Actually, he knew how, or thought he did. The Confederates didn't just want to put their own house in order. Like the French, they wanted revenge for what had happened to them during the Great War. Of course, the French had friends. Little by little, Russia was shaking off the trauma of the war and the endless Red uprising afterwards-an uprising that made the Red revolt in the CSA seem a walk in the park by comparison. And England wanted another crack at Kaiser Bill… and, no doubt, at the United States as well.
A patrol of men wearing green-gray and carrying Springfields tramped past Moss' building as he parked the Bucephalus. That reminded him he was in a land-not a country any more-that also despised his nation. His very shingle reminded him of the same thing. JONATHAN MOSS, it said. OCCUPATION LAW.
He got out of the auto. He was laughing again as he went into the office, not that it was any too funny. Not a day went by when his marriage didn't remind him he was in a land that despised his nation.
At least we're occupying a place without all that many people, he thought. The Germans would have needed to put half their men in France to keep an eye on all the frogs who hate them. That was probably why they'd let the Action Francaise get off the ground: till too late, they hadn't seen it as a real threat. And now King Charles is talking about rearming. I'm sure the Kaiser loves that. But would he start another war to stop it? He's an old man now.
President-elect Featherston also made loud noises about rearming. Moss wished he hadn't remembered that, not least since no one in the USA seemed much inclined to stop him.
Moss turned the key in his door, turned on the lamp in his office, and turned the knob on the steam radiator to make the place feel as if it was at least a little south of the Arctic Circle. That done, he plugged in a hot plate and got a pot of coffee perking. It would be black, oily sludge by this afternoon. He knew that. He knew he'd go on drinking it anyway, too.
A letter from a military prosecutor lay on his desk. He'd left it there when he went home the morning before. Major Lopat's secretary had neatly typed, We are not obligated to turn over this evidence to you prior to its production in court. Rules of discovery applicable in civilian cases do not apply here, as you are doubtless perfectly well aware. If I can be of further assistance to you, do not hesitate to call on me. Then Lopat had signed it-in red ink, for good measure.
"Well, screw you, Sam," Moss muttered. What the military prosecutor didn't know was that he already had back-channels photostats of the documents in question. They'd come in the same mail delivery as the snotty letter.
He was gloating about the surprise he had planned for the prosecutor when the telephone rang. He was his own secretary. Picking up the telephone, he said, "Jonathan Moss."
A man's voice on the other end of the line: "You're the Yank barrister, aren't you?"
"That's right," Moss answered. "Who are you? What can I do for you?"
"If I was you, I wouldn't start my motorcar no more," the voice said. A click followed. The line went dead.
Moss looked out the window. There sat the Bucephalus, right where he'd left it. Had someone done something to it there on the street, brazen as could be? Or was somebody just trying to rattle his cage?
That wasn't the biggest question, he realized. The biggest question was, did he feel like finding out the hard way?
He didn't. He called the local garrison and reported what had just happened. The sergeant with whom he spoke knew who he was. The noncom thought the call highly amusing. "You're worth more to the Canucks than a dozen of their own kind," he said. "They ought to give you a medal, not blow you up."
"Funny. Ha, ha," Moss said. "Will you send your bomb squad out to go over my auto?"
"Yes," the sergeant answered. "I'll do that. The squad may take a while to get there, though. Yours is the fifth call we've had this morning."
"A hoaxer, then," Moss said. "He must want to make people run around in circles and waste time."
"We thought so, too," the sergeant told him. "The first two times we sent out the bomb squad, nothing. The third time, there was a bomb. They're still playing with it. If you hear a bang and your windows rattle, you can bet the squad will be late to your place." He laughed again.
Moss remembered such humor from his own days in the Army. It had seemed funny then. It didn't now-not to him, anyhow. The sergeant enjoyed it. "You ought to be trying to find out who your practical joker is," Moss said. "We could have another Arthur McGregor on our hands."
"Don't worry about it, Mr. Moss," the sergeant said. "When we do catch this son of a bitch, whoever he turns out to be, you can get him off the hook. So long. The bomb squad will be along sooner or later." He hung up.
That shows what my own people think of me, Moss thought unhappily. I'm not doing anything against the law-I'm working strictly within it. This is the thanks I get.
He wondered whether the bomb squad would show up at all, or whether he would get to find out if his car was wired by going out to it and turning the key. He heard no sudden and dreadful boom, though he worked with his ears peeled all day. Toward evening, a squad of men whose heavy armor made them look like a cross between modern soldiers and medieval knights showed up and went over his car. After twenty minutes or so, one of them waddled into the building.
By the time he got to Moss' door, he was sweating despite the chilly weather. How much did that protective clothing weigh? If a bomb went off, how much good would it do? Even had Moss intended to ask those questions aloud, he didn't get the chance. The man from the bomb squad asked if he was Jonathan Moss. When he nodded, the fellow said, "No bomb. Just that asshole running us from pillar to post." Without waiting for an answer, he waddled away.
"Thanks," Moss called after him. He raised a gauntleted hand and kept on walking.
Who would want to blow me up, or at least to scare me spitless? Moss wondered. The U.S. sergeant was right. He had done a lot of good for the Canucks. They shouldn't have wanted to hurt him. They should have wanted to coat him in bulletproof glass.
Do they hate me just because I'm a Yank? He shook his head in slow wonder. Who could be that stupid?
M ary Pomeroy. Mary Pomeroy. Mary Pomeroy. No matter how often she wrote her new name, trying to get used to it, she still thought of herself as Mary McGregor. She'd been married only a couple of months. The change in her name sometimes seemed the smallest of the changes that had swept over her. She'd known they would be there when she said yes after Mort got down on one knee in front of her. She'd known they would be there, but she hadn't had any idea how overwhelming they would prove.
How could living in Rosenfeld, for instance, be so very different from living on a farm not that far outside of town? So she'd asked herself before going from the farmhouse where she'd spent her whole life to rooms across the street from the diner where her new husband worked with his father. So she'd asked herself, and she'd found out.
Electricity, for instance. She'd never had it at the farm, so she'd never known what she was missing. Now she felt as if she'd spent her life in the Dark Ages. That was literally true; kerosene lamps didn't come close to matching light bulbs for brilliance or convenience. But there was so much more. A refrigerator beat an icebox all hollow. A vacuum cleaner was ever so much easier to use and more effective than a carpet sweeper. An electric toaster knocked the stuffing out of the wire grid that went over the fire. An electric alarm clock didn't stop running if she forgot to wind it.
An electric phonograph also didn't run down, unlike the windup machine the McGregors had had on the farm. And a wireless set-a wedding present from Mort's father-offered a window on the world Mary had never imagined. Music, dramas, comedies-all in the apartment, all at the twist of a dial? If that wasn't a miracle, what was? She had to keep reminding herself the news that came from the machine on the hour was only what the Yanks wanted her to hear.