The Victorious opposition

XX

Flora Blackford had been to a lot of Remembrance Day parades, in New York and in Philadelphia. This year's parade in New York City took her back to the days before the Great War, when the holiday had truly been a day of national mourning. People had commemorated the loss of the War of Secession and of the Second Mexican War, and had pledged not to fail again. Flags had flown upside down on Remembrance Day, symbolizing the country's distress.

Since the Great War, Remembrance Day had faded some in the nation's consciousness. People had a triumph to remember now, not just a pair of scalding defeats. The custom of flying flags upside down had fallen into disuse. Teddy Roosevelt had been the first to abandon it, in the Philadelphia parade in 1918, the year after the war ended.

This year, the custom was back. Anyone who cared to look could see war clouds looming up from the south, bigger and blacker with each passing day. If that wasn't cause for distress, Flora didn't know what would be.

In the limousine just ahead of hers rode Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the ambassador from the German Empire, and his Austro-Hungarian opposite number, whose name Flora never could recall. Schacht was a much more memorable character. He spoke fluent English, as well he might, given his two middle names. He was a financial wizard, even in hard times. Nobody knew how much money he had, or exactly how he'd got it.

In 1915, riots had marred the Remembrance Day parade here. Even now, no one knew if Socialists or Mormons had started the fighting. Then, Flora had been in the crowd lining Fifth Avenue. She remembered the then ambassadors from Germany and Austria-Hungary going past. She'd never imagined that she might be taking part in the parade herself one day.

Socialists wouldn't protest or disrupt the parade this year, not with Al Smith in Powel House. What heckling there was came from Democrats. Flora heard shouts like, "We should have cleaned house a long time ago!" and, "Now you Red bastards say you're patriots!" That infuriated her and stung at the same time, for she knew it held a little truth. In politics as in life, the best slams often held a little truth.

There might have been more rude shouts than she heard. Her open car rolled along in front of a marching band that blared out martial music. The conductor wasn't John Philip Sousa, whom she'd seen in 1915, but he thought he was.

Behind the band rolled another limousine. This one carried two ancient veterans of the War of Secession. More limousines carried survivors from the Second Mexican War. A handful of veterans from that war were still spry enough to march down the street on their own, too.

After them came what seemed like an endless stream of Great War veterans, organized by the year of their conscription class. They were the solid, middle-aged men who shaped opinion and ran the country these days. The way they marched said they knew it, too.

More limousines followed them. They carried Great War veterans who wanted to parade but had been too badly wounded to march. Her brother rode in one of them. David Hamburger hadn't asked Flora to keep him out of the Army. He'd come out of the war with only one leg. He'd never asked Flora to pull strings for him since… till this Remembrance Day parade. She'd done it, and gladly. If he was a stubborn Democrat-so what? The Democrats turned out to have been closer to right about Jake Featherston than the Socialists had. Flora didn't admit that in public, but she knew it was true.

Few cheers came from the crowds that lined the streets. Remembrance Day wasn't a holiday for cheers. But the crowds were thicker than on any Remembrance Day that Flora remembered since the euphoric one after the end of the Great War.

The parade rolled along Fifth Avenue: limousines, marching bands, veterans, clanking military hardware, and all. More people filled Central Park, where it ended. Spring made the air taste sweet and green. Wherever people weren't standing, robins and starlings hopped on the grass, digging up worms.

Strangely, the cheery birds made Flora sad. There are liable to be plenty of fat worms soon, she thought, because the bodies of our young men will feed them.

A temporary speaker's platform stood in the middle of a meadow now packed with people. Policemen-one tough Irish mug after another-kept a lane clear for the limousines. They pulled up behind the platform. Dignitaries got out and ascended. Flora took her place with the rest. The other women on the platform were there because they were wives. Flora had her place because of what she did, and she was proud of it.

Governor LaGuardia, a peppery little Socialist in an outsized fedora, called the German ambassador to the microphone. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht spoke better, more elegant English than the governor. "We have been rivals, your country and mine, because we are both strong," he said. "The strong notice each other. They also draw the jealousy of the weak. Like you, we have neighbors who would like to bite our ankles." That patrician scorn drew a laugh. Schacht went on, "So long as we stand together, though, nothing can overcome us both." He got another big hand, and sat down.

The Austro-Hungarian envoy-his name was Schussnigg, Governor LaGuardia said-delivered a thickly accented speech that sounded ferocious but didn't make much sense. When he stepped away from the microphone, the applause he got seemed more relieved than anything else.

LaGuardia himself made a speech that called down fire and brimstone on the Democratic Party and the Confederate States in equal measure. Then he introduced the mayor of New York City, who was just as Italian as he was, and who ripped the Socialists and the Confederate States up one side and down the other. The two men glared at each other. Flora couldn't help laughing.

More speeches followed, some very partisan, others less so. Then Governor LaGuardia said, "And now, the former First Lady of the United States, New York City's favorite daughter, Congresswoman Flora Blackford!"

Flora stood up and strode to the microphone. A few cries of, "Blackford-burghs!" floated out of the crowd, but only a few. She hadn't expected not to hear them. If anything, she got less heckling than she'd looked for.

"I don't want to talk about political parties today," she said, and enough applause erupted to drown out the jeers. "I want to talk about what's facing the United States. It will be trouble. I don't see how it can be anything but trouble. The government now ruling the Confederate States does not respect the rights of its own people. That being so, how can we hope it will respect the rights of its neighbors?"

That got a big hand. She went on, "Many of you came to the United States or had parents who came to the United States to escape pogroms in Europe. And now we see pogroms in North America. Is a man any less a man because he has a dark skin? Jake Featherston thinks so. Is he right?"

This time, the applause was sparser, less comfortable. Again, Flora had thought it would be. She'd seen again and again that the plight of Negroes in the Confederate States did not get people in the United States hot and bothered. When people in the USA thought about Negroes, it was generally with relief that the vast majority of them were the CSA's worry.

That wasn't right. Flora drove the point home: "A lot of you have ancestors who came here because someone was persecuting them in Europe. Someone is persecuting the Negroes in the Confederate States right now, and we won't let them in. We turn them back. We shoot them if we have to. But we keep them out. And don't you see? That's wrong."

Now she got almost no applause. She would have been more disappointed if she were more surprised. "A lot of you don't care," she said. "You think, They're only niggers, and you go on about your business. And do you know what? That sound you hear from Richmond is Jake Featherston, laughing. If you don't care about a wrong to people in his country, he thinks you won't care about a wrong to people in your country, either. Is that so?"

"No!" She got the answer she wanted, but from perhaps a third of the throats that should have shouted it.

