The five men in the back shared uneasy glances with one another. Even Wilkie was caught by surprise. His cigar fell out of his mouth and onto his lap.
“I thought they were talking about foreigners,” Wickersham whispered.
“So did I!” said Wilkie. He hurriedly brushed cigar ash from his crotch as the conversation in the front seats continued.
“Green-skinned Martians come from a story called ‘The Green Boy from Hurrah.’ It’s children’s literature,” explained Robert. “There’s nothing scientific about it.”
Taft laughed heartily. “I THOUGHT YOU READ THOSE TYPES OF BOOKS ALL THE TIME!”
Robert watched the street with concern as pedestrians leaped away from the auto. “Some books make for better research than others. Jonathan Swift correctly predicted Mars had two moons in Gulliver’s Travels.”
“REALLY?”
“Yes. Phobos and Deimos. ‘Fear’ and ‘Terror.’”
Lovely names, thought the president.
“Mr. President, the road!” the attorney general shouted.
“WOAH!” Taft stomped on his horn and swerved past an empty public school wagon. “HEY, LOBCOCK! SCHOOL’S OUT!” shouted the twenty-seventh president of the United States to a bewildered public school wagon driver.
“Will, would you slow down?” Robert pleaded. “The car’s going twice as fast as the fastest racehorse in history!”
“HEY, FOR FORTY HORSEPOWER, I EXPECTED MORE FROM ITS MOTOR!”
“Horse!” screamed Wickersham.
“SORRY!” Taft narrowly threaded the auto through opposing carriages at R Street. “WHAT ABOUT H. G. WELLS? DID HE WRITE ANYTHING ABOUT MARTIANS THAT WE SHOULD TAKE SERIOUSLY?”
“Not really,” said Robert. “He was using old data. Giovanni Schiaparelli started that whole Martian canal craze last century. Many astronomers believed it until better telescopes completely debunked the theory. I observe Mars regularly from my observatory. There are no Martian canals. Or at least none we can see from our planet.”
“THAT’S TOO BAD!” Taft shouted. “I WAS ABOUT TO ASK YOU TO FLY TO ITALY WHEN YOU WERE DONE IN ALASKA!”
Robert dismissed this. “I couldn’t interview Schiaparelli if I wanted to. He died two weeks ago on the Fourth of July.”9
Taft stared at Robert, dumbfounded.
“Turn the wheel, you beanhead!” Wilkie yelled from the backseat. The steamer was veering into oncoming traffic at Iowa Circle.
“BEJESUS! HOLD ON!” Taft made a sharp right onto the sidewalk and into Iowa Circle’s small park. The auto sped headlong toward a statue of Union General John A. Logan, prompting Taft to steer in a tight circle around the equestrian.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Robert offered.
“BOB, JUST POINT ME HOME AND EVERYTHING WILL BE BULLY!”
Robert reached into his pocket and pulled out a compass. It was spinning like a pinwheel. “That road will take us straight to the White House,” he directed, pointing southwest.
“UH…” The tiny park and its twelve paths rushed past Taft like a merry-go-round. “WHICH ONE? THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME!”
“The one with the Washington Monument behind it.”
“Just get us the hell out of here!” In the back, Wilkie was desperately trying to hold on to his boater hat. And his hair.
Taft aimed for the monument, but steered his wheel a little too late. The car tore through grass until it was out of the park, sputtering westward down Rhode Island Avenue.
“Enough of this.” Wilkie shoved Agents Sloan and Jervis aside and stuck his head between Robert and Taft. “Mr. President, as the man most responsible for your life, I must report that you’re on the verge of getting yourself killed!”
“COOL YOUR COALS, HOTHEAD!” Taft honked the horn until Wilkie returned to his seat. “SO, MARTIANS ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF THE PICTURE?” the president asked Mr. Lincoln.
Robert fell silent as he considered this.
“BOB?”
“No,” he answered. “Not entirely. There are a few things that concern me about Mars once you add Alaska to the equation.”
“LET’S HEAR ’EM! AND KEEP IT SIMPLE!”
“Evolution,” began Robert. “Wells based a lot of The War of the Worlds on Darwin. In my research, I never found anything more compelling about life on Earth than how closely we resemble our planet. Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is water. So is about seventy percent of the human body. Even large animals like elephants are seventy percent water.”
