Taft bit into it, and …
Almonds!
Whether it was cyanide or not, Taft figured it would take a lot more than one dose to kill him. He finished his chocolate and helped himself to another.
The gentlemen smiled proudly. “I am pleased to see I have so overwhelmingly earned your trust, Mr. President.”
“Actually,” Taft said, chewing, “my wife figured that if you wanted me dead, you would have done it a while ago.”
The gentleman continued smiling, but for a moment it seemed forced. “Yes. Your wife is most perceptive, Mr. President.” Once again, Taft shifted in his seat. The gentleman enunciated every word with too much saliva in his mouth. “How is she?”
Taft scowled. “She wants her son back. As do I.”
The gentleman licked his white teeth as he heard this. “Did she enjoy the anniversary gift?” He motioned toward the skull.
Taft’s gaze intensified with anger.
“I must confess, Mr. President, I was not expecting you to bring it. However, now that it is here, I think it makes the perfect centerpiece for our discussion.”
“Enough talk, you skinny buzzard. Who the hell are you?”
The delighted gentleman folded his hands as if he was watching an infant take his first steps. “Since you have blessed me with your confidence, Mr. President, it is my pleasure to introduce myself and the purpose of this meeting. My name is Basil Zaharoff, and I am here to facilitate a peaceful transaction between the United States government and parties that must not be named.” He sat back and smiled.
“Where is my son?”
“Mr. President, before we get to the matter of—”
Taft rose to his feet. His large belly forced the table forward. “Where is my son?”
The four gunmen raised their shotguns to Taft’s face while the gentleman waited patiently. “Mr. President, I can assure you with full confidence that your son is safe. The young man is unharmed; he is in this building, and nothing would make me happier than to have the two of you reunited.”
“Let me see him,” Taft demanded.
The gentleman pressed his hands to his lips as if in prayer. “Mr. President, I must insist that we continue this conversation seated.” Two gunmen hurried over and shoved Taft back into his chair. “For the sake of decorum, of course.” As the gentleman spoke these words, the thug with the bandaged hand smacked the president upside the head.
“You don’t know the meaning of the word, you stupid nincompoop!” Taft growled.
“Mr. President, I am a master of many languages.”
“Good. Then answer me in plain English: Where is my son?”
The gentleman signaled one of his guards to fetch something from another room. “Mr. President, as a legal man, I trust you are mentally fit to act as your own attorney?”
Taft’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“Are you of sound mind? Is your brain fully functional?”
Taft’s eyes were aflame with fury. “Oh, I can think of a number of things I’d like to do to you right now!”
“Good,” said the unaffected gentleman. “Because I included an insanity clause.”
A mystified Taft looked to the man’s left and saw a gunman return with a briefcase. The thug opened it for the gentleman, who carefully emptied its contents.
“Where is my son?” Taft insisted.
“Just a moment, Mr. President.”
Taft leaped back to his feet. “WHERE IS MY SON?”
The gunmen forced the president back down while Basil removed a piece of paper from the suitcase. “Here!” he offered eagerly, extending the document across the table.
Surrounded by primed shotguns, Taft seized the parchment angrily. As he looked it over, the blood in his veins went cold.
“What is this?” he whispered breathlessly.
The document was covered with rust-colored writing.
“What is this!”
“Mr. President,” said the gentleman, grinning, “that document is your son!”
It was an executive order written in blood.
Taft roared like a wounded animal and reached across the table, but the gunmen held him back. The enraged president attacked one of them with a throat strike, but the thug with the bandaged hand knocked the president in the groin with the butt of his shotgun.
Taft collapsed into his chair while the gunmen rushed around the table to guard their master. “Mr. President, I am nothing more than a messenger,” said the gentleman. “I come bearing gifts of peace and the wisdom of honest words. If you want your son back, you must sign that document.”
“I’ll kill you with my bare hands!” Taft foamed, writhing in pain.
