by Jerry Ahern
Jack opened his eyes and looked again at his very beautiful sound asleep wife. Jack resettled his gun belt, tugged down the brim of his hat and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
After the comparatively brief train trip from Cheyenne to Denver, Jack and Ellen registered at the Hotel Grande Excelsior, taking the rather optimistically named Presidential Suite. Both bathed; then, hair still a little wet and Jack’s beard stubble shaved away, they dressed.
“So, where do we find Teddy Roosevelt?”
Jack looked at his leather-cased Rolex. “In exactly three hours, his special will be pulling in at the train station, where we arrived.”
“And?”
“Well—”
“Oh, we’re gonna wing it.”
“Well, I’ve got some ideas on how we’ll get to meet him.”
Ellen laughed. “I know. ‘We’re from the future.’ That’ll be good enough to get us hauled off to the booby hatch.”
Jack smiled and reassured her, “Well, at least we’ll be together, darling.”
Ellen hoped the wrinkles would fall out of her dress. She didn’t want to be committed to an asylum in something tacky looking.
In reality, Jack had a plan, hatched before they left the ranch, when he remembered something that he had read years earlier about Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, ever the scholar, had studied in Germany during his youth. It followed that a man with such an inquisitive mind would have picked up at least a decent command of spoken German and an even better skill level when it was written.
The documents taken from the Lakewood Industries couriers hyped technology not yet dreamed of, a tantalizing taste of the future. The mere idea of something like an M-16 rifle would be irresistible to one of the few men who would carry a revolver in his hip pocket during his presidency.
McKinley had not yet been assassinated; Lincoln’s death was a bitter national tragedy three and one-half decades old, Garfield’s 1881 assassination was still fresh in memory. Theodore Roosevelt was, after all, only a vice-presidential candidate in an era when seeing an armed man or any number of armed men at a political rally didn’t even arouse suspicion.
In such an environment, it would be possible—certainly for a pretty woman like Ellen—to rush up to Governor Roosevelt’s platform at the rear of his train and shove a handful of documents toward him.
Jack freely admitted to himself that his “plan” had the serious potential for failure, but it was the best that he had. If Ellen got the documents to Roosevelt and Colonel Roosevelt even glanced at them, he’d be hooked. Attached to the documents was a letter with little more than their names and the name of the hotel at which they would be staying until the following morning. Glued to the letter, saved from the handful of pocket change Jack Naile had inadvertently carried with him into the past, was an ordinary dime, a caption beneath it reading, “Do you recognize the profile of your eighteen-year-old cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Note the date that this coin was/will be minted: 1990.”
Would Roosevelt come, inquire about the strange references to future technology available to the highest bidder?
The future of history was at stake in a game of chance unlike any other ever played.
The crowd at the rail station was mixed. There were uniformed soldiers, some of whom might have served with Theodore Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War. Men in suits and working clothes. Women in their customary long skirts and dresses and omnipresent hats, some with children in their arms or held in the viselike grip of a gloved hand. There were placards waving, hand written signs of support for McKinley and Roosevelt. And there were other signs, far fewer in number, decrying “Expansionism!” and “Imperialism!” and supporting the rival Democratic candidacy of the already once-defeated William Jennings Bryan.
Ellen, standing close beside Jack, remarked, “It’s interesting, isn’t it? Almost no one remembers Bryan as a political candidate, really. He’s mostly remembered as the man who locked horns with Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Monkey Trial.”
Before Jack could respond, a band struck up a lively air, the quality of its repertoire closely akin to that often associated with high school musicians still struggling with coordinating such things as embouchure and notation. The level of sincerity was essentially identical.
The special was coming slowly along the track, accompanied by the smell of burning coal, the hiss of steam, the squeaks and rattles and the almost human sigh as the engine slowed still more. The crowd—supporters and protesters alike—closed over the rails behind the train in a wave. Somehow, the band sounded a little better, the placards waved a little higher. Small American flags were raised at the ends of upstretched arms.
