Breakthroughs (15 page)

Not this time. Laughing again, Custer said, “I have reason to believe the Rebels are somehow getting their hands on the reports I forward to the War Department, and so I have been carefully feeding them false information for the past several weeks. I hope they are less astute than our own people, and fail to notice the deception.”

Roosevelt rounded on Dowling. “Major, is what General Custer says true?”

If he wanted to, Dowling could break Custer here. He could not only break him, he could break him and come out, in the short run, smelling like a rose as he did it. The old fool had served himself up with an apple in his mouth, and all Dowling had to do was carve. He’d dreamt of a chance like this for years—and, now that he had it, he discovered he couldn’t stick the knife in. That was what it would be: a stab in the back. He might escape Custer with it, but, afterwards, who in the Army would trust an officer who laid his superior low?

“Answer me, Major,” Roosevelt said.

“I’m sorry, your Excellency,” Dowling said. “General Custer did not tell me why he wanted the reports to appear as if they were disguising the concentration of barrels.” That was a lie, but no one could ever prove it was a lie. “I presume, though, that it was for reasons of security.”

If Roosevelt felt like seeing for himself how the barrels were deployed, everything could still cave in, like a trench with a mine touched off below it. The president didn’t go charging off to do that, not right away, anyhow. Rubbing his chin, he asked, “Why, General, do you believe the Confederates may have been reading your dispatches to Philadelphia?”

“Just by way of example, sir, how could General MacArthur’s attack over by Cotton Town have failed last fall if the Rebs had no advance warning of it?” Custer asked—reasonably. “Daniel MacArthur is as fine a brigadier general and division commander as the U.S. Army possesses, but he failed. The Rebs must have prepared in advance to withstand him.”

MacArthur’s attack had failed, among other reasons, because Custer didn’t give his fine brigadier general the—admittedly extravagant—artillery support and number of barrels he’d requested. Custer didn’t want MacArthur gaining glory, any more than he’d wanted Roosevelt gaining glory in the Second Mexican War. Dowling had watched Custer outmaneuver MacArthur. Could he outmaneuver Roosevelt, too?

Maybe he could. The president coughed. “Why have you not presented these suspicions to the War Department?” he asked, and Dowling realized he was witnessing something few men had ever seen: Theodore Roosevelt in retreat.

Custer smiled. When he heard that question, he knew he had the game in hand. “Your Excellency, since I have not been able to determine how the Confederates are obtaining their information, I did not wish to run the risk of informing them that I knew they were doing so. Letting them have information that is not true struck me as being more profitable.”

“More profitable, you say?” Roosevelt perked up. He set a finger by the side of his nose. “And you have a plan to make them pay, so you can reap the profit?”

“Mr. President, I do,” Custer answered, telling the truth, as far as Dowling could see, for the first time in the interview.

“Very well, General,” Roosevelt said. “Till the mare drops her foal, no one can tell what the creature will look like. I shall judge your plan—and whether you were wise to conceal it not only from the foe but also from your countrymen—by the result.” He got to his feet. “I thank you for your time, General. Major Dowling, thank you also for your part in explaining what has occurred here. Good morning, gentlemen.” Without waiting for a reply, Roosevelt walked out to the limousine.

Dowling stared out the window, hardly daring to believe the Pierce-Arrow was really rolling away. When it was out of sight, he let out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief. “My God, sir, you got away with it.”

Custer looked disgracefully smug. “Of course I did, Major.”

“That was an inspired explanation you gave him.” Dowling was not used to admiring Custer’s wits. Doing so felt strange and wrong, as if he were dabbling in some unnatural vice.

“So it was, if I do say so myself.” The vain, pompous old fool looked more smug still. Dowling fought down the urge to retch.

Libbie Custer came downstairs in a rustle of skirts. “I saw him leave,” she said. “Did he swallow it, Autie?”

“Every morsel, my dear.” Some of the smugness hissed out of Custer, as if he were an observation balloon with a leak. He turned back to Dowling. “Major, now that the president has gone…” Had it been a complete sentence, he would have finished it with something like,
Get the hell out of here yourself.

“Yes, sir.” Dowling left in a hurry.
So Libbie was the one who came up with the second line of defense,
he thought. Slowly, he nodded. He should have known Custer wouldn’t have the brains to do it on his own. He nodded again, his faith in his own sense of how the world worked in large measure restored.

