Written in Time Read Free Page B

water, toilet paper and everything else one might need for a stay of three months, with certain items regularly rotated out of stock and replaced so that everything would be fresh. There was also a vault. James Naile didn’t open it, but John Naile glanced at it while his father opened the next doorway. Within the vault were a dozen each M1 Garand rifles, Colt 1911A1 pistols and Remington 870 pump shotguns. Ammunition and all other necessities for the guns were housed within the vault as well.  
    John Naile closed the door behind them, and they descended to the third level.  
    The third level was the smallest. There was an office, smaller but otherwise somewhat similar to his father’s office in the house, minus windows, of course. On this floor as well there were three bedrooms—the sleeping accommodations for the family. There was a gymnasium, small but efficient, with free weights, a heavy bag and a treadmill.  
    “Okay, son. Where do you think the entrance to the fourth level is?”  
    “What?”  
    “Where do you think I put it?”  
    “Why would we have a fourth level to begin with, Dad?”  
    James Naile didn’t smile. “You’ll know all of that.  
    Where’s the entrance, son?”  
    John stood in the smallish hall, the office in front of him, the gymnasium to his left, the sleeping accommodations to his right and behind him. “Secret stuff there, right?”  
    “Right. Come on, son. We don’t have a lot of time.”  
    “I know—we’ll miss the commercial.”  
    “At the very least.”  
    John turned around. “Your office would be too obvious a spot. Yours and mom’s bedroom. Right?”  
    “Right.” James smiled, evidently pleased. He led the way into the bedroom. It was a pretty standard room; a chest of drawers, a dresser with a vanity mirror, a large double bed. John started toward the dresser, but stopped, looking intently at the large headboard of the bed. “Bingo, John! That a boy! Help me move this sucker.”  
    Actually, moving the bed was relatively easy, a matter of merely pulling on the footboard, and the bed’s headboard pivoting away from the wall. Behind it was a vault door. James spun the dial through its combination and unlocked it. “Your mother and I are the only ones who know the combination. I’ll give it to you to memorize.” James reached into the darkness beyond and flicked light switches. The staircase beyond was like the ones connecting the other levels.  
    “This place must have set you back a small fortune, Dad.”  
    “Not too bad, really; it helps owning your own construction companies and concrete plants.” At the bottom of the stairwell, John Naile found himself standing beside his father in what looked like a library or study, book-shelves lining paneled walls. There was a television set—a big one—and there were pieces of unfamiliar electronic equipment. “Here we are, son.”  
    “The Russians will never get you here, Dad.”  
    “Russians, maybe; Soviets, no way, unless future history is to be radically altered. That’s why only your mother and I knew about the fourth level until today.” As James Naile went over to the television set, almost as an aside he said, “And, by the way, the Soviet Union will officially cease to exist twenty-eight years from now, in December of 1991.”  
    “You mean there’ll be a war, then?” John Naile was starting to question either his own sanity or that of his parents. “But you just said there wasn’t—”  
    “Not a war; just evolution, son. The leadership of the Soviet Union will finally realize what folks like us have been saying all along: Communism flat out doesn’t work. Economics, son, not philosophy will win out. But that’s a long story. Just thank God for Ronald Reagan.”  
    “The ACTOR?”  
    “That’s a long story, too. Anyway, when you feel it’s appropriate, John, the secrets I’m revealing to you can be shared with your wife. Someday, that baby Audrey’s