could build such boats on their own, or man them if they did, but how could you know for sure? You couldn't. Subs under the sea were hard to find and even harder to identify; they didn't come with license plates, the way motorcars did.
Nobody ever officially said whether the hydrophone operators found anything. Sam did get a letter of commendation in his service jacket for 'enhancing the Remembrance 's readiness against surprise attack.' He drew his own conclusions from that. He also kept his mouth shut about them. Sometimes advertising you'd done something smart was a good idea. Sometimes it was anything but.
When they neared the Central American coast, a tiny gunboat flying the blue-and-white Costa Rican flag came out of Puerto Limon to greet the Remembrance. An officer at the bow hailed her through a megaphone. He looked just the way Sam had thought a Costa Rican would look, and spoke English with a Spanish accent. The gunboat, which might have been a toy alongside the aeroplane carrier, got out of the way in a hurry so the elephantine ship could advance.
Puerto Limon itself turned out to be very different from what Carsten had expected. He'd come to ports in Latin America before. He'd figured the people here would be like the officer: swarthy, most of them of mixed white and Indian blood, and Spanish-speaking. Instead, most of them turned out to be Negroes, and they used more English than Spanish. In their mouths, the language had a lilt that put him in mind of what he'd heard in the Bahamas.
A long line of black men carrying huge bunches of bananas came up the pier next to the one where the Remembrance tied up. They vanished into the hold of a freighter flying the Confederate flag, then emerged to go back down the pier lugging crates: whatever that freighter had been carrying here to exchange for the golden fruit (actually, the bananas going aboard were green; Sam supposed they would ripen on the way up to the CSA).
White sailors aboard the freighter stared over at the aeroplane carrier. To Commander van der Waal, Carsten remarked, 'I wonder how many of those bastards were in the C.S. Navy during the war.'
'More than a few, or I miss my guess,' the other officer answered. 'We've just given them some free intelligence.' He shrugged. 'That's the way it goes, sometimes.'
The Costa Rican officer from the gunboat came aboard a few minutes later. His white uniform was more festooned with gold braid than that of the Remembrance 's skipper, but he introduced himself as Lieutenant Commander Garcia. That tickled Sam's funny bone. 'I wonder what an admiral in the Costa Rican Navy looks like,' he remarked.
'You probably can't see the cloth on his uniform at all, on account of the gold and the medals and such.' Commander van der Waal's snicker had a nasty edge to it. 'My little girl back in Providence likes to play dress-up the same way. Of course, she's got an excuse-she's only eight years old.'
But Lieutenant Commander Garcia said all the right things: 'We are pleased to see this great ship in our growing port. We hope it is a sign of friendship between your great republic and our own. Costa Rica and the United States have never been enemies. We do not believe we ever have to be.'
Sam wondered whether the sailors aboard the Confederate freighter could hear Garcia's words, and how they liked them if they could. Hope you don't like 'em for beans, he thought.
W hen Abner Dowling went to the train station in Salt Lake City, a police officer patted him down before allowing him inside the building. Another cop, and a military policeman with him, went through Dowling's suitcase. 'Sorry about this, sir,' the MP said when he got to the bottom of Dowling's belongings. 'I do apologize for the inconvenience.'
'It's all right,' Dowling answered. 'Identity cards and uniforms can be faked-we've found that out the hard way. Now you know for a fact I won't be carrying contraband onto the train.'
'Thank you for taking it so well, sir,' the military policeman said.
'No point getting huffy about it,' Dowling said. 'You were going to search me any which way.'
He was dead right about that. Everyone who left Utah was searched these days, whether at train stations or at checkpoints along the highways. Since assassinating General Pershing, Mormon diehards had set off bombs from San Francisco to Pittsburgh. They were suspected in a couple of murders of prominent men, too, and of bank robberies to finance their operations. And so…
And so lines into the railroad station were long and slow. Everyone was searched: men, women, children, even babies in flowing robes. At least once, somebody had tried to smuggle out explosives hidden under baby clothes. Dowling only hoped the diehards hadn't succeeded at that game before the U.S. occupiers got wise to it. Every suitcase got searched, too. Some, the ones suspected of false bottoms, also got X-rayed.
