The Victorious opposition

XIX

The Sweet Sue jounced west across the rough waters of the Atlantic, back toward Boston harbor. George Enos Jr. stood near the bow of the fishing boat, thinking about things that had changed and things that hadn't. He turned to Carlo Lombardi, who was smoking a cigarette beside him. "Back in 1914," George said, "my old man was coming home from a fishing run. He didn't have a wireless set on his ship. When he got back into port, he found out that goddamn Serb had blown up the Austrian archduke and his wife, and everything was going to hell."

Lombardi paused to take another drag before he answered, "We're lucky. We can find out everything's going to hell before we get into port. Ain't life grand nowadays?"

"Yeah. Grand." George tried to look every which way at once. "Of course, it's liable not to be the wireless that tells us."

"How do you mean?" the other fisherman asked, scratching his head.

"If a war starts, you've got to bet the Confederates'll have their submarines up here ahead of time. Only stands to reason, right?" George said. "If they do, first thing we'll know about it is-wham!"

"Fuck," Lombardi said, and pitched his cigarette into the green water. He eyed George sourly. "You bastard. Now you're going to have me looking around for a periscope or a goddamn torpedo all the way till we tie up at T Wharf."

"Yeah, well, I've been doing that ever since we started back from the Grand Bank," George said. "That sneaky Confederate son of a bitch torpedoed my father after the last war was done. It'd be just like one of those bastards to nail me before this one even starts."

"Fuck," Lombardi said again, and gave George an even more jaundiced once-over. "You better not be a goddamn Jonah, that's all I've got to say."

"My old man was the one with the bad luck," George said. The other man thought that over, then slowly nodded. If he didn't believe it, he kept it to himself. George went on, "Maybe there won't be a war this time around. Maybe. I keep on hoping there won't, anyway."

"I hope for free pussy, too, when I go to a whorehouse," Lombardi said, lighting another cigarette. "I hope for it, but that ain't how things work." He sucked in smoke. "Better not be another war. If there is, the tobacco'll all be shitty. My pa used to bitch about that all the goddamn time, how lousy the smokes were 'cause we couldn't get no Confederate tobacco."

George didn't remember whether his father had complained about bad tobacco. He'd been too little when George Enos Senior got killed, and his father had been away at sea too much while alive to leave behind a lot of memories. George did recall one night when his father kept asking if he and Mary Jane were ready to go to bed yet. He hadn't been ready, and his indignation still rankled across a quarter of a century.

All of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, he started laughing like hell. "What's so goddamn funny?" Lombardi asked.

"Nothing, not really," George answered. The other fisherman gave him a particularly fishy stare. He didn't care. It wasn't the sort of joke he could explain. Just the same, he suddenly understood why his father had kept wanting him to go to bed, which he hadn't when he was a little boy. He was liable to use that same impatient tone of voice to find out if his own boys were ready to go to sleep so he could be alone with Connie. As a matter of fact, he knew damn well he'd used that tone of voice with them before.

And if a new war does start, and if your boat goes to the bottom, is that what you want them to remember you for? he wondered. Had the same question ever occurred to his father? Probably not. But then, his father hadn't known anything about a big war before he found himself in the middle of the biggest one of all time. People living in the USA nowadays didn't have that excuse.

Neither did people living in the CSA. The Great War had hurt them even worse. They, or at least Jake Featherston, seemed ready-hell, seemed eager- for another round. George wondered why.

He found an answer, too, the same way as he'd found an answer when he thought about his old man. The Confederates lost. That means they want revenge. The USA had lost two wars in a row to the CSA. That had made people here twice as serious about getting their own back. Now, after a win, people here thought everything was square. South of the border, they didn't.

Will there ever be an end? Will both sides ever be satisfied at the same time? He thought that one over, too. Unlike the other questions, it didn't have an answer that leaped into sight.

No Confederate submersible or commerce raider challenged the Sweet Sue. No dive bomber dropped explosives on her from the sky. She sailed back into Boston harbor as if pulling fish from the sea were the hardest, most dangerous thing to do men had ever invented. In peacetime, it came close. Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn't last.

When the Sweet Sue tied up at T Wharf, the first officer made the best deal he could with the buyers. Normally, George would have stuck around to find out how good the deal was. His own share of the pie depended on how big a pie he was looking at. Today, though, he drew fifty dollars against whatever the total would be and headed for the apartment where he spent rather less time than he did at sea.

He had to get past all the harborside attractions that tried to separate fishermen from their money and make them forget about their wives. Football games and raucous music blared from wireless sets in saloons. A drunk reeled out of a tavern. He almost ran into George. "Easy, pal," George said, and dodged.

Music with more of a thump and pound to it, music played by real live musicians, poured out of strip joints. Hearing that kind of music made you think about the girls who'd dance to it, and about what they would-or wouldn't-be wearing. You could get drinks in those joints, too, but they'd cost twice as much.

If you didn't want to drink, if you didn't want to watch, if you wanted to get down to business… A swarthy, tired-looking woman about George's age leaned out of a second-story window and beckoned to him. She wasn't wearing anything from the waist up. Her breasts drooped. They seemed tired, too. She tried to sound alluring when she called, "How about it, big boy?"

George kept walking. The whore swore at him. Even her curses sounded tired.

His block of flats stood only a couple of streets farther on. He hurried to it. Unlike the one where he'd lived with his mother, it had an elevator. Most of the time, he took that as proof he'd come up in the world. When he stepped into the lobby now, though, the cage was empty. The car was on some upper floor. He didn't have the patience to wait for it. He went up four flights of stairs, taking them two at a time till his knees got tired.

The key to his apartment was brass. A good thing, too; with all the time he spent out on the ocean, an iron key would have rusted on the chain. He put the key in the lock and turned it.

Connie's startled voice came from the kitchen: "Who's there?" And then, realizing only one person besides her had a key, she went on, "Is that you, George?"

"Well, it's not the tooth fairy and it's not the Easter Bunny and it's not Santa Claus," he answered.

She came rocketing out of the kitchen and into his arms. He squeezed her till she squeaked. She felt wonderful. He didn't stop to think that he'd been at sea so long, the Wicked Witch of the North would have felt good to him. He kissed her. Things might have-no, things would have-gone straight on from there if Bill and Pat hadn't charged him and tried tackling him in ways that would have got flags thrown on any gridiron in the country. Fortunately, they weren't big enough to do any serious damage.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" they squealed. If they went on after that, it was in voices only dogs could hear.

He let go of Connie and hugged the boys. They were also good to come home to, in a different way. His wife asked, "How long will you be here this time?"

"Don't know. Didn't hang around to find out," he said. "I just drew part of my pay and headed on over here. When they want me again, they'll come after me."

"Well, at least they won't have to scour the saloons to find you," Connie said. "Some of those people…"

George didn't say anything to that. He just tried to look virtuous. He didn't know how good a job he did. For one thing, he intended to take a drink or three while he had the chance. For another, Connie's father had seen the inside of a tavern and the bottom of a glass more than a few times in his day.

