The Titanic Plan (9 page)

Vanderbilt didn’t answer, contemplating the circle.

Astor raced over the lawn and began rearranging the croquet wickets so that they lined up in a new pattern. “And you wouldn’t have just one of these cities, but many of them. They’d be strategically located all over America and easily connected by roads or water or train.”

“
Cities aren’t built from scratch,” Vanderbilt plainly stated.

“
And that’s why they’re a mess. It’s time to build the great cities of the future, George. Cities that are designed for maximum efficiency. Cities that people would flock to because it gives them better lives. And the people who develop these cities would be remembered forever.”

“
And make money,” Vanderbilt said, as much to himself as to Astor.

“
That goes without saying.”

“
It’s a big project.”

“
The biggest.”

“
It’s all very interesting, I’ll give you that.” Vanderbilt looked over the rearranged croquet game one more time. “Very interesting.”

Astor rode home that evening elated. His role in life was finally clear. He was meeting his destiny: “Architect of the Future.” He kept turning that phrase over in his head. “Architect of the Future!”

In the seat next to Astor, Vincent was as aglow as his father, though for a very different reason. Chicken Little had pulled him into a hidden alcove just off the ballroom, pressed her mouth to his, parted her lips, slithered her tongue slowly into his mouth and presented him with the first great kiss of his life.

CHAPTER 7

T
heodore Roosevelt’s ship anchored in Mombassa, East British Africa on April 18, 1909. With him were his son Kermit and seven other expedition members. They were accompanied by 250 guides and porters who, for ten months, would haul six tons of equipment through the forests and grasslands of East Africa. The National Geographic Society contributed $50,000, sponsoring the safari for “the scientific collection of specimens.”

The safari started slowly with a trek through East British Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia) before encountering thick herds of wild beasts in the Belgian Congo. By August, six months in, the group had gone deep into the Kenyan plains. Despite the remoteness, Roosevelt would receive newspapers and correspondence at least two times a week from “a naked runner.” What the ex-President was reading disturbed him. Taft was altering, if not reversing, many of Roosevelt’s initiatives. And big business was giddy about the country’s new direction. If they had their wishes, Roosevelt would disappear into darkest Africa forever. J. Pierpont Morgan summed up these sentiments when, at a New York dinner party, he raised his glass and declared: “America expects every lion will do his duty.”

He got a great laugh and hearty applause.

Even as Taft was asserting his independence, he had grown increasingly uneasy in his Presidency. He knew he occupied the White House only because Roosevelt handpicked him. Taft continually fretted about Roosevelt. What would Roosevelt think? How would Roosevelt have acted? And what would Roosevelt do upon his return from Africa? No matter how hard Taft tried, the large shadow of Theodore Roosevelt haunted him.

No one saw this more clearly than Archie. He liked Taft and was always at his side. When Taft fell asleep and started snoring in church, it was Archie who would gently poke him awake. When Taft wanted to unburden his soul, the two would take long walks through the streets around the White House.

Adding to Taft’s worries, a personal crisis struck on May 17, 1909. The First Lady, Helen Herron Taft – “Nellie” to everyone – fainted aboard the Presidential yacht during a reception on the Potomac River. She was half conscious when Archie carried her off the boat and rushed her to a hospital. Taft was inconsolable. If Will Taft was affable and relatively unambitious, it was Nellie – shrewd, aspiring, and outspoken in her opinions – that drove him to the pinnacle of power. She was everything to him. It was first thought to be heat exhaustion. Then the doctors diagnosed “nervous hysteria.” But when Nellie didn’t regain her ability to speak or move her left side, it became obvious that she had suffered a stroke. She was 47 years old.

Without his wife pushing and prodding him, sizing up political situations, and acting as his pillar of strength, Taft’s effectiveness as President eroded. He looked for guidance and refuge anywhere he could. One place was his church. Taft had been attending Sunday services at
All Soul’s Unitarian Church
since 1906, when he came to Washington to be Roosevelt’s Secretary of War. During those times he would slip quietly into a back pew, as unnoticed as a 320-pound man could be. Since he became President, his Sunday visits grew to become a pageant.

Two weeks after Nellie’s stroke, Taft returned to the church with Archie. The Presidential limousine rolled to the curbside on Fourteenth and L Street, where an attendant rushed to open the door. A crowd of parishioners applauded as Taft exited the car, tipped his hat then let Archie lead him into the church’s vestibule. Once inside, those that did not have personal prayer books (Taft used the one given to him by his father) were offered one.

“
Thank you, son,” Archie said to the boy who handed him his prayer book. The boy shyly nodded, so bashful he kept his head down and his eyes focused on the floor. Taft noticed the boy’s discomfort and tousled the young teenager’s hair.

Only after the Presidential party took their seats in the first two rows, did the entire congregation file into the pews. The church’s imposing pastor, Dr. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, strode out in white-robed splendor and peered over his congregation. “God is,” he intoned with righteous vibrato, “He is here! He is here now! Let us celebrate God by opening our prayer books to page six.”

