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''The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy'' is a historical fiction novel written by Jacopo della Quercia. The plot follows President William Howard Taft, scientist and son of a former president Robert Todd Lincoln, Secret Service Chief John Wilkie, Captain (later Major) Archibald Butt and others as they slowly unravel a worldwide conspiracy over a decade in the making. The book, which was della Quercia's debut novel, was published in 2014 by St. Martin's Griffin, an imprint of publishing company St. Martin's Press. The author described the book's genre not as singular distinct genre, but as an "equal parts cocktail" of adventure, historical fiction, science fiction, thriller and comedy.〔http://www.pocketwatchconspiracy.com/〕 The book has many references to actual events; some, such as the sinking of the RMS Titanic, are important plot points, while others, such as the destruction of the zeppelin Erbslöh, are passively mentioned as news or memories. The author also includes excerpts from real newspaper articles, which were used to provide exposition in the storyline. Similarly, all of the main characters in the book were real, relevant figures in the 20th century. The characters profiles were fictionalized to fit in with the book's plot and atmosphere, but their names, positions, occupations and personalities are kept largely intact. ==Plot== In 1910, Robert Todd Lincoln, an esteemed scientist and the only remaining son of former president Abraham Lincoln, is a close personal friend of President William Howard Taft. Taft, Lincoln and Secret Service Chief John Wilkie are returning to Washington on Taft's secret government zeppelin, Airship One. Lincoln reveals that he has found his father's pocket watch while going through his files. Lincoln explains that he could find no records of Abraham ever acquiring or owning the watch, though the watch fob was found on Abraham's person the night of his assassination. Lincoln also explains that although the watch has been running for a very long time, there is no way to open or adjust it. Furthermore, he could find no power source, save for a small gold cylinder. Furthermore, the watch has a Russian inscription that translates to "Made in America", suggesting that the watch came from Russian America, which is now known as Alaska. Lincoln believes that the watch is so advanced that it could not possibly have built by humans, leading Lincoln to believe that extraterrestrial beings are beginning to populate Alaska. Lincoln requests to use Airship One to travel to Alaska and perform experiments, which Taft happily allows. Meanwhile, while conversing with Nikola Tesla over a wireless telegraph, Airship One picks up a mysterious encryption broadcast on Tesla's line. Tesla decrypts the transmission and reveals it to be an exchange between five anonymous "gentlemen" in Paris, Brussels, New York, Philadelphia and Boma, respectively. The men have begun mining an unknown substance in the Bonanza mines, which they will begin transporting to other parts of the globe in approximately one year. The men also hint that they have just caused a mass murder and that they are maintaining unknown operations in Belfast. After the transmission, Tesla is almost assassinated as a victim of the mass murder, but he kills the assassin with one of his inventions. After landing in Washington, Taft personally drives Lincoln, Wilkie and George Wickersham, the Attorney General, to the White House, wrecking a fish wagon and destroying two of the White House's cars in the process. Once there, the President is informed that his android, which was designed by Thomas Edison as a robotic duplicate of Taft used to simulate his presence while he is away on secret matters, has begun to terribly malfunction. In an ensuing battle between the automaton and the White House staff and Secret Service, the near-indestructible machine repeatedly targets Taft before it is finally destroyed by Taft's friend, John Hays Hammond. Taft's wife, Nellie (who is said to be the real authority in the White House), insists that Taft join Lincoln on his expedition to Alaska. Once Taft, Lincoln, Hammond and Captain Archibald Butt, Taft's closest friend, board Airship One to travel to Alaska, they hold a meeting in which they discuss recent events. They deduce that the automaton must have been programmed to kill Taft, as it repeatedly targeted Taft specifically. Lincoln reveals that on the same day that gas from Halley's Comet had been predicted to destroy all life on Earth, a mysterious deep blue light was seen in the night sky over the Wrangell Mountains in Alaska, near the site of a recent scandal at the Kennecott Mines in which J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim Syndicate were caught mining in areas set aside for conservation. This reinforces Lincoln's belief in extraterrestrial activity. Hammond, who has worked as the Guggenheims' chief mining engineer, tells the group that miners in the