Return engagement sa-1

by Harry Turtledove

  "The other thing we've got is Y-ranging," Cressy said. "That gives us early warning. We don't think the Japs do. Most of their engineering is pretty good; their ships and airplanes measure up to anybody's."

  "Oh, yes, sir," Carsten agreed. "We've found that out the hard way."

  "So we have," the exec said. "But they're just a little bit slow in electrical engineering. Most of their gear is like what we were using, oh, five years ago. They get the most out of it-never underestimate their skill. It's one place where we know a few tricks they don't, though."

  "That could be a big edge," Sam said.

  "It could be, yes. Whether it will be…" Commander Cressy shrugged. "It's like anything else: it's not only what you've got, it's how well you use it." He nodded. "I always enjoy passing the time of day with you, Lieutenant. But now, if you'll excuse me…" He hurried away. He always hurried. That added to the impression that nothing ever got by him.

  When Sam got leave, he took the trolley from Pearl Harbor east to Honolulu. Hotel Street was where the ratings congregated: an avenue full of bars and dance halls and brothels, all designed to make sure a sailor out on a spree didn't leave any money in his wallet and had a good time with what he spent. Shore patrolmen tramped along in groups of three or four; traveling in pairs wasn't enough. Men called them names behind their backs, and sometimes to their faces.

  Sam sighed. Being an officer meant he was slumming here. He didn't really belong, the way he had during the Great War. There were some quieter, more discreet establishments an officer could visit without losing face. Carsten liked rowdiness as much as the next sailor on leave. But he was conscious that, as a mustang, he couldn't get away with certain things other officers might have. His superiors had warned him against acting as if he were still a CPO. Mustangs had the deck stacked against them anyhow. They made things harder for themselves if they remembered what they had been and forgot what they were.

  He was walking toward one of those discreet establishments when a plump blond woman not far from his own age came up the street toward him. He started to go past her, then stopped and did a double take. "I'll be a son of a gun," he said. "You're Maggie Stevenson, aren't you?"

  "Hello, Lieutenant," she said, pronouncing it Leftenant in the British way. A wide, amused smile spread across her face. "I take it we've met before?"

  "Just once," he replied with genuine regret. "That was the only time I could scrape so much cash together back in the last war. But you see I never forgot."

  Her smile got wider yet. "I always wanted satisfied customers," she said. "Every so often, a man who was here back then recognizes me. It's flattering, in a way." During the Great War, she'd been the undisputed queen of Honolulu's women of easy virtue. She'd charged thirty bucks a throw, ten times the going rate for an average girl, and she'd made sailors think they got their money's worth, too. She eyed Carsten's shoulder boards. "You've come up in the world a bit since then."

  He shrugged. "Maybe a bit. How about you?" She couldn't be in the business any more, but she didn't look as if she'd missed any meals. She'd made money hand over fist back then. Had she managed to hold on to any of it?

  She laughed. "Lieutenant, I own about half of Hotel Street. Every time some horny able seaman gets a piece, I get a piece of his piece. I get a piece of what he drinks, too, and of what he eats, whatever that is." She laughed again. "I haven't done too badly for myself."

  "Good," he said. Broken-down, penniless whores who'd got too old to turn tricks any more were a dime a dozen. Whores who'd made a killing in real estate, on the other hand… Well, now he'd met one. "Good for you, by God!"

  "You really mean it," Maggie Stevenson said wonderingly.

  "Why wouldn't I?"

  "Plenty of reasons, starting with that boring text about the wages of sin. For me, the wages of sin turned out to be pretty good, I had a lot of fun earning them, and I don't regret a goddamn thing. What do you think of that?"

  "You sure gave a lot of fun," Sam said. "I'm glad you had some, too. I've known quite a few working girls who didn't-don't."

  "So have I." She nodded. "I'm lucky. I have been lucky, most ways. So where are you headed, Lieutenant?"

  "I was going to the Excelsior Hotel."

  She made a face at him. "That's not one of mine. Would you rather visit the Oceanview?"

  From what he'd heard, the Oceanview was the best officers' place in Honolulu. It was also the most expensive. "Sure," he said, "or I would if I could afford it."

