Return Engagement

by Harry Turtledove

  Outside of Baltimore, the Ford stopped crawling. That didn't mean it sped up: it stopped moving at all. "What the hell?" Dowling said irritably, wondering if Abell shouldn't have laid an airplane on for him instead.

  "Some kind of mess up ahead. We'll find out when we get there." The driver sounded philosophical.

  That did little to ease Dowling's irritation. "If we get there, you mean," he growled. There was barely enough light to let him see the driver's shoulders go up and down in a shrug.

  They took twenty minutes to go half a mile to the trouble. A bomb crater rendered the road impassable south- and northbound. Engineers had just finished spreading steel matting of the sort that made instant airstrips out to either side of the damage. Without it, motorcars would have bogged down in the mud when they went off the road and onto the shoulder. With it, Dowling felt as if he were being shaken to pieces. He breathed a sigh of relief when the Ford got on the road again.

  The relief didn't last. No sooner had they got into Baltimore than the Confederates started bombing it. With that cloud cover overhead, the enemy bombers couldn't hope to be accurate. But they didn't seem to care. The bombs would come down somewhere on U.S. soil. If they didn't blow up ships in the harbor or factories or warehouses, they'd flatten shops or apartments or houses. And if they hit a school or a hospital or a church–well, that was just one of those things. U.S. pilots didn't lose sleep over it, either.

  Cops and civil-defense wardens were shouting for everybody to get off the streets. "Keep going," Dowling told the driver. The man shrugged again and obeyed.

  Somewhere near the middle of town, a warden stepped in front of the Ford. He almost got himself run over for his trouble. "Are you out of your frigging mind?" he yelled as a bomb crashed down a few hundred yards away. "Get into a cellar, or the undertaker will bury you in a jam tin."

  "What do we do, sir?" the driver asked Dowling. "Your call."

  Before Dowling could answer, a bomb went off much closer than the one a minute before. A fragment of casing clanged into the Ford's trunk. Another pierced the left front tire, which made the auto list. And another got the civil-defense warden, who howled and went down in the middle of the wet street.

  "I think we just had our minds made up for us," Dowling said as he opened the door. "Let's give this poor bastard a hand, shall we?"

  The warden was lucky, if you wanted to call getting wounded lucky. The gouge was on the back of his calf, and fairly clean as such things went. He was already struggling back to his feet again by the time Dowling and the driver came over to him. "Let me get bandaged up and I'll go back on duty," he insisted.

  Dowling doubted that; the wound was larger and deeper than the warden seemed to think it was. But it hadn't hamstrung him, as it would have were it a little lower. "Where's the closest cellar?" Dowling asked. "We'll get you patched up, and then we'll worry about what happens next."

  "Just you follow me," the civil-defense warden said. Dowling and the driver ended up hauling him along with his arms draped over their shoulders. Trying to put weight on the leg showed him he was hurt worse than he'd thought. He guided them to a hotel down the block. Dowling was soaked by the time he got there. Manhandling the warden down the stairs to the cellar was another adventure, but he and the driver managed.

  People in the cellar exclaimed at the spectacle of a bedraggled brigadier general. All Dowling said was, "Is there a doctor in the house?" For a wonder, there was. He went to work on the wounded warden. Dowling turned to his driver. "Do you think you can fix that flat once the bombs stop falling?"

  "I'll give it my best shot, sir," the driver said resignedly.

  It took more work than he'd expected, for the fragment that got the trunk had torn into the spare tire and inner tube. The driver had to wait till a cop came by, explain his predicament to him, and wait again till the policeman came back with a fresh tire and tube. They didn't get moving again till well after midnight.

  As Dowling fitfully dozed in the back seat, he hoped the driver wasn't dozing behind the wheel. The Ford didn't crash into another auto or go off the road, so the driver evidently managed to keep his eyes open.

