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XIX

They'd sent Irving Morrell to a military hospital outside of Syracuse, New York. The sprawling wooden building had enormous Red Crosses painted on the roof, in case Confederate bombers came that far north. Up till now, none had. Syracuse had to seem like the end of the world to the Confederates. It sure as hell seemed like the end of the world to Morrell.

Dr. Silverstein had told him his shoulder would heal well. And it was healing-but not nearly fast enough to suit him. He looked at the snow blowing by outside and asked, "How long before I get out of here?"

The sawbones currently in charge of him was named Conrad Rohde. "I don't know, exactly," he answered. "A few weeks, I expect."

"That's what everybody's been telling me for-a few weeks now," Morrell said irritably.

Dr. Rohde shrugged. He was a big, blond, slow-moving man. Nothing seemed to faze him. A bad-tempered colonel sure didn't. "Do you want a wound infection?" he inquired. "You told me you had one of those the last time you got shot. You're older than you were then, you know."

"Oh, yeah? Since when?" Even Morrell's sarcasm drew nothing more than a chuckle from Rohde. Morrell did know he was older than he had been in 1914. Even with the wound infection that didn't want to go away, he'd got his strength back then a hell of a lot faster than he was now.

"Do your exercises," Rohde told him, and went off to inflict his resolute good cheer on some other injured soldier.

"Exercises." Morrell said it as if it were a four-letter word. He started opening and closing and flexing his right hand. It didn't hurt as much as it had when he'd begun doing it. Then it had felt as if his whole right arm were being dipped in boiling oil. Now he just imagined he had a wolverine gnawing at his shoulder joint. This was progress, of a sort.

Dr. Rohde insisted that the more he did the exercises, the easier they would become. To Morrell, that only proved that Dr. Rohde, no matter how smart and well trained he was, had never got shot. Morrell wished he could say the same thing.

Instead, he got an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart, an honor he would gladly have done without. The decoration looked absurd on the green-gray government-issue pajamas he wore.

Even though the exercises hurt, he did keep up with them. He'd done that with his wounded leg, too, once it finally healed enough to let him. His thigh still twinged every once in a while, but he could use it as well as the other. Dr. Rohde beamed at him a few days later. "You are a conscientious man, Colonel."

"Doc, what I am is one stubborn son of a bitch." The two phrases meant the same thing, but Morrell preferred his version. He went on, "Long as you're here, Doc, I've got a question for you."

"If I know the answer, you will have it." Rohde still looked and sounded mighty cheerful for a medical man. Morrell wondered if he'd been getting into the prescription brandy.

Well, if he had, that would only make his tongue flap more freely. Morrell asked, "Am I the only officer you know of who's been specifically targeted, or are the Confederates really trying to knock off people who know what they're doing?"

"I did not know you had been, let alone any others," Rohde said.

So much for that, Morrell thought. Aloud, he said, "I damn well was. That sniper bastard took two more shots at me after I got hit, when they were carrying me off to cover." And thank God for Sergeant Pound's strong, broad back. "He missed me by a gnat's whisker both times, and he didn't even try for anybody else. So am I just lucky, or is Jake Featherston trying to kill officers who've shown that they're competent?"

"Let me try to find out." Dr. Rohde pulled a notepad from the breast pocket of his long white jacket. He scribbled something on the pad, then stuck it back in the pocket.

"You going to be able to read that?" Morrell gibed.

Rohde took the pad out again, wrote something else in it, tore out that sheet of paper, set it on Morrell's bed, and left his room. Morrell picked up the paper with his good hand. Mind your own goddamn beeswax, he read. The script was an elegant copperplate; a schoolteacher would have envied it. Morrell laughed out loud. There went one cliche, shot down like a dive bomber with a fighter on its tail.

For the next few days, Conrad Rohde was all business. Morrell wondered if he'd really offended the doctor. He didn't think he should have, but how could anybody know for sure? Maybe he'd been the fourth guy to rag on Rohde's writing in the space of an hour and a half. That would frost anybody's pumpkin.

At the end of the examination, though, the doctor said, "I haven't forgotten about what you asked. I'm trying to find out."

"All right," Morrell said mildly. "Uh-thanks."

"You're welcome," Rohde answered. "For whatever you may think it's worth, some of the people to whom I've put your question seem to think it's very interesting."

"I'd rather they thought I was full of hops," Morrell said. "The war would be easier if they did."

Rohde didn't say anything about that. He just finished writing up Morrell's vital signs and left the room. When he came back that afternoon, he set another sheet of paper from his notepad on the bed. Again, he left without saying a word.

Morrell read the sheet. In that same precise script-rub it in, Doc, why don't you? he thought-Rohde had listed seven names. Beside four of them, he'd written KIA. Beside the other three was the word wounded. Morrell recognized five of the names. He knew two of the men personally, and knew of the other three. They were all officers who were good at whatever they happened to do: infantry, artillery, one a genius at logistics. That lieutenant-colonel had kia by his name; someone else, someone surely less capable, was filling his slot now.

The doctor didn't return till the following morning. By then, Morrell had all he could do not to explode. "They are!" he exclaimed. "The sons of bitches damn well are!"

"So it would seem," Rohde answered. "You've certainly found a pattern. Whether the pattern means something is now under investigation."

"If it's there, it has to mean something," Morrell said.

But the doctor shook his head. "If you're in a crap game and somebody rolls four sevens in a row, that just means he's hot. If he rolls fourteen sevens in a row, or twenty-"

"That means he's playing with loaded dice," Morrell broke in.

"Exactly," Rohde said. "So-which is this? Four sevens in a row, or fourteen? All these officers have served at or near the front. Plenty of people who'd never make your list have got shot, too. So maybe this is a coincidence. But maybe it isn't, too. And if it isn't, you're the one who spotted it."

"Thanks a lot," Morrell said. "There's one more prize I'd just as soon not win."

"Why?" Rohde said. "We can do a better job of protecting our people if we know this than we could before we knew. That may come to matter, and not a little, either."

Morrell's grimace, for once, had nothing to do with his shattered shoulder. "And what else will we do? Go after the Confederates the same way?"

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Dr. Rohde said.

"Neither would I." Morrell pulled another horrible face. "Makes the war even more wonderful than the bombing raids and the poison gas and the machine guns, doesn't it?"

Rohde shrugged. "No doubt. You're the one who makes his living fighting it, though, you and the fellows like you on the other side. I just make mine patching up the ones you don't quite kill."

"Thanks a lot, Doc. I love you, too."

"I'm not saying we don't need soldiers. I've never said that. There's no way to get rid of such people, not without everybody doing it at the same time. If you think twenty sevens in a row are unlikely… But don't expect a doctor to get all misty-eyed and romantic about war, either. I've seen too much for that."

"So have I," Morrell said soberly. "Plenty of people have ugly jobs. That doesn't mean they don't need doing."

"Well, all right-we're not so far from the same page, anyhow," Rohde said. "I'll tell you, though, I've heard plenty who won't admit even that much."

