that, do they?'
'Well, no, but they do lots of other things the country needs,' Jake answered.
'But won't the Supreme Court say this law is unconstitutional?' the reporter asked.
Featherston looked into the cameras as if looking at a target over open sights. He had a long, lean face, a face people remembered if not one conventionally handsome. 'Tell you what, Delmer,' he said. 'If the Supreme Court wants to put splitting hairs ahead of what's good for the country, it can go right ahead. But if it does, I won't be the one who's sorry in the end. Those fools in black robes will be, and you can count on that.'
He took no other questions. He'd said everything he had to say. The microphones went off. The bright lights faded. He leaned back in his swivel chair. It creaked. Saul Goldman came back into the room. Before Jake could ask, his head of communications said, 'I think that went very well, Mr. President.'
'Good.' Featherston nodded. 'Me, too. Now they know what I think of 'em. Let's see how much nerve they've got.'
Ferdinand Koenig walked into the office. The attorney general was one of Featherston's oldest comrades, and as close to a friend as he had these days. 'You told 'em, Jake,' he said. 'Now we find out how smart they are.'
'They're a pack of damn fools, Ferd,' Jake said scornfully. 'You watch. The people who've been running this country are damn fools. All we need to do is give 'em the chance to prove it.'
Koenig had got to the office faster than Vice President Willy Knight. Knight was tall and blond and good- looking and very much aware of how good-looking he was. He'd headed up the Redemption League till the Freedom Party swallowed it. One look at his face and you could see he still wished things had gone the other way. Too bad, Jake thought. Knight wasn't so smart as he thought he was, either. He never would have taken the vice-presidential nomination if he were. The vice president of the Confederate States couldn't even fart till he got permission from the president.
Four months on the job, and Knight still hadn't figured that out. He went right on laboring under the delusion that he amounted to something. 'For God's sake, Jake!' he burst out now. 'What the hell did you go and rile the Supreme Court for?' A Texas twang filled his voice. 'They'll throw out the river bill for sure on account of that, just so as they can get their own back at you.'
'Gosh, Willy, do you think so?' Jake sounded concerned. He watched Koenig hide a smile.
Willy Knight, full of himself as usual, never noticed. 'Think so? I'm sure of it. You did everything but wave a red cloth in their face.'
Featherston shrugged. 'It's done now. We'll just have to make the best of it. It may turn out all right.'
'How can it?' Knight demanded. 'Sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, somebody's gonna sue. You can already hear the Whigs licking their chops, slobbering over the chance to make us look bad. Whatever district court gets the law'll say it's no goddamn good.'
'Then we'll take it to the Supreme Court,' Ferdinand Koenig said.
'They'll tell you it's unconstitutional, too, just like that reporter fellow said they would,' Willy Knight predicted. 'They're looking for a chance to pin our ears back. Once they get those black robes on, Supreme Court justices think they're little tin gods. And there's not a Freedom Party man among 'em.'
'I'm not too worried, Willy,' Jake said. 'This here's a popular bill. Not even the Whigs left in Congress voted against it. The country needs it bad. Folks won't be happy if the court tosses it in the ashcan.'
'I tell you, those fuckers don't care,' the vice president insisted. 'Why should they? They're in there for life…' He paused. His blue eyes widened. 'Or are you saying they won't live long if they try and smother this bill?'
Featherston shook his head. 'I didn't say anything like that. I won't say anything like that. We could get away with it if that damn Grady Calkins hadn't shot President Wade goddamn Hampton V. Not now. We don't want to get the name for a pack of lousy murderers.' We've done plenty of murdering on the way up, and we'll do as much more as we have to, but looks count. The Supreme Court justices aren't the right targets for stalwarts. We've got other ways to deal with them.
'If I were in your shoes, I'd put the fear of God in those sons of bitches,' Knight insisted.
Jake Featherston spoke softly, but with unmistakable emphasis: 'Willy, you aren't in my shoes. You try and put yourself in my shoes, you're just measuring yourself for a coffin. You got that?'
