Hell, we did the same thing during the war, when we helped the Irish rise up against England so the limeys would have more trouble getting help across the Atlantic from Canada.'
'A lot of coastline in British Columbia,' his aide-de-camp observed.
'Isn't there just?' Morrell said. 'I wouldn't be surprised if the Japs are operating out of Russian Alaska, too. The Russians have to be afraid we'll take their icebox away from them one day.'
'Why would anybody want it?' Horwitz asked.
'There's gold in the Yukon,' Morrell answered. 'Maybe there's gold in Alaska, too. Who knows? The Russians don't; that's for sure. They've never tried very hard to find out, or to do much else with the place.'
'They tried to sell it to us after the War of Secession-I read that somewhere, a long time ago,' his aide-de- camp said. 'I forget what they wanted for it; seven million dollars is the number that sticks in my mind, but I wouldn't swear that's right. What ever it was, though, we turned them down because we didn't have the money.'
'From what the old-timers say, we didn't have a pot to piss in after the War of Secession,' Morrell said, and Horwitz nodded. Morrell went on, 'But that's neither here nor there. The question is, what do we do-what can we do-about the damned Japanese?'
'At least now we know we've got to do something about them,' Horwitz replied.
'Anybody with half an eye to see has known that since the Great War ended. No, since before it ended,' Morrell said. 'We didn't beat 'em; they fought us to a draw in the Pacific, and then they said, 'All right, that's enough. We'll have another go a few years from now.' And they're stronger than they used to be. They took Indochina away from the French and the Dutch East Indies away from Holland-oh, paid 'em a little something to salve their pride, but they would've gone to war if the frogs and the Dutchmen hadn't said yes, and everybody knows it.'
'Who could have stopped them?' Horwitz said. 'England before the war, yes-but not any more. She's got to be glad the Japs didn't take Hong Kong and Malaya and Singapore the same way and head for India. The Kaiser doesn't have the kind of Navy or the bases to let him fight the Japs in the Pacific. And we'd have to get past the Japanese Philippines to do anything. So…'
'Yeah. So,' Morrell agreed sourly. 'What they do six thousand miles away is one thing, though. What they do right here in our own back yard-that's a whole different kettle of fish. If they don't know as much, we'd better show 'em pretty damn quick.' He'd been aggressive leading infantrymen. He'd been aggressive leading barrels. Now, with a vision that suddenly stretched to the Pacific a few hundred miles to the west, he wanted to be aggressive again.
'What have you got in mind, sir?' Horwitz asked.
'We ought to be flying patrols up and down the coastline,' Morrell answered. 'They couldn't sneak their spies ashore so easily then. And if they have a destroyer or something lying out to sea, we damn well ought to sink it.'
'In international waters?'
'Hell, yes, in international waters, if they're using it as a base to subvert our hold on British Columbia. All we'd need is to spot a boat and the destroyer. That'd be all the excuse I needed, anyhow.'
Horwitz frowned. 'You might start a war that way.'
'Better to start it when we want to than when they want to, wouldn't you say?' Morrell returned. 'Sooner or later, we will be fighting 'em; you can see that coming like a rash. Why wait till they're ready for us?'
'I don't think President Blackford wants a war with Japan,' his aide-de-camp said.
'I don't, either.' But Morrell only shrugged. 'But I also don't think Blackford has a Chinaman's chance of getting reelected this November. Come next March-'
Horwitz shook his head. 'No, they've amended the Constitution, remember? The new president takes over on the first of February from now on. With trains and aeroplanes and the wireless, he doesn't need so long to get ready to do the job.'
'That's right. I'd forgotten. Thanks. Come February first, then, we'll have a Democrat in the White House-or Powel House, take your pick-again. Maybe he'll have better sense. Here's hoping, anyhow.' Morrell rubbed his chin. 'It would be a funny kind of war, wouldn't it? Not much room for chaps like us: all ships and aeroplanes and maybe Marines.'
'It would be good practice for a war with the Kaiser, if we ever had to fight one of those,' Horwitz said.
'Yes, it would, wouldn't it?' Morrell grinned at his aide-de-camp. 'There's another report for you, if you feel like writing it-tell the people back in the War Department what you just told me. Back it up with maps and force breakdowns and distance charts and all the other little goodies you can think of.'
Captain Horwitz's expression was less than overjoyed. 'You've really got it in for me, don't you, sir?' he said, about half in jest.
And, about half in jest, Morrell nodded. 'Damn right I do. I want to get you promoted again so I don't have to deal with you any more. If you don't want to be a major, don't write the report. I think the last one helped make you a captain.'
'I'll write it,' his aide-de-camp said. 'Anything to escape you.' They both grinned.
But Morrell wasn't grinning after Horwitz left his office. 'The Japs!' he said softly. ' Son of a bitch.' As he'd told Horwitz, meddling in Canada did make good logical sense from their point of view. A USA distracted by troubles close to home would be less inclined to look or reach out across the Pacific. But now that Tokyo had got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, the United States would likely… do what?
Sure enough, that was what a popular wireless show called the ninety-nine dollar question. For the life of him, Morrell didn't know why that show didn't give winners a full hundred bucks, but it didn't. He took Japanese interference in British Columbia very seriously indeed. But how serious would it look to War Department functionaries back in Philadelphia? That wasn't so easy to see. He sometimes thought that, if it weren't for the Sandwich Islands the Navy had captured from the British at the start of the Great War, the War Department would have forgotten the Pacific Ocean and the West Coast existed.
Maybe this would make a useful wakeup call. Maybe it would remind those easterners that the United States did have two coastlines, and that they had unfriendly countries to the west as well as to the east. Maybe. He dared hope.
And maybe, just maybe, having an unfriendly power making a public nuisance of itself would remind even the Socialists of why the United States needed an Army and a Navy in the first place. They'd gone out of their way to conciliate the Confederates. (And the Confederates, to be sure, had gone out of their way to conciliate the USA. They were smart enough to remember they were weak, and not to get into trouble they couldn't get out of. They were under the Whigs, anyhow. The Freedom Party worried Morrell more than ever, not least because now it looked as if it might come to power one day.)
I wonder if I ought to write my own report. He laughed and shook his head. What point to that? He wouldn't have been posted to Kamloops if bureaucrats in Philadelphia were likely to pay attention to anything he said. For some people, a report from him might be an argument to do the opposite of what ever he suggested.
Besides, Horwitz might win promotion to major, in which case he would escape Morrell's perhaps stifling influence on his career. No report would get Morrell the brigadier general's stars he craved. Promotion during the war had been swift. Promotion after the war… Even men in good odor in Philadelphia languished. Promotion for someone who wasn't might never come.
And if you retire a colonel? Morrell shrugged. He'd done his part to win one war for his country. No one could take that away from him. If they wanted him to count jackrabbits and pine trees out here in Kamloops, he would do it till they wouldn't let him do it any more. One of these days, they may decide they need someone who knows something about barrels again. You never can tell.
He laughed a bitter laugh. He knew he did a good enough job here in Kamloops, but what he did had nothing to do with the specialized knowledge he'd acquired during the war. Any reasonably competent military bureaucrat could have taken his place and done about as well. That even applied to his proposed solution to Japanese meddling in British Columbia, though he might have wanted to push harder than most uniformed drones would.
He laughed again, this time with something approaching real amusement. Reasonably competent military bureaucrats shuddered at the prospect of ending up in a place like this. They intrigued and pulled wires to stay in Philadelphia, or to go on inspection tours of places like New Orleans. That meant Kamloops and other such garrisons in the middle of nowhere attracted drunks, fools, dullards… and people like me, Morrell thought.
