What if...the Cuban Missile Crisis had become a full-blown atomic war...? Boston, 1972. Ten years have passed since bombs fell on major U.S. cities and the Soviet Union. Russia is decimated; California is virtually destroyed. Washington D.C. lies beneath a giant crater lake. President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson and their families have disappeared, believed dead. The best and brightest of their administration are disgraced or in hiding. America is a shell of her former glory, a second-rate power dependent on the kindness of Britain. Martial law rules. Carl Landry, a young reporter with The Boston Globe arrives at the scene of a murder. A friendless man, a veteran of the '62 war, has been shot, but Landry doubts that he's the victim of a robbery gone wrong. and suspects the man has taken secrets to his grave. What was this man doing int he War Room of the White House in October 1962? Who pushed the button that started the war? What is the legend and what is the lie? Who was the betrayer and who was the betrayed...and could John F. Kennedy, by some miracle, still be alive?