American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (66 page)

  “We still do.” Rita’s family had always voted Socialist.

  Chester wasn’t so sure. Chester wasn’t so sure of anything just then, except that the bourbon was hitting him hard. “They’ve had twelve years,” he said. “Blackford’s had his whole term to get us back on our feet, and he hasn’t done it. Maybe the other side deserves a shot. How could it be worse?”

  “You’d really vote for Calvin Coolidge?” his wife asked. The governor of Massachusetts again looked to be his party’s likely candidate for president.

  “Right now, I don’t know what the hell I’d do,” Martin answered. “All I know is, I wish I still had my job. I wish I did, but I don’t. And God only knows what we’re going to do on account of that.” He waited to see if Rita would argue some more. He hoped she would—that might mean she’d seen a ray of hope he hadn’t. But she said not a word.

 
R
ounding the Horn in the USS
Remembrance
felt like old times to Sam Carsten. “I came the other way, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the
Dakota
during the war,” he said as waves lifted and dropped the aeroplane carrier again and again.

  “It’s easier going that way,” Lieutenant Commander Michael Watkins said. “The waves are coming with you instead of hitting you head-on.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam agreed. “I still don’t know how they ever got around this place against the wind in sailing ships.”

  “It wasn’t easy—I know that,” Watkins said, snatching up his mug of coffee from the galley table as the
Remembrance
plunged into another trough. Sam did the same. The table was mounted on gimbals, but the pitching in the strait was more than it was designed to handle.

  After another couple of rises and falls, Sam said, “I pity the poor fellows whose stomachs can’t take this.”

  “That’s no joke,” Watkins said, and took another sip of coffee.

  “I didn’t think it was, sir,” Carsten said. “Have you seen the sick-bay lists? It’s a good thing we don’t have to do any fighting in these latitudes, that’s all I’ve got to say.” He checked himself. “No, I take that back. Anybody else who tried to fight down here would have just as many seasick cases as we do.”

  “True enough.” The other officer sent him a sly look. “But I’ll bet you don’t mind the weather a bit.”

  “Who, me?” Sam tried to look innocent. Lieutenant Commander Watkins snickered, so he couldn’t have pulled it off. He went on, “Rounding the Horn in April—autumn down here, heading toward winter? No, sir, I don’t mind it one little bit. It’s the kind of weather I was made for. I can go on deck without smearing goop all over my face and my hands. I’m not burned. I’m not blistered. And we’re heading for the Sandwich Islands. I’m going to toast up there. I’ve been there before, and I know I’ll toast. So I’ll enjoy this while it lasts.”

  He hadn’t intended to get so worked up, but he didn’t enjoy, never had enjoyed, owning a hide that scorched if the sun looked at it sideways. Watkins held up a hand. “All right. I believe you. Do you think we’re going to have to fight when we do get up there?”

  “Me, sir?” Sam shrugged. “I’m no crystal-ball reader. No, we’re talking about the Japs, so I guess I should say I’m no tea-leaf reader.” Watkins made a face at him. He grinned, but then quickly became serious once more. “One thing I’ll tell you, though, is that a scrap with them won’t be any fun at all. I was aboard the
Dakota
when they suckered her out of Honolulu harbor and torpedoed her, and for the Battle of the Three Navies in the Pacific. They’re tougher than most Americans think, and that’s the truth.”

  “We can whip ’em.” Lieutenant Commander Watkins sounded confident. “We can whip anybody, except maybe the High Seas Fleet—and the Kaiser’s got more things on his plate than us right now.

  What do you know about these
Action Française
people?”

  “Sir, when I was on the
O’Brien
, we put in at Brest. I went into town to have a few drinks and look around, and I saw an
Action Française
riot. What they remind me of most is the Freedom Party in the CSA. They remember how things were back before the war, and they want to turn back the clock so they’re that way again.”

  “Good luck,” Watkins said. “The Kaiser won’t let them get away with that, and we won’t let the damned Confederates get away with it, either. We’d better not, anyhow.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carsten said. “But hard times mean parties like that get more votes, seems like. I don’t know what anybody can do about it. I don’t know if anybody can do anything.” He was sorry when the
Remembrance
rounded Cape Horn and made her way up the west coast of South America to Valparaiso, where she refueled. He’d been there briefly in the
Dakota
during the war.

