The Victorious Opposition (21 page)

He laughed as he put the motorcar in gear, not that it was really funny. Nothing like a bomb going off to concentrate the mind. When he got to the building that held his office, he didn’t park the Ford in front of it, as he’d been in the habit of doing. Instead, he went on to a lot a couple of blocks away, a lot surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards.
SECURE PARKING,
said the sign above the entrance. Moss gave the attendant twenty cents and drove in.

The sign might as well have read,
PARKING FOR AMERICANS.
The only Canadians who used it were a handful of collaborators. They were, of course, doubtless the ones who felt they needed it most.

Moss felt he needed it. That he felt he needed it infuriated him. Dammit, couldn’t the Canucks see he was on their side? Evidently not. They only saw he was a Yank. If he came from south of the forty-ninth parallel, he had to be an enemy.

Most of the buildings in downtown Berlin had had their glass replaced since the bomb went off. Here and there, though, plywood sheets still covered those openings. Some people couldn’t afford to reglaze. Some buildings simply stood empty; the business collapse had been no less savage here than anywhere else.

When he got to his office, he plugged in the hot plate and got some coffee going. The pot would be good in the morning, tolerable around noon, and battery acid towards evening. He knew he’d go right on drinking it anyway. How could anybody function without coffee? He yawned. Life was hard enough with it.

As soon as he’d poured the coffee, he started going through paperwork. Like a lot of busy men who worked for themselves, he was chronically behind. He had a better excuse than most, though. Since the bombing in Berlin, he’d had to try cases in Galt, in Guelph, in London, even in Toronto. That did nothing to make him more efficient. He was pleased with the record he’d managed to ring up despite the added difficulty of travel.

His first client came in at precisely nine o’clock. “Good morning, Mr. Jamieson.” Moss rose to shake hands with him. “How are you today?”

“Tolerable, Mr. Moss.” Lou Jamieson was a middle-aged man who walked with a limp. He had a very pale face that always bore a slight sheen of sweat or oil. His meat market was the biggest in Berlin. The occupying authorities kept accusing him of paying kickbacks to U.S. inspectors. Moss wouldn’t have bet that he didn’t, though of course lawyers didn’t ask questions like that. Much of the evidence they’d had against him went up in smoke in the bombing. That hadn’t kept them from going after him again; his trial, in London, was set to open the following week.

“What do you think they’ve got on me?” he asked now, lighting a cigarette.

“Well, that’s a problem, you know,” Moss answered. “This isn’t an ordinary criminal proceeding. There’s no pretrial discovery under occupation law. The military prosecutor can spring whatever surprises he wants in front of the judge.”

Jamieson gestured with his right hand, leaving a trail of smoke from the cigarette. “Teach your granny to suck eggs, why don’t you?” he said in a raspy baritone. “This ain’t the first time they’ve had me up, you know. I’ve beaten this crap before. So what have they got on me?”

He expected Moss to know regardless of whether the Army told him. And Moss did. Even over in London—hell, even over in Toronto—he knew people who could tell him interesting things. Finding out cost him money, but that was one of the expenses of running a practice. “There’s a lieutenant named Szymanski from the Inspectorate who’s going to testify that you paid him off. He’s going to name dates and amounts and what you wanted him not to see each time.”

“Is he?” Jamieson’s laugh had a wheezy sound to it. “You know Lucille Cheever?”

“Personally? No,” Moss said, and Lou Jamieson laughed again. Dryly, Moss went on, “I know who she is, though.” She ran the leading sporting house in Berlin, and had for years.

“That’ll do.” Jamieson stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one. “Ask her about Lieutenant Szymanski and Yolanda. She can name dates and amounts and what the damn Polack got each time. He has a wife and twins down in Pennsylvania. You hit him with that, what you want to bet he loses his memory?”

“Yolanda?” Moss echoed.

Jamieson nodded. “Yolanda. Big blond gal.” His hands shaped an hourglass. “Big jugs, too. Gotta be better than what he was getting at home. ’Course, he’s no bargain himself. He knows we know about Yolanda, he’ll shut up.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Moss didn’t write down Lucille Cheever’s name. He knew he would remember it—and the less in writing when he went on the shady side of the street, the better.

