reports he got from FitzBelmont, it was really a jovium bomb, whatever the hell jovium was) had blown up all of Philly. If his Confederate listeners wanted to think he'd said that, though, he wouldn't shed a tear.
'Maybe St. Louis the next time. Maybe Indianapolis or Chicago. Maybe New York City or Boston. Maybe Denver or San Francisco. Who knows? But one bomb, and boom! No more city, whatever it is.'
He didn't say when the next C.S. jovium bomb would go off. He had excellent reason for not saying anything about that: he had no idea. Henderson FitzBelmont didn't even want to guess. U.S. bombers were hitting Lexington harder than ever. Some of the bombs had armor-piercing noses, too, so they dug deep before going off. They were causing trouble.
But the CSA got in the first lick anyway!
'The damnyankees reckoned they had us down for the count,' Jake gloated. 'They forgot about how much we love…freedom! They'll never lick us, not while we can still load our guns and fire back. And we can.'
As if on cue, cannon boomed in the distance. The studio insulation couldn't swallow all of that noise. Some were antiaircraft guns banging away at the U.S. bombers that constantly pounded the whole Hampton Roads area. And others were the big guns from the few surviving Confederate warships, now turned against land targets rather than enemy cruisers and destroyers. The damnyankees were pushing toward Portsmouth and Norfolk by land. Anything that could slow them down, the Confederates were using.
Since some of that artillery noise was going out over the air, Featherston decided to make the most of it. 'You hear that, people?' he said. 'That noise shows we are still in the fight, and we'll never quit. They say our country doesn't have a right to live. I say they don't have a right to kill it. They won't, either. If you don't believe me, ask what's left of Philadelphia.'
He stepped away from the mike. Behind the glass wall that took up one side of the studio, the engineer gave him a thumbs-up. This wasn't the fellow he'd worked with for so long in Richmond, but some stranger. Still, Jake thought he'd given a good speech, too. Nice to find out other folks could tell.
'Well done, Mr. President,' Saul Goldman said when Jake stepped out into the corridor. 'What a speech can do, that one did.'
'Yeah.' Featherston wished the Director of Communications hadn't put it like that. What a speech could do…A speech might make soldiers fight a little longer. It might make factory hands work a little harder. All that would help…some.
No speech in the world, though, could take back Kentucky or Tennessee. No speech in the world could take back Atlanta or Savannah, or unsever the divided body of the Confederacy. No speech could take back the rocket works in Huntsville, and no speech could keep Birmingham from falling any day now.
No speech, not to put too fine a point on it, could keep the Confederate States of America from being really and truly screwed. 'Dammit,' Featherston said, 'I didn't reckon things'd end up like this.'
'Who would have, sir?' Goldman was loyal. Not only that, he didn't aspire to the top spot himself, maybe because he knew damn well no Confederate general or Party bigwig would take orders from a potbellied little Hebe. The combination-and his skill at what he did-made him invaluable.
They also meant Jake could talk more freely to him than to anyone else except perhaps Lulu. 'No, this ain't how things were supposed to work,' the President repeated. 'Swear to God, Saul, if the Yankees lick us, it's on account of we don't deserve to win, you know what I mean?'
'What can we do? We have to win,' Goldman said.
Featherston nodded. He had the same attitude himself. 'We'll keep fighting till we can't fight any more, that's what. And we won't surrender, not ever,' he said. 'If we ever stop fighting, it'll only be on account of we got nobody left to fight with, by God.'
The Director of Communications nodded. 'You've always been very determined. I knew it right from the first time you started broadcasting on the wireless.' He shook his head in wry wonder. 'That's more than twenty years ago now.'
'Sure as hell is,' Jake said. You could see those years in Goldman's gray hair, in how little of it he had left, in his waistline and double chin. On the outside, time had dogged Featherston less harshly. He had lines on his face that hadn't been there then, and his hairline had retreated at the temples, too. But he remained whipcord lean; hate burned too hot in him to let him settle down and get fat. 'And you know what?' he went on. 'Even if the war turns out rotten, I've had a good life. I've done most of the things I always aimed to do. How many men can say that, when you get right down to it?'