Propelling Ellen ahead of him by the elbow, Jack wriggled his way through the crowd, dodging a little girl in a pink coat and pink hat and hair bows, edging round a burly cavalry buck sergeant, slipping in front of a clerically collared minister or priest.
The door at the rear of the last car opened and the crowd went wild with noise as the forty-two-year-old military hero and governor of New York stepped out onto the small, flag-draped, balconylike structure. Arms raised, a smile on his full face, a glint of sunlight, as if on cue, catching his glasses, Teddy Roosevelt clearly reveled in the adulation.
One of the protestors shouted something unintelligible as he rushed forward, waving his placard like a sword. An army officer emerged from the doorway just behind the vice-presidential candidate and started to interpose himself between Roosevelt and the protestor.
Roosevelt shouldered the officer aside, leaned over the wrought-iron railing of his train car and glared at the protestor. In a voice not terribly remarkable except that it could be heard over the din, Roosevelt challenged, “You wish to speak with me, sir?!”
The protestor stopped his charge cold. The crowd of Roosevelt supporters pushed the fainthearted protestor back, man and sign disappearing within the mass of humanity.
Unflappable, Roosevelt was back in form, arms raised, the familiar toothy grin flashing.
The band was winding down its brassy tune. Jack had Ellen almost in reach of the train car’s black railing. “I’ll give it to the army officer, Jack! That’ll be better.”
“Okay! Now, kid!”
The band stopped.
Ellen stood outstretched, the envelope in her gloved right hand inches from the army officer.
Theodore Roosevelt looked down at her and smiled. “Thank you for coming today, madam.”
Roosevelt looked up and raised his voice and declared to all present, “It is with utmost sincerity that I declare that it is a feeling unmatched by any other to return, once again, to the American West and to the city which is the jewel at the center of our continent!”
Ellen shoved the envelope against the officer’s hand several times before he turned his head and looked at her. Shoving the envelope toward the man, she pointed the first finger of her other hand toward Theodore Roosevelt.
The officer—he was a captain—took the envelope from her, and Ellen sank back against Jack. Jack retreated with her into the crowd—but not too far.
Jack bent to whisper in his wife’s ear, “Let’s enjoy the moment for a while, Ellen.”
Ellen leaned her head against his shoulder.
There came a knock at their hotel room door. Ellen answered it. As she opened the door, the face she looked into was almost at eye level with her own, and she remembered that Theodore Roosevelt, a strong and burly man, was not a particularly tall one.
“Madam. May I present myself? I am Theodore Roosevelt. The gentleman with me is Captain Rogers. I had the occasion to peruse the rather odd packet with which you supplied him for my edification. Forgive me if I assume that you and the gentleman—your husband?” Ellen nodded. “Forgive me if I assume that you and your husband wished to speak with me.”
“Yes, sir, on a matter of great importance.”
“Well, then I most humbly suggest, madam, that we adjourn to som
e more suitable location. My train awaits on a siding, and I have several more scheduled stops to make before returning to New York. Hence, time is literally of the essence.”
“Time is, indeed, the essence of our discussion and the dilemma that it will present, Governor Roosevelt.” Jack’s voice registered from behind her. “I am Jack Naile, Governor Roosevelt.” Jack extended his hand, and Theodore Roosevelt clasped it briefly. “And, sir, may I have the honor to present my wife, Ellen.”
His hat already removed, Theodore Roosevelt bowed his head slightly and took her hand as she extended it. He held it for an instant, his handshake dry, firm, exuding strength without ever exercising it. “Your servant, madam.”
Ellen felt her cheeks beginning to flush.
“Please, sir, would you join us?” Jack asked, gesturing into the suite’s sitting room, “and the captain as well, of course, if you feel that he can be taken into full confidence in a very delicate matter which could have unprecedented international repercussions.”
“The documents written in German are to what you allude, I take it?”
“Those, sir, and the coin.”
