"I'm afraid you're right," Flora said after thinking it over. She sighed. "When we broke into Georgia, I thought the war was as good as won. But it'll come right down to the wire, won't it?"
"Maybe not. Maybe we'll just knock them flat," the Assistant Secretary of War said. "But they've got some rabbits they could pull out of the hat. We'll do everything we can to steal the hat or burn it, but if they hang on to it…Last time around, we could see we'd win months before we finally did. Not so easy to be sure now. That's not for public consumption, of course. Officially, everything's just fine."
"Officially, everything's always fine. Officially, everything was fine when the Confederates were driving on Lake Erie to cut us in half," Flora said.
"Can't go around saying things are bad and we're losing. People might believe us."
"Why? They don't believe us when we tell them everything's just fine. By now, they must figure we lie to them all the time." Flora listened to herself with something approaching horror. Had she really turned so cynical? She feared she had.
T he British ambassador is here to see you, Mr. President," Jake Featherston's secretary announced.
"Thanks, Lulu. Send him in," the President of the CSA said.
Lord Halifax was tall and thin, with a long bald head and a pinched mouth and jaw. He reminded Jake of a walking thermometer, bulb uppermost. No matter what he looked like, though, no denying he was one sharp bird. "Mr. President," he murmured in an accent almost a caricature of an upper-class Englishman's.
"Good to see you, Your Excellency." Featherston held out his hand. Halifax shook it. His grip wasn't the dead fish you would expect. The President waved him to a chair. "Have a seat. Glad you came through the last raid all right."
"Our embassy has an excellent shelter. Indeed, these days the shelter is the embassy, more or less," Halifax said. "The chaps who stay on, I'm afraid, draw hazardous-duty pay."
You can't stop the United States from bombing the crap out of your capital. That was what he meant, even if he was too much the diplomat to come out and say it. "Yeah, well, I hear the Germans and Austrians up in Philadelphia get bonuses, too," Jake said. They may be hurting us, but we're still in it. In meetings like this, words were smoke screens, concealing what lay behind them.
"Indeed," Halifax said, which might have meant It could be or, just as easily, My ass.
"I'm hoping your country can do more to keep the Canadians fired up against the United States," Jake said.
"Believe me, Mr. President, we're doing everything we can, this being in our interest as well," Lord Halifax replied. "The naval situation in the Atlantic remaining complex, however, we cannot do as much as we would wish. And events on the Continent naturally influence other commitments of scarce resources."
Jake had no trouble translating that into plain English. The Germans were pushing England and France back. The limeys didn't have so much to spare for adventures on this side of the Atlantic as they'd had when things were going better closer to home.
"What the damnyankees aren't using up there, they're shooting at us," Featherston said. "If we go under, they aim everything at you. How long do you think you'll last if they do?" They had a generation earlier, and the United Kingdom didn't last long. Chances were it wouldn't now, either.
And Lord Halifax couldn't shoot that one back at him. The USA could go after Britain in a big way if the CSA went under-could and would. But if Britain went down, Germany wouldn't care about the Confederacy. The Confederate States were no threat to the Kaiser, not till they got a uranium bomb. When they did, the whole goddamn world needed to watch out.
"I said we were doing everything we could, Mr President, and I assure you I meant it most sincerely," the British ambassador said. "We appreciate the CSA's importance to the overall strategic picture, believe you me we do. Our task would become much more difficult if the United States was prosecuting the Atlantic war with all their energy and resources."
You are tying the damnyankees down for us. Again, Halifax's words were pretty straightforward. He had to figure Jake could see that much for himself. And Jake could.
He leaned forward across his desk toward the limey. "Fair enough," he said, his rasping voice and harsh, half-educated accent contrasting sharply with Halifax's soft, elegant tones. "Now we come down to it. If you need us in the war, if you need us to lick the USA for you, why the hell won't you tell us what all you know about uranium bombs? We've got our own project going-you can bet your bottom dollar on that. But if you give us a hand, it helps you and us both. Sooner we start blowing the damnyankees sky-high, the happier everybody'll be. Except them, I mean."
