In the meantime…In the meantime, it was just the ship and the sea. For George, that wasn't so bad.
R ichmond. The front was Richmond. In the bunker under the ruins of the Gray House, Jake Featherston shook his fist toward the north and cursed a God Who seemed to be cursing him and the CSA.
Ever since the war started, people were saying that whoever could do two big things at once would win. The Confederacy had never managed it. Neither had the damnyankees…till now. They were still going great guns down in Georgia. And they were pushing out of the Wilderness and heading straight for the Confederate capital.
U.S. artillery hadn't fallen on Richmond yet. The ground between the Rapidan and the capital was likely the most heavily fortified stretch on the face of the earth. If the Yankees came, they had to come that way. Both sides knew it. Whatever artifice could do to stop them, artifice had done.
But along with artifice, the Confederate States needed men-men they didn't have. Too many soldiers had died in the Great War. Too many had died or gone off into captivity in Ohio and especially Pennsylvania this time around. And too many were doing everything they could to fight the USA farther south. That left a lot of the bunkers and gun emplacements between the Rapidan and Richmond nothing more than…what did the Bible call them? Whited sepulchers, that was it.
Featherston jumped when the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah?" he said harshly.
"Lord Halifax on the line, sir," Lulu said.
"Put him through," Jake said at once. Was a rat deserting the sinking ship?
"Mr. President?" That plummy British accent.
"What's up?" Jake asked the ambassador. If Halifax was bailing out, he'd put a flea in the bastard's ear, all right.
"I have some papers you may perhaps be interested in seeing," the British ambassador said.
"Well, bring 'em on over, then," Jake told him. He was so relieved that Halifax was staying put, he couldn't refuse him anything.
When Halifax got there, it gave Jake an excuse to throw out Nathan Bedford Forrest III. He didn't want to listen to the chief of the General Staff anyhow; Forrest was too gloomy to be worth listening to. By the noises he made, he feared Richmond would fall. Even if that was true, Jake didn't want to hear it. So he bundled Forrest out and brought in the ambassador instead. "What's up?" he asked again.
Lord Halifax opened his fancy attachй case: buttery leather polished till it gleamed, with clasps that looked like real gold. He pulled out a document held together with a fat paper clip. "Here you are, Mr. President. I honestly didn't believe they would turn these loose, but they did. You must have made an even more favorable impression on the Prime Minister than I thought. He does admire a…purposeful man, no doubt of that."
Jake Featherston hardly heard him. He was flipping through the papers. He didn't understand more than one word in ten, and he didn't understand any of the math. But he knew the word uranium when he saw it. And he knew about element 94, even if the limeys were calling it churchillium and not jovium.
"Did your scientists name it after Winston because it's supposed to make a big boom when it goes off?" he asked with a sly grin.
"Officially, it's a compliment to his office. We call 93 mosleyium after the Minister of War," Halifax replied. "Unofficially…well, I shouldn't wonder if you're right."
"I'll get this to our people who can use it just as quick as I can," Jake said. "And I want you to thank Winston for me from the bottom of my heart. What he did here, it means a lot to the country and it means a lot to me personally."
"He found your point about the need to continue the struggle against the United States by any means necessary alarmingly persuasive," Lord Halifax said. "If you fail, Britain is most dismally surrounded by the Yankees and the Huns."
"How close are you to getting one of these bombs?" Jake asked.
The British ambassador shrugged narrow shoulders. "Haven't the foggiest, I'm afraid. Were I not ambassador to a country also taking part in this research, I doubt I should know there is any such thing as uranium."
"Mm-makes sense," Featherston allowed. That was the only reason the Confederate envoys in London and Paris knew about uranium and what you might be able to do with it. But they hadn't been able to pry anything out of England or France. He damn well had.
"Will you be able to hold Richmond, sir?" Halifax asked.
"Hope so," Jake said. "But even if we don't, we'll keep fighting. As long as we've got a puncher's chance, we'll hang on. And with this"-he tapped the document with a nicotine-stained forefinger-"we do."
"Very good," the British ambassador said. But he meant it the way limeys did, so it might have been all right. He didn't mean it was very good, just that he'd heard. "I shall convey your determination to London. Bombing is picking up there, I'm afraid, though it's not so bad as here."
"Damn squareheads have airfields closer to you now," Jake said. Lord Halifax looked like a man who'd just sat on a tack but was too polite to mention it. Featherston knew why. He hadn't been…diplomatic. Well, too bad, he thought. He'd told the truth, hadn't he? He'd told the truth all the time while he rose-it looked that way to him, anyhow. He didn't see any point to stopping now.
And he was telling the truth again. The Kaiser's forces had bundled the British out of northwestern Germany, out of Holland, and back into Belgium. They were threatening Ypres-universally pronounced Wipers by English-speakers-again, as they had in the Great War. When it fell then, it was a sign that the Entente couldn't hold on against the Central Powers. If it fell this time around, it would be another verse of the same song.
"We are doing everything in our power to deny them the use of those air bases," Halifax said.
"Sure, sure." Jake nodded and smiled. He probably should have kept his mouth shut even if he did tell the truth. Didn't he owe Halifax that much? The ambassador-and his government, of course-had come through for the Confederacy in a big way. "Between us, your Lordship, sir, we'll lick the bad guys yet."
"Between us, yes. And the French and the Russians will have something to say about it as well." Lord Halifax grimaced again. "I worry about the Russians. Failure the last time around cost them the Ukraine and Finland and Poland and the Baltic states and a Red insurrection at least as unpleasant as yours." He was being diplomatic; the Tsar's fight against the Reds had been bigger and bloodier than anything the CSA went through. After a pause to light a Habana, he continued, "They're wavering again, I fear. When they couldn't beat the Germans, or even the Austrians…If they go out, heaven only knows what sort of upheaval will follow."
"Hell with that," Featherston said. "If they go out now, you and France get the shaft. The Kaiser can pull everything away from the east and shoot it all at you."
"Quite." British reserve had its uses. Lord Halifax got as much mileage from one soft-spoken word as Jake would have from five minutes of cussing. He rose and held out an elegantly manicured hand. "Always a pleasure, Mr. President. I do hope the document proves valuable to you."
"I'm sure it will be." I'll know just how valuable by this time tomorrow, Jake thought as he shook it. Aloud, he went on, "England's always been the best friend the Confederacy has. We know that, and we never forget it."
One more time, the truth. English recognition in 1862, English forcing of the U.S. blockade, had ensured the Confederacy's independence. English help during the Second Mexican War made sure the CSA got to keep Chihuahua and Sonora, even if an invasion of the USA from Canada came to grief in Montana.