“So if I could get myself to Switzerland—”
“No.” He grinned. “You’d have to speak German. But if you picked up a phone on July 14, 1911, in Paris, all government offices closed, and made a certain phone call”—he grinned again—“in good idiomatic French, of course, you’d have accomplished the same thing in quite a different way and for different reasons. Hell, if you could even speak English the way the English do, and could hang around on the public sidewalk outside the House of Commons between noon and twelve-forty on May nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, or twenty-second—it wouldn’t matter which—in 1912, a certain young aide of Joseph Chamberlain would come along. I could supply you with two good photographs as he looked then. And if you simply stepped forward and spoke about forty-five words in a nice fluty English accent, an event of that session of Parliament would have turned out differently. And would almost certainly have altered the position of England in a system of European alliances that did lead directly to war. But like most of your semiliterate countrymen, all you can do is speak plain vanilla American.”
“Oh, yeah, as they say in the old movies. And how about you?”
“I read German, French, and Italian. And can get along speaking them if you don’t mind a foot-in-the-mouth accent. Didn’t speak anything but good old ’Murcan till I joined the service and got into army history. Now I can also do fairly well reading Russian, and even printed Japanese. But for you we’ll have to have something involving only Americans, and prewar U.S. isn’t my specialty. I’d have to get to Washington, pick some brains.” He sat watching me, waiting.
“And what do you think Dr. D would say about this?”
“Oh, we both know what he’d say; I can quote from the little red book, the wise, wise sayings of the cautious Dr. D. Supercautious—I believe he carries a spare set of shoelaces. But we’re not talking about changing the past, Si; it would be a restoration. The old newspaper tells us that.” He hunched forward over the table toward me. “The twentieth century, Si, should have been the best, the happiest, the human race ever knew. We were on our way in those first early years! And then the great change occurred. Something that sent us down another path. Into a war nobody needed. What we can do, Si, would not be a change but a restoration to the path the world was already on.”
“I came here for a few days. Not to see anyone, except Dr. D. Least of all you. Just a final visit, mostly to walk around. Storing up images. Like a man visiting his old hometown for the last time. Now instead”—I shook my head, laughing a little—“instead you want me to prevent—”
“Give me a week, Si. That’s all. Meet me at noon a week from today. At the old place. In the Park where we talked the very first time.”
He waited, watching me, but what rushed through my mind was not what Rube thought. My mind was screaming, Tessie and Ted. Do this, and you’ll be where Tessie and Ted are! But that’s a forbidden thing, isn’t it? Not if I have to do what Rube is asking. Not my fault then, is it?
“Well? You’ll meet me in a week?”
I nodded: scared and terribly excited. Tessie and Ted . . .
Rube said, “You going to talk to Danziger?”
“I think so.”
“You’re not going to let him talk you out of—”
“No. It was different when you and Esterhazy only wanted to fool around with the past. Just to see what would happen. Then I was with Danziger. But this: yeah, sure; I’ll meet you in a week.” Tessie and Ted . . .
11
THROUGH THE REVOLVING DOORS of the Plaza, down the stone steps, and north to the Fifty-ninth Street corner, where I stopped to wait for the light. I was wearing gray pants and a navy-blue zipper jacket I’d bought a few days ago, no hat. The light changed, I crossed to Central Park, then turned onto a dirt-and-gravel path. On a bit, feeling a little excited, curious about what Rube might have. Off the path then, to walk across a dozen yards of weedy grass or something like grass toward a big outcropping of black rock.
Rube sat waiting, in tan army shirt and pants, tan shoes, an old leather jacket, and an odd-looking blue knitted cap with a fuzzy little tassel. He sat leaning back against the rock, eyes closed, face tipped up into the sun, a brown paper sack on his lap.
He heard me and opened his eyes, grinning, and gestured at the area around us as I sat down, the same place where he had first told me about the Project. “Symbolic, isn’t it? Meaningful.”
“Or something.”
“Well, you made a hard decision then, but the right one. Now do it again. But first . . .” He opened the paper sack, and took out a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich, and handed it to me. “What you ordered, I believe? The first time we sat here?” I smiled, knowing what was coming: a roast pork sandwich. “Also symbolic. Of the pig in the poke you bought then. Well, Si, I’m afraid it’s another one now. A bigger pig and a far worse poke. But first to the feast!” Rube brought out a pair of apples; they too, I remembered, were what we’d had here for lunch once before.
We ate, no hurry. Sitting back against the sun-warmed rock, it wasn’t too bad here. On the path a pair of more than usually nice-looking young women walked by, glancing over at us, then walking on with just a tiny bit of extra hip-sway, maybe three eighths of an inch. Rube said, “Those are called girls, I think. Or used to be. And someone once told me—but I’ve never believed it.”
“Good you’re in the Army, Rube: the outside world would only confuse you.”
“It does, it does. If only they’d let the Army run it.” He glanced at me. “But that’s not the right thing to say, is it? You already think I’m some kind of homegrown Hitler.”
“No, I don’t think that, Rube. Napoleon, maybe. Except for the hat.”
He reached up and touched it. “Comes to protecting my old bald head, I have no shame. A friend made it; I have to wear it occasionally.”
We finished our sandwiches, I dusted crumbs from my hands, took an apple, bit into it—it was tart—and said, “Okay, Rube, I’m all ears.”
He reached around to the side of the rock face we were sitting against, and picked up a tan leather carrying case. “What do you know,” he said, unzipping it, “about William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt?”
“Taft was fat, and Roosevelt wore funny glasses.”
“More than I knew. I wasn’t even sure which was which.” He brought out a blue-lined yellow sheet of penciled notes. “But apparently they were friends. Good ones. Roosevelt was President first, then he got the job for Taft. Naturally, after that they fought over who’d be President the next time around. In 1912. But here’s the thing: According to our U.S.A. specialists, there’s something they stuck together on. They both wanted peace. I mean really did, no political bullshit, or not too much anyway. Roosevelt had already won the Nobel Peace Prize. Taft’s father”—Rube tilted his yellow sheet of notes to read a line along the side—“had been minister to Austria-Hungary. And Ruman—no, Russia; can’t read my own scrawl. Taft himself had been Secretary of War. Roosevelt had brought Japan and Russia together to end their war. And so on. And they were both smart, they knew how things worked, they knew what other smart men all over the world knew, that things were beginning to shape up so that the world just might eventually trip and stumble into a war that made no sense.”
Rube folded his yellow sheet, shoved it back into the case, but didn’t withdraw his hand. Grinning at me, he said, “I’ve got something here that’s classified, Si. It’s army stuff: our people found this, it’s ours, and still secret. They think Roosevelt and Taft had an agreement. Whichever was elected in 1912 would implement something they’d already started together. And in the unlikely event that the Democrat was elected, they’d brief him on this, and hope for the best. Sometimes our people are pretty good, Si; take a look at this.” He brought out a letter-size sheet, and handed it to me.