Somebody down the hall shouted his name. He muttered something vile under his breath, then hurried off. Patching up another one my Confederate counterparts didn't quite kill, Morrell thought. They'll get reprimanded if they don't quit screwing up like that. He chuckled, though it wasn't really funny. Up till now, he'd never thought about war from a doctor's point of view.

Here he was, flat on his back again. For the first time since he'd got shot in 1914, he had plenty of time to lie there and think about things. He couldn't do much else, as a matter of fact. After he asked for a wireless set, he had it to help him pass the time. Sometimes the saccharine music and the sports shows and the inane quizzes made him want to scream. Sometimes what passed for news in the civilian world made him want to scream, too.

He solved that problem by turning off the wireless. Then he stared at the set sitting there on the little table by the bed. What good was it to him if he didn't listen to it? On the other hand, what good was it to him if it drove him out of his mind?

He was still trying to work that out three days later when he had a visitor. "Good God in the foothills!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know they let you out of Philadelphia except when you needed to make a mess on the floor."

Colonel John Abell gave him a thin, cool smile-the only kind the cerebral General Staff office seemed to own. "Hello," Abell said. "You do pose interesting questions, don't you? Well, I've got a question for you-can you open this?" He handed Morrell a small box covered in felt.

"Damn straight I can. I can do almost anything one-handed these days." Morrell proceeded to prove himself right-and then stared at the pair of small silver stars inside the box.

"Congratulations, General Morrell," Abell said.

"Oh, my," Morrell whispered. "Oh, my." He went on staring. After some little while, he realized he ought to say a bit more. Softly, he went on, "The last time I felt something like this, I was holding my new daughter in my arms."

"Congratulations," Abell repeated. "If the Confederates think you're important enough to be worth killing, I daresay you're important enough to deserve stars."

Morrell gave him a sharp look. The General Staff officer looked back blandly. He probably wasn't kidding. He almost surely wasn't, in fact. What Morrell had done in the field looked unimpressive to Philadelphia. What the enemy thought of him was something else again. That mattered to the powers that be. In the end, though, how Morrell had got the stars hardly mattered. That he'd got them made all the difference in the world.

Jefferson Pinkard swore when the telephone in his office jangled. Telephone calls were not apt to be good news. He always feared they'd be from Richmond. As far as he could remember, calls from Richmond had never been good news. When his curses failed to make the telephone stop ringing, he reluctantly picked it up. "Pinkard here."

"Hello, Pinkard. This is Ferd Koenig. Freedom! How are you this morning?"

"Freedom! I'm fine, sir. How are you?" What the hell do you want with me? But that wasn't a question Jeff could ask the Attorney General.

"Couldn't be better," Koenig said expansively, which only made Jeff more suspicious. The Attorney General continued, "Got a question for you."

"Shoot." What else could Pinkard say? Nothing, and he knew it.

"You reckon Mercer Scott's ready to take over Camp Dependable?"

Ice ran through Pinkard's veins. "I reckon that depends, sir," he said cautiously.

"Depends on what?"

Caution flew out the window. "On what you intend to do with me, sir. I've run this here camp since we took it over from that goddamn Huey Long. Don't think I've done too bad a job, either. Just in case you forgot, I was the fellow came up with those trucks. Nobody else-me."

"Easy, there. Easy. I do remember. So does the President. Nobody's putting you on the shelf," Ferdinand Koenig said. "It's not like that at all. Matter of fact, I've got a new job for you, if you want it."

"Depends on what it is," Pinkard said, dubious still.

"Well, how long have you been complaining that Camp Dependable isn't big enough for everything it's supposed to do?"

"Only forever."

Koenig laughed, which did nothing to make Jeff feel any easier. "All right, then," the Attorney General said. "How would you like to run a camp that's big enough for everything? Not just run it, but set it up from scratch. You've got practice at that kind of thing, don't you?"

"You know damn well I do, sir," Jeff answered. "Wasn't for me startin' up a camp in Mexico, I never would've got into this here line of work at all." And there's plenty of times I wish I never did. "Whereabouts'll this new camp be at?"

"Texas," Koenig said. "We'll put you out on the goddamn prairie, so you'll have plenty of room to grow. There'll be a railroad spur out to the place so you can ship in supplies easy. Won't be any trouble shippin' in plenty of niggers, either."

"That kind of camp again?" Pinkard said heavily. "I was hopin' you'd let me handle real prisoners of war."

"Any damn fool can do that," Ferd Koenig said. "We've got plenty o' damn fools doing it, too. But this other business takes somebody with brains and somebody with balls. That's you, unless…"

Unless you haven't got the balls to do it. That hurt. Angrily, Pinkard said, "I've never backed away from anything you threw at me, Koenig, and you know it goddamn well. I'll do this, and I'll do it right. I just wish I had my druthers once in a while, is all."

He waited. If the Attorney General felt like canning him because he had the nerve to answer back… If he did, then he would, that was all. Jeff refused to worry about it. He'd paid his dues, and he'd given the Freedom Party everything it could possibly have asked from him. He could always find other things to do now. He was too old to make a likely soldier, but he still had his health. Factories lined up to hire people like him these days.

Instead of getting angry, Koenig said, "Keep your shirt on, Jeff. I know what you've done. Like I told you, the President knows, too. Why do you think I called you first? This is going to be the top camp job in the whole country. We want the best man for it-and that's you."

Koenig had never been the sort to flatter for the sake of flattery. As Jake Featherston's right-hand man, he'd never needed to. He meant it, then. Since he meant it, Pinkard didn't see how he could say no. He drummed his fingers on the desktop. But he also had reasons he hadn't mentioned for being unenthusiastic about saying yes. He asked, "How long would it be before I have to go out to this place in Texas?"

"Part-time, pretty damn quick. Like I said, you'll be doing a lot of the setup," Koenig answered. "Full-time? A few months, I expect. You can ease Scott into your slot there while you're away, finish showing him whatever he needs when you come back to Louisiana. How's that sound?"

"Fair, I reckon," Jeff said, still with something less than delight. "A little longer might be better."

To his surprise, Ferd Koenig laughed out loud. "I know what part of your trouble is. You're courting that guard's pretty widow."

Pinkard growled something he hoped the Attorney General couldn't make out. Of course the government and the Freedom Party-assuming you could tell one from the other-were keeping an eye on him. He'd risen high enough that they needed to. He didn't like it-how could anybody like it?-but he understood it.

"Well, what if I am, goddammit?" he said. He almost said, God damn you, but managed not to. "I don't sit in this office or prowl around the camp every minute of the day and night."

"Didn't say you did," Koenig told him. "All right-how's this? When you go to Texas full-time, bring her along. Call her a secretary or whatever the hell you please. If she really does some work, that's fine. If she doesn't, nobody's gonna lose any sleep over it. We'll pay her a salary on top of the pension either way. We want you there, and if that means forking over a little extra on the side, then it does, and we'll live with it. That's why we've got bookkeepers."

