Drive to the East

IV

Jefferson Pinkard was a happy man, happier than he had been since moving out to Texas to start putting up Camp Determination. For one thing, Edith Blades was coming out to Snyder with her boys before too long. That would be nice. She didn’t want to marry Jeff till her husband was in the ground for a year, but he’d still be glad to have her close by instead of back in Louisiana.

And, for another, now he had a man he could trust absolutely among the guards. “Hip Rodriguez!” he murmured to himself in glad surprise. He hadn’t seen the little greaser for twenty-five years, but that had nothing to do with anything. After what they’d been through together in Georgia and west Texas, he knew he could count on Rodriguez. He didn’t know how many times they’d saved each other’s bacon, but he knew damn well it was more than a few.

And he knew how important having somebody absolutely trustworthy was. Running prison camps was a political job, though he wouldn’t have thought so when he started it. And the higher he rose, the more political it got. When the only man over you was the Attorney General, you found yourself in politics and maneuvering up to your eyebrows, because Ferdinand Koenig was Jake Featherston’s right-hand man-and about two fingers’ worth of the left as well.

Back by Alexandria, Mercer Scott was heading up Camp Dependable these days. Scott had led the guard force when Jeff commanded the camp. He’d had his own ways to get hold of Richmond. No doubt the guard chief here did, too. The Freedom Party people at the top wanted to make sure they knew what was going on, so they had independent channels to help them keep up with things.

And if the guard chief started telling lies, or if he started scheming, having someone on your side in the guard force was like an insurance policy. Hip Rodriguez couldn’t have fit the bill better.

With a grunt, Pinkard got up from his desk and stretched. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the top drawer, lit one, started to put the pack back, and then stuck it in his pocket instead. He was about to start his morning prowl through the camp when the telephone rang.

“Who’s bothering me now?” he muttered as he picked it up. His voice got louder: “This here’s Pinkard.”

“Hello, Pinkard. This is Ferd Koenig in Richmond.”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir?” Speak of the devil and he shows up on your front porch, Jeff thought.

“I want to know how things are coming,” Koenig said, “and whether you can make a few changes in the way the camp’s laid out.”

“Things were coming fine, sir. There’s been no problem on shipments out of here,” Pinkard answered. Shipments was a nice, bloodless way to talk about Negroes sent off to be asphyxiated by the truckload. It kept him from thinking about what went on inside those trucks. He didn’t feel bloodless toward Ferd Koenig. If the son of a bitch thought he could run a Texas camp from Richmond… he might be right, because he had the authority to do it. Grinding his teeth, Pinkard asked, “What do you need changed?”

“Way you’ve got the place set up now, it’s just for men-isn’t that right?” the Attorney General said.

“Yes, sir. That’s how all the camps have been, pretty much,” Jeff replied. “Not a hell of a lot of women and pickaninnies packing iron against the government.” There were some, but not many. He didn’t know if there were separate camps for black women, or what. He guessed there were, but asking questions about things that were none of your business was discouraged-strongly discouraged.

“That’s going to change.” Koenig’s voice was hard, flat, and determined. “You can bet your bottom dollar that’s going to change, in fact. What’s wrong with the CSA is that we’ve got too many niggers, period. Not troublemaking niggers, but niggers, period-’cause any nigger’s liable to be a troublemaker. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Oh, you’re right, sir, no doubt about it,” Jeff said. Koenig was just quoting Freedom Party chapter and verse. Jake Featherston had been going on about niggers and what they deserved ever since he got up on the stump for the Party. Now he was keeping his campaign promises.

“All right,” Koenig said. “If we’re gonna get rid of ’em, we’ve got to have places to concentrate ’em till we can do the job. That means everybody we clean out of the countryside and the cities. Everybody. So can you separate off a section for the women?”

“I can if I have to,” Pinkard replied; you didn’t come right out and tell the big boss no, not if you wanted to hold on to your job you didn’t. Thinking fast on his feet, he went on, “It’d mess things up here pretty bad, though, the way Determination is laid out now.” Ain’t that the truth? he thought. “What’d be better, I reckon, is building a camp for women right alongside the one we’ve got now. That way, we could start from scratch and do it right the first time. Lord knows we’ve got the land we need to do it.”

He waited for Koenig to tell him all the reasons that wouldn’t work. Not enough time was always a good one, and often even true. After perhaps half a minute’s silence, the Attorney General said, “Can you have a perimeter up and a place for shipments to go out of ready in ten days’ time? They can sleep in tents or on the ground till you get the barracks built.”

“Ten days? Oh, hell, yes, sir,” Jeff said, trying not to show how pleased he was. He would have agreed to five if he had to. He hadn’t expected Koenig to say yes at all.

But Koenig went on, “That’s what I like to see-a man who’ll show initiative. I told you one thing, but you had a different idea, and it looks to me like a better idea. Make sure you fix up this new camp so it’s the same size as the one you’ve got now. It’ll need to be.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Pinkard promised, slightly dazed. “Uh-if you aim to do shipments out of two big camps like that, I’m gonna need more trucks. The ones I’ve got now won’t begin to do the job.”

“More trucks,” Koenig echoed. Across all those miles, Jeff heard his pen scratching across paper. “You’ll have ’em.” Another pause. “Instead of building the new camp right alongside, why not put it across the railroad spur from the old one? That way, you can separate the niggers out soon as they get off the trains.”

“I’d have to run another side of barbed wire that way, ’stead of using what we’ve got.” Pinkard thought for a moment. “I’d need to get some dozers back again, too, to level out the ground over there.”

“Can’t you use the niggers you’ve got in the men’s camp?” Koenig demanded.

“Well, I could, yeah, but dozers’d be a hell of a lot faster,” Jeff replied. “I figured that mattered to you. If I’m wrong, you’ll tell me.”

Ferdinand Koenig paused once more. “No, you’re not wrong. All right-fair enough. You’ll have your bulldozers. And I’m going to bump you up a rank to brigade leader. That translates to brigadier general in regular Army ranks. You’ll get a wreath around your stars, in other words. Congratulations. When you were in the Army the last time around, did you ever reckon you’d make general?”

“Hell, no. I never even worried about making corporal,” Jeff answered, which was the God’s truth. “Thank you very much, sir.”

“You’re welcome. A raise comes with the promotion. I expect you’ll earn the money,” Koenig said. “More responsibility comes with the promotion, too. You’re going to be in charge of a really big operation out there, and a really important one, too. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think you could swing it.”

“I’ll do my damnedest, sir,” Pinkard said. “It’s for the Party and it’s for the country. You can count on me.”

“I do. So does the President. You’ve shown you’ve got what it takes,” Koenig said, which made Jeff button-popping proud. The Attorney General went on, “Those bulldozers and their crews’ll show up in the next few days. You tell ’em what needs doing, and they’ll do it. Anything else you need-barbed wire, lumber, whatever it is-you holler, and you’ll have it. If you don’t, somebody’s head’ll roll, and it won’t be yours. Freedom!”