“Mr. President…” The gentleman disapprovingly shook his head. “Your hands are capable of so much more than that. My employer is a great harvester of hands, and to save your son, you must use yours. You will use your executive powers to abolish the U.S. Constitution. You will abolish the U.S. Congress and the judiciary. You will dissolve the union between the states. You will disband the U.S. military. And then, you will resign your office, as will all your secretaries and ministers.”
“Never!” Taft snarled.
“Mr. President, you must comply.”
“You’ll never get away with this! Even if you gutted the whole goddamn government, Teddy Roosevelt would take my place! You know he would!”
This proposal caught Basil Zaharoff by surprise. His employers had not considered it. “Then he will be executed,” said the gentleman. “Along with all his children.”
“You inhuman monster…”
“I am quite human, Mr. President.”
“Tell me my son is alive right now!”
“Mr. President,” laughed the gentleman, “only you have that power. Your son is here! On this campus! You can be reunited with him tonight if you only put a pen to that parchment.”
The guards placed an inkwell and an ivory pen in front of Taft. As the president’s hopeless eyes fell upon them, he realized the inkwell was filled with red liquid and the ivory pen was a finger bone.
“Who are you working for?” Taft insisted. Tears were streaming down his face.
“Mr. President, you must respect their privacy.”
“Is it Morgan? Guggenheim? Tell me!”
“Mr. President,” the gentleman said with a smirk, “I can assure you that neither Mr. Morgan nor Mr. Guggenheim know anything about this.”
Taft gasped. Not Morgan? Not the Guggenheims? “Then who?” he demanded. “Who are you working for?”
“Mr. President, please. I am trying to spare your life.”
Chapter XXVII
The Universe of Battle
Several stories beneath the battle for Yale campus, Robert Todd Lincoln, Chief Wilkie, and sixteen Secret Service agents raced through the university’s underground network of steam tunnels. It was a dark, humid place illuminated only by flashlights and wide enough for only two men at a time. It seemed to stretch on forever, and the agents had no blueprints to work with. Fortunately, John Hays Hammond and some of the bravest undergraduates in Yale history had been able to discover which passage led to the Skull and Bones tomb years ago. It was how Wilkie and his men planned to rescue their president without anyone on the surface knowing, and Robert Todd Lincoln was their guide.
“Which way, Bob?” asked the Secret Service chief at a crossing.
“Hold here!” called Robert, forcing the men to stop. Scattered across this central hub were hundreds of capsule-shaped objects that glistened like amber under the men’s flashlights.
“What the devil?” asked Wilkie. “Did someone try to Hansel-and-Gretel his way through this place?”
“John, step away!” Robert shouted. He was terrified of the effect Wilkie’s cigar might have on the objects. As he crouched and put on some white kid gloves, Robert asked, “Can you give me your knife?” Using Wilkie’s puukko, Robert studied the capsules while the chief and his agents watched impatiently.
&nb
sp; “Mr. Lincoln, whatever they are, I’m sure we can hopscotch our way through this.”
Robert’s attention was elsewhere. The objects were the same shape and size as medicine capsules, only with a sickly color like brown mustard. Robert considered cutting one of them in half until he spotted specks of dirt sticking to their underside. He then noticed a waxy sheen left behind on his gloves and knife.
Robert froze.
“Enough of this,” huffed Wilkie. “Mr. Lincoln, I’m stepping through.”
“John,” Robert choked out, “this is the superweapon.”
Shocked, Wilkie shined his trembling flashlight on the capsules and backed away slowly. “What are these, Mr. Lincoln?”
“They’re time-dissolving capsules,” spoke Robert. “Tablets coated with a material that reacts instantly to air. In a matter of time, the coating will dissolve and expose whatever material is inside. If they contain what I think they do, the explosion would surge through the steam tunnels, killing all of us. I don’t believe it.” He gasped. “They found a way to turn the whole university into a weapon.”
As the men stared speechlessly at one another, Robert whipped out a handkerchief and started collecting the yellow capsules.