But Custer, even if he hadn’t planned the deception, had carried it off. If he could deceive the Confederates, too…He hadn’t had much luck doing that in any of the fighting up till now. But then, he hadn’t tried very hard, either. If he did, if he could…

It made a man hope. In this war, too much hope was dangerous. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Abner Dowling said.

Arthur McGregor rode the wagon toward Rosenfeld. Whenever U.S. trucks came up behind him, he delayed a little before moving off to the shoulder to let them roar past. It was a tiny bit of resistance, but all he could muster. He had to clench the reins tightly to keep from shouting abuse at the Americans. When the time came, he would try to take his revenge. Till then, he had to seem as conquered, as beaten down, as the rest of his countrymen.

Outside Rosenfeld, the occupiers had a checkpoint. They were meticulous in searching the wagon, and even more meticulous in searching his person. They found nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing out of the ordinary to find. “Pass on,” one of them said.

“Thank you, sir,” McGregor answered, abject as a kicked dog. He scrambled back up into the seat, flicked the reins, and rolled on toward the little town where he bought what he couldn’t raise for himself.

Rosenfeld, Manitoba, these days, was more nearly an American town than a Canadian one. Most of the men on the streets wore green-gray. Most of the talk McGregor heard was in sharp American accents, sour to his ears. Most of the money that changed hands was American money: boring green banknotes, coins full of eagles and stars and thunderbolts instead of bearing the images of George and Edward and Victoria. Most of the money in McGregor’s pocket was American money. He hated that, too.

He had to tie up his wagon on a side street. American motorcars and trucks and wagons and even bicycles dominated Main Street. As he came round the corner, a green-gray Ford whizzed past him.

He had to work hard to keep his face straight, to show none of what he was thinking. Major Hannebrink was at the wheel of that Ford. Unusually, he had none of his Springfield-carrying bully boys with him.
Probably isn’t out to murder anyone this morning,
McGregor thought.
Maybe he waits till after lunch to do his murdering.

The post office was only a few doors away. When McGregor went inside, the familiar spicy smell of Wilfred Rokeby’s hair oil greeted his nose. The postmaster used the aromatic stuff to keep his hair pasted down at either side of the precise part that ran back along the middle of his scalp.

“Good day to you, Arthur,” Rokeby said, his voice as prim and precise as that ruler-drawn part. “How are you today?” He asked that question cautiously, as he was in the habit of doing since Alexander’s death.

“I’ve been better, Wilf, and that’s the truth, but I’ve been worse, too,” McGregor answered. He sniffed in an exaggerated fashion. “Haven’t you run out of that damned grease of yours yet? Sure as hell, the plant that made it must be turning out poison gas these days.”

Rokeby glared, then stared, and then chuckled quietly. “First time I’ve heard you make a joke in a while, Arthur, even if it is aimed at me. What can I do for you this morning?”

“Let me have twenty-five of those stamps the Yanks are making us use,” McGregor said.

“Here you are,” Rokeby said. “That’ll be a dollar even.” Letter rate remained two cents, as it had been before the war. But people in occupied Canada also paid a two-cent surcharge for every stamp, the extra money going into a fund for entertainers who amused U.S. soldiers.

McGregor had complained about the surcharge ever since it was initiated. He kept quiet now, save for a low sigh as he set a silver dollar on the table. It was a U.S. coin, and had a bust of Liberty on one side, which struck him as ironic. The other side showed a fierce eagle and the word
REMEMBRANCE
.

Rokeby quickly scooped the dollar into the cash box, as if afraid leaving it where McGregor could see it might inflame him. But McGregor seemed unable to rise to inflammation today. “Saw Hannebrink driving out of town when I was walking over here,” he remarked.

“Did you?” At the mention of the security officer, Wilfred Rokeby grew wary again. Then his own expression changed—to, of all things, amusement. “Was he heading out by his lonesome, without any wolfhounds along?”

“Matter of fact, he was,” McGregor said. He turned and looked out the window. “You see him as he went by?”

Rokeby shook his head. “I did not,” he said, and his voice compelled belief. “But I have heard—don’t know for certain, mind you, but they do say it—I have heard, like I was tellin’ you, he’s got himself a cutie-pie somewheres outside of town.”

