An aeroplane buzzed over the Charles XI as the French liner approached the Confederate coast. Anne Colleton glanced up at the machine, which roared past low enough for her to make out the words CONFEDERATE CITRUS COMPANY painted on the fuselage in big, bright orange letters. The lines of the aeroplane suggested falcon much more than grouse. She wondered why a citrus company needed such a swift, deadly-looking aircraft.
Beside her, Colonel Jean-Henri Jusserand watched the aeroplane speed back toward the Virginia coast. The Frenchman said, “I suspect it would not be too very difficult to fit this aeroplane with weapons. Would you not agree, Mademoiselle Colleton?”
“I would agree that am I an idiot,” Anne replied, also in French. “I should have seen that for myself.” She kicked at the decking, angry at missing something so obvious.
“But—” Colonel Jusserand stopped, just in time. Anne sent him a sour look. He’d been about to say something like, But you are only a woman, Mademoiselle Colleton, so how could you be expected to notice such a thing? Then, fortunately, he’d remembered Anne had spent the last two years in Paris, dickering with some of the more prominent people in Action Française—not always the people with fancy titles, but those who could promise results and mean it.
With wry amusement, Anne thought, But you are only a boy, Colonel Jusserand, so how could you be expected to know anything? Jusserand was in his mid-thirties, as young as he could be and still have fought in the Great War. He paid attention to Anne as a negotiator, but never once to her as a woman. She had fifteen years on him, give or take a couple. Most of the officers with whom she’d dealt were close contemporaries of the boyish colonel. Action Française had, so far, done a better job of pruning deadwood from the French Army than the Freedom Party had of purging the Confederate Army.
The Charles XI pressed on toward Norfolk. More aeroplanes buzzed by to examine the liner. All of them said CONFEDERATE CITRUS COMPANY. They shared the same sleek, dangerous look.
Colonel Jusserand asked, “Will there be an open display of these machines at the Olympic Games?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “I’m a stranger here myself.” That held more truth than she felt comfortable admitting. She’d enjoyed her two years in France. She thought she’d helped her country while she was there. But, with Virginia in sight once more, she had to remember what she’d worked so hard to forget: that her time out of the CSA had also been an exile of sorts.
July in Norfolk brought memory flooding back. Though she was close to two hundred miles north of St. Matthews, the heat and humidity reminded her all too much of home. She’d never known weather like this in Paris. She wouldn’t have been sorry not to renew acquaintance, either.
When the customs men saw her passport and Colonel Jusserand’s, they very quickly became very respectful. “You’re on our list, sir, ma’am,” one of them said, touching the brim of his cap. He wore a snappier uniform than he would have when she left the Confederate States, one that made him look like a soldier rather than a functionary. “Our good list, I mean—we’ve got train tickets to Richmond waiting for both of you, and we’ll get you to the station fast as we can.”
He kept his promise, too. Anne wondered what sort of treatment she would have got had her name been on a different sort of list. She was just as glad not to have to find out.
Sweating in his brown wool uniform, Colonel Jusserand let out a sigh of relief when their railroad car proved air-conditioned. Anne found herself less delighted; too cold seemed as unpleasant as too hot. But she could add clothes for more warmth. She couldn’t take them off outside, not if she wanted to stay decent.
With a cloud of coal smoke erupting from the stack, the locomotive began to roll. Jusserand stared at the countryside, which he was seeing for the first time. “How very many tractors and other farm machines there are,” he remarked.
Anne nodded. “More than I remember seeing before I went to France,” she said. “A lot more, as a matter of fact. Then there would have been nothing but sharecroppers working the land.” Sharecroppers had come out in English. She thought for a moment before coming up with a French equivalent: “Tenant farmers.”
“With so many machines, who needs men?” Colonel Jusserand said. “Where do you suppose the tenant farmers have gone?”
That was a good question. Anne answered it with no more than a shrug, for she didn’t know, either. She did know most of the displaced sharecroppers were colored. Was it like this all over the CSA, or just in this stretch of Virginia? She couldn’t guess. If this went on nationwide, what would the Confederacy do with all the displaced Negroes? One more question she couldn’t answer. But, remembering what Negroes had done to the Marshlands plantation, remembering what they’d almost done to her, she hoped they got everything they deserved.