“What are you doing!” hollered Wilkie. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
“No, I’m trying to save us all! I can neutralize the reaction by putting the capsules into a desiccator. The Kent Laboratory should have plenty of them.”
“That laboratory is a fortress! You’ll get killed from three directions if you try to enter it.”
“The Peabody Museum, then.” Robert stopped working and looked up at the confused men around him. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”
“You heard the man!” Wilkie ordered. One by one, the agents closest to Robert took off their coats and crouched down. “Sorry, Jimmy, but you’ll have to surrender your hat.” The chief took Agent Sloan’s boater hat, wiped the sweat from it, and threw it into the ring for the men to put their capsules into.
“Gloves! Gloves!” cautioned Robert.
“Mr. Wilkie!” shouted Agent Barker from afar. “We can’t get close enough!”
“I know!” Wilkie grumbled. The chief chewed his cigar and came to a decision. “Bowen, Murphy: You two are going to the Skull and Bones tomb with me. Here, give me that dynamite.… The rest of you, help Mr. Lincoln with his cleanup and escort him wherever he needs to go.”
“Aye, chief,” they answered.
Robert looked up from the ground. “John, are you sure you’ll be able to rescue the president with only two agents?”
“Are you mad, man? I’m going, too!” Wilkie shouted, pointing his gun to his own heart.
“John, do you even know how to get to the Tomb?”
After an embarrassingly long silence, Wilkie responded, “Well, are you going to tell me or not?”
* * *
Back on the surface, the Steam Department building was under siege. Although Airship One continued to rain death from above, the twenty Buffalo Soldiers on the ground continued their valiant defense against relentless opposition.
One of these brave warriors was James “Bell Bottom Jack” Jackson.
“Soldier!” shouted Robert Todd Lincoln.
Sergeant Jackson turned around to see fifteen men race up the staircase. “What is it, Mr. Lincoln?”
“We need to get into the Peabody Museum,” he panted. “Can your men cover us?”
“Whoa … Mr. Lincoln, you don’t want to go there. That place is a hornet’s nest! The president’s son is in there.”
Robert nearly dropped the bundle of capsules he was carrying. “They found him?”
“Where is he?” asked Agent Sloan, whose boater had never looked so filthy.
“He’s tied up in the basement. One of our men saw him through the windows when we tried to flank the museum. We couldn’t get to him, but we’ve notified the major. He’s already dropping men to take the building.” Robert and his bodyguards looked out the window to see twenty, maybe thirty soldiers descending onto the museum.
“Mr. Lincoln!”
Agents Sloan and Wheeler pulled Robert away from the window just as two bullets whizzed past his head.
“If you need to get in there, it’s not going to be pretty,” warned Sergeant Jackson. “A race through those doors will be like charging Fort Wagner.”
“What about the Kent Laboratory?” asked Wheeler.
“We can’t help you there. My men are needed to cover the major’s assault. Just wait a few minutes, and the museum will be ours.”
“Sergeant, we have no time! We found the weapon of the enemy.” Robert lifted his bundle. “The museum is the only place we can neutralize it.”
After thinking this over, Sergeant Jackson blew a brass whistle. Soldiers stationed throughout the building rushed toward him while he signaled Airship One with his flashlight. “If that’s the case, you’re coming with us, Mr. Lincoln.”
Robert and the Secret Service agents nodded and waited.
And waited.
And then …
BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!
The enemy gunfire stopped. The Buffalo Soldiers charged out of the building with Robert Todd Lincoln surrounded by Secret Service agents behind them. More soldiers slid down lines onto the museum like spiders.
BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!
The charging cavalrymen opened fire while the soldiers on the roof broke through the museum’s windows. Airship One flashed its searchlights through the building, exposing its terrified occupants to sharpshooter fire.
BRRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWRWRRRMRMRMMRMRMMMMM!
