by Cara Charles
FDR looks at his wife and smiles, “So would I, Ike. Let’s lay our cards on the table. I’d like a commitment from you before you leave this room that you will take this mission on as your life long duty. Knowing what you know, and remembering what the world is capable of, who else is as seasoned about the world as you are, General? As I see it morally, I don’t think you have a choice.”
“Well Mr. President? I came to the same conclusion after many sleepless nights, since I first learned the possible truth about Herta. You have my word. In the meantime, I’ll be assembling my one-man team. I already know whom we can count on. I know he’ll protect her for his lifetime. Beyond that, she can have her freedom, sixty to seventy years from now. Or whenever she wants to be free of our protection. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” they both say simultaneously. Mrs. Roosevelt hugged her husband.
“You have my word. I will run for President when my tour is over, and I retire. If I lose, we will have a contingency plan for that. I will bring these plans back to you, in a month’s time. In the meantime, I will arrange a new identity for Ivan Kimirov and bring her to you, Mrs. Roosevelt. Tomorrow, nine a.m.? She is an able nurse. I’ve seen her function in our Nurse Corps in England where I’ve had her hidden, these past months. And I think she will go unnoticed as your in-house nurse, Mr. President? Agreed?”
“Wonderful.”
General Eisenhower salutes, shakes the President’s hand then kisses Mrs. Roosevelt’s hand.
She hugs him and kisses both his cheeks.
“Thank you, General. Thank you for your duty to our country, to preserving our fragile Democracy and now to a most sacred duty. It will be quite the undertaking. We salute you General,” Mrs. Roosevelt says.
“Thank you both. She’s wonderful. You’ll see.” Ike salutes then exits the room.
Mrs. Roosevelt walks across the room with the letter and reads. When she is done, Mrs. Roosevelt looks across the grounds, her hand to her mouth, as the tears roll down her cheeks.
“Can you imagine?”
“Eleanor? Have you bitten off more than you can chew?”
“Franklin? You know, it was Providence that guided me here at the right moment in history. If I’d never known about this, you’d have done the wrong thing again, completely. You would have made her a lab specimen, just like the Nazis. You were ready to treat her like a prisoner, and she would have run or been lost to us forever. Do you have any concept of that word? Forever? The General was listening to his President and ready to follow your orders, like a good soldier. Did you even read his face? You were ready to treat this as a political football, when this is a humanitarian endeavor of the highest order. You know, I’m right. Franklin? For God’s sake, think! You are not going to be President for the rest of your life! There is a life, waiting for the both of us outside this fish bowl, in a few short years. Let’s spend the rest of our time in the People’s House, doing the best we can do for everyone, with the extraordinary resources we have! For God’s sake, man! Have you no vision? I shouldn’t have to persuade you to protect her, to see her as a miracle. A beautiful, trusting, miracle in this age of human horror.”
“Yes, dear. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I’m relieved you know, actually. Old habits never die, I’m afraid. I turn over the reins to you entirely. Whatever you need, you shall have. You are right, as usual. “It is lucky...”
Joseph bolted up in bed, still in the aura of the dream.
He recites, “It is lucky for the peace of great men, that the world seldom finds out contemporaneously who its great men are.”
“Mr. Jefferson?” Casey was on his feet.
“Oh. I’m just dreaming, son. Too many memories, in Mama’s food.”
Joseph laid down.
‘But FDR was gone when Ike visited.’ Joseph sighed, letting sleep envelope him.
Casey returned to his book, glancing at the monitor every thirty seconds as Joseph slept soundly.
PRESIDENT OBAMA wondered how he could mask his body language to keep this incredible turn of events from Michelle. The President slowly opened the door to Michelle’s bedroom. Occasionally sleeping apart because their schedules took them in opposite directions, had been difficult at first but they were used to it, having such busy schedules. The President closed her door, relieved. Michelle was asleep. Before he could express what was on his mind, she’d already read him and would ask.
Now in his personal office, he could finally log onto their site.
They’d been thorough creating a password only he would know and remember. ‘Old spies never die they just remain loyal and committed to the death.’
The President entered in the code. An i-chat screen opened. It instructed him to read on, but warned him it was a ‘one time’ read, an internal retinal scanner would delete everything as he read it. And there were the photos.
‘Remarkable.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN -- A MIDNIGHT TREASURE HUNT
THE PRESIDENT READ from the College Park FOI release of the Berlin Archives. What he read was shocking. It should have been fiction. He paused on a word, not moving forward to absorb the fantastic information.
A handwritten letter to General Eisenhower followed:
6 March ’43, Medenine, Tunisia
Dear General Eisenhower:
I am retreating and I must hurry. You’ve beaten me. Well done.
I am serving a madman. I continue on only because I cannot get my family to safety, hoping for this war to end soon. This is the statement of a traitor, but that is not why I write to you.
Since my few short years here in Africa, I have been acquainted with the Italian Southern Semitic expert, Doctor Marino Castellucci, a great archeologist and historian. He has spent his life here. It is his information that has led to my recent success. This defeat is of my own design. I write you this letter for pure humanitarian reasons, not political.