“Freedom!” Jeff echoed the Party slogan, but he was talking to a dead line.

He got up from his desk, stretched, and went to the window. Out beyond the barbed wire, and out beyond the railroad spur and the road that ran alongside it, what was there to see? Nothing but more prairie-sagebrush and tumbleweed and jackrabbits and little gullies that turned into torrents when it rained. Leveling them out would be the dozers’ main job. They could do it, and it wouldn’t take long.

“Son of a bitch,” he said softly. “A women’s camp.” They were serious back there in Richmond. He’d known they were serious-he wouldn’t have been a Freedom Party man if they weren’t-but he hadn’t known they were that serious. If they kept on the way they were going, there wouldn’t be a Negro left in the CSA before too long.

Pinkard shrugged as he headed out the door. He wouldn’t shed a whole lot of tears if that happened. If there weren’t any Negroes, white men wouldn’t have to worry about them taking away their jobs. They wouldn’t have to worry about Negroes eyeing white women. And they wouldn’t have to worry about Red uprisings. He’d got his baptism of fire in 1916 against Red Negro rebels in Georgia. They’d fought harder than the damnyankees had. Of course, the USA and CSA took prisoners. Neither side in the black uprisings had bothered with that very often. So… good riddance to bad rubbish.

Out into the sunshine he went. Spring was in the air, but the sun wasn’t biting down with full force yet. He’d grown up in Alabama and spent time in Louisiana. Texas summer was no fun for anybody, but it wouldn’t be any worse than what he was used to.

With several submachine-gun-toting guards at his back, he did his usual prowl through Camp Determination. That he did it was normal. How he did it wasn’t. He tried not to make his rounds the same two days running. He’d stick his head into barracks halls, or he’d go through the kitchens, or he’d go around just inside the perimeter checking for signs of tunneling, or he’d talk with prisoners, or… He never knew ahead of time. He just followed whatever gut feeling he had.

The Negroes had found they could complain to him if they stayed respectful. “Suh, we needs mo’ food,” a skinny black man said. He didn’t ask for better food; that was obviously a lost cause.

“You’re getting what I can give you,” Jeff said, which was more or less true. “If I get more in, you’ll get more, too.” That was also true, although he didn’t expect to see the camp’s supply increased. To drive the point home, he added, “I can’t make you any promises, mind.”

“Do what you can, suh, please,” the black man said. Pinkard nodded and went on to the next barracks hall. The Negroes there grumbled about the food, too. Jeff listened and nodded and again said he’d do something if he got the chance. As long as they were grumbling about the food and not about the trucks that transported them to other camps, everything was fine. The trucks were what really mattered-and the Negroes didn’t seem to know it.

For once, Cincinnatus Driver felt as if he were leading a charmed life. The Confederates had arrested him-and they’d let him go. To him, that went a long way toward proving white men weren’t as smart as they thought they were. He might even find himself on the U.S. border one of these days before too long. He dared hope, anyhow.

Meanwhile… Meanwhile, life went on in Covington’s colored quarter. It wasn’t much of a life. Even compared to what he remembered of times before the Great War, it wasn’t much of a life. He shrugged. He couldn’t do much about that. He couldn’t do anything about it, in fact. All he could do was try to get through from day to day.

He thought about staying away from Lucullus Wood’s barbecue place. He thought about it, but found he couldn’t do it. His showing up there wouldn’t make alarm bells go off at the police station. The only Negroes who didn’t show up there were the unlucky ones too poor to afford any of Lucullus’ barbecue.

He hoped-he prayed-he wouldn’t see Luther Bliss at the barbecue place anymore. He hated, despised, and feared the former head of the Kentucky State Police. Of course, he also hated, despised, and feared the Confederate States of America. Bliss was one of the CSA’s sincerest and ablest enemies-and gave Cincinnatus the cold horrors just the same.

If the Confederate police didn’t have informers posted in the barbecue joint, they were missing an obvious trick. Despite the risk, talk there was freer than anywhere else in Covington that Cincinnatus knew about.

By now, everybody who worked in the place recognized him when he came in. More than a few people also recognized that he had a special connection with Lucullus. They would always find a seat for him, even when the ramshackle restaurant was packed. He got extra barbecue when he ordered, and some of the time they didn’t bother charging him. He’d always been a man who paid his own way, but he appreciated that now, because he didn’t have a whole lot of money.

Policemen and Freedom Party stalwarts came into Lucullus’ place, too. They also recognized Cincinnatus-recognized him and left him alone. They’d caught him once, and it hadn’t stuck. Not all of them understood why it hadn’t stuck, but they knew it hadn’t. They were no more energetic than most mere mortals. They didn’t feel like doing anything they didn’t have to.

Lucullus came up to Cincinnatus while he was eating a big plate of beef ribs. The barbecue cook was a massive man, muscle more overlain by fat with each passing year. Who could blame him for liking his own cooking? Everyone else did, too. His father, Apicius, had been even wider and thicker.

Cincinnatus set down a rib. “Afternoon,” he said.

“Afternoon.” Lucullus had a big, deep voice that went with his bulk. “Mind if I join you?”

“You throw me out on my ear if I’m dumb enough to tell you yes in your own place,” Cincinnatus said. “I done plenty o’ dumb things in my time, but nothin’ dumb as that.”

“Glad to hear it.” Lucullus squeezed into the booth, across the table from him. He waved to one of the waitresses. “Bring me a cup of coffee, would you, Aspasia honey, when you git the chance?” Nodding, the woman waved back.

The coffee arrived faster than when you git the chance. Cincinnatus hadn’t expected anything different. When the boss asked for something, only a fool kept him waiting-and Lucullus wasn’t the sort to put up with fools. Casually, Cincinnatus asked, “So what do you hear from Luther Bliss?”

He’d timed it well; Lucullus was just taking a sip. The cook choked, but the coffee didn’t-quite-go up his nose. After managing to swallow, Lucullus sent him a reproachful stare. “Damn you, you done that on purpose.”

“Who, me?” Cincinnatus was innocence personified-not easy for a black man on the wrong side of fifty with a ruined leg. But he’d been only partly malicious. “What do you hear from him?” he asked again.

Lucullus didn’t bother pretending he hadn’t had anything to do with the white man with the mahogany eyes of a hunting hound. “Says he owes you one on account of you done that truck for him.”

The truck had held mines that went into the Licking River. At least one of them had blown a Confederate gunboat sky-high. The news should have gladdened Cincinnatus’ heart. And so it did, in fact. All the same, he said, “Reckon I owe Luther Bliss more’n one.”

“Mebbe.” Lucullus calmly filched one of the ribs off Cincinnatus’ plate and took a bite out of it. Fiery barbecue sauce ran down his chin-an occupational hazard. “How come you didn’t spill your guts to the Confederates when they done grabbed you, you feel that way?”

Cincinnatus couldn’t squawk at Lucullus’ scrounging, not after all the free food the other man let him have. As for the other… “Well, I didn’t know where the bastard was at, or I might have.”