"Thank you kindly, Mr. Koenig." Now Jeff was glad he hadn't aimed his curses straight at the Attorney General. "That's mighty handsome of you. I'll do it, and I'll see if she wants to come along."

"Good," Koenig said. "I'll tell you one more thing, long as I'm on the line: if she doesn't want to go to Texas with you, chances are it wouldn't have worked out even if you stayed in Louisiana."

Pinkard grunted. That was probably gospel, too. He said, "She's got young, 'uns, you know. There a place close by this here new camp for them to go to school?"

"Beats me," the Attorney General said. "But if there isn't, there will be by the time you move there for good. You've got my word on it. You're an expensive proposition, you know that?"

"You said you wanted the good stuff. I don't come cheap," Pinkard answered.

Ferdinand Koenig laughed again. "We'll take it from there, then," he said, and hung up.

"Yeah. I guess maybe we will," Pinkard said to the dead line. He set the telephone back in the cradle.

When he went out into the yard, he wasn't surprised to find Mercer Scott coming up to him inside a minute and a half. The guard chief knew when he got a telephone call. Jeff had never found out how, but Scott knew. "What's the latest?" the hard-faced man asked casually.

"Congratulations," Jeff said, his own features as tightly shuttered as if he were in a high-stakes poker game. "Looks like you're gonna be takin' over this here camp in a few months' time."

"Oh, yeah?" Mercer Scott had a pretty good poker face, too, but it failed him now, shattering into astonishment. "What the hell's goin'on? You ain't in trouble far as I know, so help me God." He had to be wondering what sort of revenge Jeff had planned for him.

"Nah, I ain't in trouble," Jeff allowed after letting the other man stew for a little while. "They're startin' up a new camp in Texas, and they want me to go over there, get it up and running, and then take it over."

"Ah." Scott's narrow eyes were shrewd. "Good break for you, then. It'll be a big son of a bitch, I bet. They wouldn't waste you on anything pissant-like. So you'll be able to set it up the way you want to, will you?"

"That's what Koenig says, anyways," Jeff answered. "I'll find out how much he means it when I get there. Some-I'm pretty sure o' that. All the way? Well, Jesus walked on water, but there ain't been a hell of a lot of miracles since."

"Heh," Scott said. "Yeah. That'd be funny, if only it was funny. Well, you earned it-screw me if you didn't." He stuck out his hand. Jeff solemnly shook it. The clasp seemed less a trial of strength than their handshakes usually did. Still shrewd, Scott went on, "What's Edith Blades gonna think about it?"

Pinkard shrugged. "Dunno yet. I only just found out myself. I got to see what she thinks, see if she feels like packin' up and headin' west."

"You're serious," Scott said in some surprise.

"Expect I am," Jeff agreed. "She's a nice gal. She's a sweet gal. She wouldn't play around on you, not like-not like some." He didn't need to tell Mercer Scott the unhappy story of his first marriage.

Scott didn't push him. Maybe the guard chief already knew. He just said, "Good luck to you." His voice was far away. His eyes weren't quite on Jeff, either. He was looking around Camp Dependable. Jeff had no trouble figuring out what he was thinking about: things he'd do different when he took over.

That would be his worry. Jeff had plenty of things to think about, too. Paying a call on Edith once he got off duty topped the list, but only barely. Part of his mind was already way the hell out in Texas. Just like Mercer Scott, he was thinking about what he'd do when he started his new post. But Edith did come first.

He couldn't telephone her. She didn't have a telephone. He drove on over that evening after sundown. Her boys said, "It's Mr. Pinkard!" when she opened the door. They sounded glad to see him. That made him feel good. He'd never had much to do with kids since he stopped being one himself, not till now.

"Well, so it is," she said. "Come on in, Jeff. What brings you here?"

He told his story all over again. This time, he finished, "An' I was wondering, if I was to go to Texas, whether you'd like to come along-you and the kids, of course." He didn't want her thinking he didn't give a damn about the boys. He wasn't even trying to fool her, because he did like them.

She said, "That depends. I could go out there and we'd keep on seeing each other like we been, or I could go out there married to you. I'm not saying you've got to propose to me now, Jeff, but I tell you straight out I won't go out there in between the one of those and the other, if you know what I mean."

He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. He liked her better for meaning it, not less. He would gladly have slept with her if she'd let him, but he never would have thought about marrying her if she had. He said, "I'd be right pleased to marry you, if that's what you want to do." His heart pounded. Would he be pleased? One way or the other, he'd find out.

"That's what I'd like to do," she said. "I'd be proud to go to Texas as your fiancee. I'd like to wait till Chick's dead a year before I marry again, if you don't mind too much."

"I don't mind," Jeff said. Too much, he thought.

Tom Colleton had hoped to land another leave down in Columbus. Then the USA threw a fresh attack at Sandusky. It was more an annoyance than a serious effort to drive the Confederates out. The blizzard that blew into the U.S. soldiers' faces as they advanced from the east didn't make their lives any easier, either. After a couple of days of probing and skirmishing, they sullenly drew back to their own lines-those who could still withdraw, of course.

Whatever else the attack accomplished, it made the Confederate high command nervous. An order canceling all leaves came down from on high. Privates and sergeants hoping for some time away from the front were disappointed. So was Tom Colleton. One more reason to hate the damnyankees, he thought as the arctic wind off Lake Erie threatened to turn him into an icicle.

For a wonder, the Confederate powers that be actually suspected they might have disappointed their men. From officers of such exalted grade, that was almost unprecedented. Colleton put it down to Jake Featherston's influence on the Army. Say what you would about the President of the CSA, but he'd been a noncom up close to the front all through the Great War. He knew how ordinary soldiers thought and what they needed. Some of that knowledge got through to the people directly in charge of the Army these days.

They tried to make up for banning leaves by sending entertainers up to Sandusky. It wasn't the same-they didn't send a brothel's worth of women up there, for instance-but it was better than nothing.

There were some women in the troupe: singers and dancers. The soldiers who packed a high-school auditorium whooped and cheered and hollered. Officers were no less raucous than enlisted men. They might have charged the stage if a solid phalanx of military policemen with nightsticks hadn't stood between them and the objects of their desire.

Most of the acts that didn't have girls in them met a reception as frigid as the weather outside. A comic who told jokes about the war but was plainly making his closest approach to anything that had to do with combat by being here almost got booed off the stage.

"You cocksucker, you'd shit your drawers if you saw a real Yankee with a real gun in his hands!" somebody yelled. A fierce roar of approval rose from the crowd. It was all downhill from there for the luckless comic.

One exception to the rule was a Negro musical combo called Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces. Negro musicians had been part of life in the Confederate States since long before the War of Secession-and Satchmo was a trumpeter the likes of whom Tom Colleton had never seen or heard. The rest of the Rhythm Aces were good without being especially memorable. Backing the brilliant Satchmo, they shone brighter in the light of his reflected glory.

