The Victorious Opposition (80 page)

Sam supposed he was a Democrat himself. But whether he defended the status quo or not, he feared it was going to get a hell of a kicking around.

C
olonel Irving Morrell saluted. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, and then, smiling, “Good to see you again, sir, too. It’s been too long.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” Brigadier General Abner Dowling replied.

The last time they’d been together, Morrell had outranked Dowling. He tried not to resent the fat officer’s promotions. They weren’t Dowling’s fault: how could anybody blame him for grabbing with both hands? Instead, they—and Morrell’s own long, long freeze in rank—spoke volumes about the War Department’s peacetime opinion of barrels.

“We’re going to be doing something different here,” Dowling remarked. “The other side’s got the ball, and they’ll try to run with it.”

“And we have to tackle them,” Morrell said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Dowling agreed.

Morrell whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “We’re not going to be able to keep them from crossing the river,” he said.

“Oh, good,” the fat brigadier general said. Morrell looked at him in some surprise. Dowling went on, “I’m glad somebody besides me can see that. Officially, my orders are to throw them back into Kentucky right away.”

“Sir, you’d bust me down to second lieutenant if I told you what I thought of the War Department,” Morrell said.

Abner Dowling surprised him again, this time by laughing till his jowls quivered like the gelatin on a cold ham. “Colonel, I spent more than ten years of my life listening to General George Armstrong Custer. If you think
you
can shock me, go ahead. Take your best shot. And good luck.”

That made Morrell laugh, too, but not for long. “If we were fighting the Confederate Army of 1914, we’d kick the crap out of it,” he said. “That’s a lot of what the big brains in Philadelphia have us ready to do.”

The laughter drained out of Dowling’s face, too. “Custer would have been louder about it, but I don’t know if he could have been much ruder. We’ve got plenty of men, we’ve got plenty of artillery; our air forces are about even, I think. Our special weapons—gas, I should say; call a spade a spade—will match theirs atrocity for atrocity. Have you met Captain Litvinoff?”

“Yes, sir.” When Morrell thought about Captain Litvinoff, he didn’t feel like laughing at all any more. “I get the feeling he’s very good at what he does.” He could say that and mean it. It was as much praise as he could give the skinny little officer with the hairline mustache.

It was June. It was already warm and muggy. It would only get worse. He didn’t like to think about being buttoned up in a barrel. He especially didn’t like to think about being buttoned up in a barrel while wearing a gas mask. When he thought about Litvinoff, he couldn’t help it.

Thinking about being buttoned up in a barrel made him think about barrels in general, something else he wasn’t eager to do. “Sir, if we are going to play defense, we don’t just need gas. We need more barrels than we’ve got.”

“I am aware of that, thank you,” Dowling replied. “Philadelphia may be in the process of becoming aware of it. On the other hand, Philadelphia may not, too. You never can tell with Philadelphia.”

“But if we’re going to stop them—” Morrell began.

His superior held up a hand. “If we’re going to stop them, we’ve got to have some notion of what they’ll try. We’d better, anyhow. What’s your best estimate of that, Colonel?”

“Have you got a map, sir?” Morrell asked. “Always easier to talk with a map.”

“Right here.” Dowling took one from his breast pocket and unfolded it. It was printed on silk, which could be folded or crumpled any number of times without coming to pieces and which didn’t turn to mush if it got wet. Morrell drew a line with his fingers. Dowling’s eyebrows leaped. “You think they’ll do that?”

“It’s what I’d do, if I were Jake Featherston,” Morrell answered. “Can you think of a better way to cripple us?”

“The War Department thinks they’ll strike in the East, the same as they did in the last war,” Dowling said. Morrell said nothing. Dowling studied the line he had drawn. “That could be . . . unpleasant.”

“Yes, sir,” Morrell said. “I don’t know that they have the men and the machines to bring it off. But I don’t know that they don’t, either.”

Dowling traced the same path with his finger. It seemed to exert a horrid fascination. “That could be very unpleasant. I’m going to get on the telephone to the War Department about it. If you’re right . . .”

“They won’t take you seriously,” Morrell predicted. “They’ll say, ‘All the way out there? Don’t be silly.’ ” He tried to sound like an effete, almost effeminate General Staff officer.