Knight was not a coward. He'd fought, and fought well, in the trenches during the Great War. But Featherston intimidated him, as Featherston intimidated almost everyone. 'Yeah, Jake. Sure, Jake,' he mumbled, and left the Confederate president's office in a hurry.
Laughing, Featherston said, 'He doesn't get it, Ferd. And he's gonna be as surprised as a ten-year-old when the magician pulls the rabbit out of his hat when we give those justices what they deserve.'
'The difference is, this way we'll kill 'em dead, and everybody'll stand up and cheer when we do it,' Koenig said. 'He doesn't see that.' He hesitated, then asked, 'You're sure you want one of our people filing suit against the law?'
'Hell, yes, as long as nobody can trace him back to us,' Jake answered without hesitation. 'Whigs'd take weeks to get around to it, and I want this to happen just as fast as it can.'
'I'll take care of it, long as you know your own mind,' the attorney general said. 'You know I've always backed your play. I always will, too.'
'You're a good fellow, Ferd.' Featherston meant every word of it. 'Man on the way up needs somebody like you to guard his back. And once he gets where he's going, he needs somebody like you more than ever.'
'When we started out, they ran the Freedom Party out of a cigar box in the back of a saloon,' Koenig said reminiscently. 'Did you ever figure, back in those days, that we'd end up here?' His wave encompassed the Confederate presidential mansion.
'Hell, yes,' Jake replied without hesitation. 'That's why I joined: to pay back the bastards who lost us the war-all the bastards: coons and our own damn generals and the Yankees-and to get to the top so I could. Didn't you?' He asked it in genuine perplexity. He could judge others only by what he did himself.
Koenig shrugged broad shoulders. He was beefy fat, with a hard core of muscle underneath. 'Who remembers now? For all I know, I went to that saloon and not some other place on account of the beer was good there.'
'It was horse piss,' Jake said. 'I remember that.'
'Now that I think back on it, you may be right,' Koenig admitted. He looked around as if he couldn't believe the office where they sat. 'But hell, we were all just a bunch of saloon cranks in those days. Nobody thought we'd amount to anything.'
'I did,' Featherston said.
His longtime comrade laughed. 'You must've been the only one. Those first few months after the war, a thousand different parties sprang up, and every goddamn one of 'em said it'd set the Confederate States to rights.'
'Somebody had to have it straight. We did.' Jake Featherston had never lacked for confidence. He'd never doubted. And his confidence had fed the Party. During the dark years after Calkins gunned down President Hampton, his confidence had been all that kept the Party alive. That and the wireless, he thought. I figured out the wireless a couple of jumps ahead of the Whigs and the Radical Liberals. They ran after me, but they never caught up. They never will, now.
'We've got some old bills to pay, you know,' he told Koenig. 'We've got a lot of old bills to pay, matter of fact. About time we started doing that, don't you think? We've looked meek and mild too long already. That isn't our proper style.'
'Had to get this bill through Congress,' the attorney general said. 'One thing at a time.'
'Oh, yes.' Featherston nodded. 'It's been one thing at a time ever since we didn't quite win in 1921. That's a hell of a long time now. I'm going to be fifty in a few years. I haven't got all the time in the world any more. I want the whole pie, not just slices. I want it, and I'm going to get it.'
'Sure thing, Sarge,' Ferdinand Koenig said soothingly. 'I know who you want to pay back first. I'll start setting it up. By the time we do it, everything'll go just as slick as boiled okra. You can count on that.'
'I do. You'd best believe I do,' Jake said. 'Pretty soon now, we have some things to tell the USA, too. Not quite yet. We've got to put our own house in some kind of order first. But pretty soon.'
'First we take care of this other stuff.' Koenig was not a fiery man. He never had been. But he kept things straight. Jake needed somebody like that. He was shrewd enough to know it. He nodded. Koenig went on, 'Besides, the next step puts the whole country behind us, not just the people who vote our way.'
'Yeah.' Featherston nodded again. A wolfish grin spread across his face. 'Not only that, it'll be a hell of a lot