“Better be more to it than that,” Lucullus said severely.

There was, no matter how little Cincinnatus wanted to admit it. Scowling, he said, “Don’t reckon I’d tell the Confederates where a dog was at, let alone a son of a bitch like that one.”

Laughing, Lucullus said, “That’s better.” He lit a cigarette.

“Gimme one o’ them things,” Cincinnatus said. Lucullus did, and leaned across the table so Cincinnatus could take a light from his. After a long, satisfying drag, Cincinnatus added, “You don’t know you’re playin’ with a rattlesnake there, on account of I ain’t told you.”

“He is one, sure enough.” Lucullus sounded more pleased than otherwise. He explained why: “Dat man be a serpent, sure enough, but he be our serpent. He don’t bite niggers. He bites Confederates, an’ they shrivels up an’ dies.”

That wasn’t quite literally true, but it made a telling metaphor. Cincinnatus wanted no part of it, or of Luther Bliss. “He done bit me,” he said angrily.

“Well, but he reckon mebbe you got somethin’ to do with them Confederate diehards back then.” Lucullus cocked his head to one side and studied Cincinnatus. “Plenty other folks reckon the same thing. My pa, he was one of ’em.”

And Cincinnatus had had something to do with them, not that he intended to admit it now. “That man steal two years outa my life,” he growled. “You reckon I gonna trust him far as I can throw him after that?”

“Trust him to give the Freedom Party a boot in the balls,” Lucullus said. “He do dat every chance he git.”

Before Cincinnatus could answer, a gray-haired, stooped, weary-looking black man came into the barbecue place. One of the small hells of Cincinnatus’ injuries was that he couldn’t jump to his feet. He had to make do with waving. “Pa! I’m over here! What is it?”

But he knew what it was, what it had to be. Seneca Driver didn’t only look weary. He looked as if he’d just staggered out of a traffic accident. “She gone, son,” he said as Cincinnatus did fight his way upright. “Your mama gone.” Tears ran unnoticed down his face.

Lucullus had risen, too. He set a hand on Cincinnatus’ shoulder. “Sorry to hear the news,” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you set your pa down, he tell you what happened.”

Numbly, Cincinnatus obeyed. As numbly, his father accepted the cup of coffee Aspasia brought him. His hands added cream and sugar. Cincinnatus didn’t think he knew they were doing it. He said, “She done laid down for her nap-”

“I know,” Cincinnatus broke in, wanting to say something. “She was asleep when I went out.”

“Uh-huh.” His father nodded. He sipped from the coffee, then stared at it in surprise, as if wondering how it had got there. “Sometimes I’m glad when she go to sleep, on account of I don’t got to worry none fo’ the nex’ little while.”

“I understand that,” Cincinnatus said. “Feel the same way my ownself.”

“But she don’t usually sleep this long,” Seneca said. “I go in to see how she is, an’-” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think nothin’ special of it, on account of she makin’ messes a while now.”

“Yeah.” Cincinnatus looked down at the gnawed ribs on the plate in front of him. His mother had cleaned him when he was a baby. He’d found cleaning her one of the cruelest parts of her slide into senility.

“I put my hand on her shoulder, an’ she gettin’ cold,” his father said. “Jus’ like somebody blowed out a candle. She go easy. I bless the good Lord fo’ dat. Pray to Jesus I go so easy when my time come.”

Cincinnatus made himself nod. Grief and relief warred inside him, along with shame that he should feel relief. “It’s over now,” he said, and choked on his own tears.

Aspasia brought Seneca a plate of ribs. “Why, thank you, child,” he said in mild surprise. “You didn’t have to do nothin’ like that.”

“On the house,” she said softly. “You need anything else, you jus’ sing out, you hear?” She hurried away.

As automatically as he’d fixed the coffee to suit him, Seneca started to eat. He said, “What am I gonna do without your mother?”

“Got to let the undertaker know,” Cincinnatus said.

“I do dat.” His father sounded impatient, almost irritable. “Yeah, I do dat. But so what? Your mama an’ me, we been together close to sixty years. Now she ain’t there no more.” He waved before Cincinnatus could speak, so Cincinnatus didn’t. “I know she ain’t hardly been here this las’ couple years, but it ain’t the same. It just ain’t.” He started crying again, as unknowingly as he had before.

“Maybe we get you up into Iowa,” Cincinnatus said. “Start everything all over up there. You got great-grandchildren you never seen.”

“I don’t believe no ofays. I especially don’t believe no Confederate ofay policeman,” Seneca Driver replied with a shrug.

“Even if he lied, maybe we get there on our own.” Cincinnatus knew it would be easier-not easy, but easier-with his mother gone. He didn’t say that; even thinking it gave his relief and shame fresh ammunition.

“We see.” His father sounded altogether indifferent. “Got other things to fret about right now.”

With Cincinnatus at his side, he arranged them. The funeral was four days later, on a bright spring day. Cincinnatus wore a suit he’d brought down from Des Moines. It wasn’t funereally dark, but it was the only one he had. None of the neighbors and friends who’d come presumed to say anything about it.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the preacher intoned. “God bless and keep Livia Driver, who is free of the evils of this world and free to enjoy a kinder one beyond. We pray for her in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

“Amen,” Cincinnatus echoed. Preachers always said such things. He knew that. But for a Negro in the CSA, the evils of this world were altogether too real.

Part of Clarence Potter wished he hadn’t gone to school in the USA. It wasn’t that he begrudged the education; he didn’t. Yale was a first-rate school. Back before the Great War, quite a few Confederates and Yankees had studied in each other’s homelands. Some people had thought that would bring the CSA and USA closer together. It hadn’t. It never would. They were as different as chalk and Friday.

So it seemed to a patriot from either one, anyhow. Potter, despite his own differences with the government he served, certainly qualified. But not even the most ardent patriot from either country could deny that they were similar in some important ways, too, language high on the list.

Potter listened to a sergeant talking. “Where did you learn to sound like a damnyankee?” he asked.

“Sir, I grew up in Pittsburgh,” the noncom answered. “My father was in the tobacco business, and he lived up there. Wasn’t much fun when I came down here, because I already had the accent, and people got on me for it.”

“I believe that,” Potter said. Somebody else would have to check the man’s story. If it was true, it accounted for the accent. If it wasn’t, it was outstanding cover for the Yankees to sneak one of their own into a secret Confederate operation.

But that wasn’t Potter’s worry, or not directly. All he could do was note the possibility. Somebody else would have to deal with it. His job was checking the way the sergeant sounded. And the man sounded pretty good to him. He scribbled notes in a loose-leaf binder, then nodded to the sergeant.

“I think you may well hear back from us,” he said.

“I hope so, sir,” the man said, still sounding much too much like a damnyankee for comfort. “This sounds like a good way to give the United States a good, stiff kick in the nuts.”

Potter hadn’t said much about the operation. The sergeant, however, plainly had the brains to add two and two and get something close to four. “If you do hear from us, you’ll get the details then,” Potter told him.