"I'm going to say one more thing, and then I'm through," she told the crowd. "If you say that oppression of anybody anywhere is all right, you say that oppression of everybody everywhere is all right. I don't think that's what the United States are all about. Do you?"

"No!" This time, the shout was louder. A lot of people clapped and cheered as she went back to her seat.

Governor LaGuardia introduced another member of Congress. The man, a Democrat, harangued the crowd about how good they were and how wicked the Confederates were. He said not a word about the Negroes in the Confederate States. To him, the Confederates were wicked for no other reason than that they presumed to challenge the people of the United States of America.

He told the people in Central Park what they wanted to hear. They ate it up. The park rang with cheers. Flora had done her best to tell the people the truth. They hadn't liked that nearly so well.

The dignitary sitting next to her leaned over and said, "I see why they call you the conscience of the Congress."

"Thank you," she whispered. Someone, at least, had understood.

Then he went on, "But really! To get excited about a bunch of niggers? Those black bastards-pardon my French, ma'am-aren't worth it. We'd all be better off if they were back in Africa swinging through the trees."

He was, she remembered with something approaching horror, a judge. "What do you do if one of them comes into your court?" she asked.

"Oh, I try to be fair," he answered. "You have to. But they're usually guilty. That's just how things go."

He didn't see anything wrong with what he said. The only way Flora could have let sense into his head would have been to bash it open with a rock. She knew that. She'd met the type before. If she did it here at a Remembrance Day rally, people would talk. Even telling him off was useless. He'd just get offended. She could talk till Doomsday without persuading him.

Sitting there quietly felt as much like a compromise with evil to her as letting the Confederates do what they wanted to the Negroes in their country. She made herself remember there were degrees of wickedness, as there were with anything else. If you couldn't tell the difference between one and another, how were you supposed to make choices?

You couldn't. She knew that, however distasteful she found it. The Confederates were worse than the judge. That still doesn't mean he's good, she thought defiantly. At the microphone, the Democratic Congressman kept on laying into the CSA. The crowd ate up every word.

When Jake Featherston told the people who protected him that he was going to make a speech in Louisville, they started having conniptions. They screamed about black men with guns. They screamed about white men with guns who didn't want to live in the CSA. They screamed about damnyankees with mortars on the other side of the Ohio River. For the USA to try to bump him off would be an act of war, but it wouldn't be a war he got to run if they went ahead and did it.

That last comment worried him, because he didn't think anyone else in the Confederacy had the driving will and energy to do what needed doing when the war started. But he stuck out his chin and told the Freedom Party guards, "I'm going, goddammit. You keep the people in Louisville from shooting me. That's your job. I'll worry about the rest. That's mine."

Even Ferdinand Koenig flabbled about the trip. "You're the one man we can't replace, Jake," he said.

These days, he was almost the one man who could call Jake by his Christian name. Featherston looked across his desk at the attorney general. "It's worth the risk," he said. "The Party guards'll keep me safe from niggers and nigger-loving bastards who wish they were Yankees. And Al Smith is too nice a fellow to turn his artillery loose while we're at peace."

Al Smith was a damned fool, as far as Jake was concerned. Had the USA had a dangerous leader-say, another Teddy Roosevelt-Jake would have done everything he could to get rid of the man. People like that were worth an army corps of soldiers, likely more.

But Ferd Koenig had another worry. Quietly, he asked, "And who's going to keep you safe from the guards?"

Featherston glared at him. He'd already lived through two assassination tries-three if you counted Clarence Potter, who hadn't come to Richmond to play checkers. The stalwarts who'd backed Willy Knight against him still shook him to the core. But he said, "If I can't trust the Party guards, I can't trust anybody, and I might as well cash in my chips. And if I can't trust them, they can try and do me in right here in Richmond as easy as they can in Louisville."

By the look on Koenig's heavy-featured, jowly face, he might have just bitten down on a lemon. "You're bound and determined to do this, aren't you?"

"You bet I am," Jake answered. "You take over a place, you need to let the people there get a look at you." He'd been reading The Prince. He couldn't pronounce Machiavelli's name to save his life, and if he wrote it down he wouldn't have spelled it the same way twice running. All the same, he knew good sense when he ran into it, and that was one hell of a sly dago.

He went to Louisville. He'd decided he would, and his deciding was what made things so. And when he went, he went in style. He didn't just fly in, make a speech, and fly out again. He took a train up from Nashville, and at every whistle stop all the way north across Kentucky he stood on a platform at the back of his Pullman and made a speech.

The Pullman had armor plating and bulletproof glass. Nothing short of a direct hit by an artillery shell would make it say uncle. The lectern on the platform was armored, too. But from the chest up and from the sides, he was vulnerable. The Freedom Party guards told him so, over and over. He went right on ignoring them.

Nobody shot him. Nobody shot at him. People swarmed to the train stations to hear him. They waved Confederate and Freedom Party flags. They shouted, "Freedom!" and, "Featherston!" — sometimes both at once. Women screamed. Men held up little boys so they'd see him and remember for the rest of their lives. The Party had organized some of the crowds, but a lot of the response was genuine and unplanned. That made it all the more gratifying.

He didn't see any black faces in the crowds. He would have been surprised and alarmed if he had. If he never saw any black faces anywhere in the CSA, that wouldn't have broken his heart.

"You folks helped us take back what's ours," he told the crowds at the whistle stops. "We got part of the job done, but the damnyankees won't make the rest of it right. They're nothing but a pack of thieves, and how are you supposed to live with a thief next door?"

People cheered. People howled. People shook their fists toward the north, as if Al Smith could see them. They'd been back in the Confederate States not even a handful of months, but they were ready to fight for them.

Jake tasted their jubilation. It was different from the cold lust for revenge he felt in the rest of the CSA. People here had spent a generation under Yankee rule. They'd had their men conscripted into the U.S. Army. They knew what they'd abandoned, and they were glad to be back where they belonged.

Or most of them were: enough to have voted Kentucky back into the CSA, even with Negroes given the franchise to try to queer the deal. But there were white men-white men! — who looked north with longing, not with hate. If they knew what was good for them, they'd be lying low right now. If they didn't know what was good for them, Confederate officials and Party stalwarts would give them lessons on the subject.

He got into Louisville a little before six in the evening. People waving flags lined the route from the train station to the Galt House, the hotel where he would spend the night. He didn't stop there for long now-just enough time to grab a bite to eat and run a comb through his hair. Then it was on to the Memorial Auditorium a few blocks away for his speech.

The auditorium was a postwar building, of reinforced concrete that could have gone into a fortress. Most of Louisville was new. The city had been destroyed twice in the past sixty years. The USA had tried to take it in the Second Mexican War-tried and got a bloody nose. In the Great War, General Pershing's Second Army had driven the Confederates out, but not till the defenders, fighting from house to house, made the Yankees wreck the city to be rid of them.

