"'Cause I went to college up there a million years ago, and I wanted to fit in," Potter replied. "And if I had a dime for every time I've answered that question, I'd be too rich to worry about an Army post."
"Reckon we'll go through security before we get real far into Petersburg." The driver sounded as if he was looking forward to it, which meant he didn't completely believe Potter. And if I had a dime for that, too… the Intelligence officer thought.
He figured Petersburg would be something out of Dante, and he was right. Soldiers and bureaucrats and civilian refugees thrombosed the streets. People moved forward by shouting and waving fists and sometimes by shooting guns in the air. Potter saw bodies hanging from lampposts. Some said DESERTER. Others said SPY. He felt the driver's eye on him, but pretended he didn't.
Sure as hell, there were security checkpoints almost every block. "Papers!" the soldiers or Freedom Party Guards-more and more Guards as Potter neared the center of town-would shout. The wreathed stars on his collar meant nothing to them. Considering that Nathan Bedford Forrest III and other high-ranking officers had risen against Jake Featherston, that made more sense than Potter wished it did.
Then a Freedom Party Guard checked off his name on a clipboard. "You're on our list," said the man in a camouflage smock. "You come with me right now." By the way he jerked the muzzle of his automatic rifle, Potter would be sorry if he didn't-although perhaps not for long.
"Where are you taking me?" Potter asked.
"Never mind that. Get out of your auto and come along," the Party Guard said.
Not seeing any other choice but starting a firefight he couldn't hope to win, Potter got out of the Birmingham. "Good luck, sir," the driver said.
"Thanks." Potter hoped he wouldn't need it, but it never hurt.
None of his escort-captors?-demanded the pistol on his belt. He wondered whether that was a good omen or simply an oversight. One way or the other, he figured he'd find out before long. "Now that we've got him, what the hell do we do with him?" another Party Guard asked.
The one who'd decided Potter was a wanted man checked the clipboard again. "We take him to the Lawn, that's what," he answered.
It meant something to the other Freedom Party Guard, if not to Clarence Potter. The security troops hustled him along. Nobody laid a finger on him, but nobody let him slow down, either: not quite a frog-march, but definitely something close.
The Lawn, on Sycamore near the corner of Liberty, turned out to be a tall red-brick house much overgrown by ivy. The grass in front of it had gone yellow-brown from winter cold. More Freedom Party Guards manned a barbed-wire perimeter outside the house. They relieved Potter of the.45 before letting him go forward. Before he could go inside, a stonefaced Army captain gave him the most thorough-and most intimate-patting down he'd ever had the displeasure to get.
"Do you want me to turn my head and cough?" he asked as the captain's probing fingers found another sensitive spot.
"That won't be necessary." The young officer didn't change expression at all.
"Necessary…sir?" Potter suggested. He didn't usually stand on military ceremony, but he was sick and tired of being treated like a dangerous piece of meat.
He watched the captain think it over. The process took much longer than he thought it should have. At last, grudgingly, the man nodded. "You are on the list, and it looks like you're clean. So…it won't be necessary, sir. Are you happy…sir?"
"Dancing in the goddamn daisies," Potter replied.
That got the ghost of a grin from the young captain. "Go on in, then, sir." No audible pause this time. "The boss will take care of you."
"Who-?" Clarence Potter began, but the captain had already forgotten about him. Somebody else was coming up to the Lawn, and needed frisking. Those educated hands had more work to do. Muttering, Potter went on in. When he saw Lulu typing on a card table set up in the foyer, he figured out what was going on.
She paused when she recognized him. He almost laughed at the sniff she let out. She never had liked him-she never thought he was loyal enough to the President. But it wasn't funny any more. The way things were these days, suspicion of disloyalty was liable to be a capital offense.
"General Potter," the President's secretary said.
"Hello, Lulu," Potter answered gravely. "Is he all right?"
"He's just fine." She got to her feet. "You stay right there"-as if he were likely to go anywhere. "I'll tell him you're here." The Confederate States of America might be going down the drain, but you couldn't tell from the way Lulu acted. She came back a moment later. "He wants to see you. This way, please."
This way took him through the living room, down a hall, past four more guards-any one of whom looked able to tear him in half without breaking a sweat-and into a bedroom. Jake Featherston was shouting into a telephone: "Don't just sit there with your thumb up your ass, goddammit! Hurry!" He slammed the handset down.
Lulu's cough said she disapproved of the bad language even more than of the man she escorted. "General Potter is here to see you, sir," she said. She still didn't care for Potter, though, not even a little bit.
"Thank you, darling," Jake said. Watching him sweet-talk his secretary never failed to bemuse Potter. He wouldn't have bet Featherston could do it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes again and again. "Come in, Potter. Sit down." He pointed to a chair. "Lulu, hon, please close the door on your way out." Please! Who would have thought it was in the President's vocabulary?
Lulu gave Potter a fishy stare, but she did as Jake Featherston asked. "Reporting as ordered, Mr. President," Potter said, sinking into the overstuffed chair. It was all red velvet and brass nails, and looked like something from a Victorian brothel.
"How close are they to a uranium bomb?" Featherston didn't waste time or politeness on Potter. The President looked like helclass="underline" pale and haggard and skinny, with big dark circles under his eyes. How much did he sleep? Did he sleep at all? Potter wouldn't have bet on it.
"They're getting closer, sir," he answered. "They're talking about months now, not years-if the damnyankees' bombs don't set them back again."
"Months! Jesus Christ! We can't wait months!" Jake howled. "Haven't they noticed? This goddamn country's falling apart around their ears! Atlanta! Richmond! Savannah's going, and God only knows how long Birmingham will last. We need that fucker, and we need it yesterday. Not tomorrow, not today-yesterday! Months!" He rolled his eyes up to the heavens.
"Sir, I'm just telling you what Professor FitzBelmont told me," Potter said. "He also said that if you think you can find someone who'll do it better and faster, you should put him in charge."
Featherston swore. "There isn't anybody like that, is there?"
"If there is, Mr. President, I sure don't know about him," Potter answered. "Shall we try disrupting the U.S. program again?"
"What the fuck difference does it make?" Featherston said bitterly. That alarmed Potter, who'd never before heard him back away from anything. Even more bitterly, the President went on, "Shit, they're licking us without uranium bombs. I never would've reckoned they could, but they damn well are. Makes you wonder if we deserve to live, doesn't it?"
"No, sir. I have to believe that," Potter said. "This is my country. I'll do everything I can for it."
Featherston cocked his head to one side. "Ask you something?"
"You're the President, sir. How can I say no?"
"You sure never had any trouble before. But how come you didn't throw in with Bedford Forrest III and the rest of those bastards?"
"Sir, we're in a war. We need you. We need you bad. Whoever they brought in instead would have been worse. Chances are the Yankees wouldn't have made peace with him, either, not this side of-what do they call it?-unconditional surrender. That kills us. Way it looks to me is, we've got to keep fighting, because all our other choices are worse. Maybe the slide-rule brigade can save us. It's the best hope we've got, anyhow."