The Grapple (56 page)

“Neither did I, ma’am,” the cabby agreed. “But I heard one of ’em was an auto bomb and the other one was a people bomb.”

“Oy!”
Flora said. “Has anyone claimed responsibility? Confederates? Mormons who don’t want to give up? Canadians?”

“God only knows,” he said. “You can walk along minding your own…darn business, and out of the blue—
kaboom!
”

“Out of the blue makes it worse,” Flora said, and the driver nodded. When someone said he’d planted an auto bomb, when a group proclaimed that one of its members hated you enough to blow himself to red mist to hurt you, at least you knew why you’d been injured. When the question hung in the air…When the question hung in the air, what could you do but stay afraid all the time? Flora didn’t
think
the cabby had several hundred pounds of TNT in the trunk of his beat-up Packard or under the floorboards, but she couldn’t prove he didn’t. And he couldn’t know she hadn’t strapped an explosive belt around her waist. Scary times, all the way around.

As if to prove as much, concrete barricades kept motorcars from getting too close to Congressional Hall. Flora paid the driver. The Packard wheezed away. She approached the building. Despite her status, despite her Congressional ID, security guards went through her handbag and attaché case. A hard-faced policewoman patted her down. She’d got complaints that some of the women who frisked other women enjoyed themselves as much as men would have. She didn’t know what anyone could do about that. This one seemed all business. “You can go on,” she said when she finished.

“Thank you so much,” Flora said. The sarcasm rolled off the policewoman like rain off a tin roof.

Her secretary was in the office before Flora got there. “Good morning, Congresswoman,” she said. “Coffee’s just about ready.”

“Thanks, Bertha. It smells good,” Flora said. “Isn’t it terrible about the bombs this morning?”

“I should say so,” Bertha answered. “I hear the people bomb was one of those horrible Mormons.”

“Was it? How do they know?” Flora asked.

“I don’t know, but I’d believe anything about those people,” her secretary said. “They caused us so much trouble, so much misery—why wouldn’t they go on doing it even now?”

That wasn’t evidence. It wasn’t anything even close to evidence. Flora knew as much, even if Bertha didn’t. The cease-fire in Utah was holding…mostly. But there were Mormons who weren’t ready to give up the fight against the government that had spent a lifetime abusing them. Some didn’t care if they lived or died. The United States were painfully learning that men or women who didn’t value their own lives were the hardest kind of foes to stop.

“What are my appointments this morning?” Flora already knew most of them, but Bertha couldn’t go on ranting about Mormons if she had to check.

“Senator Taft called a few minutes ago and said he’d like to come by,” she answered. “I told him it was all right. I hope that wasn’t wrong?” She didn’t like making mistakes, which made her a good secretary. Flora had known some who just didn’t give a damn one way or the other.

She nodded now. “I’m always glad to see Senator Taft,” she said. They disagreed politically more often than not—they disagreed on almost everything, in fact, except that Jake Featherston needed suppressing. But they had an odd, acrid friendship, each knowing the other was sincere and honest. Flora went on, “Did he say what it was about?”

“Not to me, he didn’t.” Bertha sniffed. “Like a secretary should know what was going on? Noooo.” She stretched the word out into a long sound of complaint.

“All right. I’ll find out when he gets here.” Flora carefully didn’t smile.

Robert Taft came in about twenty minutes later. “Good morning, Flora,” he said. He was only half the man his father had been—literally. He was lean and spare, where William Howard Taft had been wide as a football field. William Howard Taft had been deceptively clever, a good mind darting out from that vast bulk. There was nothing deceptive about Robert Taft’s cool, dry, piercing intelligence.

“Good morning.” Flora brought him a cup of coffee—he would have done the same for her in his office. “What can I do for you today?” She was sure he wanted her to do something; he didn’t waste time on social calls. His father, who’d lived up to the clichés about fat men, had been far more outgoing.

Sure enough, Robert Taft went straight to business: “I want your support for the measure readmitting Kentucky and Tennessee to the United States.”

“Do you really think the time is ripe?” Flora asked. “We don’t hold all of either one—we don’t hold most of Tennessee. I know some white people in Kentucky really are pro-USA. But in Tennessee, we’d only have Negroes to work with, and how many has Jake Featherston left alive?”