  More problems with the road stalled them outside of Washington. The driver did start snoring then. Dowling let him do it till things started moving again. They didn't get through the de jure capital of the USA until after dawn. That let Dowling see that Confederate bombers had hit it even harder than Philadelphia. Still, it wasn't the almost lunar landscape it had been after the USA took it back from the CSA in the Great War.

  The Confederates had knocked out the regular bridges over the Potomac. Engineers had run up pontoon bridges to take up the slack. The Ford bumped into what had been Virginia and was now an eastern extension of West Virginia.

  Daniel MacArthur made his headquarters near the little town of Manassas, scene of the first U.S. defeat–but far from the last–in the War of Secession. As Dowling, wet and weary, got out of the motorcar, he hoped that wasn't an omen.

  ****

  WAITING FOR the first big U.S. attack to go in wasn't easy for Flora Blackford. If it succeeded, it would bring the war back to something approaching an even keel. If it failed . . . She shook her head. She refused to think about what might happen if it failed. It would succeed. It would.

  Ordinary business had to go on while she waited along with the rest of the United States. Studying the budget was part of ordinary business. If you looked long enough, you learned to spot all sorts of interesting things.

  Some of the most interesting were the ones that were most puzzling. Why was there a large Interior Department appropriation for construction work in western Washington? And why didn't the item explain what the work was for?

  She called an undersecretary and tried to find out. He said, "Hold on, Congresswoman. Let me see what you're talking about. Give me the page number, if you'd be so kind." She did, and listened to him flipping paper. "All right. I see the item," he told her. Close to half a minute of silence followed, and then a sheepish laugh. "To tell you the truth, Congresswoman, I have no idea what that's about. It does seem a little unusual, doesn't it?"

  "It seems more than a little unusual to me," Flora answered. "Who would know something about it?"

  "Why don't you try Assistant Secretary Goodwin?" the undersecretary said. "Hydroelectric is his specialty."

  "I'll do that," Flora said. "Let me have his number, please." She wrote it down. "Thanks very much." She hung up and dialed again.

  Assistant Secretary Goodwin had a big, deep voice. He sounded more important than the junior functionary with whom she'd spoken a moment before. But when she pointed out the item that puzzled her, what he said was, "Well, I'll be . . . darned. What's that doing there?"

  "I was hoping you could tell me," Flora said pointedly.

  "Congresswoman, this is news to me," Goodwin said. She believed him. He seemed angry in a special bureaucratic way: the righteous indignation of a man who'd had his territory encroached upon. She didn't think anyone could fake that particular tone of voice.

  Tapping a pencil on her desk, she asked, "If you don't know, who's likely to?"

  "It would have to be the secretary himself," Goodwin answered. "Let's see which one of us can call him first. I aim to get to the bottom of this, too."

  The Secretary of the Interior was a Midwesterner named Wallace. The first time Flora tried to reach him, his secretary said he was on another line. Goodwin must have dialed faster. "I'll have him call you back, if you like," the secretary added.

  "Yes. Thank you. Please do that." Flora gave her the number and returned the handset to its cradle. She did some more pencil tapping. Were they just passing the buck? Her mouth tightened. If they were, they'd be sorry.

  She jumped a little when the telephone rang a few minutes later. Bertha said, "It's Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, Congresswoman."

  "Oh!" Flora said. She'd been expecting the Secretary of the Interior. She wondered what Roosevelt wanted. More propaganda? S
he shrugged. Only one way to find out. "Put him through, please."

  "Hello, Congresswoman." As usual, Franklin Roosevelt sounded jaunty. No one who didn't know would ever imagine he couldn't get out of his wheelchair. "How are you this lovely morning?"

  It wasn't lovely; it was still raining. Even so, Flora couldn't help smiling. "I'm well, thanks," she answered. "And you?"

  "In the pink," Roosevelt said. "I just had a call from Hank. He thought I might be able to tell you what was going on."

  "Hank?" Flora echoed with a frown. "Hank who? You're a step or two ahead of me."

