He could speak clear English when he wanted to. Why didn't he want to more often? "On the western flank, Birmingham and Huntsville are pretty much in the bag," Morrell said. "We're hitting Selma and Mobile hard from the air. We'll get to 'em before too long. New Orleans…Well, we can bomb it. If we smash the levees, we can flood a lot of it. But we won't get soldiers there any time soon."
"A reasonable estimate," Abell agreed. "And in the east?"
"I'm shifting most of the effort there up into South Carolina," Morrell replied. "Charleston, Columbia…If the General Staff has a different idea, I expect you'll let me know." He wondered if that was part of the reason he'd been summoned to Philadelphia. What did they think he would do if he stayed down in the Confederacy and got orders he didn't like? Set up on his own? He admired Napoleon as a soldier, but not as a politician.
"At present, no. That seems adequate, or more than adequate," John Abell said. He acted nervous, though.
For a moment, that made no sense at all to Morrell. The United States was manifestly winning the war. They'd cut the CSA in half. The campaign in Virginia was going well at last. Even the minor struggles in Arkansas and Sequoyah and west Texas all inclined toward the USA. So why wasn't Abell even happier?
Morrell didn't expect hosannas and backflips from the General Staff officer. He'd known Abell too long and too well for that. But still…Then a light went on, a light as bright and terrible as the sun. "That goddamn superbomb!" Morrell exclaimed. "How close is Featherston?" He didn't ask how close his own country was. That, he assumed, would be a secret more tightly held than the other.
"Ah. Good. You do understand the basic difficulty under which we labor," Abell said. "The answer is, we just don't know-and that is our principal area of concern at this point in time."
"I can see how it might be," Morrell said dryly. If the Confederates could blow a city off the map with one bomb, they hadn't lost yet, not by a long chalk. "We are trying to do something about this?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," John Abell said. "Before too much longer, the question may be moot, but at the moment it remains relevant."
And what was that supposed to mean? Were the United States about to capture the CSA's superbomb works? Or was his country close to getting a superduperbomb of its own? "Anything you can tell me without bringing the wrath of the great god Security down on your head?" Morrell inquired.
"Our own research along those lines is making good progress," Abell said, and not another word.
Even that much was more than Morrell expected. "Well, all right," he said, and took out two packs of Dukes. He pulled a cigarette from one and stuck it in his mouth; the other he tossed on Abell's desk. "Here you go. Spoils of war."
"Thanks." Abell opened the pack and held out a cigarette. Morrell gave him a light. The General Staff officer never went near the front. He probably got sick of the nasty U.S. tobacco-unless other officers who wanted to stay on his good side kept him in smokes. Maybe his desk was full of them. You never could tell.
"Those bombs are going to change the way we fight. They'll change the way everybody fights," Morrell said.
"We are commencing studies on that topic," Abell said.
"How? We don't know enough yet," Morrell said. "And that reminds me-how come the Kaiser hasn't flattened London or Paris? Did he only have the one bomb? How long till he gets another one?"
"I don't know the answer to that," Abell replied, "but I do have an idea why Petrograd went up in smoke and the Western capitals haven't."
"I'm all ears," Morrell said.
"Prevailing winds," Abell told him. "These bombs spew poison into the air, and the wind can carry it a long way. From Petrograd, the stuff goes deeper into Russia. From London or Paris, the Germans could give themselves a present."
"A present they want like a hole in the head," Morrell said. John Abell nodded. Morrell stubbed out his cigarette and shuddered. "That makes these damn things even worse than I thought."
"The only thing worse than using them on somebody is somebody else using them on you," Abell said.
"Have we stopped the Confederates from using one on us?"
"We hope so."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Morrell asked.
"They're working on this thing in a Virginia mountain town. We have bombed it so heavily, next to nothing is left aboveground," the General Staff officer replied.
Morrell had listened to a lot of presentations. He could hear what wasn't said as well as what was. "What are they doing underground?"
"Well, we don't precisely know." Abell sounded as uncomfortable as he ever did. "They've burrowed like moles since the bombing started. That's why I hope we've kept their program from producing a uranium bomb, but I can't be sure we have."
"Terrific," Morrell said. "How do we find out for sure?"
"If they use one on us, we failed," Abell said. "It's as simple as that, I'm afraid."
"Oh, boy," Morrell said in distinctly hollow tones. "That's encouraging." He looked up at God only knew how many feet of steel and concrete over his head. "If they drop one on Philadelphia, will it get us all the way down here?"
"I don't think they can do that, anyhow," Abell replied. "I'm told a uranium bomb is too heavy for any airplane they have. We're having to modify our bombers to carry the load."
"Mm. Well, I guess that's good news. So they've got to wait till their rockets get out of short pants, then? Or do they have an extra-special rocket ready to go?"
"We don't believe so," John Abell said. "But then, we didn't know about the ones they do have till they started firing them at us."
"Tell you one thing," Morrell said as he lit another cigarette. Abell made a questioning noise. Morrell explained: "You sure know how to cheer a guy up."
Y ankee bombers still didn't come over Lexington, Virginia, very often in the daytime. C.S. fighters and heavy flak made that an expensive proposition. Clarence Potter thanked God for small favors. He would have thanked God more for big ones, but the Deity didn't seem inclined to give the Confederate States any of those nowadays.
A crane swayed a crate into the cargo bed of a truck that looked ordinary but wasn't. This machine had a very special suspension. Even so, the springs groaned as the crate came down.
Potter watched the loading process with Professor Henderson FitzBelmont. "You're sure this damn thing will work?" Potter said.
FitzBelmont looked at him. "No."
"Thanks a lot, Professor," Potter said. "You sure know how to cheer a guy up."
"Would you rather have me lie to you?" FitzBelmont asked.
"Right now, I really think I would," Clarence Potter told him. "I hate to try this if there's an even-money chance we'll get nothing but a squib."
FitzBelmont shrugged. "It's untested. Ideally, we would have more time and more weapons. Things being as they are…"
"Well, yes. There is that," Potter said. Just getting back to Lexington from Petersburg had been nightmare enough. "All right. We'll try it, and we'll see what happens, that's all. Wish us luck."
"I do," Professor FitzBelmont said. "In my own way, I'm a patriot, too." His way wasn't so different from Potter's. Neither man went around shouting, Freedom! They both loved the Confederate States all the same.
Potter climbed into the cab of the truck next to the driver, a sergeant. "We ready, sir?" the noncom asked in accents not much different from Potter's own.
"If we're not, we never will be-which is, of course, always a possibility," the Intelligence officer said. The sergeant looked confused. "We're ready, Wilton," Potter assured him. "Now we see what happens."
Several command cars and armored cars rolled north and slightly east with the special truck. Everybody in them spoke the same kind of English as Clarence Potter: all the men could pass for Yankees, in other words. Both sides had used that trick during the war whenever they thought they could get away with it. One more time, Potter thought. It's coming down toward the end, but we're going to try it one more time.