After unpacking, Jake walked the couple of blocks to the convention hall, a huge marble wedding cake of a building that had gone up on Esplanade, just outside the French Quarter, a few years before the Great War. He was standing on the rostrum, looking out over the great hall, when Amos Mizell walked down the center aisle toward him. Willy Knight came in a couple of minutes later, before Jake and Mizell could do much more than say hello. Featherston was irked, but only a little; both men would have had spies in the hotel, and maybe back at the train station, too.

All the greetings were warier than they would have sounded to anyone who didn't know the men involved. At last, Mizell said, "The Tin Hats will throw their weight behind you, Jake. You're what this country needs this year, no two ways about it."

Suddenly, Featherston was awfully damn glad he'd come to New Orleans. He'd met Mizell halfway, and now the head of the veterans' organization was coming through for him in a big way. Willy Knight looked as if he'd just bitten down hard on the sourest lemon ever picked. He'd been threatening that if Jake didn't tap him for vice president, he'd run for the top spot himself on an independent Redemption League ticket. That would have hurt, and hurt bad, especially in the West. He could still do it. But if the Tin Hats were loudly backing the Freedom Party, his bid would look like nothing but an exercise in spite.

Now, still sour, he asked, "You think you have any real chance of winning, Featherston?"

"Don't know for certain," Jake said easily. "The Party would have a better shot if TR had won up in the USA. Everybody down here hates him just as much as he hates us. Those Red bastards they've got up there now are bending over backwards so far, it's hard to get people riled up at 'em the way they ought to be."

"You ought to count your blessings, Jake," Mizell said. "If Roosevelt had been president of the United States for longer than a couple of days after the news about your fellow down there in South Carolina broke, he'd have had his head on a plate-either that or he'd have blown Richmond to hell and gone."

"Yeah, I was lucky there," Featherston admitted. Knight sent him another hooded glance, as if to say, If I were a little luckier, I'd be wearing your shoes now. He was probably right. It did him no good.

"Picked a running mate yet?" Mizell asked, casual as if wondering about what Jake intended to have for supper. Maybe he was just idly curious, the way he sounded. And maybe Jake would flap his arms and fly to the moon, too.

"Yeah," he answered, and let it go at that.

"It isn't me." Knight's voice was flat, uninflected.

"No, Willy, it isn't you." Jake looked him over. "And if you want to raise a stink, go right ahead. You can run your own little outfit, do whatever you want. Would you sooner be a general in a little tinpot army or a colonel in a real one?"

He waited. He didn't know how he'd answer that question himself. Knight glared at him, but finally said, "I'll stick." He didn't add, Damn you, not quite. His eyes said it for him.

Jake didn't care. From that moment on, he seemed to hold the world in his hands and turn it as he desired. The convention-the convention he hadn't wanted-went smooth as silk, slick as petroleum jelly. The platform called for ending reparations to the USA, restoring a sound currency, punishing the people who'd botched the war, putting Negroes in their place, and making the Confederate States strong again (by which Jake meant rearming, but he remained too leery of the United States to say so openly). It passed by thunderous voice vote; Jake hoped it would grab lots of headlines.

The next day was his. People made speeches praising him. He'd helped draft some of them. His nomination went forward as smoothly as the Confederate advance on Philadelphia should have gone at the start of the Great War. No one else's name was raised. He became the Freedom Party's choice on the first ballot.

He let it be known he wanted Ferdinand Koenig to run with him. The Freedom Party secretary had backed him when he needed it most, and deserved his reward. That didn't go quite so smoothly as the first two days of the convention had. Willy Knight let his name be placed in nomination, and his followers made fervent speeches about balancing the ticket geographically. Having made their speeches, they sat down-and got steamrollered. Knight sent Jake a note saying he hadn't known they would do it. It might possibly have been true. Jake wouldn't have bet a postage stamp on it.

On the night after the convention nominated Koenig, Feather-ston stood on the stage at the front of the smoke-filled hall and stared out at the throng of delegates calling his name. The hair at the nape of his neck tried to stand up. Three and a half years before, he'd climbed up on a streetcorner crate to take Anthony Dresser's place because the founder of the Freedom Party wasn't up to speaking to even a couple of dozen people. Thousands waited for Jake's words now. Millions-he hoped-would vote for him come November.

"We're on the way!'' he shouted, and the hall erupted in cheers. He held up his hands. Silence fell, instantly and completely. God must have felt this way after He made the heavens and the earth. "We're on the way!" Jake repeated. "The Freedom Party is on the way-we're on the way to Richmond. The Confederate States are on the way-they're on the way back. And the white race is on the way-on the way to settling accounts with the coons who stabbed us in the back and kept us from winning the war. And we should have won the war. You all know that. We should have won the war!"

Not even his upraised hands could keep the Freedom Party delegates from yelling their heads off. He basked in the applause like a rosebush basking in the sun. When he began to speak again, the noise cut off. "The Whigs say vote for them, everything's fine, nothing's wrong, nothing's really changed a bit." Jake's guffaw was coarse as horsehair. "Bet you a million dollars they're wrong." He pulled a $1,000,000 banknote from his pocket, crumpled it up, and threw it away.

Laughter erupted, loud as the cheers had been. Jake went on, "The Rad Libs say everything's fine, and all we need to do is cozy on up to the USA." He looked out at the crowd. "You-all want to cozy on up to the USA?" The roar of No! almost knocked him off his feet.

"And the Socialists-our Socialists, not the fools in the United States-say everything will be fine, and all we need to do is cozy on up to the niggers." He paused, then asked the question everyone waited for: "You-all want to cozy on up to the niggers?" No! wasn't a roar this time, but a fierce and savage howl. Into it, through it, he said, "If we'd have gassed ten or fifteen thousand of those nigger Reds at the start of the war and during the war, how many good clean honest white Confederate soldiers would we have saved? Haifa million? A million? Something like that. And the ones who did die, by God, they wouldn't have died for nothing, on account of we'd have won.

"But the dirty cowards in Richmond, the corrupt imbeciles in the War Department, didn't have the nerve to do it. So the niggers rose up, and they dragged us down. But like I said before, we're on the way again. This time, nobody stops us-nobody, do you hear me? Not the Congress. Not the jackasses in the War Department. Not the niggers. Not the USA. Nobody! Nobody stops us now!"

He suddenly realized he was dripping with sweat. He'd got the crowd all hot and sweaty, too. They were on their feet, screaming. He saw a sea of glittering eyes, a sea of open mouths. He had a hard-on. He didn't just want a woman. He wanted the whole country, and he thought he might have it.

Once upon a time, the town had been called Berlin. Then, when the Great War broke out, the Canadians rechristened it Empire, not wanting it to keep the name of an enemy's capital. Jonathan Moss had flown over it then, as the U.S. Army pounded it to pieces and eventually overran it during the long, hard slog toward Toronto. Now it was Berlin again. And now he was back, a brand-new lawyer with a brand-new shingle, specializing in occupation law.