  Chile was a staunch U.S. ally, not least because Argentina, her rival, had close ties to England and the other great alliance system. Argentina outweighed Chile, but the peace held because the Argentines didn’t outweigh the United States and didn’t want to give them any excuse to meddle in South American affairs.

  Valparaiso had grown in the years since Sam was last there. He saw no signs of damage from the great earthquake of 1906. The weather was mild, which meant he got sunburned. Then the
Remembrance
started north and west again, toward the Sandwich Islands. He sighed, went to the pharmacist’s mate, and drew himself yet another tube of zinc-oxide ointment.

  “You don’t happen to carry this stuff in five-gallon tubs, do you?” he asked, not altogether in jest.

  “Sorry, no.” Like most in his post, the pharmacist’s mate had no sense of humor.

  A few days out of Valparaiso, the
Remembrance
changed course, swinging more nearly toward the north. “Change of plan,” Commander Martin van der Waal told Carsten. “Keep it under your hat for a bit, though, because the men won’t like it. You can forget about Honolulu. No bright lights. No booze. No fast women, not any time soon. We’re bound for patrol duty off the coast of British Columbia.” Sam had fond memories of some of the fast women in Honolulu. Even so, he said, “That’s the best news I’ve had in months, sir. You ever eat one of those whole roasted pigs they cook in a pit in the Sandwich Islands? That’s what I look like when I’m stationed there—cooked meat, nothing else but. The coast of British Columbia . . . That’s not so bad.” He’d sunburned in Seattle, too, but only a little.

  Van der Waal looked him over, then nodded to himself. “No, you wouldn’t be one to complain about going way north, would you? You’ve got your reasons.”

  “You bet I do, sir.” Sam nodded. “But what’s the scuttlebutt about the change in plans? What’s going on off British Columbia?”

  “We’ll be flying combat air patrol, keeping an eye out for the Japs and giving ’em hell if we catch any of

  ’em in the neighborhood,” Commander van der Waal replied. “I don’t know this for a fact, but I hear they’ve been trying to stir up the Canucks, get ’em to rebel again.”

  “Bastards,” Carsten said without much rancor. Having gone to Ireland during the Great War, he knew that was how you played the game. But, frowning, he asked, “Why us, sir? They’ve got to have other aeroplane carriers closer to Canada than we were when we set out. Why not use one of them? We’re going the long way round, seems like.”

  “Yes, there are other carriers closer,” van der Waal agreed. “They’re purpose-built ships, not a converted battle cruiser like the
Remembrance
. They carry more aeroplanes than we do. And
they’re
all going to the Sandwich Islands. So is a lot of the rest of the fleet—whatever we don’t leave behind in the Atlantic to keep an eye on the Confederates and the limeys.”
 And the Germans,
 Sam thought. He lit a cigarette. “If they want the first team in Honolulu,” he said slowly, “then they think there really might be trouble with the Japs.”

  “That’s the way it looks to me, too,” van der Waal said. “And that means we’re going to have to pay special attention to torpedo-damage drills on our way north. Nobody knows what the Japs have operating off the Canadian coast. It may be nothing. It may be a destroyer or two. Or it may be more, including submersibles. And destroyers can launch torpedoes, too—that’s their best hope against bigger ships, in fact.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sam hoped he didn’t sound too resigned. It wasn’t that torpedo-damage control wasn’t important. He knew it was. He’d seen how important it was aboard the
Dakota
. Important or not, though, it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. He’d come to the carrier hoping to work with aeroplanes or, that failing, to stay in gunnery, his specialty as a petty officer before he got promoted. Of course, what he wanted to do and what the Navy wanted him to do were two different beasts.

  Van der Waal knew he was reluctant. He said, “This duty is vital to the ship’s security, Ensign—vital, I tell you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carsten said again. “I know that, sir.” He stifled a sigh. “I’ll do what ever you need, sir.”