The Ninth Cavalry reached and breached the museum’s main entrance, destroying its barricades with the butts of their rifles. As Robert rushed into the building alongside his protectors, his heart slowed to a near stop. He was completely unprepared for the awful yet awe-inspiring universe of battle being waged inside the Peabody Museum.
Robert watched in stunned silence as the Buffalo Soldiers operated on the museum like gifted surgeons. Every single shot was perfectly timed to Airship One’s mighty horn. Crystals and precious metals glittered with gunfire. The soldiers took positions behind mineral displays and dinosaur bones with clockwork precision. Four men opened fire from behind the skeleton of an ancient sea turtle more than thirteen feet high. Some enemies were shot through rows and rows of glass cases. Others were ambushed by Buffalo Soldiers hidden behind massive brontosaurus bones. One villain was shot in front of a claosaurus display, splattering his blood all over the broken lizard. Another enemy suffered the indignity of being crushed by a giant octopus suspended above him. Room by room, floor by floor, the battle moved through the building while Robert Todd Lincoln and the Secret Service raced to the basement. They had a superweapon to disarm and the president’s eldest son to rescue.
But who would be downstairs waiting for them? Would it be a bound and gagged Bob Taft, or would it be the cruel gunmen who abducted him?
It was both.
Chapter XXVIII
Skull and Bones
A deep rumble shook Skull and Bones Hall, wiping the smile from Basil’s face. “C’était quoi ça?” he asked his henchmen.
Realizing that help had come at last, Taft regained his senses and let his blood cool. He leaned back in his wooden chair and innocently tapped his chest with his fist. “Excuse me,” he added, hoping to pass the recent rumble as indigestion.
It did not work.
Unnerved, Basil stood up and whispered to the guard with the bandaged hand. As the gunman left the room, the anxious gentleman glanced at the grandfather clock in the dining hall. He compared its time to the magnificent pocket watch on his waistcoat.
Taft’s eyes focused like binoculars on the silver timepiece. “That’s a very interesting pocket watch you’ve got there.”
“Yes, it is,” Basil said impatiently.
“You mind telling me where you got it?”
“Mr. Presiden
t, we already gave your wife an anniversary present,” snapped the gentleman. “Clearly, it did not make a strong enough impression. Next time, I will simply suggest some more arsenic.”
The entire world around William Howard Taft slowed and dimmed. “What did you say?” he whispered.
Basil scowled. “How did a simpleton like yourself ever get elected president? While I am impressed you felled our android and discovered our experiment in Alaska, I attribute that more to our failings than to your mental faculties.”
“What did you say about my wife?” Taft repeated slowly and clearly.
“Mr. President,” a bullying Basil smirked, “do you think it was coincidence that your wife fell ill so soon into your tenure? Your Secret Service chief discovered the bomb we planted at the White House for your inauguration.37 We had no choice but to change our tactics once you assumed the presidency.”
“What did you do to my wife?”
An amused Basil Zaharoff grinned menacingly and swaggered between the silver skull and the portrait of Taft’s father. “Mr. President, your nation should not have stepped upon the world’s stage so unprepared to play the greatest game. Kingdoms and countries are commodities where I come from. All my employers did was challenge you to a friendly game of chess. And in my experience, when facing an opponent who does not know how to play, you simply rob him of his queen.”
Taft twitched his mustache, and then he attacked.
The president shoved the dining table forward with both hands, knocking Basil and two of his guards to the floor. As the third thug raised his shotgun, Taft seized the silver skull and lobbed it at the man as if it were opening day at National Park. The shining orb hit the gunman like a cannonball to the face, sending him crashing into the grandfather clock behind him. Both the man and the clock fell silent. Taft then leaped across the table for Zaharoff, but the coward fled through the great hall’s double doors. The two gunmen on the ground scurried to their feet and aimed their weapons, but Taft got the drop on them. He landed heavily against both men, forcing them back to the ground. While crushing one of the thugs under his weight, Taft seized the other by the throat and smashed his head against the table like a glass bottle. The gunman’s neck snapped instantly.
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy Page 20