Taft smiled at this, taking it as a nod to the Republican Party.
“If there is or ever was life on Mars, it had to adapt to an environment with freezing temperatures and much less water than we have on Earth.”
“WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ALASKA?”
“Mars doesn’t have water. It has ice!”
“Watch the road…” Wilkie grumbled.
Taft zigzagged the steamer past a trolley and onto the north side of Scott Circle.
“Make a right at that fish wagon onto Sixteenth Street,” said Robert.
“TOO LATE!” Taft accidently steered into a different fish wagon on Massachusetts Avenue, destroying it. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
“WILKIE! WHAT KIND OF WAGON WAS THAT?”
The Secret Service chief quickly studied the wreck behind them. “There’s a big sign that says ‘kipper.’”
“YES, THAT’S WHAT I SMELLED! HAVE SOMEONE FROM THE TREASURY REIMBURSE THAT MAN! ALSO, HAVE THEM BRING HOME SOME OF THAT FISH!”
A frustrated Wilkie reached into his jacket for his pad and a pencil.
“SO, BACK TO THE RED PLANET!”
Robert picked up where he left off. “We have known about the Martian polar ice caps for centuries. We know they grow and shrink at different seasons, just like ours. We know Mars has an axial tilt similar to Earth’s. We even know the Martian day is approximately twenty-four hours long. If Martians, assuming they exist, need a cold environment with conditions similar to their own, Alaska would be a convenient location for them on Earth.”
“GREAT! AND HOW DID THEY COME OVER?”
“Will, we’re talking well beyond any reasonable—”
“JUST TELL ME HOW WE WOULD DO IT!”
After a moment’s thought, Robert replied, “Newton’s cannonball.”
The president gave Robert another confused look.
“Dupont Circle,” one of the men from the back seat called out.
Taft looped the car around the intersection and onto New Hampshire Avenue. “You should have taken Connecticut Avenue,” Wilkie pestered, but Taft ignored him.
“It is theoretically possible to journey into outer space,” Robert continued. “However, I suggest we lower our voices for the rest of the ride.”
“OH!” Taft gasped. “Sorry! So, Newton’s cannon…”
“Cannonball.”
“Is there a big gun involved, or is this just something he made up to prove a point?”
“It’s a bit of both, actually. The idea is if you fired a cannon high enough, you would be able to shoot something out of orbit. Jules Verne used it in From the Earth to the Moon, as did Georges Méliès in one of his moving picture shows. In 1903, a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky dismissed the idea as unrealistic. He said it would be impossible to design a gun barrel long enough for it to work. However, that same year he determined space exploration could be accomplished using liquid-fueled rockets.10 I have examined Tsiolkovsky’s research, Will, and believe me: It is brilliant. Space exploration is inevitable, and I am convinced Tsiolkovsky’s method will be what first puts a human out of orbit. But…”
“But what?” Taft and the five men in the back were listening closely.
“This”—Robert patted the timepiece in his right coat pocket—“changes everything. It proves there is a power source in Alaska that even the greatest scientific minds in the world don’t know about. Rocketry is much more feasible than anything Isaac Newton or Jules Verne envisioned, but that�
�s because rockets are within the means of modern technology. A spaceship built using the same mechanics as this pocket watch could travel for decades rather than minutes. It would be as if Newton’s cannonball shot itself into space without any powder, or Tsiolkovsky’s rockets without liquid fuel. That’s how you make interplanetary travel possible. Turn here.”
Taft, nearly forgetting he was behind the wheel, steered off the empty sidewalk and back onto Washington Square.
“I think you know the way from here,” Robert offered.
“Oh, yes.” Taft raced around George Washington’s bronze equestrian and onto Pennsylvania Avenue. After traveling nearly four thousand miles from a pub in London, the president was less than one mile away from his home. “So, are you expecting to find some Martian equivalent to Newton’s cannonball in Alaska?” Taft asked.
“Honestly, no. Not at all.”
“Why not?”
“You read that transmission we intercepted. Those ‘gentlemen’ said they were recovering bodies and materials, not spaceships.”
“I believe you, Bob, but we’re both lawyers. You know as well as I do that that ciphertext wouldn’t hold up in court as evidence that these gents were talking about Alaska. For all we know, they were prospectors drilling oil, trying to recover dead workers and lost equipment.”
