"You're always welcome at the Puzzle Palace, Gen'ral."
"Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce Colonel Earl Sawyer, CSA, Military Intelligence branch, who will present today's briefing. Earl is a good old boy, but I happen to know that under all that Mississippi he is damned sharp… and cheek by jowl with the General Staff. Earl." Norris smiled again, looking relieved, and sat back in the chair as Sawyer heaved himself up, opened the briefcase, and began laying out papers.
"Good mornin', all. I'd like to start out by saying that this briefing is most secret. As you all understand. Even the name of this project should be considered vital to the security of the Confed'racy."
Quidley frowned. Sawyer seemed to change on his feet — the drawl thinned out, the cracker manner changing to something more rapid, more efficient. But his attention was not on the man's manner but on his words. Shiloh. At last he would find out what it was.
"I'm going to begin quite a ways back," said Sawyer, looking at Vickery, "For the benefit of the Empire representative. I'll make it as concise as I rightly can.
"For the last hundred and thirty-some years, the Confederacy has been face to face with a powerful foe. Sometimes it's been real war, like it was durin' Secession and out West in the 1880s; sometimes, just been a face-off. But always we've been facing a powerful and, in the main, hostile North.
"It all started during the partition. If Lincoln'd let us out peaceful, we might have got along better afterwards. If we'd lost the war… well, who knows. But all through the nineteenth century we were neck and neck, expandin' territorially. The North went west and north, into the midwest, Alaska, West Canada. We went west — till the Arizona war — and then south, into Cuba and the Yucatan and Coahuila. Till today there's seventeen stars in the Stars and Bars."
Norris coughed impatiently, but Sawyer would not be hurried.
"The Palmerston Alliance — eighteen and sixty-four — has been the cornerstone of our security. And we carried our share, too, in the Quadruple Entente, winnin' the Great War in 1916. This Confederate-Empire friendship has stood like a rock amid changin' world events — and made the Yankees and the Czar think twice about attackin' either one of us.
"Today, however — " his voice dropped, and he leaned forward over the table — "that alliance, and our security with it, is bein' threatened. Again, from Philadelphia." Quidley concentrated. He knew the history. But what could threaten the strongest alliance on the planet?
"As you all know," Sawyer went on, "the Union has just concluded the Japanese war. It was a long one — ever since 1975, the surprise attack on Los Angeles. But last January it ended — with the Union usin' a new weapon."
"The new shell," murmured someone.
"That's right. One of them — fired from a battleship sixty miles at sea — completely destroyed the port city of Yokohama. It's a weapon that is, well, irresistible. No armor can withstand it. Its explosive power is terrific. But that's not the worst of it." Sawyer tapped the table for emphasis. "The worst of it is — that the Union's the only country got one."
"Research is proceeding at London and Capetown," said Vickery. Heads turned at the dry Dartmouth accent, and the whispers that had punctuated Sawyer's remarks ceased. "If you don't mind my making a remark—"
"Floor's yours, Sir Leigh."
"As to the new shell… our, ah, scientists have been able to duplicate some of the — effects. Others elude us. We might have had our own device by now but two years ago there was an — accident — at the Lochboisdale facility. It destroyed most of the equipment and many of the best men in the field.
"What we badly require at this point is certain information on the internal construction of the explosive portion of the shell."
Sawyer nodded. "You're gettin' a bit ahead of me, Sir Leigh, but you're right. So that brings us to the sensitive part of this briefing." He tapped one of the papers. "The Castle, of course, has got intelligence people in Philadelphia. They've been tellin' us some interesting things. For an example — we thought they had only one shell, the one they fired, and that makin' more was a lengthy affair. Now we come to find out that there's one bein' made a month — turned out of a topsecret plant in Thief River, Minnesota. So they've had time to accumulate a few."
"That's bad news," said Norris.
"Yes, sir, it is. Real bad. Get more into that in a minute. But there's another piece of intelligence bears on it too — a piece we just recently got."
"Go on," said Vickery.
"The Yokohama device was a shell for a naval gun; twenty-four-inch, Yankee battlewagon caliber. Apparently the first six shells were of this model. But now our source in Philadelphia is tellin' us a new model's being produced. A thirty-inch."
"Union coast artillery," said Quidley.
"Right, Major. And the first of those thirtyinchers has come off the line — and is earmarked for shipment to Fort Monroe."
"Damn," Norris muttered as Sawyer unfolded a map of the area and laid it in front of Vickery. To the admiral he said, laying a finger on Old Point Comfort, "This is Fortress Monroe. By terms of the Treaty of Montreal, 1864, the Union retained this fortified position in Southern territory in order to guard the mouth of the Chesapeake and the Bay cities. Later we built this fort, Davis, across the channel from it. We swapped shots all through the war of '88 but the Yankees held. Since then they've continually modernized and strengthened it. The present thirty-inch disappearing batteries were installed in 1964."
"We have thirty-eight-inch Tredegar rifles on this side," said Norris.
"Yes, sir," said Sawyer politely. "And they've been a powerful deterrent to Yankee adventurism. But the whole picture is changin'. The power balance is still working. But pretty soon it's going to be overturned — in the North's favor."
There was an uneasy stirring about the table. They knew what an upset of that balance could mean. A renewal of the perennial confrontation in the divided city of Washington. Pressure for concessions in Venezuela and Mexico, just as the oil fields there were reaching peak production under the aegis of Confederate corporations. And, most dangerous of all, stepped-up Railroad activity among the coloreds.
"Now," said Sawyer, "Shiloh.
"Today is — " he checked his watch ostentatiously — "The seventeenth of July. Three days from today, on the twentieth, a Union ammunition ship will depart the Colts Neck, New Jersey, arsenal for Hampton Roads. The — cargo — will be aboard. It's scheduled to dock in Phoebus Channel, near Monroe, at 0730, on the twenty-third of July.
"It will never make it. During the night, as it approaches the capes, it will be boarded and sunk by Railroad terrorists. The shell will, presumably, go to the bottom in well over a thousand fathoms of water."
Quidley stroked his moustache. The pause grew too long for him and he said, "Will it, Colonel?"
"Of course not. Oh, the ship will. But the shell won't. We'll have it. It'll be immediately transshipped by rail to the Arsenal and Weapons Laboratory at Columbus, Georgia. There, a group of Allied" — he glanced at Vickery, who nodded slightly — "and government experts will disassemble it for study."
Quidley frowned. Something was nagging at his mind, some obscure fact.
Sawyer went on. "That, in brief, will be the project that we've been callin' Shiloh. The General Staff has approved it — our Allies know about it — and, I might say too, it has the personal approval of the President."
Something obscure — a ship, a fort — he struggled with his memory. Meanwhile Sawyer passed stapled sheaves of paper around the table. Quidley eyed his. It was the operation order for the project.
There: He had it. A piece of moldy history, exhumed from wherever it had lain since his school days. Hadn't it been an ammunition ship — Union, of course, named the Star of the West — that had tried to reach Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, and been driven off by the South Carolinians….