Drive to the East

Catching his foul mood, Goldman said, “Don’t worry about it, Mr. President. When you go on the wireless and let the United States know you’re still here, that will hurt them worse than losing a big city.”

Again, the Director of Communications made sense. Jake found himself nodding, whether he wanted to or not. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “They can’t afford to come after me like that all the time. They won’t have any airplanes or pilots left if they do, on account of we’ll blow ’em all to hell and gone.” He pointed to Goldman. “Make sure there’s a studio waiting for me just as soon as these Yankee bastards let up, Saul.”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” Goldman promised.

He was as good as his word, too. He always was. That by itself made him somebody to cherish. Most people did what they could and gave excuses for the rest. Saul Goldman did what he said he’d do. So did Jake himself. People hadn’t believed him. He’d taken more than sixteen years, a lot of them lean and hungry, to get to the top. Now that he’d arrived, he was doing just what he’d told folks he would. Some people had the nerve to act surprised. Hadn’t they been listening, dammit?

An armored limousine took him to a studio. Nothing short of a direct hit by a bomb would make this baby blink. Jake had already survived two assassination attempts, not counting this latest one from the USA. Except when his blood was up, the way it had been during the air raid, he didn’t believe in taking u

By now, sitting down in front of a microphone was second nature to him. He’d been a jump ahead of the Whigs and Radical Liberals in figuring out what wireless could do for a politician, and he still used it better than anybody else in the CSA or the USA. Having Saul Goldman on his side helped. He knew that. But he had himself on his side, too, and he was his own best advertisement.

In the room next door, the engineer held up one finger-one minute till airtime. Jake waved back at the glass square set into the wall between the rooms to show he’d got the message. He always acknowledged the competence of people like engineers. They did their jobs so he could do his. He took one last look around. There wasn’t much to see. Except for that glass square, the walls and ceiling of the studio were covered in what looked like cardboard egg cartons that helped deaden unwanted noise and echoes.

The engineer pointed to him. The red light above the square of glass came on. He leaned toward the microphone. “I’m Jake Featherston,” he said, “and I’m here to tell you the truth.” His voice was a harsh rasp. It wasn’t the usual broadcaster’s voice, any more than his rawboned, craggy face was conventionally handsome. But it grabbed attention and it held attention, and who could ask for more than that? Nobody, not in the wireless business.

“Truth is, I’m still here,” he went on after his trademark greeting. “The Yankees dropped bombs on the Gray House, but I’m still here. They threw away God only knows how many airplanes, but I’m still here. They wasted God only knows how much money, but I’m still here. They murdered God only knows how many i

The red light went out. Behind the glass, the engineer applauded. Jake gri

When Jake came out of the studio, Saul Goldman stood in the hall with eyes shining behind his glasses. “That… that was outstanding, Mr. President,” he said. “Outstanding.”

“Yeah, I thought it went pretty well,” Featherston said. Around most people, he bragged and swaggered. Goldman, by contrast, could make him modest.

“No one in the United States will have any doubts,” Goldman said. “No one in the Confederate States will, either.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” Jake said. “I don’t want anybody to have any doubts about what I’ve got in mind. I aim to make the Confederate States the grandest country on this continent. I aim to do that, and by God I’m going to do that.” Even Saul Goldman, who’d heard it all before, and heard it times uncounted, nodded as if it were fresh and new.

Aship of his own! Sam Carsten had never dreamt of that, not when he joined the Navy in 1909. He’d never dreamt of becoming an officer at all, but he wore a lieutenant’s two broad gold stripes on each sleeve of his jacket. The Josephus Daniels wasn’t a battlewagon or an airplane carrier-nothing of the sort. The U.S. Navy called her a destroyer escort; in the Royal Navy, she would have been a frigate. She could do a little bit of everything: escort convoys of merchantmen and hunt submersibles that menaced them, lay mines if she had to (though she wasn’t specialized for that), bombard a coast (though that was asking for trouble if airplanes were anywhere close by), and shoot torpedoes and her pair of four-inch popguns at enemy ships. She was all his-306 feet, 220 men.

Commander Cressy, the Remembrance’s executive officer, had been surprised when he got her-surprised, but pleased. Sam’s own exec was a lieutenant, junior grade, just over half his age, a redheaded, freckle-faced go-getter named Pat Cooley. Cooley was probably headed for big things-he was almost bound to be if the war and its quick promotions lasted… and if he lived, of course. Carsten knew that he himself, as a mustang, had gone about as far as he could go. He could hope for lieutenant commander. He could, he supposed, dream of commander-as long as he remembered he was dreaming. Considering where he’d started, he had had a hell of a career.

Cooley looked around with a smile on his face. “Feels like spring, doesn’t it, Captain?”

Captain. Sam knew he couldn’t even dream about getting a fourth stripe. But he was, by God, captain of the Josephus Daniels. “Always feels like spring in San Diego,” he answered. “August, November, March-doesn’t make much difference.”

“Yes, sir,” the exec said. “Another three weeks and we’ll have the genuine article.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam nodded. “We’ll think it’s summer by then, I expect, cruising off the coast of Baja California.”

“Got to let the damn greasers know they picked the wrong side-again,” Cooley said.

“Uh-huh,” Sam repeated. The Empire of Mexico and the Confederate States had been bosom buddies ever since the Second Mexican War. There was a certain irony in that, since Mexican royalty came from the same line as the Austro-Hungarian Emperors, and Austria-Hungary lined up with Germany and the USA. But Confederate independence and Confederate friendship with the first Maximilian had kept the USA from invoking the Monroe Doctrine-had effectively shot the Doctrine right between the eyes. The Emperors of Mexico remembered that and forgot who their ancestors had been.

Pat Cooley was the one who took the Josephus Daniels out of San Diego harbor. Sam knew damn near everything there was to know about gu