had tried to resist. They didn't try for long, not after those confederate citrus company machines bombed and machine-gunned them from the sky. And the aeroplanes had been useful since, too, pounding Negro guerrillas who hid in swamps and bays inaccessible except from above.
The Confederate States weren't supposed to have aeroplanes that carried bombs and machine Runs. That was what the United States had been saying since 1917, anyhow. President Smith had sent President Featherston a note about it. Jeff remembered hearing about that on the wireless set in his quarters. And President Featherston had written back, too, saying they were armed only for internal-security reasons, and that the CSA would take the weapons off as soon as things calmed down again.
So far, the USA hadn't said anything more. It had been two or three weeks now since the first protest. As far as Jeff could see, that meant his country had got away with it. He grinned as he went into the mess hall. The damnyankees had been kicking the Confederate States around for more than twenty years, but their day was ending. The CSA could walk proud again. Could… and would.
A colored cook fixed him a big, meaty roast-beef sandwich with all the trimmings. He got himself a cup of coffee, rich and pale with cream and full of sugar. Mayonnaise ran down his chin when he took a big bite of the sandwich. Life wasn't bad. No, sir, not bad at all.
Every time Clarence Potter put on his uniform, he looked in the mirror to see if he was dreaming. No dream: butternut tunic, a colonel's three stars on each collar patch. The cut of the tunic was slightly different from what he'd worn in the Great War. It was looser, less binding under the arms, and the collar didn't try to choke him every time he turned his head. Whoever'd redesigned it had realized a man might have to move and fight while he had it on.
Going to the War Department offices in Richmond seemed a dream, too, although he'd been doing it for a year and a half now. The sentries outside the building stiffened to attention and saluted when he went by. He returned the salutes as if he'd done it every day since the war ended. The first few times he'd saluted, though, he'd been painfully, embarrassingly, rusty.
More visitors to the War Department walked up the stairs near the entrance or paused to ask the sergeant sitting at a desk with an information sign where they needed to go. The
sergeant was plump and friendly and helpful. Few people went down the corridor past his desk. Another sign marked it: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The friendly sergeant nodded to Potter as he strode by. He went halfway down the corridor with the intimidating sign, then opened a door labeled supplies amp; requisitions. With careful, even fussy, precision, he closed the door behind him.
Three more guards stood on the other side of that door. Instead of bayoneted Tredegars, two of them carried submachine guns: short, ugly weapons good for nothing but turning men into hamburger at close range. The third guard had a.45 instead. He said, 'Your identification, Colonel?'
As always, Potter produced the card with his photograph on it. As always, the guard gave it a once-over to make sure photo matched face. Satisfied, the man with the.45-who'd been careful not to get in his comrades' line of fire-stepped back. He pointed to the log sheet on a table past the guards. Potter put the card back in his wallet, then logged himself in. He looked at his watch before adding the time: 0642. He'd had to get used to military hours again, too.
Stairs led down from the door marked supplies amp; requisitions. The room where Potter worked was in a subbasement, several stories below street level. Down here, fans whirred to keep air circulating. It felt musty anyhow. In the summer, it was air-conditioned like a fancy cinema house; it would have been unbearable otherwise.
Potter sat down at his desk and started going through U.S. newspapers, most of them a day, or two, or three, out of date. Know your enemy had to be the oldest rule in intelligence work. Papers in the USA talked too much. They talked about all sorts of things the government would have been happier to see unsaid: movements of soldiers, of barrels, of aeroplanes, of ships; stories of what was made where, and how much, and for how much; railroad schedules; pieces about how the bureaucracy worked and, often, how it failed to work. Papers in the CSA had been the same way before the Freedom Party took over. They offered much less to would-be spies now.
Every so often, Clarence Potter remembered he'd come up to Richmond to assassinate President Featherston. He knew why he'd come up here to do it, too. He still believed just about everything he had during the 1936 Olympics. But he wasn't interested in shooting Featherston any more. He had too many other things going on.
He'd known Featherston was shrewd. But he hadn't realized just how clever the president of the CSA was, not till he saw from the inside the way Featherston operated. After shooting the Negro who'd opened fire on Featherston before he could himself, Potter could have been patted on the back and then suffered a dreadful accident. Instead, Featherston had done something even nastier: he'd given Potter a job he really wanted to do, a job he could do well, and a job where who his boss was didn't matter a bit.
'Oh, yes,' Potter murmured when that thought crossed his mind. 'I'd want revenge on the USA no matter who the president was.'
Featherston hadn't used him in the subjugation of Louisiana. Potter hadn't even known that was in the works till it happened-which was, all by itself, a sign of good security. There were all sorts of things he didn't need to know and would be better off not knowing. The people who'd planned and brought off the Louisiana operation didn't know what he was up to, either. He hoped like hell they didn't, anyhow.
He was banging away at a typewriter, putting together a report on U.S. Navy movements out of New York harbor, when his nine o'clock appointment showed up ten minutes early. Randolph Davidson's collar tabs bore the two bars of a first lieutenant. He was in his late twenties, blond, blue-eyed, with very red cheeks and a little wisp of a mustache. Saluting, he said, 'Reporting as ordered, Colonel Potter.'
Potter cocked his head to one side, listening intently, weighing, judging. 'Not bad,' he said in judicious tones. 'How did you come to sound so much like a damnyankee?' He sounded a lot like one himself; the intonations he'd picked up at Yale before the war had stuck.
'After the war, sir, my father did a lot of business in Ohio and Indiana,' Davidson answered. 'The whole family lived up there, and I went to school there.'
'You'd certainly convince anyone on this side of the border,' Potter said.
The younger man looked unhappy. 'I know that, sir. People don't trust me on account of the way I talk. I swear I'd be a captain now if I sounded like I came from Mississippi.'
'I understand. I've had some trouble along those lines myself,' Potter said in sympathy. 'Now the next question is, could you pass for a damnyankee on the other side of the border?'
Davidson didn't answer right away. Those blue eyes of his widened, and became even bluer in the process. 'So that's what this is all about,' he breathed.
'That's right.' Potter spoke like one of his Yale professors: 'This is what happens when two countries that don't like each other use the same language. You can usually tell somebody from Mississippi apart from somebody from Michigan without much trouble. Usually. But, with the right set of documents, somebody who sounds like a damnyankee can go up north and be a damnyankee-and do all sorts of other interesting things besides. What do you think of that, Lieutenant?'
'When do I start?' Davidson said.
'It's not quite so simple,' Clarence Potter said with a smile. 'You've got some training to do.' And we've got some more checks to do. 'But you look good. You sound good.'
'Thank you very much, sir,' Davidson said, where most Confederate citizens would have answered, Thank you kindly. Potter nodded approval. The younger man's grin said he knew what Potter was approving.
'I will be in touch with you, Lieutenant,' Potter said. 'You can count on that.'
'Yes, sir!' Davidson also knew dismissal when he heard it. He got to his feet and saluted. 'Freedom!'
That word still rankled. It reminded Clarence Potter of what he had been. He didn't care to think about how the man who'd redonned Confederate uniform had come to Richmond with a pistol in his pocket. He wanted to pretend he hadn't heard the word. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Lieutenant Davidson was definitely a man who spoke with a Yankee accent. That didn't mean he wasn't also a Freedom Party spy checking on the loyalty of a suspect officer.
I'm old news now, Potter thought. If anything happens to me, it won't even show up in the papers. I can't