Castellucci's assistant, a beautiful young Ethiopian woman I’ve innocently but instinctively called Herta since I met her, in German it means “of the Earth,” needs asylum in America. I trust you can keep her and her secret safe.
Professor Castellucci believes she is a living legend, thousands of years old, fantastic as that sounds. When I first came to Africa some of the Germans who made Africa their home, told me of this old African legend and talked of searching for her, asking for my help. For them, she was a living gold mine. I never paid attention to it, thinking it was greed and liquor talking.
Last night, I told Marino I would be leaving Africa today in retreat, probably never to return. It was then Marino shared his beliefs with me insisting I take her with me, which would be madness, and only because he was drunk and feeling saddened by my leaving. He shared a hypothesis about Herta, formulated over his lifetime.
While he has aged into an old but wise man, Herta his assistant, he calls her by her native name Nan, his Nana, my Herta has not aged. It was her knowledge of old hieroglyphic symbols and history of this region that made him and his work famous and respected, that years ago convinced him. He told me of the legends of the Semitic people of the area he has dedicated his life to have a name for a living female legend. Nana Bubu. He is certain Herta is this living legend.
Without our army’s protection he’s afraid he will be arrested. It would have been better if he had not told me as you Americans know nothing of this legend, but the English-African pioneers do, as do the French, the Dutch and the Danish.
I’ve gotten terrible information recently that extermination and experimentation camps are set up all over Europe to answer Hitler’s final solution. I don’t want her to end up there. It’s time I believe in something and I seek to ask you to grant her asylum and anonymity in America.
It may be an old lover’s speculation and my heart speaking, but why not protect her, for humanity’s sake? I’d rather die protecting her, than die for a madman.
I am a soldier, not a barbarian. I am sending this letter to Switzerland’s Credit Bank Suisse in Zurich, accoun
t 01051917. If she is lucky enough to get to you, Herta will have given you the account number and this is my testimony to who I believe she really is.
God’s speed.
With much respect for the ideals of your democracy
Sincerely,
Erwin Rommel
“Received on 1 June 1945. Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
There was Ike’s signature. Rommel’s letter disappeared.
‘You have three minutes to commit this photograph to memory.’
Up popped another old photograph.
There she was again. Perhaps the photo was taken in the 1930’s. A handsome young dark haired man beside her. Then another… the same beautiful, dark haired, young, African woman with Rommel this time, at an Egyptian tomb in Africa, hieroglyphics behind them. They zoomed in onto her face.
‘Help her, Mr. President,’ the computer asked, ‘she’s hiding somewhere out there. All we have to do is find her before the rich and powerful do. In a few days we’ll have located and de-programmed the keeper of her whereabouts. We’ve had a breakdown in our system and can’t locate the keeper. Until then, we are asking you to do this one mission and retrieve vital linkable evidence to her that is in the Old Smithsonian.’
There she was in close-up, the wall of hieroglyphics in the background, fading. Perhaps there was significance in those glyphs. Yes, Herta was amazingly beautiful. She was as tall as Rommel. She had a regal bearing. He looked at the photograph for a full three minutes as instructed, memorizing her face, the slight cleft in her chin, her high cheek bones, her upper forehead sloping outward, her face was incredibly symmetrical, even almond shaped eyes, her right slightly larger than her left, her eyebrows were perfectly matched, her mouth perfect, her lower lip slightly larger than her top lip. Her skin smooth, and blemish free. Her nose fine boned, slightly rounded on the tip. She was the perfect woman. He could have looked at her longer, but he was on a time frame, knowing when he’d take his eyes off of her, she’d be gone. Peripherally he saw his time clock counting down his time with her… three, two, and one, gone. He just hoped he’d meet her someday.
He was instructed to memorize what was to follow.
Instructions with numerical sequencing followed. The President was fully aware the words were disappearing as soon as he read them.
Up popped schematic instructions for his bedroom, a Google map of two destinations with jogging times to reach each destination, several brick counts, door codes, a library stack and sample number, an old Ford SUV license plate.
He read to the end of the first set of instructions.
‘There may be more in days to come,’ they had written.
Now it instructed, he could ask a question.
The President typed in, ‘has anyone ever read or located the glyphs behind her? What about tracing the URL and what about the lawn motion sensors?’
The dialog box responded.
‘Yes, the whereabouts of glyphs not necessary for this mission, not a URL, you’re going subterranean, down further than the fourth level bunker, no sensors down there. Good luck Mr. P. Leave now. You have 90 minutes.’
‘I’ll need it. BO. Out.’
A funny face icon appeared, the end of the transmission. A digital clock appeared counting backwards from ninety minutes.
The President set his timer on his digital Casio watch. Before the President turned off his computer, he checked his history.
‘Funnyjokesandantidotes.com’ was the only thing listed. He clicked on it. That’s all it was.
There was that funny face, just for him, knowing he’d double-check them.
89 minutes.
He turned off his computer, satisfied.