He also had the brains not to ask too many questions. He said, “I hope I do, sir,” saluted, and left the underground room in the War Department.

Instead of calling in another candidate, Potter telephoned Nathan Bedford Forrest III. The chief of the Confederate General Staff said, “Forrest here. What can I do for you, General?”

“You’ve already done it, sir,” Potter said. “You’ve got me playing God for these fellows you’re recruiting.”

“And so?” Forrest said. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had to select people for a dangerous mission. That’s part of your job.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Potter agreed. “Usually, though, the men I pick and choose from aren’t so eager as these kids. They’re going to get killed. Some of them will get a blindfold and a cigarette if they’re lucky, or a bullet in the back of the head if they aren’t. But they don’t care. I could give you a division if willingness were all it took.”

“Well, willingness damn well isn’t,” Forrest said. “These man have got to be good. They’ll have to convince Yankees that they’re Yankees. We don’t want just anybody here. We want men who can get well behind enemy lines and raise hell.”

“I understand that. There was a fellow a couple of days ago who’d played a Yankee two or three times in amateur theatricals down in Mississippi.” Potter sighed. “He was every bit as bad as that would make you think, but he didn’t believe it. He got mad as hops when I told him he’d have to fight the war the regular way.”

Forrest laughed, not that it was really funny. “Amateur theatricals, eh? I believe you-you couldn’t make that up. He must have convinced somebody he could sound like he came from the USA, or he never would have got as far as you.”

“I suppose he did.” Potter drummed his fingers on the binder. “Have to see who he did convince, and weed that man out-whoever he is, he’s got a tin ear.” He wrote himself another note.

“You think of everything, don’t you?” Forrest said admiringly.

“Don’t I wish I did? If I’m so smart, how come I’m not rich?” Potter said. Forrest laughed, though again he wasn’t joking. He went on, “I’m just trying to stay one step ahead of the damnyankees.”

“We’ll be farther ahead of them than that if things go the way I hope they do,” Lieutenant General Forrest said.

Potter almost asked what kind of things the chief of the General Staff had in mind. He refrained at the last moment, at least as much because he feared Forrest would tell him as because he feared Forrest wouldn’t. He didn’t have a need to know, no matter how badly he wanted to know. He didn’t want to make Forrest responsible for breaching security. I really have spent too much time in Intelligence, he thought.

Instead of prodding at things that weren’t his proper concern, he asked something that was relevant: “Any sign the United States are training infiltrators who wear butternut?”

He got silence on the line for about half a minute. Then Forrest said, “Thank you for reminding me that anything we can do to the USA, the USA can do to us. No, General, I haven’t had any reports like that. But just because I haven’t had them doesn’t mean the damn-yankees aren’t doing something like that. They could, couldn’t they?”

“Oh, yes-maybe more easily than we could,” Potter answered. Kentuckians loyal to the USA had no trouble sounding as if they came from Confederate Tennessee. Men from the less mountainous parts of West Virginia sounded like their Virginia neighbors. And the United States had their share of people who’d grown up in the Confederate States or gone to school here.

“One more thing we’ll have to watch out for,” Forrest said mournfully. “The President won’t be jumping up and down when he hears about it.”

“No, he won’t,” Potter agreed. “But I’ll tell you one thing: he’ll be a lot angrier if you don’t tell him about it till it ups and bites you, if it does.”

“You’re likely right,” Forrest said.

“Yes, I think so,” Potter said. He’d known Jake Featherston longer than even the President’s oldest Freedom Party buddies. He didn’t know Featherston so deeply, but he’d spent a lot of time brooding over what the head of the Freedom Party was likely to do next, and he’d been right more often than he’d been wrong.

“All right, then. I will pass it along,” Forrest said. “And I’ll try to make sure no more ham actors get as far as you. So long.” He didn’t quite suppress a snort before hanging up.

It was funny. Potter couldn’t deny that, though he’d been annoyed at the inept Mississippian and even more annoyed at the officer who’d passed the man. That officer would soon find himself in a new assignment. Potter didn’t know whether it would be defusing mines with his teeth or just counting thumbtacks in Georgia or Alabama or somewhere else far away from the real war. Wherever it was, the fellow wouldn’t have anything to do with this project.

At the moment, Clarence Potter didn’t want to have anything more to do with this project, either. He suddenly seemed to feel the weight of the whole War Department pressing down on him. If he didn’t get out, he thought he’d suffocate. That set of symptoms had afflicted other men who worked in the subbasement, but never him, not till now.

Rank had its privileges. If he felt like getting out, he could, and he didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. He blinked a little when he came out into Richmond in broad daylight. He might have been a suddenly unearthed mole. When was the last time he’d been out and about with the sun in the sky? He couldn’t remember, which wasn’t a good sign.

Propaganda posters sprouted everywhere: on walls, on fences, on doors. They cursed the enemy and exhorted people to work hard and keep their mouths shut. One of them, an idealized portrait of Jake Featherston (and Potter, who saw Featherston fairly often, knew how idealized it was), simply said, THE PRESIDENT KNOWS. That gave Potter something to think about; he suspected it would have given anybody something to think about. Another one showed two bestial-looking Negroes with knives sneaking up on a house where a blond woman slept. LOOK OUT! it warned. The Intelligence officer nodded to himself-there was a good piece of propaganda.

The city of Richmond, now that he was actually looking around, seemed to have taken a worse beating already in this war than it had all through the Great War. Clarence Potter didn’t know why that surprised him, but it did. Bombers could rain far more death down onto the ground than they’d been able to a generation earlier. They carried bigger bombs farther, faster, and higher, so they were harder to shoot down. And there were more of them than there had been. It showed.

Buildings that still had glass in their windows were the lucky ones. Some people had replaced the glass with sheets of plywood. Others made do with cardboard, which was fine till it got wet. Quite a few hadn’t patched the wounds with anything. Those buildings, even when otherwise undamaged, seemed to look out on the world with dead eyes.

A lot of motorcars were missing glass from their windows, too. Patching them with plywood wasn’t practical. People made do, not that they had much choice.

Bomb damage beyond broken windows was scattered almost at random throughout Richmond. Here a building would have a chunk bitten out of it or a street would be cordoned off with sawhorses to keep automobiles from diving into a hole in the pavement eight feet deep and thirty feet across. Gangs of Negroes directed by whites with submachine guns worked with picks and shovels to clear rubble and repair roads.

Every now and then, most of a city block of buildings was gone, smashed to matchsticks and bricks and rubbish. Men and women sifted through the rubbish, trying to find fragments of the lives they’d just had blown to smithereens. A girl of about six clutched in her arms a rag doll she’d just picked up and did a triumphant, defiant dance. Take that, Potter thought, looking north. The damnyankees might have wrecked her home, but she’d found her best friend again.

Despite the wreckage, morale seemed good. Men and women on the street often greeted Potter with calls of, “Freedom!” He had to return the same answer, too, which made his sense of irony twinge. His rank drew notice. “We’ll get ’em, General,” one man said. “Don’t you worry about it.”