“Yes. A most fascinating coin, indeed, Mr. Naile, madam.” Roosevelt glanced over his shoulder at Captain Rogers. Taller than Roosevelt, about Jack’s height of a little under six foot, he was the youngest person there, no more than thirty. As he prepared to step away, he moved his head, and a perfect blond curl fell out of place and rested across his forehead. He brushed it away with the edge of a finger. “Captain, I will rely on your discretion that nothing which transpires here shall be spoken of to anyone without my permission.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Theodore Roosevelt stepped over the threshold, cocked his head back so that he could look Jack square in the eye and asked, “I must first inquire what fascination there exists for the number sixteen in the German documents. And then, sir, madam, what my eighteen-year-old cousin Franklin has to do with that rather interesting ten-cent piece.”
“It’s a very long story, Governor Roosevelt,” Ellen interjected. “A very long story.”
Ushering Teddy Roosevelt and Captain Rogers toward two chairs opposite a love seat, a smallish table interposed between, Jack began by saying, “I was/will be born in Chicago forty-six years from now. My father will be born in Manchester, New Hampshire, in eight years, my mother in Chicago in 1902. By then, Mr. Roosevelt, if we do not act, the world will be forever changed. In fact, at this very moment, the future may be irretrievable.”
Teddy Roosevelt stood before his chair, only seating himself as Ellen fanned her skirts to sit on the love seat. Then he spoke. “I have the horrible feeling, Mr. Naile, that you are somehow not a madman, and that I may soon wish that you were.”
“As do I,” Jack responded, his voice like death.
Aboard Theodore Roosevelt’s special car, an exchange of wires between the vice-presidential candidate and the President having taken place, Jack Naile sipped at a glass of scotch. It wasn’t as good as Glen Livet, but was decent.
On a table between them were Lizzie’s portable CD player—Theodore Roosevelt hadn’t grooved on Depeche Mode, but had dubbed Frank Sinatra “captivating”—and a half-dozen books, the earliest of which wouldn’t be published for more than fifty years. Paladin Press’ The U.S. Army Special Forces Medical Handbook Roosevelt had found “fascinating.”
Theodore Roosevelt leaned forward in his high-backed, gaudily upholstered chair. “The track will be cleared for us to Cheyenne, then Ogden, then onward to Reno. This automobile you have, Mr. Naile—it is reliable? And will seat several persons?”
“Extremely reliable, Mr. Roosevelt. It would normally seat eight, but with the rearmost seat removed it will easily accommodate yourself, Captain Rogers, my wife and myself,” Jack answered.
“Wires have been sent to various individuals, their nature at once as intentionally obtuse, yet urgent in tone, as those exchanged between myself and President McKinley. By the time this train should reach Reno, Nevada, the proof of your assertions should be in hand. And forces will be assembled. Meanwhile, personnel will be discreetly stationed to view all comings and goings at the British, French and German embassies. Lamentably, similar individuals will be posted at our own War Department and in other locations throughout the capital. If these emissaries of Lakewood Industries are afoot, they will be apprehended, and the lingering— albeit wholly understandable—doubts vouchsafed by the President will be assuaged. And then, sir, madam—then we shall act against these villains with relentless vigor!”
Teddy Roosevelt’s fist hammered down so resoundingly on the wine table beside his chair that the table legs collapsed.
Sleeping fitfully in the last few days, Ellen Naile at last found a comfortable spot on the bed. Still in her underwear, but minus her corset and her dress, Ellen Naile had cuddled under a blanket in Mr. Roosevelt’s generously offered bed. The future president’s desire for information concerning late-twentieth century technology was insatiable, yet he had agreed that Jack should tell him nothing which might in some way alter the future, unless it was necessary to their “mission at hand.”
And Jack, of course, lifelong fan of Teddy Roosevelt, was more than happy to have his hero’s undivided attention.
Sleep had seemed best to Ellen; eventually Jack would join her, Mr. Roosevelt having insisted that the married couple have the train car’s sole bed. When Jack felt like shit in the morning because he’d missed so much sleep, she would be her usual cheerful morning self.
