"What was there is either up here or down in Georgia," Forrest replied. "It has been for weeks." He paused, then licked his lips and asked, "Are you sure you aren't overworked, Mr. President?"
"I'm tired of nobody doin' what needs doin'-I sure am tired o' that," Jake growled.
"That's…not quite what I meant, sir." Nathan Bedford Forrest III licked his lips again. "Don't you think the strain of command has been a little too much for you? Shouldn't you take a rest, sir, and come back to duty when you're refreshed and ready to face it again?"
"Well, I don't rightly know," Featherston said slowly. "Do you really reckon I'm off?"
"The war hasn't gone the way we wish it would have, and that's a fact." Forrest sounded relieved-and surprised-that Jake wasn't hitting the armored ceiling in fourteen different places. "Maybe somebody with a fresh slant on things can stop the damnyankees, or at least get a peace we can live with out of them."
"I suppose it's possible, but I wouldn't bet on it." Under the desk, out of the general's sight, Jake's left hand hesitated between two buttons. The first one, the closer one, would send the nearest guards rushing into the office. But the chief of the General Staff plainly had a coup in mind. If he hadn't suborned those guards, he wasn't worth the paper he was printed on. "Who do you have in mind to take over afterwards? You?" Keep the son of a bitch talking. Jake's finger came down on the other button.
"I'll take military command," Nathan Bedford Forrest III replied. "But I think Vice President Partridge is the better man to talk peace with the United States. Everything stays nice and constitutional that way." He was keeping Jake talking, too, waiting till his men got here to back his play.
You stupid piece of shit. Only way to get me out of this chair is to murder me. Featherston let a little anger show, but only a little-the sort he might show if he was thinking of stepping down. "Do you reckon even the Yankees are dumb enough to take Don Partridge seriously?" he demanded. "I sure as hell don't."
"If he's speaking in the name of the President, or as the President, they'll have to listen to him." Nathan Bedford Forrest's eyes kept slipping toward the door and then jerking back to Jake. The President of the CSA wanted to look that way, too, but he didn't. He had more discipline in his pinkie than Forrest did in his whole worthless carcass.
"So who all figures the country'd be better off without me?" Jake asked. "Don must be in on this, too, right? How about Clarence Potter? He's a fellow with pretty fair judgment-always has been." He was also a fellow Featherston had suspected for years.
To his surprise, Forrest shook his head. "As a matter of fact, no. He thinks you're the best war leader we've got. I used to think so, too, but-"
He broke off. There was a commotion outside, shouts and screams and then a couple of gunshots and more screams and shouts. One of the bullets punched through what was supposed to be bulletproof glass in the door. Almost spent, it ricocheted off the wall above Jake's head and fell harmlessly to the floor.
An instant later, the door flew open with a crash. Four soldiers in camouflage uniforms burst into the President's office. Jake and Nathan Bedford Forrest III pointed at each other. "Arrest that man!" they both yelled.
Four automatic-rifle muzzles bore on the chief of the General Staff. So did the.45 Jake Featherston plucked from a desk drawer. "Hold it right there, traitor!" one of the soldiers roared.
"Freedom!" the other three shouted. They were Party Guards, not Army men. Nathan Bedford Forrest III seemed to notice that for the first time. His face turned gray as tobacco smoke. Jake Featherston watched with almost clinical interest. He'd never seen a man go that color before-not a live man, anyhow.
"How-?" Forrest gasped. That used up all the breath he had in him. He might have been a hooked crappie, drowning in air he couldn't breathe.
"What? You reckon I've only got one set of guards round this place?" Jake said. "You might be dumb enough to do something like that, but I sure ain't." He turned to the men who'd rescued him. "Make sure everything's secure down here. You find anybody you don't figure you can rely on, grab the son of a bitch. We'll sort out who's what later on. In the meantime, we squeeze answers out of this asshole. He'll sing. He'll sing like a fucking canary."
"You bet, boss." One of the Freedom Party Guards-a troop leader-grinned a sharp-toothed grin. "Once we get going, we can make a rock sing." The three-striper laughed.
So did Featherston. "He won't be a rock," he predicted. Part of him wanted to laugh at what an amateurish excuse for a coup Nathan Bedford Forrest III tried to bring off. Talking him into stepping down of his own accord! If that wasn't the dumbest thing in the world, Jake didn't know what would be. "Your granddad'd be ashamed of you," he told Forrest.
"Great-grandfather. And no, he wouldn't-he didn't like tyrants any better than I do," the suddenly former chief of the General Staff replied. He could talk a good game, but some games weren't about talk, and he'd never figured that out.
"Take him away," Jake said. He didn't want to argue with Forrest, and he didn't have to, either. But the other man hadn't the least idea what he meant. If the original Nathan Bedford Forrest planned a coup, he would have done it right. This smudgy carbon copy-hardly a Forrest at all in looks, except for the eyes-didn't know the first thing about how to manage one.
Away he went, perhaps too numb to realize yet what kind of hell he was heading for. Well, he'd find out pretty damn quick. The only thing that excused a plot was winning. Failure brought its own punishment.
Jake went out into the antechamber. Lulu sat at her desk as calmly as if two Army men didn't lie dead not ten feet away. "I knew you'd take care of that foolishness, Mr. President," she said. "Shall we call somebody to get rid of this carrion?"
"Mm-not quite yet," Featherston answered. "Let me bring in some more men I'm sure I can count on." The worst thing about having somebody mount a coup was being unable to trust the people around you afterwards.
But if he couldn't count on the Freedom Party Guards, he couldn't count on anybody-and if he couldn't count on anybody, Nathan Bedford Forrest III's strike would have worked like a charm. Jake went back to the telephone on his desk. Had Forrest had the brains to suborn the operator and keep the President from getting hold of loyal troops? That might make things dicey, even now.
But no. Within a minute, Featherston was talking with a regimental commander named Wilcy Hoyt, who promised to secure the Gray House grounds with his troops. "Freedom!" Hoyt said fervently as he rang off.
Would the men who backed Forrest fight? Would they try to take Jake out, reckoning it was their best chance? In their shoes, Featherston would have done that. He still had his.45. But the pistol was there to protect him against a visitor who turned out to be an assassin. It wouldn't help much against a squad of soldiers determined to do him in.
As soon as he got off the telephone with Hoyt, he went out and grabbed an automatic rifle from one of the dead guards. Even that wouldn't do him as much good as he wished, but it was better than the pistol. If he had to go down, he aimed to go down fighting.
"Will there be more shooting, Mr. President?" Lulu asked.
"Well, I don't know for sure, but there may be," Jake answered.
"Hand me that other rifle, then," his secretary said.
Featherston stared at her as if she'd suddenly started speaking Swahili. "You know how to use it?"
"Would I ask if I didn't?" she said.