“Yankees can’t lick us,” a woman declared. “We’re tougher’n they are.”

Potter made himself nod and agree whenever someone said something like that. He also thought any one Confederate was likely to be tougher than any one Yankee. Did that mean the USA couldn’t lick the CSA? He wished he thought so. There were a lot more Yankees than Confederates. Jake Featherston had hoped to knock the United States out of the fight in a hurry. It hadn’t quite worked.

Now it was a grapple. The Confederates still had an edge, but it wasn’t so big as Potter would have liked. The United States can lick us, he thought. They’d just better not, is all.

Mary Pomeroy sat in a jail cell in Winnipeg, waiting for the other shoe to drop. That it would, she had no doubt. They’d caught her red-handed this time. And, of course, now that they had caught her red-handed, Wilf Rokeby’s charges looked a lot different. They hadn’t believed the retired postmaster when he said she’d sent a bomb through the mail. They hadn’t-but they sure did now.

A rugged matron in a green-gray blouse and skirt-a woman’s U.S. uniform-led two male guards up the corridor toward her. “Your lawyer is here,” she announced. “You have half an hour to talk with him.”

“Thanks a lot,” Mary said. Sarcasm rolled off the matron like rain off a goose. She opened the door. Mary came out through it; if she hadn’t, the matron would have slammed it shut again. Anything was better than just sitting on the rickety cot in there.

The guards pointed the rifles at Mary as she went up the hall. They looked ready to start shooting at any excuse or none. They no doubt were, too. She almost wished they would. If she went up before a real firing squad, she’d have to try to be as brave as Alexander was. Maybe I’ll see him up in heaven, she thought.

Heavy wire mesh kept her from doing anything but talking with the lawyer. His name was Clarence Smoot; the military judge in charge of her case had appointed him. He was plump and bald and looked prosperous. Maybe that meant he got clients off every once in a while. Mary didn’t expect he’d be able to do much for her. She knew she was guilty, and so did the Yanks.

“Half an hour,” the matron barked again. “From now. Clock’s ticking.”

“Oh, shut up, you miserable dyke,” Clarence Smoot muttered, loud enough for Mary but not for the matron to hear. The lawyer raised his voice then: “Shall we talk about your chances, Mrs. Pomeroy?”

“Have I got any?” Mary asked bleakly.

“Well… you may,” Smoot said, fiddling with the knot on his gaudy necktie. “They can’t prove you blew up Laura Moss and her little girl. They may think so”-and they may be right, too, Mary thought-“but they can’t prove it. All they can prove is that you had explosives when they caught you, and that those explosives were well hidden. You won’t get away with saying you were going to blow up stumps or anything like that.”

“They won’t listen to me no matter what I say.” Mary was more nearly resigned than bitter. “I’m Arthur McGregor’s daughter and I’m Alexander McGregor’s sister. And now they’ve got me.”

“They may not apply the maximum penalty-”

“Shoot me, you mean.”

Clarence Smoot looked pained. “Well, yes.” But you don’t have to come right out and say it, his attitude suggested. “Colonel Colby is a fairly reasonable man, for a military judge.”

“Oh, boy!” Mary put in.

“He is,” Smoot insisted. “Compared to some of the Tartars they’ve got…” His shudder made his jowls wobble. “If you throw yourself on the mercy of the court, I think he’d be glad enough to let you live.”

“In jail for the rest of my life?” Mary said. Reluctantly, Smoot nodded. She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’d sooner they gave me a blindfold and got it over with.”

“Are you sure?” Smoot asked. “Do you want your husband to have to bury you? Do you want your mother and your husband and your sister and your son to have to go to the funeral? If you do, you’ll be able to get what you want. I don’t think there’s any doubt of that.”

Mary winced. He was hitting below the belt. Alec was too little to understand what all this meant. His mother was in a wooden box and they were putting her in the ground forever? That would have to be a bad dream, except it wouldn’t be. It would be real, and when he grew up he would hardly remember her.

But some things were more important. If she’d thought they would let her out one day before too long, she might have weakened. With nothing but endless years in a cell as an alternative, though… “My brother didn’t beg. My father didn’t beg. I’ll be damned if I’m going to.”

Clarence Smoot exhaled heavily and lit a cigarette. “You don’t give me much to work with, Mrs. Pomeroy.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Then she shook her head again. “I’m sorry they caught me. That’s the only thing I’m sorry for. They’ve got no business being here. You’ve got no business being here. You’re a Yank, eh? You talk like one.”

“I’m from Wisconsin. Up till now, I didn’t know that made me a bad person.” Smoot’s voice was dry. He eyed her. “Would you rather have a Canadian lawyer bumping up against an American military judge? I don’t think that would do you an awful lot of good, but you can probably find one.”

“What I want…” Mary took a deep breath. “What I want is for all you Yanks to get out of Canada and leave us alone to mind our own business. That’s what I’ve wanted since 1914.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Pomeroy, but that’s not going to happen. It’s way too late to even worry about it,” Clarence Smoot said. “We’re not going to go away. And the reason we won’t is that you wouldn’t mind your own business if we did. You’d start playing footsie with the Confederates or England or Japan, and you’d make all kinds of trouble for us. We don’t aim to let that happen.”

“Can you blame us?” Mary exclaimed. “After everything the United States have done to my country, can you blame us?”

Smoot spread his pudgy hands. He wore a wedding ring; Mary hoped he wasn’t married to a Canadian woman. “Whether I can blame you doesn’t matter,” he said. “Whether the United States are going to take that kind of chance… well, they won’t, so there’s no point even thinking about it.”

That was how a Yank would think. Before Mary could tell him so, the matron stuck her formidable face into the room and said, “Time’s up.”

Mary’s time nearly was up. She felt it very strongly. Smoot said, “We’ll do the best we can at your hearing. The less you say, the better your chances. I can see that plain as day.”

In tramped the guards. They didn’t point their rifles at Mary this time, but they looked as if they were just about to. “When I say that’s it, that’s it,” the matron barked, her voice almost as deep as Smoot’s.

“Take it easy, Ilse,” the lawyer said soothingly. But the matron wasn’t inclined to take it easy. She jerked a muscular thumb toward the door. Mary got up and went. If she hadn’t, the matron would have made her pay for it-oh, not right there where Smoot could see, but later on. The food would be worse, or Mary wouldn’t get to bathe, or maybe the matron would just come in and thump her. She didn’t know what would happen, only that it wouldn’t be good.

They took her to the hearing in an armored personnel carrier, a snorting monster of a vehicle only one step this side of a barrel. If they had to use it here, they weren’t using it against their foreign enemies. That consoled her a little-as much as anything could.

Colonel Colby was a Yank in a uniform. That was all that registered on her at first. Another, younger, Yank, a captain named Fitzwilliams, prosecuted her. He laid out what her family connections were. Clarence Smoot objected. “Irrelevant and immaterial,” he said.