Before the Second Mexican War, and to a degree after it, Louisville had been an un-Confederate sort of place. Because it did so much business with the United States, it had looked north as well as south. But once it got taken into the USA, it wasn't a booming border town any more. Even before the collapse of 1929, business was slow here. That made people all the more glad to return to the Confederacy.

A rhythmic cry of, "Featherston! Featherston! Featherston!" greeted Jake as he strode up to the lectern. The bright lights glaring into his face kept him from getting a good look at the blocks of stalwarts who kept the chant strong, but he knew they were there. They weren't the only ones shouting, though- far from it. When he held up his hands for quiet, they fell silent at once. The rest of the crowd, less disciplined, took longer.

When he had enough quiet to suit him, he said, "I am Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth." That brought him a fresh eruption of cheers. They knew his catch phrase, and had known it for years. Wireless stations from northern Tennessee had beamed his speeches up into Kentucky long before it returned to the Confederate States. He went on, "Here's what the truth is. The truth is, the Yankees don't want peace in North America. Oh, Al Smith says he does, but he's lying through his teeth."

Boos and hisses rose when he named the president of the United States. One loudmouthed fellow yelled, "We didn't vote for him!" That drew a laugh. Jake scowled. Nobody was supposed to get laughs at his speeches but him.

He said, "It's been almost twenty-five years since the United States stole our land from us. They coughed up a couple of pieces, and now they think they ought to get a pat on the head and a dish of ice cream on account of it. Well, folks, they're wrong. No two ways about it. They are wrong.

"And they think that might makes right. They aren't so wrong about that. But they think it gives 'em the right to hold on to things. They may think it does, but I'm here to tell you it isn't so. We've got the right to take back what's ours, and we'll do it if we have to.

"I want peace. Anybody who's seen a war and wants another one has to have a screw loose somewhere." Jake got a hand when he said that. He'd known he would, which was why he put it in the speech. He didn't believe it, though. He'd never felt more alive than when he was blasting Yankees to hell and gone in the First Richmond Howitzers. By contrast, peacetime was boring. He went on, "But if you back away from a war now, a lot of the time that just means you'll have to fight it later, when it costs you more. If the people in the United States reckon we're afraid to fight, they'd better think twice."

He got another hand for that, a bigger one. He'd hoped it would. It meant people were ready. They might not be eager, but they were ready. And ready was all that really counted.

Shaking his fist toward the country across the Ohio, he rolled on: "And if the damnyankees reckon they can get our own niggers to stab us in the back again, they'd better think twice about that, too." A great roar of applause went up then. Louisville had been in U.S. hands when the Negroes in the CSA rebelled in 1915, but the white folks here were just as leery of blacks as if they'd never left the Confederacy. Negroes had never got the right to vote in Kentucky, not till the plebiscite earlier this year. There wouldn't be a next time for them, either. Jake went on, "We've got our niggers under control now, by God. Oh, there's still some trouble from 'em-I won't try to tell you any different-but we're teaching 'em who's boss."

More thunderous applause. Jake hoped that, if he killed enough rebellious blacks, the rest of them would learn who held the whip hand. As an overseer's son, he took that literally. And if the Negroes didn't care to learn from their lessons… He shrugged. He'd go on teaching. Sooner or later, they would get it.

He knew damn well the United States were helping blacks resist the Confederate government. His people had already seized more than one arms shipment right here in Kentucky. His mouth opened in a predatory grin. Two could play at that game.

"Here's the last thing I've got to say to you, folks," he cried. "Kentucky is Confederate again. As God is my witness, Kentucky will always be Confederate from here on out. And I promise you, I won't take off this uniform till we've got everything back that belongs to us. We don't retreat. We go forward!"

He slammed his fist down on the podium. The Memorial Auditorium went wild. He couldn't make out individual cheers amid the din. He might have been in the middle of artillery barrages louder than this, but he wasn't sure. After a while, it all got to be more than the ears could handle.

He looked north toward the United States again. He was ready. Were they? He didn't think so. They'd started rearming a lot more slowly than he had. They're soft. They're rotten. They're just waiting for somebody to kick the door in.

"Featherston! Featherston! Featherston!" Little by little, the chant emerged from chaos. Jake waved to the crowd. The cheers redoubled. The Yanks are waiting for somebody to kick the door in, and I'm the man to do it.

Anne Colleton muttered a mild obscenity when someone knocked on the door to her St. Matthews apartment. She hadn't been home for long, and she'd head out on the road again soon. She wanted to enjoy what time she had here, and her idea of enjoyment didn't include gabbing with the neighbors.

She took a pistol to the door, as she usually did when someone unexpected knocked. The Congaree Socialist Republic was dead, but Negro unrest in these parts had never quite subsided. If a black man wanted to try to do her in, she aimed to shoot first.

But it wasn't a homicidal Red. It was a middle-aged white man in a lieutenant-colonel's uniform, two stars on each collar tab. That was all she saw at first. Then she did a double take. "Tom!" she exclaimed.

"Hello, Sis," her younger brother said. "I came to say good-bye. I've been called up, and I'm on my way out to report to my unit."

"My God," Anne said. "But you're married. You've got a family. What will Bertha do with the kids?"

"The best she can," Tom Colleton answered, which didn't leave much room for argument. "You're right-I didn't have to go. But I couldn't have looked at myself in a mirror if I hadn't. The Yankees have got more men than we do. If we don't use everybody we can get our hands on, we're in a hell of a lot of trouble."

She knew perfectly well that he was right. The USA had always outweighed the CSA two to one. If the United States could bring their full strength to bear, the Confederate States would face the same squeeze as they had a generation earlier. The USA hadn't managed that in the War of Secession, and had failed spectacularly in the Second Mexican War. In the Great War, they'd succeeded, and they'd won. Keeping them from succeeding again would be essential if the Confederacy was to have a chance.

All of which passed through Anne's mind in a space of a second and a half and then blew away. "For God's sake come in and have a drink," she said. "You've got time for that, don't you?"

"The day I don't have time for a drink is the day they bury me," Tom Colleton answered with a trace of the boyish good nature he'd largely submerged over the past few years.

Anne was all for revenge. She was all for teaching the United States a lesson. When it came to putting her only living brother's life on the line, she was much less enthusiastic. She poured him an enormous whiskey, and one just as potent for herself. "Here's to you," she said. Half of hers sizzled down her throat.

Tom drank, too. He stared at the glass, or maybe at the butternut cuff of his sleeve. "Christ, I did a lot of drinking in this uniform," he said. He might have been talking about somebody else. In a way, he was. He'd been in his early twenties, not fifty. He'd been sure the bullet that could hurt him hadn't been made. Men were at that age, which went a long way toward making war possible. By the time you reached middle age-if you did-you knew better. Ask not for whom the bell tolls…

"How's Bertha doing?" Anne asked. She'd always thought her brother had married below his station, but she couldn't deny that he and his wife loved each other.