  "Wallace," Roosevelt told her. "You've been talking to people about that Washington State item in the Interior Department budget. It's no wonder nobody over there knows anything much about it. It really has more to do with my shop, if you must know."

  "With the War Department?" Flora said. "Why isn't it listed under War Department appropriations, in that case?" Curiouser and curiouser, she thought.

  Roosevelt coughed a couple of times. He sounded faintly embarrassed as he answered, "Well, Congresswoman, one reason is that we didn't want to draw the Confederates' notice and make them wonder what we were doing way out there." He laughed. "So we drew your notice and made you wonder instead. Seems we can't win."

  "So you did," Flora said. "What are you doing way out there? Something large, by the size of the appropriation you're asking for."

  "I'm sorry, but I can't tell you what it is," Roosevelt said.

  "What?" Now Flora really did start to get angry. "What do you mean, you can't? If you don't want to talk to me here, Mr. Roosevelt, you can answer questions under oath in front of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Now–what sort of boondoggle has the War Department got going on in Washington State?"

  "We don't believe it's a boondoggle. We wouldn't be working on it if we did," Roosevelt answered. "And you can summon me to the Joint Committee, no doubt about it. But if you do, I will lie like Ananias. That will be the best possible way for me to serve my country. I will be convincing, too. Your colleagues, or enough of them, will believe me. And, of course, I will deny we ever had this conversation."

  He meant every word of it. Flora had dealt with a lot of recalcitrant bureaucrats. Once in a great while, one of them would dig in his heels and refuse to move. Plainly, that was what was happening here. Flora didn't understand why, though. "What could possibly be so important?" she asked.

  "I can't tell you that, either," Roosevelt said. "I will tell you that it is more important than my job. If you want to send me to the calaboose for contempt of Congress, I will cheerfully go. It is that important. It is so important, I am going to ask you to let me sell you a pig in a poke and trust me without asking any more questions. If you do, I will thank you. If you don't, Jake Featherston will. Up to you."

  He meant every word of that, too. Whether he was right or wrong was a different question–and he didn't want to give Flora any clues that would let her decide. She said, "You don't make this easy, do you?"

  "Few things in wartime are easy. Figuring out whether to keep this secret is one of them," he answered.

  "If you turn out to be wrong, Mr. Roosevelt, there is no place in the world you can hide from me," Flora said.

  "That's fair," Roosevelt said at once. "If you have a price, I will pay it. The administration will pay it. You were unhappy President Smith hasn't said more about the way the CSA treats its Negroes. He could. He would. He will, if you like."

  "The last time we talked about this, you said it was between the President and me," Flora reminded him. "You told me you couldn't do anything about it. I believed you." Of course she'd believed him. What he'd told her was the way things always worked in the U.S. government–or any other. "Why have you changed your mind? Why do you think he'll change his?"

  "Because he agrees with me about how important this is–and how important keeping it secret is," Franklin Roosevelt answered.

  Flora didn't ask him if he could deliver. She had no doubt he could. But what was so very important out there by the Pacific that Al Smith would change a political position he'd taken after the coldest of calculations? She started to ask the Assistant Secretary of War. Only one thing held her back: the certainty that he wouldn't tell her.

  Slowly, she said, "I think I will take you up on that. This war has a moral element. We aren't just fighting it to protect ourselves, though we certainly are doing that. But the Confederates are committing crimes against humanity. They need to be stopped."

  "Crimes against humanity," Roosevelt echoed. Flora could hear the faint scrape of pen on paper. "It's a good phrase, a telling phrase. You'll hear it again. Is there anything else?"

  There was one thing more–the secret Roosevelt was willing to pay any price to preserve. Again, though, Flora knew he wouldn't tell her. "No, I don't think so," she answered, and wondered what sort of deal she'd just made. Franklin Roosevelt wasn't her idea of the Devil–but how could she be sure?

  She couldn't. That bothered her more than anything. She'd done it anyhow. Done what, exactly? Agreed to keep quiet about something he wished she'd never found in the first place. It was almost as if she'd discovered him being unfaithful to his wife.