  "Don't worry about that." She took a business card and a pen from her purse. She wrote on the card, then handed it to Sam. "Show them this at the door. On the house. For old times' sake, you might say."

  "Thanks very much." He eyed the card. She'd written, Anything-Maggie in a bright purple ink. The printed card described her as a caterer. She catered to all kinds of appetites. "Thanks very much."

  "You'll pay me back. Just keep the Japs away. They'd be hell on business. Good luck, Lieutenant." Off she went, the same determination in her stride as when she'd gone on to the next eagerly waiting sailor after leaving Sam. He looked down at the card again, smiled, and shook his head in wonder.

  The bouncers at the door to the Oceanview could have played professional football. They were used to seeing commanders and captains and even admirals, not an overage lieutenant, junior grade. "Help you, sir?" one of them rumbled. Help you get lost? he no doubt meant. Sam displayed Maggie Stevenson's card, wondering what would happen next.

  "Oh," the bouncer said. He actually came to attention, and nudged his even beefier pal so he did the same. "Didn't know you knew the owner." He handed back the card, nothing but respect on his blunt-featured face. "Have a good time, sir."

  "I do believe I will," Sam said, bemused. He walked in. The place wasn't whorehouse gaudy. Everything had an air of quiet elegance. You could see the money, but it didn't shout. And the purple ink on that card was a potent Open, Sesame.

  With that card in hand, his own money was no good in there. No one would take it, not even for tips. The food was good. The booze was better. After a while, he picked himself a girl. Just making the choice wasn't easy; the Oceanview had girls to match anyone's taste, as long as that taste was good.

  Sam finally settled on a blue-eyed brunette named Louise. She did whatever he wanted, and smiled while she was doing it. He didn't ask for anything fancy or jaded; his own habits didn't run that way. He didn't think he warmed her, but she was pleasant all the way through.

  She didn't throw him out of bed so she could go on to her next customer right away, either, the way girls in houses usually did. Instead, she lay beside him for a lazy cigarette and a brandy. "How did you get to know the Boss?" she asked; he could hear the capital letter.

  "Same way I just got to know you," he answered, patting her round behind. He wondered if he could manage a second round. He'd been at sea a long time.

  Louise's eyes widened. "She gave you that card for a roll in the hay years ago?" She didn't say, You must have been better with her than you were with me. Even if she didn't, Sam could tell what she was thinking.

  He shrugged. "Maybe she was feeling sentimental." That sent Louise into gales of laughter. Well, Maggie Stevenson didn't strike Sam as the sentimental type, either. But what other explanation made sense?

  And, in the end, what difference did it make? With Louise on top the second time, Sam did succeed again. He went back to the Remembrance thinking there were worse places to fight a war than Honolulu in spite of the tropical sun.

  Jefferson Pinkard always dreaded telephone calls from Richmond. When people in Richmond phoned Camp Dependable, it was usually to tell him to do things he didn't want to do. Some things they didn't want to put in writing, even in something as ephemeral as a telegram.

  "Hello, Pinkard." Ferdinand Koenig sounded almost offensively cheerful this morning. Why not? The Attorney General gave orders. He didn't have to take them. "How are you today?"

  "Fine, sir," Jeff answered. Hopefully, h
e added, "Connection isn't real good."

  "No? I hear you just fine," Koenig said-so much for that. "There's something you need to take care of for me."

  "What's that?" Jeff asked, trying to hide the resignation he felt.

  "You still have Willy Knight there, right? Nothing's happened to him or anything?"

  "No, sir. Nothing's happened to him. We've still got him right here," Pinkard said. He'd never included the former Vice President of the CSA in a population reduction. What you once did, you couldn't undo. "How come? You need him again?" If they were crazy enough to want to use Knight to rally the country, or some small part of it, they could. Pinkard didn't think it would work, but nobody'd asked his opinion, and nobody was going to, either.

  "Need him? Jesus Christ, no!" Ferd Koenig hadn't lost all of his mind, then. "He's never going to have any use for anybody again. Time to dispose of him."

