Written in Time Read Free Page A

snapped up the collar of his suit and hunched his shoulders as they started into the gardens.  
    “To watch a soap opera on television.”  
    “What?”  
    “Remember what they say about asking silly questions, son?”  
    “I remember, Dad.”  
    “Walk faster. We’ll miss the commercial.”  
    “Are we advertising on television? Hey! You can’t get television reception underground.”  
    “No shit, Sherlock! Come on.”  
    John Naile reached into his coat and pulled out a Lucky Strike, then lit it with his Zippo. “Television? I haven’t liked anything on television since Have Gun—Will Travel went off in September.”  
    “Try Richard Boone’s new show. An anthology kind of thing. It’s pretty darn good.” Still trying to keep pace with his father, John Naile heeled out his cigarette.  
    They passed the tennis courts and the pool and pool house and the garden shed and turned at the end of the line of privet hedge and started toward the small structure that looked like a pump house but was really a disguised entrance to the family bomb shelter.  
    “Why can’t we watch television up at the house? Is this some kind of dirty program Mom and Audrey can’t see?”  
    “Your mother already has the TV on. I bought one of those portable ones and put it in the kitchen. They’ll see what we see.”  
    “I don’t understand, Dad!”  
    “Good! You’re not supposed to. Yet! You ever wondered why I built the bomb shelter in the first place, John?”  
    “Oh, gee whiz, I don’t know, Dad! Maybe to protect the family and the servants from blast, fallout and radiation in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union?”  
    His father was opening the pump house door; a flashlight appeared in James Naile’s hand just as suddenly as that pistol had seventeen years earlier.  
    “There won’t be a nuclear war, at least not until sometime after the mid-1990s, John.” The light switch inside the pump house went on, and James Naile pocketed the flashlight. “And it certainly won’t be the Soviet Union we’ll be fighting.” James Naile actuated the entrance mechanism into the bomb shelter and the fake rear wall of the pump house slipped left; visible beyond it in the lights James Naile turned on was a wide metal stairwell winding downward.  
    “I know you were a confidant of President Eisenhower, Dad, and that you get along okay with Jack Kennedy and most of the Kennedy clan, but I didn’t realize you knew Khrushchev and those guys, too.”  
    Unbidden, John closed the shelter door, sealing them inside. He could hear the subtle hum of the ventilation system. During normal times, when the structure was occupied, all electrical systems ran off ordinary household current. There were diesel generators standing by that would take over if the shelter was ever to be used for real. As a kid, John had considered the bomb shelter a kind of tree house, only underground. And, like an elaborate tree house, it consisted of several levels.  
    James Naile took the steps downward, and John Naile followed him. “I built the bomb shelter in order to mask what’s on the fourth level, John.”  
    “Fourth level?”  
    “I do have special knowledge of the future, John. On days like today, I wish to God that I didn’t.”  
    They reached the first level of the shelter, some eighteen feet below the surface.  
    Half of this level was given over to things such as the diesel generators and their backups, with a separate fuel- storage area, sealed off from the rest of the level for safety reasons, on the far end.  
    James Naile opened another doorway, flipped another set of switches, and John Naile followed him into the next stairwell.  
    The second level housed, on one side, living and working quarters for the family and, on the other end, similar but more modest accommodations for the staff, as well as sleeping quarters. At the center were common rooms and storage areas. Within the storage areas were food,