  Would she have kept quiet about something like that? She didn't suppose she would have gone out of her way to talk about it, but. . . . She didn't suppose Roosevelt could have offered such a tempting bargain about that, either.

  What on earth was going on out there to make them willing to go so far to cover it up? Flora laughed. She almost wanted to be difficult just so she could find out.

  She wondered if they were developing some fancy new poison gas. Western Washington was full of empty square miles. If you wanted to experiment with something toxic, you wouldn't do it in New York City. You'd go someplace where a mishap wouldn't turn into a disaster.

  Slowly, Flora nodded to herself. If she had to bet, she would have put her money on something like that. The longer the Confederates didn't know what was going on, the shorter the time they'd have to start working on an antidote or new protective clothing or whatever they'd need to neutralize the weapon once the United States trotted it out.

  She nodded again. That left her more or less satisfied, but it also left her more than a little miffed. No matter how she'd threatened Roosevelt, she wasn't about to start screaming about a new poison gas from the housetops. She wanted this war won, too. Didn't Roosevelt see that? Evidently not. He'd promised her the sun, moon, and little stars to keep her mouth shut instead.

  The telephone in the outer office rang. Bertha answered it. She called, "Congresswoman, it's the President."

  Flora picked up the phone on her desk. "Hello, Mr. President," she said.

  "Hello, sweetheart," Al Smith answered. "So you want me to squawk about the shvartzers, do you? So all right, I'll do it." Like a lot of New York Irish politicians, he could sound very Jewish when he wanted to.

  "That's . . . kind of you, sir," Flora said. "I still don't quite understand why you're raising such a fuss."

  "I know," Smith said. "Franklin made the deal with you so you wouldn't ask questions, remember, not so you would."

  "Oh, yes. I remember. I'm not likely to forget," Flora answered. "If you meet your end, I'll meet mine." She said that with a curious reluctance. "I won't ask any questions. I won't poke my nose where it doesn't belong. But if you think I won't be ready to blow up from curiosity, you'd better think again."

  Al Smith laughed. Even then, he sounded tired. "Well, I've been worrying about some bigger bangs than that lately."

  "Not likely," Flora said. The President laughed again. He made a kissing noise over the telephone and hung up. Flora smiled as she did, too. She was still curious, but she didn't feel quite so bad about the bargain now.

  ****

  MAJOR JONATHAN Moss bounced to a stop at an airstrip outside a Maryland town with the odd name of Texas. One after another, the rest of his fighter squadron landed behind him–all except one pilot, who'd had engi
ne trouble and had to come down somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Moss hoped the missing man would get repairs and rejoin the squadron soon. By the looks of things here in the East, they were going to need all the help they could get.

  Led by a groundcrew man with wigwag flags, Moss taxied into a revetment. As soon as his prop had stopped spinning, more groundcrew men spread camouflage netting over his Wright. He slid back the canopy and climbed out.

  "Looks like the balloon's going to go up here pretty soon," he remarked.

  "Beats me," the groundcrew man answered. "Far as I'm concerned, we've already been sitting around too long with our thumbs up our asses."

  A man of strong convictions, Moss thought, amused. But then again, why not? Everybody in the USA seemed to wonder why the attack here in the East hadn't started yet. Moss' flying boots dug into mud as he walked out of the revetment. The rain had messed things up. He knew that. And the high command here was pulling together whatever it could to add to the fight. But didn't the powers that be think the Confederates were doing the same damn thing?

  Martin Rolvaag came out of another revetment. Moss' wingman waved to him. "At least we didn't have to fight our way across Ohio," Rolvaag said.

  "That occurred to me, too," Moss admitted. "Can't say I'm sorry we didn't."

  "Way it looks to me, we can't do more than one big thing at a time, and neither can the Confederates," Rolvaag said. "As soon as one side or the other manages to run two full-scale attacks at once, it'll have the edge."