With a harsh spotlight on him, he looked like nothing so much as a big black frog. His eyes and his cheeks bulged in a way that would have been comical except for the sounds that came out of his horn. A man who made music like that? No matter what he looked like, you couldn't help taking him seriously.

A man sitting in the row behind Tom said, "I'll be goddamned if that nigger don't look scared to death."

He was right. Colleton realized as much almost at once. He'd taken Satchmo's grimaces and contortions as some ill-advised comedy thrown into the act. Colored performers often did things like that when they played in front of whites. But these weren't the usual nigger's smirks and simpers. They didn't come close to fitting the music, either, and Satchmo wasn't the sort of man who would have sullied that.

What was he so afraid of? Nobody here was going to do anything to him. On the contrary: the soldiers were listening in the enchanted silence only the finest performers could earn. When Satchmo finished a number, the cheering nearly tore the roof off the auditorium.

What, then? Tom shrugged. You couldn't expect Negroes to love the CSA. As far as Tom was concerned, they deserved a lot of what they were getting. He remembered the way the Marshlands plantation had been, and the ruin it was now. If the colored Reds hadn't risen up, that wouldn't have happened. But blacks didn't like it so much now that the shoe pinched the other foot.

Tom didn't know everything the Freedom Party was doing down in the CSA. He did know he wasn't sorry for it, whatever it was. He'd never asked himself where the phrase population reduction came from. Few whites had, though they used it. Had the question occurred to him, he might have understood why terror lay under Satchmo's music.

When the trumpeter and the Rhythm Aces finished their set, they got another thunderous hand. Tom wasn't the only man who leaped to his feet to show how much he'd liked them. They played an encore and got even more applause, enough to prompt a second encore. They could have played all night, as far as the soldiers went. At last, though, Satchmo mimed exhaustion.

"I thanks you right kindly, gentlemen," he said in a deep, gravelly voice, "but we gots us another gig in the mornin'. When the gummint done sent us up here to Yankeeland, they made sure they kep' us busy."

How many shows did they have to play? How much rest did they get between them? The answers were bound to be lots and not much, respectively. Reluctantly, the Confederate soldiers let them go-and then jeered the white song-and-dance man who had the misfortune to come on after them.

Quite a few men got up and left after Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces quit the stage. They might have been saying they were sure they wouldn't see anything else worth watching. Tom sat through the rest of the evening. He saw a few more pretty girls than the soldiers who'd walked out early, but that was about it.

He tramped back through the snow to the house where he'd been staying since his regiment reached Sandusky. The Yankees who'd lived there before him had either got out or been killed. The house itself had taken some damage, but not a lot. With wood in the fireplace and coal in the stove, it was cozy enough, even in wintertime.

A commotion-men running every which way and shouting-woke Tom before sunup the next morning. He put on his boots and the greatcoat he'd piled on top of his blanket and went out to see what the hell was going on. The only thing he was sure of was that it wasn't the damnyankees: nobody was shooting and nobody was screaming in the way only wounded men did.

He got his answer when a soldier burst out, "Them goddamn niggers've run off!" By the fury in his voice, he might have been an overseer back in the days before the Confederate States manumitted their slaves.

"Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces?" Tom asked. He couldn't imagine men making such a fuss over either of the other colored acts in the show.

"That's right. Goddamn stinking ungrateful coons," the soldier said. "We catch their black asses, we'll make 'em sorry they was ever born."

"They're probably already sorry," Tom said. "And if they aren't now, they will be pretty damn quick. Even if they do make it through our lines, they'll find out the damnyankees don't like niggers a hell of a lot more than we do."

The soldier-a sergeant who needed a shave-nodded. "That's a fact, sir. But I want to make 'em as sorry as they can be. They got themselves a nerve, playin' like that last night and then runnin' away. Like I said, ungrateful bastards."

"Which way did they go?" Tom asked. "In this snow, they should have left a trail a mile wide."

"What it looks like they done is, it looks like they stole themselves a command car," the noncom said. "Once they got on the eastbound road, their goddamn tire tracks look like everybody else's."

He was right about that. Command cars often mounted machine guns, too. Whoever tried to stop the blacks might get a nasty surprise. "Did you send a wireless message on ahead, warning people the niggers are liable to be on the way?" Tom asked.

"Sure did, sir," the unshaven sergeant answered, "but Christ only knows how much good it'll do. We only just found out they was gone-reckon the ruction's what rousted you out of the sack-and they have hours of start. They could've gone a hell of a long ways before we knew they took off."

He was right about that, too. Tom said, "God help their sorry necks if we do catch 'em. They'll get their population reduced faster than you can whistle, 'Dixie." "

"Just goes to show you can't trust a nigger no matter what," the noncom said. "Somebody down in the CSA figured those spooks wouldn't make a break for it if he let 'em get close to the damnyankees. That's what he figured, but it sure looks like he was full of shit."

Another soldier came running out of regimental headquarters. "Son of a bitch!" he shouted. "Just got word back from the east. They found a picket post, looks like it was all shot to hell. Shot to hell from this side, mind you, not like the Yankees done it. Hell with me if those coons didn't get away."

Tom and the sergeant both swore. Evidently the stolen command car had carried a machine gun. Had one of the Rhythm Aces, or maybe even Satchmo himself, served a weapon like that in the uprisings of 1915 and 1916? Or-worse thought yet-had one of them served in the C.S. Army during the Great War and learned to use a machine gun there? So much for gratitude: if he had, he'd just bitten the hand that fed him.

And the Confederate pickets would have been paying attention to the U.S. troops in front of them, not to a command car coming up from behind. They would have figured an officer was coming up to look things over. It would have been the last mistake they ever made.

"How far from there to the Yankees' positions?" Tom asked.

"Not very far, sir," answered the soldier who'd heard the report.

"Any sign of dead niggers between the outpost and the U.S. lines?"

"No, sir."

"They got away, then, sure as hell." Tom cussed some more. So did the sergeant. After a moment, so did the man who'd brought the news. Tom went on, "The real pisser is, odds are they won't let any more niggers come up and perform after this. I bet they ship the other colored acts in this troupe back home, too. It's a damn shame for soldiers, is what it is. We aren't using niggers to fight. If we can't use 'em to entertain, what are they good for?"

"Who says niggers are good for anything?" the sergeant growled. "It'd be a better country if we didn't have to worry about 'em no more."

The other soldier standing there in the snow nodded. Tom didn't argue. He wouldn't have been sorry to see all the blacks in the CSA disappear, either. He didn't have the stomach for killing them all himself, but he wouldn't shed a tear if the Freedom Party found men who did. As for Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces… "I can think of some we don't have to worry about any more-unless the Yankees use 'em to mock us." That could be a nuisance. But, as long as he stood here by Lake Erie, it couldn't be much more than a nuisance.

Flora Blackford picked up the telephone in her office. "Yes? What is it?" she said.

"Mr. Roosevelt wants to speak to you, Congresswoman," her secretary answered.

