tone of voice in a lot of trouble. He could smile his way out of bar scenes that usually would have brought out broken bottles.
Seaman Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, was deadly serious. 'How long before we need to start worrying about Confederate submersibles again?' he asked.
'We've already worried about Confederate subs,' Sam said. 'Remember that passage between Florida and Cuba we took on the way to Costa Rica? We didn't spot anything, but God only knows what those bastards had laying for us there.'
'That's their own waters, though,' Fitzpatrick protested. 'That isn't what I meant. What I did mean was, how long before we have to worry about them out here in the Pacific? And out in the Atlantic, too-don't want to leave out the other ocean.'
This time, Carsten didn't answer. He looked to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger again. The commander of the damage-control party said, 'We've already got Jap subs here in the Pacific, and maybe British boats coming up from Australia and New Zealand toward the Sandwich Islands. We've got British boats and German boats and French ones, too, in the Atlantic. Enough of those sons of bitches running around loose already. What the hell difference do a few Confederate subs make?'
Now he got a laugh. Sam joined it, even though he didn't think Pottinger had been kidding. 'Back when I started out in the Navy, all we worried about was surface ships,' he said. 'Nobody'd ever heard that aeroplanes were dangerous, and submarines were still half toys. Nobody had any idea what they could do. It's a different world nowadays, and that's the truth.'
'You betcha,' Seaman Fitzpatrick said. 'Nobody ever thought of a funny-looking thing called an aeroplane carrier, neither.'
'Damage control is damage control,' Pottinger said. 'Something hurts the ship, we patch it up. That's what we're here for.'
Sailors nodded once more. Carsten didn't argue with his superior, not out loud. But it was more complicated than that. Shells did one kind of damage, torpedoes another, and bombs a third. Bombs had the potential to be the most destructive, he thought. Unlike shells and torpedoes, they weren't limited in how much explosive they could carry. And explosive was what delivered the punch. Everything else was just the bus driver to get the cordite to where it did its job.
Sam didn't care for that line of reasoning. If bombs could sink ships so easily, what point to having any surface Navy at all? He'd first wondered about that during the war, when an aeroplane flying out from Argentina had bombed the battleship he was on. The damage was light-the bombs were small-but he thought he'd seen the handwriting on the wall.
Maybe a carrier's aeroplanes could hold off the enemy's. But maybe they couldn't, too. Down in the warm, humid belly of the Remembrance, Sam shivered.
III
Jonathan Moss was an American. He had a Canadian wife. After studying occupation law, he'd made his living in Berlin, Ontario, by helping Canucks struggling in the toils of what the U.S. Army insisted on calling justice. Without false modesty, he knew he was one of the best in the business.
And what was his reward for doing everything he could to give the Canadians a hand? He stared down at the sheet of paper on his desk. He'd just taken it out of an envelope and unfolded it. In block capitals, it said, yank SWINE, YOU WILL DIE!
He supposed he ought to turn it over to the occupying authorities. Maybe they could find fingerprints on it and track down whoever had stuck it in the mail. Instead, Moss crumpled up the paper and chucked it into the waste- basket. For one thing, odds were anyone who sent a charming missive of this sort had the elementary common sense to wear gloves while he was doing it. And, for another, taking a crank like this seriously gave him power over you.
During the war, Moss had flown observation aeroplanes and fighting scouts. He'd gone through all three years without getting badly hurt, and ended up an ace. After the real terror of aerial combat, a cowardly little anonymous threat didn't get him very excited.
He methodically went through the rest of his mail. The Bar Association reminded him his dues were payable before December 31. That gave him two and a half weeks. His landlord served notice that, as of next February 1, his office rent would go up five dollars a month. 'Happy day,' he said.
He opened another nondescript envelope. This one also held a single sheet of paper. Its message, also in untraceable block capitals, was, your wife and LITTLE GIRL WILL DIE, YANK SWINE!
Seeing that, Moss abruptly changed his mind about the letter he'd thrown away. He fished it from the trash can and flattened it out as best he could. The letters in both were about the same size and in about the same style. Moss rummaged for the envelope in which the first threat had come. He set it next to the one he'd just now opened.
'Well, well,' he murmured. 'Isn't that interesting?' He was no detective with a microscope, but he didn't need to be to see that his address on the two envelopes had been typed with two different machines. Not only that, one U.S. stamp bore a Manitoba overprint, while the other had one from Ontario. The notes, as near as he could see, were identical. The envelopes not only weren't but had been mailed from different provinces. (He checked to see if the postmarks confirmed what the stamps said. They did. One came from Toronto, the other from a town south of Winnipeg.) What did that mean?
Two possibilities occurred to him. One was that somebody didn't like him and had got his bother-in-law or someone of that sort to help show how much. Somebody like that was a pest. The other possibility was that he'd fallen foul of a real organization dedicated to-What? To making his life miserable, certainly, and, odds were, to making Canada's American occupiers unhappy en masse.
He'd hoped time would reconcile Canada to having lost the Great War. The longer he stayed here, the more naive and forlorn that hope looked. English-speaking Canada had risen once on its own, in the 1920s. More recently, the Empire of Japan had tried to ignite it again. Great Britain wouldn't have minded helping its one-time dominion make the Yanks miserable, either.
With a sigh, Moss put both sheets of paper and both envelopes in a buff manila folder. With a longer, louder sigh, he donned his overcoat, earmuffs, hat, and mittens. Then he closed the door to the law office-as an afterthought, he locked it, too-and left the building for the two-block walk to occupation headquarters in Berlin.
Had he been in a tearing hurry, he could have left off the earmuffs and mittens. It was above zero, and no new snow had fallen since the middle of the night. Moss had grown up around Chicago, a city that knew rugged weather. Even so, his wartime service in Ontario and the years he'd lived here since had taught him some things about cold he'd never learned down in the States.
He saw three new yanks out! graffiti between the building where he worked and the red-brick fortress that housed the occupation authority. Two shopkeepers were already out getting rid of them. He suspected the third would in short order. Leaving anti-American messages up on your property was an offense punishable by fine. Occupation Code, Section 227.3, he thought.
The sentries in front of occupation headquarters jeered at him as he came up the steps: 'Look! It's the Canuck from Chicago!' He wasn't in the Army- indeed, most of his practice involved opposing military lawyers-so they didn't bother wasting politeness on him.
'Funny boys,' he said, at which they jeered harder than ever. He went on into the building, or started to. Just inside the entrance, a sergeant and a couple of privates stopped him. 'They've beefed up security, sir,' the sergeant said. 'Orders are to pat down all civilians. Sorry, sir.' He didn't sound sorry at all.
Moss shed his overcoat and held his arms out wide, as if he were being crucified. After he passed the inspection, he went on to the office of Major Sam Lopat, a prosecutor with whom he'd locked horns more than a few times. 'Ah, Mr. Moss,' Lopat said. 'And what sort of fancy lies have you got waiting for me next time we go at each other?'
'Here.' Moss set the manila folder on the major's desk. 'Tell me what you think of these.'
Lopat raised one eyebrow when Moss failed to come back with a gibe. He raised the other when he saw what
