Maybe Willy Knight thought the smile was meant for him. He grinned back and stuck out his hand. Jake took it. The clasp turned into a quiet trial of strength. Knight was a little taller and a lot wider through the shoulders, but Featherston's rawboned frame carried more muscle than it seemed to. When the two men let go, Knight was the one who opened and closed his hand several times to ease the pain and bring it back to life.
"Come on in," Jake said genially. "Have a drink."
"Don't have to ask me twice." In spite of the hand that was surely throbbing, Willy Knight managed another grin. "You barely have to ask me once."
They all went into Jake's hotel room. He closed the door behind them. The guards looked even less happy. He still wasn't worried. Knight wouldn't plug him himself. That wouldn't just take Jake off the ticket-it would take him off, too. He didn't want that. He wanted to be number one, but he'd settle for number two.
Jake made himself another drink. Ferdinand Koenig and Willy Knight fixed whiskeys for themselves, too. He raised his glass in salute first to Knight, then to Koenig. "Mr. Vice President," he said. "Mr. Attorney General."
"Mr. President," the other two men said together. All three drank.
"It's going our way," Featherston said. "We've got what it takes, and the country finally knows it. What we have to do now is make sure the Rad Libs and especially the Whigs are whipped dogs long before November rolls around. I like what's happening down in Sonora-somebody hits you in the cheek, hit him back so goddamn hard, you knock his head off."
Koenig chuckled. "That's not quite what Jesus said."
"Yeah, and look what happened to him," Jake answered.
"Maybe we don't want to come on too strong," Willy Knight said. "We've spent the last ten years trying to live down that Grady Calkins son of a bitch."
"But now we've done it," Featherston said. "I want people to know-they'll be sorry if they even think about going the wrong way. We backed down ten years ago. We had to. We don't have to any more. We're going to win in November. You can take it to the bank. But even if we don't, by God, we're going into Richmond anyways."
Knight's bright blue eyes widened. "That's treason!" he said, and finished his drink with a gulp.
"It's only treason if you don't bring it off," Jake said calmly. "If we have to grab it, we'll win. We're getting things ready, all nice and quiet-like. Like I told you, I don't reckon we'll need it."
"We'd better not," Willy Knight said, still jolted. "Christ, you're talking civil war."
"Jeff Davis wasn't afraid of it. We shouldn't be, either," Jake answered. "I keep telling you and telling you, this is just in case. You've got to cover everybody who can carry the ball, and that's what I intend to do."
He almost hoped he would have to try to seize power by force. Storming the War Department would be as sweet as marching into Philadelphia would have been during the Great War.
"Once we're in, however we're in, we'll make everything legal," Koenig said. "If you're in, you make the rules, and that's just what we'll do."
Knight managed a sheepish smile, as if realizing he'd shown weakness. "You don't think small, do you, Jake?"
"Never have. Never will," Featherston replied. "As long as you can imagine something, you can make it real. That's what the Freedom Party's all about. We know the Confederate States can be great again. We know we can pay back all the bastards who held us while the damnyankees sucker-punched us. We can do it, and we're gonna do it. Right?"
"Right!" Willy Knight said. Jake was watching him. He seemed as hearty as he should have. Maybe he'd just had cold feet for a moment. Featherston shrugged. How much did it really matter? As vice president, all Willy'd do was make speeches, and Jake intended to make sure of what was in them before they came out of the handsome puppet's mouth. Knight still hadn't figured out he'd been condemned to oblivion. That only proved he wasn't so smart as he thought he was.
Jake and Ferdinand Koenig looked at each other. Koenig nodded, ever so slightly. The more he'd thought about it, the more he'd liked escaping the worthless number-two slot and being promised one where he could actually do things. Featherston had plans for the attorney general's office. Once I'm elected…
Three days later, he took another step toward the Gray House in Richmond. When he strode up onto the speakers' platform at the Memorial Auditorium to accept the Freedom Party nomination, the roar from the assembled delegates left his ears as stunned and battered as any artillery barrage ever had. The klieg lights blazing on him put the sun to shame. A thicket of microphones in front of him amplified his voice for the delegates, for people listening on the wireless web, and for the newsreels that would soon show his image all over the Confederate States.
"Hello, friends," Jake said to all the millions who would see and listen to him. "You know me. You know what I stand for. I've been up here in front of you before. I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you-"
"The truth!" the Freedom Party men bellowed.
Featherston nodded. "That's right. I'm here to tell you the truth. I've been doing that for a long time now. I think you're finally ready to listen. The truth is, this country needs to put people-white people, decent people-back to work, and we will. The truth is, this country needs to put the niggers who stabbed us in the back in their place, and we will. The truth is, Kentucky and Sequoyah and that joke the USA calls Houston still belong to the Confederate States. We ought to get 'em back-and we will."
He had to stop then; the applause was too loud and too long to let him continue. When at last it ebbed, he went on, "The truth is, the Whigs have had seventy years to run this country, and they've run it into the ground. Somebody else needs to do it, and do it right- and we will." Another great roar. He held up his hands. Silence fell, completely and at once. Into it, he said, "If you like the way things have gone the past few years, vote Whig. But if you want to tell those people what you really think of 'em, vote-"
"Freedom!" That cry outdid all that had gone before. And then the delegates began to chant, "Feather ston! Feather ston! Feather ston!" Jake stood tall on the platform, waving to the crowd, waving to the country, glorying in what he had and reaching out for what he wanted.
B ouncing around South Carolina, from Charleston to Columbia to Greenville and to the smaller towns in between, Anne Colleton felt more than a little like a table-tennis ball. When she got out of her Birmingham in St. Matthews, her brother greeted her with, "Hello. Didn't I know you once upon a time?"
"Funny, Tom," she answered, meaning anything but. "Very funny. For God's sake, fix me a drink." Her own flat looked unfamiliar to her. Maybe her brother hadn't been joking after all.
He mixed whiskey and a little water for her and plopped in a couple of ice cubes. After he'd made himself a drink, too, he said, "Well, you've got Jake Featherston, and it looks like he's going to win. Are you happy?"
"You bet I am." She would have said more, but a long pull at the whiskey came first. "Thank you. That's a lifesaver."
"I ought to go places with a little cask around my neck, like those St. Bernard dogs in the Alps," Tom Colleton said.
"I'd be glad to see you, that's for sure." Anne took another sip. "Yes, I'm happy. I've waited for this day ever since the end of the war, even though I didn't know what I was waiting for at first."
"You walked away from Featherston once," Tom said.
"I made a mistake," Anne said. "Aren't you glad you never made a mistake in all your born days?"
"Now that you mention it, yes." Tom was irrepressible. Anne snorted. Her brother went on, "I'll tell you one mistake I didn't make: once I got out of politics, I didn't get back in."
"You wouldn't have talked that way before you got married," Anne said. It made you soft, was what she meant. To anyone else, she would have said that, said it without a moment's hesitation. With Tom, she hesitated.