by Bob Mayer
With his training, that was pretty damn good.
*****
Caleb fired a sustained burst from the M-60 machinegun. Twelve to fifteen rounds exactly as he’d been taught on the firing range at Parris Island so many years ago. The tunnel was a funnel for the rounds, and even if he hit the sides, the ricochet effect sent them in the right direction.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and he looked over. Aaron was just behind him and to the side. “They’ll figure this out and maneuver,” Aaron said.
“Of course,” Caleb replied.
He stepped back, allowing another Peacekeeper to step up. Caleb gave him the M-60.
Caleb and Aaron walked back to the first intersection and stepped out of the line of fire.
“How long can we hold?” Aaron asked.
“It’s not enough to hold,” Caleb said. “We have to punch back to gain time. These aren’t NYPD. They’re contractors. Which means the Society most likely sent them. That means there’s an infinite number of them, but we defeat this first wave, we can gain a little time before they can get the next together.”
“That’s all we need,” Aaron said.
“I always thought the time delay was a stupid idea,” Caleb said.
“It’s the way things are,” Aaron said simply.
“Of course.” Caleb picked up a MP-5 submachinegun from a stack of weapons that had been positioned there, just behind the front lines of the battle. “I’m going to flank them. Assault from the side and that should break this assault.”
Aaron nodded. “We keep the peace.”
Caleb stared at the older man for a moment, whether shocked or agreeing, it wasn’t clear from his expression. “Yes. We keep the peace.”
Then he began running down the tunnel, away from the firefight. He desired something more personal.
*****
Burns’ badge got them into the part of the Smithsonian that wasn’t open to the public: the massive storage facilities that were underground. If the curator found Evie’s request odd, he didn’t show it. Unlike the security guard, he was actually more impressed with her credentials as the curator of Monticello than with Burns’ FBI identification. He was a bit put out by her rush, hurrying to keep up with her.
“I wanted to put the painting on exhibition for the fiftieth anniversary,” the curator said as he escorted them along a hallway. “I was told it would be in poor taste to exhibit a painting by President Kennedy’s lover on the anniversary of his death, but I felt it was giving history its due. We have to accept the glory of Camelot along with its darkness.”
“True,” Evie said.
He opened up a door; the whooshing sound indicating the room beyond was under positive pressure. “We have several of Mary Meyer’s paintings. She was actually beginning to come into her own on the DC art scene at the time of her death. Most tragic to have her career cut short like that.”
“I’m sure she was bummed,” Burns muttered.
The curator turned to the right. “The art work is along the walls. We preserve as best we can, but budget cuts, the sequester, all of it has had its toll.”
“It has,” Evie murmured, looking at the paintings as they passed by.
“Here,” the curator said. “’Half Light’ by Mary Meyer.”
“That’s art?” Burns asked.
Evie could understand his question. It was a simple, geometric piece. A square with a circle in it, the circle bisected laterally and vertically. The colors were muted: black for the square, then each quadrant of the circle a different color: brown, pale purple, pale blue and a mustard color.
Evie leaned over. “Burns, what do you see here, right at the center where all four colors come together?”
Burns pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket. He put them on, then joined her. “There’s a little spot.”
“It’s not a spot,” Evie said. “It’s a dot.”
“All right,” Burns said, straightening and taking his glasses off. “And?”
“Old tradecraft,” Evie said. “Something Mary Meyer might have learned from her husband who was in the CIA.” Perhaps it was the excitement of her discovery that caused Evie to revert to data mode. “During the Franco-Prussian War, when Paris was besieged, messages were sent via carrier pigeon. Obviously a pigeon can’t carry an entire file. Or an entire book. A photographer figured out a way to shrink pictures so that a document could be reduced many, many times. Microdots became very useful in Berlin during the Cold War, after the Wall went up. Which I suppose is ironic,” Evie said, snapping out of it. “Given why we’re here.”
Evie pulled a pocketknife out her coat. “She hid it in plain sight.”
“What?” Burns asked.
Evie scraped the dot off the painting, ignoring the gasp of concern from the curator. She held up the blade, the tiny dot on it. “Mary Meyer’s real diary.”
*****
The digital counter continued to wind down.
00:47:34
12 August 1963
He signed her in as ‘Powers Plus One.’ The way he always did. As if she didn’t have a name. As if her presence at the White House must never be acknowledged.
Mary Meyer had wanted to paint that night. She could see the blank canvas as clearly as she could see Dave Powers getting out of the car and signing her into a place that she shouldn't be; but sometimes emotion won over logic. Jack shouldn't need her like this tonight, but she knew why.
The Secret Service Agents never met her eyes, just like none of the staff did. It's like she was some weakness in their President that they couldn't admit to themselves. Or, more likely, some weakness in themselves to acknowledge the man that led them, the man they idolized, could have such a flaw.