“Overruled,” the military judge said. “This establishes motive.” The worst of it was, Mary knew he wasn’t wrong. She hated the Yanks for what they’d done to her country and what they’d done to her family.

Captain Fitzwilliams set out the case linking her to the bombing at Karamanlides’ general store (she thought they’d forgotten all about that one) and to the one that killed Laura and Dorothy Moss. Smoot objected to that, too. “The only kind of evidence you’ve got is the testimony of a man who is obviously biased,” he insisted.

“Why obviously?” Fitzwilliams asked. “Because he doesn’t agree with you? It doesn’t matter much anyhow. She was caught with explosives in the barn on the farm where her mother lived. Bomb-making is-and should be-a capital crime all by itself. The other charges are icing on the cake.” By the pained way Smoot grunted, he knew that only too well.

“Does the defendant have anything to say in mitigation or extenuation?” the judge asked. He sounded as if he hoped she did. That surprised her. As Clarence Smoot had said, he wasn’t a monster, only a man doing his job.

Smoot nudged Mary. “This is your chance,” he whispered. “Think of your little boy.”

She hated him then, for trying to deflect her from what she intended to do. She had to steel herself to tell the judge, “No. I did what I did, and you’ll do what you do. If you think I love my country any less than you love yours, you’re wrong.”

Colonel Colby looked at her. “A plea for mercy might affect the verdict this court hands down.” It wasn’t that he wanted her to beg. He wanted her to live.

“You can give me the same mercy you showed Alexander,” she said.

The military judge sighed. “Why do you want to martyr yourself? It won’t change anything one way or the other.”

“You have no right to be here. You have no right to try me,” Mary said.

“We have the best right of all: we won,” Colby said. “If your side had, would you have been gentle to the United States? I doubt it.” Mary hadn’t even thought about that. It didn’t worry her, either. Colby let out a long, sad sigh. “I have no choice but to pronounce you guilty, Mrs. Pomeroy. The punishment for the infraction is death by firing squad.”

“We will appeal, your Honor,” Smoot said quickly.

“No.” Mary overruled him, or tried to.

“An appeal in a capital case is automatic,” Colby told her. “Part of me hopes I will be overruled. I must say, though, I don’t expect to be.”

They took Mary back to her cell. They allowed her no visitors. That was more a relief than a torment. She didn’t want to see Mort, and she especially didn’t want to see Alec. He might have made her weaken. She didn’t think she could stand that, not when she’d come so far.

Colonel Colby knew what he was talking about. The appeal was denied. The panel that heard it ordered the sentence carried out, and so it was, on a sunny day with spring in the air. Mary knew she should have been afraid when they tied her to the pole, but she wasn’t.

They offered her a blindfold. She shook her head, saying, “This is for Canada. I’ll take it with my eyes open.”

A minister prayed. She wondered why the Yanks had him here when they were doing something so ungodly. An officer commanded the men in the squad: “Ready!.. Aim!.. Fire!” The noise was shattering. So was the impact. And then it was over.

Guards at the Andersonville prison camp often let U.S. POWs see Confederate papers. Sometimes they would offer their own editorial comments, too. They jeered whenever the CSA did something good. If the USA scored a success, it never showed up in the news in the Confederate States.

The guards also jeered at what they called U.S. atrocities. “Look at this here,” one of them said, waving a newspaper at Major Jonathan Moss. “Now you people are shooting women up in Canada.”

Moss glared at him. “Are you going to let me see it, or are you just going to flap it in my face?” The guard blinked, then handed him the paper, which came from Atlanta. Where Confederate newspapers came from hardly mattered. They all had the same stories in them: whatever the Freedom Party wanted the Confederate people to hear.

Moss read the story. The way the reporter told it, Mary Pomeroy was a martyr whose like the world hadn’t seen since St. Sebastian. That the damnyankees alleged she’d blown up a woman and a little girl in Berlin, Ontario, only proved what a pack of liars and murderers came out of the United States.

So the reporter said, anyhow. It proved something different to Jonathan Moss. He thrust the paper under his arm without a word. “Well?” the Confederate asked him. “What have you got to say about that there?”

“She had it coming.” Moss’ voice was hard and flat.

The guard gaped at him. “How can even a damnyankee say such a heartless thing as that?”

“Because she murdered my wife and my daughter, you cracker son of a bitch.” Moss braced himself. If the guard wanted to mop the floor with him, he could. The fellow was bigger than he was and only half his age-and carried a submachine gun besides.

But the guard’s gape only got wider. “She killed-your kinfolk?” He sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s what I told you,” Moss answered. “It’s the God’s truth, too. If she hadn’t done that, I’d probably still be up in Canada. I’d be a damn sight happier than I am now, too. I wish I’d been up there even now. I’d have stood in that firing squad. I’d have pulled that trigger. You bet your life I would have.”

He wondered if the guard would call him heartless again. The man didn’t. He just went off shaking his head. That’ll teach you to wave a newspaper in somebody’s face, you know-nothing bastard, Moss thought savagely.

He was avenged. After a couple of years without any movement, he’d doubted he ever would be. And so? he wondered. Was he any happier because this woman was dead? He would gladly have killed her, yes, but was he happier? Slowly, he shook his head. That wasn’t the right word. He’d never be happy, not thinking of Laura and Dorothy dead. But he had a sense of satisfaction he hadn’t known before. It would have to do.

Of course it will, you fool. It’s all you’ll ever get. His wife and his daughter wouldn’t come back. And neither would the woman who’d sent them the bomb. From what the Confederate newspaper said, she had a husband and a little boy. They’d miss her the way he missed his wife and daughter. There was no end to this. Try as you would to find one, there wasn’t any.

He read the story over and over. Rosenfeld, Manitoba… That rang a bell. He nodded to himself. Wasn’t that where that fellow tried to blow up General Custer and ended up blowing himself up instead? Moss was pretty sure it was, though it had happened almost twenty years earlier. Was this gal any relation to that bomber? He didn’t remember the fellow’s name, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Pomeroy. But then, the woman was married, and the paper didn’t say anything about her maiden name.

It wouldn’t. If she was related to the other Rosenfeld bomber, that would make her a murderer from a family of murderers. Somebody like that wouldn’t draw sympathy even from the Confederates. And so, if it was true, the C.S. propaganda machine just ignored it.

Here came that guard again. He had another one in tow. The second man, as Jonathan saw when he got closer, was an officer. He strode up to Moss. “What’s this I hear?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Moss answered. “What do you hear?”

“Conley here tells me you’re related to the people this woman the Yankees shot is alleged to have blown up.”

“Alleged?” The word made Moss furious. “I heard the explosion. I saw the building-and some of the other people she hurt while they were getting out. I buried what was left of my wife and little girl. Don’t you talk to me about alleged, goddammit.”

The guard officer gave back a pace. He hadn’t expected such vehemence. Well, too bad for him, Moss thought. Weakly, he said, “How do you know she really did it?”

“I don’t know for sure.” Now Moss did some paper-waving of his own. “But I’m a lawyer. It sure looks beyond a reasonable doubt to me.”

