'All right, dear.' Sylvia didn't quite know how to take the question. She wondered whether Mary Jane really would remember the day as long as she'd hoped. As they were heading toward the trolley stop, she asked, 'What did you think of the president?'
'He talked for a long time.' By the way Mary Jane said it, she didn't mean it as a compliment.
'He had a lot of things to talk about.' Sylvia gave credit where it was due, even if she didn't care for all the things Roosevelt had said. 'Running the country is a big, complicated job.'
'Huh,' Mary Jane said. 'I bet more people would vote for him if he didn't talk so much.' Sylvia tried to figure out how to answer that. In the end, she didn't answer at all. Her best guess was that Mary Jane had a point.
Jake Featherston had never imagined he'd end up working out of an office. He had one now, though, paid for with Freedom Party dues. He had a secretary, too, whose pay came from the same source. Without Lulu endlessly tapping away on the typewriter, he wouldn't have got done a quarter of what needed doing. As things were, he got done half of what needed doing, sometimes even more.
Lulu couldn't handle everything by her lonesome. Featherston studied the snapshot on his desk. It showed a British- or Confederate-style rhomboidal barrel in the middle of some dry, rough-looking country. The letter that had come with the photo was from a Party member fighting for the Emperor of Mexico against rebels who had Yankee backing.
We're not really here at all, the letter read. Neither is our friend. The friend in question was the barrel. Only a couple of us ever used these critters in the war against the USA. Now we all know how to handle them. Some of us are going to try and see if we can't get some stronger engines, too, so they '11 go better. You bet we '11 bring home what we 're learning. Freedom!
Slowly, Featherston nodded to himself. The Confederate States weren't allowed to have barrels of their own. So the United States said, and the United States were strong enough to make their word stick. But Confederate mercenaries in Mexico, in Peru, and in Argentina were getting practice fighting in barrels and in aeroplanes and on the sea, and were figuring out improvements for the machines they used. A lot of those mercenaries belonged to the Freedom Party. Jake figured he knew as much about clandestine Confederate military affairs as the War Department did-and the War Department didn't know how much he knew.
Lulu stopped typing. She came into his private office: a thin, gray-haired woman, competent rather than decorative. 'Mr. Kimball is here to see you, Mr. Featherston.'
'Bring him right on in,' Jake said. 'We've got some things to talk about, sure enough.' His secretary nodded, left, and returned a moment later with Kimball. Jake rose and shook his hand. 'Good to see you. Glad you could get up to Richmond.'
'I hadn't planned to,' Roger Kimball answered, 'but things have a way of coming up when you don't expect them, eh?'
Featherston nodded. After Lulu went out and started typing again, he said, 'Just when you thought you had everything sunk down out of sight for good, you find out you were wrong. That fellow who went and saw Anne Colleton isn't by any chance lying, is he?'
Kimball looked as if he wanted to say yes, but in the end he shook his head. 'I sank the Yankee bastard, all right. So the war was over? Too damn bad.' He glared at Jake, defying him to make something of it.
'Good,' Jake said. Kimball stared. Featherston went on, 'I fought the damnyankees up to the very last second I could. You think I care if you waited till the cease-fire went into effect before you gave 'em one last lick? In a pig's ass, I do. What matters to me is whether it'll make trouble for the Party and trouble for the country. If I decide it will, I'm going to have to cut you loose.'
He waited to see how Kimball would take that. The ex-submersible skipper said, 'I'll kill that son of a bitch of a Brear-ley if it's the last thing I ever do. I knew he was a weak reed right from the start.'
'You will not,' Jake Featherston said. 'You will not, do you hear me?' He waited to see how Kimball would take the flat order.
Kimball took it just the way he'd expected him to: he blew his stack. 'The hell I won't,' he snarled, going brick red. 'I told that bastard I'd murder him if he ever started running his big mouth. He damn well has, and I damn well will.'
