'This little fellow? This little fellow here?' Mort grabbed Alec and stuck him on his lap. Alec squealed with glee and cuddled up. If I tried that, he'd pitch a fit. Either that or he'd just jump off ten seconds later, Mary thought. Mort ruffled the toddler's fine sandy hair. 'You're not so tough, are you?'
'Tough!' Alec yelled gleefully. 'Tough!'
'You're not so tough,' Mort said again, and turned him upside down. Alec squealed in delight. Mary hid a sigh by turning away. Mort could do things with their son that she couldn't. She'd seen that very early on. He could get Alec to pay attention and do what he was told when she couldn't. Maybe it was just that he had a deep, rumbling man's voice. Maybe it was that he was gone more and Alec wanted to please him while he was around. Whatever it was, it was unquestionably real.
So was Laura Secord's treason. Alec has his father, Mary thought. I made a promise to mine a long time ago. I haven't kept it yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. Oh, no. It doesn't mean that at all. She nodded to herself. Then she smiled. She wasn't annoyed at Mort any more, not even a little bit.
Conscripts were filling out the ranks of the Confederate Army. It got stronger week by week. Confederate aeroplanes carried guns and bombs. The fastest Confederate fighters could go up against anything the USA built. And the United States, while they'd grumbled, hadn't done anything but grumble. As far as Clarence Potter was concerned, that would do for a miracle till a bigger one came along.
Jake Featherston had thought it would work like this. If it hadn't, whether Featherston got-extorted-the right to run for a second term wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans' worth. The country would have thrown him out on his ear if the USA didn't take care of the job.
The Confederate States were ever so much stronger than they had been. Potter knew just how strong they were-and how strong the United States were. A fight would have been no contest. But no fight came. Featherston had been sure none would. And he'd been right.
'By God, he's earned a second term for that,' Potter muttered at his desk down below the War Department building.
He shook his head in something halfway between bemusement and horror. Did I say that? Did I say that? he wondered. By God, I did. I meant it, too. He'd spent more than fifteen years as one of Jake Featherston's sincerest enemies-sincerest, because he'd known Featherston longer and better than any of the other people who couldn't stand him. And now he had to admit Jake had known what he was doing after all.
Potter wouldn't have dreamt the USA would sit quiet and let the CSA rearm. He would have thought-hell, he had thought-you'd have to be crazy to take a chance like that. Featherston had taken the chance, and he'd got away with it.
So what did that make him? A crazy man saw things nobody else could see. But what about someone who saw things nobody else could see-but that turned out to be there after all? There was a word for people like that, too. The word was genius. Potter didn't like using that word about Jake Featherston. He still remembered the weight of the revolver he'd carried up to the Olympic swimming stadium, intending to get rid of Jake once for all.
But he hadn't. He'd got rid of the colored would-be assassin instead, and the whole world was different on account of it. He looked down at his butternut uniform. He wouldn't have put that on again, not in a million years.
Here he sat, analyzing reports from Confederates in the USA who talked as if they'd grown up there. The reports, of course, weren't addressed war department, Richmond, Virginia, csa. Somehow, that might have made even the sleepy United States open eyes wide and perhaps raise an eyebrow. Instead, the letters and telegrams had come to a variety of businesses scattered all over the Confederate States. They were all coded, too, so they didn't talk directly about barrels or aeroplanes. Not all the codes were particularly subtle, but they'd defeat casual snoopers.
Potter wished the reports could come straight to him. As things were, he got them anywhere from several hours to several days after they reached the CSA. As long as the United States and Confederate States stayed at peace, the delay didn't matter too much. If they ever went to war…
He laughed at himself. If the USA and the CSA went to war again, the only way letters and telegrams crossed the border would be through the International Red Cross. He suspected-no, he knew-they would be a lot slower than they were now.
He drummed his fingers on the desk, took off his spectacles and carefully polished them, replaced them on his nose, and then did some more drumming. However much he despised the USA, he hoped another war wouldn't come. The Confederacy would be fighting out of its weight, and all the more so because the United States had no second front against Canada this time.
Did Jake Featherston see that? It seemed pretty plain to Potter. As far as he could tell from cautious conversations, it seemed pretty plain to most of the officers in the War Department. The trouble was, of course, that Featherston wasn't an officer, and never had been one. He was a jumped-up sergeant, remarkably shrewd, but not trained to look at the big picture. How much would that matter? If it really came to another fight, the president would surely be shrewd enough to let trained commanders take charge of things.
Potter's musings were interrupted when a uniformed officer-not a soldier, he realized after a moment, but a Freedom Party guard-strode up to his desk, saluted, and barked out, 'Freedom!'
'Freedom!' Potter echoed in more crisply military tones. 'And what can I do for you, ah, Chief Assault Leader?' The other officer wore a captain's three bars on either side of his collar, but Party guards had their own titles of rank. Potter didn't know if they thought the Army's weren't good enough for them, or if they thought those were too good. It wasn't the sort of question he could ask, not if he wanted to keep wearing his uniform and not one with a big P stenciled on the back.
'Sir, I am ordered to bring you to the president at once,' the chief assault leader answered.
'Ordered, are you? Well, then, you'd better do it, eh?' Potter said, pushing back his chair and stowing papers in a drawer that locked. The Freedom Party guard nodded seriously. Clarence Potter didn't smile. He'd been pretty sure a man who became a Party guard wouldn't recognize irony if it piddled on his shiny black boots. He asked, 'Do you know what this is about?'
'No, sir,' the officer said. 'I have my orders. A motorcar is waiting outside.' He turned and marched, machinelike, toward the stairs. Potter followed at a more human amble.
The motorcar was a Birmingham painted butternut. It flew a Freedom Party flag, though, not the Confederate battle flag an Army vehicle would have sported. Potter and the stone-faced chief assault leader got in. The driver, also a Freedom Party guard, whisked them away from the War Department and up Shockoe Hill to the presidential residence.
A bodyguard there relieved Potter of his pistol. That was routine these days. If the guard knew Potter had once carried a pistol intending to use it on the president, he gave no sign.
'Reporting as ordered, sir,' Potter said when the captain-no, the chief assault leader-took him into Featherston's office. Formality helped. If he spoke to the president of the CSA, he wouldn't have to think-so much- about the fiery, foul-mouthed artillery sergeant he'd known during the war, wouldn't have to think that the sergeant and the president were one and the same.
'Good to see you, Colonel. Sit down,' Jake Featherston replied, returning the salute. Maybe he was using formality to suppress memory, too. As soon as Potter was in the chair, Featherston waved to the Party officer. 'That'll be all, Randy. You just run along. Close the door on your way out.' Randy looked unhappy, but he did what everybody seemed to do around Featherston: he obeyed. The president turned back to Clarence Potter and got straight to business: 'I need more from your people in Kentucky.'
'Sir?' Potter needed a moment to shift gears.
Featherston's scowl made him look like an angry, hungry wolf. 'Kentucky,' he repeated impatiently. 'Things are heating up there, and I'm going to want to know more about what's going on. I'm going to want to be able to make things happen there, too.'
'I haven't got but a handful of men in Kentucky, Mr. President,' Potter said. 'My specialty is people who talk like Yankees, and that's not what we mostly use there, because the accent is closer to our own. Men from Tennessee don't stand out in Kentucky the way they would in Pennsylvania or Kansas.'
'I know what you've got in Kentucky.' Featherston reeled off the names and positions of almost all of Potter's men in the state. He wasn't looking at a list. He knew them, knew them by heart. Those names and supporting
