In at the Death (51 page)

Flies were already starting to buzz above the blood pooling around the corpse in the roadway. Cassius stirred the body with his foot. Jake Featherston’s lean, hungry face stared sightlessly up to the sky. A fly landed on his cheek. It crawled over to the rill of blood that ran from the corner of his open mouth and began to feed.

“Well, you did it. You just sank the Confederate States of America.” The officer with glasses talked like a Yankee. But he wore a C.S. uniform with, Cassius saw, a general’s wreathed stars on his collar. He took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes with his tunic sleeve. “Jake Featherston was a son of a bitch, but he was a great son of a bitch—and you killed him.”

He looked as if he wanted to say more. Telling off somebody with a Tredegar was never a good idea, though.

Another man, a heavy fellow in a gray Party uniform, figured that out, too. He said, “Who would’ve reckoned a…colored kid could do in the President?” The pause meant he’d almost said
nigger
, or more likely
goddamn nigger
, but he swallowed anything like that before it got out.

“Who the hell are you people, anyway?” one of the U.S. soldiers—a sergeant—demanded.

“Ferdinand Koenig, Attorney General, CSA,” the heavy man answered. Cassius almost shot him, too. Koenig ran the camps. He was Jake Featherston’s enforcer. But shooting anybody with his hands up wasn’t so easy.

“Clarence Potter, brigadier general, CSA,” said the man with glasses.

“Christ!” the sergeant in green-gray said. “You’re on our list! You’re the asshole who blew up Philly!”

“You know that?” Potter blinked, then actually bowed. “Always an honor to be recognized,” he said. Cassius found himself surprised into admiration. Potter had style, in a cold-blooded way.

The other Confederates gave their names and ranks. The only one Cassius had heard of was Saul Goldman, whom he thought of as the Confederacy’s chief liar. But the rest were all big shots, too, except for a young captain with a pilot’s wings on the right breast pocket of his tunic.

“Do Jesus!” Gracchus said. “There here’s ’bout what’s left o’ the Confederate gummint, ain’t it?”

“Where’s what’s-his-name? The Vice President?” The U.S. sergeant snapped his fingers. “Partridge in a pear tree—him?”

Even with their cause in ruins and themselves in captivity, several of the Confederates smiled at that. A couple of them even laughed. “The Vice President isn’t with us,” General Potter said. “If you look under a flat rock, you’ll find a lizard or a salamander or something. It’s bound to be just as smart as Don.”

“Jesus, Potter, show a little respect,” Ferd Koenig said. “He’s President now, wherever he is.”

“Only proves we’re screwed, if you ask me,” Potter said calmly.

Three command cars rumbled up from Madison: probably called by wireless. Their machine guns added to the U.S. firepower. A photographer jumped out of one of them. “Godalmightydamn,” he said, aiming his camera at the corpse in the road. “That really is the motherfucker, ain’t it?” He took several pictures, then looked up. “Who punched his ticket for him?”

Gracchus gave Cassius a little shove. “This fella right here.”

A flashbulb went off in Cassius’ face. He saw green and purple spots. “Way to go, sonny. You just turned famous, know that? What’s your name, anyway?”

“Cassius,” he answered. Now two people, both white, had thrown fame in his face. “I’m Cassius. I don’t care nothin’ about famous. Only thing I care about is, that bastard’s dead an’ gone.”

“You may not care about famous, buddy, but famous is gonna care about you,” the photographer predicted. “Bet your ass it will. You’re gonna be the most famous smoke in the whole goddamn US of A.”

Smoke
wasn’t exactly an endearment, but Cassius was too dazed to get very upset about it. More command cars and a halftrack came up the road. Some of the people who got out were soldiers. Others were reporters. When they found out Cassius had shot Jake Featherston, they all tried to interview him at once. They shouted so many questions, he couldn’t make sense of any of them.

Some of the reporters started grilling the captured Confederates, too. The prisoners didn’t want to talk, which seemed to upset the gentlemen of the press.

Cassius kept looking at the body every so often.
I did that
, he told himself.
I really did
.

“Don’t pay these mouthy fools no mind,” Gracchus advised him. “You don’t got to say nothin’ to ’em if you don’t care to. You
done
somethin’ instead.”

