Potter looked at his watch in amazement. Where had the morning gone? He'd done more plugging than he thought. "Not me," he said, and got to his feet. Intelligence had its own mess hall-the secret lunchroom, he thought with wry amusement-so men who dealt in hidden things could talk shop with no one else the wiser.
He got himself a pastrami sandwich-a taste he'd acquired in Connecticut, and not one widely shared in the CSA-and a glass of Dr. Hopper, then sat down at a table. He had it to himself. Even after a year and a half, he was still new here, still not really one of the gang. A lot of the officers in Intelligence, the elite in the C.S. Army, had served through the lean and hungry times after the Great War. They had their own cliques, and didn't readily invite johnny-come-latelies to join. They were still deciding what to make of him, too. Some of them despised Jake Featherston. Others thought him the Second Coming. With one foot in both those camps, Potter didn't fit either.
And so, instead of gabbing, he listened. You learn more that way, he told himself. A Yankee spy would have learned a lot, especially hearing the way names like Kentucky and Houston got thrown around. Potter had suspected that much even before he came back to Intelligence. As anyone would, he liked finding out he was right.
X
Snow swirled through the air. Colonel Abner Dowling stood at stiff attention, ignoring the raw weather. Even when a flake hit him in the eye, he didn't- he wouldn't-blink. I'll be damned if I let Salt Lake City get the best of me now, he thought stubbornly. A military band struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner." Beside Dowling, his adjutant drew himself up even straighter than he had been.
When the last notes of the National Anthem died away, Dowling moved: he marched forward half a dozen paces to face the newly elected governor of Utah, who stood waiting in a black suit an undertaker might have worn. A mechanism might have given Dowling's salute. "Governor Young," he said.
Heber Young returned a nod at least as precisely machined. "Colonel Dowling," he replied, his tone as cool and formal as the officer's.
Flashbulbs popped, recording the moment for posterity. Purple and green spots filled Dowling's vision. He did his best not to blink on account of the flashbulbs, either. "Governor Young," he said, "at the order of President Smith, Utah is now taking its place as a state like any other in the United States, its long military occupation coming to an end. I wish you and your fellow citizens good fortune in years to come, and hope with all my heart that the peace and tranquility established here may long continue."
"Thank you very much, Colonel Dowling," Governor Young replied, and more flashbulbs popped. "We of Utah have waited a long time for this moment. Now that our government is in our own hands once more, you may rest assured that we will be diligent and careful in serving the public good."
He's as big a liar as I am, Dowling thought. Utah wasn't a land of peace and tranquility, and the new civilian government-the new Mormon government, since Latter-Day Saints held all the elected offices in the executive and solid majorities in both houses of the Legislature-would do whatever it damn well pleased.
Young went on, "For more than half a century now, the United States have persisted in believing that the people of Utah are different from others who call the USA home. At last, we will have the opportunity to show the country-to show the entire world-that that is not so. We are our own masters once more, and we will make the most of it."
Dowling listened politely, which took effort. Young hadn't mentioned a few things. Polygamy was one. Disloyalty was another. After an attempted secession during the Second Mexican War, an armed rebellion during the Great War, and an assassination in front of Dowling's own eyes, were the people of Utah really no different from others who called the USA home? Dowling had his doubts.
But President Smith evidently didn't, and Smith's opinion carried a lot more weight than Dowling's (even if Dowling himself carried a lot more weight than Smith). Removing the U.S. garrison from Utah would save millions of dollars that might be better spent elsewhere-provided the state didn't go up in flames and cost more money, not less. We'll find out, Dowling thought.
"I will work closely with the government of the United States to make sure peace prevails," Heber Young said. "Utah has been born again. With God's help, our liberty will long endure."
He nodded once more to Dowling. What did that mean? Get out, you son of a bitch, and don't come back? Probably, though Young, a thorough gentleman, would never have said such a thing.
Dowling gave him another salute, to show that civilian authority in the United States was superior to military. Then the commandant-now the former commandant-of Salt Lake City did a smart about-face and marched back to his men. The ceremony was over. Civilian rule had returned to Utah for the first time in more than fifty years.
Trucks waited to take the soldiers to the train station. Dowling and Captain Toricelli went in a green-gray automobile instead. Toricelli said, "Five minutes after we leave the state, the Mormon Temple will start going up again."
"What makes you think they'll wait that long?" Dowling asked, and his adjutant laughed, though he hadn't been joking. He went on, "How much do you want to bet that gilded statue of the angel Moroni will go on top of the new Temple, too?"
"Sorry, sir, but I won't touch that one," Captain Toricelli answered. The gilded copper statue that had surmounted the old Mormon Temple had disappeared before U.S. artillery and aerial bombs brought the building down in 1916. The occupying authorities had put up a huge reward for information leading to its discovery. In more than twenty years, no one had ever claimed that reward, and the statue remained undiscovered.
"I wonder what the Mormons will do now that they're legal again," Dowling said in musing tones.
"Young had to promise they wouldn't bring back polygamy," Toricelli said. "The president did squeeze that much out of him."
"Bully," Dowling replied, at which his adjutant, a much younger man, looked at him as if amazed anyone could say such a thing. Dowling's ears heated. His taste in slang had crystallized before the Great War. If he sounded old-fashioned… then he did, that was all.
No one shot at the auto or the trucks on the way to the station. Dowling had wondered if his men would have to fight their way out of Salt Lake City, but the withdrawal hadn't had any trouble. Maybe the Mormons didn't want to do anything to give Al Smith an excuse for changing his mind. Dowling wouldn't have, either, not in their shoes, but you never could tell with fanatics.
The Mormons did find ways to make their feelings known. Pictures and banners with beehives-their symbol of industry and the emblem of the Republic of Deseret they'd tried to set up-were everywhere. And Dowling saw the word freedom! painted on more than a few walls and fences. Maybe that just meant the locals were glad to be getting out from under U.S. military occupation. But maybe it meant some of them really were as cozy with Jake Featherston's party and the Confederate States as Winthrop W. Webb had feared.
Dowling hoped the skinny little spy was safe. As far as he knew, no one had ever figured out that Webb worked for the occupying authorities. But, again, you never could tell.
At the station, most of the soldiers filed into ordinary second-class passenger cars. They would sleep-if they slept-in seats that didn't recline. Dowling and Toricelli shared a Pullman car. Dowling remembered train rides with General Custer. He didn't think he was as big a nuisance as Custer had been.
No matter what he thought, he'd never broached the subject to Captain Toricelli. Custer was a great hero to the USA, but not to Abner Dowling. As Dowling knew too well, no man was a hero to his adjutant, any more than he was to his valet. Toricelli stayed polite. That sufficed.