'Then I damn well will cut you loose right this minute,' Featherston said. 'Forget what I told you down in Charleston. I don't want a man who can't do what he's told in the Freedom Party. I don't want somebody who's liable to blow up behind my back in the Party. If you want to kill Brearley after I told you not to, you can kindly wait till you don't have any connection to me. Do whatever you please on your own hook. Don't embarrass the Party.'
He waited again. What would Kimball do? He'd been an officer. Would he get shirty about taking orders from an ex-sergeant? A lot of fellows who'd worn fancy uniforms couldn't stomach anything like that. Or would he remember that, in the Freedom Party, he was still a mid-ranking officer and Jake was commander-in-chief?
Kimball started to blow his stack once more. Featherston could see it begin… and, a moment later, could see Kimball ease off again. Jake eyed the former Navy man with respect he hoped he concealed. Not everybody could go into a rage and then clamp down on it. The people who could were apt to be very useful indeed.
Slowly, Roger Kimball said, 'All right, Sarge, suppose I let the son of a bitch live for a while? That means you've got a line on giving him what he deserves some other way, right?''
'Not yet, it doesn't,' Featherston answered. Yes, Kimball was worth keeping around, all right-he'd got one step ahead of Jake, which didn't happen every day. 'I'm not saying I will yet, either. Have to cipher out how I want to do it, if I decide to do it. Do I want it to look like the Party didn't have anything to do with it? Or do I want the job to say, You screw around with the Freedom Party and you 7/ end up good and dead?'
All at once, instead of taking it personally, Kimball started looking at it as a tactical problem. Jake saw the change in his eyes. He smiled to himself, but only to himself-he didn't want Kimball to know he could read him.
'That's a nice question, isn't it?' Kimball said. 'I guess the one to ask right afterwards is, If we let the world know the Freedom Party got rid of Brearley, can we do it without having anybody go to jail?'
'There are places we could,' Jake answered. 'South Carolina's one of'em, I reckon: Anne Colleton has big chunks of that state sewed up tight for us.'
'I haven't done too bad my own self, you don't mind my saying so,' Kimball replied. Was that touchiness in his voice?
It was, Jake decided. Was Kimball jealous of Anne Colleton? Damned if he wasn't. That was a useful thing to know. Feather-ston filed it away. He couldn't use it now, but that didn't mean he wouldn't be able to somewhere down the line. For the moment, he needed to stick to the business at hand: 'I'm not so sure about Richmond. We've got a lot of cops in the Party here, same as most places, but they've got city hall and the state government and the Confederate government all sitting over 'em. They might have to go after us, whether they really want to or not.'
'I can see that.' Kimball raised an eyebrow. He was cool and collected again. Yes, he would have made a formidable submarine skipper. Nothing fazed him for long. Jake could easily picture him stalking and sinking that U.S. destroyer after the war ended, and banking on success to keep him out of hot water. He went on, 'The Whigs and the Radical Liberals don't fancy the Freedom Party much these days, do they?'
'If they did, I'd reckon I was doing something wrong,' Feather-ston said. 'Pack of damn fools, want to keep on doing things the same old way. That's real sly, ain't it? That's how we got into the mess we're in. That's how we'll get into more messes, too, sure as the devil.'
'I don't reckon you're wrong there.' Kimball leaned forward, Brearley almost forgotten. 'What the hell are you going to do about the niggers if we ever get the chance?'
'Smack 'em down and make sure they don't have the chance to get back up on their feet and stab us in the back again,' Jake answered: the reply he usually gave. He had more in mind, but he still didn't know if he could do, if anybody could do, everything he really wanted. What he'd told Kimball would suffice for the time being. 'Let's get back to this business here. There's no paper, nothing in your log or anything, that says you sank this Yankee ship too late, right?'
To his relief, Kimball nodded. 'I made sure there wouldn't be. Brearley can't prove anything like that. But I didn't sink the Ericsson all by myself, either. If the rest of the crew start blabbing, they could give me a hell of a hard time.'
'Would they do that?' Jake asked.
'Most of'em wouldn't, I'm sure of it,' Kimball said, again the reply Featherston wanted to hear. 'They were
