The Victorious opposition

Trouble was, the bastard almost certainly wasn't imaginary. A German had trouble sounding like a Frenchman, and vice versa. But a Yankee and a Confederate were too close to begin with. Differences in accent were small things. If you came from the USA, you had to remember to say things like note or banknote instead of bill. People would follow you if you used your own word, but they'd know you were a foreigner. But if you were careful, you could get by.

Something else worried Clarence Potter. He ran spies. The probable counterpart of one of the fellows he ran would also be a spy. If you had people in place as spies, though, wouldn't you also have them in place as provocateurs? As saboteurs?

He didn't know whether the Confederates had provocateurs and saboteurs lurking in the USA. He didn't know because it was none of his business. What he didn't know, he couldn't tell. In philosophy up at Yale, though, he'd learned about what Plato called true opinions. He was pretty damn sure he had one of those about this question. He also had some strong opinions about where he'd put provocateurs and saboteurs.

He sat down in front of his typewriter to bang out a memorandum. In it he said not a word about spies, provocateurs, and saboteurs in the United States. He did mention the possibility that their U.S. equivalents were operating in the Confederate States. It would be unfortunate, he wrote, if the USA were able to take advantage of similarities between the two countries in language, custom, and dress, and it is to be hoped that steps to prevent such dangerous developments are currently being taken.

When he reread the sentence, the corners of his mouth turned down in distaste. He didn't like writing that way; it set his teeth on edge. He would rather have come straight to the point. But he knew the officers who would see the memorandum. They wrote gobbledygook. They expected to read it, too. Active verbs would only scare them. They were none too active themselves.

As soon as he fired the memorandum up the chain of command, he stopped worrying about it. He judged he probably wouldn't get an answer. If the Army or the Freedom Party or somebody was watching out for suspicious characters, he wouldn't. Nobody would bother patting a busybody colonel on the hand and saying, "There, there. No need to worry, dear."

A few days later, he was writing a note when the telephone on his desk rang. His hand jerked a little-just enough to spoil a word. He scratched it out before picking up the handset. "Clarence Potter." He didn't say he was in Intelligence. Anyone who didn't already know had the wrong number.

"Hello, Potter. You are a sneaky son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"Hello, Mr. President," Potter answered cautiously. "Is that a compliment or not? In my line of work, I'm supposed to be."

"Hell, yes, it's a compliment," Jake Featherston answered. "It's also a judgment on us. We've been thinking a lot about what we can do to the damnyankees. We ain't worried near enough about what them bastards can do to us."

When his grammar slipped that far, he was genuinely irate. He'd also told Potter what the call was about. "You've read the memorandum, then?"

"Damn right I've read it. Those two whistle-ass peckerheads above you kicked it up to me. They were going, 'What do you want to do about this here?' "

Clarence Potter had a hard time swallowing a snort. Featherston might be president of the CSA, but he still talked like a foul-mouthed sergeant, especially when he took aim at officers. Potter asked, "What do you want to do about it, Mr. President?"

"You asked the questions. I want somebody to get me some answers. I sure as shit don't have enough of 'em right now. How would you like to do it? I'll make you a brigadier general on the spot."

Only two promotions really mattered: the one up from buck private and the one to general's rank. All the same, Potter said, "Sir, if I have a choice, I'd rather work on our assets there than their assets here. I want to hit those people when the time comes."

"Even if it costs you the promotion?" Featherston could only mean, How serious are you?

"Even if it does," Potter said firmly. "I didn't expect to come back into the Army anyway. I didn't do it for a wreath around my stars. I did it for the country." And to keep from giving you an excuse for getting rid of me. He didn't say that. Why remind Featherston?

"All right, then. You've got it-and the promotion," the president said. "That's your baby now, General Potter."

It did feel good. It felt damn good, as a matter of fact. And it felt all the better because Potter hadn't expected he would ever get it. When he said, "Thank you, Mr. President!" he sounded much more sincere than he'd thought he would while talking to Jake Featherston.

"I reckon you've earned it," Featherston answered. "I reckon you'll do a good job with it, too. You wait half an hour, and then you go right on into Brigadier General McGillivray's office and get to work. From here on out, it's yours."

"Yes, sir," Potter said, but he was talking to a dead line. He wondered briefly why the president wanted him to wait, but only briefly. He'd known Jake Featherston more than twenty-five years. He could guess what Jake would be doing with that half hour.

And his guess proved good. When he walked into his superior's-no, his former superior's-office, Brigadier General Stanley McGillivray was white and trembling. "I gather you are to replace me?" he choked out when he saw Potter.

"I gather I am." Potter had ripped into a good many incompetent officers in his time, but he didn't have the heart to say anything snide to McGillivray. The other Intelligence officer was a broken man if ever he'd seen one. He was so terribly broken, in fact, that Potter, for once, was moved more to sympathy than to sarcasm. "I hope the president wasn't too hard on you?"

"That, Colonel Potter-excuse me: General Potter-is what they call a forlorn hope," McGillivray answered bitterly. "I think you will find everything in order here. I think you will find it in better condition than I have been given credit for. Good day. Good luck." By the way he stumbled out of the office, he might almost have been a blind man.

"Poor bastard," Potter muttered. Anyone who ran into the cutting torch of Jake Featherston's fury was going to get charred. He'd seen that for himself, more often than he cared to remember.

And then he put Stanley McGillivray out of his mind. He was familiar with only about a third of the work that this desk did. He had to learn the rest of it… and he had the strong feeling he had to learn it in a tearing hurry. Featherston sure as hell wouldn't wait for him. Featherston had never been in the habit of waiting for anybody.

Potter went through the manila folders on the desk one by one. Some of them held things he'd expected to find. A few held surprises. He'd hoped they would. If he'd been able to figure out everything McGillivray was doing, wouldn't the damnyankees have done the same thing?

Some of the surprises were surprises indeed. The Confederates had been ru

The assets farther west were interesting, too. Most of Potter's notions of where they were proved right. Again, he got some surprises about who they were. That didn't matter so much. As long as he could use them…

He also checked the procedures Brigadier General McGillivray had in place for staying in touch with his people in the USA in case normal communications cha