movement of Confederate forces into the territory of the Empire of Mexico.'
'I would point out to you, sir, that, when and if the purchase arrangements between Mexico and the Confederacy are completed, the provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora shall no longer be the territory of the Empire of Mexico, but rather that of the Confederate States of America.' Stuart's smile looked ingratiating, but was anything but. 'Surely, Bill-'
'William,' Foulke said. 'I prefer William. William Dudley Foulke, sir, at your service.'
'Beg your pardon, William,' Stuart said easily, wondering what such a pompous little fellow was doing so far out West. 'As I was saying, surely the United States cannot be thinking of forbidding the Confederate States from moving their forces from one part of their own territory to another.'
William Dudley Foulke took a deep breath. 'I am requested and required to inform you, General, as the government of the United States has informed President Longstreet in Richmond, that the United States consider the sale of Sonora and Chihuahua to be made under duress, and therefore to be invalid and of no consequence.'
'Oh, they do, do they?' Stuart had understood that to be the position of the United States, but had never heard it explicitly till now. The way it was stated… 'William, I assure you I mean no offense by this, but you talk more like a lawyer than a soldier.'
Foulke smiled: he was amused, not angry. 'I considered a career in the law in my early days, General Stuart. In the aftermath of the War of Secession, I determined that I could better use my talents in the service of my country as a soldier than as a jurist. As I am of Quaker stock, my family was distressed at my choice, but here I am today.'
'Here you are,' Stuart agreed. 'And since you are here, Lieutenant Colonel Foulke, I have to tell you that the view of the Confederate States is that, if the sale of Sonora and Chihuahua be completed, those two provinces become territory belonging to the Confederate States of America, to be administered and garrisoned at the sole discretion of the government of the CSA. In plain English, sir, once they're ours, we'll do with them as we please.'
'In plain English, sir, the United States do not aim to let themselves be outflanked on the south,' Foulke said. 'The United States do not aim to let the Confederacy take advantage of a weak neighbor, as you did when you bullied Cuba out of Spain a few years ago. I expect you will wire a report of this meeting back to Richmond. Rest assured that I am telling you nothing different from what Minister Hay is telling President Longstreet there, or for that matter what President Blaine is telling Minister Benjamin in Washington.'
Major Horatio Sellers spoke up: 'You Yankees keep barking that way, Lieutenant Colonel, you're going to have to show whether you've got any bite to go with it.'
Foulke flushed: with his fine, fair skin, the darkening was quite noticeable. But his voice was cool as he replied, 'Major, if your nation persists in its unwise course, you will feel our teeth, I assure you.'
'The United States have already felt our teeth, sir,' Jeb Stuart said. 'It has been a while, I admit; perhaps you've forgotten. If you have, we are prepared to remind you. And, I will point out, we have good friends, which is more than the United States can say.'
Lieutenant Colonel Foulke shrugged. 'Sir, I have delivered to you the message with which I was charged. I personally have no great use for war, nor does any man, nor any nation, of sense. But you are to know that the United States are firmly resolved in this matter. Good day.' Without waiting for a reply, he and the captain with him rode back toward their men.
Stuart watched until all the Yankees started riding off in the direction of New Mexico. When he'd been Foulke's age-Lord, when he'd been even younger-he'd loved nothing better than riding to war. Now that he had sons of his own growing to manhood, he was no longer so sure.
He turned to Major Sellers. 'The next time we see that Yankee, it will be on the battlefield.'
His aide-de-camp gave a sharp, short nod. 'Good,' he said.
Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen had heard that the British government designated diplomatic service in Washington, D.C., a hardship position on account of the abominable climate of the capital of the United States. He didn't know for a fact that that was true. If it wasn't, though, it should have been. The weather had already got hotter and muggier than it ever did in Berlin, and May was only a bit more than half done. Kaiser Wilhelm I's military attache in the United States ran a finger under the tight collar of his blue Prussian uniform to try to let in some air. That helped little, if at all.