“What else they got?” Jamieson inquired.

“Unless somebody’s pulling a fast one on me, he’s their heavy artillery.”

Jamieson snorted contemptuously. “Dumb assholes.” Moss knew what that was likely to mean. He hadn’t studied occupation law to help real crooks wiggle off the hook. But you couldn’t turn down clients because you thought they were guilty. Jamieson went on, “If Szymanski’s all they’ve got, we’ll kick their asses. See you over in London.” He fired up another cigarette and swaggered out of the office.

And how do I explain talking to Lucille Cheever to Laura?
Moss wondered. He knew he would have to tell her. If he didn’t and she found out later, that would be worse. He sighed. Northwestern Law School hadn’t covered all the points of legal ethics it might have.

The telephone rang. “Jonathan Moss,” he said crisply. It was occupation headquarters in Galt, announcing a delay in a case there: the prosecutor was in the hospital with a case of boils. “How . . . biblical,” Moss murmured. The officer on the other end of the line hung up on him.

Chuckling, he went back to work. His next client came in fifteen minutes later. Clementine Schmidt was embroiled in what looked to be a permanent property dispute with the occupation authorities. Appeals over what was and what wasn’t acceptable documentation that she owned the property she claimed to own dragged on and on. Since the war ended, military judges had changed their minds at least four times. All in all, it was not the USA’s finest hour in handling Canadian affairs.

Miss Schmidt (Moss couldn’t blame men for fighting shy of marrying such a disputatious woman) brandished a letter. In a voice ringing with triumph, she declared, “I have found my cousin, Maximilian.”

“Have you?” Moss blinked. She’d been talking about Maximilian for years. He’d always assumed her cousin had died in the war.

But she nodded. “Yes, I have,” she said triumphantly. “He fought in the Rockies and was badly wounded there. That is why he never came home.”
It had nothing to do with you? Amazing,
Moss thought. His client went on, “He settled in a town called Kamloops, in British Columbia. And he remembers very well the situation of the property.” She thrust the letter at him.

He rapidly read through it. When he’d finished, he nodded. “We’ll definitely show this to the appellate judge when the time comes,” he said. Miss Schmidt beamed. The letter was in fact a lot less ironclad that she seemed to think. Cousin Maximilian recalled that the family had owned the property in question once upon a time. He had no new documentation to prove that. If he’d lived out in Kamloops since being wounded, it wasn’t likely that he would.

Clementine Schmidt was still elated that she’d found good old Cousin Max. Moss let her chortle, then eased her out of the office. He poured himself more coffee once she finally left. He was still drinking it when the postman knocked on the door. “Here you are, Mr. Moss,” the fellow said, and dumped a pile of envelopes on what had been a nearly clean desk.

“Thanks.” Moss surveyed the pile with something less than joy unalloyed. He sorted through the day’s mail, separating it into piles: papers related to cases, advertisements, payments (only a couple of those—and why was he not surprised?), and things he couldn’t readily classify.

He opened a plain envelope in that miscellaneous pile, then unfolded the sheet of paper inside it. Neatly printed on it in large letters were the words,
WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU, YOU YANK SON OF A BITCH. WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOUR WHORE OR HER BRAT, EITHER.

He stared in dismay. Since the bombing of occupation headquarters, he hadn’t had a missive like this. He’d hoped he wouldn’t. Considering what had happened to occupation headquarters, he couldn’t very well ignore it. Whoever was behind this had proved he was playing for keeps.

His hand trembled as he reached for the telephone and rang up Galt. As bad luck would have it, he was connected to the officer with whom he’d cracked wise about the military prosecutor’s boils. “You’re not so goddamn funny when you need the Army, are you?” the other American said.

“Well, maybe not,” Moss admitted. “I’m no fonder of being blown up than anybody else.”

“Shows how much gratitude your clients have,” the officer said.

“I doubt my clients are behind this,” Moss said stiffly. The gibe stung all the same. He didn’t know why Canadians wanted him dead, either. He’d spent his whole career fighting their legal battles—and winning quite a few of them. And this was the thanks he got?

“Bring in the paper,” the man in Galt said. “We’ll run it through the lab. I doubt they’ll come up with anything, but you never know till you try.”

