1st August
Maria Galveston began to regain consciousness.
She looked around the unfamiliar, cell-like room in which she found herself.
There were no windows – the room was illuminated by lights that were set into the ceiling. The room contained the bed on which she was lying, a chair, a wash basin and a toilet facility.
She noticed that there was a tray on the table. It contained some bread, cheese and meat.
Maria stood up and became aware of feeling not quite well. She also had a headache. She could not feel any injury to her head, however. It was more as if she was suffering from a hangover.
She reached into her pocket and noted that she still had her mobile. There was no signal.
Sight of the phone brought back the memory of her last message to Elliot, just before she lost consciousness.
On the previous evening, Maria had been working very late. She had been re-reading the White House file on Dean Hemmingway and looking for some clue as to where he might have gone. She had walked to the West Wing refectory just before three o’clock in the morning. It had been deserted, as one would expect at that time of the morning, but it had a coffee machine.
Maria had been in the process of getting a drink from the machine when she had heard a noise coming from the kitchen area. She had crossed the room to investigate.
A door to a storeroom behind the kitchen had been open. She had carefully approached the storeroom. It had appeared that there was no one inside, so she had entered to discover an open doorway to a lift in the far wall of the room.
She had asked herself what the purpose of a lift might be in such an odd location and had moved closer to investigate.
There had been an intercom on the wall by the lift, and she had heard a voice – made indistinct by the poor quality of the intercom speaker. The voice had said: ‘Are you there Camellia?’
‘Who’s that?’ Maria had instinctively answered.
‘It’s Dean,’ came the reply. ‘Who did you expect it to be?’
Maria did not fully understand what was happening but thought it very likely that “Dean” was Dean Hemmingway and that he was somewhere nearby.
Maria had taken her mobile from her pocket. She knew that she must urgently message Elliot. Her police experience told her that she should report without delay. Also, she had seen too many films and read too many books in which protagonists had not relayed critical information quickly enough before some unpredictable event had prevented them from doing so.
She quickly typed: I may have located H. Maria had intended to write more, but at that moment, she heard a muffled thud and became aware of feeling woozy. She had just maintained sufficient presence of mind to press the send button on her phone before she had lost consciousness.
Returning to the moment, Maria inspected the entrance to the cell. There was an outer solid door, inside which was a second barrier made of vertical, metal bars. Both appeared to be designed to slide into a recess in the door frame.
As Maria was looking at the entrance in more detail, the outer door suddenly slid open to reveal a corridor in which stood Dean Hemmingway.
‘Hello, Miss Galveston,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we had to kidnap you. We were not expecting anyone to be near the lift shaft at that hour of the morning.’
‘Where are we, Dean?’ asked Maria.
‘Very few people know about this place,’ Hemmingway replied. ‘Eisenhower called it “the Doomsday Bunker”. It was built at the end of World War Two as a command centre for the president in the event of a nuclear war.’ Hemmingway glanced upwards. ‘We’re about four hundred metres below the White House.’
‘You can intercept communications from here, I guess, in relation to military orders,’ Maria surmised.
‘More than that,’ Hemmingway explained, ‘we can issue orders from here – as if on behalf of the president.’
‘And block instructions to launch missiles,’ Maria speculated.
‘Precisely,’ Hemmingway confirmed. ‘This control room is simply never used these days, so no one would suspect that we were able to access it.’
‘Unless, of course, someone discovered you or Camellia using the hidden lift.’
Hemmingway looked concerned for a moment. ‘You heard me using Camellia’s name over the lift intercom,’ he swiftly concluded. ‘I was worried there, for a moment, that your people had identified her.’
Maria deduced that Camellia must be the WAR operative in the Pentagon. ‘They’ll work it out when she doesn’t show up at the Pentagon,’ said Maria.
‘She’s still there,’ Hemmingway answered. ‘It was only me who stayed down here this morning. She was simply helping to access the bunker. She was the one who fired the tranquilising pellet, by the way. I hope it hasn’t had too many ill effects.’
‘So what happens now?’ asked Maria, ignoring his concern.
‘You and I will stay in the bunker until September the thirteenth,’ Hemmingway replied. Camellia will join us at some point nearer to the date. WAR believes that God intends that asteroid to hit Earth, and from here we should be able to prevent the godless interfering with His will.
‘After September the thirteenth, nothing will matter. If it’s God’s will that we succeed, then the world will be at an end. If we have failed, then we will give ourselves up – knowing that we did all we could.’
Maria paused to think about that attitude. However misguided, Hemmingway struck her as sincere in his religious beliefs, and she could not help but admire that.
‘I’m not prepared to risk you causing any disruption, so the bars will remain closed,’ Hemmingway continued, ‘but at least we can talk and keep each other company. Perhaps you might even pray with me. I hadn’t planned to come down to the bunker so soon – there are a further forty-three days until Judgement Day.’ He looked at Maria. ‘Was I correct in inferring that removal from my role in relation to the presidential password indicated that my involvement with WAR had been discovered?’
Maria saw no purpose in doing other than telling him the truth. ‘Yes,’ she replied.