The President didn't do secret meetings, but he did love hunting, and Jason knew how to lay a trail.
Getting an official appointment with Theodore Roosevelt was impossible. The White House schedule was a fortress guarded by men who hated everything the name Rockefeller stood for. But Jason had an advantage that no lobbyist in Washington possessed: he knew the future.
He knew about Alice Roosevelt.
The President's eldest daughter was a firebrand, a rebel who smoked cigarettes on the White House roof and carried a pet snake in her purse. She loved to shock people. And nothing was more shocking than the Ghost of Wall Street crashing her father's afternoon exercise.
Jason had "accidentally" run into her at a society gala the night before. A few whispered comments about a scandal involving a rival debutante, a shared laugh at the expense of a stuffy Senator, and he had secured the only pass that mattered.
"Use the side gate near the Treasury," Alice had whispered, her eyes dancing with mischief. "He plays tennis at four. He hates to be interrupted. It'll be fun."
At 4:05 PM, Jason walked through the side gate. A surprised Secret Service agent started to move toward him, but Alice waved him off from the veranda.
Jason walked toward the tennis court.
The man on the court was a force of nature. Theodore Roosevelt didn't play tennis; he attacked it. He was smashing the ball with a violence that was terrifying to behold, his bulky frame moving with surprising agility. He was sweating, shouting, and laughing all at once.
He slammed a final, brutal forehand that sent the ball careening into the fence. Game over.
He grabbed a towel and turned, his face flushed red with exertion. His eyes, magnified by his thick spectacles, landed on Jason.
The laughter vanished.
"Prentice!" Roosevelt boomed. His voice was like a cannon shot. "The Rockefeller man! How the devil did you get past my guards?"
He marched toward the fence, wiping his face. "Come to beg for mercy? Come to offer me a bribe? I warn you, I've thrown better men than you out of this yard."
He was loud, boisterous, and deliberately intimidating. He was the Bull Moose, and this was his territory.
Jason didn't flinch. He didn't bow. He walked right up to the net.
"No, Mr. President," Jason said calmly. "I came to offer you a victory."
Roosevelt stopped toweling off. He squinted at Jason, his interest piqued despite himself. He liked boldness.
He gestured to a wooden bench on the sidelines. "You have three minutes before I get bored. Talk."
Jason sat. Roosevelt remained standing, looming over him, drinking a glass of lemonade with gusto.
"The public wants a show," Jason began. "They want to see the monster slain. They want the Standard Oil trust broken into pieces."
"And they shall have it!" Roosevelt roared. "The law is the law, Prentice! No man is above it, not even your father-in-law."
"I agree," Jason said.
Roosevelt blinked. He lowered his glass. "You... agree?"
Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, wooden matchstick. He held it up.
"If we fight you in court," Jason said, "this battle will drag on for ten years. The lawyers will get rich. The public will get bored. And in the end, even if you win, the victory will be buried in paperwork."
He snapped the matchstick in two with a sharp crack.
"We will stop fighting the antitrust suit," Jason said.
Roosevelt froze. The silence on the tennis court was sudden and absolute.
"We will agree to a dissolution decree," Jason continued. "We will accept the breakup of the trust. No more holding companies. No more monopoly."
He looked Roosevelt in the eye. "You get to be the Trust Buster who took down the biggest giant of them all. You get your headline. You get your legacy. You get to hang the scalp on the wall before the election."
Roosevelt eyed him suspiciously. He was a politician, but he was also a tactician. He knew that predators didn't surrender without a reason.
"And what do you get?" Roosevelt asked, his voice lower, dangerous. "Rockefeller doesn't surrender. He fights for every dime."
Jason lied perfectly.
"We get peace," he said. "Mr. Rockefeller is an old man, Mr. President. He wants to play golf. He wants to give away his dimes to children. He's tired of being the villain."
He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "He wants to retire in a world that doesn't hate him. He wants to die as a philanthropist, not a robber baron."
He framed the greatest strategic pivot in financial history as the defeat of an old, tired man.
Roosevelt stared at him for a long moment. Then, a slow, predatory grin spread across his face. He loved the idea of forcing John D. Rockefeller to his knees. He loved the idea of breaking the unbreakables.
"A dissolution decree," Roosevelt said, tasting the words. "Total breakup. Independent boards. Real competition."
"Agreed," Jason said.
"And no tricks?" Roosevelt challenged. "No shadow companies?"
"The courts will oversee it all," Jason promised.
Roosevelt threw his head back and laughed. It was a booming, joyous sound that startled the birds from the trees.
"Bully!" he shouted. "Bully for you, Prentice!"
He extended a massive, sweaty hand.
"Tell the old man he's made a wise choice," Roosevelt said, pumping Jason's hand with bone-crushing force. "The age of the monopoly is over."
Jason smiled politely. "As you say, Mr. President."
He walked away from the tennis court, leaving the President of the United States celebrating his historic victory. Jason had just signed the death warrant of Standard Oil. And in doing so, he had just saved the Rockefeller fortune.
Back at the Willard Hotel, the mood was tense.
Alta was pacing the length of the suite, her skirts rustling with agitated energy. When Jason walked in, she stopped dead.
"Well?" she demanded. "Did he throw you out?"
Jason walked past her to the ice bucket. He picked up a bottle of cheap hotel champagne and popped the cork. The foam spilled over his hand like liquid gold.
"He agreed," Jason said.
He poured two glasses.
"He thinks he won," Jason continued, handing her a glass. "He thinks he broke us. He's going to announce the agreement tomorrow."
Alta took the glass, but she didn't drink. She walked to the table where the map with the red lines still lay. She stared at the fractured empire.
"So it's over?" she whispered. "Standard Oil is dead?"
Jason walked up behind her. He looked at the map, at the seven new kingdoms he had carved out of the corpse of the old one.
"Long live the Seven Sisters," he said, raising his glass. "Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Amoco... or whatever they call themselves in this timeline."
He clinked his glass against hers.
"We just turned one fortune into seven, Alta. We just made ourselves the richest people in the history of the world."
Alta finally took a sip. The reality was sinking in. But the worry hadn't left her eyes.
"Father will be... difficult to convince," she said. "He will see this as a failure."
Jason walked to the window. He looked out at the Capitol dome, glowing in the twilight. He felt the hum of the future vibrating in his bones. The cars were coming. The wars were coming. The oil age was dawning.
"Let him be difficult," Jason said. "Let him scream. When the stock prices triple after the breakup, when the dividends start pouring in from seven companies instead of one... he'll think it was his idea all along."
He turned back to her, his eyes burning.
"Pack your bags, Alta. We're going back to New York. We have a company to dismantle."