“I have to make the effort,” Dowling said. “Otherwise, it’s my fault, not theirs.”

Morrell could see the logic in that. He changed the subject, asking, “Have we got sabotage under control?”

“I hope so,” Dowling said, which wasn’t what he wanted to hear. The general went on, “Sabotage and espionage are a nightmare anyway. We aren’t like Germans and Russians. We all speak the same language. And downstate Ohio and Indiana were settled by people whose ancestors came up from what are the Confederate States now. Most of ’em—almost all, in fact—are loyal, but they still have some of the accent. That makes spies even harder to spot. My one consolation is, the Confederates have the same worry.”

“Happy day,” Morrell said.

His superior laughed. So did he, not that it was really funny. Not being sure who was on your side made any war more difficult. Neither the CSA nor the USA had done all they could with that truth in the Great War. Morrell had the feeling both would make up for it if and when they met again.

Abner Dowling asked, seemingly out of the blue, “Did you ever serve in Utah, Colonel?”

“No, sir,” Morrell answered. “Can’t say I ever had that pleasure. I helped draw up the plan that involved outflanking the rebels there, but I was never stationed there myself.”

“You know we still have colored friends down south of what’s the border now,” Dowling said—he seemed to be all over the conversational map.

“I don’t know that for a fact, or I didn’t till now, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Morrell said. “We’d be damned fools if we didn’t.”

“Hasn’t stopped us before,” Dowling observed. Morrell blinked. He hadn’t thought the older man had that kind of cynicism in him. Of course, he’d known Dowling when the latter served under Custer, whose own personality tended to overwhelm those of the people around him. Custer had even managed to keep Daniel MacArthur in check, which couldn’t possibly have been easy. While Morrell contemplated the rampant ego of his recent C.O., Dowling went on, “I don’t think the Confederates are damned fools, either. I wish they were; it would make our lives easier. They were sniffing around in Salt Lake City when I commanded there the same way we are with niggers in the CSA. Only edge we’ve got is that there are more niggers in the Confederate States than Mormons here, thank God.”

“Ah.” Morrell nodded. Brigadier General Dowling hadn’t been talking at random, then. He’d actually been going somewhere, and now Morrell could see where. “So you think the Mormons are going to try and stick a knife in our backs?”

“Colonel, they hate our guts,” Dowling said. “They’ve hated our guts for sixty years now. I won’t deny we’ve given them some reason to hate us.”

“Not like they haven’t given us reason to sit on them,” Morrell said.

“Oh, there’s plenty of injustice to go around,” Dowling agreed. “And if another war starts, there’ll be more. But I wish to high heaven President Smith hadn’t lifted military occupation.”

“Don’t you think he’s got people watching the Mormons?” Morrell asked.

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Dowling replied. “But it’s not the same. If we see the Mormons gathering arms, say, it’s not so easy to send troops back into Utah to take away the rifles or whatever they’ve got. That might touch off the explosion we’re trying to stop.”

“The police—” Morrell began.

Dowling’s laugh might have burst from the throat of the proverbial jolly fat man—except he didn’t look jolly. “The police are Mormons, too, or most of them are. They’ll look the other way. Either that or they’ll be the ones with the weapons in the first place.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
”

“You
are
cheerful today, sir,” Morrell said. “Who
will
watch the watchmen?”

“I suppose Al Smith will, or his people. He means well. I’ve never said he doesn’t. He’s doing the best he can. I only wish he weren’t quite so trusting. He kept us out of war—till after the election. Me, I’d sooner have trusted a rattlesnake than Jake Featherston.”

“You mean there’s a difference?” Morrell asked. Dowling shook his head. His chins danced. But there was a difference, and Morrell knew it. Featherston was likely to prove more deadly than any rattler ever hatched.

An orderly poked his nose into Dowling’s office. He brightened when he spotted Morrell. “Sir, I’m supposed to tell you a new shipment of barrels just came in at the Columbus train station.”