  "Dispose of him?" Pinkard wanted to make sure he had that right before he did anything. "Shall I expect something in writing that tells me the same thing? You people change your mind about that, whose ass is in a sling? Mine."

  "Nobody's going to put anything in writing about this," Koenig said. "I'll call you back tomorrow, that's all." He hung up.

  "Shit." Jefferson Pinkard hung up, too. The Attorney General hadn't said what would happen if he called back and found Willy Knight still breathing. Pinkard didn't need anybody to draw him a picture, though. He could figure it out for himself. Somebody else would do Knight in-and he'd trade his uniform for prison coveralls, if the powers that be didn't decide to dispose of him instead.

  It had to be done, then. And he had to see it done. You never could tell which guard was a secret Knight sympathizer. If the man got loose, especially now with a war on… Pinkard supposed that was why Richmond had decided it didn't want to keep him around any more. If he ever escaped, the damnyankees could use him against the CSA. Or he could rally the black rebels, maybe even join them to white troublemakers. No wonder the Freedom Party didn't want to take the chance of letting him keep breathing, even in a place like Camp Dependable.

  When Jeff walked out of the office compound and into the very different world of the camp itself, he wasn't surprised to have Mercer Scott come over to him within a couple of minutes. "What's up?" the guard chief asked.

  He knew Pinkard had got a call from Richmond. He didn't even bother hiding that. But he didn't know, or didn't let on that he knew, what the call was about. Maybe he was sandbagging. Jeff didn't think so. He hoped not, anyway. He said, "Have Atkins and Moultrie and McDevitt bring Willy Knight here right away. Those three, nobody else. Anybody fucks this up, Mercer, it may cost me my ass, but I promise you you'll go down with me."

  Again, Scott didn't bother pretending he didn't know what Jeff was talking about. He said, "You want to come along with me, see I don't talk to nobody else?"

  "Yeah," Jeff said after a moment's thought. "I guess maybe I do. No offense, Mercer, but this here's important."

  "Soon as you said it was about Willy, I reckoned it was," Mercer Scott answered. "His clock finally run out?"

  Pinkard didn't answer that, not in so many words. "Let's just go get him, separate him off from the rest of the prisoners." He laughed. "One thing-he won't be hard to find." Except for the guards, Knight was still the only white man in the camp.

  Braxton Atkins, Clem Moultrie, and Shank McDevitt were guards personally loyal to Pinkard. Mercer Scott had his own favorites, too. A guard chief would have been a damn fool not to. But Jeff was going to stand and fall with his people on this. Things still might go wrong, but they wouldn't go wrong because he hadn't done everything he could to make them go right.

  All five white men carried submachine guns with big, heavy snail-drum magazines when they went after Willy Knight. If anybody tried to give them trouble, they could spray a lot of lead around before they went down. The Negroes in the camp had been taken in arms against the Confederate States. They knew what sort of weapons the guards had, and no doubt why. They also knew the men in uniform wouldn't hesitate to start shooting, not even a little bit. They gave them a wide berth.

  Pinkard and his followers found Knight coming back from the latrine trenches. When the former Vice President realized they were heading his way, he straightened into a mocking parody of attention. "Well, gents, what can I do for you?"

  "Got a message for you from Richmond," Pinkard answered stolidly. "It's waiting back at the compound."

  "A message? What kind of message?" Hope warred with fear on Knight's scrawny, care-worn face. Did any part of him really imagine Jake Featherston would ever let him off the hook? Maybe so, or the hope wouldn't have been there.

  "I don't know. A message. They wouldn't let me look at it." Pinkard lied without compunction. This had to go smoothly. The way to make sure that happened was to keep Knight soothed, keep him eager, till the very last instant.

  And it worked. He believed because he wanted to believe, because he had to believe, because not believing meant giving up. "Well, lead me to it, by God," he said, more life in his voice than Jeff had heard there for years.

  "No, Mr. Knight. You go first. You know the way," Pinkard said. That Mister sealed the deal. Knight hurried on ahead of the guards. Behind his back, Mercer Scott gave Jeff a look filled with reluctant respect. He brought his free hand up to touch the brim of his juice-squeezer hat, as if to say, You know what you're doing, all right.