The bedroom was a smallish compartment at the front of the railroad car, spartanly furnished with the bed itself, a straight-backed wooden chair and a small writing desk. There were books and sheaves of paper stacked neatly on the floor beside the desk. A mini-armoire served as a closet for Mr. Roosevelt’s clothes; one of its two doors was open and her dress hung suspended from a hanger to a hook on the interior of the door.
Ellen had arrived at her decision to go to sleep when Jack and Theodore Roosevelt had begun discussing Jack’s little pistol, the Seecamp .32. When conversations turned to firearms and the conversation had nothing to do with business, Ellen tuned out and shut down when possible.
A noise above her in the darkness awakened her.
She had, by this time, traveled in this train car from Denver to Cheyenne, and this was the first time she’d noticed the car’s roof creaking.
Imagination? Eyes wide open, blanket tucked up to her chin, Ellen Naile stared above her, into the darkness.
Another creaking sound, seemingly a few inches off to her left, which would have placed the origin of the noise at the precise side-to-side midpoint of the train car.
She remembered Olivia de Havilland seeing the shadows of outlaws on the roof of her train car, then trying to warn Errol Flynn that Bruce Cabot and his evil minions were about to spring Victor Jory. Were there men walking on this train? At—she turned up the lamp beside the bed and looked at her anachronistic wristwatch—four in the morning? Four in the morning! Jack was still talking with Theodore Roosevelt! Jack would be worthless until well after noon.
The cute-looking Captain Rogers, a grizzled-looking sergeant of some kind and a half-dozen soldiers and Mr. Roosevelt’s male secretary occupied the car immediately ahead of theirs. There was a coal car and the engine. If there were men on the roof of Mr. Roosevelt’s private car, where had they come from?
Could the soldiers be up there, guarding Mr. Roosevelt? Why hadn’t she heard them earlier?
Ellen kept the lamp glowing, pushed the blanket down and sat up.
“Tell Jack,” she murmured to herself.
“We will actually place men on the surface of the moon! Incredible, Mr. Naile.”
“Yes, sir. It was terrific to watch.”
“And you saw this on what you call ‘television’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I calculated correctly, you, sir, are actually older than I. By almost a decade. Why not call me Theodore?”
“That would be presumptuous of me, sir, despite your permission. It would be like calling our first president George or our sixteenth president Abe.”
“I’m only a governor, sir, and soon—if public opinion has been properly gauged—will be vice-president. When Mr. McKinley steps down, we will see what happens.”
Jack would have bitten his tongue if it would have helped. Instead, he contented himself with saying, “Pursuant to our agreement concerning future history, I cannot reveal to you, Mr. Roosevelt, when you will become president, only that you will and that you’ll be considered one of the greatest of America’s presidents.”
“I do not care for flattery, Mr. Naile.”
“Only the truth, sir. I promise you that,” Jack affirmed. “But, please, I’d be honored if you’d call me ‘Jack.’”
“Jack. Can you tell me more about this wondrous thing of men actually walking on the moon?”
“It will be in 1969, but you must never reveal that to anyone, sir. At the time, there was/will be a great deal of international tension—”
“Germans, I’d wager. But, no, don’t tell me. Go on, Jack.”
“If the date were to become known, it might have serious unforeseen consequences concerning those tensions, Mr. Roosevelt.”
“Does everyone in the future have one of these television devices?”
“Yes, sir, in the developed countries virtually everyone has at least one. Ellen and I were only recently married at the time and didn’t have one. I got a great deal on a demonstrator model at Sears—”
“Sears & Roebuck?”
“The very same, sir.”
“Bully for them! I like success. Go on.”
“Well, sir, one of the astronauts—his name was/will be Neil Armstrong, a very courageous aviator—piloted the lunar module down to the surface and said—”
“There are men on the train car’s roof.”
Jack dropped his long since emptied glass; it landed on the carpet between his feet and didn’t break. Ellen stood just inside the main portion of the train car, the bedroom compartment’s door ajar behind her, a gray blanket clutched tightly around her upper body like some oversized shawl. She jerked the thumb of her free hand toward the roof. “Up there, Jack! Men walking on the roof. I heard them!”