Night was falling when the train pulled into Richmond from the south. As soon as Anne descended to the platform, someone called her name. All she had to do was answer. As before, uniformed men whisked her and Colonel Jusserand away. She barely had time to note how many people in the station spoke with Yankee accents—men and women down from the USA to see the Olympic Games—before she and the Frenchman were in a motorcar bound for the Gray House.
No waiting in the waiting room this time, either. Jake Featherston saw them right away. “Congratulations,” he told Anne. “I’ve read every report you sent. You did a first-rate job over there. First-rate, I tell you.” He stuck out his hand and gave Colonel Jusserand a big, friendly smile. “And I’m damned pleased to meet you, Colonel. Action Française”—he didn’t butcher the French too badly—“is doing the same thing for your country that the Freedom Party is for this one.”
“Yes, I think so, too.” Jusserand spoke good English, though Anne’s French was even better. “Revenge is a sweet word, is it not?”
He couldn’t have said anything better calculated to hit the Confederate president where he lived. “Oh, yes,” Featherston said softly. “Oh, yes, indeed. None sweeter. So we will be able to count on France when the day comes?”
“That depends,” Jusserand answered. “Can we count on the CSA if we first find that day?”
Here was something Anne hadn’t seen before: someone hustling Jake Featherston. “Like you said, that depends.” The president spoke carefully. “You start a fight with the Germans tomorrow afternoon, we’ll have to sit out—we aren’t ready yet. You give us the chance to get ready, we’ll back you all the way.”
In Paris, Anne and the Frenchmen with whom she’d dealt had gone round and round over that. The Kaiser’s government watched the French as carefully as the United States watched the Confederate States, maybe more carefully. Colonel Jusserand thought so. He said, “You have the advantage over us. You are a large country, with more room to hide what you do not want your neighbors to see. With us, les Boches could be anywhere at any time.”
“Since we’ve been good little boys, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Featherston answered. Even his grin didn’t make those long, bony features handsome. But a smiling Jake Featherston made handsomer men seem insipid. Anne had thought so since the first time she met him, back in the days when she thought she could control him. She wasn’t wrong very often. When she was, she wasn’t wrong in a small way.
“How fortunate you are to have these Olympic Games,” Jusserand murmured. “You show your own people and the world the Confederate States are once more a nation to be reckoned with.”
“That’s right. That’s just exactly right,” Featherston said. “You’re a pretty sharp fellow, aren’t you, Colonel?” The French officer did his best to look modest. His best, as Anne had seen, was unconvincing.
She asked, “How serious are the Negro uprisings, Mr. President? Some of the stories I heard in Paris played them down. The others made it sound as bad as 1915.”
“That’s crap. It’s nothing like 1915—nothing, you hear?” Featherston’s voice was hard and cold. “More than a nuisance, less than real trouble, you know what I mean? Bad enough so the USA couldn’t say no when we asked to beef up the Army a bit—and we may beef it up a bit more than the damn-yankees know about.”
He sounds … pleased the blacks are trying to hit back, Anne realized. He expected them to, and he was ready to take advantage of it. She eyed the Confederate president with respect no less genuine for being reluctant. He always seemed to see a move or two further than anybody else.
Featherston went on, “But the hell with that for now.” Colonel Jusserand looked shocked; he’d never have sworn in front of a woman. Featherston said, “You’re here in Richmond when we’ve got the Olympics. You want to enjoy yourselves, right? Here.” He scribbled on a couple of sheets of paper from a pad on his desk, then handed one to Anne, the other to the Frenchman. “Passes to whatever you want to see. Go on over to the ticket bureau and exchange ’em. Anybody gives you a hard time about it, let me know. I’ll make the son of a bitch pay.”
No one gave Anne anything close to a hard time. She found that instructive; people in the CSA took Featherston’s orders seriously—or at least they’d learned they would be sorry if they didn’t. Anne rode a bus to the enormous Olympic stadium on the northern outskirts of town. It hadn’t existed when she’d left the country two years earlier. Now the great bowl of marble and concrete, Confederate and Party flags aflutter all around the rim, dominated the skyline in that part of Richmond. Other Olympic buildings and the village where the athletes lived surrounded the stadium.