"Thank you, Bertha. Of course I'll talk to him," Flora said. When the Assistant Secretary of War came on the line, she continued, "Good morning, Mr. Roosevelt. What can I do for you today?"

"Hello, Congresswoman." As always, Franklin Roosevelt sounded jaunty in spite of his paralysis. "I've just run into something that I thought might interest you."

"What is it?" Flora asked.

"Seems some colored musical ensemble that was up in Ohio to entertain Confederate soldiers decided the grass was greener on our side of the fence. They got away. I gather they shot up some Confederates doing it, too."

"Good for them!" Flora exclaimed. "They didn't get shot when they walked into our lines?"

"They drove in, as a matter of fact-they stole a command car. That's what gave them their firepower," Roosevelt answered. "No, they didn't get shot. I'm not sure they know how lucky they are."

"What are we going to do with them? We can't very well send them back-that would be murder," Flora said.

"No, we'll keep them. We can use their testimony about Confederate atrocities. And they're supposed to be pretty good musicians, if you like that kind of thing." Roosevelt's laugh was a little self-conscious. "Not really to my taste, I'm afraid: too wild. But some people are excited that they've made it over the border. Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces, they're called."

"Satchmo?" Flora wasn't sure she'd heard straight.

"That's right." Franklin Roosevelt laughed again. "I gather he was named, er, Sennacherib, but nobody who knew him could pronounce it. I believe that-I can't pronounce it myself."

"Sennacherib is a fancy handle even for a Negro from the Confederate States," Flora agreed. "Will we be bringing, uh, Satchmo and the-the Rhythm Aces, did you say?-to Philadelphia? This is where the wireless networks have their headquarters."

"Yes, I think we'll do that. I don't know how much broadcasting we'll have them do, though. What we call English and what they call English are almost two different languages, I'm afraid."

"I'd like to see them when they get here," Flora said.

"Actually, I was hoping you'd say that." The Assistant Secretary of War sounded pleased. "You've taken the lead in telling the world about what the Confederates are doing to their colored population."

"It's worse than what the Ottomans did to the Armenians during and after the Great War," Flora said. "If the Russians started killing off their Jews, that might come close, but even it wouldn't be the same."

"The Russians or the Germans," Roosevelt said. "With the Kingdom of Poland a German puppet, the Kaiser rules over as many Jews as the Tsar does."

"Yes, but the Russians have pogroms for the fun of it, and to distract people from what a mess the Tsar's government is," Flora answered. "The Germans are too civilized for that kind of thing, thank God."

"Half their brain trust are Jews, too. They can't afford to do without them," Roosevelt said. "But that's beside the point. Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces have heard about you, too. So I'm doubly glad you want to meet them, because they've already said they want to meet you."

"How have they heard about me? Do you know?" Flora asked.

"From the wireless, mostly, I think," Roosevelt told her. "That's good to hear; it shows some of our propaganda is getting through. Would you like to be there on the platform when they come in?"

"That might be nice." Flora sighed reminiscently. "When I was first elected to Congress and came down here to start my term, Hosea met me on the platform and took me to my flat. That was the first time we met. I had no idea it would go the way it did."

"He was a good man. A good man," Franklin Roosevelt said. "I've always thought it was horribly unfair to blame the business collapse on him. If it weren't for that, he would have made a fine President. No, that's not right-he did make a fine President. It's just that the times were against him."

"Thank you. I've always thought the same thing," Flora said. "And we elected Coolidge-and got Hoover. Coolidge wouldn't have made things better, and Hoover didn't. And the Confederates chose Jake Featherston, and the French got Action Francaise and a king, and the English got Mosley and Churchill. That's a lot to pin on an Austro-Hungarian bank failure, but it's the truth."

"If you toss a pebble into a snowbank, you can start an avalanche that will wipe out everything down below," Roosevelt said. "The first failure was a pebble, and the avalanche rolled downhill from there."

"Didn't it just!" Flora said mournfully.

When Roosevelt spoke again, it was after a paper-shuffling pause: "Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces get into town at the Broad Street station, Platform 27, at… let me see… at half past nine tomorrow night. That's when they're scheduled, I should say. Confederate bombers and Confederate saboteurs may change everyone's plans."

"Oh, yes, I know," Flora replied. "Well, I'll get there on time-unless an air raid changes my plans."

"Thank you very much." Franklin Roosevelt hung up.

To Flora's relief, the sirens didn't howl that night. The Confederates weren't coming over Philadelphia quite so much these days. More of their airplanes were staying home to attack the U.S. forces slogging forward through an ocean of blood in Virginia. She had no trouble getting a cab and going over to the Broad Street station.

Platform 27 wasn't the one where she'd got off the train from New York City all those years ago. Too bad, she thought. She'd wondered if Franklin Roosevelt would also be there to greet the escaped musicians. He wasn't, but several lesser War Department dignitaries were.

The train ran late. Some years before, there'd been an Italian politician who'd promised to make the trains run on time if he were elected. He hadn't been; nobody had believed he could do it. Flora tried to remember his name, but couldn't, which only went to show how unimportant he'd been. U.S. trains weren't so bad as their Italian counterparts were said to be, but they weren't all that good, either. And the war had done nothing to help.

At ten, Flora was resigned. At half past, she was annoyed. At eleven, she didn't know whether to be furious or worried. The train finally pulled into the station at ten minutes to twelve. That irked her all over again. She'd decided to give the laggard locomotive till midnight. After that, she could have gone home and gone to bed in good conscience. She wouldn't see bed at even a halfway reasonable hour now.

People who got off before Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces shook their heads and grumbled, often profanely, about delays and detours. A few of them muttered apologies to Flora as they walked by. One of the foulest-mouthed passengers, though, was a woman, and she was in no mood to apologize to anybody for anything.

Flora had no trouble recognizing the men she was looking for. In the bright light under the platform, the Negroes seemed all eyeballs and teeth. They wore green-gray uniform tunics and trousers with the highly polished shoes that must have accompanied more formal wear. They stared every which way, plainly with no idea what to do next.

She stepped up to them, gave her name, and said, "Welcome to Philadelphia. I'd say welcome to freedom, but there's a party down in the CSA that's given the word a bad name."

All five of the black men grinned and nodded. "Ain't it the truth!" said the one who stood out a little from the rest. If he wasn't Satchmo, she would have been very surprised. He had a deep, raspy voice and an engagingly ugly face. "We're right pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Blackford. Ain't that right, boys?" The other Negroes nodded again, in unison.

The men from the War Department were a few paces behind Flora. Since they were the ones who were going to take charge of the newcomers, she stepped aside and let them introduce themselves. Then she asked, "What is it like for a Negro in the Confederate States these days?"

"Ma'am, I reckon you got a notion already that it's pretty bad," Satchmo said. Flora didn't need to nod to show she did. The musician went on, "All right. Well, for true, it's a hundred times that bad." The other Rhythm Aces murmured agreement, as if he were a lead singer and they his backup vocalists.