“Some Tennessee whites will work with us. You can always find front men,” Taft said, which was probably true. “But the real reason for readmitting them is to show that we aim to end this war by ending the Confederate States, and that Featherston can’t stop us. That was the rationale for reviving Houston, too. And the more states we take back, the more states that fall out of the Confederacy, the more political pressure we put on Richmond. How long will the Confederate people and the Confederate Army go on backing a loser?”

“These U.S. states would be shams—and they’d elect Democrats, not Socialists,” Flora said. “Isn’t that part of what you have in mind?”

“We can work out an arrangement like the one we used in Utah, if that’s what’s troubling you,” Taft said. “As long as they stay under martial law, they don’t vote in national elections. You won’t see the House and Senate swamped with undesirables.” He smiled a wintry smile.

Flora considered. A deal like that only put off the evil day. But it was liable to put off the day for a long time, because no Confederate state would be reconciled to returning to the USA any time soon. Anyone who remembered the interwar histories of Kentucky and Houston knew that. She found herself nodding. “I think we have a deal,” she said.

“H
ere you are, Mr. President.” Lulu set the latest pile of wireless intercepts and press clippings from the USA on Jake Featherston’s desk.

“Thank you kindly,” he said, and put on his reading glasses to go through them. He never let himself be photographed wearing the damned things, but without them print was just a blur these days.

He waited till Lulu left his underground office before he started swearing. She didn’t like it. He could cuss out his generals, but he wouldn’t swear in front of his secretary. That was crazy, but it was how things worked. Of course, he couldn’t stand most of his generals, and he liked Lulu. Keeping her happy mattered to him.

But he had plenty to cuss about. The damnyankees, now that they’d grabbed the ball, showed no signs of wanting to let go of it. Jake shook his head in furious wonder. That wasn’t how things were supposed to work. The Confederate States were supposed to jump on the United States with both feet and never let them up again. Jake had intended to make the CSA the dominant country in North America. What he’d intended and what was going on…didn’t turn out to be the same thing, dammit.

The damnyankees were methodically building up in Tennessee, the same way they’d built up north of the Ohio before slamming down into the Confederacy. The counterattack through the mountain gaps into their flank hadn’t fazed them. Featherston muttered in profane discontent as he shook his head. The counterattack hadn’t fazed them
much.
Without it, they might already be in Chattanooga. Even so, they were gloating about how far they had come.

They were gloating about how well things were going in what they called Houston, too. Part of that was thumbing their noses because they’d revived the state that everyone who lived in it hated. Part of it was a threat; a U.S. officer out there said, “Before too long, we hope to shut down the Confederates’ murder factory near Snyder.”

“Fuck you, asshole,” Featherston growled. That hit him where he lived. Getting rid of the CSA’s Negroes was at least as important as putting the United States in their place, as far as he was concerned. If the Yankees thought they could stop him, they would have to think again.

He made a note to himself to talk to Ferdinand Koenig about that. Before he could do anything about the note, Lulu stuck her head in again and said, “Major General Patton is here to see you, sir.”

“Send him in,” Jake said. Lulu nodded and withdrew.

Patton came in wearing what was practically dress uniform, with medals hanging on his chest in two rows. That wasn’t the way to make Jake Featherston love him. Not that Jake had anything against courage, but he had everything in the world against show-off officers.

Patton’s salute could have come straight out of VMI, too. The holsters on his belt were empty, though; the President’s guards had his pistols. “Mr. President,” he said in his gravelly voice.

“Sit down, General.” Featherston waved Patton to a chair. When Patton had taken his seat, Jake fixed him with his stoniest glare. “You didn’t give me what I needed, General. You didn’t give the country what it needed. What have you got to say for yourself, eh?”

“Two things, sir,” Patton replied. “First is, if you’re not satisfied with me, put in someone you like better and stick me in a penal battalion. I’ll fight for the Confederate States any way you please. Second thing is, whoever you put in my place will have as much trouble succeeding as I did unless we can get some air cover. My men were naked under the sky, and they paid a dreadful price for it.”