He shook his head now. "She's not very happy. I don't reckon I can blame her for that. But I have to go." He finished the whiskey and held out the glass. "Pour me another one. Then I've got to head for the station and catch the northbound train."

"All right." Anne poured herself another drink, too, even though the first one was already making her head swim. It loosened her tongue, too. Without it, she never would have asked, "What do you think our chances are?"

Tom only shrugged. "Damned if I can tell you. Last time I went off to war, I was sure we'd lick the Yankees in six weeks and be home in time for the cotton harvest. One whole hell of a lot I knew about that, wasn't it? This time, I've got no idea. We'll find out."

"Maybe there won't be a war." Anne knew she was trying to talk herself into believing what she suddenly wanted with all her heart to believe, but she went on, "Maybe the damnyankees will back down and give us what we're asking for."

"Not a chance," Tom said. "I thought they were a pack of cowards last time. I know better now. They're as tough as we are. And even if they did, how much difference would it make?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. If the damnyankees back down tomorrow, what'll Jake Featherston do the day after? Ask 'em for something else, that's what. And he'll keep right on doing it till they say no and have to fight. Because whether you want a war or I want a war, Featherston damn well does, and he's got the only vote that counts. You going to tell me I'm wrong?"

Part of Anne-most of Anne-wanted to, but she knew she couldn't. She shook her head. "No, you're not wrong. But the time is ripe, too, and you know it. Things are going to blow up in Europe any day. The old Kaiser can't possibly last much longer, and his son's going to spit in France's eye. What'll happen then?"

"Boom," Tom said solemnly. "I'm surprised the French have waited as long as they have, but Action Franзaise doesn't seem to have one clear voice at the top, the way the Freedom Party does."

"No, they don't," Anne agreed. "But if they and the British and the Russians can put Germany in her place and give us even a little help against the USA, we'll do all right. If you don't think so, why are you wearing the uniform again?"

"It's not for the Freedom Party. You can tell that to Jake Featherston's face next time you see him. I don't care," Tom said. "It's for the country. I'd fight for my country no matter who was in charge."

Anne had no intention of telling the president any such thing, regardless of what Tom said. It wouldn't do her brother any good, and might do him a lot of harm. Tom didn't seem to understand how thoroughly politics had twined themselves around everything else in the CSA these days. If you said uncomplimentary things about the Freedom Party, you'd probably be thought disloyal to the Confederate States, too.

Anne wondered if she ought to warn him. The only thing that held her back was the near certainty he wouldn't listen to her. Maybe he'd learn better when he got back on active duty. Or maybe he wouldn't, and he'd run his mouth once too often, and get cashiered and sent home.

He was her kid brother. Having him safe back here in South Carolina wouldn't break her heart. Oh, no, not at all.

"Be careful," was all she did tell him.

He nodded. "You know what they say: old soldiers and bold soldiers, but no old bold soldiers. I'm going out there to do a job, Anne. I'm not going out there looking to get shot. I've got too much to come home to."

"All right, Tom." Was it? Anne wondered. She never liked it when somebody whose life she'd run for a long time slipped away from her control. She'd made more allowances for Tom than she did for most because they were flesh and blood. And now here he was, leaving not only her control but his wife's as well, heading off into the brutal, masculine world of war.

Clarence Potter was going the same way. He actively despised the regime. He was ready to put his life on the line for it just the same, and for the same reason: it was in charge of the country, and the country mattered to him.

"Be careful," she said again, and reminded herself to say the same thing to Clarence as soon as she could.

"You, too," Tom said then.

"Me?" She laughed. "I won't be up at the front, and you probably will." That probably was her hope against hope. She knew damn well he would. She took another sip of whiskey. However much she drank, though, the most she could do was blur that knowledge. She couldn't make it leave.

But her brother was serious, even if he'd taken on enough in the way of whiskey to speak with owlish intensity: "How much difference do you think being at the front will make? Bombers have a long reach these days. In this war, everybody's going to catch hell, not just the poor bastards in uniform."

That had an unpleasant feel of truth to it. Anne said, "Bite your tongue."

He took her literally. He stuck it out and clamped his teeth down on it so she could see. She laughed; she'd had enough that things like that were funny. But she couldn't help asking, "You think they'll bomb civilians, then?"

"Look what they did to Richmond last time," he said. "And it's not like our hands are clean. They had more airplanes, that's all."

Anne had been in Richmond for one of the U.S. air raids. She still remembered the helpless terror it had roused in her. "Well, we'd better have more this time, that's all," she said. "Let them find out what they did to us."

"I hope so," Tom said. "I expect so, as a matter of fact. But God help us if it turns out they give us another dose."

He got to his feet. Anne stood up, too. They hugged. "You be careful," she said for a third time.

"I promise," he answered. She didn't believe him for a minute. He would do what he would do. The only reason he hadn't got killed in the last war was dumb luck. She wished him more of that. It might serve where promises didn't.

Tom went out the door and off to the train station. Anne watched him from the window. He wobbled as he walked; she'd poured a lot of whiskey into him. That was all right. He'd sober up before he got to wherever he needed to go. She realized he hadn't said where that was. Military security had fallen between them like a blanket.

She muttered a curse against military security. She muttered another curse against war. That second one was halfhearted, and she knew it. She wanted all the horrors of war to come down on the damnyankees' heads. She just didn't want anything to happen to Tom or to Clarence or to the people of the Confederate States. That wasn't fair, of course. She couldn't have cared less.

Tom turned a corner and was gone. No. Anne shook her head. He wasn't gone. She just couldn't see him any more. There was a difference. "Of course there's a difference," she said aloud, as if someone had told her there wasn't.

Another drink didn't seem likely to let her know what the difference was. She fixed one for herself anyway. She'd thought Tom would have the sense to stay home with his wife and children. She'd thought so, but she'd been wrong. She hated being wrong.

And she even saw how she'd been wrong. Jake Featherston had spent years building up the passion for war in the Confederate States. He'd needed to, to get the revenge on the United States he wanted. Anne also wanted that revenge, and so she'd helped him. What could be more natural, then, than that the passion took someone who otherwise would have stayed home?

What indeed? Anne gulped the new drink in a hurry. Somehow, seeing where she'd been wrong didn't help a bit.

Even in late spring, the North Atlantic pitched and tossed. The USS Remembrance was a big ship, but the waves flung her about even so. Sam Carsten thanked heaven for his strong stomach and for the cloudy skies that kept his fair, fair skin from burning. Other than that, he had little for which to be thankful.