"Do most of the Negroes in the CSA know what the Freedom Party is doing to them-to you?" Flora asked.

One of the Aces spoke on his own for the first time: "If we didn't, ma'am, you reckon we take the chance o' doin' what we done?"

"But musicians like you travel all over the place. You hear things most people wouldn't," Flora persisted. "What about ordinary Negroes who stay in one spot? Do they know what's happening in those Freedom Party camps?"

A major asked, "Do they hear our wireless broadcasts? We try to let them know what's going on." He had to be in Intelligence or Propaganda. Nobody who wasn't could have made that sound so smooth.

"They hear some, I reckon, but the Freedom Party jams you pretty good, suh," Satchmo replied. "Don't want nobody, white or colored, listenin' to the damnyankee wireless."

Flora had heard white Confederates say damnyankee as if it were one word. She hadn't expected a black man to do the same. "How do they know, then?-the black people in the CSA, I mean."

The musicians looked at her. One of them said, "Everybody know somebody done got sucked into a camp. Ain't nobody know nobody who ever come out again. We ain't educated. White folks in the CSA always been afraid o' what'd happen if we git educated. But we ain't stupid, neither. Don't gotta be no sly, sneaky Jew to figure out what folks goin'in an' not comin' out means."

He knew as little of Jews as Flora did of Negroes, probably less. She had to remind herself of that. And he'd made his point. She said, "Well, you're safe here-as long as a bomb doesn't fall on your head. We all take that chance."

"Thank you, ma'am. God bless you, ma'am," Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces chorused together.

"You're welcome," Flora said. "And I'll do whatever I can to stop those Freedom Party goons from massacring your people. I don't know how much that will be, but I'll do my damnedest." She hardly ever swore, but it seemed fitting now.

"God bless you," Satchmo repeated. "Nice to know somebody here cares a little, anyways. Ain't nobody south of the border cares at all."

How many people north of the border cared at all? Too few, too few. Flora didn't care to tell Satchmo that. He and his friends had just escaped from worse. Let them find out a little at a time that they hadn't come to paradise. That way-maybe-their hearts wouldn't break.

Cincinnatus Driver couldn't believe he'd been stuck in Covington more than a year. He knew he was lucky his father hadn't had to bury him here, but he wasn't always sure his luck in surviving had been good.

Just the same, he had made progress. He still used a cane, and feared he would for the rest of his life. He was fairly spry with it now, where he had been an arthritic tortoise. He didn't get headaches as often as he had not long after the accident, either, and the ones that did come weren't so blinding. Progress. He laughed. It was either that or cry. He'd gone from worse to bad. Huzzah!

His mother, now, his mother went from bad to worse. She still knew who Seneca was, and sometimes Cincinnatus, but that was almost her only hold on the real world. She made messes like a toddler. The first time Cincinnatus cleaned her, he burst into tears as soon as he got out of the room. He had to harden himself to do it over and over again. He never cried after that once, but it tore at his heart every time. It wasn't right. It wasn't natural. She'd done this for him when he was little. That he should have to do it for her…

He found himself looking at his father. Would he have to do the same for him one day? The horror of that thought drove Cincinnatus out of the house. He could have gone to the Brass Monkey; getting drunk would-well, might-have kept him from dwelling on it. Instead, he headed for Lucullus'. He couldn't buy a drink there, not officially, but that didn't mean he couldn't get something to wet his whistle if he wanted to. Knowing the proprietor had its advantages.

The place wasn't crowded when he limped in. He hadn't thought it would be, not on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. But it wasn't empty, either. As far as he knew, Lucullus' place was never empty. The barbecue was too good for that. Negroes and whites both came here. As usual, whites sat at some tables, blacks at others, and… There, a white man and a Negro sat across from each other at the same table. That was out of the ordinary not only at Lucullus' but anywhere in the CSA.

Then Cincinnatus saw the Negro at the table was Lucullus himself. The bulky barbecue chef broke the rules whenever he pleased. The white man glanced up as Cincinnatus came in. The fellow didn't look to be far from a skid row bum. His gray hair came down in odd tufts from under a disreputable hat. He'd needed a shave for three or four days. His scruffy sweater had had spots on it before barbecue sauce added a more colorful one.

None of that had anything to do with the icy lizards that walked up Cincinnatus' back. Going around like somebody who'd been hitting the bottle too hard for too long might fool most people, but not Cincinnatus. He would have recognized Luther Bliss in pancake makeup and a little black dress, let alone this outfit.

His face must have given him away. Bliss said something to Lucullus, who looked up. He waved to Cincinnatus and beckoned him over. Cincinnatus would sooner have jumped into a nest of rattlesnakes. He didn't see what choice he had, though. Moving even more slowly than he had to, he approached.

"Well, well. Damned if it ain't little Mary Sunshine." Bliss sounded like a crack-brained derelict, too, which was harder than looking like one. His eyes, though, his eyes he couldn't disguise. They were too alert, too clever, to match the rest of his pretended persona.

"What you doin' here?" Cincinnatus asked as he sat down-by Lucullus. Nothing in the world would have made him sit down by Luther Bliss.

"Me? goin'to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it," Bliss answered.

For a moment, that made no sense to Cincinnatus. Then it did. It was from the Book of Job. "You don't gotta do much talkin' to make me believe you're the Devil," Cincinnatus said.

Bliss brayed out a loud, stupid laugh. "Love you, too," he said, and blew Cincinnatus a kiss.

Cincinnatus turned to Lucullus. "What you doin' with this man? Whatever it is, he ain't doin' it for you. He's doin' it for his ownself, nobody else." Bliss laughed again, even more raucously. Cincinnatus glared at him once more. All that did was prove looks couldn't kill.

Before saying anything of consequence, Lucullus waved for a waitress and told her to fetch Cincinnatus a plate of pork ribs and a bottle of Dr. Hopper. Only after she went away did he remark, "Ain't always who you're for what matters. Sometimes who you're against counts fo' mo'."

"Yeah, sometimes." Cincinnatus pointed at Luther Bliss. "He's against you, for instance, on account of you're a Red." Keeping his voice down so the whole place wouldn't hear what he was saying took almost more willpower than he had in him.

"I got bigger worries right now, bigger fish to fry." Bliss talked normally. He just made sure nobody in his right mind would want to listen. That was a considerable talent. He had a lot of them. Getting Cincinnatus to trust him would never be one.

The waitress brought the food and the soda pop. Nobody said anything till she left. Cincinnatus wondered whether that was wasted caution. People who worked for Lucullus were probably involved in his schemes up to their eyebrows. Then the delicious aroma of the ribs distracted him. He dug in, and promptly got a stain on his shirt to match the one on Luther Bliss' sweater.

"How'd you like to help us give the Confederate States of America one right in the nuts?" Lucullus asked.

He might have asked, How'd you like to buy a pig in a poke? Or he might have asked, How'd you like to get killed? Cincinnatus suspected all three questions boiled down to the same thing. "Depends," he said. "What do I gotta do?"

