He lit a cigarette. It was a Niagara, a U.S. brand, and tasted lousy. But the C.S. tobacco firms were out of business-for the moment, anyway. Bad smokes beat no smokes at all.
Puffing on a Niagara made him think of heading north again, out of the USA and back to the country he'd adopted. Living in the Republic of Quebec meant returning to a backwater. Things happened more slowly there. Movies got to Riviиre-du-Loup months, sometimes years, after they were hits in the United States. Most of them were dubbed into French; a few had subtitles.
O'Doull's English would have got even rustier than it had if not for the need to read medical journals and try to keep up with the miracles happening in the USA-and the miracles the USA imported from Germany. Back before the United States fostered Quebecois independence, Canada tried ramming English down the locals' throats. Older people still remembered the language, but not fondly. Younger ones wanted nothing to do with it.
He could live with that if he had to. He had lived with it, for years. You took the bad with the good wherever you went. By now, his college French had picked up enough of the local accent to let people who didn't know him think he was born in La Belle Province himself. Of course, not many people in Riviиre-du-Loup didn't know him. As far as he was concerned, that was part of the good.
"Penny for 'em," Sergeant Lord said.
"Thinking about going home again," O'Doull answered.
"Figured you were," Lord said. "You're right here, but your eyes were a million miles away."
"Better than the thousand-yard stare the poor mudfoots get when they've been through the mill," O'Doull said. Lord nodded. They both knew that look too well.
O'Doull stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one. He'd done something useful today, anyhow. If Colonel Tobin had sent him home, it would have been up to Goodson Lord. The guy with the shrapnel might have died then. Granny McDougald could have pulled him through, but O'Doull didn't think Lord was up to it.
But if the Confederates kept a rebellion smoldering for years, was that reason enough for him to stay down here till it finally got stamped out, if it ever did? He shook his head. He'd paid all the dues he felt like paying-more than he'd had to pay. He wasn't so goddamn young any more. He'd had that thought not long before, too. He wanted the rest of his life for himself.
Whether the U.S. Army or the authorities in the Republic wanted him to have it might be a different question. Well, he'd done what he could along those lines. Off in the distance, a train whistle blew. He smiled. If all else failed, he could hop a freight. What did the the soldiers say when you came out with something stupid? And then you wake up-that was it.
Doctor Deserts! Heads for Home in Spite of Orders! He saw the headlines in his mind's eye. Yes, it would be a scandal. It would if they caught him, anyhow. If they didn't, he was home free. The Republic wouldn't extradite him-he was sure of that.
Stop it, he told himself. You'll talk yourself into it, and then you'll really be up the creek.
Seventeen days after he wrote his letter, one with a Quebecois stamp came back. He opened the envelope with a strange mix of apprehension and anticipation. If they said no…But if they said yes…!
And they did! In stilted English, a bureaucrat in Quebec City proclaimed that he was a valuable medical resource, and vitally needed to serve the populace of Riviиre-du-Loup. He grinned from ear to ear. He'd been called a lot of things before, but never valuable, let alone a medical resource. He hurried off to show Colonel Tobin the letter.
J onathan Moss didn't like Houston. It was even hotter and muggier than Georgia and Alabama, and that was saying something. New Orleans was supposed to be just as bad, or maybe worse, but you could have a good time in New Orleans. If you could have a good time in Houston, Moss hadn't found out how.
Defending a man he loathed sure didn't help. Defending a man who might be the biggest murderer in the history of the world made things worse. And defending a man who might be the biggest murderer in the history of the world and didn't seem the least bit sorry about it, who seemed proud of what he'd done, made things much worse.
Defending Canadians who'd fallen afoul of occupation authorities was worth doing. This, on the other hand…Moss wished Major Isidore Goldstein hadn't smashed his stupid motorcar and himself. Then he would be going through the torments of the damned right now. Moss would rather have been flying turbo fighters, even though there was no one to fly them against any more. Would he rather have been sitting on the shelf? Sometimes he thought yes, sometimes no.
Pinkard's trial, and that of guard chief Vern Green, and those of several other guards from Camp Humble and its predecessor farther west, went on in what had been the Confederate District Courthouse in Houston. The exterior was modeled after the Parthenon: all elegant columns. But it was built from cheap concrete, not marble, and it was starting to crumble in Houston's savage weather.
Filling in for Confederate judges were U.S. Army officers. They'd shot down Moss' arguments for getting Jefferson Pinkard off the hook one after another. No, he couldn't claim Pinkard was only acting on orders from Richmond.
"The charge is crimes against humanity," said the chief judge, a craggy brigadier general named Lloyd Meusel. "The defendant is assumed to have been aware that, regardless of orders, it is illegal and criminal to have murdered innocent people in literally carload lots by various ingenious methods and then either burying them in mass graves or burning them so that their passing became a stench in the nostrils of mankind forever."
"Dammit, they weren't all that innocent," Pinkard said-he wouldn't keep his mouth shut, which was something any defendant needed to know how to do. "Plenty of rebels-and they all hated the CSA."
And, of course, that gave the military prosecutor, a bright young major named Barry Goodman, the chance to pounce. He grabbed it. "May it please the court," he said, "how many of the Negroes who passed through these extermination camps were tried and convicted of any crime, even spitting on the sidewalk? Is it not a fact that the only thing they were guilty of was being colored, and that this became a capital crime in the Confederate States?"
General Meusel leaned over backwards to be fair. "Well, Major, we are here to determine whether that is a fact. We can't assume it ahead of time."
"Yes, sir," Goodman replied. "I will endeavor to demonstrate and document its truthfulness. I believe I can do that."
Jonathan Moss believed he could, too. Moss had seen the photographs taken outside of Snyder, and the documents captured from the meticulous files kept at Camp Humble. They offered overwhelming evidence of what the CSA had done. And Goodman put them into evidence, again and again.
He had letters where the gasketing of trucks was said to be tightened up "to improve their asphyxiating efficiency." Jefferson Pinkard's initials said he'd read and approved-and approved of-those letters. Goodman had other letters about the construction of the bathhouses at Camp Humble, and about the airtight doors that made sure Negroes didn't escape from the "termination chambers." He had letters to and from the people who provided the cyanide for the termination chambers. And he had a small mountain of letters complaining about the shoddy workmanship and design of the crematoria of Camp Humble.
Just listening to those letters being read into evidence pissed Pinkard off. Jonathan Moss could tell. And it wasn't because his client had written them. It was because Pinkard still wanted to slug the bastards who'd sold him a bill of goods about the body-burning ovens and their smokestacks.
After court adjourned that day, Moss badly needed a drink. Soldiers in U.S. uniform were not welcomed with open arms in most of Houston's watering holes. Out of consideration for that fact, the Army had set up an officers' club and one for enlisted men in the courthouse basement. Moss hied himself thither for a snort.