'Not many,' Goldman agreed.
'Damn right.' Featherston paused to light a cigarette. He didn't like to smoke just before he went on the air; his voice was raspy enough anyway. 'The folks who live down here after this war is over, whoever the hell they turn out to be, they won't have to worry about nigger trouble ever again, no matter what. And that's thanks to me, goddammit.' He jabbed a thumb at his own chest.
'Yes, Mr. President.'
But Goldman didn't sound happy. Jake had artilleryman's ear, and didn't hear so well as he had once upon a time. While he might miss words, though, he was still dead keen for tone. 'What's eating you, Saul?' he asked.
'I guess it's the way you put it, sir,' the Director of Communications said slowly. 'I can see the Tsar talking about Jews like that, or the Ottoman Sultan talking about Armenians.'
When nobody flabbled much about the way the Sultan got rid of his Armenians, that had encouraged Jake to plan the same for the blacks in the CSA. He'd said as much in Over Open Sights, too. Because he liked Goldman, he was willing to believe the other man had just forgotten. 'The Tsar's a damn fool, even if he is on the same side as us,' he said. 'Jews are white men, dammit. And so are Armenians…I reckon. Can't talk about those folks the same way you do about niggers. Biggest mistake folks here ever made was shipping niggers over from Africa. Nobody ever tried to fix it…till me. And I damn well did.'
Saul Goldman still didn't look convinced. Maybe his being Jewish was finally causing problems after all. His people had been persecuted unjustly. That might make it hard for him to see that Negroes really deserved what the Freedom Party was giving them. If he was getting pangs of conscience now, he'd sure taken his own sweet time doing it. Trains had been carrying blacks off to the camps since before the war started, and Saul's propaganda helped justify it to the Confederate people and to the world.
'C'mon outside,' Jake told him. 'Maybe you need some fresh air. It'll help clear your head.'
'Maybe.' Goldman didn't argue. Like anyone who bumped up against Jake Featherston, he'd soon come to realize arguing with him didn't do a damn bit of good.
It was a fine spring day. The savage heat and humidity that would close down soon hadn't yet descended on Portsmouth like a smothering blanket. A newly arrived hummingbird, ruby throat glittering, sucked nectar from a honeysuckle bush. The smell of growing things filled the air.
But so did nastier odors: the stench of death and the slightly less noxious stink of spilled fuel oil. Yankee bombers had been punishing Hampton Roads ever since the war began. They had reason to, damn them; this was the most important Confederate naval installation on the Atlantic coast.
As in Richmond, few buildings had survived undamaged. Not many warships were fit to put to sea from here, either. Salvage crews were clearing a sunken cruiser and destroyer from the channel. That steel would find another use…if the Confederacy lasted long enough.
It will, dammit, Featherston thought, angry at himself for doubting. The sun sparkled off the waves-and off the thin, iridescent layer of fuel oil floating atop them. A moored cruiser, laid up with engine trouble and bomb damage, let go with a salvo of eight-inch shells. They'd come down on the damnyankees' heads soon enough.
A few U.S. airplanes buzzed over Hampton Roads. Jake took that for granted nowadays. C.S. air power did what it could, but it couldn't do enough to hold the enemy at arm's length any more, not even above Virginia. By the sound of the engines, most of the engines were above Newport News, on the north side of the mouth of the James. Antiaircraft guns flung shells at them, but the bursts were too low to bring them down.
Jake pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket and wrote, We need stronger AA. The Confederate States needed lots of things right now. He had no idea when engineers could get around to designing a larger-caliber antiaircraft gun, let alone manufacture one, but it was on the list.
He looked down to put the notebook back in his pocket. That spared his eyes when a new sun sprang into being above Newport News, six or eight miles away from where he was standing. He suddenly had two shadows, the new one far blacker than the old. Slowly, the new shadow started to fade.
Saul Goldman had his hands clapped over his face-maybe he'd been looking the wrong way. Jake stared north
