They smoked for a couple of drags apiece. Potter knocked ash into a brass astray on the desk. He said, “If you think you’ve intrigued me… you’re right, dammit.”
The chief of the General Staff grinned at him, unabashed. “I hoped I might, to tell you the truth. I’m getting up a volunteer battalion I’m going to want you to help me vet.”
“Are you? A battalion of our people who can sound like damn-yankees?” Potter asked. Forrest nodded. Potter sucked in smoke till the coal at the end of his cigarette glowed a furious red. After he let it out, he aimed another question at his superior: “Are you putting them in U.S. uniforms, too?”
Nathan Bedford Forrest III didn’t jump. Instead, he froze into immobility. He clicked his tongue between his teeth after fifteen seconds or so of silence. “Well, General,” he said at last, “you didn’t get the job you’ve got on account of you’re a damn fool. If I didn’t know that already, you just rubbed my nose in it like I’m a puppy getting house-trained.”
“If they’re captured in enemy uniform, the United States will shoot them for spies,” Potter said. “We won’t be able to say boo about it, either. Under the laws of war, they’ll have the right.”
“I understand that. Everybody who goes forward with this will understand it, too,” Forrest answered. “You have my word on that, General. I already told you once, this is a project for volunteers.”
“All right,” Potter said. “But I did want to remind you. As a matter of fact, for something like that I was obliged to remind you. So where exactly do I fit in?”
“You’re the fellow who’s been running people who can sound like damnyankees and act like damnyankees.” Forrest stubbed out his smoke and reached for the pack to have another one. When he offered it to Potter this time, Potter shook his head. The chief of the General Staff lit up again. He sucked in smoke, then continued, “If they can be halfway convincing to you, they’ll be good enough to convince the enemy, too.”
“It’s not just accent.” Potter scratched his chin as he thought. “You can get away with flattening out the vowels some. Even swallowing r’s might make the Yankees think you’re from Boston or somewhere up there-what even the Yankees call a Yankee. But some things will kill you if the USA hears ’em coming out of your mouth.”
“Banknote is one,” Forrest said. “I know they say bill instead.”
“Just about everybody knows that one-just about everybody thinks about money a good deal,” Potter agreed. Nathan Bedford Forrest III laughed, though Potter hadn’t been kidding, or not very much. He went on, “They don’t say tote up there, either-it’s carry. And they mostly say bucket instead of pail, though you might get by with that one. You won’t ever get away with windscreen; they always say windshield. They might think somebody who says windscreen is an Englishman, but that won’t help anybody in a U.S. uniform much, either.”
“No, not hardly.” Forrest laughed once more: a grim laugh.
“What will you be using them for?” Potter quickly held up his right hand. “No, don’t tell me. Let me figure it out.” He thought for a little while, then nodded-at least as much to himself as to his superior. “Infiltrators. They have to be infiltrators. Get them behind the lines, giving false directions, sabotaging vehicles, putting explosives in ammunition dumps, and they’ll be worth a lot more than a battalion of ordinary men.”
Again, Forrest gave him a careful once-over before speaking. When he did, he said, “Shall I put you in an operational slot, Potter? If you want your own division, it’s yours for the asking.”
“I think I can do the damnyankees more harm right where I am, sir,” Potter replied. Nathan Bedford Forrest III didn’t argue with him. He thought a bit more. “Do you know what the really elegant part of the scheme is? As soon as the damnyankees realize we’ve got men behind their lines like that, nobody in a green-gray uniform will trust anybody he doesn’t know. And that’ll last for the rest of the goddamn war.”
Forrest slowly nodded. He looked like a man trying to show nothing on his face at a poker table. Did that mean he or whoever’d come up with the notion hadn’t thought so far ahead? Potter would have bet it did. He almost asked, but checked himself. That might have looked like showing off.
One other thing did occur to him, though: “You know they’ll do the same thing to us? They just about have to, if for no other reason than to make us as scared of our own shadows as they will be.”
“I’ll… take that up with the President,” Forrest said. Were the raiders in Yankee uniform Jake Featherston’s idea? Potter wouldn’t have been surprised; Featherston had a genius for making trouble in nasty ways. He also had the gifted amateur’s problem of not seeing all the consequences of his troublemaking.
This long war, for instance. He really thought Al Smith would make peace. Potter muttered unhappily. If only the Yankees would have quit. Jake Featherston would have gone down in history then, no doubt about it. Things wouldn’t be so easy now. He asked Forrest, “What do you think of Charlie La Follette?”
“We’ll just have to see,” the chief of the General Staff replied. “So far, he sounds like Smith. But who knows what he’ll be like once he gets out from under the other fellow’s shadow? How about you? You probably know more about him than I do.”
“I doubt it. Who pays attention to the Vice President?” Potter said, and Forrest laughed, again for all the world as if he’d been joking. He went on, “I think you’ve got it about right. Doesn’t look like he’s going to pack in the war.”
“No, it sure doesn’t. Too bad. It’d make our lives easier if he did, that’s for damn sure,” Forrest said-one more thing Potter thought he had about right.
They’d pulled Armstrong Grimes’ regiment, or what was left of it, out of the lines in Utah for a while. The corporal and his buddies had to march away. The powers that be saved most of their trucks to haul men to and from fights they thought more important than the one against the Mormon rebels.
Marching out meant he and his fellow survivors tramped past the men coming up to take their places in Provo. Telling who was who couldn’t have been easier. The new fish had fresh uniforms, and carried very full packs on their backs. They were clean-shaven. They looked bright and eager.
Armstrong and the rest of the veterans stank. He couldn’t remember when he’d last bathed or changed his underwear. He was as whiskery as any of the others. His uniform had seen better days, too. He carried nothing he couldn’t do without. And his eyes went every which way at once. They were the eyes of a man who never knew which way trouble was coming from, only that it was coming.
Most of the soldiers pulling out had eyes like that. The rest just stared straight ahead as they trudged along. The thousand-yard stare belonged to men who’d seen and done too much. Maybe rest would turn them back into soldiers again. Maybe nothing would. The way war was these days, it had no trouble overwhelming a man.
Some of the veterans jeered at the rookies: “Aren’t you pretty?” “Aren’t you sweet?” “Do your mothers know you’re here?” “Where do you want your body sent?”
The men going into the line didn’t say much in return. They eyed the troops they were replacing like people in a zoo eyeing tigers and wolves. But no bars stood between them and the veterans. They plainly feared they’d get bitten if they teased the animals. They were right, too.
“Got a cigarette, Sarge?” Grimes asked. He was a big man-he’d been a second-string lineman on his high-school football team what seemed a million years ago and was actually just over one. Under the whiskers, his face was long and oval like his mother’s, but he had his old man’s dark hair and eyes.