He’d been instructed to leave the White House through the little known Truman escape tunnel.
They’d known about and used his fourth level subterranean bunker, but not the tunnel. The fourth level bunker was where they’d hidden President Bush during September 11, 2001.
He had less than ninety minutes to get his tasks done and back there to his room.
‘Thank God, it wasn’t snowing. The streets are still heavy with the recent snow.’
He’d be jogging all over town.
He walked out of his office, pulled off his tie, and walked toward his suite.
“G’night. 0500’s going to come early,” the President said to his agents.
“Yes sir. Good night,” the agents said nearly in unison.
The President smiled at the four agents, entered his suite, changed into his cotton under garments, silk long underwear, a turtleneck, sweater, and his hooded black basketball warm up suit knowing he’d be soaked with sweat when he got back. He added a cotton liner for his fleece watch cap, then a baseball cap on, a fleece scarf and lined gloves.
He warmed up for his allotted five minutes. He wished he had a headlight. He decided not to take his wallet. If he were arrested he’d worry about that later. He placed pillows in his bed to look like he was sleeping, and as instructed, pressed a few panels in his room.
The panels recessed and then slid over to reveal a secret door. He opened the door, braced for alarms, nothing. A narrow, recently cleaned, lighted staircase led down. The bulbs were the new spiral energy-efficient kind.
‘Wow. Resourceful bunch. Time to go, Rambo,’ he said to himself.
The President bounded down the stairs, adrenalin pumping.
One of his agents knocked on the door.
He had gone down six steps, the door closing. He bound back up the stairs, two at a time as the door slid open. The President took a breath. Another knock.
“Everything OK sir? Noting unusual movement in your room.”
“I was just doing a bit of Kundalini yoga before I went to bed. It’s a calisthenics, yoga style. Sorry to concern you. I’ll take a quick shower, then go to bed.”
“Sorry to disturb, sir.”
“No problem at all.”
The President ran to the shower turned on the water, calculating the time it would take him then off. He walked to the tunnel doorway. He’d had lost three minutes.
The President ran down passed the sixth step waited as the doors closed.
He ran down three full flights of stairs, two at a time, six levels to the forgotten lower levels of the White House grounds, praying their information was current.
At the bottom landing, he found a vault door with a combination lock, entered the combination opened that massive door afraid it would creak. It was recently lubed.
A lighted tunnel led down a full flight. This tunnel reminded him of the brickwork on the underground tunnel network of the Hoover Dam. The old Hoover Dam builders had built this tunnel when Truman remodeled the White House.
The President jogged through the tunnel, he recited the numbers he’d use soon passing locked rooms. Up ahead, was a fork in the tunnel. He was stopped at the locked, wrought iron gate.
The President counted the bricks from the floor up and found brick seventeen. He picked at the mortar around the loose brick so he could pull it out of the wall. There behind it was a large iron key to the old gate’s lock. He tried the key. The damned thing wouldn’t turn, even though a bit of oil was on the lock. They said it would take a lot of muscle.
The gate had been a gift from Catherine the Great to George Washington. By design, only her strongest Cossack guards were able to open that gate. She thought the new President of her era, could use such a gate at Mt. Vernon.
The enormous gate key wouldn’t budge. Nothing. POTUS was starting to sweat. He checked his watch with the built in night light. He was off schedule by two minutes. His Grandmother used to rub a sticky key on her forehead to get a bit of oil on it. The President rubbed both sides of the teeth on his forehead, moved the key around in the lock to lubricate it. He took a calming breath and tried one more time. He felt a give. The huge key turned and he sighed.
“Thanks again, Tut.”
He slipped around the heavy door, closed it, did not re-lock the gate, but repla
ced the huge key behind brick number seventeen. The hard part lay ahead. In the unlit portion of the tunnel, he had to find night goggles with an amplified hearing device.
Sliding his gloved hand along the bricks of the tunnel, the President counted. Around number forty-five, he removed his glove, felt shoulder high for the goggles. If he missed them, he’d miss his time window. Completely blind, groping the wet bricks, his bare fingers found the night vision goggles. He stretched them on his head, turned it on and hurried.
The time lock on the side door of the old section of the museum would be open for one extra minute past two a.m. He ran like he never ran before, hoping the dank ground beneath his feet would be level and not too slippery.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN -- THE MISSION
THE PRESIDENT WAS SO GLAD he had quit smoking.
As he ran on, he thought of the aged spies behind his mission. Only they would remember this tunnel, lost from memory and current files, for them to use one day. He imagined them calling in old favors. To their dying breath, they took their secrets with them. He was their point man, and intensely honored to be trusted and chosen.
Up ahead was another gate. Brick bottom up sixteen, a key opened that duplicate gate in the same way, as he hid the key behind brick fourteen from the floor. Within twenty paces, he found what looked like a bomb shelter door. He opened it. He was twenty-five feet from the exit.
There was an interior door.
He was inside the Renwick Museum’s basement. He opened that door and he was inside a broom closet. He had to go out the service entrance in exactly two minutes.
The lock would be open and alarms paused.