"I knew he didn't have the balls for it," Luther Bliss said scornfully.

Cincinnatus didn't raise his voice as he said, "Fuck your mother, Luther."

Bliss' mahogany eyes opened very wide, perhaps at the obscenity, perhaps because a black man had presumed to call him by his first name. Before he could say anything, Lucullus beat him to it: "That'll be enough outa both o' you." He glowered at white man and black in turn, as if to say they'd have to quarrel with him before they could go at each other.

If Luther Bliss wanted a fight, Cincinnatus was ready. He didn't even worry about being a cripple. He intended to use his cane to knock the white man ass over elbow. He didn't figure Bliss would fight fair, so why should he?

"You reckon you can drive a truck?" Lucullus asked him.

"Can I? Hell, yes," Cincinnatus answered. "Why do I want anything to do with this ofay bastard, though?" He pointed across the table at Bliss.

"Because it'll heap coals of fire on Jake Featherston's head." Lucullus could quote Scripture for his purpose, too. "Next to that, what else matters?"

That was a potent argument with any Negro, but not necessarily potent enough with Cincinnatus. "Jake Featherston never lured me down here so he could throw me in jail," he snarled. "This here asshole did."

Bliss didn't deny it. How could he, when it was true? He said, "Featherston's killing spades by the tens of thousands-hell, maybe by the hundreds of thousands now. You gonna piss and moan about a jail cell next to that?"

He had an odd way of arguing, which didn't mean it wasn't effective. He didn't care what Cincinnatus thought of him. He just worried about what the black man did. Cincinnatus didn't look at him or speak to him. Instead, he turned to Lucullus. "Where's this truck at? Where do I got to drive it to?"

"It's by the train station," Lucullus answered. "You got to bring it over to the river."

"The Ohio?" Cincinnatus asked. You could almost spit from the station to the Ohio.

Lucullus shook his head. The soft flesh under his chin wobbled. That made Cincinnatus think of the barbecue chef's father. Apicius Wood's flesh had been the only soft thing about him. Lucullus said, "No, not the Ohio. The Licking, here in the colored part o' town."

That made sense. Cincinnatus wasn't sure a colored truck driver could get near the Ohio without challenge. The tributary was bound to be a different story. "What's the truck got in it?" Cincinnatus asked.

"Something I arranged," Luther Bliss said. "You don't need to know what."

Cincinnatus started to get to his feet. "Obliged for the ribs," he told Lucullus. "Reckon you don't need me for no driver."

"Git down off your high horse. You are the proudest damn nigger," Lucullus said querulously. Cincinnatus didn't deny it. He didn't leave, either. He waited. If he got an answer, that was one thing. If he didn't… He could always leave then. Lucullus muttered under his breath. Then he stopped muttering and spoke in that same low, breathy voice: "Got us some mines to dump in the river."

"Do Jesus!" Cincinnatus said. Luther Bliss doubtless had connections with the U.S. War Department. Even so, smuggling infernal devices like that across the border couldn't have been easy. Since Bliss had managed to do it, or somebody had managed to do it for him… "When you want me there?" Cincinnatus asked.

Two days later, wearing a pair of overalls and a cloth cap furnished by Lucullus, he made his way toward the truck. A gray-uniformed cop checked his passbook and let him go on without asking exactly where he was going and why. The Confederates thought everything in Covington was under control. Cincinnatus' carnivorous smile said otherwise.

He found the truck right where Lucullus said it would be. One of the keys in his pocket opened the door. Another fit the ignition. The motor roared to life when he turned that key and stamped the starter.

Releasing the hand brake and putting the truck in gear felt good. He'd been driving for more than thirty years. He'd taken his surname because of what he did. Driving was a big part of his life, and he hadn't been able to do it since coming down to Covington. Now he could.

He shook his head and clucked sadly as he went through the colored quarter. A lot of houses stood empty; their owners had been sensible enough to get across the Ohio to the USA when the CSA won the plebiscite. Cincinnatus sighed. He'd been sensible himself. Fat lot of good it had done him.

The derelict garage where Lucullus had told him to pull in was hard by the river. The building faced away from the Licking, but had a back door that opened on it. Even before Cincinnatus killed the engine, half a dozen black men stepped out from the gloom and darkness inside the garage.

"You brung 'em?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," Cincinnatus answered. The men took half a dozen crates out of the back of the truck. They pried up the tops and carefully removed the mines, one after another. Two men on each mine, they carried them down to the river. Cincinnatus didn't see how they placed them: whether they dropped them in, had a rowboat waiting, or what. As soon as the last mine was gone, he fired up the truck again and drove off. Lucullus' crew of men with strong backs also broke up in a hurry.

The truck went back where he'd found it. He returned the keys to Lucullus. The barbecue chef gave him a conspiratorial wink. He returned it, then limped out of the barbecue shack and headed home.

Jake Featherston scowled as he read the report from Kentucky. A Confederate gunboat on the Licking River had blown sky-high when it hit a mine. Two dozen men dead, another eight or ten badly hurt, an expensive piece of machinery gone to hell… He cursed under his breath, and then out loud.

After he'd thought for a few seconds, his curses got nastier. The Licking ran into the Ohio. You couldn't drop a mine into the Ohio and expect it to go up the Licking. Sure as hell, the damnyankees had sneaked people and at least one mine from the USA into the CSA. Either that or they'd sneaked in the explosives and then used white traitors or niggers to do their dirty work for them.

After a few more seconds, Jake swore even louder. That at least one mine stuck in his head. How much time and money and manpower would the authorities in Covington have to spend before they made sure there weren't any others-or before they got rid of the ones they found? Too much, too much, and too much, respectively.

Back before Kentucky and the abortion called Houston came home to the CSA, pro-Confederate demonstrators had been as nasty and as noisy as they could. Yankee backers in the redeemed states were quieter. If they showed what they thought, the police and Freedom Party stalwarts and guards would land on them with both feet. The Yankees had been soft-headed and let their enemies shelter under the protection of the Constitution. In the CSA, the Whigs had made the same mistake-and they'd paid for it, too.

Unfortunately, the damnyankees had wised up. They'd figured out how to play nasty, and they'd turned out to be pretty good at it. Featherston swore once more, this time at himself. He'd misread Al Smith. The man-and the country Smith led-turned out to have more backbone than he'd expected. He'd been so sure the Yankees would go for his peace offer after the CSA's smashing victories in Ohio. He'd been sure, and he'd been wrong.

"Well, if the bastards won't lay down on their own, we'll just have to knock 'em flat, that's all," he muttered. "And we goddamn well will." The telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah? What is it, Lulu?"

"General Potter is here to see you, sir," his secretary answered.

"Send him in," Jake said, and hung up. When Clarence Potter walked into the President's office, Featherston fixed him with a glare. "You know about the goddamn mess in Covington?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Potter answered. Jake's glare, which reduced a lot of men to quivering jelly, had disappointingly little effect on the Intelligence officer. Potter went on, "That's one of the things I was coming to talk to you about. We've got reports Luther Bliss has been seen in Covington. Does that name mean anything to you?"