To put it mildly, things did not look good. The Remembrance and the cruisers and destroyers surrounding her were on full war alert. Everyone seemed sure it was coming. The only questions left were about when and where and how.

Maybe the clouds in the sky didn't matter so much. Sam spent almost all of his time belowdecks, either at his battle station in damage control or in the officers' mess or sacked out in his tiny cabin. On his schedule, a vampire would have had trouble getting a sunburn.

He might as well have been married to Lieutenant Commander Hiram Pottinger. He saw his superior nearly every waking moment. The two of them prowled through the bowels of the ship, looking for trouble they could eliminate before it got the chance to eliminate them. Every once in a while, they would find something and turn their sailors loose on it. Then they would pause and nod and sometimes shake hands. That was what they were supposed to do, and by now they were both damn good at the job.

Sam still remembered that he wanted to get in on the aviation side of things. He remembered, but nostalgically, as if thinking of a long-lost love. Years of doing the duty he was in had shaped him and scraped him till he wasn't a square peg in a round hole any more. By now, he fit the slot in which the Navy had put him. That was how things worked.

He kept right on going up to the wireless shack whenever he found the chance. Maybe that proved he was a mustang; he still had a rating's insatiable appetite for scuttlebutt. The yeomen who kept the Remembrance in touch with the wider world grinned whenever he poked his head in. They teased him about it, as much as they could tease a superior officer.

"Going to tell the limeys everything you know, sir?" one of them asked.

"Hell, no." Sam shook his head. "I'm going to save it till we get over to the Pacific. Then I'll tell it to the Japs."

They all laughed. The only thing Sam wanted to tell the Japanese was where to head in. He would gladly have helped guide them on the way, too. They'd shelled a ship he was on once and torpedoed him twice. If they hadn't sunk him, it sure as hell wasn't for lack of effort.

Before any of the yeomen could say something else slyly rude, loud, mournful music started coming out of the wireless set. "Something's up," Sam said. "What station is that?"

"German Imperial Wireless, sir," answered the man who'd been teasing him. The yeomen and Carsten looked at one another. Wilhelm II had been failing for a long time now. If he'd finally gone and failed…

A torrent of German poured from the speaker. "You picking that up, Gunther?" another yeoman asked.

"I will if you don't jog my elbow," Gunther answered. He was a big blond kid, not so fair as Sam but fair enough. Another Midwestern farm boy who'd decided to go to sea instead of spending the rest of his life walking behind a couple of horses' asses. (These days, he'd probably ride a tractor. That still wasn't Sam's idea of fun.)

"Is it the Kaiser?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Uh, yes, sir." Gunther corrected himself. "It's him, all right. Blood clot on the lung, the wireless says. Went into a coma last night, died this morning." More music replaced the announcer's voice. This time, Sam recognized the tune: Deutschland ьber Alles. When the German anthem ended, the announcer came back on the air. "He's hailing the accession of Friedrich Wilhelm-King Friedrich Wilhelm V of Prussia and Kaiser Friedrich I of Germany," Gunther reported.

"Kaiser Bill had a hell of a run: better than fifty years," Sam said. His son and heir wouldn't match that; Friedrich Wilhelm, who'd lived so long in his father's shadow, was already close to sixty.

More German came out of the wireless. This was a different voice. Gunther said, "Uh-oh. This is the new Kaiser's mouthpiece. He says Friedrich Wilhelm's first act is to declare that he can't possibly give up anything his father won."

"Uh-oh is right," Sam said. "That means trouble with France and England and probably Russia, too." He whistled softly. "Big trouble, I think. I wonder what the hell we do now."

"Well, sir, we're already on battle alert," Gunther said practically.

"Yeah," Sam said: not the ideal reply, perhaps, for an officer and a gentleman, but one both accurate and concise.

Gunther got on the telephone to the bridge. Sam ambled out of the wireless shack, whistling tunelessly to himself. For the next little while, he would know something the skipper didn't. Of course, knowing did him no good. He couldn't bring the Remembrance, or even the damage-control parties, to a higher state of alert than they were already in.

British airplane carriers, he thought unhappily. British battleships, if they can get in close enough. British and French submersibles. French destroyers, too, I suppose. What a joy. Would Britain and France declare war on the USA, too, once they went to war with Germany, which they sure looked as if they'd do? The frogs might not. They were taking dead aim at their next-door neighbors.

The limeys? Carsten worried more about them. They owed the USA a kick in the teeth. The United States had booted them out of Canada, Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. Sam couldn't see them mounting an invasion to take back Toronto. The islands out in the Atlantic? They were a different story. And to get to the islands, the British would have to get past the U.S. Navy.

With a spatter of static, the Remembrance's intercom came to life. Sam blinked. The squawkboxes didn't get used very often. "This is the captain speaking." Sam blinked again. When the intercom did come on, Captain Stein hardly ever spoke himself. That was usually the exec's job. But the skipper continued, "Men, you need to know that the German Empire has just announced that Kaiser Wilhelm II has passed away. His son, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, has just become the new German Kaiser.

"Friedrich Wilhelm has formally rejected the demands France has made for the return of territory lost in the Great War. The international situation will grow more dangerous as a result of this. For the moment, we are not at war with France or Britain or anyone else." That could only mean the CSA. Sam shook his head. No, it could mean Japan and even Russia, too. Captain Stein went on, "However, we must not let ourselves be caught off guard by a sneak attack. Be more alert than ever. If in doubt about anything, let a superior know. You may save your ship. That is all." With another spatter of static, the intercom went dead.

Later, after Sam had gone back on duty, Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said, "The French and the English won't declare war on us, will they, Carsten?"

"Damned if I know, sir," Sam answered. He wondered why the devil Pottinger was asking him. The other officer had two grades on him and wore an Annapolis ring to boot. If anybody knew the answers, Pottinger should have been the man. On the other hand, though, Sam had twenty years on his superior officer. Maybe Pottinger thought that counted for something.

"We'll just have to lick 'em if they do," Pottinger said. He hadn't been old enough to see action in the Great War, but he'd seen his share in the Pacific War against the Japanese. He'd be all right.

Even though the Atlantic was rough, airplanes roared off the Remembrance's flight deck. Having a combat air patrol up could save the ship if the British or French or Confederates decided to declare war by attacking, the way the Japs had.

No doubt the cruisers in the squadron were launching their seaplanes, too. Those would range farther afield. With luck, they would spot the enemy before he got close enough to launch an airborne strike force.

Unlike Pottinger, Carsten wasn't usually the sort who borrowed trouble. Even so, he wished he hadn't decided to contemplate the meaning of the phrase with luck. It reminded him too vividly of what could happen without luck.

