"I want to thank the court for its integrity, General," Potter said. "I have to say, I didn't expect it." Not from Yankees was in his mind if not on his tongue.
Stephens had to know it was there, too. His mouth twisted. "Your enemies are men like you, General," he said. "That, I believe, is the principal meaning of this verdict."
Potter inclined his head. "The point is well taken, sir."
"Happy day," Stephens said bleakly. "Please understand: we don't approve of you even if we don't convict you. You will be under surveillance for the rest of your life. If you show even the slightest inclination toward trouble, it will be your last mistake. Do I make myself clear?"
"Abundantly." Clarence Potter might have complained that he was being singled out for discriminatory treatment. He might have-but he wasn't that kind of fool, anyhow.
"Very well. I gather the men who debriefed you have now finished?"
"Yes, sir," Potter said. "They have squeezed me flatter than a snake in a rolling mill." He'd told them everything about his trip up from Lexington to Philadelphia. Why not? Come what might, he wouldn't do that again. He'd told them a lot about Confederate intelligence operations, too, but not everything. They thought he'd told them more than he really had. If they wanted to ferret out C.S. operatives up here, though, he thought they'd need more than he'd given them.
The U.S. brigadier general didn't laugh, or even smile. "You may collect the balance of the pay owed you as an officer POW under the Geneva Convention. And then you may…go." He drank more water.
Go where? Potter wondered. Nothing left of Charleston, not any more. And not much left of Richmond, either. Not much left of the CSA, come to that. He was a man without a country. Turning him loose might have been the cruelest thing the USA could do. All the same, he preferred it to getting his neck stretched.
"May I ask a favor of the court, sir, before I return to civilian life?" he said.
"What sort of favor?" If you needed a dictionary illustration for suspicious, General Stephens' face would have filled the bill.
"May I beg for a civilian suit of clothes? This uniform"-Potter touched a butternut sleeve with his other hand-"is less than popular in your country right now."
"There are good and cogent reasons why that should be so, too," the chief judge said. But he nodded a moment later; he was at bottom a fair-minded man. "I admit your request is reasonable. You will have one. If, however, you had asked for a U.S. uniform in place of your own, I would have refused you. You've already done too much damage in our clothing."
"My country is no longer at war with yours, General." My country no longer exists. "While our countries were at peace, I lived peacefully"-enough-"in mine. I intend to do the same again."
The suit they gave him didn't fit especially well. The wide-brimmed fedora that went with it might have looked good on a twenty-five-year-old…pimp. The kindest thing he could say about the gaudy tie was that he never would have bought it himself. He knotted it without a murmur now. The less he looked like his usual self, the better he judged his chances of getting out of Philadelphia in one piece.
Green banknotes-no, they were bills up here-filled his leatherette wallet. He wondered what the economy was like down in the ruins of the CSA. Would inflation run mad, the way it had after the Great War? Or were the Yankees ramming their currency down the Confederacy's throat this time? Either way, a wallet stuffed with greenbacks looked like good insurance.
They even gave him a train ticket to Richmond. That settled where he would go, at least for the time being. If he didn't have to pay for the ticket, he could hang on to some more of his POW pay.
That seemed a good thing, because he had no idea how to make more money. All his adult life, he'd been either a soldier-and the bottom had been blown out of the market for Confederate soldiers-or a private investigator-and he was, at the moment, one of the least private men on the continent.
His chuckle was sour, but not sour enough to suit one of the U.S. MPs keeping an eye on him. "What's so damn funny?" the Yankee asked.
"I may be reduced to writing my memoirs," Potter answered, "and that's the kind of thing you do after you don't expect to do anything else."
The MP's glance was anything but sympathetic. "You want to know what I think, Mac, you already did too goddamn much."
"That only shows I was doing my job."
"Yeah, well, if I was doing my job…" The U.S. sergeant swung his submachine gun toward Potter, but only for a moment. Discipline held. A good thing, too, Potter thought.
They hustled him out of the courthouse through a back door. A crowd of reporters gathered at the front of the building. None of them paid any attention to the aging man in tasteless clothes who went by in the back seat of a Ford.
U.S. train stations didn't work exactly the same way as their C.S. equivalents did, but they were pretty close. Potter found the right platform at the Broad Street station and waited for the train to come in.
Some of the men on it turned out to be released Confederate POWs. Some looked like Yankee hotshots on their way down to the CSA to see what they could make by picking the corpse's bones. Some just looked like…people. Potter wondered what they thought of him. In his present getup, he thought he looked pretty shady.
He got to Richmond late in the afternoon. A U.S. first lieutenant stood on the platform holding a sign with his name on it. He thought of walking by, but why give the United States excuses to land him in trouble? "I'm Clarence Potter," he said.
"My name is Constantine Palaiologos," the U.S. officer said. "Call me Costa-everybody does." His rueful smile probably told of lots of childhood teasing. "Since I got word you'd be coming here, I found an apartment for you."
"How…efficient," Potter murmured.
Lieutenant Palaiologos didn't even try to misunderstand him. "We do intend to keep an eye on you," he said. "The building wasn't badly damaged during the war, and it's been repaired since. It's better than a lot of people here are living."
"Thanks…I suppose," Potter said.
He smelled death in the air as the lieutenant drove him through the battered streets. He'd smelled it in Philadelphia, too; it was part of the aftermath of war. It was stronger here, not surprisingly. People looked shabbier than they did in the USA. They walked with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes-they knew they were beaten, all right. For the first time since the early days of the Lincoln administration, the Stars and Stripes flew all over the city, not just above the U.S. embassy.
The apartment building didn't look too bad. Some of its neighbors still showed bomb damage, but it even had glass in the windows again. Freshly painted spots of plaster probably repaired bullet holes, but there weren't a whole lot of buildings in Richmond that a bullet or two hadn't hit.
"So-is this where you keep all the old sweats?" Potter asked.
"No, General," Palaiologos answered seriously. "We try to separate you people as much as we can. The further apart you are, the less you'll sit around plotting and making trouble."
In the USA's shoes, Potter probably would have arranged things the same way. He let the young lieutenant show him his new digs. It was…a furnished apartment. He could stand living here. Once he got a wireless and a phonograph and some books, it might not even be too bad.
"Did I see a stationery store around the corner?" he asked.
"I think so," Lieutenant Palaiologos said.
"As long as you've got a motorcar, will you take me over there and run me back?"
"All right." Palaiologos spoke without enthusiasm, but he didn't say no.
Potter bought a secondhand typewriter, a spare ribbon, and two reams of paper not much better than foolscap. He got the U.S. officer to lug the typewriter up to the flat, which was on the second floor.