Halifax's bony face never showed much; he would have made a dangerous poker player. But his eyebrows rose a fraction now. Maybe he hadn't expected Jake to be so direct. If he hadn't, he didn't know the President of the Confederate States as well as he thought he did.
"Uranium is an extremely delicate subject," he said at last.
"Tell me about it!" Featherston exclaimed. "Even so, you think the United States aren't working on a bomb of their own? Suppose they get it before we do. They'll blast Richmond off the map, and New Orleans, and Atlanta-"
"Assuming Atlanta hasn't fallen by then," Halifax said.
Fuck you, Charlie. Featherston almost said it, and diplomacy be damned. At the last instant, he bit his tongue. What he did say was, "Yeah, well, suppose they knock us out of the war. Then what? How long before London goes up in smoke? About as long as it takes to get a bomb across the ocean."
Lord Halifax looked physically ill. "The United States aren't our only worry on that score," he choked out.
"I know. Damn Germans started this whole mess. Somebody should've strangled that Einstein bastard when he was a baby." Jake scowled. "Too late to get all hot and bothered about it now. Look, I don't even know how far along you guys are. Maybe we're ahead of you."
The British ambassador winced, ever so slightly. Ah, that got him, Jake thought with an internal grin. The mere idea that backward half-colonials across the sea could get ahead of the high and mighty lords of creation on their own foggy island had to rankle.
To make sure it did, Jake added, "After all, we're a long ways ahead of you when it comes to rockets. Ask the Yankees if you don't believe me."
Halifax winced again, more obviously this time. Jake Featherston's internal grin got wider. "Quite," Halifax muttered: a one-word admission of pain.
"Reckon we can work a swap?" Jake asked. "We'll tell you what we know. We're not afraid of our allies. If you want to shoot rockets at the Germans, more power to you. Blow 'em to hell and gone. I won't shed a tear, and you can bet your…backside on that."
"An interesting proposal," the ambassador said. "I am not authorized to agree to it, but I shall put it to the Prime Minister. If he deems it feasible, we can proceed from there."
"How long will that take?"
"My dear sir!" Lord Halifax spread his hands. "That's in Winston's court, I'm afraid, not mine. I will say he is not a man in the habit of brooking delay."
Featherston wondered if they really did speak the same language. He thought he understood what the British ambassador meant, but he wasn't sure. Hoping he did, he answered, "He'd better not wait around. You're in trouble, and so are we. The more we can help each other, the better our chances, right?"
"One could hardly disagree," Halifax said.
"Fair enough." But Jake wasn't smiling. He was scowling. "Thing you've got to remember is, this cuts both ways. You want what we know about rockets-any fool can see you do. You want to get, but you don't want to give. And I'm here to tell you, your Lordship, sir, that ain't gonna fly."
Lord Halifax was a diplomat. If Featherston's bluntness offended him, he didn't let on. "I assure you, Mr. President, I intend to make your views plain to the Prime Minister. What happens after that is up to him."
Jake knew perfectly well he would have the hide of any Confederate ambassador who exceeded his authority. In fairness, he couldn't blame
Winston Churchill for feeling the same way. But his definition of fairness was simple. If he got what he wanted, that was fair. Anything less, and the other side was holding out on him.
Most of the time, he admired Churchill. Like him, the Prime Minister had spent much too long as a voice crying in the wilderness. In a way, Churchill had a tougher job than he did. Britain needed to worry about fighting both the USA and the German Empire.
But Britain hadn't been invaded the last time around. She hadn't been disarmed and had to start over. All she'd lost was Ireland-and the way the Irish felt about their longtime overlords meant she might be better off without it. With Ireland gone, the British didn't have to worry about keeping the lid on a country where a third of the population hated the guts of the other two-thirds. Ireland was under British control now, to keep the USA from using it as a forward base, but military occupation had a whole different set of rules. The limeys weren't as tough on the micks as the Freedom Party was on Confederate Negroes, but they didn't take any crap, either.
