"Who warned you about the raid?" Stevenson is certain the raid was Wallace's work; but he is equally certain Wallace would never have tipped King.
Expecting evasion, he is surprised when King answers. "Tricky Dick."
"You've seen him?"
"Him? No, nobody's ever seen that sly ol' fox. He sent a message, though. Told us you'd ask about him, too; and told us to tell you it was him."
Later, back in his hotel room, a shaken Stevenson seeks liquid relief and finds that King has a mordant sense of humor. Opening the package King's minion had given him, he finds the inevitable bottle of bourbon.
It is Old Crow.
The two storm troopers bang on his door early in the morning, but they allow him to shower and dress before escorting him to the Hauptquartier. The other men hanging about the hotel stare at Stevenson as he is marched past. It is the first clue the locals have that he might be someone important. The bartender is just opening up. When he sees Stevenson, he raises both hands, with two fingers spread in a V to signal encouragement.
A vigorous man in his early sixties, Rommel questions Stevenson about the incident at the checkpoint and how Lt. Goldberg handled the drunken redneck in the pickup truck. The interrogation is persistent, but polite. America is not a conquered province and a federal senator is no small thing to toy with. Rommel represents the League of Nations, not the Kaiser. He wears the green-and-white armband on his sleeve with the crossed olive branches. Officially, there are limits to what he can do to Stevenson.
Unofficially, of course, there are always tragic accidents.
Nervous in front of the iron-gray tactician, Stevenson pulls a pack of Luckies from his coat pocket, but Rommel curtly refuses him permission to light up. Stevenson is so startled that Rommel unbuttons enough to explain.
"I have sworn off the tobacco," he says. "It is-how do you say it? — a 'movement' in Europe. Perhaps you have heard? An Austrian painter-a crusader against vivisection and animal abuse-leads the campaign. I hear him speak once at a rally in Nuremberg, where they lit a bonfire and everyone threw into the flames their cigarettes. As a painter, the man was mediocre; but as a speaker, he is spellbinding. According to him, even the smoke of others is harmful; and so, there is no smoking in my presence."
Stevenson tucks his pack away. He doesn't think an anti-tobacco attitude will serve Rommel well in the South, but the general has not come here to endear himself.
He has not come here at all, Stevenson suddenly realizes with ice in his heart. He was lured here, by the bombing. But lured by whom? And for what purpose?
Rommel has detected his abrupt stiffening. "Yes? There is something else?"
Stevenson wonders where his duty lies-as a Democrat, as an American, as a human being. Here is a man who tramples on the liberties of American citizens, who arrests without warrant, who executes without trial. And yet, the people he has come to chastise have deserved what he gives them. Indeed, the avowed League policy of "rebuilding a multiethnic society" is more than they deserve. When Rommel presses him, he says only, "You may be in danger here."
The general is interested, but not surprised. Over the years, he has been in a number of unsafe places: Minsk, Bataan, Okinawa; as a young man in his twenties, in the shell-churned abattoir of the Western Front. Very little can frighten him.
And what does Stevenson have to frighten him with? A sudden, icy feeling in the gut that everything up to now has been a setup for something yet to come. The incident at the checkpoint; the meetings with Sparkman, with Wallace, with King; the rumors, the car bomb, Rommel's arrival. But to whose advantage? There is a devious mind at work. Wallace? He lacks the subtle touch. King? Rommel has come to protect King's people-but Rommel has come also to disarm them.
In the end, Stevenson mouths platitudes about safety and the breakdown of civil order.
Rommel's smile is a wolf's smile. "It is to remedy this breakdown of your civil order that I am come."
A growing noise outside the building forestalls any reply-which is good, because Stevenson has none. Only that the League is gasoline thrown on smoldering embers; that the United States could have handled things, given time. The trends had been good; lynchings had been on the decline. If only Black had been more assertive, and less defensive of "states' rights." If only the northern machines had leaned harder on their southern colleagues. If only Wilson had not made casual bigotry so fashionable with his praise forBirth of a Nation.
If only. Stevenson sighs.
People outside begin hooting. Looking out the window, he sees a bus escorted by a company of soldiers. There is a banner on the side of the bus: We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser. If it is meant to reassure the whites of Selma, it fails. People hurl catcalls at the bus. They shake their fists. Some stones are thrown, but when the soldiers cock their rifles and level them at the crowd, the locals disperse, muttering. They know the Germans will fire if pushed. Stevenson sees the darkies through the windows of the bus, eyes white and wide as saucers. They are unarmed and they know it. The unwelcoming crowd is supposed to be disarmed too, but no one can believe that.
Rommel has joined him by the window. "Brave men," Stevenson tells him.
"They are soldiers doing their duty."
Stevenson watches the bus out of sight. "I wasn't thinking of the soldiers." When they turn away, Stevenson asks bleakly, "What's the point, general? Too much blood has been spilled for them to live in their old neighborhoods again. Neither side can pretend the clearings never happened."
Rommel shrugs. "I am only following orders. The World Court mandated this busing. So long as my troops are here, your rednecks dare not make trouble."
"But your troops can't stay forever. Once they're gone, those people will go for each other's throats."
Rommel purses his lips, disliking the futility of his mission. "There is too much history here," he answers. "We do what we can, while we can. Yet, somehow, there must be a final solution to the redneck problem."
"What?" Stevenson asks sardonically. "Kill them all?"
Rommel makes no reply for a moment and Stevenson's heart freezes as, once again, the wind brings the odors of dead fires from the ruins of Darktown. Then the general shakes his head-though with how much reluctance Stevenson dares not guess.
Outside his hotel, a woman stops him with a hand on his sleeve. He sees red-rimmed eyes, makeup hastily applied, hair not quite in place. "They say you're an important man," she says. "A senator from up north."
Stevenson inclines his head. He does not deny it.
"You can tell them they're making a mistake, making a terrible mistake. They'll listen to an important man like you. Tell them they've made a mistake." Her voice grieves; her eyes plead.
Stevenson lays his hand over hers. "Tell who? What mistake?"
"My husband!" the distraught woman says. "They've taken my husband to the camp."
He understands now, and nods. "It's their policy," he says, "when any of their soldiers are killed by terrorists."
"But Leroy had nothin' to do with that! He's a good man, a decent man. God-fearing. He never had no truck with the coloreds-they kept to their side of town and we kept to ours-but he never wished them no harm."
Over her shoulder and down at the end of the street, across the railroad tracks, stand the cold embers of Darktown. The distant sound of hammers and saws echoes in the still, muggy air. Rebuilding-with hope or fatalism? "He wasn't one of the mob?" Stevenson says harshly. "Not one of those who fired those houses over there and shot the people who tried to run out of the blazing buildings?"