Wrangell mountains were constantly pressured to dig deeper and deeper, and that he believes that the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate were secretly looking for a different material. He remembers that what caused him to quit was frequent mention of Belgian King Leopold II, who was notorious for oppressing the natives of the Congo Free State. The expedition proves fruitless, as Lincoln and the President do not find any extraterrestrial activity or information about the pocket watch. Meanwhile, Wilkie and Wickersham travel to New York to talk to J.P. Morgan. They force him to send them all of his financial reports under threat of federal investigation. As Wilkie and Wickersham leave to discuss how they are going to have Miss Knox hired to Morgan's enterprise as a mole, it is implied that Morgan is the "Gentleman from New York" from the Tesla broadcast. Months later, while working for Morgan, Miss Knox has found clues indicating that the International Mercantile Marine Company, specifically the White Star Line, is at the center of a smuggling operation, and she plans to have herself transferred to the Line. Over the next year, Lincoln writes to scientists such as Theodor Wulf and Albert Einstein for information about the pocket watch and the blue light over the Wrangells. He finds out that the power source in the watch is made of lead, a material which can not create the necessary heat to power machinery. Lincoln also finds out that the Wrangell mountains possess large quantities of the radioactive element cesium, which may have caused the blue light. He learns that the Guggenheims have begun shipping material out of the Bonanza mine, which was mentioned in the Tesla broadcast, meaning that the operation the "gentlemen" were planning has gone undeterred. An inquiry into the U.S. Steel Trust, which includes Morgan and the Guggenheims, has begun, and a criminal investigation of the trust is now certain. Captain Butt has been promoted to Major and is the President's new aide. One night in 1911, Lincoln suddenly remembers that his father accidentally left the pocket watch in Lincoln's room at the White House the night of the assassination. He rushes to Washington to tell the President that his father owned the watch. In the White House, as the Tafts are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, a disturbance occurs on the East Wing. While the Secret Service agents are distracted, a silver-plated skull is snuck into the Treaty Room and Taft's son Robert is kidnapped. Inside the skull, they find a note telling Taft to come alone to the Skull and Bones tomb at Yale University. The note states that if Taft does not come, Robert will be killed and that if he brings any military or Secret Service or alerts the University, New Haven will be destroyed by an unknown superweapon. The night of the meeting, Taft enters the building alone, and is told by a man named Basil Zaharoff, who claims that he works neither for Morgan nor the Guggenheims, to sign a document abolishing the U.S. Constitution. Taft escapes his bonds and kills all of Zaharoff's mercenaries with his bare hands while Zaharoff escapes. Meanwhile, Lincoln, Wilkie and his Secret Service agents discover the superweapon in Yale's underground steam tunnels in the form of capsules of elemental cesium, which was mined in the Wrangells. Believing that the highly explosive cesium would be used to destroy the university with a large explosion, Lincoln collects the capsules to test them. The rescue team rescues Robert and advances through the halls of the University, killing many enemies while Buffalo soldiers sharpshooter provide cover fire from the Airship. Wickersham, Wilkie, Lincoln, Taft and Robert are safely returned to the zeppelin. As they fly to Washington, it is deduced that Zaharoff was the "Gentleman from Paris" from the Tesla broadcast, and that Morgan and the Guggenheims could not have been responsible for the kidnapping. After testing the capsules, Lincoln realizes that the superweapon is not an explosive, but rather an aerosol; the steam tunnels would have been powered up, and the steam would have carried the extremely corrosive cesium up into New Haven, corroding the town away and killing all its citizens. It is also found that the militiamen who had fought the rescue team were from the Belgian Congo, and Taft and Lincoln travel to the Congo to investigate. The crew finds a house in the middle of the jungle that belongs to insane, murderous Belgian military officer Leon Rom, who is found to have been the "Gentleman from Boma". The crew kill Rom, but are taken aback by his level of psychosis. Taft, Wilkie, Lincoln and several Secret Service agents travel to London for a meeting with "The Colossus" set up by Miss Knox. The Colossus (who turns out to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) Reveals that Miss Knox, who has taken on the alias Violet Jessop, has found that the IMM is indeed smuggling materials across the Atlantic. After hearing that the pocket