"Tell him not to wait around, that's all," Jake said. "For his sake and ours."
"Winston is a great many things, but not a ditherer. He may from time to time find himself mistaken. He hardly ever finds himself unsure," Halifax said. "I do not know what his answer will be. I am confident you will have it in short order."
"Good. Anything else?" Jake was no ditherer, either.
"The United States are making a good deal of propaganda capital from that camp they captured in Texas," Lord Halifax said. "Did you have to be quite so open in your destruction of the colored populace?"
"You know what, Your Excellency? I don't give a shit how much the damnyankees squawk about that." Jake wasn't being truthful, but he didn't care. He had to make the limey understand. "What we do inside our own country is nobody's business but ours. We've had a nigger problem for hundreds of years-even before we broke away from England. Now I'm finally doing something about it, and I really don't care who doesn't like that. We're going to come out of this war nigger-free, or as close to nigger-free as I can make us."
"Your solution is…heroic," Halifax said.
Jake liked that better than the British ambassador probably intended. He felt like a hero for reducing the CSA's colored population. "I keep my campaign promises, by God," he said.
"No one has ever doubted your determination." Lord Halifax got to his feet. "If you will excuse me…" He left the President's office.
When Lulu looked in after Halifax was gone, Jake Featherston asked, "Who's next?"
"Mr. Goldman, sir."
"Send him in, send him in."
Saul Goldman had grown bald and pudgy in the twenty-odd years Jake had known him. That had nothing to do with anything. The little Jew still made a damned effective Director of Communications. Because he did, he could speak his mind to the President, or come closer than most of the glad-handing yes-men who surrounded Featherston.
"I don't know how I can present any more losses in Georgia," he said now. "People will know I'm whistling in the dark no matter what I say."
"Then don't say anything," Jake answered. "Just say the Yankees are spewing out a pack of lies-and they are-and let it go at that."
Goldman cocked his head to one side, considering. "It could work…for a while. But if Atlanta falls, sir, it's a propaganda disaster."
"If Atlanta falls, it's a fucking military disaster, and the hell with propaganda," Featherston said. "I don't think that'll happen any time soon." He hoped he wasn't whistling in the dark. The news from Georgia was bad, and getting worse despite the fall rains.
"You know more about that than I do. I'm not a general, and I don't pretend to be," Goldman said.
"Don't know why the hell not," Jake told him. "Seems like every damn fool in the country wants to tell me how to run the war. Why should you be any different?" He held up a hand. "I know why-you aren't a damn fool."
"I try not to be, anyhow," Goldman said.
"You do pretty well. Half of being smart is knowing what you're not smart at," Jake said. "Plenty of folks reckon that 'cause they know something, they know everything. And that ain't the way it works."
"I never said it was," Goldman answered primly.
"Yeah, I know," Jake said. "You make one."
A s far as Irving Morrell knew, he was unique among U.S. generals, with the possible exception of a few big brains high up in the General Staff. His colleagues thought about winning battles. After they won one, if they did, they worried about the next one.
Morrell was different. He thought about smashing the Confederate States of America flat. To him, that was the goal. Battles were nothing in themselves. They were just the means he needed to reach that end.
Back when the CSA still had soldiers in Ohio, he'd drawn a slashing line on the map, one that ran from Kentucky through Tennessee and Georgia to the Atlantic. That was where he was going now. He aimed to cut the Confederacy in half. Once he did, he figured the Confederate States would do what anything cut in half did.
They would die.
The question uppermost in his mind now was simple: could he go on to the ocean without bothering to capture Atlanta first? Would the enemy die fast enough afterwards to make the risk worthwhile?
He pondered a map. The chart was tacked to the wall of what had been a dentist's office in Monroe, Georgia, more than fifty miles east of Atlanta. He would have used the mayor's office, but a direct hit from a 105 left it draftier than he liked.
Monroe had had a couple of big cotton-processing plants, both of them now rubble. It had had a couple of fine houses that dated back to the days before the War of Secession, both of them now burnt. War had never come to this part of the CSA before. It was here now, and it made itself at home.