In the stands near her, Anne heard American accents from both CSA and USA, clipped British tones, Irish brogues, and people speaking French, German, Spanish, Italian, and several languages she didn’t recognize. For that matter, she had trouble following some of the French she heard. When the couple with the odd accent cheered the athletes from the Republic of Quebec, she understood why.
Black men from Haiti and Liberia competed along with everyone else. When a Haitian sprinter won a bronze medal, Jake Featherston looked as if he’d swallowed a big swig of lemon juice. In France, Anne had heard he’d had to accept the Negroes’ participation on equal terms, like it or not: otherwise the Games would have gone elsewhere. She wondered how furious Featherston was, and whether he could extract any sort of revenge on the International Olympic Committee.
But that was a question only a handful of insiders would know about. To most citizens of the Confederate States, to most of the swarms of visitors from abroad, all that mattered was whether the Olympics came off well. By that standard, Featherston and the CSA were doing fine.
A Confederate runner narrowly beat a man from the USA in the 800-meter run. The crowd went wild. Anne clapped and yelled as loud as anyone else. She would never be behindhand in cheering for Confederate victories over the damnyankees. She wished there were more of them, and on fields different from the track. One of these days, she thought. Maybe one of these days before too long.
With a grunt, Clarence Potter rose from the seat he’d been occupying for what seemed like forever. He hadn’t wanted to pay for a Pullman berth from Charleston up to the Confederate capital. Now he was paying in a different way: with a sore back, and with eyes gritty from lack of sleep. His seat had reclined, but not far enough. He’d managed to doze a bit on the way north, but he hadn’t got nearly enough rest.
As he stood and grabbed his carpetbag from the rack above his head, the weight of the pistol in the shoulder holster reminded him of the weapon’s presence. He wondered if Freedom Party goons would be waiting for him when he got off the train. If they were, they’d be sorry.
But no one troubled him on the platform or in the station. He hurried through the cavernous building, and got to the cab stand outside ahead of most of the other passengers, who’d had to go to the baggage car to retrieve their suitcases.
“Where to, pal?” asked the driver of the frontmost cab when Potter got in. The fellow added, “Freedom!”
“Freedom!” Potter echoed, hating the word. He felt the weight of the pistol again. “Ford’s Hotel, across from Capitol Square.”
“Right you are.” The cabby put his auto—a middle-aged Ford imported from the USA—into gear, waiting for an opening in the traffic. “You here for the Olympics?”
“That’s right.” Among other things, Clarence Potter thought. “I know they started a couple of days ago, but I couldn’t get away from work till now. These days, you hold on tight to a job if you’ve got one.” He’d had more flexibility than he let on, but the driver didn’t need to know that.
The fellow nodded. “Ain’t it the truth?” he said. “Even this lousy job—I couldn’t very well leave, could I? Not if I want my kids to eat, I couldn’t. Business was crummy till the Games started, too—you’d best believe that.”
“Oh, I do,” Potter said solemnly. “Times aren’t easy anywhere.”
“Yeah.” The driver pulled away from the curb. Behind him, the next cab moved up to wait for a passenger.
Richmond had changed since Potter last saw it. Of course, that had been during the dark days at the end of the Great War, when U.S. bombers were methodically knocking the Confederate capital flat. Now it seemed so fresh and clean, someone might have rubbed the buildings and even the sidewalks with soap and water. And maybe someone had, to give visitors the impression Jake Featherston wanted them to have. Potter wouldn’t have been surprised.
Freedom Party stalwarts stood on every other corner. They weren’t wearing their usual bludgeons, and were giving strangers directions. How long would they stay on their best behavior? Till the Olympics were over, no doubt, and not a minute longer.
In Capitol Square, a Mitcheltown—what the damnyankees called a Blackfordburgh: a shantytown full of people who’d lost their jobs and lost their homes—had flourished for years. It was gone now, with no sign it had ever existed. Where were those people? Were they all working? Potter laughed under his breath. Not likely. But they were out of sight, which was what mattered to the present masters of the CSA.
Ford’s Hotel was a great white pile of a building, with Confederate flags flying everywhere on it. The cab wheezed to a stop in front of the entrance. Potter gave the driver half a dollar, which included a dime tip. He carried his bag up the low stairs leading into the hotel and past the doorman, an immensely tall, immensely fat Negro in a uniform gaudier than any the C.S. Army issued. Potter recalled the getup from his wartime visits to Richmond, though he didn’t think this was the same man wearing it.