  Once Pinkard had Willy Knight away from the rest of the prisoners, he knew things would go the way he wanted them to. He nodded to his three loyalists. They all raised their weapons and shot Knight several times each. He died hopeful, and he died fast. There were worse ways to go out-plenty of them. The camp gave examples every day.

  "Good job," Jeff told the guards. His ears still rang from the gunfire. "Take what's left here and get rid of it." They dragged Willy Knight's body away by the feet. That way, they didn't get their uniforms so dirty. The corpse left a trail of red behind it. Flies started settling on the blood and buzzed round the body.

  "Well, there's one loose end taken care of," Scott said.

  "I was thinking the same thing," Jeff answered. He was also thinking that another one had just shown up. Now the guard chief knew for sure who three of his chief backers were. He didn't see what he could have done about that, but he knew he would have to get some less obvious followers, too.

  "Just complicated our lives, having him around," Mercer Scott added.

  "You think I'm gonna tell you you're wrong, you're nuts," Jeff said. "Now I'm gonna go call the Attorney General back, tell him it's been taken care of." He didn't aim to wait for Ferdinand Koenig to telephone him again. He would have liked to call Koenig something worse than his formal title. He would have liked to, but he didn't, not where Scott could hear. The guard chief had his own channels back to Richmond. Giving him dirt to report was just plain stupid.

  "I liked the way you handled that. Slick as hell," Scott said.

  "Thanks," Pinkard said. Maybe good reports could go back to the capital, too. Maybe. He wouldn't have bet anything much above a dime on it.

  He placed the call to Koenig's office. Hisses and pops and clicks on the telephone line said it was going through. Every once in a while, Jeff could hear operators talking to each other. They sounded like faraway ghosts. And then, also from some considerable distance but not quite from the Other Side, the Attorney General said, "Koenig here."

  "Hello, sir. This is Pinkard. Wanted to let you know it's all done."

  "Good. That's good," Koenig said. "You didn't waste any time, did you?"

  "Didn't reckon I ought to," Jeff answered. "Never can tell what'll happen if you dick around on something like this."

  "Well, you're right about that." The Attorney General paused. "You're sure about it?"

  Jeff had expected that. He found himself nodding, even though Ferd Koenig was a thousand miles away. "Sir, I saw it with my own eyes. I made sure I did. Can't take chances on something so important.
"

  "All right. I reckon you know why I have to make certain," Koenig said. Pinkard nodded again. That meant the Attorney General would also check with Mercer Scott, and maybe with some other people at Camp Dependable, too, people about whom neither Pinkard nor Scott knew anything. Jeff didn't know Koenig had people like that here, but he would have in the other man's shoes. The Attorney General went on, "I'll let the President know what a good job you did."

  "I thank you kindly." Jeff meant that. "How do you want me to put it in the books, sir?, 'Shot while attempting to escape' or, 'natural causes'?"

  ", 'Natural causes,' " Koenig answered after a bare moment's hesitation. "His heart stopped, didn't it?"

  "Sure as hell did."

  "All right, then. Leave it at that. The less we stir up those waters, the better off everybody'll be," Ferdinand Koenig said.

  Jeff found himself nodding one more time. "That's how it'll be, then." There were still more than a few people who liked Willy Knight. They mostly kept their mouths shut if they wanted to stay healthy, but they were out there. No point getting them all hot and bothered, not if you could help it. Natural causes could mean anything.

  "All right." Koenig paused once more. "Sounds like it went off smooth as can be. I'll let the President know about that, too."

  "Thanks. Thanks very much." Pinkard beamed. Most of the time, nobody ever gave a jailer the respect he deserved.

  After a few more polite noises-ones that didn't matter nearly so much-Koenig hung up. Jeff let out a long sigh. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. But he'd handled it.

  He nodded to himself. If it wasn't one thing, it was another, all right. And he had a pretty good notion of what the next thing would be: a new population reduction. How many more of those could the guards take and still keep their marbles? He didn't want them blowing out their own brains or finding other ingenious ways to kill themselves, the way Chick Blades had.