"I hope to shit it does!" Featherston burst out. "That cold-blooded bastard was nothing but trouble for us while the USA held on to Kentucky."

Potter's face never showed a whole lot. Even so, the slight twitch of an eyebrow gave Jake some idea of what was going through his devious mind. If it wasn't something like, Takes one to know one, the President of the CSA would have been mightily surprised.

"I can't prove he had anything to do with the mines in the Licking," Potter said. "I can't prove it-but that's the way to bet."

"You'd better believe it," Jake said. "I want that son of a bitch taken out. He can cause us more trouble than a regiment of regular Yankee soldiers."

"We're working on it," Potter said. "Trouble is, he's a professional, too. I'd guess he's been in place there a good long while, getting set up and so on, but I first got word of him just a few days ago. He's not going to be there by himself. He'll have friends lending a hand."

"Niggers lending a hand," Featherston said savagely. "You see why we're on our way to taking care of them."

"Oh, yes, Mr. President. I've never had any trouble with that," Potter said.

Jake eyed him. He hadn't quite come out and said he did have trouble with other things the Freedom Party had done, but he might as well have. "How the hell did I get me a goddamn stiff-necked Whig running my spies?" Jake asked Potter-or possibly God.

God, as usual, kept quiet. Potter, as usual, didn't. Giving Jake a crooked smile, he answered, "Well, sir, looks to me like it's because you aren't a wasteful man."

Among his other annoying traits was being right most of the time. He'd sure put a hole right in the middle of this bull's-eye. Featherston remained sure Potter had come up to Richmond in 1936 to put a hole right in the middle of his bull's-eye. He'd accidentally become a hero instead, and made the most of things since.

The really crazy part was that, if he'd just stayed down in Charleston as an ordinary loud-mouthed Whig, he would have got arrested and gone into a camp for politicals, the way so many others had. Or maybe, since he was tougher than most, he would have been shot while resisting arrest. He would have been out of the picture, though, for sure.

But here he was-not only alive but useful. He'd done better for himself as a would-be assassin than he ever could have as an ordinary loud-mouthed Whig.

"That was part of what you wanted to tell me," Featherston said. "What else have you got?"

Clarence Potter smiled again. This time, a leopard wouldn't have been ashamed to show its teeth like that. "We've found one of the spies in the War Department, anyhow-sniffed him out with another round of multiversion reports."

"There you go!" Jake slammed a fist down on the desk. Papers and even the gooseneck lamp jumped. "Who was it?"

"A mousy little file clerk in Operations and Training named Samuel Beauchamp Smith," Potter answered. "He's been shuffling and filing papers since 1912, God help us, and he's probably been passing things along all that time, too."

"Peel him," Featherston said. "Peel him like an onion, and make him hurt every time you strip off a new layer. He's been hurting us all that time-he should hurt for a long time himself. Just be sure you keep him alive so he can go on answering questions, that's all."

"It's being taken care of, sir." Clarence Potter didn't bat an eye. He didn't lose any sleep over playing a dirty game. He understood you sometimes had to get answers any way you could. If that was hard on the bastard who didn't want to give them… well, too bad for him.

"All right," Featherston said. "And a good job on that sniper who shot Morrell."

"Not good enough." Potter said. "He's on the shelf, but I wanted him dead."

Potter was a perfectionist. Unless things went exactly the way he wanted them to, he wasn't happy. That was not the least of the things that made him so useful to the CSA in spite of his godawful politics. Featherston said, "By your report, the Yankees scooped him up and got him out of harm's way pretty damn quick."

"First shot should have finished him off." Yes, Potter was discontented. "One of our snipers would have. But this was so far in back of their lines, I had to rely on local talent-and the local talent wasn't talented enough."

"You'll have other chances at other officers," Featherston said. "If we can knock the brains out of the U.S. Army, it'll be that much easier to lick."

"Yes, sir. But the Yankees have figured out that that was an assassination try," Potter said. "I'd suggest you beef up security for our own best men."

"I've already done it," Featherston said. "And, to tell you the truth, there's a few generals I wouldn't mind seeing 'em knock off. I won't name names, but I reckon you can figure some of 'em out for yourself."

"Could be." Potter's voice and chuckle were dry. But he quickly grew serious again. "The other thing is, you ought to beef up your security, too. The war effort goes down the drain if we lose you."

"Don't you worry about my security. That's not your department, and it's tight as an old maid's…" Featherston didn't finish, but he came close enough to make Potter chuckle again. And the truth was, he didn't worry all that much about his security, at least not in the way Potter meant. If it was good enough to keep blacks and disgruntled Freedom Party men from knocking him off, it was bound to be good enough to hold the damnyankees at bay, too.

And if it wasn't… If it wasn't, Don Partridge became President of the CSA. Jake didn't think Partridge could run things, even if he did have the title. Who would? Ferd Koenig, from behind the scenes? Nathan Bedford Forrest III, from even further behind them?

Featherston only shrugged. If he wasn't there to see the unlucky day, what difference did it make to him? "Anything else?" he asked.

"Only the thought that, since the damnyankees didn't quit after we got up to Lake Erie, we might do better finding a peace both sides can live with than butting heads for God knows how long," Potter answered. "That kind of fight favors them, not us."

"I want your opinion on how to run my business, you can bet I'll ask for it," Featherston growled. "Till I do, you can damn well keep your mouth shut about it. So long, General Potter."

"So long, Mr. President." Potter wasn't the least bit put out as he left the office. He'd probably said what he'd said for no better reason than to rattle Jake's cage.

I don't care why he said it. He can goddamn well shut up about it, Featherston thought. Defiantly, he looked north. He'd taken Confederate arms where they'd never gone before, where none of his predecessors had ever dreamt they could go. He still intended to lick the United States, to lick them so they stayed licked. It might take longer than he'd thought when he set out, but that didn't mean he couldn't do it.

"I can, and I will," he said, as if someone had denied it. All he had to do to make something real was to want it, to keep going after it, and not to quit no matter what. Sooner or later, it would fall into his hands. I'm sitting here in the Gray House, aren't I?

He nodded. Even if the Whigs didn't like it, he was here. He belonged here. And he intended to take the Confederate States with him where he wanted to go. By the time they were someone else's worry, they would look the way he'd wanted them to all along. No one else would be able to change them back to the way they were now.

As for the United States… Featherston's swivel chair squeaked as he swung it around toward the north, too. All right, they hadn't given up the way he'd thought they would. That didn't mean they couldn't be beaten down. He intended to do just that. By the time he got finished, the Confederate States would be the number-one power on this continent.

They'd stay number one, too. He intended to fix things so even a dunderhead like Partridge couldn't mess them up. And everyone would always remember the name of the man who'd put them on top. His name. Him. Jake Featherston.