him, and that four out of five classified him as deranged. Or worse. One of the “political advisors” on CBS commented that he also had the effect of scaring people. “Look,” he said, “they know this guy is going to be launching rockets.” And therein lay the problem. Blackstone had stirred up such a commotion that Jerry could not hope to pursue the matter quietly. Thanks a lot, Bucky.
Barbara was at her desk when he arrived at t
he office the next day. She looked at him with a mixture of dismay and sympathy. And there was something else, something in her tone that suggested she no longer saw him the same way. She’d been his secretary for a year and a half. In fact, she’d been more than that: She’d been a friend. But when he walked in that morning, it was as if a gulf had opened between them. It wasn’t that she’d grown distant. But as if they no longer knew each other.
Ordinarily, if a major NASA story had broken during the course of an evening, it would have been front and center when he came into the office. Jerry, did you see what they were doing in the space station? Or, had he heard about Commander Ryan and the stripper? But on this day, she’d simply looked his way, eyes half-averted. “Hello, Jerry,” she’d said, with a weak smile. “How’s it going?” How, indeed?
Mary hadn’t called yet. She couldn’t have been happy.
He pushed back in his chair and focused on the photograph of himself and three Girl Scouts gathered in front of a test rocket in the museum. It had been taken only last month The kids were from Troop 17, based at one of the local churches. Suddenly, it seemed a long time ago. A happier time——
He was scheduled to interview Petra Bauer, a NASA physicist, later that morning. Jerry was a regular contributor to NASA TV. It was, in fact, the aspect of his job that he most enjoyed. His biggest laugh line always came when he claimed that his earliest ambition was to be an astronaut, but that he had a problem with heights. The line probably worked because people could see the truth in it. One look at Jerry told you he was not a charge-the-hill kind of guy. Mostly, Jerry was about getting along. He had social skills that wouldn’t quit, a talent for making people like him. He was a good speaker, and he had a passion for spaceflight. As long as other people were doing it.
He was a perfect fit for his job. Or he had been until Sidney Myshko’s long silence turned up.
Blackstone was convinced there’d been a landing. Jerry thought maybe it had happened. Something clearly had been going on. But he could not imagine any reason for the secrecy. So explain yourself, Bucky. Come up with a theory. Give me a scenario that makes sense.
The Cassandra Project Page 12