Featherston stared at Patton again, this time sourly. The high and mighty general had just taken much of the wind out of his sails. Anyone who volunteered for a penal battalion…Those outfits were made up of officers and men who’d disgraced themselves one way or another. Commanders threw them in wherever the fighting was hottest. Soldiers who redeemed themselves could earn their old rank back. Most of the poor damned bastards ended up as casualties instead. They were there to end up as casualties, and with luck, to help the cause a little before they did.

“I goddamn well ought to throw you in a penal battalion,” Jake growled, but even he could hear his heart wasn’t fully in it.

“Do whatever you need to do, Mr. President. I’ll go.” Patton was nearly as stubborn as Jake was himself.

“I’ll get more mileage out of you if I keep you in command.” Featherston didn’t like that conclusion, but he’d had to deal with a lot of things he didn’t like lately. “Can you hold Chattanooga?”

“I can try,” Patton answered. “If they mass enough force to outweigh us six to one or something like that, though, I don’t know how I’ll manage it. I’m a better than decent general, sir, but I don’t work miracles.”

“Will you fight house by house and block by block, make those damnyankee sons of bitches pay the way we paid in Pittsburgh?”

“Yes, sir.” Patton didn’t hesitate. In that, too, he was like the President of the CSA.

“All right, then. Go do it,” Featherston said. It wasn’t all right, or anywhere close to all right, but Jake came from the school that didn’t believe in showing where it hurt. Anything that gave anyone a grip on you was to be avoided.

Patton rose and saluted again. “You won’t be sorry, sir. Or if you are, I’ll be too dead to know about it.” Without waiting for a reply, he did a smart about-turn and marched out of the office: a procession of one.

“I’m already sorry,” Jake muttered. He was sorry he had to use an attacking general to defend. He was sorry he had to defend so deep inside the Confederacy. He’d planned to fight this war almost entirely on U.S. soil. Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?

He walked to the door and asked Lulu, “Who’s next?”

“General Potter, Mr. President.” She sniffed. She didn’t like Clarence Potter—mostly because Jake Featherston didn’t like him.

Jake hid a smile. That was about as funny as anything he had going on these days. But like Potter or not, the President knew he was useful. “Send him in.”

“Yes, sir.” Lulu sighed.

Although Jake felt like sighing, too, he didn’t, not around Potter. He didn’t trust the Intelligence officer enough to show that he didn’t enjoy his company. All he said after the usual formalities was, “Being in the line isn’t as easy as it looks, is it?”

“No, sir. It’s like juggling knives when someone’s shooting at your feet,” Potter answered. “Maybe experience helps. I hope to God it does, anyway. I’ve got a little now—the hard way. They were grabbing for anybody they could find with wreaths on his collar, and they tapped me. I gave it my best shot. What else could I do?”

“Go out there and kick those Yankees’ asses?” Featherston suggested, not at all sardonically.

“Sir, I would have loved to,” Potter said. “But we hardly even got to the front, let alone fought there. U.S. air power chewed us to pieces coming through the gaps—slowed us down, gave us casualties, tore the crap out of our trucks and armor. We wouldn’t have been in good shape even if we had done more fighting. We need more airplanes and more pilots.”

“We need more of everything, goddammit,” Jake said.

“Yes, sir. We do.” With four words, Potter skewered every Freedom Party policy—every policy of Jake Featherston’s—at least as far back as the President’s first inauguration. And Featherston couldn’t do one damn thing about it, because all the cross-grained Intelligence officer had done was agree with him.

In lieu of snarling at him for agreeing, Jake asked, “Were you able to keep putting Professor FitzBelmont’s feet to the fire while you were in the field?”

“By messenger, yes, sir,” Potter answered. “It meant letting one more man in on the secret, but Chuck doesn’t blab. And I figured that was better than doing it by telephone or wire or letter. With a messenger in the know, I could really speak my mind.”

“Fair enough,” Jake said. “FitzBelmont’s got to know how bad we need that bomb, and how important it is for us to get it before the United States do.” If the Confederate States got uranium bombs ahead of the USA and kept on getting more of them, shortages of everything else—even airplanes, even manpower—would stop mattering. If the CSA had uranium bombs and the USA didn’t, the Confederacy would damn well win.