He could have ordered lobster for breakfast if he wanted — but he couldn’t have walked out of the building of his own free will, even if he could still walk.
His balcony overlooked Farragut Park — he could just see the back of the White House from his floor. He’d picked the apartment based on the view alone.
Charles Finney wanted to remind himself of who he was, a man who’d lived his life in the shadow of that great building, a man who’d made sacrifices for his country.
If anyone found out what he’d done, it wouldn’t just be his own image that was tarnished. It would destroy the entire fabric of democracy, and what this great nation was founded upon.
He shook his head and cursed.
The terrorist seemed to be intent on destroying everything he’d built. He’d unearthed Die Koloratursoubrette, the bomb that Heisenberg had jokingly named “The Fat Lady” of opera, after he had heard that the American bombs were to be named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy.”
Then he’d dragged Mike Reilly’s grandson into the situation, leading him around by the nose from clue to clue. At least, that’s what he was hearing from his sources at the Capital.
It was a bad sign.
He’d had to take steps. The death of Congresswoman Bledes was unfortunate, but Finney considered her loss collateral damage. He was mostly indifferent to her death. What stirred his anger was the fact that the shot had failed to reach its intended target.
What else would be lost to protect the king in this game?
He chuckled to himself. He’d given up so much, in a thousand small ways; he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself now — except for the fact that he had to play both the role of a piece and of the player.
It was worth it, though.
The King was the United States.
And he’d be damned if he was going to yield the game to the son of some upstart German immigrant trash…
Finney wheeled himself back inside, and away from the balcony. He was humming an old Doris Day song in the back of his throat.
A knock at the door.
“Come in.”
A pretty, pale-faced young woman stepped in. “Someone here to see you, Mr. Finney.”
“That’s all right. I’m expecting him.”
She backed out of the doorway; a few moments later, George Smith entered. He had an aluminum attaché case with him, attached to his wrist by a discreet cuff and a black band that looked like a bicycle lock.
“Sir,” he said.
“Do you have it?”
“Yes, sir. We used the paintball attack on the senators as a distraction. As you guessed, the terrorist had to respond to the attempted escape you asked us to put into effect. I believe we timed things rather well.”
“Yes,” Finney nodded in satisfaction. He knew the document had been held in the Library of Congress. Several of his people were planted there.
“Would you like to see it, sir?”
He rubbed his tongue thoughtfully over a tender tooth. He had lost a few over the years, and he hesitated every time he had to have one pulled.
“Might as well,” he said. “Before it goes into the secret vaults, eh? We’re turning into the Vatican, with underground crypts full of history. Crucial information it’s better that no one knows, yet we can’t bear to part with. A bunch of sentimental old fools, that’s what we are, too ashamed to admit that we’re a bunch of filthy sausage-makers. Each and every one of us push it down the road, make it someone else’s problem…”
Smith stood and listened with his hands behind his back. Respectful treatment toward a key political figure who had once been important, but was now just an old man who was clearly losing his marbles.
He shook his head. “Listen to me ramble. Go on, open it.”
Smith unlocked the case from his wrist, then placed the case on the bedside table and unlocked the two clasps with a key. He snapped open the locks, then lifted the lid and pulled out a manila envelope. Inside the envelope was a rigid plastic folder.
Inside the folder was the document, still inside a thin layer of crisp cellophane.
The old man’s eyes filled with tears.
His sadness wasn’t for the author of the letter — Werner Heisenberg — or the addressee — President Gerald Ford — but for all the times gone past. The burdens he carried, the lies he was forced to tell, even the deaths he had to order.
All to protect D.C. from one bomb. A device that had been ripped out of the past where it had been decently hidden, then placed in public view.
A million people, threatened.
It made his blood boil.
And for what? So that some kid could reveal the “truth.” The one truth out of a hundred different other truths that nobody needed to know — nobody needed to know that the Germans had been ahead of both the U.S. and the Soviets. Nobody needed to know that World War II had almost been lost. If Washington D.C. had been taken out by a nuclear bomb, would all the fight have gone out of Americans? If anyone found out how close the U.S. seat of government had come to becoming another Nagasaki or Hiroshima, who knows what would have happened.
Most importantly, few people would accept what he had withheld for more than seven decades: In the history of the human race, no one event had steered the course of humanity toward everlasting peace, more than the development and subsequent proliferation of the atomic bomb.
In his opinion, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, and subsequent architect of the first proven successful atomic weapon, should have been awarded the greatest Nobel Peace Prize for his development.
It was this action and the deterrent threat of life-on-earth ending consequences, that left the world in its longest period of peace and stability since the end of World War II. At no time on earth had mankind cooperated so well together, since the start of the Agricultural Revolution nearly ten thousand years ago.
Retired Senator Finney closed his eyes.
A group of scientists brought this atrocity to mankind. And in jarring contrast its development had left prolonged peace.
But it was his own actions which brought about the proliferation of the world-ending weapon. This was what made the entire venture so successful.
If America had maintained the Atomic weapon monopoly, the benefits would have been nowhere near as successful. In that case, he doubted the city of Nagasaki would have been the last place on earth to be destroyed by such a weapon.
The thought literally made him shiver.
What they did was abhorrent and treasonous at best, but he had done so for the good of his country. He was old. There was nothing the Administration could do to him that time wasn’t already well on its way to achieving.
What use to drag it all out into public now?
Except to blackmail the good men who were forced to make such terrible choices.
He shook his head and dashed the wetness in his eyes away with the back of his hand.
“Hand me my reading glasses,” he said.
They were gently placed into his hand.
Finney read the document letter, the words swimming in front of his eyes.
Although it seemed to take an eternity, he soon finished reading. His mouth was dry as he swallowed. Smith handed him a glass of water as he took away the document.
“Sir?”
“Lock it back up.”
Heisenberg had been a man of probity and honor. The problem with men of probity and honor was that they were unable to keep their damned mouths shut. The letter had made President Gerald Ford ask questions. Questions, like earthworms, did their best work when they were buried deep underground with the rest of the muck. Ford’s questions had exposed truths, forcing him to make difficult choices.