As Dowling took his seat in the fancy Pullman car, he marveled that any ordinary civilians at all got on in Utah. He muttered under his breath, a mutter uncomplimentary to the inhabitants of the state he helped rule. Utah had precious few ordinary civilians, and even fewer who were also Mormons. Up till General Pershing was killed, Dowling had dared believe otherwise. So had the administrators who'd been on the point of relaxing military occupation in Utah.
It could have become a state like any other, Dowling thought as the train began rolling east. They could have rebuilt the Temple, if they'd wanted to. But some damnfool hotheads made sure that wouldn't happen. I hope they're pleased with themselves. Utah won't get out from under the U.S. Army's thumb for the next ten years now.
He suspected the man who'd gunned down General Pershing-a man who'd never been caught-and his pals were pleased with themselves. Some people had a vested interest in trouble. If it looked as if calm threatened to break out, people like that would do anything they could to thwart it. And, as they'd shown, they could do plenty.
Colonel Dowling let out a loud, long sigh. He glanced toward the bed in his compartment. If he wanted to, he could take off his shoes-take off his uniform, for that matter-curl up there, and go to sleep. He didn't have to worry about Salt Lake City, or Utah as a whole, for the next several days.
Unless the Mormons have planted a bomb under the railroad tracks, he thought. He knew that wasn't likely. But he also knew it wasn't impossible.
He shook his head, angry at himself. I said I wasn't going to worry about it, and what do I do? Start worrying, that's what.
He looked out the window. An aeroplane flew past, also heading east but easily outpacing the train. It was one of those new three-motored machines that could carry freight or passengers. Suddenly, Dowling wondered what sort of precautions people were taking at landing fields. A bomb aboard an aeroplane would surely kill everybody on it. Muttering again, this time a sharp curse, he scribbled a note to himself. Maybe the Mormons hadn't thought of trying to bomb aeroplanes, the way they assuredly had thought of bombing trains. Maybe they wouldn't. But maybe they would, too. He wanted to stay one step ahead of them if he could.
When lunchtime came, he made his way back to the dining car. He was about to dig into a big plate of spare ribs when a clever-looking woman with reddish hair going gray came up to his table and said, 'Mind if I join you, Colonel Dowling?'
'I suppose not.' He frowned; she looked familiar, but he couldn't place the face. 'You're…'
'Ophelia Clemens,' she said crisply, holding out her hand man-fashion. 'We met in Winnipeg, if you'll remember.'
'Good God, yes!' Dowling exclaimed as he shook it. 'I'm not likely to forget that!' She'd come to occupied Canada to interview General Custer, and she'd just escaped being blown to bits with him-and with Dowling-when Arthur McGregor planted a bomb in the steakhouse where Custer ate lunch. 'How are you, Miss Clemens?'
'Tolerable well, thanks,' the newspaperwoman answered. 'Are you also heading to Washington for General Custer's funeral?'
Dowling nodded. 'Yes, I am. I would have gone anyway, but Mrs. Custer also sent me a telegram asking me to be there, which I thought was very kind and gracious of her.'
'Do you have any comments on the general's passing?'
'It's the end of an era,' Dowling said automatically. That he knew it was a cliche made it no less true. He went on, 'He was an officer in the War of Secession. He was a hero in the Second Mexican War. He was a hero- probably the hero-of the Great War.' Even though he broke orders to do it. Even though he almost got himself court-martialed-and me with him. 'And he was a hero all over again, when he was coming home to retire, when he threw back the bomb that Canadian tossed at him.' Every word of that was true, too. Dowling knew he would have died if General Custer hadn't stubbornly, irrationally-correctly-believed McGregor was the man who'd been out to kill