“I’ll do it,” Moss said. Doing it right away meant canceling a meeting. He canceled it. Whoever was doing this, Moss wanted him caught. He didn’t like living in fear. Somebody out there, though, didn’t care what he liked.

VI

S
pring and snow went together in Quebec. Lucien Galtier drove with exaggerated care. He knew the Chevrolet would skid if he did anything heroic—which was to say, stupid or abrupt—on an icy road. The point of going to a dance, after all, was getting there in one piece. He wondered if he would have thought the same as a young buck courting Marie. Of course, back in those days before the turn of the century, only a few millionaires had had motorcars. It was hard to do anything too spectacularly idiotic in a carriage.

Marie . . . His hands tightened on the steering wheel. She was seven years dead, and half the time it felt as if she were just around the corner visiting neighbors and would be back any minute. The other half, Galtier knew she was gone, all right, and the knowledge was knives in his soul. Those were the black days. He’d heard time was supposed to heal such wounds. Maybe it did. The knives, now, didn’t seem to have serrated edges.

A right turn, a left, and yes, there was the path leading to François Berlinguet’s farmhouse and, even more to the point, to the barn nearby. Plenty of other autos and carriages and wagons sat by the house. Lucien found a vacant spot. He turned off his headlights and got out of the Chevrolet. Snow crunched under his shoes.

Lamplight spilled out of the barn door. So did the sweet strains of fiddle music. Then, suddenly, a whole band joined in. Galtier shook his head in bemusement. Back in his courting days, nobody had owned a phonograph, either. Music meant real, live musicians. It still could—those fiddlers were real, live human beings. But it didn’t have to, not any more.

The band stopped. People in the barn laughed and clapped their hands. Then the music started up again—someone must have turned the record over or put a new one on the phonograph. The live fiddlers joined in.

Lucien blinked against the bright lights inside the barn. He’d got used to the darkness driving over. Couples dipped and swirled in the cleared space in the middle. Men and women watched from the edges of the action. Some perched on chairs; others leaned against the wall. Quite a few of them were holding mugs of cider or beer or applejack. Galtier sidled toward a table not far from the fiddlers and the phonograph. Berlinguet’s wife, Madeleine, a smiling woman of about forty-five, gave him a mug. He sipped. It was cider, cider with a stronger kick than beer.

“Merci,”
he said. She nodded.

When the next tune ended, François Berlinguet, who was a few years older than Madeleine, pointed toward Lucien. “And here we have the most eligible bachelor in all of the county of Temiscouata,
Monsieur
Lucien Galtier!” His red face and raucous voice said he’d been drinking a lot of that potent cider.

The drunker the people were, the louder they cheered and clapped their hands. “God knows what a liar you are, François, and so do I,” Lucien said. Berlinguet bowed, as if at a compliment. Galtier got a laugh. His host got a bigger one.

Trouble was, it hadn’t been altogether a lie. Ever since he’d lost Marie, widows had been throwing themselves at Galtier. So had the daughters and granddaughters of friends, acquaintances, and optimistic strangers. He felt no urgent need for a second wife. He’d done his best to make that plain. No one seemed to want to listen to him.

Even though the phonograph was quiet, the fiddlers struck up a tune. People began to dance again. What Lucien noticed was how harsh and ragged the music seemed. When he was young, people had enjoyed whatever music their neighbors made. Some was better, some not quite so good, but what difference did it make?

It made a difference now. People measured neighbors’ music not by the standards of other neighbors’ music, but against the professionals who made records. What would have been fine a couple of generations before was anything but now.
We’re spoiled,
Lucien thought. That hadn’t occurred to him before, which made it no less true.

Berlinguet came over to him. “Will you be a wallflower?” he teased.

“If I want to,” Galtier answered. “I can do just about anything I want to, it seems to me. I have the years for it.”

“But you will break the hearts of all the pretty girls here,” his host said. “How can they dance with you if you will not dance?”

“Now that, my friend, that is a truly interesting question,” Lucien said. “And now I have another question for you as well: is it that they wish to dance with me, or is it that they wish to dance with my farm and my electricity and my Chevrolet?”

François Berlinguet did him the courtesy of taking him seriously. “It could be that some of them do wish to dance with the farm and the other things. But, you know, it could also be that some of them wish to dance with
you
. Will you take away their chance along with that of the others?”