But George didn't want to think about that right this minute, either. He asked, "How are things here?"

"Pretty good," Connie answered. "They've been good boys. They haven't tried to pull the ears off the cat or flush the Sears, Roebuck catalogue down the toilet." They had committed the felony with the catalogue, one crumpled page and then more than one crumpled page at a time, till a flood and two spankings resulted. They hadn't messed with the cat's ears, at least not where their parents could catch them. But then Whiskers, unlike the hapless catalogue, could take care of himself.

The cat strolled up to see what the commotion was about. He gave George a leisurely glance, then yawned, showing needle teeth. Oh, it's you, he might have said. He remembered George between trips just well enough to tolerate being petted. And, of course, George smelled of fish, which made him interesting.

"How was the run?" Connie did her best not to sound anxious. Her best could have been better. If the run wasn't good, things got tight. She had to make ends meet on whatever George brought home.

"Pretty good. We brought back a lot of tuna," he answered. "Only question now is how much it'll bring."

"News hasn't been good," Connie said, and he nodded. She went on, "That might drive prices up."

"Maybe. I can hope." He sniffed. "What smells good?"

"I was stewing a chicken," she told him. "We were going to have it for two nights, maybe three, but who cares? I've got to show you I'm a better cook than the Cookie, don't I?"

"You're a lot cuter than Davey, anyhow," he said, which made her squawk. He went on, "I just hope Bill and Pat get sleepy pretty soon." Both boys let out indignant howls. If he'd listened to them, he would have believed they would never fall asleep again. Fortunately, he knew better.

Connie turned red. "My father used to say things like that when he came home from a fishing run."

"So did mine," George said. "I never understood why till not very long ago. I don't remember much about my pa, but that sticks in my mind."

"How come, Daddy?" Bill asked.

"I don't know. It just does," George answered. "It's the sort of thing a fisherman would say, that's for sure." Bill asked why again. George didn't say, not in words. He kissed Connie again instead. As far as he was concerned, that was the best answer he could give.

Jefferson Pinkard looked around at his kingdom and found it… not so good. He turned to Mercer Scott, the guard chief at Camp Dependable. "For Chris-sake, Mercer," he said, "what the hell are we gonna do when those goddamn sons of bitches in Richmond send us another shipment of niggers? This camp'll go boom, on account of there just ain't no room for any more spooks in here. Do they care? Do they give a shit? Don't make me laugh."

Scott shifted a chaw of Red Man from his left cheek to his right. He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. "You sure as hell ain't wrong," he said. "We got us coons hangin' from their heels like they was bats. Dunno where else we can put 'em. On the roofs, maybe?" He laughed to show that was a joke.

Jeff laughed, too, though it was anything but funny. If he could have put bunks on the roofs of the prisoner barracks, he would have done it. He didn't know where else to put them, that was for sure. "Bastards don't send us enough in the way of rations, neither. We got pellagra, we got hookworm, we got plain old-fashioned starvation. Wouldn't take a whole lot more food to make all that stuff a hell of a lot better."

"Damned if I can see why you're gettin' your ass in an uproar about that," Scott said. "They're only niggers. No, they ain't only niggers. They're a bunch of goddamn Reds, too. So who gives a shit if they die? Ain't nobody gonna miss 'em."

"It's not…" Pinkard frowned, looking for the word that summed up how he felt about it. "It's not orderly, dammit. If they give me so many prisoners, they're supposed to give me enough food for that many, too. That's just the way things work."

As a matter of fact, that wasn't the way things worked. They'd worked that way in the prisoner camps down in the Empire of Mexico, not least because Jeff had made sure they did. And they'd worked that way in the Birmingham jail, because it was longstanding policy that they work so. There was no longstanding policy for camps housing political prisoners and Negroes taken in rebellion. Every day that passed saw such policy made.

Scott seemed to understand instinctively the root of that policy. It was, Who gives a shit if they die? Pinkard could see that for himself. A hell of a lot of prisoners left Camp Dependable feet first. He didn't like it. He scavenged across the countryside for more rations than he was officially issued. No doubt that did some good. Against the kind of overcrowding he was facing, it didn't do much.

A guard trotted up to him, heavy belly bouncing above his belt. "Telephone call for you, boss," the man said. He hadn't missed any meals. None of the guards had. Neither had Pinkard himself.

"Thanks, Eddie," he said, though he didn't know why he was thanking the guard. Telephone calls weren't likely to be good news. He tramped back to the office and picked up the phone. "Pinkard speaking."

"Hello, Pinkard." The clicks and pops on the line said it was a longdistance call. "This is Ferdinand Koenig, calling from Richmond."

"Yes, sir!" The attorney general was Jake Featherston's right-hand man. "Freedom!"

"Freedom! I've heard you aren't happy because you haven't been getting enough advance notice of prisoner shipments," Koenig said, as if he'd just finished listening to Jeff bitching to Mercer Scott.

"Uh, yes, sir. That's true," Jeff said. Meanwhile, he was thinking, Goddammit, some son of a bitch here is telling stories about me back in Richmond. Have to find out who the bastard is. He didn't suppose he should have been surprised that Koenig-as attorney general or as Freedom Party big wig? — had spies in Camp Dependable. All the same, he wanted to be rid of them.

The attorney general didn't sound too angry as he said, "Don't suppose I can blame you for that. Here's your news then: you've got about fifteen hundred niggers-maybe two thousand-heading your way. They ought to be there in three, four days."

"Jesus Christ!" It wasn't a scream, but it came close. Pinkard went on, "Sir, no way in hell this camp will hold that many more people. We're overflowing already."

"That's why I'm telling you now." Koenig spoke with what sounded like exaggerated patience. "You have the time to get ready for those black bastards."

"I don't suppose we'll get the rations we need to feed 'em," Jeff said. Only silence answered him. He hadn't really expected anything else. Reproachfully, he continued, "Sir, you know I'm a good Party man. I don't mean any disrespect or anything like that. But what the hell am I supposed to do to get my camp ready for a shipment that big?"

"Whatever you have to do." Ferdinand Koenig paused. Pinkard didn't think he would say anything more, but he did, repeating, "Whatever you have to do. Is that plain enough, or do I have to draw you a picture? I'd better not have to draw you a picture. I heard you were a pretty smart fellow."

Maybe he had just drawn a picture. "Jesus Christ!" Jeff said again, not much liking what he thought he saw. "You mean-?"

Koenig cut him off. "Whatever you have to do," he said for the third time. "You can take care of it, or I'll find somebody else who will. Your choice, Pinkard. Which would you rather?"

Jeff thought it over. It didn't take long. He was a good Party man. The Party mattered more to him than anything else. The ruins of his marriage proved that. And, where Emily had screwed around, the Party had always been faithful. Without it, God only knew what he would have done when he lost his job at the Sloss Works. Didn't loyalty demand loyalty in return? "I'll take care of it, Mr. Attorney General. Don't you worry about a thing."