It wasn’t enough. If Cassius could have killed Jake Featherston five million or six million or eight million times, it might have come close to being enough. But he’d done all he could do. He made himself nod. “Yeah,” he said.

N
ot far outside of Pineville, North Carolina, Irving Morrell stood up in the cupola of his barrel for what he hoped was the last time in the war. Sweat ran down his face. He was glad to escape the iron oven in which he’d ridden north. The cease-fire continued to hold. With a little luck, it would soon turn into something more like a real peace.

A monument of piled stone, two or three times as tall as a man, marked the place where James Polk had been born. Since Polk was President of the United States before they split into two countries, this seemed a good place for the representatives of those two countries to meet.

Close to the monument stood what could only have been a Negro sharecropper’s cabin. It was empty now, windows broken, door hanging half open. If meeting at Polk’s birthplace symbolized something, that deserted cabin meant something else altogether. Where were the blacks who’d called it home? Anywhere on this earth? Morrell doubted it.

The sergeant in charge of another U.S. barrel peered up the road toward Charlotte with field glasses. He waved to Morrell. “Here they come, sir!”

“Thanks,” Morrell said.

A moment later, his own Mark One eyeball picked up the approaching autos. As they got closer, he saw that the Confederates were scrupulously abiding by the terms of the cease-fire agreement. All three motorcars were unarmed. The first flew a large white flag from its wireless aerial. So did the third. The middle auto had two aerials. One flew the Stars and Bars, the other the flag of the President of the Confederate States.

Morrell’s barrel was flying the Stars and Stripes from its antenna. That guided the Confederates to the proper machine. He could have blown them to hell and gone. Even now, when they were giving up, the temptation was very real. Instead, he climbed down from the barrel as the Confederate motorcars stopped under his guns.

A Confederate officer—a general, Morrell saw—got out of the lead motorcar. He walked up to Morrell and saluted stiffly. “Good day, sir,” he said. “I recognize you from many photographs. My name is Northcote, Cyril Northcote. After the, ah, recent unfortunate events, I have the dubious privilege of being the senior General Staff officer not in captivity.”

Morrell returned the salute. “Pleased to meet you, General Northcote.”

“Meaning no disrespect to you, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t say the same,” Northcote answered bleakly.

“Well, General, under the circumstances, I don’t see how I can take offense at that,” Morrell said.

“Yes. Under the circumstances.” Northcote spoke as if each word pained him. The door to the middle C.S. motorcar opened. A young-looking blond man in a sharp gray civilian suit came out. General Northcote waved to him and he came forward, his perfectly shined shoes flashing in the bright sun. Machinelike, Northcote said, “General Morrell, it is my duty to present to you the President of the CSA, Mr. Don Partridge. Mr. President, this is U.S. General Irving Morrell.”

“Mr. President,” Morrell said formally. He did not offer to shake President Partridge’s hand—he was under orders from Philadelphia to do no such thing.

Partridge’s hand did start to rise, but fell back like a dead thing when he realized no handshake would be forthcoming. Close up, his round face didn’t just look young. It looked boyish, as if none of the past three years of struggle had registered with him or on him at all. How was that possible? Morrell didn’t know, but it seemed to be.

“General,” Partridge said, and managed a nod.

Morrell nodded back; he had no orders against that. “Mr. President, you have come here under the terms of the cease-fire now in place to agree to the unconditional surrender of all forces still under command of the Confederate States of America. Is that correct?” He sounded like a man speaking from a script, and he was.

President Partridge had to work to manage another nod. “Yes. That’s right.” He sounded surprised and hurt, as if wondering how fate—and Morrell—could do such a thing to him.

“All right, then. I have the terms of the surrender here.” Morrell took two copies of the document from his left breast pocket and unfolded them. “I would like to go over them with you before you sign so no one can say afterwards that there was any misunderstanding. Is that agreeable to you, sir?”

“Have I got a choice?” Don Partridge sounded bleak, too.

“Only going on with the war,” Morrell answered.

“Then I haven’t got a choice.” Partridge sighed. “Go ahead, General. We can’t fight any more, or I wouldn’t be here.”