“I do not know.” Galtier shrugged a Gallic shrug. “Truly, I do not. The trouble is, how do I tell with a certainty the ones from the others?”

Before Berlinguet could answer, Dr. Leonard O’Doull and Galtier’s daughter, Nicole, walked into the barn. With his long, angular body and fair, Irish-looking face, O’Doull always looked like a stranger in a crowd of Quebecois. But he wasn’t a stranger here. He must have treated at least half the people in the barn. Men and women swarmed up to him. Some wanted to talk about their aches and pains. More, though, wanted to talk politics or gossip. Even if he did still sound a little—and only a little—like the American he was, he’d made a place for himself in and around Rivière-du-Loup.

Eventually, he and Nicole came over to Galtier. As François Berlinguet had, O’Doull said, “You’re not dancing,
mon beau-père.
Do you think you will wear out all the sweet young things?”

“It could be,” Lucien answered. “It could also be that I think they will wear me out. When I want to dance, I will dance. And if I do not care to . . . well, who will make me?”

Nicole grabbed his left hand. When she did, her husband plucked the mug of cider out of his right hand. “
I
will make you,” she said, and dragged him out toward the middle of the floor. “You don’t need to wonder why I want to dance with you, either.” She understood him very well.

He wagged a finger at her. “Yes, I know why you want to dance with me. You want to make me look like a fool in front of the entire neighborhood. How is it that you have come down here from town?”

“I talked with Madeleine Berlinguet when she came up to sell some chickens, and she invited us,” Nicole answered. “Before too long, you know, little Lucien will want to start coming to dances, too.”

The idea that his grandson would soon be old enough to want to dance with girls rocked Galtier back on his heels. Had it really been so many years since little Lucien was born? It had, sure enough.

When the music started—fiddlers playing along with the phonograph—he had to remember where his feet went. Nicole didn’t lead too obviously, for which he was grateful. And, once he’d been dancing a little while, he discovered he was having a good time. He didn’t intend to admit that, but it was true.

After the song (an import from the USA, with lyrics translated into French) ended, Leonard O’Doull came out and tapped Galtier on the shoulder. “Excuse me,
mon beau-père,
but I am going to dance this next dance with my wife.”

“You think so, do you?” Galtier asked in mock anger. “Then what am I to do? Return to wallflowerdom?”

“Is that a word?” His son-in-law looked dubious. “You can go back if you like, or you can find some other lady and dance with her.”

“Such choices you give me. I am not worthy,” Galtier said, and Leonard O’Doull snorted. Now Lucien did feel like dancing. He touched a woman on the shoulder. He smiled. “Hello, Éloise. May I have this dance?”

“
Mais certainement,
Lucien.” Éloise Granche was a widow of about Nicole’s age. She’d lost her husband in a train wreck a little before Lucien lost Marie. If he hadn’t known her before, he would have thought that was what gave her an air of calm perhaps too firmly held. In fact, she’d always been like that. Philippe Granche had drunk like a fish; maybe that had more to do with it.

The music started again. Galtier took her in his arms. She was two or three inches shorter than Marie had been, and plumper, too, but not so much that she didn’t make a pleasant armful. She danced well. Lucien had to remind himself he needed to say such things.

“And you,” she told him when he did. After a moment, she asked, “Is this your first time since . . . ?”

She let that hang, but Galtier understood perfectly well what she meant. “No, not quite,” he answered, “but it still seems very strange. How long have you been dancing now?”

“A couple of years,” Éloise said. “Yes, it is strange, isn’t it? With Philippe, I always knew just what he would do. Other people are surprises, one after another.”

“Yes!” He nodded. “They certainly seem to be. And not only on the dance floor, either. The world is a different place now.”

“It certainly is for me,” she said. “I wasn’t so sure it would be for a man.”

“Oh, yes. For this man, anyhow.” Galtier didn’t think he’d ever spoken of his love for Marie outside the bosom of his family. He didn’t intend to start now. Even saying so much was more than he’d thought he would do.

Éloise Granche seemed to know what he meant even when he didn’t say it. She said, “You have to go on. It’s very hard at first, but you have to.”