"I wasn't worried," Koenig said. "Like I told you, if you didn't, somebody else would. But I'm glad it's you. I know you've put in a lot of time for us. And I know you'll do a good job here, too. You won't screw it up and leave a bunch of loose ends or anything like that." You'd better not, was what he meant.

"Hell, no," Jeff said quickly. "When I do somethin', I do it right and proper."

"Good," Koenig said, and the line went dead.

Pinkard stared at the telephone for close to half a minute. "Fuck," he muttered, and finally hung it up. He trudged out of the office.

"What's up?" Mercer Scott called to him.

Are you the spy? I wouldn't be surprised. I've run my mouth around you. Well, no more, goddammit. But Scott had to know about this. Jeff said, "In three or four days, we're getting another fifteen hundred, two thousand niggers."

Scott stared. "Holy shit!" he said. "They can't do that! This place won't hold 'em."

"Oh, yes, it will," Pinkard said.

"How?" Scott demanded. "You were just now telling me it wouldn't hold the niggers we've got, and you were right. You know damn well you were right."

"I'll tell you how." And Pinkard did.

"Holy shit," Scott said again, this time in an altogether different tone of voice. "You sure you know what you're talking about? You sure you know what you're doing?" Under other circumstances, the questions would have infuriated Jeff. Not now.

He nodded uneasily. "I know, all right. Get the guards we need-you'll know the ones we can count on. Then pull out the niggers."

"All at once?" Scott asked.

After a moment, Jeff shook his head. "No. That'd be asking for trouble. Take out a couple hundred. Less chance of anything going wrong."

"Yeah." The guard chief eyed him. "How come I'm the lucky one? What are you gonna be doing? Sittin' in your office pouring down a cold beer?"

Had things been different, that would have infuriated Jeff, too. The way things were, Mercer Scott had the right to ask. Pinkard shook his head. "You stay here and get the next bunch ready. I'm going out with the first ones, and I won't come back till the job's done."

"All right." Scott nodded. "That's fair. I can't tell you it ain't." He stuck out his hand. Pinkard shook it. He was grateful for any sort of reassurance he could get.

Along with fifteen guards, he led two hundred Negroes away from Camp Dependable. The black men came willingly enough. As far as they knew, it was just another work detail. When they'd gone two or three miles from the camp, he ordered them to dig a long, deep trench. "This here ain't nothing but a waste o' time," one of them said. But he was only complaining, the way people did when they had to do work they didn't care for.

Pinkard didn't argue with him. When the ditch was dug, he ordered the Negroes to lie down in it. That drew more complaints. "You gots to put us on top of each other?" a man said. "We ain't no goddamn fairies."

The guards stepped up onto a parapet made from the dirt the Negroes had dug out. Even when they aimed their submachine guns at the men in the trench, the blacks didn't seem to believe what was happening. This is my camp, Jeff thought miserably. I'm responsible for what goes on here. He nodded to the guards. The order was his to give, and he gave it: "Fire!"

They did. As soon as they started shooting, it was as if the ground convulsed. The submachine guns roared and stuttered and spat flame. The guards slapped in magazine after magazine. Pinkard was appalled at how much ammunition his men needed to kill the prisoners. The stenches of blood and shit filled the humid air. At last, the screaming stopped. Only the groans of the dying were left.

More than one guard vomited into the trench. Jeff felt like heaving up his guts, too, but sternly refrained. "Scrape dirt over 'em," he told the guards. "We've got more work to do." The guards grumbled, but not too much. They seemed too stunned to do a whole lot in the way of grumbling.

And it got harder after that. The Negroes at the camp had to have understood what was going on when the guards came back and the men they'd been guarding didn't. But Mercer Scott was no fool. The first gang of blacks had gone off willingly enough, yes. He made sure the next bunch were shackled. That way, nobody tried to run off into the woods and swamp.

Over the course of the next three days, Pinkard reduced the population of Camp Dependable by two thousand men. That was how he referred to it in his reports. That was how he tried to think about it, too. If he thought about reducing population, he didn't have to dwell on shooting helpless prisoners.

A few of the guards were exhilarated after the job was done. They were the ones who thought Negroes had it coming to them. Most of the men were very subdued, though. They didn't mind jailing blacks or starving them. Shooting them in cold blood seemed to be something else again.

One shot rang out in the middle of the night: a guard blowing his brains out. He got buried, too, with almost as little fuss as if he were one of the blacks so casually disposed of.

When the promised-the threatened-new shipment of Negro prisoners arrived, Camp Dependable was able to take them. Pinkard wondered if he would get a congratulatory call from Ferd Koenig. He didn't. Maybe that made sense, too. After all, he'd only done what the attorney general needed him to do.

Scipio wished to God he could get out of Augusta. But it wasn't so easy as it would have been a few years before. Things had tightened up. Everywhere a black man went, it was, "Show me your passbook, boy." If he started working in, say, Atlanta, he would have to produce the document that proved he was himself-or proved he was Xerxes, which amounted to the same thing. And if he did that, he would be vulnerable to either Anne Colleton or Jerry Dover.

He didn't think his boss at the Huntsman's Lodge had anything in particular against him. He knew damned well his former boss at the former Marshlands plantation did. But he didn't like the idea of being vulnerable to Dover much better than he liked being vulnerable to Miss Anne. Being vulnerable to anybody white terrified him.

At the restaurant, the rich white men who ate there talked more and more of war. So did the newspapers. Jake Featherston was thumping his chest and foaming at the mouth because Al Smith wouldn't give him what he'd promised not to ask for the year before. Scipio remembered too well what a catastrophe the last war had been for the Confederate States. Under other circumstances, the prospect of a new one would have appalled him.

Under other circumstances… As things were, he more than half hoped the CSA did start fighting the USA gain. All eyes, all thoughts, would turn toward the front. They would turn away from a town in the middle of nowhere like Augusta. And he had heard some of the things bombing airplanes could do nowadays. That made him all the gladder Augusta was a long, long way from the border.

What made life harder was that whites weren't all he had to worry about in Augusta. The Terry was full of sharecroppers displaced from the land by the tractors and harvesters and combines that had revolutionized farming in the CSA since the Freedom Party came to power. The Terry, in fact, held far more people than it held jobs. A man who wasn't careful could easily get knocked over the head for half a dollar-especially a man who wasn't young and who had to wear a penguin suit to and from work, so he looked as if he had money.

Scipio made a point of being careful.

Coming home was worse than going up to the Huntsman's Lodge. Going to work, he had to face harassment from whites who fancied themselves wits. Most of them overestimated by a factor of two. He had to give soft answers. He'd been doing that all his life. He managed.

He came home in the middle of the night. Darkness gave predators cover- and the Augusta police rarely wasted their time looking into crimes blacks committed against each other. Every street corner on the way to his apartment building was an adventure.

