to do. I can still control things to a point.”
“My only question is, what about the press?”
“That’s the worst of it. The president is going public with everything they find up there. It’s like he was waiting for a big discovery to justify a major boost in the space budget. I’ll admit he was good, but how did he know there was something in that crater?”
“The press is the problem right now; we’ll get into how he knew what was up there later.” Rawlins thought a moment, swiveling his chair to see his daughter through the twenty-by-thirty-foot plate glass window. The eighteen-year-old saw him and waved. He smiled and waved back with a glimmering smile on his lips. “I wish we could make the president disappear.”
“Even though this line is secure, I didn’t hear you say that,” the vice president said hurriedly.
“Yes you did. I’ll say it again in far more profound and legalese wording: the man is a pain in the ass and needs to go away. Another four years of his leadership is not part of the Lord’s plan.”
“We’ve known each other since seminary school, Sam. You know I love my country and my God, so you must understand me when I say those loves are in that exact order.”
“And you must understand me, Mr. Vice President; we’ve managed to bury Operation Columbus for seventy years. I will not allow the public to start needless speculation about its origins. I will not allow that. I will not!”
“Give me time. I can convince the president this is not in the best interests of the nation. Hell, there may be national security issues to deal with. Give me the time I need to discover what and who’s running this Case Blue operation.”
“Time is a commodity we don’t have.” Rawlins stood and watched his daughter lay out her towel by the pool, and then his eyes went to the security man who was watching her do it. He frowned and turned back to his desk without sitting. “I want that find on the Moon hushed up. Ever since I let you in on the Columbus find in Ecuador, when we were in school, and-you’re right-since I was a seminary student and you were stealing books to sell back to the school bookstore, we made a deal that the world will never be tempted by the devil and the knowledge that Columbus would bring to humankind.” Rawlins furrowed his brow as he watched the security guard and the absolute shameless way he ogled his beautiful daughter. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight. “Now, I need you to start thinking ahead. The news about this find is already all over the world. What if this nation, or any other power in the world, decides to get to the Moon and they uncover the equivalent of Columbus? What are you prepared to do?”
“Are you asking what if the United States tried to send a manned mission to the Moon? Or someone else?”
“Of course that’s what I mean, you moron. I will not allow that to happen. I would spend fifty billion dollars to see that any attempt would be stopped. Now tell me, are we capable of getting back to the Moon on short notice? Is anyone in the world capable?”
“No, of course not. NASA hadn’t planned a return for at least fifteen more years. And other nations-well, it would be impossible.”
“I hate that devilish word, impossible. That’s why I’m in a position of power, my friend, because I didn’t listen to people who said that the things I wanted to achieve were impossible. Nothing is impossible. So-” His eyes sprang open and he glared out the window at the security guard, who didn’t seem to care who was watching him stare at his younger daughter. “What are you prepared to do if the impossible happens?”
“I… I… don’t know.”
“You disappoint me, Harry. Maybe you shouldn’t be in line for the job I thought you were ready for.”
The Reverend hung up. He had wanted to throw it through the window, but caught himself before he allowed his explosive temper to fully vent. He slowly and deliberately walked over to the large plate glass window and tapped lightly on the thick pane, trying not to attract the attention of his lounging daughter. The security guard, a large man himself, turned with his thumbs pressed into his gun belt. Rawlins smiled and waved at the blond-haired guard. With his smile still in place he gestured with his right hand for the guard to join him at the ornate French doors. The guard’s face flushed, and then he pointed at his own chest and mouthed the word me?
Rawlins nodded his head enthusiastically. The big man in the blue security uniform walked away and disappeared around the corner. Samuel Rawlins walked back to his desk and pulled open the top drawer, retrieving a small item, then turned and opened the outside doors to his study. The security guard was standing there. His arms were at his side and he looked as if he were at attention.
“Yes, sir?” he said, looking from the smiling, silver-haired Rawlins to his right, and then left, suddenly wishing he wasn’t the only guard on duty on the west side of the estate.
“How are you today-” Rawlins asked, as he bent at the waist to get a better look at the man’s name tag-“Officer Wright?”
“Uh, just fine, sir, how are-”
“I saw you looking at my daughter a moment ago.”
“Uh, yes sir, she is very-”
Rawlins’s large hands shot through the air so fast that the guard never knew what was happening. One minute he was standing there facing the Reverend and the next minute his neck was being twisted brutally to the left. Before he even realized his words had been cut off, he heard his own neck snap in two. Rawlins grimaced and let the large man slide through his hands to collapse onto the concrete walkway.
“You were about to give an answer that would have gotten you in trouble, young man.” Rawlins stepped out onto the walkway and looked around. Then he removed the object he had retrieved from his desk. It was a small digital camera. He adjusted the automatic focus, zooming into the shocked and now strangled security guard. He snapped a picture and then looked down at one of the hundred security men he had on staff. “Your services will no longer be needed at my home.”
Rawlins turned and stepped inside the French doors and closed them behind him. His anger was totally vented and the relief he felt was just this side of ecstasy. He turned the small digital camera over and looked at the picture he had just taken on the small LED screen. He smiled and half nodded his head. “Not bad.”
He picked up the phone as he placed the camera on the desktop. He punched in a number and waited.
“Security. Anderson speaking,” the voice said as Rawlins picked up the camera once more and studied the picture.
“Ah, Mr. Anderson, one of your men seems to have had an accident right outside my study on the west side of the house. I think you better call for an ambulance-very quietly of course, I think he tripped and fell. Very good, no, please don’t disturb me. I have quite a bit of work to catch up on.”
Rawlins set the phone down and smiled at the small picture of the dead security guard. He finally opened the drawer and shut off the camera as he placed it inside. As he did he saw the small framed photograph he had placed inside a few months earlier, meaning to get the frame changed. He had forgotten about it. He picked it up once more as he had a million times in his life and looked at himself forty-five years earlier. He was standing next to his father in the black-and-white photo. He himself was as unsmiling as the man standing next to him. The dark-haired man wore the uniform of an Army lieutenant colonel. The uniform was spit-polished and fit as snugly as a tailor could make it. They stood in front of an old castlelike structure that looked as if it had seen better days.
“Nineteen sixty-five,” he mumbled.
As he lay the picture back inside the drawer, he knew the old castlelike building was no castle at all. Nowhere close, in fact. It was a stone monstrosity made to keep men imprisoned and his father had been the gatekeeper of that fairy-tale place-the man with the key in a rotating nation-by-nation watchman’s role.
He closed the drawer, shutting out the stern image of his father. Yes, his own flesh and blood had been the gatekeeper back in 1965, and that was how the events of today were related to Reverend Rawlins.
The keys of the gatekeeper opened and closed the dungeonlike cells of Germany’s Spandau Prison.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Jack Collins and Sarah McIntire stood on the large front porch of one of the more modest houses high in the hills just off Flamingo Boulevard in Las Vegas. Collins was a former black operations guru and a man with countless incursions behind enemy lines, and that was why Sarah McIntire could not figure out exactly why Jack was nervous
