Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

In spite of everything, reports from Philadelphia did get back to Richmond. They took a while, but they got here. Clarence Potter, unlike a lot of people in the Confederate government and military these days, was a patient man. Sooner or later, he expected he would find out what he needed to know.

One of the things he'd grown interested in was how reports got from Richmond to Philadelphia, to whatever opposite numbers he had there. A clerk in the U.S. War Department had sent by a roundabout route a U.S. report that… quoted Potter, as a matter of fact.

I believe the situation with regard to the Negroes in Mississippi is hectic, and our response to it must be dynamic. Seeing his own words come back was interesting-and exciting, too. He'd written several versions of that report. In another, he called the situation distressing and the needed response ferocious; in yet another, the keywords were alarming and merciless; and so on. He had a list of where the report with each set of keywords had been distributed. He kept that list in his wallet. No one but him could possibly get at it.

When he took out the list, he checked to see where the relevant words were hectic and dynamic. Then, whistling to himself, he went to Lieutenant General Forrest's office. He had to cool his heels in an anteroom for half an hour before he could see the chief of the Confederate General Staff. By the glum expressions on the faces of the two major generals who emerged from Forrest's inner office, they would have been glad to let him go before them.

"Good morning, General," Nathan Bedford Forrest III said when Potter came in at last. "Sometimes you have to take people out to the woodshed. It's not a hell of a lot of fun, but it's part of the job."

"Yes, sir. You're right on both counts." Potter closed the door behind him and lowered his voice: "You're right on both counts, and you've got a Yankee spy somewhere in the Operations and Training Section."

"Son of a bitch," Forrest said. "Son of a bitch! So your cute little scheme there paid off, did it?"

"Yes, sir." Clarence Potter nodded in somber satisfaction. "When I drafted that report on the guerrilla situation in Mississippi, I varied the words in some of the most important sentences. Each version went to a different section here in the War Department and in the State Department. If a spy sent it north and one of our people in the USA got it back to me, I'd know where it came from. I've had to wait longer than I wanted to, but that's part of the game."

"Operations and Training, eh?" A savage gleam came into Forrest's eyes. His great-grandfather had probably worn that same expression just before he drew his saber and charged some luckless damnyankee cavalryman. "You have any idea who the snake in the grass is?"

"No, sir," Potter answered. "I can't even prove he's the only spy in the War Department. But I know he's there, and I can think of a couple of different ways to get after him."

"I'm all ears," Forrest said.

"One would be to do the same thing I did this time: make several versions of a report, one for each subsection of O and T. The problem with that is, getting results back from the USA is slow and uncertain," Potter said. "The other one is the usual-seeing who has a grudge, seeing who's spending more money than his salary accounts for, seeing who all had access to the report, and on and on. You'll have plenty of people who can do that for you; you don't need me to give them lessons."

"Let's try both approaches," Nathan Bedford Forrest III said after only the barest pause for thought. "You fix up another report-hell, make it on the organization and training of spies. They'll sit up and take notice of that. We'll use it to winnow out suspects, or we'll try to, anyway. And we'll do the usual things, too. We don't want to miss a trick here."

Potter nodded. "All right, sir. I'll take care of it. I wonder how much this bastard has given the USA without our ever noticing it."

"When we catch him, we'll squeeze him like an orange," the chief of the General Staff promised. "Oh, yes. I have plenty of people who can take care of that for me, too."

"No doubt, sir." Now Potter did his best to hide his distaste. Intelligence work wasn't always about friendly persuasion. Potter didn't shrink from straightforward brutality, but he didn't relish it, either. Some people did. They usually made better Freedom Party stalwarts and other sorts of strongarm men than they did spies-usually, but not always.

"You did a terrific job here, Potter," Forrest said. "Your country won't forget."

"This is just a start. When we catch this son of a bitch, then I've done something," Potter said.

"Well, at least we're looking in the right place now-or one of the right places." Forrest looked harried. "Jesus Christ! We're liable to be ass-deep in these stinking Yankees."

"Every one we ferret out is one we don't have to worry about later." Potter didn't say that one captured spy would lead to others. It was possible, but not likely. If the Yankees had the brains God gave a blue crab, they'd have each spy sending what he found to someone he never saw, didn't know, and would have a hard time betraying. Jack Smith wouldn't know that Joe Doakes three desks over was also selling out his country. They could eat lunch together every day for twenty years without finding out about each other. He'd organized things in Philadelphia and Washington that way. His counterparts in green-gray would do the same thing.

"You fix up some fresh bait." Nathan Bedford Forrest III might have been on a fishing trip. And so he was-but he hoped to fry up a nastier catch than crappie or bluegill. "We'll take it from there."

Potter recognized dismissal when he heard it. He got to his feet and saluted. "Yes, sir." Out he went, coldly pleased with himself. He wished he could have talked with Anne Colleton about what he'd done. She would have appreciated it. She might have thought of it herself-she'd been nobody's fool. If she hadn't gone down to Charleston the day the Yankee carrier raided…

He shrugged. Bad luck came to everybody. You had to look at it that way, or else the voices that came to you in the wee small hours of bad nights started showing up at all hours every day. You weren't good for anything then, to yourself or to anybody else. Bury your dead, drink a toast to them now and again, and move on. As long as you kept moving, you made a hard target.

They'd get you anyway, of course. Odds were, though, they'd take longer.

He sat down at his desk. It wasn't as if he had nothing to do. He'd pile those bait reports on top of everything else. No rest for the weary, he thought. Or was it for the wicked? He never could remember. And what difference did it make? It fit either way.

He swore when the telephone rang. There went a perfectly good train of thought. He wondered if he'd be able to find it again. The telephone went on ringing. He picked it up. "Clarence Potter here." Anybody who didn't know he was in Intelligence had no business calling on this line.

"Hello, Potter, you sly son of a bitch. General Forrest tells me you really are as smart as you think you are."

"Thank you, Mr. President-I suppose." Potter wasn't inclined to let anyone praise more faintly than he did.

Neither was Jake Featherston. Laughing, he said, "You're welcome-I reckon." His good humor never lasted long. He went on, "That was a good piece of work. We've got to make sure the damnyankees aren't looking over our shoulder and reading our cards before we ever set 'em down."

"Yes, sir." Potter hoped his resignation didn't show. In spite of everything the Confederate States could do, the United States were going to find out some of what they were up to. The countries were too similar and shared too long a border to keep that from happening. He went on, "As long as we find out more about what they're up to, we're ahead of the game."