Most of the time, of course, the corners were adventures only in his own imagination. He could-and did-imagine horrors whether they were there or not. Every once in a while, they were. He walked as quietly as he could. He always paused in the blackest shadows he could find before exposing himself by crossing a street. Nobody had worried about street lights in the Terry even before the rise of the Freedom Party. These days, the idea of anyone worrying about anything that had to do with blacks was a painful joke.

Voices from a side street made Scipio decide he would do better to stay where he was for a little while. One black man said, "Ain't seen Nero for a while."

"You won't, neither," another answered. "Goddamn ofays cotched him with a pistol in his pocket."

"Do Jesus!" the first man exclaimed. "Nero always the unluckiest son of a bitch you ever seen. What they do with him?"

"Ship him out West, one o' them camps," his friend said.

"Do Jesus!" the first man said again. "You go into one o' them places, you don't come out no more."

"Oh, mebbe you do," the other man said. "Mebbe you do-but it don't help you none."

"Huh!" the first man said-a noise half grunt, half the most cynical laugh Scipio had ever heard. "You got dat right. They throws you in a hole in the ground, or else they throws you in the river fo' the gators and the snappers to finish off."

"I hear the same thing," his friend agreed. "Gator sausage mighty tasty. I ain't gonna eat it no mo'. Never can tell who dat gator knowed." He laughed, too. The black men walked on. They had no idea Scipio had been listening.

He waited till their footsteps faded before he went on to his apartment. The Huntsman's Lodge served a fair amount of wild game: venison, raccoon, bear every once in a while, and alligator. Scipio had been fond of garlicky alligator sausage himself. He didn't think he would ever touch it again.

Three days later, he was walking to work when police and Freedom Party stalwarts with submachine guns swept into the Terry. They weren't trying to solve any specific crime. Instead, they were checking passbooks. Anybody whose papers didn't measure up or who didn't have papers, they seized.

"Let me have a look at that there passbook, boy," a cop growled at Scipio.

"Yes, suh." Scipio was old enough to be the policeman's father, but to most whites in the CSA he would always be a boy. He didn't argue. He just handed over the document. Arguing with a bad-tempered man with a submachine gun was apt to be hazardous to your life expectancy.

The cop took a brief look at his papers, then gave them back. "Hell, I know who you are," he said. "You been paradin' around in them fancy duds for years. Go on, get your black ass outa here."

"Yes, suh. Thank you kindly, suh." Scipio had taken a lot of abuse from whites for going to work in a tuxedo. Here, for once, it looked to have paid off. He got out of there in a hurry. That was unheroic. He knew it. It gnawed at him. But what could he do against dozens of trigger-happy whites? Not one damned thing, and he knew that, too.

He'd gone only a few blocks when gunfire rang out behind him: first a single shot, then a regular fusillade. He didn't know what had happened, and he wasn't crazy or suicidal enough to go back and find out, but he thought he could make a pretty good guess. Somebody must have figured his chances shooting it out were better than they would have been if he'd gone wherever the cops and the stalwarts were taking people they grabbed.

The fellow who'd started shooting was probably-almost certainly-dead now. Even so, who could say for sure he was wrong? He'd died quickly, and hadn't suffered much. Scipio thought of alligators, and wished he hadn't.

One of the waiters, a skinny young man named Nestor, didn't show up at the Huntsman's Lodge. Jerry Dover muttered and fumed. Scipio told him about the dragnet in the Terry. The manager eyed him. "You reckon they picked up Nestor for something or other?"

"Dunno, Mistuh Dover," Scipio said. "Reckon mebbe they could've, though."

"What do you suppose he did?" Dover asked. "He's never given anybody any trouble here."

"Dunno," Scipio said again. "Dunno if he done anything. Them police, I don't reckon they was fussy." They were standing right outside the kitchen, in a nice, warm corridor. He wanted to shiver even so. Nestor would have been wearing a tuxedo, too. Fat lot of good it had done him.

Jerry Dover rubbed his chin. "He's a pretty fair worker. Let me make a call or two, see what I can find out."

What would he have done if Nestor were a lazy good-for-nothing? Washed his hands like Pilate? Scipio wouldn't have been surprised. He didn't dwell on it. With the crew shorthanded because Nestor wasn't there, he stayed hopping.

And Nestor didn't show up, either. Dover wore a tight-lipped expression, one that discouraged questions. Scipio and the rest of the crew got through the evening. When he went back the next day, the missing waiter still wasn't there. That nerved him to go up to the manager and ask, "Nestor, he come back?"

"Doubt it." Dover sounded as if he had to pay for every word that passed his lips. "Time for a new hire. He won't know his ass from Richmond, either."

"Nestor, what he do?" Scipio persisted. "You find out?"

"He got himself arrested, that's what." Jerry Dover sounded angry at Scipio-or possibly angry at the world. "He picked the wrong goddamn time to do it, too."

"What you mean?" Scipio asked. "Ain't no right time to git arrested."

Dover nodded. "Well, that's so. There's no right time. But there's sure as hell a wrong time. What the cops told me yesterday was, the city jail's full. So those niggers they caught in the Terry-you know about that?"

"Oh, yes, suh," Scipio said softly. "I tol' you, remember? They almost 'rests me, too."

"That's right, you did. Well, I'm damn glad they didn't, because I'd be down two waiters if they had." If the restaurant manager was glad for any other reason that they hadn't arrested Scipio, he didn't show it. He went on, "Jail's full up, like I said. So they went and shipped these here niggers off to one of those camps they've started."

"Lord he'p Nestor, then," Scipio said. "Somebody go into one of them places, I hear tell he don't come out no mo', not breathin', anyways." He'd heard it as gossip between two men he'd never seen, but that didn't mean he didn't believe it. It had the horrid feel of truth.

Jerry Dover shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. What had he heard? Back in the days when Scipio worked at Marshlands, he'd been convinced the Colletons couldn't keep a secret for more than a few minutes before the blacks on the plantation also knew it. Here at the Huntsman's Lodge, the colored cooks and waiters and cleaners quickly found out whatever their white bosses knew. Or did they? Just as blacks kept secrets from whites out of necessity, so whites might also find it wise to keep certain things from blacks.

But if Dover had that kind of knowledge, it didn't show on his face. Scipio thought it would. Dover did what he had to do to get along in the world in which he found himself. Who didn't, except crazy people and saints? But the manager was pretty honest, pretty decent. He was no "Freedom!" — yelling stalwart without two brain cells to rub against each other.

He said, "You want to watch yourself on the street, then, don't you? You know I've got some pull. But it doesn't look like I can do anything about one of those places."

"I watches myself real good, suh," Scipio answered. "You say de city jail full up?" Jerry Dover nodded. Scipio asked him, "They 'rest white folks now, de white folks go to dese camps, too?"

His boss looked at him as if he'd asked whether the stork brought mothers their babies. "Don't be stupid," Dover said.

