It was a xeroxed copy of a smaller sheet, blackened all around the edges for a couple inches surrounding a slightly tilted memo-size rectangle of white. Printed at the top of the memo: The White House. Below that in three penciled lines of fairly good handwriting: Lunch D.S.; under that, wrp gft; below that, Detail Z on G, B, V.E.
“Cute, eh?” said Rube. “Our people tell me that Presidents save bales of stuff. And that it’s getting worse. Not much from George Washington, carloads from Gerald Ford.” He touched the paper in my hand. “So what does that thing mean?—it’s Taft’s handwriting. Probably nothing, and who cares. Except that anything a President writes is of some interest, so eventually somebody—I don’t know who, it was years ago—at least worked out the date. D.S. was probably Douglas Selbst, senator from Ohio, Taft’s state. So check out the senator’s journal in the Library of Congress, and yep, it mentions his lunch with the President all right, at some length. On August 14, 1911. So now the memo is dated, and our people note that fact. Not on the original memo, though. It’s our information, and to hell with anyone else—right? Don’t ever let the Navy find out that Taft had lunch with Senator Selbst in 1911.
“Twenty-five years later—I’m not fooling, Si—another one of our people, an ambitious young girl, if you’ll excuse the ugly word, a lieutenant, who hadn’t been born when the memo got dated, came across our file copy. And got interested in the other items. What was ‘rupp guft’? All she could think of was ‘wrap gift,’ so she checked out Taft’s wife’s birth date—not the easiest thing in the world to find out, incidentally. But sure enough, it was August fifteenth, so now the United States Army History Section knew that ‘rupp guft’ did indeed mean ‘wrap gift’—terrific! Apparently Taft did his own gift wrapping; those were leisurely days even for Presidents. That information, by the way, is also classified. Swear you’ll never tell.”
I crossed my heart.
“Okay. Our people earn their pensions. Eventually. And a lifetime after Taft scribbled his memo, one of our guys going through some stuff that included this glanced at the third item, and the initials translated themselves for him. On sight. That happens. ‘Detail Z,’ said the memo, and then—G for George, B for Briand, and V.E. for Victor Emmanuel. George Fifth of England; Briand, the premier of France; and the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel. Three heads of state! And so a lifetime after this thing was written, our people got interested. Sort of. And went to work. Also sort of. Who was Z? they wondered. That was three years ago, and at first—”
“Rube. In only five or six hours it’s going to get dark.”
“All right. I get carried away. Who was Z? Well, Z was a guy Taft and Roosevelt sent to Europe. To extend greetings from the President to various heads of state: that sort of thing. But also to—well, to chat. And reach a few informal agreements. Form a sort of unofficial alliance. Whoever was elected in 1912—and also including the Democrat, if possible—would commit himself to actively work, to do everything in his considerable power, to float the idea that we would enter any European war on the side of the Allies. And precede even that with Atlantic submarine patrol.”
“They couldn’t promise that, could they?”
“Of course not. Congress would have to declare war; this was back in the old-fashioned days when Presidents felt they had to honor their oath to abide by the Constitution. Only Congress could declare war then, and undoubtedly would not have done so. Everyone knew that. All over the world. But this is the point, Si: While I’m an ignoramus about U.S. history, we now move into a historical field I do understand. If there were even the slimmest possibility that America would come into a European war . . . that war immediately becomes impossible. Don’t need Congress, formal treaties, don’t need even the least certainty about it. Because no nation begins a war, Clausewitz tells us, that it does not believe it will win. And that’s true. That war, Si, unnecessary to anyone, would simply not have begun. No idiotic ultimatums, no declarations. Believe me, Si, it would have worked! The war would have been made impossible. Dig up Ludendorff and Hindenburg and ask them. They’ll tell you.”
“But Z didn’t get his agreements.”
“Oh, he got them. So our people believe. What he got was letters, informal exchanges. No acts of Parliament or anything like that. But signed. By heads of state. So they counted. They had power and magic.”
“And that’s how World War One never happened?”
“It happened.”
“How come?”
“Z never got home.”
“What?”
“No sign of it in anything our people came across. On his way back, all finished, had what he came for: they have cablegrams on that. But then . . . he just seems to vanish. Thin air. We know because there are references to it. Maybe they knew why at the time. Probably did. But we don’t.”
“Well, who was Z?”
Rube sat slowly shaking his head. “Our people don’t know. His actual name never shows up. He is always just ‘Z.’ And damn it, Si, our people here don’t really care. They’re not that interested. This stuff is all just a favor to me. Can’t blame them: it’s nothing they’re on, you see. To them this is just one more failed mission, and there are dozens and dozens of those in any country’s history. It happened a lifetime ago, is very little documented, so—it’s a case of so-what.”
“Can’t you tell your people why you—”
“No. I’ve been able to form a new unit on this. Very small, need-to-know. Esterhazy heads it, nominally; I’m second in line, and the rest of the unit is mostly the sergeant who brings us coffee.”
“Esterhazy.”
“Yep. Brigadier now. Si, you know we can’t tell people what we’re doing. Most of our people never even heard of the original Project in the first place. How could we explain what we hope to do? Show them the Project, a junk heap? I’ve had to accept what they’ve offered, which is mostly what they already had at hand. Anyway, I doubt that there’s much of anything else. We’re talking history of the U.S.A. well before 1914, hardly anyone even thinking about a coming war. Wasn’t like Europe; I’ve told you the kind of stuff I could give you for Europe. But here? I think what I’ve got is about all there is to get.” Rube grinned at me suddenly, reaching over to clap me on the forearm. “But an old dog doesn’t forget his old tricks! What do you do when a trail peters out? You run around in circles! Till you pick up the scent again. Look, let’s get us some coffee or something.” He hopped up, the old athlete, offered me a hand, and I let him help pull me up, and we turned to walk over to the path.
We reached it, turning south toward Fifty-ninth Street and the Plaza Hotel. Rube said, “You ever hear of Alice Longworth?”
“Yeah, I think so. Old lady? Dead now? The one who said Thomas Dewey looked like the little man on a wedding cake?”
“That’s her. She also said, ‘If you can’t speak well of someone, come sit by me.’ That last is the reason I thought of her. She was real bright. Clever, witty. Had a tongue in her head, as they say. A gossip. Married to a socialite congressman. And she wasn’t always an old lady. Once she was young, and very much the leader of the young Washington set. Knew everybody who was anybody in Washington. Did you know she was Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter?”