“Hannebrink?” Arthur McGregor stared. Until this moment, the idea that any Canadian woman might be friendly—might be more than friendly—to the Yank who had murdered Alexander had never entered his mind. But for strumpets, for whom such matters were business arrangements, he hadn’t heard of any of his countrywomen showing friendship—or something more than friendship—toward the hated occupiers. That, of course, did not mean such things failed to happen. “You wouldn’t know who she is, would you?”

Rokeby quickly shook his head. Silent curses echoed through McGregor’s mind. Had he been too obvious? Perhaps not, for the postmaster answered, “Not sure anybody here in town does. Whoever the gal is, don’t expect it’s something she’d want to brag on, you know what I mean?”

“That I do, Wilf,” McGregor answered. Pretending he didn’t know what Rokeby was talking about would have been an obvious lie, and so more dangerous than agreeing with him. The farmer picked up the stamps, folded them over themselves, and put them into an overcoat pocket. “Obliged to you. See you again next time I come to town, I expect.”

“Take care of yourself,” Rokeby said. “Take care of your family.” Was that an oblique warning, of the sort Maude made? McGregor didn’t know. He didn’t worry about it, either. With a nod to the postmaster, he left the post office, went back to the wagon for the kerosene tin, and strode down the street to the general store.

Anyone who needed a storekeeper for a vaudeville show could hardly have done better than Henry Gibbon, who looked the part from bald head to leather apron over a belly that remained comfortable despite hard times. Storekeepers shared with farmers the ability to keep themselves fed no matter how hard times got.

“How are you today, Arthur?” Gibbon asked, the same wariness in his voice as had been in Rokeby’s.

“Not too bad, not too good,” McGregor said: a variation on the reply he’d given the postmaster. He set a couple of cents on the counter. “I’m going to raid your pickle barrel.” Gibbon nodded and plucked up the little copper coins. McGregor lifted the lid, picked out a plump pickle, and took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully. “That’s not bad, but it doesn’t taste quite the same as the ones you usually have in there.”

“Can’t get those any more,” Gibbon answered. “These here pickles, they come up out of Michigan. Like you say, they aren’t bad.”

McGregor stared at the pickle in his hand as if it had turned on him. He almost threw it down. But, even if it came from the United States, he’d already bought it, and he was a man who hated waste. He ate it and licked the last of the vinegar off his fingers.

“Didn’t come to town just for pickles,” Gibbon said. “Go on—tell me I’m wrong.”

Before McGregor could tell him anything, a couple of soldiers in green-gray walked into the general store and looked around as if they owned the place. They were occupying this part of the province, so in effect they did. McGregor bought another pickle and diligently ate it, finding that preferable to having to talk to the Yanks. One soldier bought a spool of thread—Gibbon had a good-sized display of stuff that made a fair match for the U.S. uniform. His pal bought a tin-plated potato peeler. Out they went.

“You’ll be rich, Henry,” McGregor remarked.

“Oh, yeah,” the storekeeper said. “I’m going to take this here and retire on it to the south of France—unless the damn Germans get there first. Now what can I do for you today?”

“Need some beans,” McGregor answered, “and my kerosene ration, and white thread for Maude—she ain’t got any uniforms to mend—and five yards of calico for her, too, and a new bobbin for the sewing machine.”

“You’ve got to give me your ration coupon for the kerosene,” Gibbon reminded him. “Never seen people like the Yanks for dotting every
i
and crossing every
t
. If you get the kerosene without I get the coupon, roof falls in on me, near as I can tell. Life’s hard enough without that.”

“Life’s hard enough.” McGregor said no more. “Here you are.” He pulled the coupon out of his pocket and handed it to Gibbon. “Yanks sold it to me. They’re willing to let me have lights in my house this month, long as I haven’t got too many.”

Chuckling, Gibbon got a funnel and a bucket and filled the kerosene tin from the barrel he kept not far from the ones that held pickles and crackers. “You sound a mite better these days.”

“Maybe a mite,” the farmer allowed. After a short pause, he went on, “That Hannebrink almost ran me over when I was coming round the corner to the post office. Things must be a mite better for him, too, or more than a mite: Wilf Rokeby said he was in a hurry to get down to Elsie Kravchuk’s place and see how bad her bed linen’s rumpled.” Rokeby hadn’t said any such thing. But if anyone in town knew where Major Hannebrink really was going, Henry Gibbon was the man.