That was good advice, too. It always was. What worried Scipio was, it might not be enough. He'd escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe-if he wasn't stupid to begin with-he'd listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?

Five-thirty in the morning. Reveille blared. Armstrong Grimes groaned. He had time for that one involuntary protest before he rolled out of his cot and his feet hit the floor of the barracks hall at Fort Custer outside of Columbus, Ohio. Then he started functioning, at least well enough. He threw on his green-gray uniform, made up the cot, and dashed outside to his place in the roll call-all in the space of five minutes.

What happened to men who were late had long since convinced him being late was a bad idea. Back home, his mother had made the bed for him most of the time. He'd been sloppy at it when he first got here. Now a dime bounced off his blanket, and bounced high. The drill sergeant didn't have cause to complain about him or even notice him-the two often being synonymous.

He stood there trying not to shiver in the chilly dawn. When the time came, he sang out to announce his presence. Other than that, he kept quiet. Everybody else did the same. For once, the drill sergeants seemed in a merciful mood. They let the assembled soldiers march off to breakfast after only a minimum of growling and cursing.

Everybody marched everywhere at Fort Custer. Armstrong had begun to think Thou shalt march was in the Bible somewhere right below Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain-two commandments he was learning more about violating every day.

He took a tray and a plate and a mug and silverware, then advanced on the food. A cook's helper loaded the plate with scrambled eggs and hash browns and greasy, overdone bacon. Another one poured the mug full of coffee almost strong enough to eat through the bottom. Armstrong grabbed a seat at a long, long table. He put enough cream and sugar in the coffee to tame it a little, threw salt on the eggs and potatoes and pepper on the eggs, and then started shoveling in chow.

Nobody talked much at breakfast. Nobody had time. The drill here was simple: feed your face as fast as you could. Armstrong had never much cared for manners. He didn't have to worry about them here. Compared to the way some of the guys ate, he might have come from the upper crust. Every once in a while, he thought that was pretty funny. More often than not, he didn't have time to worry about it one way or the other.

As soon as he finished, he shoved his tray and dirty dishes at the poor slobs who'd drawn KP duty. Then he hustled out to the exercise yard. He wasn't the first one there, but he was a long way from the last. Bad things happened to the guys who brought up the rear.

Of course, bad things happened to everybody right after breakfast. Violent calisthenics and a three-mile run weren't the way Armstrong would have used to settle his stomach. The drill sergeants didn't care about his opinion. They had their own goals. His conscription class, like any other, had had some fat guys, some weak guys. He remembered who they'd been. But the fat guys weren't fat any more, and the weak guys weren't weak any more. Oh, a few had washed out, simply unable to stand the strain. People said one fellow had died trying, but Armstrong didn't know if he believed that. Most of the recruits, no matter what kind of shape they'd been in to start with, had toughened up since.

After the run, the conscripts "relaxed" with close-order drill. "Left…! Left…! Left, right, left!" the drill sergeant bawled. "To the rear… haarch!" He screamed at somebody who couldn't keep the rhythm if his life depended on it. Armstrong's company had a couple of those unfortunates, who drew more than their fair share of abuse. He'd never figured out why the Army still needed close-order drill. Doing it where the enemy could see you was a recipe for getting massacred. But he didn't have any trouble telling one foot from the other, or turning right and not left when he heard, "To the right flank… haarch!"

Lunch that day was creamed chipped beef on toast, otherwise creamed chipped beast or, more often, shit on a shingle. Armstrong didn't care what people called it. He didn't care what he got, either, as long as there was plenty of it. He would have eaten a horse and chased the driver-and, considering how fast he could pound out the three miles, he probably would have caught him.

After lunch came dirty fighting and rifle practice. Like any reasonably tough kid who got out of high school, Armstrong had thought he knew something about dirty fighting. The drill sergeant who'd mercilessly thumped him in the first day's lesson taught him otherwise. He'd been amazed to discover what all you could do with elbows, knees, feet, and bent fingers. If you happened to have a knife…

"Any civilian who fucks with me better have his funeral paid for," he said.

The drill sergeant shook his head. "He may have been through the mill, too. Or he may have a gun. You can't kick a gun in the nuts. Remember that, or you'll end up dead."

That struck Armstrong as good advice. A lot of what the drill sergeants said struck him as good advice. Whether he would take it was another question. He was no more interested than any other male his age in getting answers from someone else. He thought he had everything figured out for himself.

After the fighting drill, he and his company marched off to the rifle range. That did help reinforce what the sergeant had said. If you had a Springfield in your hand, you could put a hole in a man-or a man-shaped target-from a hell of a lot farther away than a man could put a boot in your belly. And Armstrong was a good shot.

"A lot of you guys think you're hot stuff," another drill sergeant said. This one had a fine collection of Sharpshooter and Expert medals jingling on his chest. "Listen to me, though. There's one big difference between doing it on the range here and doing it in the field. In the field, the other son of a bitch shoots back. And if you think that doesn't matter, you're dreaming."

Armstrong only grunted. He was sure it didn't matter. He could do it here. As far as he was concerned, that meant he could do it, period.

The drill sergeant said, "Some of you think I'm kidding. Some of you think I'm talking with my head up my ass. Well, you'll find out. It's different in the field. A hell of a lot of guys get out there and they don't shoot at all. There's plenty of others who don't aim first. They just point their piece somewhere-in the air, probably-and start banging away."

"What a bunch of fools," Armstrong whispered to the recruit next to him. He wanted to laugh out loud, but he didn't. That would have drawn the drill sergeant's eye to him, which he didn't want at all.

As things were, the sergeant sent a scowl in his general direction, but it didn't light on him personally. The veteran noncom went on, "There's just one thing you're lucky about. The other side will have as many fuckups as we do. That may keep some of you alive longer than you deserve. On the other hand, it may not, too. A machine gun isn't awful goddamn choosy about who it picks out." His face clouded. "I ought to know." He wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart, too.

"Question, Sergeant?" somebody called.

"Yeah, go ahead."

"Is it true the Confederates are giving their soldiers lots and lots of submachine guns?" the youngster asked.

"Yeah, that's supposed to be true," the sergeant said. "I don't think all that much of the idea myself. Submachine gun only fires a pistol round. It doesn't have a lot of stopping power, and the effective range is pretty short." He stopped and rubbed his chin. It was blue with stubble, though he'd surely scraped it smooth that morning. "Of course, submachine guns do put a hell of a lot of lead in the air. And the goddamn Confederates can hold their breath till they turn blue, but they're never gonna have as many men as we do. I expect that's why they're trying it."

Another recruit piped up: "Why hasn't somebody made an automatic rifle, if a submachine gun isn't good enough?"

"The Confederates are supposed to be trying that, too, but there are problems," the sergeant said. "Recoil, wear on the mechanism, overheating, having the weapon pull up when you fire it on full automatic, keeping it clean in the field-those are some of the things you've got to worry about. I wouldn't fall over dead with surprise if we start using something like that, too, one of these days, but don't hold your breath, either. And the Springfield is a goddamn good weapon. We won a war with it. We can win another one if we have to."