Sweating, Schlieffen stepped onto the black cast-iron balcony outside his office. He startled a pigeon on the rail. It flew away, wings flapping noisily. Schlieffen reckoned that a victory of sorts. Too many pigeon droppings streaked the dark red brick of the German ministry.
Against the humidity and heat, though, he won nothing. No breeze stirred the air; it was as hot outside as back in the office. Horses and buggies and wagons rattled up and down Massachusetts Avenue. The street was paved with bricks, so they didn't raise great choking clouds of dust as they might have done, but the racket of iron- shod hooves and iron tires on the paving was terrible.
That racket drove whatever thoughts Schlieffen had had clean out of his head. For a man so intensely intellectual, that could not be borne. He went back inside, closing the French doors behind him. As the air was so still, he made the office no hotter, and, since they were almost all glass, he hardly made it dimmer.
Above his desk hung three framed portraits. A Catholic might have thought them images of a secular Trinity. That had never occurred to Schlieffen, a devout Hutterite. To him, they were merely the most important men in his life: ascetic-looking Field Marshal von Moltke, whose victories over Denmark, Austria, and France had made Prussian-led Germany a nation; plump, imperious Chancellor von Bismarck, whose diplomacy had made von Moltke's victories possible; and, above them both, the Kaiser, bald now, his fringe of hair, mustache, and fuzzy side whiskers white, his chest full of well-earned medals, for he had been a formidable soldier in his own right before succeeding his brother as King of Prussia.
Whenever Schlieffen thought of the Kaiser's soldierly career, he could only marvel, for Wilhelm had first seen action in the Prussian puppet forces that fought under Napoleon's command when the century was young. 'How many men still living can say that?' Schlieffen murmured. And afterwards, Wilhelm had helped guide Prussia 's rise to greatness, had known when to urge his brother to decline the throne of a united Germany after the revolutions of 1848, and had known when to accept it himself a generation later.
From the Kaiser's portrait, Schlieffen's eyes fell briefly to the small photograph of a pretty young woman on his desk: the one bit of sentiment he permitted himself in a room otherwise utterly businesslike. Anna had been his cousin as well as, for four wonderful years, his wife. In the nine years since her death in childbed, he'd found it easier to care for the ideal of Germany than for any merely human being.
He inked his pen and wrote the last few sentences of the report he'd been working on. After scrawling his signature at the bottom, he checked his pocket watch: a few minutes past ten. He had a ten-thirty appointment at the War Department.
Precise as always, he signed the daybook in the front hall, noting his departure time to the minute. The guards outside the door saluted as he left the embassy. He punctiliously returned the courtesy.
He walked half a block southeast on Massachusetts, then turned right onto Vermont, which cut diagonally across Washington 's square grid and led straight toward the White House and the War Department building just west of it. Civilians waved to him, mistaking his light blue uniform for one belonging to the U.S. Army. He'd had U.S. soldiers make the same mistake and salute him.
He ignored the misdirected greetings, as he ignored most human contact. Then a fat man on a pony that didn't seem up to bearing his weight recognized the uniform for what it was. 'Hurrah for the Kaiser!' the fellow called, and tipped his hat. Schlieffen acknowledged that with a polite nod. The Kaiser was popular in the United States, not least because his army had beaten the French.
Newsboys hawked papers on every corner. Headlines screamed of coming war. Schlieffen's glance lifted toward the Arlington Heights on the far side of the Potomac. Buildings screened most of his view of them, but he knew they were there. He also knew the Confederate States had guns mounted on them, and on other high ground along the southern bank of the river. If war came, Washington would suffer.
More soldiers were on the streets than usual, but not many more. Unlike Germany, the United States had no conscription law, relying instead on volunteers to fill out the relatively small professional army once war was declared. That struck Schlieffen as the next thing to insane, even if the Confederacy used the same system. Mobs,