He checked in, got his room key, and put his clothes on hangers and into drawers, as if he were an ordinary traveler. Then he went downstairs again and spent five cents for a copy of the Richmond Whig, which gave him a schedule of Olympic events.
President Featherston will watch the swimming competition tomorrow, one story said, to cheer on Richmond’s own Peter Dawson, who will be aiming for the gold medal in the 400 and 800 meters. Potter nodded slowly to himself. The swimming stadium would be a good place to try: much smaller than the great bowl where the athletes competed in track and field.
Every story in the paper seemed to glorify Featherston, the Freedom Party, the Olympics, Richmond, or all four at once. What made that particularly disgusting, as far as Potter was concerned, was that, up until the Freedom Party took power, the paper, as its name showed, had been strong for the Whigs. No more. Not many papers in the CSA persisted—or were still able to persist—in opposing the Freedom Party and the president.
“Which is why someone has to do something,” Potter murmured. And who better than me? I should have seen this coming before anybody else. Hell, I did see it coming, but I couldn’t take Featherston seriously. My only consolation is, nobody else did, either.
Without Jake Featherston, what would happen to the Freedom Party? Nothing good. Potter was sure of that. Featherston was the glue that held it together. Take him away, and the pieces would fly apart. They would have to … wouldn’t they?
Potter ate a big steak and a mess of fries in the hotel restaurant. Then he went up to his room and turned on the wireless. It was full of stories about—what else?—Jake Featherston, the Freedom Party, the Olympics, Richmond, or all four at once. The wireless stories were very smooth, smoother than those in the paper. Whoever had put them together knew what he was doing.
The next morning, Potter ordered a plate of ham and eggs. The condemned man ate a hearty meal. Well, why not?
He got another taxi and took it to the swimming stadium. Tickets were three dollars apiece—not the worst daily wage for a working man. Potter set three brown banknotes on the counter, took his ticket, and went inside.
For a tense moment, the smell of chlorine rising from the huge swimming pool put him in mind of Great War gas attacks. He had to fight down panic—had to and did. Then he worked his way toward the presidential box. He couldn’t get as close as he would have liked. Freedom Party guards in their almost-Army uniforms surrounded Jake Featherston. Potter sighed. He’d expected nothing different. He would have to wait for his chance, if it ever came.
He settled into his seat, right by an aisle that gave him at least the illusion of a chance to get away. He drummed his fingers on his thigh. How long would Featherston watch? Would he go do something else before Potter found a chance? You’ll find out, Potter told himself. Wait. See what happens.
While he waited, he watched the swimmers. He cheered “Richmond’s own Peter Dawson” as loudly as any of the men around him with their Freedom Party pins. He’d always thought of himself as a patriot. The difference was that, to him, Confederate patriotism didn’t start and stop with the Party.
Dawson didn’t win the gold in the 400 meters; a swimmer from Sweden did, by several lengths. But the hometown hero did win a silver medal. Better yet, he outkicked a man from the USA to do it. Cheers rang through the swimming stadium. After shaking the Swede’s hand, Dawson pulled himself from the pool and waved to the crowd.
“Frankfurters! Git your frankfurters! Twenty-five cents! Frankfurters!” The colored vendor roamed up and down the aisles, hawking the sausages. Clarence Potter handed the man—whose graying hair said they were about of an age—a quarter. He got back a frankfurter on a bun wrapped in waxed paper. As Potter unwrapped it and began to eat, the Negro hurried up the aisle once more. “Frankfurters! Git your frankfurters!”
The medalists got up onto the victory stand. A pretty girl put the medals—gold, silver, bronze—around their necks. They all grinned and shook hands with one another. A band blared out what Potter presumed to be the Swedish national anthem, though he didn’t recognize it. Up went the Swedish flag, yellow cross on blue. The Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes rose on flagpoles to its right and left.
When the anthem ended, the three young men descended from the platform. They were still chattering excitedly. Peter Dawson and the swimmer from the USA might have been friends. Maybe they were. Potter wondered how often they’d raced against each other, how well they knew each other.
“Frankfurters! Twenty-five cents! Git your frankfurters!” Here came the vendor again, distracting Potter—and everyone around him—from the joy of the moment. Back in the Roman days, vendors at the Colosseum selling dormice in honey had probably made people miss the best moments of lions devouring Christians.
