The Victorious opposition

Late that afternoon, the telephone in the new office rang. When he picked it up, A

"Jesus Christ!" Potter sat bolt upright in his new swivel chair. It was a different make from the one he'd used before; he wasn't used to it yet. Its squeak sounded fu

"I had to talk with the president about something," she answered. "He told me he'd promoted you."

"Oh." Potter's alarm evaporated. If she'd heard it from Jake Featherston, it was hardly a security breach. "All right."

"He told me some of why he promoted you, too," A

"Well, I can't know, not for sure. But I would, if I were in their shoes. I do know they gave our niggers guns during the last war. If there's another one, they'd be fools not to do it again. They're bastards. They aren't fools. We thought they were in 1914. We've been paying for it ever since."

"Can we track down the people they've got here?" A

"Of course we can," Potter answered, thinking, No way in hell. More truthfully, he went on, "The harder we go after them, the more careful they'll have to be, too."

"Uh-huh," A

She was, dammit, plenty smart enough to see the contradictions between the two things he'd said. He changed the subject: "What were you talking about with the president?"

"The timing of a propaganda campaign here in South Carolina," she said. Potter wondered just what that meant. He didn't want to go into details with her. God only knew how secure this line was. But the likeliest explanation he could come up with on his own was, We were talking about when the war will start.

Abner Dowling raised field glasses to his eyes and looked across the Ohio River into Kentucky. The mere act of observing Kentucky from afar made him so angry, he wanted to swell up like a bullfrog. As far as he was concerned, he shouldn't have been looking into a foreign country when he eyed Kentucky. He should have been in the state, getting ready to defend it against the Confederates. If they wanted to take it away from him, they would have been welcome to try. He could have promised them a warm reception.

Now… Now he had to figure out how to defend Ohio instead. The General Staff had generously sent him some plans prepared before the Great War. They would have been just what he needed, except that they ignored airplanes and barrels and barely acknowledged the existence of trucks. Things had changed since 1914. Dowling knew that. He hoped to God the General Staff did, too.

Some of what the old plans suggested was still sound. All the bridges across the Ohio had demolition charges in place. Artillery covered the bridges and other possible crossing points. Antiaircraft guns poked their noses up among the camouflaged ca

He kept his main force farther back in Ohio than the old plans recommended. Again, the airplane was the main reason why. He also wanted to get some notion of what the Confederates were doing before he committed his men.

Custer would have charged right at them, wherever they first showed themselves, he thought. The way he rolled his eyes showed his opinion of that. Custer would have charged, sure as the devil. Maybe he would have smashed everything in his way. Maybe he would have blundered straight into an ambush. But he could no more keep from charging than a bull could when a matador waved his cape. Sword? What sword? Custer would have thought, bullishly.

For better or worse-for better and worse-Dowling was more cautious. If the Confederate Army crossed into the USA, he wanted to slow it down. The way he looked at things, if the Confederates didn't win quick victories, they'd be in trouble. In a long, drawn-out grapple, the USA had the edge. Dowling didn't think that had changed since the Great War.

He raised the field glasses again. Kentucky seemed to leap toward him. Jake Featherston had lied about keeping soldiers out of the state. He'd lied about not asking for more land. How was anybody in the United States supposed to trust him now? You couldn't. It was as simple as that.

Even Al Smith had seen the light. The president of the USA had said he would fight back if the CSA tried to take land by force. Dowling was all for that. But so much more could have been done. It could have, but it hadn't. Everybody'd known the Confederates were rearming. If the USA had been serious about showing Featherston who was boss, the country could have done it quickly and easily in 1935. Nothing would be quick or easy now.

And the United States weren't so ready as they should have been. Dowling thought about all the time wasted in the 1920s. The Confederates had been on the ropes then, either on the ropes or smiling and saying how friendly they were. Why build better barrels when you'd never have to use them? As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all.

"Sir?" said an aide at Dowling's elbow. "Sir?"

Dowling had been lost in his own gloom. He wondered how long the younger man had been trying to draw his notice. However long it was, he'd finally succeeded. "Yes, Major Chandler? What is it?"

"Sir, Captain Litvinoff from the Special Weapons Section in Philadelphia has come down from Columbus to confer with you," Chandler answered.

"Has he?" Dowling was damned if he wanted to confer with anybody from what was euphemistically called the Special Weapons Section. Regardless of what he wanted, he had little choice. "All right. Let's get it over with." He might have been talking about a trip to the dentist.

"Max Litvinoff, sir," the captain said, saluting.

Dowling returned the salute. "Pleased to meet you," he lied. Litvinoff looked even more like a brain than he'd expected. The captain with the cobalt blue and golden yellow arm-of-service piping on his collar couldn't have been more than thirty. He was about five feet four, ski

However he looked, he was all business. "This will be good terrain for the application of our special agents," he said briskly.

He might have been talking about spies. He might have been, but he wasn't. Dowling knew too well what he was talking about. Dowling also had a pretty good idea why Litvinoff didn't come right out and say what he meant. People who ended up in the Special Weapons Section often didn't. It was magic of a sort: if they didn't say the real name, they didn't have to think about what they were doing.

"You're talking about poison gas." Dowling had no such inhibitions.

Max Litvinoff coughed. His sallow cheeks turned red. "Well… yes, sir," he mumbled. He was only a captain. He couldn't reprove a man with a star on each shoulder. Every line of his body, though, shouted out that he wanted to.

Too bad, Dowling thought. He'd been up at the front with General Custer the first time the USA turned chlorine loose on the Confederates in 1915. "Gas is a filthy business," he said, and Captain Litvinoff's cheeks got redder yet. "We use it, the Confederates use it, some soldiers on both sides end up dead, and nobody's much better off. What's the point?"

"The point, sir, is very simple," Litvinoff answered stiffly. "If the enemy uses the special agent"-he still wouldn't say gas-"and we don't, then our men end up dead and his don't. Therefore…"

What Dowling wanted to do was yell, Fuck you! and kick the captain in the ass. Unfortunately, he couldn't. Litvinoff was right. Handing the CSA an edge like that would be stupid, maybe suicidal. "Go on," Dowling growled.