"Three went up and none came back. The Defense Command boys thought it highly unusual for the Soviets to screw-up three times in a row on simple moon orbiting flights."
"You think they were manned?"
"I do indeed," said Emmett. "The Soviets wallow in deception. As you suggested, they almost never admit to a space failure. And keeping the buildup for their coming moon landing clouded in secrecy was strictly routine."
"Okay, if we accept the theory the three bodies came from one of the Selenos spacecraft, where did it land? Certainly not through their normal reentry path over the steppes of Kazakhstan."
"My guess is somewhere in or around Cuba."
"Cuba." The President slowly rolled the two syllables from his lips. Then he shook his head. "The Russians would never allow their national heroes, living or dead, to be used for some kind of crazy intelligence scheme."
"Maybe they don't know"
The President looked at Emmett. "Don't know?"
"Let's say for the sake of argument that their spacecraft had a malfunction and fell in or near Cuba during reentry. About the same time, Raymond LeBaron and his blimp show up searching for a treasure ship and are captured. Then, for some unfathomable reason, the Cubans switch the cosmonauts' bodies for LeBaron and his crew and send the blimp back to Florida."
"Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"
Emmett laughed. "Of course, but considering the known facts, it's the best I can come up with."
The President leaned back and stared at the ornate ceiling. "You know, you just might have struck a vein."
A quizzical look crossed Emmett's face. "How so?"
"Try this on for size. Suppose, just suppose, Fidel Castro is trying to tell us something."
"He picked a strange way to send out a signal."
The President picked up a pen and began doodling on a pad. "Fidel has never been a stickler for diplomatic niceties."
"Do you want me to continue the investigation?" Emmett asked.
"No," the President answered tersely.
"You still insist on keeping the bureau in the dark?"
"This is not a domestic matter for the justice Department, Sam. I'm grateful for your help, but you've taken it about as far as you can go."
Emmett snapped his attaché case shut and rose to his feet. "Can I ask a touchy question?"
"Shoot."
"Now that we've established a link, regardless of how weak, to a possible abduction of Raymond LeBaron by the Cubans, why is the
President of the United States keeping it to himself and forbidding his investigative agencies to follow up?"
"A good question, Sam. Perhaps in a few days we'll both know the answer."
Moments after Emmett left the Oval Office, the President turned in his swivel chair and stared out the window. His mouth went dry and sweat soaked his armpits. He was gripped by foreboding that there was a tie between the Jersey Colony and the Soviet lunar probe disasters.
Ira Hagen stopped his rental car at the security gate and displayed a government ID card. The guard made a phone call to the visitors center of the Harvey Pattenden National Physics Laboratory, then waved Hagen through.
He drove up the drive and found an empty space in a sprawling parking lot crowded by a sea of multicolored cars. The grounds surrounding the laboratory were landscaped with clusters of pine trees and moss rock planted amid rolling mounds of grass. The building was typical of tech centers that had mushroomed around the country. Contemporary architecture with heavy use of bronze glass
and brick walls curving at the corners.