“A lawyer? How’d you get captured? Couldn’t run away fast enough?” The officer laughed at his own wit.

“I’m a fighter pilot. I fought at the front line or on your side of it,” Moss answered coldly. “I wasn’t making like a hero in a prison camp hundreds of miles away.” The guard officer retreated in disorder.

Moss started to throw the Atlanta paper to the ground, then checked himself. It might not be anything he’d wanted to keep-he had his vengeance, and now he knew it, but the price he’d paid! — but that didn’t mean the paper was useless. Torn into strips, it would come in handy at the latrine trenches.

He didn’t intend to say anything about the story to his fellow POWs. It was none of their business. But either the guard who’d given him the paper or the officer he’d routed must have blabbed, for the other prisoners found out about it even though he kept his mouth shut.

Every so often, one of them would come up to him, clap him on the back, and say something like, “You got your own back. That’s good.”

They meant well. He knew as much. That didn’t keep him from losing patience. Finally, after about the fourth time it happened, he snapped. “What do you mean, got my own back?” he growled at a luckless first lieutenant. “If I had my own back, I’d still be married. I’d still have my little girl. And I’d probably still be up in Canada.”

“Sorry, sir,” the lieutenant said stiffly, and he retreated as fast as the Confederate guard officer had. After that, fewer prisoners sounded sympathetic, which suited Moss fine.

In fact, fewer prisoners wanted anything to do with him. That also suited him fine-till he got a summons from the senior U.S. officer, a colonel named Monty Summers. “See here, Moss,” he said, “no man is an island.”

“Sir, isn’t it a little early in the morning for John Donne?” Moss asked.

“It’s never too early for the truth,” Summers said, which proved he’d never been a lawyer. “We don’t want you solitary. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the camp, either.”

“I’ll worry about me, sir,” Moss said, “and the camp can take care of itself, as far as I’m concerned.”

Summers snorted in exasperation. He was a corn-fed Midwesterner who’d been captured in Ohio when the war was new. He had sandy hair going gray, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and a rock of a chin that he stuck out whenever he wanted to make a point. He stuck it out now. “You haven’t got the right attitude,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” said Moss, who wasn’t. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Well, you’d damn well better change it.” Summers sounded as if that were as easy as changing a flat tire. He aimed his chin at Moss again. “We’re still in the war. We’re still fighting the Confederates. We’re all in this together. We’re a team, dammit. And you let the team down if you don’t play along. Don’t you want to help drive these fucking goons nuts?”

“Well…” Moss nodded. “All right, Colonel. Maybe you’ve got a point.”

“You’d better believe I have,” Summer said. “If we weren’t all on the ball, for instance, we’d have Confederate spies raising all kinds of trouble.”

“How do you know we don’t?” Moss asked.

“There are ways.” The senior U.S. officer spoke with assurance. “There are ways, but they don’t work unless everybody’s on the ball. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Moss said.

“All right, then.” Monty Summers’ nod seemed amiable enough. “I won’t say anything more about it, then. A word to the wise, you know.” He seemed to like other people’s distilled wisdom.

Moss went on much as he had before-but not quite. He’d never been a back-slapping gladhander. He never would be, either. But he did try to stop making his fellow captives actively dislike him. They seemed willing enough to meet him halfway. He started hearing more camp gossip, which gave him something to chew on, if nothing else.

Nick Cantarella sidled up to him one warm spring morning. “How you doing, Major?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” Moss answered. “How’s yourself?”

“I’ve been worse. Of course, I’ve been better, too. This isn’t exactly my favorite place,” Cantarella said.

“I wouldn’t come here on vacation, either,” Moss said, and Cantarella laughed. Moss added, “The only people who like it here are the guards. They’re too dumb not to-and they get to carry guns, but nobody’s going to shoot back at them.” He was thinking of the officer he’d routed. Cantarella laughed again, even more appreciatively this time. Moss started to laugh, too, but swallowed the noise in a hurry. Captain Cantarella was somehow involved in escape plans-if there were any escape plans to be involved in. As casually as Moss could, he asked, “What is your favorite place?”

“New York City,” Cantarella replied at once.

With his accent, that didn’t surprise Moss at all. Still casually, the fighter pilot asked, “How soon do you expect to see it again?”

Cantarella didn’t answer right away. He scratched his cheek. Whiskers rasped against his fingernails; he was a man who got five o’clock shadow at half past one. Then he said, “Well, sir, I hope I don’t have to sit out the whole goddamn war here.”

“Who doesn’t?” Moss agreed. “Let me know if you have any other thoughts along those lines.”

“I’ll do that, Major,” Cantarella said. “You can count on it.” Off he went. He gave the impression of still being very much in the war even though he was hundreds of miles behind the lines and on the wrong side of the barbed wire and machine-gun towers. Moss looked after him. How long did he intend to stay on the wrong side of the barbed wire? Will he take me with him when he goes? That was the question that mattered most to Moss.

“Hello, General,” Brigadier General Irving Morrell said, walking up toward the frame house that held Brigadier General Abner Dowling’s headquarters.

“Hello, General,” Dowling replied. “Good to see you again, and it’s high time you had stars on your shoulders, if anybody wants to know what I think.”

“Thanks. Thanks very much,” Morrell said. “They do make me think I haven’t wasted the past thirty years, anyway.”

“I know what you mean,” Dowling said, and no doubt he did: he’d been in the Army even longer than Morrell had before trading his eagles for stars. He went on, “How are you feeling?”

“Sir, I’ll do,” Morrell answered. His shoulder chose that moment to twinge. He did his best not to show how much it hurt. It would sting him if he tried to move it too far-to move it as if he weren’t wounded, in other words-or sometimes for no reason at all: certainly none he could find. With a wry chuckle, he continued, “One of the so-called advantages of my new exalted status is that they don’t expect me to push back the Confederates singlehanded.”

Dowling snorted-a rude noise to come from a general. “You can’t fool me. I’ve known you too long. First chance you get, you’re going to climb back into a barrel. Five minutes later, you’ll stick your head out of the cupola, because you can’t see a damn thing through the periscopes.”

“Who, me?” Morrell said, as innocently as he could. Both men laughed. Dowling had him pegged, all right. Morrell added, “I don’t know that I like being so predictable.”

He’d thought Dowling would go on laughing, but the fat officer sobered instead. “You probably shouldn’t be that predictable, as a matter of fact. If you are, the Confederates are liable to take another shot at you.”

Morrell grunted. The other general might well be right. Morrell said, “It’s an honor I could do without. I never minded getting shot at because I was a U.S. soldier. I minded getting shot, that time in Sonora-it hurt like blazes, and it left me flat on my back for a hell of a long time. But it was one of those things that happen, you know what I mean? But if they’re shooting at me because I’m me… That’s assassination. It isn’t war.”

“They’re doing it,” Dowling said.

“I know they are,” Morrell answered. “We’ve lost some good people because they’re doing it, too-lost them for good, I mean, not just had them wounded the way I was.”