Day followed day. An oiler came alongside to refuel the Remembrance. Sam remembered an oiler refueling the USS Dakota just before the USA attacked Pearl Harbor and took the Sandwich Islands away from Britain. Back then, most ships had been coal-fired. Even the Dakota had burned both oil and coal. Things had changed since. He didn't think any front-line ships burned coal any more.

He was in the officers' wardroom fueling up himself-on coffee-when Commander Cressy came in looking thoroughly grim. "Oh, boy," said one of the other officers in there.

"Oh boy is about the size of it," the exec agreed. "France has declared war on Germany and sent soldiers and barrels into Alsace and Lorraine. Britain has joined in the declaration. Her airplanes are bombing several cities in northern Germany. The Tsar has recalled his ambassadors from Berlin and Vienna and Constantinople. It can't be more than a matter of days before Russia joins in."

"Here we go again," somebody said, which summed up exactly what Sam was thinking.

"That wasn't all," Cressy said. "Latest word is that Jake Featherston's declared war on Germany."

Several sharp exclamations rang out. "On Germany?" Sam said. "Not on us?"

"Not yet, anyhow," Commander Cressy replied. "Declaring war on Germany sounds good and doesn't cost him anything. It's almost like the Ottoman Empire declaring war on the CSA. Even if they do it, so what? They can't reach each other."

"We're still formally allied to Germany, and we've got a bunch of the same enemies," Sam said. "If the Confederates declared war on the Kaiser, does that mean we have to declare war on them?"

"You do ask interesting questions, Carsten," the exec said. "I don't think we have to do anything. There was that stretch in the twenties when it looked like we might square off against Kaiser Bill, and the alliance pretty much lapsed. But then the old snakes stuck their heads up again, so we never duked it out with Germany. Anyway, though, my guess is that Al Smith will sprout wings and fly before he goes and declares war on his own hook."

A lot of men with stripes on their sleeves nodded at that. Most officers were Democrats. That made sense: they defended the status quo, which was what the Democratic Party stood for.

Sam supposed he was a Democrat himself. But whether he defended the status quo or not, he feared it was going to get a hell of a kicking around.

Colonel Irving Morrell saluted. "Reporting as ordered, sir," he said, and then, smiling, "Good to see you again, sir, too. It's been too long."

"It has, hasn't it?" Brigadier General Abner Dowling replied.

The last time they'd been together, Morrell had outranked Dowling. He tried not to resent the fat officer's promotions. They weren't Dowling's fault: how could anybody blame him for grabbing with both hands? Instead, they- and Morrell's own long, long freeze in rank-spoke volumes about the War Department's peacetime opinion of barrels.

"We're going to be doing something different here," Dowling remarked. "The other side's got the ball, and they'll try to run with it."

"And we have to tackle them," Morrell said.

"That's about the size of it," Dowling agreed.

Morrell whistled tunelessly between his teeth. "We're not going to be able to keep them from crossing the river," he said.

"Oh, good," the fat brigadier general said. Morrell looked at him in some surprise. Dowling went on, "I'm glad somebody besides me can see that. Officially, my orders are to throw them back into Kentucky right away."

"Sir, you'd bust me down to second lieutenant if I told you what I thought of the War Department," Morrell said.

Abner Dowling surprised him again, this time by laughing till his jowls quivered like the gelatin on a cold ham. "Colonel, I spent more than ten years of my life listening to General George Armstrong Custer. If you think you can shock me, go ahead. Take your best shot. And good luck."

That made Morrell laugh, too, but not for long. "If we were fighting the Confederate Army of 1914, we'd kick the crap out of it," he said. "That's a lot of what the big brains in Philadelphia have us ready to do."

The laughter drained out of Dowling's face, too. "Custer would have been louder about it, but I don't know if he could have been much ruder. We've got plenty of men, we've got plenty of artillery; our air forces are about even, I think. Our special weapons-gas, I should say; call a spade a spade-will match theirs atrocity for atrocity. Have you met Captain Litvinoff?"

"Yes, sir." When Morrell thought about Captain Litvinoff, he didn't feel like laughing at all any more. "I get the feeling he's very good at what he does." He could say that and mean it. It was as much praise as he could give the skinny little officer with the hairline mustache.

It was June. It was already warm and muggy. It would only get worse. He didn't like to think about being buttoned up in a barrel. He especially didn't like to think about being buttoned up in a barrel while wearing a gas mask. When he thought about Litvinoff, he couldn't help it.

Thinking about being buttoned up in a barrel made him think about barrels in general, something else he wasn't eager to do. "Sir, if we are going to play defense, we don't just need gas. We need more barrels than we've got."

"I am aware of that, thank you," Dowling replied. "Philadelphia may be in the process of becoming aware of it. On the other hand, Philadelphia may not, too. You never can tell with Philadelphia."

"But if we're going to stop them-" Morrell began.

His superior held up a hand. "If we're going to stop them, we've got to have some notion of what they'll try. We'd better, anyhow. What's your best estimate of that, Colonel?"

"Have you got a map, sir?" Morrell asked. "Always easier to talk with a map."

"Right here." Dowling took one from his breast pocket and unfolded it. It was printed on silk, which could be folded or crumpled any number of times without coming to pieces and which didn't turn to mush if it got wet. Morrell drew a line with his fingers. Dowling's eyebrows leaped. "You think they'll do that?"

"It's what I'd do, if I were Jake Featherston," Morrell answered. "Can you think of a better way to cripple us?"

"The War Department thinks they'll strike in the East, the same as they did in the last war," Dowling said. Morrell said nothing. Dowling studied the line he had drawn. "That could be… unpleasant."

"Yes, sir," Morrell said. "I don't know that they have the men and the machines to bring it off. But I don't know that they don't, either."

Dowling traced the same path with his finger. It seemed to exert a horrid fascination. "That could be very unpleasant. I'm going to get on the telephone to the War Department about it. If you're right…"

"They won't take you seriously," Morrell predicted. "They'll say, 'All the way out there? Don't be silly.' " He tried to sound like an effete, almost effeminate General Staff officer.

"I have to make the effort," Dowling said. "Otherwise, it's my fault, not theirs."

Morrell could see the logic in that. He changed the subject, asking, "Have we got sabotage under control?"

"I hope so," Dowling said, which wasn't what he wanted to hear. The general went on, "Sabotage and espionage are a nightmare anyway. We aren't like Germans and Russians. We all speak the same language. And downstate Ohio and Indiana were settled by people whose ancestors came up from what are the Confederate States now. Most of 'em-almost all, in fact-are loyal, but they still have some of the accent. That makes spies even harder to spot. My one consolation is, the Confederates have the same worry."

"Happy day," Morrell said.

