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"That's right, friends. This here was supposed to be a white man's country, but do the Whigs care about that? Not likely! Thanks to them, we've got niggers who can vote, niggers who can serve on juries, niggers who don't have to show passbooks to anybody. That'd be bad enough if they'd put the coons in the Army so we could win the war. But they put 'em in, and we lost anyways. And then the Whigs went out and won the next election even so. Maybe some of you all see the sense in that. I tell you frankly, I don't."
He went on till the engineer signaled it was time to wind down, and ended as the man drew a finger across his throat. When he walked out of the studio, his shirt was as sweaty as if he'd spoken before a crowd of thousands. Saul Goldman came up and shook his hand. "Very good speech," the Jew said. "Very good indeed."
"I will be damned," Featherston said. "I think you really mean it. You're not making fun of me." Goldman nodded. Jake asked the obvious question: "How come?"
"I'll tell you." Goldman had… not an accent, but the ghost of one, barely enough to suggest his parents would have spoken differently. "Anywhere else, when things go wrong, what do they do? They blame the Jews. Here, you blame the colored people. I am a Jew, a Jew in a country where things went wrong, and no one wants to kill me on account of it. Shouldn't I be grateful?"
Jake had never been much for seeing the other fellow's point of view, but he did this time. "Well, well," he said. "Isn't that interesting?"
P art of Colonel Irving Morrell-and the bigger part, at that-wanted to be back at Fort Leavenworth, making barrels larger and stronger and better. Part of him, but not all. The rest, the part that was a student of war rather than a combat soldier, found a lot to interest it back at the General Staff. Quite a few things crossed his desk that never made it into the newspapers.
He showed one of them to Lieutenant Colonel John Abell, asking, "Is this true?"
"Let me read through it first," Abell said. General Liggett's adjutant was thin and pale and almost sweatless, a pure student of war. Though probably brave enough, he would have been out of place on anything so untidy as a real battlefield. He and Morrell didn't much like each other, but over the years they'd developed a wary respect for each other's abilities. He took his own sweet time reading the report, then gave a judicious nod. "Yes, this ties in with some other things I've seen. I believe it's credible."
"The Turks really are massacring every Armenian they can get their hands on?" Morrell asked. Abell nodded again. Morrell took back the typewritten report, saying, "That's terrible! What can we do about it?"
"We, as in the United States?" Abell asked, precise as usual. Morrell gave him an impatient nod. He said, "As best I can see, Colonel, nothing. What influence can we bring to bear in that part of the world?"
Morrell grimaced and grunted. His colleague was all too likely to be right. He'd had to find Armenia on a map before fully understanding the report he'd received. How many Americans would even have known where to look? The distant land at the edge of the Caucasus might have been lost among the mountains of the moon, as far as most people were concerned. With the best will in the world, the Navy couldn't do a thing. And as for sending soldiers across a Russia whose civil strife looked eternal… The idea was absurd, and he knew it.
He tried a different tack: "Can Kaiser Bill do anything? When Germany spits, the Turks start swimming. And the Armenians are Christians, after all."
Lieutenant Colonel Abell started to say something, then let out his breath without a word. A moment later, after sending Morrell a thoughtful look, he said, "May I speak frankly, Colonel?"
"When have I ever stopped you?" Morrell asked in turn.
"A point," Abell admitted. "All right, then. There are times when you give the impression of being a man whose only solution to a problem is to hit something, and to keep hitting it till it falls over."
"Teddy Roosevelt spent a lot of time talking about the big stick, Lieutenant Colonel," Morrell said. "As far as I can see, he had a pretty good point."
John Abell looked distinctly pained. Sniffing, he said, "Our former president, however gifted, was not a General Staff officer, nor did he think like one. Which brings me back to what I was saying-you often give that same bull-moose impression, and then you turn around and come up with something not only clever but subtle. That might be worth pursuing. It would have to go through the State Department, of course."
Morrell grunted again. "And why should the boys in the cutaways and the striped trousers pay any attention to us green-gray types?"
For once, Abell's answering smile was sympathetic. The United States were one of the two most powerful countries in the world these days, sure enough. Very often, the American diplomatic corps behaved as if the U.S. Army had had nothing to do with that. Such a supercilious attitude infuriated Morrell. Of course, his fury mattered not at all; had people in the State Department known of it, it would more likely have amused them than anything else.
Abell said, "May I make a suggestion?"
"Please."
"If it were I," the brainy lieutenant colonel said, flaunting his grammatical accuracy, "I would draft a memorandum on the subject, send it to General Liggett, and hope he could get it to the secretary of war or one of his assistants. Being civilians, they have a better chance than we of getting the diplomats to notice the paper."
"That's… not bad, Lieutenant Colonel," Morrell said. Abell hadn't even tried to steal the idea for himself, and he had Liggett's ear. Though it wasn't obvious at first glance, he could be useful. Morrell chuckled. He probably thinks the same about me. He went on, "I'll take care of it right away. Thanks."
"Always glad to be of service, sir." Now Abell sounded as coolly ironic as usual.
When Morrell spoke that evening of what he'd done during the day, his wife nodded vigorous approval. "I hope something comes of it, Irv," Agnes Morrell said. "Hasn't this poor, sorry world seen enough killing these past few years?"
"Well, I think so," Morrell answered. "You won't find many soldiers singing the praises of murder, you know."
"Of course I know that," Agnes told him, more than a little indignantly. She was in her early thirties, not far from his own age, and had been another soldier's widow before meeting him at a dance back in Leavenworth. She had brown eyes; her black hair, these days, was cut short in what the fashion magazines called a shingle bob. It was all the rage at the moment. Morrell didn't think it quite suited his wife, but didn't intend to tell her so. As far as he could see, such things were her business, not his. She went on, "Supper will be ready in a few minutes."
"Smells good." Morrell's nostrils flared. Compared to some of the things he'd eaten in Sonora and the Canadian Rockies and Kentucky and Te
"Chicken stew with dumplings and carrots," Agnes said. "That's the way you like it, isn't it?"
Spit flooded his mouth as he nodded. "I knew I married you for a couple of reasons," he said.
"A couple of reasons?" Her eyebrows, plucked thin, flew up in mock surprise. "What on earth could the other one be?"
He walked over to her and let his hand rest lightly on her belly for a moment. "We'll find out if it's a boy or a girl sooner than we think."
"It won't be tomorrow," Agnes reminded him. She'd been sure she was in a family way for only a few weeks. There wasn't much doubt any more; not only had her time of the month twice failed to come, but she was perpetually sleepy. And she had trouble keeping food down. She gave Irving Morrell a much bigger helping than she took for herself, and she ate warily.