The Book of Truths (33 page)

“No.”

“Did he know?” Neeley pointed down.

Nesbitt followed her finger. “Yes.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Bye,” Roland said as Neeley was getting ready to ask her next question. He cut the rope and the two men dropped out of sight into the abyss.

“I wasn’t done!” Neeley yelled at him.

“Yes,” Roland said, as he took her in his arms. “You are.”

“Last day,” the Keep said. “What have you learned?”

President Templeton glumly nodded. “I don’t know if I’m relieved or just exhausted.”

“Both,” the Keep said.

They were seated, for the last time, in the same room on the top floor of the White House. Tomorrow there would be a new president. A new occupant of the position. A new person for the Keep to in-brief.

“Pretty amazing,” Templeton said.

“What is, sir?” The Keep had her book open, quill poised, but so far, she’d written nothing, which didn’t cheer the soon-to-be-ex-president very much.

“No one talked about it. What happened. Cherry Tree.”

The Keep lifted the quill and tapped it against her cheek. “Yes. I have to admit I was surprised and so was Hannah. But the Nightstalkers called that right by having everyone get infected. Not only were they able to burn it out at the same time, the psychological dynamics were most intriguing. So many people baring their souls to each other. So many secrets exposed. No one wants that. No one wants to talk about that. Everyone is pretending it never happened.”

The president laughed. “Nobody has looked anyone in the eye since then. I think everyone wants to get the hell out of here.”

The Keep said nothing and the president sighed.

“Tell me something,” he finally said. “The PEOC. Riggs had the code from the football. He had the targeting matrix. He launched. But he didn’t launch. You haven’t told me what happened. Why it didn’t go off like he wanted?”

“Ah…” The Keep shook her head. “Surely you don’t think it could be that simple. That a single man—or woman starting tomorrow—could simply open up a briefcase and begin Armageddon?”

She tapped the book. “It’s in here, but so few see it. Kennedy ran on the missile gap, then suddenly shifted gears. Reagan called the Soviets the evil empire, but then came within a single treaty of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely. Nixon was crumbling, under impeachment, but he walked out of here without destroying anything when he so desperately wanted to. Do you know what changed them? That room.”

“It’s fake!” Templeton sat bolt upright. “The whole war room thing is a fake. Like a movie set.”

“No.” The Keep shook her head. “It’s real. The world could indeed be destroyed from that room. The Cellar or the Nightstalkers or any of us were never powerful enough to prevent that room being built for that possibility. What we could do was put in checks and balances. That’s something the Founding Fathers were all for. We just moved it into the nuclear age.

“Everyone adapts. As General LeMay and the others started Pinnacle to keep civilians like you from reducing the power they felt they needed, others worked to make sure that ultimate power, the power to destroy the world several times over, was not so negligently placed in one person’s hands.”

The Keep put down the quill. “Really. Think about it. How amazing is it that since Hiroshima and Nagasaki we haven’t used these weapons again? There have been studies on it, many studies, trust me, and the odds that we have never once used a nuclear weapon again are pretty astronomical. We’ve been in how many wars since the end of World War Two? The Berlin crisis, which we
solved not with weapons but with food and coal. MacArthur wanted to use nukes when the Chinese crossed the Yalu. Nixon in Cambodia. Kennedy in Cuba. So many times we came so close, but it never happened.

“That was not chance, Mister President. Let me ask you something. May I, sir?”

Templeton seemed a bit surprised she was asking his permission. He nodded.

“What if you can only change when you truly, absolutely believe you have done the unthinkable? That you entered that code and pushed that button?” She tapped the book. “That’s the biggest secret in the Book of Truths. That’s the part you didn’t get to read when you came into office. That she won’t get to read when I brief her tomorrow night while she’s still heady from the inauguration, when I will, as you say, destroy her dreams and promises.”

“Who controls the nukes then? Or are they all a fake?”

“Oh, you know they’re real. You received the After Action Report on Pinnacle and the Nevada Test Site.”

Templeton snorted. “Hell yeah. Spent hours on the phone with the Russians and then the Chinese telling them we had an accident when they picked up the blast. But who controls them?”

The Keep tapped the book. “The Cellar, of course. The real launch codes are in here. And the only one who can authorize the release of that code is Hannah. Because this country needs people who don’t push buttons.

“The PEOC is why some presidents have changed so dramatically while in office. Because they
did
push it. Then they sat there for those two minutes, watching that screen, realizing what they had unleashed, the true impact of what had happened hitting them so hard that when that door opened and the Keep walked
in, they fell to their knees in relief. They’d truly realized that nuclear warfare is lose-lose. A zero-sum game. They changed.