His superior laughed. So did he, not that it was really funny. Not being sure who was on your side made any war more difficult. Neither the CSA nor the USA had done all they could with that truth in the Great War. Morrell had the feeling both would make up for it if and when they met again.

Abner Dowling asked, seemingly out of the blue, "Did you ever serve in Utah, Colonel?"

"No, sir," Morrell answered. "Can't say I ever had that pleasure. I helped draw up the plan that involved outflanking the rebels there, but I was never stationed there myself."

"You know we still have colored friends down south of what's the border now," Dowling said-he seemed to be all over the conversational map.

"I don't know that for a fact, or I didn't till now, but it doesn't surprise me," Morrell said. "We'd be damned fools if we didn't."

"Hasn't stopped us before," Dowling observed. Morrell blinked. He hadn't thought the older man had that kind of cynicism in him. Of course, he'd known Dowling when the latter served under Cluster, whose own personality tended to overwhelm those of the people around him. Custer had even managed to keep Daniel MacArthur in check, which couldn't possibly have been easy. While Morrell contemplated the rampant ego of his recent CO., Dowling went on, "I don't think the Confederates are damned fools, either. I wish they were; it would make our lives easier. They were sniffing around in Salt Lake City when I commanded there the same way we are with niggers in the CSA. Only edge we've got is that there are more niggers in the Confederate States than Mormons here, thank God."

"Ah." Morrell nodded. Brigadier General Dowling hadn't been talking at random, then. He'd actually been going somewhere, and now Morrell could see where. "So you think the Mormons are going to try and stick a knife in our backs?"

"Colonel, they hate our guts," Dowling said. "They've hated our guts for sixty years now. I won't deny we've given them some reason to hate us."

"Not like they haven't given us reason to sit on them," Morrell said.

"Oh, there's plenty of injustice to go around," Dowling agreed. "And if another war starts, there'll be more. But I wish to high heaven President Smith hadn't lifted military occupation."

"Don't you think he's got people watching the Mormons?" Morrell asked.

"Oh, I'm sure he does," Dowling replied. "But it's not the same. If we see the Mormons gathering arms, say, it's not so easy to send troops back into Utah to take away the rifles or whatever they've got. That might touch off the explosion we're trying to stop."

"The police-" Morrell began.

Dowling's laugh might have burst from the throat of the proverbial jolly fat man-except he didn't look jolly. "The police are Mormons, too, or most of them are. They'll look the other way. Either that or they'll be the ones with the weapons in the first place. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

"You are cheerful today, sir," Morrell said. "Who will watch the watchmen?"

"I suppose Al Smith will, or his people. He means well. I've never said he doesn't. He's doing the best he can. I only wish he weren't quite so trusting. He kept us out of war-till after the election. Me, I'd sooner have trusted a rattlesnake than Jake Featherston."

"You mean there's a difference?" Morrell asked. Dowling shook his head. His chins danced. But there was a difference, and Morrell knew it. Featherston was likely to prove more deadly than any rattler ever hatched.

An orderly poked his nose into Dowling's office. He brightened when he spotted Morrell. "Sir, I'm supposed to tell you a new shipment of barrels just came in at the Columbus train station."

Morrell bounced to his feet. The thigh where he'd been wounded in the opening days of the Great War twinged. It would remind him the rest of his life of what had happened down there in Sonora. No help for it, though, so he ignored it. The leg still worked. What else mattered? He saluted Brigadier General Dowling. "If you'll excuse me, sir…"

"Of course," Dowling said. "The sooner the barrels get off their flatcars and into units, the better off we'll be."

The orderly had a command car. It was no different from the one Morrell had used on the border between Houston and Texas. He didn't mind sitting behind a machine gun at all. If the Confederates didn't have saboteurs and assassins in Columbus, he would have been amazed.

When he got to the station, he discovered how eager the factory in Pontiac had been to ship those barrels. They were all bright metal; they hadn't even been painted. He hoped his own men would have the time to slap green and brown paint on them before the shooting started. If they did, fine. If they didn't… Well, if they didn't, the barrels were still here, and not back at the factory in Michigan. He would throw them into the fight. He would lose more of them than if they were harder to see at a distance, but they would take out a good many Confederate barrels, too.

How many barrels did the Confederates have? How many could they afford to lose? Those were both interesting questions-the most interesting questions in the world for the U.S. officer in charge of armored operations along the central Ohio. And Morrell didn't have good answers. The U.S. might have had plenty of saboteurs on the other side of the border. Spies who could count and report back? Evidently not.

Morrell looked south. I'll find out. Soon, I think.

The U.S. ambassador to the Confederate States was a bright young Californian named Jerry Voorhis. He was, of course, a Socialist like Al Smith. As far as Jake Featherston was concerned, that made him a custardhead right from the start. He didn't look or sound like a custardhead at the moment, though.

"No," he said. He didn't bother sitting down in the presidential office. He stood across the desk from Featherston, looking dapper and cool in a white linen suit despite the stifling blanket of June heat and humidity.

"No, what?" Jake rasped.

"No to all your demands," Voorhis answered. "President Smith has made his position very clear. He does not intend to change it. The United States will not return any further territory ceded to us by the CSA. You agreed to abide by plebiscites and to make no more demands. You have broken your agreement. The president does not consider you trustworthy enough for more negotiations, and he will yield no more land. That is final."

"Oh, it is, is it?" Jake said.

"Yes, it is." The U.S. ambassador stuck out his chin and gave back a stony glare.

Featherston only shrugged. "Well, he'll be sorry for that. As for you, Ambassador, I'm going to give you your walking papers. As of right now, you are what they call persona non grata here. You have twenty-four hours to get the hell out of my country, or I'll throw you out on your ear."

Voorhis started to say something, then checked himself. After a moment's pause for thought, he resumed: "I was going to tell you you couldn't do me a bigger favor than sending me back to the United States. But I'm afraid you're doing no favors to millions of young men in your country and mine who may be shooting at each other very soon."

"That's not my fault," Jake said in a flat, hard voice. "If President Smith was ready to be reasonable about what I want-"

"My ass," Jerry Voorhis said, which was not the usual diplomatic language. Maybe he thought the rules changed for expelled ambassadors. Maybe he was right. His bluntness made Jake blink. And he went on, "If the president gave you everything you say you want, you'd just say you wanted something else. That's how you are." He didn't bother hiding his bitterness.

And he was right. Featherston knew it perfectly well. Knowing it and admitting it were two different beasts. He pointed toward the door. "Get out."

"My pleasure." As Voorhis turned to go, he added, "You can start a war whenever you please. If you think you can end one whenever you please, you're making a big mistake."

Jake thought about saying something like, We'll see about that. He didn't. The damnyankee could have the last word here. Who got the last word once the balloon went up-that would be a different story.