  “I’m sure you will. I appreciate it,” van der Waal said. “You make a solid officer, Carsten, and I’m pleased to have you under me. If you’d gone to Annapolis instead of taking the mustang’s route, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d made captain by now.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Sam said. “I do appreciate that, believe you me I do.” A lot of what he was doing these days amounted to showing people what he might have done if he’d had better chances when he was younger. He shrugged. Those were the breaks. He hadn’t even thought about becoming an officer till years after the war.
But I passed my exams very first try,
 he thought proudly. Some veteran CPOs had been trying for years, with no luck at all.

  He went out on deck. This wasn’t Cape Horn, not any more. The air was warm. The sea was blue and calm. The sun shone bright. Sam sighed. You couldn’t have everything. He reached for the zinc-oxide ointment.

 
B
erlin, Ontario, didn’t boast a whole lot of fancy saloons. The best one, as far as Jonathan Moss was concerned, was the Pig and Whistle, not far from the courthouse. He found himself having a couple of drinks with Major Sam Lopat, the military prosecutor. They weren’t sparring with each other in court today. They’d both ducked in to get warm; though the calendar declared it was April, a new blizzard had just left Berlin eight more inches of snow.

  Hoisting a glass, Moss said, “Mud in your eye.”

  “Same to you,” the U.S. officer said, and drank. “Of course, all the mud around here’s frozen into a cheap grade of cement.”

  “Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Moss drank, too. “Nobody in his right mind would come here for the weather, that’s for sure.”

  “Nope. Nobody in his right mind would come here at all.” But then Lopat paused and shook his head. “I take that back, damned if I don’t. You’re here for a reason—you can’t very well practice occupation law in the USA. Two reasons, matter of fact, because you married that Canadian gal, too.”

  “Yeah.” Moss didn’t mention that he’d gone into occupation law not least because even then he hadn’t been able to get Laura Secord out of his mind.

  Lopat’s train of thought went down a different track, which was probably just as well. He said, “And everything’s going to hell all over the world, but you’re a civilian with a steady job. That’s nothing to sneeze at, either, not these days it’s not.”

  “Ain’t it the truth?” Moss said, without grammar but with great sincerity. “I don’t know when it’s going to turn around. I don’t know if it’s ever going to turn around.”

  “Tell you one thing.” The military prosecutor spoke with a glee unfueled as yet by whiskey. “Come November, old man Blackford can head back to Dakota, and nobody’ll miss him a bit. And with a Democrat in Powel House, things here in Canada will tighten up—and about time, too. You see if they don’t, Jonathan my boy.”

  “If they tighten up any more, you won’t bother trying Canucks at all,” Moss said. “You’ll just give ’em a blindfold and a cigarette, the way it worked during the war.”

  “What a liar!” Lopat said. “Some of the fast ones you’ve pulled off in military court, and you’re boo-hooing for the Canucks? Give me a break, for crying out loud!”

  “Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell
prosecute
and
convict
the same way,” Moss said.

  “That’s not how it works. Even in military court, a defendant’s entitled to a fair shake.”

  “Most of the ones who come up before the court deserve to be shaken, all right,” Lopat said. “One of these days, you’re going to be sorry for getting so many of ’em off. You may be turning another Arthur McGregor loose on the world.”

  “McGregor never went to court,” Moss snapped. “And there’s not a lawyer in the world who doesn’t have some clients he wishes he didn’t. But what can you do, for Christ’s sake? If you don’t give everybody as good a defense as you can, everybody’s rights go down the drain.”

  “Some people deserve to be locked up, and to have the jailer lose the key,” Lopat insisted. “Or worse.

  How many people did McGregor end up killing? And a lot of ’em were just Canucks in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “McGregor deserved whatever happened to him—after he had his day in court,” Moss said. “Till you have a trial, you just don’t know. You people have tried to railroad a few Canadians in your time, and don’t try to tell me any different.”

  Lopat snorted. “You’d say that, wouldn’t you? I’ve got news for you, though. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.” He picked up his glass of whiskey, poured it down, and signaled for a refill.

  “If you don’t admit that . . .” Moss threw his hands in the air. Of course Sam Lopat wouldn’t admit it.

  He was a lawyer, too. Expecting a lawyer to admit anything damaging to the point of view he was presenting was like wishing the Easter Bunny would hop across your lawn. You could do it, but it wouldn’t do you any good, and you’d spend a long time waiting.