Like he lost value in being just a normal human in pain who reached out to the one person who could share it with him. They all needed him to be perfect, but she was the one person in his life right now who not only knew that he wasn't perfect, but allowed him to just be a man. A man with all his flaws and imperfect dreams and small hopes. She allowed him to be Jack, and she always had, and that's why he reached out for her on this night, of all nights.
She could tell that Dave Powers found her less than and that he felt small sneaking her in on this night when Jackie was on the horse farm in Virginia that Jack had bought her to find some solace in her own time of need. Of which tonight was one of the most painful.
Mary wondered how they could all love him, admire him and yet not know him at all. They loved a man who didn't exist. A figment of their own fervent imaginations needing him to be anything but what he was. Right now she knew with all her heart that he was just like her—a parent feeling the terrible ache of a child in the ground instead of all around you, and demanding some attention that you barely had. All parents feel the constant need of their children, but Mary knew that she and Jack were in the tiny minority of people who felt the black hole of the child no longer there. The pain that is the echoing silence of no demands.
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy had been born by emergency C-section premature in Massachusetts on the 7th of August. He’d died two days later. The funeral had been on the 10th, and Mary had watched the news coverage, her heart aching for both Jack and Jackie. To lose another baby. Arabella, the name Mary knew Jackie had intended for a daughter, had been stillborn back in ’56. The baby was buried now and Jackie was off, away from the demands of DC and being First Lady, with her beloved horses in the countryside. But Jack couldn’t be away. The demands of office demanded his presence. The demands of life had caused him to call Mary and ask her to come tonight.
She went with Dave through the first floor and up the elevator to his private quarters. When she walked in she saw that he was sitting in a deep leather chair with a drink and a cigarette. He waved off Dave.
She knew the look on his face because she'd been there many times. It was the look of despair on someone who's not allowed to feel it. She couldn't do it because she had other sons, and he couldn't do it beca
use he ruled the free world. For a moment her heart broke for him. For a second she tried to imagine grieving when grief is just considered a weakness and she knew why Jackie was gone and would always be. For a moment she thought of Lincoln who wasn't allowed to grieve in this house, either. There was no grief allowed her, and she started to weep and ran to him and knelt on the floor and buried her face into his crossed legs, and she knelt like that silently crying as she would have done for any sculptor of a saint. He said something to Dave Powers who'd brought her in but she didn't hear it because silencing her own tears drowned out all the words that could have been.
The door closed and they were alone and Jack pulled her up until she was sitting in his lap and he whispered in her ear: “I need this. I need to know that I'm still alive.”
Mary knew what he meant, and for the brief time that he gave her she tried to show him that he was living, that he was a man, but that his fears could be gone for the moment. Mary wished with all her heart that she had more than a moment to give but she knew that a moment meant a lot when any moment out of this was pain. A pain so hard that you wonder how people can live at all.
She forgot the blank canvas that brought her a reprieve and looked at him afterwards. “We can’t go on like this, Jack.”
He buried his face in her hair. “I know. I'm so sorry for using you. I use many people, but I shouldn’t use you.”
She pulled back. “You aren't using me, Jack. I've been used a lot and it doesn't feel like this. We're using each other and that's so different.”
He hugged her hard. “Mary, you need to give me some strength.”
She buried her face in his thick hair and whispered: “What do you need me to do?”
“Do you know Khrushchev lost a son?”
“I didn’t.”
“I’ve lost a daughter and a son now. You’ve lost a son. And Khrushchev lost a son. An exclusive and horrible club.”
“What do you need, Jack?”
Jack sighed. “I need you to remember something for me.”
She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Why? You aren't thinking of doing something stupid, are you?” Because she'd done many stupid things in his situation, and for a moment she forgot that he was referring to things that were out of her awareness.
And then he got down on the floor with her, a position that hurt him so much with his back that she knew that everything he said was so important that she could never forget a word of it. He grimaced at the pain but he knelt by her and began whispering in her ear.
Mary reached over and pushed her blond hair behind her ear and listened. He whispered for a long time, and she nodded to tell him that she understood. Because a part of her understood exactly and knew at that moment what he was asking her, and more important, she knew how to do it. When he finished she took his face and held it in her hands—the face that was so much bigger because of the steroids, still handsome but swollen to satisfy a part of him that was so ill. She held his face and stared into those eyes.
“I'll do it, Jack.”
And for a second she thought she saw a tear and she felt terrible that that tear scared her as much as all the other people who needed him to be something different than just a human being. She turned her face so he wouldn't see the same fear that he saw all day on every other person who mattered to him.
“Mary,” he said. “Mary.”
She turned back to face him.
“Can you do this?”
“Yes, Jack. Yes, I can do it.”
And he hugged her close. “I knew that I could trust you.”
