and south branches of the Thompson River came together, in a valley near the foot of the Canadian Rockies. Even in Philadelphia, Morrell would have been glad to have an overcoat on most February days. There were days-and more than a few of them-in Kamloops when he would have been glad to have two of them.
Cold slapped his face when he went outside. He shoved his hands into the overcoat's pockets to keep them from freezing. The rolling country around the town was in summer a near desert of tumbleweed and sagebrush. Snow painted it white at this season of the year, and white it would stay for another couple of months.
Morrell sighed. His breath smoked, as if he'd exhaled after a drag on a cigarette. The flat land would have been ideal for testing barrels. He'd said so, too, in the very first report he sent back to Philadelphia. He wondered if anybody had read that report, or even bothered to take it out of its envelope. He had his doubts. No one, certainly, had acted on the suggestion, or even acknowledged it.
So far as he knew, no one in the USA was testing barrels anywhere else, either. He kicked at the snow, which flew up from his boots. Down in the Empire of Mexico, the machines the Confederate-backed imperialists used were at least as good as the ones he'd been experimenting with back at Fort Leavenworth before budget cuts shut down the program. The rebels didn't have barrels that could match them, and the rebels, by now, had just about lost the civil war.
He kicked at the snow again. The Ottoman Turks weren't massacring Armenians these days the way they had a few years before, but American intervention had nothing to do with that. Kaiser Wilhelm-who wasn't good old Kaiser Bill any more-had ignored U.S. protests, and so had Abdul Majid, the Ottoman sultan. They'd figured the United States had more urgent things to worry about closer to home, and they'd been right.
They made us look like a bunch of chumps, is what they did, Morrell thought as he walked toward his office. A horse-drawn garbage wagon rattled up the road toward him. He nodded to the men aboard it. The Canadian white wings pretended he didn't exist. They took money from the American occupiers, but that didn't mean they wanted anything else to do with them. Yes, the U.S. Army had snuffed out the latest uprising a couple of years before, but it didn't seem to matter. The Canucks were going to stay sullen for a long, long time to come.
How do we keep them from causing more trouble, next year or five years from now or fifteen years from now or fifty years from now? Morrell wondered. He wished he could talk to some German officers, even if things between the two greatest powers left in the world weren't so friendly as they had been up till the war ended. The Kaiser's men were occupying a hostile Belgium now, and they'd been occupying a hostile Alsace and Lorraine for more than fifty years. They had lots of practice at ruling territory that didn't want to be ruled.
Seldom had Morrell had a wish so promptly granted. When he got to the office building, his aide-de-camp, a lieutenant named Ike Horwitz, said, 'Sir, there's a German officer waiting to see you. Said you saw action together during the war.'
'Captain Guderian, by God!' Morrell exclaimed in delight. 'He was an observer with my unit when we were fighting over by Banff, just a couple of hundred miles from here.'
'Yes, sir,' Horwitz said. 'Only he's a lieutenant colonel now, if I remember German rank markings straight. Oh-and he's got an orderly with him, a sergeant.'
Something in Horwitz's voice changed. Morrell needed a second to realize what it was. 'You don't like the orderly?'
'No, sir,' Horwitz said with more of that same stiffness.
'Why not?' Morrell asked curiously.
'He figured out I was a Jew,' Horwitz answered. It probably hadn't taken much figuring; Morrell's aide-de- camp looked very Jewish indeed, with a nose of impressive proportions. 'He didn't think I spoke any German-and I don't, not really, but Yiddish is close enough to let me understand it when I hear it.'
'Oh,' Morrell said. 'Well, to hell with him. Guderian's not like that, I can tell you for a fact. He doesn't care one way or the other.'
Lieutenant Horwitz nodded. 'He told his orderly to keep quiet and mind his own business. I just sat here and minded mine.'
'Good for you, Ike.'
'I wanted to punch the bastard right in the nose.'
'Don't blame you a bit. But you didn't, and that makes you a good soldier.'
Horwitz's snort said he would sooner have been a bad soldier. Morrell went into his office. Heinz Guderian bounded up from a chair to shake his hand. Sure enough, the energetic German had a single gold pip on each fancy shoulder strap-a lieutenant colonel's insignia. His orderly sprang to his feet, too, and gave Morrell a crisp salute. The fellow wore an Iron Cross, First Class. That gave Morrell pause; it hadn't been easy for a noncom to win that medal. Second Class, yes-First, no. The man might be a son of a bitch, but he'd done something special during the war.
He spoke in German: 'Excuse me, sir, but I know no English.'
'It's all right,' Morrell replied in the same language. 'I can get along in German.' His voice hardened a little. 'And so can my aide-de-camp.'
Lieutenant Colonel Guderian grimaced. His orderly was unabashed. 'So he knows what I think of his kind, does he? Well, too bad. The world would be a better place if we got rid of the lot of them.'
'Nonsense,' Morrell said sharply. He thought, Damn fool sounds like Jake Featherston, except he's riding a different hobby horse.
The sergeant might have replied, but Guderian held up a hand and said, 'Enough.' His orderly had discipline; he fumed, but he subsided. Then Guderian switched to English: 'This is not why I came to talk to you, Colonel Morrell.'
'Well, what can I do for you, then?' Morrell asked.
'I was wondering if you could arrange for me a tour of occupied western Canada,' the German officer said. 'We are interested in the methods you Americans use to control the lands you have won… What is so funny, Colonel?'
'I'll tell you what's funny,' Morrell answered when he got done laughing. 'What's funny is, I was just wondering how you Germans held on to Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine. What we've been doing here hasn't worked out so well as we'd have liked. The Canadians still hate our guts. We smashed their last uprising, but they're liable to rebel again any old time. If you know a trick for keeping people quiet, I wouldn't mind learning it.'
'What does he say, sir?' Guderian's orderly asked. With the air of a man humoring a subordinate who didn't really deserve it, Guderian translated. The sergeant made an almost operatic gesture of contempt. 'It's simple,' he declared. 'Kill enough and you'll frighten the rest into giving in.'
Guderian sighed. 'Spater, spater,' he said, and turned back to Morrell. 'That's the only answer he knows-kill everything in sight.'
'You don't get any arguments that way, anyhow,' Morrell observed.
'No, nor any chance to put things right later,' the German said. 'So you Americans have no sure answers for this, either, then?'
'I'm afraid not. I'll be glad to set up your tour for you, but I don't think you'll see anything very exciting,' Morrell answered. I'll make damn sure you don't see anything too very exciting, as a matter of fact, he thought. If you're looking for ideas from us, that means you need 'em badly. And if you don't get 'em, you'll have more trouble holding down your subjects if you ever wind up in a scrap with us.
'Thank you. I should perhaps let you know certain American officers are in Belgium now, trying to learn from us.' Guderian smiled and shrugged. 'Between us, your country and mine share the problems of the strong, nicht wahr?'
'Yes,' Morrell said. And I bet our boys don't learn one damn thing from you, either, except where the officers' brothels are. He wagged a finger at the German. 'Nobody's looking at what you're doing in the east, in Poland and the Ukraine?'
Heinz Guderian shook his head. 'No, Colonel, no one looks there-and it is as well that no one does, too.' His eyes swung toward his tough-talking orderly. 'In the east, his methods prevail. Poland pretends to be a kingdom. The Ukraine…' He shook his head. 'After all, they're only Slavs.' He might have been a Confederate saying, After all, they're only niggers. Morrell smiled with half his mouth. Either way, God help the poor bastards on the receiving end.
At seventeen, Mary McGregor had got used to being taller than her mother. Her father, after all, had been a