The Negro paused by Potter, taking another frankfurter from the enameled metal box he wore at his waist. A sweat-stained canvas strap that went around his neck supported the box, leaving his hands free. He handed the sausage to a woman across the aisle, got back a dollar banknote, and gave her three quarters in change.
“Frankfurters! Git your frankfurters here!” The vendor stopped again, two or three steps farther down. For a moment, that meant nothing to Clarence Potter. Then he realized no one there had called or waved for a frankfurter. The Negro reached into the box just the same. What he pulled out this time wasn’t a bun wrapped in waxed paper. It was a submachine gun with the stock sawed off short to make it easier to hide. With a wordless shout of fury and hate, he aimed it in Jake Featherston’s direction and started shooting.
Guards toppled, wounded or dead. People screamed. The president of the CSA went down, too. Did he dive for cover, or was he hit? Potter didn’t know. He did know the surviving guards were going to fill the Negro full of lead … and probably everyone around the fellow, including himself. With hardly any conscious thought, his own pistol sprang into his hand. He shot the Negro in the back of the head.
The colored man crumpled as if all his bones had turned to mush. He was surely dead before he hit the stairs. By sheer luck, the submachine gun didn’t spray any more bullets when it clattered off the concrete. You poor damned fool, Potter thought. If you’d only waited a little longer, I would have tried to do it for you. Now—sweet Jesus, maybe I’ve gone and saved Jake Featherston’s worthless life.
“Drop it!” Four Freedom Party guards screamed the words at the same time. They pointed Tredegars and submachine guns of their own at Potter. Very slowly and carefully, he laid down the pistol.
“Don’t shoot him!” somebody close by called. “He just killed that goddamn nigger—and where the hell were you?”
“That’s right!” someone else said, voice cracking with excitement. “He’s a hero! He just saved President Featherston!”
Those rifle barrels didn’t waver, but the guards held their fire. Maybe I didn’t save him, Potter thought hopefully. Maybe he got one right between the eyes. Maybe …
But no. Jake Featherston stuck his head up. He had a pistol in his hand. He wouldn’t have been easy meat for anyone. With a little luck, he won’t recognize me, Potter thought. He hasn’t seen me for years, after all.
Featherston’s eyes widened. He recognized Potter, all right. Then one of his guards—who didn’t—said, “This guy killed the nigger who was shootin’ at you, sir.” Other people called Potter a hero, too. Hero, here, was the last thing he wanted to be. But he was stuck with it—and so was Jake Featherston.
Back in the Gray House, Jake Featherston gulped down a whiskey and set the glass on the presidential desk. Across the desk from him, Clarence Potter, annoyingly calm, sipped from a drink of his own. Jake said, “So you were sitting right there close to me, and you just happened to have a pistol in a shoulder holster.”
“I didn’t just happen to have it.” Potter sounded annoyingly calm, too. “I’m an investigator. Some of the things I investigate are pretty unsavory. I always have a pistol where I can grab it in a hurry.”
“And you never once thought of plugging me?” Featherston said.
“Of course not,” Potter answered. His face said, If I did, do you think I’m dumb enough to admit it?
A silent aide set a piece of paper on Featherston’s desk. His gaze flicked down it. When he was done, he eyed Potter again. “You’ve been a busy boy down in Charleston, haven’t you? It’s a wonder you’re still running around loose.”
“You come right out and admit that?” Potter said.
“Admit what?” Jake’s smile was all teeth and no mirth. “You say I said it—you say I said it and you get anybody to print what you say—and I’ll call you a liar to your face. How are you going to prove anything different?”
Potter took another sip from his drink. “A point.” He wasn’t just a cool customer. He was a cold fish.
“So what the hell am I going to do with you?” Jake wondered aloud. “You hate my guts, but you shot that nigger before any of my guards could.”
He’d had bullets whistle past his ear before. The frankfurter seller who’d tried to do him in couldn’t shoot worth a damn. The first couple of rounds had been near misses, but then the submachine gun had pulled up and to the right, as such weapons did all too often. Ten or twelve people were hurt, some of them badly, but not Jake. And, by failing, the Negro had handed the Freedom Party a whole new club with which to beat his race.