He nodded again. “So I’ve seen. It
was
hard at first.” He hadn’t spoken of that even with his family. There had been weeks—months—when he hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, let alone get on with his life.

The music stopped. “Thank you for asking me,” Éloise said. “That was very pleasant.”

“I thought so, too.” Lucien hesitated. He hadn’t talked with anyone who knew what he was talking about before. She’d traveled down the same road as he. After the hesitation, he plunged: “Shall we also dance the next one?”

“I’d like to,” she said briskly. “We’ve both made the same journey, haven’t we?”

“I was just thinking that very thing!” he said in surprise. When he and Marie had the same thought at the same time, he’d taken it for granted. Why not? They’d spent forty years living in each other’s pockets. When he did it with a near stranger . . . That was a surprise.

Éloise’s shrug said it astonished her less than him. “It springs from what we were talking about, I think.” The fiddlers began to play. She swayed forward. They started dancing again, this time without words.

Galtier wondered what Marie would say. Probably something like,
Try not to step on her toes, the way you always did on mine.
Éloise’s eyes were closed as they spun around the barn. Her expression said she might have been listening to someone who wasn’t there, too. But she was also very much with Lucien.

When the music stopped this time, they both walked over to the table to get some cider. They stood by the wall, talking of this and that, through the next dance—and the next. But Galtier didn’t feel like a wallflower any more.

T
he USS
Remembrance
steamed south, accompanied by a couple of destroyers and a heavy cruiser. Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Sam Carsten smeared zinc-oxide ointment on his nose and the backs of his hands. He knew he would burn anyhow, but he wouldn’t burn so badly this way.

Off to the east rose the bleak, almost lunar landscape of Baja California. The
Remembrance
and her companions sailed outside the three-mile limit the Empire of Mexico claimed, but not very far outside it. Their guns and the carrier’s aeroplanes could have smashed up that coast or whatever little gunboats the Mexicans sent out to challenge them.

But the Mexicans sent out nothing. Cabo San Lucas wasn’t much of a port. No, actually, that wasn’t true. It had the makings of a fine harbor—or it would have, if only there were any fresh water close by. Since there wasn’t, the protected bay went to waste except for an old gunboat or two and a few fishing trawlers.

Sam turned to Lieutenant Commander Harrison, the assistant officer of the deck. “Sir, may I make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead, Carsten,” Roosevelt Harrison replied. The Annapolis ring on the younger officer’s finger explained why he was where he was and Sam was where
he
was.

“Thank you, sir,” replied Sam, who’d never expected to become an officer at all when he joined the Navy a few years before the Great War started. “The Confederates have a naval base at Guaymas, sir. Where we are and where we’re headed, they might want to use us to give their submersible skippers some practice.”

“They aren’t supposed to have any submersibles,” the assistant OOD said.

“Yes, sir. I know that, sir,” Carsten said, and said no more.

Harrison considered. After a few seconds, he said, “You may have a point. I wouldn’t trust those bastards as far as I could throw ’em.” He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and raised his voice to a shout: “Attention on deck! All hands be alert for submarines in the neighborhood.” Sailors hurried to the edge of the deck and peered in all directions, shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun with their palms. Lieutenant Commander Harrison gave his attention back to Sam. “A good thought. I don’t believe they’d try anything even if they do have boats in the water, but you’re right—stalking us would give them good practice.”

“What happens if somebody does spot a periscope?” Carsten asked. “Do we drop ashcans on the submersible?”

“That’s a damn good question, and I’m glad the skipper’s the one who’s got to answer it,” Harrison said. “My guess would be no. The Confederates aren’t allowed to have any submersibles, but how do we know whatever we spot isn’t flying Maximilian’s flag?” He and Sam exchanged wry grins; the Empire of Mexico could no more build submarines than it could aeroplane carriers. But where a boat was built had nothing to do with whose flag she flew.

“I don’t suppose we can tell, sir,” Sam allowed. “Still, if it looks like a boat’s getting ready to fire something . . .”

“Then we’re liable to have a war on our hands.” The assistant OOD shivered, though the day was fine and warm. “Till I see a wake in the water, I won’t order an attack on any submarine we spot. If the skipper has a different notion, that’ll be up to him.”