He waited. Sure enough, that drew another question: "Are we going to fight another war with the Confederate States?"

"Beats me," the drill sergeant answered. "I've done my share of fighting, and I am plumb satisfied. But if that Featherston son of a bitch isn't… You need two for peace, but one can start a war. If he does start it, it's up to us- it'll be up to you-to finish it."

Armstrong Grimes had no complaints. If he had to be in the Army, he wanted to be there while it was in action. What point to it otherwise? He didn't think about getting hurt. He especially didn't think about getting killed. That kind of stuff happened to other people. It couldn't possibly happen to him. He was going to live forever.

The sergeant said, "And if he does start another war, you will finish it, right? You'll kick the CSA's mangy ass around the block, right?"

"Yes, Sergeant!" the young men shouted. They were all as convinced of their own immortality as Armstrong Grimes.

"I can't hear you." The sergeant cupped a hand behind one ear.

"Yes, Sergeant!" The recruits might have been at a football game. Armstrong yelled as loud as anybody else.

"That's better," the drill sergeant allowed. "Not good, but better." Hardly anything anybody did in basic training was good. You might be perfect, but you still weren't good enough. They wanted you to try till you keeled over. People did, too.

Supper was fried chicken and canned corn and spinach, with apple pie a la mode for dessert. It wasn't great fried chicken, but you could eat as much as you wanted, which made up for a lot. Armstrong used food to pay his body back for the sleep it wasn't getting.

After supper, he had a couple of hours to himself-the only time during the day when he wasn't either unconscious or being run ragged. He could write home-which he didn't do often enough to suit his mother-or read a book or get into a poker game or shoot the breeze with other recruits winding down from an exhausting day or do what he usually did: lie on his cot smoking cigarette after cigarette. People said they were bad for your wind. He didn't care. He got through his three miles without any trouble, and the smokes helped him relax.

"You think there's going to be a war?" somebody asked. The question had been coming up more and more often lately.

"If there is, the goddamn Confederates'll be sorry," somebody else answered.

"Damn right," Armstrong said in the midst of a general rumble of agreement.

"We can lick 'em," someone said, and then added what might have been the young man's creed: "If our fathers did it, hell, we can do it easy."

"Damn right," Armstrong said again. Two hours after he sacked out, they had a simulated night attack. He bounced out of bed to repel imaginary enemies. He didn't miss the sleep. Why would he? He was already too far behind for a little more to matter.

Colonel Clarence Potter imagined a man he had never seen. He didn't know if the man lived in Dallas or Mobile or Nashville or Charleston or Richmond. Wherever he lived, he fit right in. He sounded like the people around him. He looked like them, too, and acted like them. When the time came to shout, "Freedom!" he yelled as loud as anybody. When he had a few beers in a saloon, he grumbled about what the damnyankee innovation of the forward pass had done to the great game of football.

And when he was by himself, this man Potter had never seen would write innocent-looking letters or send innocent-sounding wires up to the United States. He would be doing business with or for some firm or other based north of the Mason-Dixon line. And some of his messages really would be innocent, and some of them would go straight to the U.S. War Department in Philadelphia.

The man Potter had never met-would never meet-was the mirror image of the spies he ran in the USA. He'd had the idea. He had to assume his opposite number up in the United States had had it, too. He didn't like that, but he had to believe it. He kept wondering how much damage that imaginary U.S. spy could do.

Trouble was, the bastard almost certainly wasn't imaginary. A German had trouble sounding like a Frenchman, and vice versa. But a Yankee and a Confederate were too close to begin with. Differences in accent were small things. If you came from the USA, you had to remember to say things like note or banknote instead of bill. People would follow you if you used your own word, but they'd know you were a foreigner. But if you were careful, you could get by.

Something else worried Clarence Potter. He ran spies. The probable counterpart of one of the fellows he ran would also be a spy. If you had people in place as spies, though, wouldn't you also have them in place as provocateurs? As saboteurs?

He didn't know whether the Confederates had provocateurs and saboteurs lurking in the USA. He didn't know because it was none of his business. What he didn't know, he couldn't tell. In philosophy up at Yale, though, he'd learned about what Plato called true opinions. He was pretty damn sure he had one of those about this question. He also had some strong opinions about where he'd put provocateurs and saboteurs.

He sat down in front of his typewriter to bang out a memorandum. In it he said not a word about spies, provocateurs, and saboteurs in the United States. He did mention the possibility that their U.S. equivalents were operating in the Confederate States. It would be unfortunate, he wrote, if the USA were able to take advantage of similarities between the two countries in language, custom, and dress, and it is to be hoped that steps to prevent such dangerous developments are currently being taken.

When he reread the sentence, the corners of his mouth turned down in distaste. He didn't like writing that way; it set his teeth on edge. He would rather have come straight to the point. But he knew the officers who would see the memorandum. They wrote gobbledygook. They expected to read it, too. Active verbs would only scare them. They were none too active themselves.

As soon as he fired the memorandum up the chain of command, he stopped worrying about it. He judged he probably wouldn't get an answer. If the Army or the Freedom Party or somebody was watching out for suspicious characters, he wouldn't. Nobody would bother patting a busybody colonel on the hand and saying, "There, there. No need to worry, dear."

A few days later, he was writing a note when the telephone on his desk rang. His hand jerked a little-just enough to spoil a word. He scratched it out before picking up the handset. "Clarence Potter." He didn't say he was in Intelligence. Anyone who didn't already know had the wrong number.

"Hello, Potter. You are a sneaky son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"Hello, Mr. President," Potter answered cautiously. "Is that a compliment or not? In my line of work, I'm supposed to be."

"Hell, yes, it's a compliment," Jake Featherston answered. "It's also a judgment on us. We've been thinking a lot about what we can do to the damnyankees. We ain't worried near enough about what them bastards can do to us."

When his grammar slipped that far, he was genuinely irate. He'd also told Potter what the call was about. "You've read the memorandum, then?"

"Damn right I've read it. Those two whistle-ass peckerheads above you kicked it up to me. They were going, 'What do you want to do about this here?' "

Clarence Potter had a hard time swallowing a snort. Featherston might be president of the CSA, but he still talked like a foul-mouthed sergeant, especially when he took aim at officers. Potter asked, "What do you want to do about it, Mr. President?"

"You asked the questions. I want somebody to get me some answers. I sure as shit don't have enough of 'em right now. How would you like to do it? I'll make you a brigadier general on the spot."

Only two promotions really mattered: the one up from buck private and the one to general's rank. All the same, Potter said, "Sir, if I have a choice, I'd rather work on our assets there than their assets here. I want to hit those people when the time comes."

"Even if it costs you the promotion?" Featherston could only mean, How serious are you?