“Truman started the Cellar because he actually did have the bomb dropped. Twice. It all comes down to a simple truth that dates back to this quill.” She waved it. “Jefferson realized, after he had completed the Louisiana Purchase, that he had exceeded his constitutional powers. And he finally understood that one man can’t have ultimate power because eventually he will use it.”

The president got out of his chair and went over to a counter. He poured himself a stiff drink. He’d had the bottle and glass put there the previous day. He’d learned from his last meeting with the Keep to be prepared. He downed the glass, then poured another.

“I’m not buying it.” He downed the second glass and poured a third. “We’re not the only ones with nukes now. Truman had the power exclusive. But that changed.”

“Oh,” the Keep said. “There is a Russian version of Hannah. Sitting near the Kremlin.”

“And a Keep there too?”

“I hope, but that’s not within my need to know, sir. However, if you study history, you will see that many brave Russians have died keeping the world from destroying itself. One spy kept the Cold War balanced by keeping both sides up to date on the true balance of power. He was killed by the KGB as a traitor when they inserted him, still alive, into a crematorium inch by inch and filmed it to show to others as an object lesson. That man deserves a star on the wall at Langley. More so than the last two stars that went up on that wall.”

The president walked to the window and gazed out at a wintry Washington, DC. He took a sip from his glass. “You should have told me.”

“Then it wouldn’t have mattered, sir,” the Keep said. “You’re a politician. That personality type is the complete opposite of the person we need to have their finger over that button. Reagan could have signed that treaty in Iceland and rid the world of nuclear weapons, but he put politics first. They all do. Then some go in that room and push the button and they learn. Why do you think their hair goes white?”

The president ran a hand through his hair without even realizing it. “I didn’t go into that room. I never pushed that button.”

The Keep stood. She shut the Book of Truths with a solid thud. “I know, sir.”

He looked at her. “Is that why I wasn’t reelected? Why you shut the book and don’t want my last lessons learned?”

The Keep smiled sadly. She picked up the book and tucked it tight to her chest. “It’s not a bad thing to be a good man, Mister President. It’s just not enough.”

“Like I said before, they shouldn’t call that the Book of Truths,” Templeton called to her as she headed for the door. “They should call it the Book of Secrets. And maybe, just maybe, all of this has taught us we shouldn’t have secrets anymore.”

The Keep paused at the door and looked over her shoulder. “That would be a very fine world indeed, Mister President.”

For more on the Nightstalkers, read the first book,
Area 51: Nightstalkers
.

For more on how Hannah and Neeley, the housewife and the assassin, were recruited by Nero for the Cellar, read
Bodyguard of Lies
. And for how the Cellar operates, read
Lost Girls
.

I write factual fiction. I gather real events and add in a fictional premise and characters.

Yes: There was a marine named Smedley Butler and he was awarded two Medals of Honor.

Yes: Churchill did say that truth must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Yes: The officially acknowledged first nuclear weapon ever “lost” by the US was in 1950 over Canada. Sorry, Canadians. Our bad.

Yes: When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara instituted technical launch codes on nuclear weapons to prevent unauthorized deployment, the Strategic Air Command, on its own, decided to override that by setting all the codes to 00000000 and they stayed that way for a while before anyone caught on.

Yes: The Pentagon did secretly remove President Nixon’s ability to launch nuclear weapons in his erratic, waning days before he resigned.

Yes: President Jimmy Carter did send the nuclear launch authorization codes out with his laundry.

Yes: President Ronald Reagan had the codes in his pocket when he was shot and they ended up on the emergency room floor, forgotten about.

Yes: General Curtis LeMay strongly believed in a preemptive first strike against the Soviet Union.

Yes: The Russians did open their nuclear “football” in reaction to a satellite launch by the Norwegians.

Yes: The scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project did have a betting pool as to the yield of the Trinity Test, with the low end being a dud and the high end igniting the sky on fire and incinerating Earth.

Which leads us to today where…

Photograph © Bob Mayer, 2004

New York Times
best-selling author, West Point graduate, and former Green Beret Bob Mayer weaves military, historical, and scientific fact through his gripping works of fiction. His books span numerous genres—suspense, science fiction, military, historical, and more—and Mayer holds the distinction of being the only male author listed on the Romance Writers of America Honor Roll. As one of today’s top-performing independent authors, Mayer has drawn on his digital publishing expertise and military exploits to craft more than fifty novels that have sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. These include his best-selling Atlantis, Area 51, and Green Beret series. Alongside his writing, Mayer is an international keynote speaker, teacher, and CEO. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.