That could wait—for a little while, anyhow. “What am I going to do with you?” Featherston repeated.
With a shrug, Clarence Potter said, “Give me a medal and send me home.”
Featherston shook his head. “Nope. You’d be back. And who knows? You might not miss. If I send you home, you’d have to have an accident pretty damn quick.”
“You don’t care what you say, do you?” Potter remarked. “You never did.”
“I already told you, you’re not going to make a liar out of me,” Jake said. “Tell you what I’ll do, though, since I owe you for this, and since you were damn near the only officer I knew during the war who had any sense at all.” He leaned forward. “How’d you like to go back in the Army … Colonel Potter?”
In spite of Potter’s calm façade, his eyes widened. “You mean that,” he said slowly.
“Damn right I do. I can get some use out of you, and so can the country. About time we had some intelligence in Intelligence, goddammit. And I can keep an eye on you that way, too. What do you say?”
“If I tell you no, I wind up dead,” Potter answered. “What do you think I’m going to say?”
You can end up just as dead in a butternut uniform as you can in slacks and a jacket, Jake thought. But he wasn’t sorry Potter had said yes. The other man was a prim son of a bitch, but he had brains and he had nerve. He’d proved that during the war, in the swimming stadium, and—Jake’s eyes again traveled down the list of some of the things Potter had done in Charleston—in between times, too, even if he’d been on the wrong side then. He could do the CSA a lot of good if he wanted to.
“All right, Colonel,” Featherston said. “We’ll go from there, then.” He stuck out his hand. Potter didn’t hesitate more than a heartbeat before shaking it.
Watching Potter walk out the door with a flunky reminded Jake of something else, a piece of business he wondered why he’d left unfinished. He picked up the telephone and spoke into the mouthpiece. He’d taken too many orders in his time. He liked giving them a lot better.
He had to wait a while before this order was carried out. Normally, he didn’t like waiting. Here, though, he composed himself in patience and went through some of the endless paperwork on his desk. If I’d known how much paperwork went with the job, I might’ve let Willy Knight be president of the Confederate States. But he shook his head. That might be funny, but it wasn’t true. The paperwork didn’t just go with the job; in large measure, the paperwork was the job.
His secretary poked her head into the office. “General Stuart is here to see you, Mr. President.”
“Thanks, Lulu.” Jake’s smile was large and predatory. “You send him right on in.”
In marched Jeb Stuart Jr., his back as stiff as an old man could make it. He was a year or two past seventy, his chin beard and hair white, his uniform hanging slightly loose on a frame that had begun to shrink. He looked at Featherston with gray-blue eyes full of hate. His salute might have come from a rickety machine. “Mr. President,” he said tonelessly.
“Hello, General,” Featherston said, that fierce grin still on his face. “We meet again.” He waved to a chair. “Sit down.”
“I prefer to stand.”
“Sit down, I said,” Jake snapped, and Stuart, startled, sank into the chair. Featherston nodded. “Remember the last time you paid a call on me, General? You were gloating, on account of I was down. You reckoned I was down for good. You weren’t quite as smart as you reckoned, were you?”
“No, sir.” Jeb Stuart Jr.’s voice remained stubbornly wooden.
“Do you recollect Clarence Potter, General Stuart?” Featherston asked. Doing his best to remain impassive, Stuart nodded. Featherston went on, “I just brought him back into the Army—rank of colonel.”
“That is your privilege, Mr. President.” Stuart did his best not to make things easy.
His best wasn’t going to be good enough. Jake had the whip hand now. “Yeah,” he said. “It is. You screwed his career over just as hard as you screwed mine. And for what? I’ll tell you for what, God damn you. On account of we were right, that’s what.”
Jeb Stuart Jr. didn’t answer. During the war, Jake had served in a battery commanded by Jeb Stuart III, his son. He’d suspected Pompey, the younger Stuart’s colored servant, of being a Red. He’d said as much to Potter. Jeb Stuart III had used his family influence, and his father’s, to get Pompey off the hook. The only trouble was, Pompey had been a Red. When that proved unmistakably clear, Jeb Stuart III had thrown his life away in combat rather than face the music. And Jeb Stuart Jr. had made sure neither Featherston nor Potter saw another promotion through the rest of the war.