"Even if it does," Potter said firmly. "I didn't expect to come back into the Army anyway. I didn't do it for a wreath around my stars. I did it for the country." And to keep from giving you an excuse for getting rid of me. He didn't say that. Why remind Featherston?

"All right, then. You've got it-and the promotion," the president said. "That's your baby now, General Potter."

It did feel good. It felt damn good, as a matter of fact. And it felt all the better because Potter hadn't expected he would ever get it. When he said, "Thank you, Mr. President!" he sounded much more sincere than he'd thought he would while talking to Jake Featherston.

"I reckon you've earned it," Featherston answered. "I reckon you'll do a good job with it, too. You wait half an hour, and then you go right on into Brigadier General McGillivray's office and get to work. From here on out, it's yours."

"Yes, sir," Potter said, but he was talking to a dead line. He wondered briefly why the president wanted him to wait, but only briefly. He'd known Jake Featherston more than twenty-five years. He could guess what Jake would be doing with that half hour.

And his guess proved good. When he walked into his superior's-no, his former superior's-office, Brigadier General Stanley McGillivray was white and trembling. "I gather you are to replace me?" he choked out when he saw Potter.

"I gather I am." Potter had ripped into a good many incompetent officers in his time, but he didn't have the heart to say anything snide to McGillivray. The other Intelligence officer was a broken man if ever he'd seen one. He was so terribly broken, in fact, that Potter, for once, was moved more to sympathy than to sarcasm. "I hope the president wasn't too hard on you?"

"That, Colonel Potter-excuse me: General Potter-is what they call a forlorn hope," McGillivray answered bitterly. "I think you will find everything in order here. I think you will find it in better condition than I have been given credit for. Good day. Good luck." By the way he stumbled out of the office, he might almost have been a blind man.

"Poor bastard," Potter muttered. Anyone who ran into the cutting torch of Jake Featherston's fury was going to get charred. He'd seen that for himself, more often than he cared to remember.

And then he put Stanley McGillivray out of his mind. He was familiar with only about a third of the work that this desk did. He had to learn the rest of it… and he had the strong feeling he had to learn it in a tearing hurry. Featherston sure as hell wouldn't wait for him. Featherston had never been in the habit of waiting for anybody.

Potter went through the manila folders on the desk one by one. Some of them held things he'd expected to find. A few held surprises. He'd hoped they would. If he'd been able to figure out everything McGillivray was doing, wouldn't the damnyankees have done the same thing?

Some of the surprises were surprises indeed. The Confederates had been running people in Philadelphia since before the Great War. They'd recruited young men who needed this or that-and some who needed to make sure this or that never became public. Not all those young men had lasted. Some had died in the war. Some hadn't had the careers they'd hoped they would, and so proved useless as sources. But a handful of them, by now, were in position to know some very interesting things, and to pass them on.

The assets farther west were interesting, too. Most of Potter's notions of where they were proved right. Again, he got some surprises about who they were. That didn't matter so much. As long as he could use them…

He also checked the procedures Brigadier General McGillivray had in place for staying in touch with his people in the USA in case normal communications channels broke down-in plain English, in case there was a war. They weren't bad. He hoped he could find a way to make them better. The real problem he saw was how slow they were. He understood why that was so, but he didn't like it. "There's got to be a better way," he muttered, not sure if he was right.

Late that afternoon, the telephone in the new office rang. When he picked it up, Anne Colleton was on the other end of the line. "Congratulations, General Potter," she purred in his ear.

"Jesus Christ!" Potter sat bolt upright in his new swivel chair. It was a different make from the one he'd used before; he wasn't used to it yet. Its squeak sounded funny, too. "How did you know that?"

"I had to talk with the president about something," she answered. "He told me he'd promoted you."

"Oh." Potter's alarm evaporated. If she'd heard it from Jake Featherston, it was hardly a security breach. "All right."

"He told me some of why he promoted you, too," Anne said. "Do you really think the damnyankees are going to raise hell here if we go to war?"

"Well, I can't know, not for sure. But I would, if I were in their shoes. I do know they gave our niggers guns during the last war. If there's another one, they'd be fools not to do it again. They're bastards. They aren't fools. We thought they were in 1914. We've been paying for it ever since."

"Can we track down the people they've got here?" Anne asked.

"Of course we can," Potter answered, thinking, No way in hell. More truthfully, he went on, "The harder we go after them, the more careful they'll have to be, too."

"Uh-huh," Anne said in thoughtful tones.

She was, dammit, plenty smart enough to see the contradictions between the two things he'd said. He changed the subject: "What were you talking about with the president?"

"The timing of a propaganda campaign here in South Carolina," she said. Potter wondered just what that meant. He didn't want to go into details with her. God only knew how secure this line was. But the likeliest explanation he could come up with on his own was, We were talking about when the war will start.

Abner Dowling raised field glasses to his eyes and looked across the Ohio River into Kentucky. The mere act of observing Kentucky from afar made him so angry, he wanted to swell up like a bullfrog. As far as he was concerned, he shouldn't have been looking into a foreign country when he eyed Kentucky. He should have been in the state, getting ready to defend it against the Confederates. If they wanted to take it away from him, they would have been welcome to try. He could have promised them a warm reception.

Now… Now he had to figure out how to defend Ohio instead. The General Staff had generously sent him some plans prepared before the Great War. They would have been just what he needed, except that they ignored airplanes and barrels and barely acknowledged the existence of trucks. Things had changed since 1914. Dowling knew that. He hoped to God the General Staff did, too.

Some of what the old plans suggested was still sound. All the bridges across the Ohio had demolition charges in place. Artillery covered the bridges and other possible crossing points. Antiaircraft guns poked their noses up among the camouflaged cannons. If the Confederates were going to try to bomb his guns to silence, they wouldn't have an easy time of it.

He kept his main force farther back in Ohio than the old plans recommended. Again, the airplane was the main reason why. He also wanted to get some notion of what the Confederates were doing before he committed his men.

Custer would have charged right at them, wherever they first showed themselves, he thought. The way he rolled his eyes showed his opinion of that. Custer would have charged, sure as the devil. Maybe he would have smashed everything in his way. Maybe he would have blundered straight into an ambush. But he could no more keep from charging than a bull could when a matador waved his cape. Sword? What sword? Custer would have thought, bullishly.

For better or worse-for better and worse-Dowling was more cautious. If the Confederate Army crossed into the USA, he wanted to slow it down. The way he looked at things, if the Confederates didn't win quick victories, they'd be in trouble. In a long, drawn-out grapple, the USA had the edge. Dowling didn't think that had changed since the Great War.

He raised the field glasses again. Kentucky seemed to leap toward him. Jake Featherston had lied about keeping soldiers out of the state. He'd lied about not asking for more land. How was anybody in the United States supposed to trust him now? You couldn't. It was as simple as that.

