“You know what a secretive son of a gun Nixon was,” said NBC. “He’d probably never have told Agnew or Ford, so maybe it’s not a conspiracy of presidents, but a character flaw of one president.”
The journalists began arguing among themselves: Would Nixon tell anyone? Why would any president down the line feel compelled to keep Nixon’s secret?
Jerry relaxed with a sigh of relief. The relief passed when he realized that it was going to be like this every day, that in fact they were probably taking it easy on him because it was his opening day on the job.
The conference went on another twenty minutes. Finally, as it began winding down, one of them asked if Jerry would be on a future Moon rocket.
Jerry shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t even like airplanes. It’s terra firma for me.”
“Some spokesman for a space shot!” snorted a reporter.
“You didn’t seem to mind my being a spokesman for NASA,” said Jerry coldly. “I don’t remember your minding my setting up some private interviews for you when no one else would go out of their way to do so.”
The assembled journalists seemed to realize they’d pushed Jerry enough for one day, especially his first day, and they asked a few innocuous questions. Finally, Jerry said that he would take one final question and call it a day.
“Has the Moon rocket got a name yet?” asked Newsweek. “Maybe something like the Enterprise?”
“Yes, it has a name,” said Jerry.
“Well, what is it?”
Jerry turned until he was facing the bulk of the cameras. “The Sidney Myshko.”
And, twenty-eight floors above him, Bucky Blackstone smiled in satisfaction. “We hired a good one,” he said to Gloria Marcos. “I guess we’ll keep him.”
25
“After all I’ve done for him,” said the president. He watched with a growing sense of betrayal as Jerry Culpepper defended Morgan Blackstone and implied government deceit.
“Wouldn’t you go to the Moon if you could?” Jerry demanded of the reporters. “And if you were convinced something had happened up there, something the government has been hiding for half a century, wouldn’t that be all the more reason to go?”
Cunningham shook his head. “You can’t trust anybody, Ray. If not for me, he’d still be impersonating a lawyer in TV commercials for an obscure Ohio firm, trying to persuade viewers that he was on their side, and that ‘the team’ at Carmichael and Henry would happily take on the big corporations for those who’d acquired a lung disease”—he couldn’t remember which—“because of irresponsible construction work.”
Cunningham had taken him on board in Ohio during a successful run at the governor’s mansion and provided an opportunity for him to rise to national prominence during the 2016 presidential campaign. “Then I handed him the job at NASA. And this is how he pays me back.”
Jerry had left the press area by then and was back inside the terminal at Flat Plains. It was just like Blackstone, naming the new vehicle for Sidney Myshko. It was a nice touch but pure theater.
Ray grunted his agreement. “I can understand why Jerry lost patience with NASA,” he said, “but I’d never have believed he’d cross over and join that son of a bitch.”
The president shut the screen down and sighed at the ingratitude of the human race. “People have short memories,” he said. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.”
“He’s not the guy you thought he was, George.”
“No, he isn’t.” Cunningham dropped the remote onto a coffee table. Not worth being annoyed over. “Ray, are you sure you’ve checked with everybody about this? There must still be a few people around who would know if anything that big had happened.”
“You mean the landings?”
“Of course.”
“George, it’s been a half century. The high-level people who were at the White House and at NASA simply aren’t with us anymore. We’ve asked everyone we could find. Nobody knows anything. But almost all of them were staff assistants or secretaries. There’s no reason to believe they’d have known about anything major that was going down.”
“What about the intelligence agencies?”
“You know how they are. Everything’s Top Secret Bimbo or whatever. They don’t talk to one another, and I suspect they don’t talk much to the directors. I don’t think they trust anybody who didn’t come up through their organization. The information doesn’t get passed around. It’s just put into a classified vault somewhere, everybody retires or dies, and pretty soon it just gets lost, and nobody knows it ever existed. I think that’s where we are now.”
“Ray—”
“Yes, sir?”
“You think it happened?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no explanation that makes sense, George. We were in a race with the Soviets to see who could get there first. To the Moon. If we’d touched down before Apollo XI, can you imagine any kind of reason President Nixon would have had for keeping it quiet?”
Cunningham raised his arm in surrender.
“That’s exactly right, George. It’s ridiculous. The whole thing’s ridiculous. And that’s why—”
Cunningham heard the jingle of Ray’s cell phone. The chief of staff took it from his pocket, lifted the lid, and glanced at it. “Milt,” he said.
The president felt an odd reluctance. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
He tied the phone into the speaker. “Hi, Milt,” he said. “President Cunningham’s with me. What have you got?”
“Ray, I can’t find anything about Cohen’s being involved in political activities. But he seems to have been hit pretty hard by Watergate. It looks as if he might have started drinking heavily at about that time. And something else: He took his own life.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Ray. “Did he leave a note?”
“No. But I checked into it. People who knew him said he was despondent. Said he was always gloomy.”
“How’d he die?”
“An overdose of sleeping pills. I checked out the police reports. They were satisfied there was no foul play. But what’s interesting is that the description of his personality is so different from what I heard about him at George Washington. At least the early years there. He had a reputation for being easygoing. Casual. Everybody liked him. Life of the party. Then, suddenly, in the midseventies, it all changed.”
“Maybe,” said Cunningham, “his name was on the list of the Watergate escort service. He might have been worried about being exposed.”
“Nobody I could find,” said Weinstein, “thought he’d ever have screwed around with whores, Mr. President. Excuse my language.”
“It’s all right.”
“Apparently, he had all the women he wanted. Didn’t have to pay for them.”
“Okay. It was just a thought.”
“Anything else, Milt?” asked Ray.
“Yes. Speaking of the Watergate—”
“Yes?”
“It probably doesn’t mean a thing. But I told you about the drinking problem. Apparently, he was overheard one night saying how he’d been one of the Watergate burglars.”
“Well,” said Ray, “I don’t think I’d give that too much credence.”
“I talked with some of the people who knew him after he retired. They said it was a kind of running joke. When he’d had too much to drink. And you’re probably right, I doubt it means anything. Still—”
“Thanks, Milt.” Ray broke the connection and stared at the president. “George, we have nothing.”
Cunningham got up, looked at the time, looked at his chief of staff. “What do you think?” he said.
“I didn’t hear anything that convinced me Cohen was anything but a drunk.”