An hour later, the telephone rang in his office. "Featherston," he snapped.

"Mr. President, the ambassador to the USA is on the line," his secretary said. "He sounds upset."

"Put him through, Lulu." Jake could guess what the ambassador was calling about.

The Confederate ambassador to the United States was a Georgian named Russell. Jake never remembered his Christian name. All he remembered was that the man was reasonably smart and a solid Freedom Party backer. When he heard Featherston's voice on the line, he blurted, "Mr. President, the damnyankees are throwing me out of the country."

"Don't you worry about it," Jake answered. "Don't you worry about it one little bit, on account of I just heaved Jerry Voorhis out of Richmond."

"Oh." Russell sounded relieved, at least for one word. But then he said, "Holy Jesus, Mr. President, is there gonna be another war?"

"Not if we get what we want," Featherston said. "Get what's ours by rights, I ought to say." As far as he was concerned, there was no difference between the one and the other.

"All right, then, Mr. President. I'll see you back there soon," Russell said. "I sure as hell hope everything goes the way you want it to."

"It will." Jake never had any doubts. Why should I? he thought. Everything's always gone good up till now. It won't change. He spent a few more minutes calming the ambassador down, then hung up the phone on him.

No sooner had he done that than Lulu poked her head into his office and said, "General Potter is here to see you, sir."

"Is he?" Jake grinned. "Well, send him right on in."

"Good morning, Mr. President," Clarence Potter said, saluting. He carried a manila folder under his left arm. Tossing it onto Featherston's desk, he went on, "Here are some of the latest photographs we've got."

"Out-fucking-standing!" Jake said, which produced an audible sniff from Lulu in the outer office. "These are what I want to see, all right. If you have to, you'll walk me through some of them."

Some of the pictures that Potter brought him were aerial photos. Getting reconnaissance airplanes up over the USA wasn't that hard. Every so often, Featherston wondered how many flying spies the United States had above his own country. Too many, probably. The photographs Potter brought him were neatly labeled, each one showing exactly where and when it had been taken.

"Doesn't look like there's a whole lot of change," Jake remarked. "Everything still seems out in the open."

"Yes, sir," Potter answered.

Something in his tone made Jake's head come up. He might have been a wolf taking a scent. "All right," he said. "What's different in the stuff they don't want us to see?"

He almost laughed at the way Potter looked at him. The Intelligence officer didn't want to respect him, but couldn't help it. Yeah, sonny boy, I run this country for a reason, Jake thought. Potter said, "If you'll look at some of these ground shots, Mr. President, you'll see the Yankees are starting to move up into concealed forward positions. They should have done it sooner, but they are starting."

"How did we get these ground photos back here so fast?" Featherston asked. "Some of 'em are from yesterday morning."

"Sir, we're still at peace with the USA," Potter replied. "If a drummer or a tourist crosses back into Kentucky from Illinois or Indiana or Ohio, who's to say what kind of prints are on his Brownie? They're only just now starting to wake up to the idea that we might really mean this." He couldn't resist adding, "It might have been better if we'd left them even more in the dark."

Nobody criticized Jake Featherston to his face and got away with it. "Listen, Potter," he snapped, "the damnyankees'll get more surprises from me than a fellow does from his doctor after he lays a fifty-cent whore." The other man guffawed in surprise. Jake went on, "You don't know all my business, so don't go making like you do."

He waited to see if Potter would get angry or get sniffy. The other man didn't. Instead, he nodded. "All right. That makes sense. Does anybody know all your secrets? Besides you, I mean?"

"Hell, no," Jake answered automatically. "There are things I could brag about-but I won't." If he hadn't checked himself, he might have started boasting about what was going on down in Louisiana, for instance. But the whole point of knowing things other people didn't was to be able to use what you knew against them and to keep them from using what they knew against you.

Clarence Potter, he saw, got that. Well, Potter was in Intelligence. If anybody could see the point of secrets, he was the man. And he nodded now. "When I first got to know you, you would have run your mouth," he said. "There's more to you than there used to be. That's why I'm here, I expect."

"Instead of still being a goddamn stubborn Whig and wanting to blow my head off, you mean?" Featherston asked.

Potter nodded. He smiled a crooked smile. "Yeah. Instead of that." The smile got wider. Now he was waiting-waiting to find out if Jake would send him off to a camp for admitting it.

And Jake wanted to. But Potter, damn him, had made himself too useful to be jugged like a hare. And from now on he'd be too busy to worry about blowing the head off of anybody who wasn't wearing a green-gray uniform. Jake jerked a thumb at the door. "All right. Get the hell out of here, and take all your pictures of naked women with you."

"Yes, sir." Chuckling, Potter scooped up the folder of reconnaissance photos and started out. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Good luck," he said. "You've done everything you could to get us ready, but we'll still need it."

"I'll put in a fresh requisition with the Quartermaster Corps," Jake said. Potter nodded and left. Jake shook his head in bemusement. He might have made stupid jokes like that with Ferd Koenig and a couple of other old-time Party buddies, but not with anybody else. So why make them with Potter?

But he didn't need long to find the answer. He'd known Potter longer than he'd known Koenig or any of the other Party men. They'd both hung tough when the Army of Northern Virginia was falling to pieces all around them. If the president of the greatest country in North America-no, in the world! — couldn't joke around with the one man who'd known him when he was just a sergeant, with whom could he joke? Nobody. Nobody at all.

If the Confederate States were going to become the greatest country in the world, they had to go through the United States first. Bastards beat us once, when the niggers stabbed us in the back, Jake thought. This time, I'll sit on the niggers but good, right from the start. Let's see those damnyankee fuckers do it again, especially when we're ready-when I'm ready-and they aren't quite. The photos Potter had shown him proved that.

Lulu made most of his telephone calls. He made this one himself, on a special line that didn't pass through her desk. It went straight from his office to the War Department. Men checked twice a day to make sure the damnyankees didn't tap it. It rang only once before the Chief of the General Staff picked it up. "Forrest speaking."

"Featherston," Jake said, and then, "Blackbeard." He hung up.

There. It was done. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen would happen… starting tomorrow morning, early tomorrow morning.

Summer had just come in. Jake worked through the rest of June 21. He ate supper, and then went right on working through the night. Lulu brought him cup after cup of coffee. After a while, yawning, she went home to bed. He worked on, behind blackout curtains that kept light from leaking out of the Gray House and showing where it was from the air.

June 21 passed into June 22. All that coffee made Jake's heart thud and soured his stomach. He gulped a Bromo-Seltzer and went on. At a quarter past three, the drone of airplane engines and the thunder of distant artillery-not distant enough; damn those Yankee robbers! — made him whoop for sheer glee. He'd waited so long. Now his day was here.