“And attempting to murder Nikola Tesla?”
“That part is most unsettling, Bob, no doubt about that. Unfortunately, Dr. Tesla’s little lightning machine left us without so much as a fingernail of his would-be assassin. I want to know who wanted Tesla dead as much as you do, but with no body we have no bread crumbs for you or the Justice Department to follow.”
“I accept that,” Robert acknowledged. “And I want you to know I respect the Justice Department’s decision to investigate that strange matter in New York without my involvement. I just hope they don’t find anything that prompts you or Wickersham to send in the cavalry with guns blazing. The fewer moving pieces there are to this puzzle, the easier it will be for us to solve.”
“For you to solve!” Taft corrected. “Bob, you’re more than welcome to play bloodhound in Alaska, but I have an appointment with my wife to keep! Speaking of which…” The president accelerated his roaring steamer straight for the White House.
“However,” Robert continued, “I still can’t figure out why Halley’s comet figures into this, never mind how. There are mines and rigs throughout the country; only the Wrangell Mountains showed irregularities. If these ‘gentlemen’ found something foreign to Earth in Alaska, why wait until we passed through Halley’s comet to extract it? If there is a connection between the two, how could anyone possibly have known about it?”
“Is it possible the Martians used the comet as a vehicle?” Taft asked. “It’s supposed to be a big ball of ice, right? That sounds like something they could travel quite comfortably on if they prefer the cold.”
Robert took off his glasses and cleaned them as the car neared Lafayette Square. “I think that would be extremely unlikely. There are plenty of comets out there, Will, and Halley’s comet has been documented for millennia. We have Babylonian tablets, the Bayeux Tapestry, Renaissance paintings, and now the dying witticisms of Mark Twain as testament to it. If Martians went through the trouble of figuring out how to travel all the way to Earth, I doubt they would have abandoned their primary mode of transportation.”
“What if it was meant to be a one-way trip?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if they never intended to leave Earth?”
Robert was about to laugh, but caught himself. “Do you mean like Ellis Island or Plymouth Rock?”
“Weren’t they both buried under two miles of ice at one point?”
Taft and Robert shared a long, uncomfortable look with each other as they considered that maybe, just maybe, humanity evolved from an ancient ancestor far stranger and more disturbing than anything Charles Darwin could have imagined.
“Cow,” said Wickersham.
Taft looked over his shoulder. “Cow?”
Wilkie drew his revolver. “Cow!”
Standing straight in the auto’s path was a Holstein blissfully grazing the White House North Lawn.
“PAULINE!” Taft turned the steering wheel as far left as he could, narrowly sparing the life of the beloved White House cow, Miss Pauline Wayne. The experience left her panicking.
“WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING ON THE NORTH LAWN?” Taft shouted. “She usually grazes in the South Lawn.”
“Mr. President, the brakes!” urged Wickersham.
“The breaks?”
The speeding steamer was on a collision course with Mrs. Taft’s beautiful 1909 Pierce-Arrow 36 H.P. landaulet parked outside the White House North Portico.
“The brakes!” shouted Robert.
“Where are they?”
“There!” Robert pointed at a lever on Taft’s side. “Pull that!”
Taft pulled the lever with all his strength, plucking it clean off the car like a dandelion. “It’s broken!” he cried.
“You’re supposed to squeeze the handle!” screamed Wilkie.
Taft tried squeezing it. “It isn’t working!”
“God damn this day…” Wilkie swore. The Secret Service chief holstered his pistol and discarded his boater hat. “I’ll get the big guy!” he shouted. Secret Service Agents Sloan, Jervis, and Wheeler rushed into action, helping Robert and Wickersham off the auto and onto the grass. Wilkie, meanwhile, seized Taft from behind in a mighty bear hug and, with all his strength, leaped out of the car with the president in his arms. Taft and his bodyguard tumbled onto the North Lawn, stopping just in time to see the White Model M obliterate Mrs. Taft’s blue landaulet. As the Model M’s boiler exploded, Wilkie buried Taft’s face in the grass and used his body to shield the president. Once the explosions were over, Wilkie whistled. Agents Sloan, Jervis, and Wheeler helped their three protectees back onto their feet.