And the same fate that was starting to count down his hours went through his embrace and started to count down her fate. But at that moment she didn’t know of that and had no idea of the future. She didn't understand then that he was hedging his mortality. And she never understood that he was hedging hers as well. She just knew that she was holding a grief-stricken parent and she did understand that. She did not understand that she'd just sealed her fate with his. She did what he asked in his whispers in her ears.
The gods are kind when they hide the real meanings of such small murmurings.
Chapter Thirteen
00:32:30
*****
Through the pain in his head, Ducharme began to sharpen his focus. Or perhaps it was with the aid of the pain. He couldn’t separate the pain from who he was any more. He climbed out of the river of sewage ten feet from the massive blades that were chopping through the ditch, which explained the hand he’d encountered. There were lights in the room and Ducharme pulled up his night-vision goggles.
Dripping, Ducharme walked past the blades, weapon at the ready.
What he wasn’t ready for was the blow from behind, sending him sprawling. Ducharme dropped the weapon in order to hit the ground and roll, coming up, hands up in a defensive position, trying to determine who had attacked him.
A massive man, a pale figure in the dim glow in the sewage room, towered over him. The man had a gun in his hands, but he acted like it was a distraction as he glowered down at Ducharme.
“You’re dead,” Caleb said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“We’re all going to die.” Ducharme got to his knees, to his feet. And still he had to look up at his opponent. “Now is as good a time as any.”
He went for his pistol and Caleb grabbed his hand, locking it in his powerful grip. “Nice try.”
The look of victory on Caleb’s face shifted to one of surprise as Ducharme’s other hand slammed the Fairbairn into the big man, the narrow blade going right between his ribs and piercing his heart.
As Caleb went to his knees, Ducharme jerked the knife out, picked up his pistol and automatic rifle and continued on his mission.
Caleb blinked a few times, then fell forward on his face with a solid thud, joining all the departed souls he’d dumped in this disgusting part of the sewer system.
*****
“Where is your display on the Cold War?” Evie asked the curator.
“Second floor, northwest corner,” the man replied. “But you just—“
He was speaking to air as Evie took off running, Burns trying to keep up.
As Evie swung open the door, she skidded to a halt.
Turnbull was blocking the way and had a gun ready. He had two men flanking him, also with guns drawn.
“Seriously?” Evie said.
Burns drew his pistol and stepped in front of her.
“Seriously,” Turnbull said. “Give me the diary.”
“You don’t think it’s important to the current situation?” Evie asked.
“My people are dealing with the current situation,” Turnbull said.
“What you think is the current situation,” Evie said. “Just like you thought you had Mary Meyer’s diary in your little cave. And you didn’t. You’ve been wrong and you’re wrong now. So get out of my way.”
And with that, Evie stepped around Burns, pushed past a befuddled Turnbull and headed for the stairs. Burns holstered his pistol and sprinted after her. They ran through the Smithsonian until they reached the Cold War exhibit. Evie pushed through a rope barricade to the portion on spy-craft. She carefully inserted the dot on a slide and then placed the slide in the microdot reader.
She was focused on reading when Turnbull and his men arrived. Burns had his pistol out once more, covering her back.
“Relax,” Turnbull said. “We’re in this together.”
“Right,” Burns said.
Evie was making tiny adjustments to the knobs on the side of the machine. “It had to be after the Crisis. That’s when Kennedy and Khrushchev came up with the plan.” She adjusted. “August twelfth, 1963. Just after Patrick Kennedy’s death.” She was nodding. “Kennedy told Meyer all about it. Leaving some missiles behind. Taking some of the warheads and putting them in Moscow and New York.”
“We know all that,” Turnbull said.
Evie didn’t look up from the reader. “Did you know that Khrushchev tol
d Kennedy that he wouldn’t leave nuclear warheads in Cuba? Warheads he couldn’t be guaranteed of controlling? That he left some missiles and dummy warheads, and that Castro was furious when he realized he’d been duped?”
“That we didn’t know,” Turnbull allowed.
“So we don’t have to worry about plutonium in Cuba,” Evie said.
*****
00:28:15
*****
Aaron checked his watch. Less than a half hour until the world learned that nuclear weapons could not be used without consequences. That no one was safe.
The cost would be high, but in the long run, it would be worth it. They’d kept the peace for over half a century, kept nuclear weapons from being used again after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A new peace would come out of this.
Future generations would thank the Peacekeepers.
Over half of whom were dead and wavering. The assault was taking a toll. No matter how well Caleb had trained the Peacekeepers, they weren’t combat-hardened soldiers like the assaulting force.
Aaron decided on a final course of action. He left his people behind and retreated, making his way to the vault.
26 June 1963
Click HERE or the picture to view Kennedy’s speech “I am a Berliner”
Or go here: http://youtu.be/hH6nQhss4Yc
“I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor, who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.
“Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum.’ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’