Morrell bounced to his feet. The thigh where he’d been wounded in the opening days of the Great War twinged. It would remind him the rest of his life of what had happened down there in Sonora. No help for it, though, so he ignored it. The leg still worked. What else mattered? He saluted Brigadier General Dowling. “If you’ll excuse me, sir . . .”

“Of course,” Dowling said. “The sooner the barrels get off their flatcars and into units, the better off we’ll be.”

The orderly had a command car. It was no different from the one Morrell had used on the border between Houston and Texas. He didn’t mind sitting behind a machine gun at all. If the Confederates didn’t have saboteurs and assassins in Columbus, he would have been amazed.

When he got to the station, he discovered how eager the factory in Pontiac had been to ship those barrels. They were all bright metal; they hadn’t even been painted. He hoped his own men would have the time to slap green and brown paint on them before the shooting started. If they did, fine. If they didn’t . . . Well, if they didn’t, the barrels were still here, and not back at the factory in Michigan. He would throw them into the fight. He would lose more of them than if they were harder to see at a distance, but they would take out a good many Confederate barrels, too.

How many barrels did the Confederates have? How many could they afford to lose? Those were both interesting questions—the most interesting questions in the world for the U.S. officer in charge of armored operations along the central Ohio. And Morrell didn’t have good answers. The U.S. might have had plenty of saboteurs on the other side of the border. Spies who could count and report back? Evidently not.

Morrell looked south.
I’ll find out. Soon, I think.

T
he U.S. ambassador to the Confederate States was a bright young Californian named Jerry Voorhis. He was, of course, a Socialist like Al Smith. As far as Jake Featherston was concerned, that made him a custardhead right from the start. He didn’t look or sound like a custardhead at the moment, though.

“No,” he said. He didn’t bother sitting down in the presidential office. He stood across the desk from Featherston, looking dapper and cool in a white linen suit despite the stifling blanket of June heat and humidity.

“No, what?” Jake rasped.

“No to all your demands,” Voorhis answered. “President Smith has made his position very clear. He does not intend to change it. The United States will not return any further territory ceded to us by the CSA. You agreed to abide by plebiscites and to make no more demands. You have broken your agreement. The president does not consider you trustworthy enough for more negotiations, and he will yield no more land. That is final.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” Jake said.

“Yes, it is.” The U.S. ambassador stuck out his chin and gave back a stony glare.

Featherston only shrugged. “Well, he’ll be sorry for that. As for you, Ambassador, I’m going to give you your walking papers. As of right now, you are what they call
persona non grata
here. You have twenty-four hours to get the hell out of my country, or I’ll throw you out on your ear.”

Voorhis started to say something, then checked himself. After a moment’s pause for thought, he resumed: “I was going to tell you you couldn’t do me a bigger favor than sending me back to the United States. But I’m afraid you’re doing no favors to millions of young men in your country and mine who may be shooting at each other very soon.”

“That’s not my fault,” Jake said in a flat, hard voice. “If President Smith was ready to be reasonable about what I want—”

“My ass,” Jerry Voorhis said, which was not the usual diplomatic language. Maybe he thought the rules changed for expelled ambassadors. Maybe he was right. His bluntness made Jake blink. And he went on, “If the president gave you everything you say you want, you’d just say you wanted something else. That’s how you are.” He didn’t bother hiding his bitterness.

And he was right. Featherston knew it perfectly well. Knowing it and admitting it were two different beasts. He pointed toward the door. “Get out.”

“My pleasure.” As Voorhis turned to go, he added, “You can start a war whenever you please. If you think you can end one whenever you please, you’re making a big mistake.”

Jake thought about saying something like,
We’ll see about that.
He didn’t. The damnyankee could have the last word here. Who got the last word once the balloon went up—that would be a different story.

An hour later, the telephone rang in his office. “Featherston,” he snapped.

“Mr. President, the ambassador to the USA is on the line,” his secretary said. “He sounds upset.”

“Put him through, Lulu.” Jake could guess what the ambassador was calling about.

The Confederate ambassador to the United States was a Georgian named Russell. Jake never remembered his Christian name. All he remembered was that the man was reasonably smart and a solid Freedom Party backer. When he heard Featherston’s voice on the line, he blurted, “Mr. President, the damnyankees are throwing me out of the country.”