Morrell thought that had been true ever since Savannah fell, if not since Atlanta did. But Jake Featherston kept the Confederacy going months longer than anybody would have imagined, and what he did to Philadelphia…
He may have killed me yet, even if it takes years
. Well, it was over now, thank God.

“All right. Here we go—Article One says you surrender unconditionally to the United States all forces on land, at sea, and in the air who are at this date under Confederate control,” Morrell said.

Don Partridge nodded. “That’s what I’m here for.” Under his breath, he added what sounded like, “Goddammit.” Morrell pretended not to notice.

“Article Two says your high command will immediately order all Confederate authorities and forces to cease operations on Thursday, July 14, 1944, at 1801 hours Eastern Summer Time: today at a minute past six,” the U.S. general went on. “Your forces will hold in place. They will hand over weapons and equipment to U.S. local commanders. No ship or aircraft is to be scuttled or damaged. Machinery, armaments, and apparatus are to be turned over undamaged. This specifically includes your superbomb works in Lexington. Is that plain enough for you?”

“I understand you,” Partridge said. “We won’t do any damage to them. Your bombers have already done plenty, though.”

“Make sure you don’t use that as an excuse for any sabotage there,” Morrell warned. “My government is very, very serious about that. If your people get cute, they’ll be sorry.”

“They’re already sorry,” the President of the CSA said. “We’ll go along.”

“You’d better. Now—Article Three. At that same time—6:01 today—all your camps killing Negroes are to cease operations,” Morrell said. “Camp authorities are to make every effort to feed their inmates. U.S. supply convoys will reach them as soon as possible. Camp personnel will surrender to the first U.S. officers who arrive. Anyone who flees instead of surrendering will be liable to summary execution—we’ll shoot the bastards on sight. Have you got
that
?”

“I’ve got it,” Don Partridge answered. “Some of them will likely take their chances anyway.”

He was bound to be right there. Even so, Morrell went on, “That brings us to Article Four. Your high command will at once issue orders to the appropriate commanders that they obey any commands issued by the U.S. War Department and carry them out without argument or comment. All communications will be in plain language—no codes.”

“Agreed.” By the way he spat it out, the word seemed to taste bad in Partridge’s mouth.

“Good.” Again, Morrell left the new and unhappy Confederate President what little pride he could. “Article Five says that a final political settlement may supersede this surrender.”

That got him a glare. “When you decide how you want to carve us up, you’ll go ahead and do it, you mean,” Partridge said.

Yes
, Morrell thought. Aloud, he said, “Sir, I’m only a soldier. I don’t have anything to do with that.”
Yeah, I’ll pass the buck
. “Article Six now. If your high command or any forces under your control fail to act in accordance with this surrender, the War Department will take whatever punitive or other action it deems appropriate. If you disobey or fail to comply, we will deal with you in accordance with the laws and usages of war.”

“You won. We lost. You’ll do whatever you damn well please,” Don Partridge said.

“That’s about the size of it, sir,” Morrell agreed. “And if there’s any doubt or dispute about what these terms mean, the decision of the United States will be final.” He handed Partridge both copies of the instrument of surrender. “Have you got a pen?”

“Yes.” Partridge took one from an inside pocket. He read the terms to make sure they said what Morrell claimed they did. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb as people in the USA thought. Maybe he’d been playing possum to make sure Jake Featherston didn’t do unto him as he’d done unto Willy Knight. Chances were it wouldn’t matter now one way or the other. Biting his lip, Partridge signed. He thrust one copy back at Morrell. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Morrell tried to stay what the diplomats called correct.
We hate each other, but we don’t let it show
. “Do you have wireless equipment to let you relay the news of the surrender to your commanders so they can issue the appropriate orders? You are welcome to use U.S. equipment if you don’t.”

“I do, thank you very much,” Partridge replied.
So there
, Morrell thought. The President of the CSA went back to his motorcar. Morrell watched him talk into a microphone in there.

Morrell made small talk with General Northcote till Partridge got out again. Then he asked, “All taken care of?”

Don Partridge nodded. “Yes. You will have full cooperation from all our officials. And now, if you will excuse me, I’d like to get back up to Charlotte and do what I can to keep things running.”