“All for one,” Jack Jericho said.
“And one for all,” his brother replied.
Then they both looked at their father who unfailingly said, “Until the bitter end, my boys.”
-38-
A Man Who Loves the Bomb
An unmarked van with bulletproof glass, armor-plated doors, and run-flat tires approaches the sentry post at STRATCOM headquarters, Offut Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska. A helmeted sentry checks the papers of the driver, makes a quick call on his phone, and waves the van through. Two minutes later, the van speeds past an imposing windowless concrete building and squeals to a stop in front of a titanium blast door cut into a hill. The side door of the van opens, and a motorized ledge lowers Professor Lionel Morton in his wheelchair to the ground.
Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Griggs leads a procession of four Army Rangers, their pants bloused neatly into their combat boots, and the professor, who aims his wheelchair for the open blast door. As he motors into the bunker, Morton smiles at the STRATCOM insignia cut into the walclass="underline" an iron fist gripping three lightning bolts, wrapped by an olive branch.
He stops the whirring wheelchair for a moment, sighs, and says, “Home sweet home.” Then with his military escort, Professor Morton proceeds into the bunker, and the huge door closes behind him with a pneumatic whoosh and a metallic clang.
A four-door green Chrysler with black wall tires and tinted windows pulls up to a two-story house on a leafy street in Palo Alto, California. Four men in dark suits get out and walk briskly to the front door. Across the street, an elderly man waters his lawn and looks suspiciously at the strangers.
Once on the porch, one of the men rings the doorbell.
No answer.
Another opens the mailbox and pulls out a wad of third-class mail. The first man stops ringing the bell and tapes to the door a document with an impressive blue cover and the signature of a federal judge. The other two men hit the door with sledge hammers, shattering it. Across the street, the fellow with the hose is suddenly watering his own feet.
“My name is deputy United States Marshal Brian Healey, and I am serving an emergency search warrant on these premises,” the first man shouts as he enters the house. No one answers, and the four men pile inside.
They will painstakingly go over the entire house, but they start in the cluttered study of the owner: Professor Lionel Morton. They pull down photographs from the walls, looking for compartments hidden underneath. While the others search the desk and file cabinets, deputy Marshal Healey takes inventory. He is about forty with close-cropped gray hair and a gut that is just starting to bulge over the 34-inch waistband he has proudly worn since his sophomore year at San Jose State. Healey studies the photos starting with a grainy black-and-white shot of a mustachioed man in an overcoat and galoshes standing in the snow with a rocket that looks like an oversized Roman candle. Underneath, a caption, “Dr. Robert Goddard, March 16, 1926.”
Nearby, a framed shot of the “Enola Gay” crew taken on the island of Tinian on August 2, 1945, just days before they took off for their rendezvous with history. Then, a group shot of the Manhattan Project scientists, a photo of a young Lionel Morton standing beneath the rockets of a first generation Thor missile, and finally, a series of mushroom cloud explosions captioned “Bikini Island 1956” and Eniwetok 1952.”
On a credenza, a scale model of an MX-774 experimental missile sits on a plaque with a brass plate inscribed, “White Sands Proving Grounds, 1948.” Other models, like children’s toys, are lined up alongside: an Atlas Missile with a plaque reading “Cape Canaveral, 1958,” and a Titan II with the notation, “McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, 1962.”
Like a room frozen in time. other black-and-white photos memorialize a slice of history. Healey picks up a signed photo of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara standing next to an Atlas missile. He reads the inscription aloud, “To Lionel. You made it happen. Bob.”
Healey is mesmerized by the nuclear weapons memorabilia. “What kind of man would create a shrine to nuclear weaponry?” he wonders aloud.
“A man who loves the bomb,” another marshal replies.
“Or worships it,” a third marshal says.
They empty the desk drawers and search the filing cabinets, but do not find what they are looking for. Healey approaches a large globe of the earth, propped on a floor stand. He spins the globe, letting his finger drag across the continents. He finger feels an imperfection in the globe, and he uses his other hand to stop the spinning. He slips his fingers into a groove at the equator and swings the northern hemisphere open like a lid. He pulls out a metal briefcase from inside and opens the latch. Inside is a foam indentation, the perfect size for a computer disk. Only there is no disk. The case is empty.
A courier in civilian clothes dashes across the catwalk in the amphitheater above the STRATCOM War Room. He clatters down the ladder to the main floor and hands a sealed envelope to F.B.I. Agent Hurtgen. General Corrigan, Colonel Farris and their aides turn away from the Big Board and watch as Hurtgen unties the cord and breaks the seal.
“What are you looking at?” he says, moving back a step.
“What the hell is that?” Colonel Farris demands, sneaking a peek at the “Top Secret” seal on the envelope.
“Behavioral Science Unit report. Level Six clearance required. What’s your security rating?”
“Security rating!” General Corrigan booms. “Do you know where you are? Are you out of your mind, you, you… ” The pressure is getting to the general, and all he can say, his voice trailing off, is, “you civilian.”
Chagrined, Agent Hurtgen opens the envelope and pulls out the King James version of the New Testament.
“Top secret,” Colonel Farris says, sneering.
“Might as well be,” Hurtgen says. “It’s not like anybody inside the Beltway’s ever read it.”
Agent Hurtgen opens the Bible where it has been book-marked and reads aloud from a yellowed passage, “‘The first earth had passed away, and the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, came down from Heaven.’”
General Corrigan’s look asks for an explanation.
“Revelations,” Hurtgen says. He unfolds a report on F.B.I. stationery, spends a moment reading it, another moment milking the situation for its drama, then says, “Paraphrasing now. To get a new Jerusalem, a place where all believers live forever, first you gotta blow up the old one.”
“Says who?” the general demands.
“Peter.”
“Peter who?” Colonel Farris asks.
“The Bible guy,” Hurtgen says, thumbing to another marked page. “Peter, chapter three, verse ten. ‘The Lord will come as a thief in the night, and the heavens will open with a great noise and fervent heat, and the earth shall be burned up.’”
“The Morning Star,” General Corrigan says, grimly.
“Jesus Christ,” Colonel Farris mumbles under his breath.
“Exactly,” Hurtgen says, closing the book.
The courier whispers something in Hurtgen’s ear and on the Big Board, the map of the world is replaced by a photo showing the aftermath of the New York porn shop bombing. Again, Hurtgen consults his memo and says, “They call themselves the Holy Church of Revelations. They’re led by a fellow who calls himself Brother David, a charismatic fanatic. The Behavioral Science Unit’s working on a psych profile.”
The Big Board blinks with what looks like a high school yearbook photo of a younger, short-haired David. It blinks again, and a slightly older David is carrying a sign at a protest rally: “Abortion is Murder.”