“Unofficially-and you haven’t heard this from me-we’re doing it, too,” Dowling said.

That made Morrell grunt again. “Well, I can’t even tell you I’m very surprised,” he said at last. “It’s the only thing we can do, pretty much. If they hit us like that, we have to hit back the same way, or else they get an edge. But I’ll be damned if I like it. It makes this business even filthier than it has to be.”

“Personally, I agree with you. You’ll find those who don’t, though.” Dowling paused, ruminating on that. After a bit, he went on, “When you were in Ohio, you met Captain Litvinoff, didn’t you?”

“The skinny fellow with the little mustache that looked like it was penciled on? The poison-gas specialist? Oh, yes. I met him. He gave me the cold chills.” Now it was Morrell’s turn to pause. He let out a long, sorrowful sigh. “All right, General. You made your point.”

“Over in Richmond or wherever they keep them, the Confederates have men just like dear Captain Litvinoff,” Dowling said. Morrell realized the other general liked the poison-gas expert even less than he did. He hadn’t imagined such a thing was possible. Dowling went on, “Now we’re finding assassins under flat rocks. And things are liable to get worse before they get better.”

“How could they?” Morrell asked in honest perplexity.

“Well, I don’t exactly know. But I can tell you something I heard from somebody I believe,” Dowling said.

“I’m all ears.” Morrell liked gossip no less than anyone else.

“You ever hear of that German scientist named Einstein? You know-the Jew with the hair that looks like steel wool in a hurricane?”

Morrell nodded. “Sure. Who hasn’t heard of him? He’s the one they always make absentminded professor jokes about. What’s he got to do with the price of beer, though?”

“He’s a hell of a sharp man, no matter how absentminded he is.”

“I never said he wasn’t. You don’t get to be famous like that if you haven’t got a lot on the ball. But what about him?”

“He’s disappeared,” Dowling said portentously. “Not disappeared as in his apartment building got hit by a bomb while he was in the bathtub. Disappeared as in fallen off the map. Quite a few of the other high-forehead fellows in Germany and Austria-Hungary have quietly dropped out of sight, too.”

“They’re working on something.” Morrell didn’t phrase it as a question. He’d been in the Army a long time. He recognized the signs. When a lot of people who did the same kind of work quietly dropped out of sight, something-probably something big-was going on behind the scenes. He pointed a finger at Dowling. “Do you know what it is?”

“Not me,” Dowling said. “When I need to count past ten, I take off my shoes.”

He was sandbagging; he was nobody’s fool. Morrell paused one more time. Then he asked, “Whatever the Kaiser’s boys are working on, are we working on it, too?”

Dowling had started to light a smoke-a Confederate brand, no doubt captured or confiscated here in Virginia. He froze with the cigarette in his mouth and the match, still unstruck, in his hand. “You know, General, I asked my… friend the very same question.”

“And? What did he tell you?”

“He told me to mind my own goddamn business and get the hell out of his office.” Dowling did light the cigarette then. He took a long, deep drag, as if he wanted to escape the memory of his friend’s reply. “So you can take that any way you want to. Either we aren’t or we are and we don’t want to talk about it-really don’t want to. You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

“You sound like that colored band that got away from the Confederates,” Morrell said. “They put them on the wireless enough, don’t they?”

“Oh, you might say so.” Dowling’s voice was dry. “Yes, you just might. But propaganda is where you find it.”

“And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Morrell looked west from Culpeper, the town where Dowling presently made his headquarters. The Blue Ridge Mountains sawtoothed the horizon. The mountains didn’t worry Morrell so much. What the Confederates might have lurking in them did. “Is Patton going to try to hit us from the flank again?”

“He’s welcome to, by God. He’ll have even less fun than he did the last time,” Abner Dowling growled. “But things seem pretty quiet off to the west. If what the spies say is true, the enemy’s pulled some forces away from there.”

“Where have they gone, then?” Morrell asked the immediately obvious question-not only was it obvious, it was important.

“Best guess is, to attack our salient on the other side of the Rapidan.”

“The Wilderness.” Morrell made a discontented-almost a disgusted-noise. “I’ve been down there. I’ve looked it over. You couldn’t come up with worse country for barrels if you tried for a year. What on earth possessed General MacArthur to get a foothold there?”

Dowling considered before answering, “Well, General, you’ll have to understand that he and I are not on the most intimate terms.” By the pained expression he bore, that was an understatement. “My guess is only a guess, then. I suppose that’s where we have the foothold because it’s the only place we could get one.”

“I see,” Morrell said-two words that covered a lot of Deeply Regrets telegrams from the War Department. After a meditative pause of his own, he added, “Do you suppose that salient does us more good than it does the Confederates?”

“I hope so,” Dowling answered, which wasn’t quite what Morrell had asked. “If we can ever get out of that nasty second growth, the terrain gets better. But the Confederates know that as well as we do, and they don’t want to turn us loose.”

“How many casualties are we taking down there?” Morrell asked. “They can hit us from three sides at once.”

“It’s… bothersome,” Dowling admitted, which meant it was probably a lot worse than that. “What we need to do is get barrels over onto the other side of the Rapidan in country where we can really use them. I’m glad you’re here-if anyone can arrange that, you’re the man.”

“Thanks,” Morrell said. “I’m just glad I’m anywhere right now.” As if to underscore that, his shoulder twinged again. “I’ve been thinking about that particular problem myself, and I’ve got a few ideas.”

“You’ll want to talk with a map in front of you,” Dowling said, proving he’d done a good deal of planning in his time, too. He waved back toward the frame house. “Shall we?”

“In a minute,” Morrell said. “Let me scrounge another one of those nice cigarettes off you, if you don’t mind.”

“Not a bit.” Dowling stuck another one in his mouth, too. “Really taste like tobacco, don’t they? Not like…” He paused, searching for a simile.

Morrell supplied one: “Horseshit.”

Dowling laughed. “Well, now that you mention it, yes.” He lit it; his cheeks hollowed as he inhaled. “Damn things are supposed to be hell on the wind. You couldn’t prove it by me-I never had any wind to begin with.” He patted his belly as if it were an old friend-and so, no doubt, it was.

“I don’t think they’ve hurt mine much,” Morrell said. Unlike Dowling, he was usually in good, hard shape, though his stay in the hospital had set him back. He took another drag.

Planes buzzed by overhead. Morrell automatically looked around for the closest trench, and spotted one less than ten feet away. He could jump into it in a hurry if they dove on him. But they kept going: they were U.S. fighters heading south to strafe the Confederates and shoot up C.S. dive bombers and whatever else they could find.

“Good luck, boys,” he called to the pilots once he was sure they wouldn’t come after him.

“Amen,” Abner Dowling agreed, adding, “We could use the Lord on our side. Considering what Featherston’s people are up to, He’d better be.”

“Well, yes,” Morrell said, “but you know what they say about the Lord helping people who help themselves. We’d better do some of that, too, or we’re in real trouble.” He almost wished Dowling would have told him he was wrong, but Dowling didn’t.