American Empire: Blood and Iron - By Harry Turtledove Page 0,170

live for a while? That means you’ve got a line on giving him what he deserves some other way, right?”

“Not yet, it doesn’t,” Featherston answered. Yes, Kimball was worth keeping around, all right—he’d got one step ahead of Jake, which didn’t happen every day. “I’m not saying I will yet, either. Have to cipher out how I want to do it, if I decide to do it. Do I want it to look like the Party didn’t have anything to do with it? Or do I want the job to say, You screw around with the Freedom Party and you’ll end up good and dead?”

All at once, instead of taking it personally, Kimball started looking at it as a tactical problem. Jake saw the change in his eyes. He smiled to himself, but only to himself—he didn’t want Kimball to know he could read him.

“That’s a nice question, isn’t it?” Kimball said. “I guess the one to ask right afterwards is, If we let the world know the Freedom Party got rid of Brearley, can we do it without having anybody go to jail?”

“There are places we could,” Jake answered. “South Carolina’s one of ’em, I reckon: Anne Colleton has big chunks of that state sewed up tight for us.”

“I haven’t done too bad my own self, you don’t mind my saying so,” Kimball replied. Was that touchiness in his voice?

It was, Jake decided. Was Kimball jealous of Anne Colleton? Damned if he wasn’t. That was a useful thing to know. Featherston filed it away. He couldn’t use it now, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to somewhere down the line. For the moment, he needed to stick to the business at hand: “I’m not so sure about Richmond. We’ve got a lot of cops in the Party here, same as most places, but they’ve got city hall and the state government and the Confederate government all sitting over ’em. They might have to go after us, whether they really want to or not.”

“I can see that.” Kimball raised an eyebrow. He was cool and collected again. Yes, he would have made a formidable submarine skipper. Nothing fazed him for long. Jake could easily picture him stalking and sinking that U.S. destroyer after the war ended, and banking on success to keep him out of hot water. He went on, “The Whigs and the Radical Liberals don’t fancy the Freedom Party much these days, do they?”

“If they did, I’d reckon I was doing something wrong,” Featherston said. “Pack of damn fools, want to keep on doing things the same old way. That’s real sly, ain’t it? That’s how we got into the mess we’re in. That’s how we’ll get into more messes, too, sure as the devil.”

“I don’t reckon you’re wrong there.” Kimball leaned forward, Brearley almost forgotten. “What the hell are you going to do about the niggers if we ever get the chance?”

“Smack ’em down and make sure they don’t have the chance to get back up on their feet and stab us in the back again,” Jake answered: the reply he usually gave. He had more in mind, but he still didn’t know if he could do, if anybody could do, everything he really wanted. What he’d told Kimball would suffice for the time being. “Let’s get back to this business here. There’s no paper, nothing in your log or anything, that says you sank this Yankee ship too late, right?”

To his relief, Kimball nodded. “I made sure there wouldn’t be. Brearley can’t prove anything like that. But I didn’t sink the Ericsson all by myself, either. If the rest of the crew start blabbing, they could give me a hell of a hard time.”

“Would they do that?” Jake asked.

“Most of ’em wouldn’t, I’m sure of it,” Kimball said, again the reply Featherston wanted to hear. “They were howling like a pack of wolves when we sent that damn destroyer to the bottom. But even on a little boat like the Bonefish, there’s a couple dozen sailors. I can’t tell you nobody would chime in with my exec, because I don’t know that for a fact.”

“All right.” Jake scratched his head and thought for a while. “Here’s what we’re going to do for now: sit tight and see what happens. If Brearley goes to the papers, he damn well does, that’s all. I don’t reckon it hurts the Party. You weren’t in the Party during the war, on account of there wasn’t any Party to