Confederate Army. The summer-weight cotton cloth was cooler and more comfortable than a suit would have been. With Jake's rangy height, the uniform was also much more impressive on him.
Photographers snapped away. Newsreel cameras ground out footage. Reporters waited for quotes. Jake reminded himself that he had to be extra careful about what he did and said in public. The Confederate press crews would make him look and sound the way he and Saul Goldman thought he should. The crews from the USA were a different story, though. Half-more than half-of them were here hoping to see him look and sound like a fool. And he couldn't keep them out of the CSA, not when President Smith was coming. Just have to be smarter than they are, he thought, and smiled a little nastily. Shouldn't be hard.
A stalwart in white shirt and butternut trousers put down a telephone and hurried over to him. 'The train's about two minutes away, boss,' he said.
'Thanks, Ozzie,' Jake answered. The stalwart drew back. Are you loyal? Featherston wondered. Are you really loyal? Ever since Willy Knight tried to do him in, he'd wondered about almost everyone around him-everyone except Ferd Koenig and Saul Goldman and a handful of other old campaigners. He'd chosen his new vice president, a senator from Tennessee named Donald Partridge, not least because Don was an amiable nonentity who couldn't hope to threaten him.
Here came Al Smith's train. Schoolchildren on the platform started waving the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars. A military band struck up 'The Battle Cry of Freedom,' a tune both sides had used-with different lyrics- during the War of Secession.
The train came to a stop. A colored attendant brought up the little stepped platform people used to descend to the station. Freedom Party guards-not stalwarts, who were less likely to be trustworthy-with submachine guns fanned out to make sure there were no unfortunate international incidents. The door to Smith's Pullman car opened. The first men out were the U.S. president's bodyguards. They wore civilian suits, not butternut uniforms, but otherwise were stamped from the same hard-faced mold as the Freedom Party men.
When President Smith himself emerged, the band began to play 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' a tune heard as seldom in Richmond as the Stars and Stripes were seen. Under a jaunty fedora, Smith's hair was snow white. He looked older and wearier than Jake Featherston had expected. But he managed a smile for the swarm of cameramen and reporters, and walked up to Jake with a friendly nod. 'Pleased t'meetcha, Mr. President,' he said.
'Right pleased to meet you, too, Mr. President,' Jake answered. Flash photographs and the newsreel cameras recorded their handshake for posterity. Jake had heard Al Smith on the wireless and in newsreels. He'd found the other president's New York City accent hard to follow then. It proved no easier in person. Smith highlighted sounds anyone from the Confederate States would have swallowed, and chopped up what a Confederate would have stretched out.
'Looking forward to hashing things out wit' you,' Smith said.
'Welcome to Richmond,' Featherston said. 'About time we did sit down and talk face to face. Best way to settle things.' Best way for you to give me what I want.
'You betcha,' Smith said. Jake took that to be agreement. The military band switched from the U.S. national anthem to 'Dixie.' President Smith took off his hat and stood at attention.
Also at attention beside him, Jake Featherston admitted to himself it was a nice touch. When the Confederate anthem ended, Jake said, 'Shall we go on to the Gray House and do a little horse-trading?'
'That's a deal,' Al Smith said.
Surrounded by bodyguards from both countries-who eyed one another almost as warily as they examined bystanders-the two presidents went out to Featherston's new limousine. The previous motorcar had been armored. This one could have been a barrel, except it didn't have a turret. Anyone who tried to murder the president of the CSA while he was in it was wasting his time.
Unfortunately, with the thick windows rolled up, traveling in the limousine was about as hot as traveling in a barrel. Al Smith promptly rolled his down a few inches. 'They want to take a shot at me, they can take a shot at me,' he said. 'At least I won't roast.'
'Suits me.' Jake did his best to stay nonchalant. His guards and Smith's were probably all having conniptions. Well, too damn bad, he thought.
The parade route from the station to the Gray House jogged once. That way, Smith-and the reporters with him-didn't see the damage from an auto bomb Red Negroes had set off two days before. Featherston hated the black man who'd come up with that tactic. It did a lot of damage, it spread even more fear, and it was damned hard to defend against. Too many Negroes, too many motorcars-how could you check them all? You couldn't, worse luck.
If President Smith noticed the jog, he was too polite to say so. He smiled out at the flag-waving children and adults lining the route. 'Nice crowd,' he said, with no trace of irony Featherston could hear. Did that mean he didn't realize they'd been specially brought out for the occasion? Jake hoped so.
When they got to the Gray House, Smith stared at it with interest. Comparing it to the White House, Jake thought, or to that place in Philadelphia.
They posed for more pictures in the downstairs reception hall, and then in Jake's office. Then they shooed the photographers out of the room. 'Care for a drink before we get down to business?' Featherston asked. He'd heard Al Smith could put it away pretty good, and he wasn't so bad himself.
'Sure. Why not?' the president of the USA said.
A colored servant brought a bottle of hundred-proof bourbon, some ice cubes, and two glasses. Jake did the honors himself. He raised his glass to Al Smith. 'Mud in your eye,' he said. They both drank.
'Ah!' Smith said. 'That's the straight goods.' He took another sip. Anyone that whiskey didn't faze had seen the bottom of more than one glass in his day, sure as hell.
After Featherston poured refills, he said, 'You know what I want, Mr. President. You know what's right, too, by God.' As far as he was concerned, the two were one and the same. 'Let the people choose. We'll take our chances with that.'
'And in the meantime, you'll keep murdering anybody in Kentucky and Houston who doesn't go along,' Smith said.
'We haven't got anything to do with that.' Jake lied without compunction.
The president of the USA let out a laugh that was half a cough. 'My ass.'
Featherston blinked. Nobody'd come right out and called him a liar for a long time. He said, 'You're just afraid of a plebiscite on account of you know what'll happen.'
'If I was afraid of a plebiscite, I wouldn't be here,' Al Smith answered. 'But if we go that way, I've got some conditions of my own.'
'Let's hear 'em,' Jake said. Maybe he wouldn't be able to grab everything on the table. If he got it served to him course by course, though, that would do.
'First thing is, no bloodshed in the time before the plebiscite,' Smith said. 'If people are going to vote, let 'em vote without being afraid.'
'If you call a plebiscite, I expect the folks in the occupied states will be happy enough to go along with that,' Featherston said at once. He could rein in most of his people, and say the ones he didn't rein in weren't his fault. Besides, everybody knew by now what the Freedom Party could do. It wouldn't have to add much more in the runup to a plebiscite to keep the message fresh.
'All right. Number two, then,' Al Smith said. 'You want the people to vote, the people should vote. All the people-everybody over twenty-one in Houston and Kentucky and Sequoyah.'
'I've been saying that all along,' Jake answered. Despite his thunderings, he didn't know if he would win in Sequoyah. Settlers from the USA had flooded into it since the war. Before, the Confederates had kept white settlement slow out of deference to the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, who'd helped so much in the War of Secession. The United States had always been hard on Indians, which was why the Creeks and the Cherokees and the rest were so loyal to the CSA.
But President Smith shook his head. 'I don't think you get it. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. Whites and Negroes.'
'Whites and Negroes?' Jake was genuinely shocked. That hadn't even occurred to him. 'Niggers've never been able to vote in the CSA. They sure as hell won't vote once they come back, either. Hell, they can't vote in those states now.'