“Did you reckon I’d forget, General Stuart?” Jake asked softly. “I never forget that kind of thing. Never, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Mr. President,” Stuart said. “The high respect I hold for your office precludes my saying more.”
“For my office, eh? Not for me?” Featherston waited. Again, Jeb Stuart Jr. didn’t answer. Jake shrugged. He knew the older man blamed him for Jeb Stuart III’s death. Too damn bad, he thought. In spite of his campaign promises, he’d walked softly around the Army up till now. He hadn’t been quite ready to clean house. All of a sudden, he was—and surviving an assassination attempt would do wonders for his popularity, cushion whatever anger there might have been. “I accept your resignation, General.”
That struck home. Stuart glared. He’d spent fifty-five years in the Confederate Army; he’d been a boy hero in the Second Mexican War, and had never known or wanted any other life. “You don’t have it, you … you damned upstart!” he burst out.
Upstart? Jake knew he was one. The difference between him and Stuart—between him and all the swarms of Juniors and IIIs and IVs and Vs in the CSA—was that he was proud of it. “No resignation?” he said. Jeb Stuart Jr. shook his head. Featherston shrugged. “All right with me. In that case, you’re fired. Don’t bother cleaning out your desk. Don’t bother about your pension, either. You’re finished, as of now.”
“I demand a court-martial,” Stuart said furiously. “What are the charges against me, damn you? I’ve been in the Army and risking my life for my country since before you were a gleam in your white-trash father’s eye. And not even the president of the Confederate States of America has the power to drum me out without my day in court.”
“White trash, is it?” Featherston whispered. Jeb Stuart Jr. nodded defiantly. “All right, Mr. Blueblood. All right,” Jake said. “You want charges, you stinking son of a bitch? I’ll give you charges, by Christ!” His voice rose and went harsh and rough as a rasp: “Yeah, I’ll give you charges. Charges are aiding and abetting your inbred idiot son, Captain Jeb fucking Stuart III, in hiding that his prissy little nigger called Pompey was really a goddamn Red. I’ll take you down, cocksucker, and I’ll take your stinking brat down with you. There won’t be a place in the CSA you can hide in by the time I’m done with you two, you’ll stink so bad. And so will he.”
The color drained from Jeb Stuart Jr.’s face. It wasn’t just that no one had talked to him like that in all his life. But no one had ever gone for the jugular against him with such fiendish gusto. He was white as typing paper when he found his voice, choking out, “You—You wouldn’t. Not even you would stoop so low.”
Jake smiled savagely. “Try me. You want a court, that’s what you’ll get.”
“G-Give me a pen, God damn you,” Stuart said. Featherston did, and paper to go with it. The officer’s hand shook as he wrote. He shoved the paper back across the desk. I resign from the Army of the Confederate States, effective immediately, he’d written, and a scrawled signature below the words. “Does that satisfy you?”
“Damn right it does. I’ve been waiting for it for twenty years,” Jake answered. “Now get the hell out of here. You start feeling unhappy, just remember you’re getting off easy.”
Jeb Stuart Jr. stormed from the office. He slammed the door as he went. Jake laughed. He’d heard a lot of slams since becoming president. This one didn’t measure up to some of the others.
After a moment, Jake called, “Lulu?”
“Yes, Mr. President?” his secretary said.
“Give Saul Goldman a buzz for me, will you?” Featherston was always polite to Lulu, if to nobody else. “Tell him I want to talk with him right away.”
When he said right away to Goldman, the skinny little Jew, who got the Freedom Party’s message out to the country and the world, took him literally. He got to Jake’s office within five minutes. “What can I do for you, Mr. President?”
“General Jeb Stuart Jr. just resigned.” Featherston flourished the sheet of paper with the one-line message. “I’m going to tell you why he resigned, too.” He gave Goldman the story of Jeb Stuart III and Pompey.
Goldman blinked. “You want me to announce that to the country? Are you sure?”
“Damn right I do. Damn right I am.” Jake nodded emphatically. “Let people know why he left. Let ’em know we’ll be cleaning out more useless time-servers soon, too. That’s the angle I want you to take. Reckon you can handle it?”
“If that’s what you want, Mr. President, that’s what you’ll get,” Goldman said.
“That’s what I want,” Jake Featherston declared. And sure as hell, what he wanted, he got.