“Are you all right, Mr. President?” asked Wilkie, his mustard suit completely stained with grass and what he hoped was mud.
“Yes, I am, John,” Taft exhaled. “Thank you.” The president patted his savior on the shoulder and took a few steps toward the roaring fire consuming both autos. As Taft’s blue eyes followed the growing cloud of smoke and steam in the air, he spied a figure looking down at him from the mansion’s second-floor sitting room. The figure slipped back into the darkness of the White House and closed the curtains, causing Taft’s heart to sink like a stone.
The president lowered his head and turned around. “Is everyone in one piece?” he asked. Aside from their ruined suits, the six men he had been riding with appeared unhurt. “Bob?” he asked Robert, who was anxiously checking his coat pockets. Once he found what he was looking for, Robert looked at Taft and nodded.
The distraught president breathed in relief and took one last look at the burning autos. “Sorry, fellas. I’m not a very good motorist,” Taft confessed.
“We know,” said Wilkie.
But, with more important matters to attend to, Taft dusted himself off and straightened his mustache. “Well,” he chirped, “we didn’t come here to roast marshmallows. Let’s go inside and inspect the real damage.”
The group walked up the stairs of the North Portico. There was no doorman, so Taft knocked on its dark wooden doors. It was the first time he had ever done so.
The door creaked open ever so slightly—just far enough for someone to stick both barrels of a shotgun in the president’s face.
Chapter VII
“Mr. President! Thank God You’re Here.”
White House chief usher Irwin H. Hoover lowered his Remington Model 1900 from the president’s head.
“Hello, Ike. Nice haircut.” Taft could not remember the last time he had seen the man so unkempt.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. We have been under siege since midday. Please, come in.” Mr. Hoover nervously opened the North Portico doors and just as quickly locked them behind Taft and
his men. “Mr. President,” Hoover bowed, “Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Wilkie, Mr. Wickersham, Agents Sloan, Wheeler, Jervis. Welcome to the White House.”
The Entrance Hall of the White House was very much what you would expect from its exterior. It was opulent, spacious, and so stratospherically white that it looked like it was slathered with wedding cake icing. Its six Doric columns seemed two or four columns too many for a man of Taft’s modesty. The hall’s gold mirrors, though large and stately, were frequent, unfriendly reminders of how desperately the president needed more exercise. Far worse was the Entrance Hall’s low-hanging chandelier. That obnoxious creation was imprisoned in an oversized gold lantern as punishment for its assault on good taste. Even the gold emblem in the center of the hall’s marble floor troubled Taft. Whenever he crossed it, he feared the gold lantern above it would descend and trap him in the White House forever like a fly in a jar. It was hardly a welcoming experience for this president.
And lastly, Taft sighed as he observed the west wall, was John Singer Sargent’s famed portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. There he stood proudly, silently, watching, waiting. Following your every move as if about to inquire what the hell you were doing in his mansion. He had the eyes of a hunter and the trigger finger to go with it. Within the portrait, his right hand gripped—almost groped—a round wooden newel as if about to trigger a booby trap right under your feet. Or perhaps open a secret passage to some underground lair. Or maybe blow up a bridge in some faraway country. The man’s motives were as unknown as his plans for the 1912 election, but there he stood triumphant. Already back in the White House. Theodore Rex.
Taft twitched his mustache.
To his right were four valets dressed in fine livery. They were brandishing M1895 Lee Navy rifles in the Ushers’ Room behind overturned furniture. To Taft’s left, a small squadron of doormen, footmen, cooks, maids, and butlers guarded the Grand Staircase in a phalanx formation several chests deep. The militia was armed with carbines, Henry rifles, Smith & Wesson Model 3s, musketoons, rifle muskets, a blunderbuss, and a vast assortment of kitchen knives. Commanding them was White House custodian Arthur Brooks, a former officer in the DC National Guard. He had a Browning Auto-5 shotgun in his steady hands. Like the four ushers on Taft’s right, Arthur Brooks was a man of color, something that upset quite a few Washingtonian snobs Nellie Taft could not possibly give a goddamn about. Mr. Brooks was Nellie’s closest adviser and confidant at the White House, so seeing him so heavily armed was all Taft needed to know whom he was guarding upstairs.
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy: A Novel Page 6