Reluctantly, Morrell decided Atlanta would have to fall before he stormed east again. It gave the enemy too good a base for launching a counteroffensive against his flank if he ignored it. Too many roads and railroads ran through the place. He couldn't be sure enough his air power would keep them all out of commission to ignore it. Taking chances was one thing. Taking stupid chances was something else again.
He didn't want to charge right into the city. He aimed to envelop it instead. That way, the Confederates couldn't do unto him as the USA did unto them in Pittsburgh. An attacking army that took a city block by block put its own dick in the meat grinder and turned the crank.
No help would come to Atlanta from the north or the east, and the bulk of the CSA's strength lay in those directions. The Confederate States were like a snail. They had a hard shell that protected them from the United States. Once you broke through, though, you found they were soft and squishy underneath. How much could they bring in from Florida or Alabama? Not nearly enough-or Morrell didn't think so, anyhow.
Back when he first proposed his slash, the General Staff estimated it would take two years, not one. When Chattanooga fell, he'd hoped to prove them wrong. He might yet, but racing ahead for the sake of speed wasn't smart.
"Then don't do it," he muttered, and headed out of the office. On the floor lay the dentist's diploma from Tulane University, the glass in the frame shattered. Morrell wondered whether the man was still practicing in Monroe or had put on a butternut uniform and gone up toward the front.
Two black men carrying rifles stalked along the street. They wore armbands with USA on them. White civilians fell over themselves getting out of their way. They waved and nodded to Morrell: not quite salutes, but close enough. He nodded back. The Negro guerrillas made him nervous, too. But they scared white Confederates to death, which was good, and they knew more about what was going on here than U.S. troops did, which was even better.
Sometimes they shot first, without bothering to ask questions later. Morrell was sure they'd killed a few people who didn't deserve killing. But how many Negroes who didn't deserve killing were dead all across the CSA? A little extra revenge might be too bad, but Morrell didn't intend to lose any sleep about it.
Except f
or guerrillas, not many Negroes were left in and around Monroe, or anywhere U.S. armies had reached. White people seemed to suffer from a kind of collective amnesia. More often than not, they denied there'd ever been many blacks close by. In Kentucky, they said the Negroes mostly lived in Tennessee. In Tennessee, they said the Negroes mostly lived in Georgia. Here in Georgia, they pointed two ways at once: towards Alabama and South Carolina. Was that selective blindness, a guilty conscience, or both? Morrell would have bet on both.
"Young man!" A Confederate dowager swept down on him. "I need to speak to you, young man!"
Morrell almost looked over his shoulder to see whom she meant. He'd passed fifty a couple of years before, and his weather-beaten features didn't seem young even to himself. But her gray hair and the turkeylike wattles under her chin said she was some distance ahead of him. "What can I do for you, ma'am?" he asked, as politely as he could.
"Young man, I know you come from the United States, and so are ignorant of a good deal of proper behavior, but I must tell you that colored people are not permitted to go armed in this country," she said.
He looked at her. He did his best to look through her. "They are now."
"By whose authority?" she demanded.
"Mine." He tapped the stars on his shoulder strap.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, in that case," she said.
Of itself, his hand dropped to the.45 he wore on his belt. "Lady, I think you better get lost before I blow your stupid head off," he said. "You people did your best to murder every Negro you could catch, and you have the gall to talk to me about shame…There's not a word low enough for you."
"The nerve!" The matron flounced off. Reality hadn't set in for her. He wondered if it ever would, or could.
Over in Texas, General Dowling had taken local big shots through the Confederate death camp and into the mass graveyard so they could see with their own eyes what their country had done. Some of them had the decency to kill themselves afterwards. Others just went on the way they had before.
Morrell wished he had one of those camps to show the locals. Then they wouldn't be able to shrug and pretend there'd never been that many Negroes in this part of the CSA. But he feared the matron wouldn't be much impressed afterwards. She was one of those people for whom nothing seemed real if it didn't happen to her.
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