Even Al Smith had seen the light. The president of the USA had said he would fight back if the CSA tried to take land by force. Dowling was all for that. But so much more could have been done. It could have, but it hadn't. Everybody'd known the Confederates were rearming. If the USA had been serious about showing Featherston who was boss, the country could have done it quickly and easily in 1935. Nothing would be quick or easy now.

And the United States weren't so ready as they should have been. Dowling thought about all the time wasted in the 1920s. The Confederates had been on the ropes then, either on the ropes or smiling and saying how friendly they were. Why build better barrels when you'd never have to use them? As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all.

"Sir?" said an aide at Dowling's elbow. "Sir?"

Dowling had been lost in his own gloom. He wondered how long the younger man had been trying to draw his notice. However long it was, he'd finally succeeded. "Yes, Major Chandler? What is it?"

"Sir, Captain Litvinoff from the Special Weapons Section in Philadelphia has come down from Columbus to confer with you," Chandler answered.

"Has he?" Dowling was damned if he wanted to confer with anybody from what was euphemistically called the Special Weapons Section. Regardless of what he wanted, he had little choice. "All right. Let's get it over with." He might have been talking about a trip to the dentist.

"Max Litvinoff, sir," the captain said, saluting.

Dowling returned the salute. "Pleased to meet you," he lied. Litvinoff looked even more like a brain than he'd expected. The captain with the cobalt blue and golden yellow arm-of-service piping on his collar couldn't have been more than thirty. He was about five feet four, skinny, and homely, with thick steel-rimmed glasses and a thin, dark mustache that looked as if he'd drawn it on with a burnt match for an amateur theatrical.

However he looked, he was all business. "This will be good terrain for the application of our special agents," he said briskly.

He might have been talking about spies. He might have been, but he wasn't. Dowling knew too well what he was talking about. Dowling also had a pretty good idea why Litvinoff didn't come right out and say what he meant. People who ended up in the Special Weapons Section often didn't. It was magic of a sort: if they didn't say the real name, they didn't have to think about what they were doing.

"You're talking about poison gas." Dowling had no such inhibitions.

Max Litvinoff coughed. His sallow cheeks turned red. "Well… yes, sir," he mumbled. He was only a captain. He couldn't reprove a man with a star on each shoulder. Every line of his body, though, shouted out that he wanted to.

Too bad, Dowling thought. He'd been up at the front with General Custer the first time the USA turned chlorine loose on the Confederates in 1915. "Gas is a filthy business," he said, and Captain Litvinoff's cheeks got redder yet. "We use it, the Confederates use it, some soldiers on both sides end up dead, and nobody's much better off. What's the point?"

"The point, sir, is very simple," Litvinoff answered stiffly. "If the enemy uses the special agent"-he still wouldn't say gas-"and we don't, then our men end up dead and his don't. Therefore…"

What Dowling wanted to do was yell, Fuck you! and kick the captain in the ass. Unfortunately, he couldn't. Litvinoff was right. Handing the CSA an edge like that would be stupid, maybe suicidal. "Go on," Dowling growled.

"Yes, sir. You will be familiar with the agents utilized in the last war?" Captain Litvinoff sounded as if he didn't believe it. When Dowling nodded, Litvinoff shrugged. He went on, "You may perhaps be less familiar with those developed at the close of hostilities and subsequently."

So I am, Dowling thought. And thank God for small favors. But he couldn't say that to Litvinoff. He was, heaven help him, going to have to work with the man. What he did say was, "I'm all ears."

"Good." Captain Litvinoff looked pleased. He liked talking about his toys, showing them off, explaining-in bloodless-seeming terms-what they could do. If that wasn't a measure of his damnation, Dowling couldn't imagine what would be. Litvinoff continued, "First, there's nitrogen mustard. We did use some of this in 1917. It's a vesicant."

"A what?" Dowling asked. The Special Weapons Section man might have his vocabulary of euphemisms, but that didn't even sound like a proper English word.

Reluctantly, Litvinoff translated: "A blistering agent. Mucus membranes and skin. It does not have to be inhaled to be effective, thought it will produce more and more severe casualties if the lungs are involved. And it is a persistent agent. In the absence of strong direct sunlight or rain, it can remain in place and active for months. An excellent way to deny access to an area to the enemy."

"And to us," Dowling said.

Captain Litvinoff looked wounded. "By no means, sir. Troops with proper protective gear and an awareness the agent is in the area can function quite well."

"All right," Dowling said, though it was anything but. "What other little toys have you got?"

"Walk with me, sir, if you'd be so kind," Litvinoff said, and led him away from the officers and men in his entourage. When the young captain was sure they were out of earshot, he went on, "We also have what we are terming nerve agents. They are a step up in lethality from other agents we have been utilizing."

Dowling needed a second or two to figure out what lethality meant. When he did, he wished he hadn't. "Nerve agents?" he echoed queasily.

"That's right." Litvinoff nodded. "Again, these are effective both by inhalation and through cutaneous contact. They prevent nerve impulses from initiating muscular activity." That didn't sound like anything much. But his next sentence told what it meant: "Lethality occurs through cardiopulmonary failure. Onset is quite rapid, and the amount of agent required to induce it is astonishingly small."

"How nice," Dowling said. Captain Litvinoff beamed. Dowling muttered, "I wonder why we bother with bullets any more."

"So do I, sir. So do I." Litvinoff was dead serious-under the circumstances, the exact right phrase. But then, as grudging as a spinster talking about the facts of life, he admitted, "These nerve agents do have an antidote. But it must be administered by injection, and if it is administered in error, it is in itself toxic."

"This is all wonderful news," Dowling said-another thumping lie. He had been looking forward to lunch. He usually did. Now, though, his appetite had vanished. And a new and important question occurred to him: "Good to know we have these things available. But tell me, Captain, what are the Confederates likely to throw at us if the war starts?"

Max Litvinoff blinked behind his spectacles. "I am more familiar with our own program…"

"Dammit, Captain, I'm not just going to shoot these things at the enemy. I'll be on the receiving end, too. What am I going to receive? What can I do about it?"

"Respirators are current issue. Protective clothing is rather less widely available, and does tend to restrict mobility in warm, humid climates," Litvinoff said. Dowling tried to imagine running around in a rubberized suit in Ohio or Kentucky in July. The thought did not bring reassurance with it. The Special Weapons Section officer went on, "The Confederate States are likely to be familiar with nitrogen mustard. Whether they know of nerve agents, and of which sorts, I am less prepared to state."

"Does somebody in the War Department have any idea? Can you tell me who would?" Dowling asked. "It might be important, you know."

"Well, yes, I can see how it might," Litvinoff said. "Unfortunately, however, defenses against these agents are not my area of expertise."

"Yes, I gathered that. I'm trying to find out from you whose area of expertise they are."

"Knowing that does not fall within my area of expertise, either."

Dowling looked at him. "Captain, why the hell did you come out here in the first place?"

"Why, to give you information, sir."

He meant it. Dowling could see as much. Seeing as much didn't make him very happy-or give him much information, either.