The turning pages sounded like the fluttering of wings. Archie glanced to the President, who looked comforted by the familiar ritual. Then Archie opened his own book and grew puzzled. It was not a prayer book. The title page read: “
How the Other Half Lives.
” Under the title was an inscription in bold handwriting:
“Greetings from the front. A noble battle needs great soldiers. Join us, Captain
.
”

The message carried no signature, but Archie knew who it was from. And it unsettled him. He had already put his last encounter with Mick Shaughnessy out of his mind. Like a disturbing weed, Mick had reappeared. Agitated, Archie began flipping through the pages while the congregation sang a hymn. In the book were pictures of people crowded in squalid living quarters, photographs of gamins starving on the streets of New York, and of attractive young girls laboring in claustrophobic sweatshops. Archie lifted his head and looked toward the back of the church. He noticed the group of adolescent boys who had been serving as ushers. The shy boy who gave him the book was not among them. Archie stood and began excusing himself down the pew. Taft shot him a none-too-pleased look. Archie moved to back of the church as the hymn came to an end, searching for the boy he knew he would not find.

CHAPTER 8

G
eorge Washington Vanderbilt liked to surprise people. He was aware of what they thought of him: the Vanderbilt who was different. The cultured Vanderbilt. The sensitive Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt who could speak numerous languages. The Vanderbilt who would actually read a book. The Vanderbilt who wasn’t really a Vanderbilt.

Some people did actually question his heritage. George looked and acted nothing like his siblings. They were all stout and sturdy men, mostly with froggish features and loutish manners. They were aggressive businessmen and builders. They wanted to impress the world with empires of industry and garish monuments to themselves.

George was slim, refined, and genteel. He was an avid reader and obsessive book collector. His family assumed that he was happy with his comparatively small inheritance – 6 million dollars – and that he would retire to the life of a writer or professor.

But George was a Vanderbilt. After his brother William built the
Marble House
in Newport, to be topped in ostentation by his brother Cornelius’ mansion,
The Breakers
, George set out to trump them all. He announced to the world that he would be remembered as the grandest and most cultivated Vanderbilt of his generation with his own great house –
Biltmore
.

In 1888 George purchased 2000 acres of a majestic forest near the town of Asheville, North Carolina. He hired the world’s most renown architect (and Vanderbilt family favorite) Richard Morris Hunt, to design
Biltmore
with him. To create the estate grounds he turned to the acknowledged master of landscaped design, Frederick Law Olmsted – the man who created
Central Park
. To tend to the massive forest Vanderbilt took on a college friend named Gifford Pinchot, a young man who would go on to become the first head of the U.S. Forest Service.

Biltmore
took five years to complete. For Christmas, 1895, George invited the entire Vanderbilt family – mother, brothers, sisters and their families – to the estate’s official opening. None of them had any real idea of what George was building in the boondocks. None of them really cared. That Christmas Eve day the Vanderbilt family traveled in their personal railcars to Asheville, where they were switched to George’s private rails, which he laid from the train depot to the entrance of the estate’s grounds. From there, all boarded carriages for the final three mile journey through ravines and forests, past bubbling streams and serene ponds until, at the very last moment, just before the final ascent, the path opened and revealed the chateau of
Biltmore
in all its glory, perched on a hill with a backdrop only God (or Olmstead) could have devised. Little brother George had out-Vanderbilted all the Vanderbilts. They stood in awe as George greeted them with an understated “Merry Christmas,” all the while watching their stunned reactions with a subdued delight.

13 years later George sat alone in
Biltmore’s
20,000-book library staring at a portrait of his grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty. Within the family the first Cornelius Vanderbilt was simply known as “The Commodore.” Unlike most of his offspring, he was a handsome man. The portrait showed The Commodore in his later years, with white hair and huge white muttonchops, sitting in a formal dress coat with a high collared white shirt and a silk tie knotted at his neck. He looked calm, benevolent and wise. In fact, he was none of these things. Cornelius Vanderbilt was a foul-tempered, mean, vulgar, son-of-a-bitch who cared about one thing and one thing only: money. His last words to his family as he lay dying were “Keep the money together, hey.”

George knew his grandfather would probably hate him. The Commodore had a reputation for viciously demeaning his children. Yet George often glared up at that portrait of the wise looking man and silently asked his grandfather for guidance. In this case, it was about Astor’s proposal. Despite what he told Astor, he thought the idea was absolutely cracked. Vanderbilt faced overwhelming obstacles in building one great house. He knew that to build cities from scratch, even if they started small, was near impossible.

And yet greatness often begins with a foundation of the impossible
. He looked up at his grandfather again. Cornelius Vanderbilt was an illiterate farm boy who started building his fortune by ferrying people from Staten Island to Manhattan. He did the impossible by acquiring steamboats when everyone said it was folly. And then George looked around. Twenty years ago, the very spot he sat was a muddy marsh in the middle of a forest. And now it was the grandest home in America.

The one thought he tried to avoid, the secret no one else knew, was that building America’s grandest home had practically bankrupted him. He had sunk so much money into the mansion that his funds were almost drained. While he kept up an elegant façade, his world was crumbling. The reason to get involved with Astor was not to achieve greatness; that was
Biltmore
. The reason to join Astor was to save him from going completely broke.

CHAPTER 9

I
t had been almost a year since Archie visited Charles Bonaparte and Stanley Finch at the Department of Justice. The earnest young agent Finch had maneuvered himself into the top position of the nation’s newly created intelligence agency, the Bureau of Investigation.