watch's power source is made of lead, Doyle explains that the watch was originally powered by uranium, and the lead is the uranium in its decayed state. The group soon realizes that the uranium, gold, copper in the watch and the gold-bearing quartz in the watch fob were all mined in the Kennecott Mines, and Doyle guesses that the watch was constructed by Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl to facilitate the Alaska Purchase by proving that the land contained precious materials. After learning that Zaharoff has a duplicate of the watch made from silver, Doyle guesses that Zaharoff stumbled upon the design for the watch and developed the idea for the superweapon, which he created from Alaskan uranium. Robert realizes that the blue lights in the sky over the Wrangells were caused by a test of the weapon, which was purposely performed when Earth passed by Halley's Comet to mask the effects. However, Robert realizes that, to do substantial damage, the superweapon would have to be the size of "three city blocks" and would require the use of steam. From this, Doyle realizes that the plan from the beginning was to activate the superweapon via the steam tunnels of the RMS Titanic. On April 14, 1912, Taft, Robert and Wilkie are aboard Airship One, while Nellie is aboard the SS Californian and Butt is already aboard the Titanic. After meeting up with Miss Knox, who is now a waitress aboard the ship, Archie boards the deck of the ship and prepares to fight. The three men aboard the airship, along with the men who provided cover fire during the New Haven raid, descend upon the ship. Mercenaries soon kill the captain and hold Taft hostage. The men are greeted by J.P. Morgan and Leopold II, the "Gentleman from Brussels", who had faked his death to escape disgrace. Leopold reveals that he has killed Benjamin Guggenheim, who was the "Gentleman from Philadelphia" from the Tesla broadcast. Leopold has chosen to attack the United States with his weapon, because the United States was the first country to expose Leopold's brutalities in the Congo Free State. Crippling the United States will plunge the world into war, and when the great powers collapse, Zaharoff and Leopold will become the most powerful people on Earth. Taft escapes and runs after Leopold, while Wilkie and Lincoln are chased around by "Morgan", who is actually an android. As passengers take arms and fight Leopold's men, Airship One is shot down and crashes onto the deck. Meanwhile, Robert shorts out the power on the ship, preventing use of the superweapon. As Taft and Wilkie prepare to leave, it is revealed to a shocked Taft that "Wilkie" is really ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. The Californian arrives to aid the Secret Service and rescue Taft and the others. Taft throws the badly wounded Roosevelt to a lifeboat, but before Taft can jump, the Titanic begins to rise out of the water. Leopold sees Taft jumping and prepares to shoot him, but Butt subdues the monarch as the rising waters rush over and kill them. Taft jumps off the ship and is reeled aboard the Californian. Passengers aboard the Titanic who fought against Leopold are delivered to the U.S. and given new lives by the American and British governments. The public is told that the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank, while the real story is kept a state secret. J.P. Morgan is forced to appear in court for an investigation of his "money trust", and dies from stress three months later. Butt is given a state funeral and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Taft is not reelected for a second term, but in 1921, President Warren Harding offers him a position as Chief Justice of the United States. Taft and Lincoln are briefly reunited at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, where Robert tells Taft that the pocket watch had saved Robert's life on the Titanic by catching a bullet. In 1936, an extremely rich and healthy Zaharoff is living comfortably at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Zaharoff laments that working for Leopold had been a mistake, as Leopold relied too heavily on "lunatics" such as Rom and had lucrative motives. As Zaharoff expresses his excitement over future weapons trade negotiations (which are implied to be with Adolf Hitler), Zaharoff suddenly begins to go into convulsions as his maid, who is actually Miss Knox, steals from him the designs for the pocket watch and his silver duplicate of the watch. Miss Knox poisons Zaharoff and delivers the watch to Nellie. Nellie mails the watch to Lyman James Briggs, chairman of the Uranium Committee along with a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt detailing the use of uranium as a weapon. As Nellie, who has always had a negative opinion of the Roosevelt family, ponders working with President Roosevelt, she reverses her anti-Roosevelt stand by stating, "I like these Roosevelts". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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