If Roger Kimball isn 'tjust the way you think he is, isn 't that a reason to stop your affair with him? That was what Tom meant. Kimball could have been a Baptist preacher, and Tom would have disapproved of the affair. That Kimball was anything but a Baptist preacher made the disapproval stick out all over, like the quills on a porcupine.

Her brother did have a point, though. Anne was not so blindly devoted to either the Freedom Party or to Roger Kimball as to be blind to that. "He's coming. I can't stop him from coming. I'll hear him out," she said.

"So glad you're pleased." Tom grinned impudently. "Seeing as his train gets into St. Matthews in twenty minutes, I'm going to head over toward the station. Want to come along?"

"No, thank you," Anne answered. "This is your soldier and your soldier's pal. If you want to deal with him, go right ahead. You invited him down without bothering to ask me about it, so you can bring him here on your own, too."

"All right, Sis, I will," Tom said. "See you soon-or maybe not quite so soon, depending on how late the train is today." He grabbed a hat off the rack and went out the door whistling. Anne glared at his back. If he knew she was doing it, he didn't let on.

Anne resolved to be as poor a hostess as rigid notions of Confederate hospitality allowed. But, when her brother returned with the stranger, her resolution faltered. She hadn't expected the fellow to look like such a puppy. Out came a peach pie whose existence she hadn't intended to admit. She put on a fresh pot of coffee. "Your name is Brearley, isn't that right?" she said, knowing perfectly well it was.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. "Tom Brearley, ex-C.S. Navy. Through most of the war, I was Roger Kimball's executive officer aboard the Bonefishr

"Of course," Anne said. "I knew the name sounded familiar." It hadn't, not really; Kimball had mentioned his exec only a couple of times, and in less than flattering terms. Anne had an excellent memory for names, but Brearley's had slid clean out of her head. He hadn't wanted to give it before coming down, either; only her and Tom's flat refusal to meet with a mystery man had pried it out of him.

Brearley said, "Up in Richmond, I saw in the papers that you were working for the Freedom Party, and that he is, too."

Tom Colleton raised an eyebrow. Anne ignored it, saying, "Yes, that's right. The war's been over for three years now. That's far past time for us to get back on our feet again, but the only people who want this country to do things and not just sit there with its head in the sand are in the Party, seems to me."

"I don't think that's so, but never mind," Brearley said. "I didn't come down here to argue politics with you. Getting somebody to change politics may be easier than getting him to change his church, but it isn't a whole lot easier."

"Why did you come down here, then?" Anne asked. "In your last letter, you said you knew something important about Roger Kimball, but you didn't say what. I'm not sure why you thought it would matter to me at all, except that both our names happened to end up in the same newspaper story."

Kimball hadn't talked much about Brearley to her. How much had Kimball talked about her to Brearley? Men bragged. That was one of their more odious characteristics, as far as she was concerned. She'd thought Kimball relatively immune to the disease. Maybe she'd been wrong.

She couldn't tell, not from reading Brearley's face. He still looked like a puppy. But he didn't sound like a puppy as he answered, "Because if what he did ever came out, it would embarrass the Freedom Party. For that matter, if what he did ever came out, it would embarrass the Confederate States."

"You don't talk small, do you?" Tom Colleton remarked.

"My granddad would have called it a sockdologer, sure enough," Brearley said, "and he'd have been right, too. Let me tell you what happened aboard the Bonefish right at the end of the war." He detailed how Kimball, fully aware the war was over and lost, had nonetheless stalked and sunk the USS Ericsson, sending her to the bottom without, so far as Brearley knew, a single survivor.

"That's it?" Anne said when her visitor fell silent. Tom Brearley nodded. "What do you expect me to do about it?" she asked him.

She was asking herself the same question. Kimball had certainly kept this secret from her. She wasn't surprised. The more people who knew about the Ericsson, the more dangerous the knowledge got. She made a point of not looking over at her brother. She knew how he was likely to use it: not in any way that would make her comfortable.

Tom Brearley said, "What I do with it doesn't matter. I'm nobody in particular. But you're involved in the Freedom Party, same as Roger Kimball is. How do you feel about working side by side with a cold-blooded murderer?"

Anne gnawed the inside of her lower lip. No, Brearley didn't talk like a puppy. He minced no words at all, as a matter of fact. She decided to match his bluntness: "If you really want to know, Mr. Brearley, it doesn't bother me one bit. If I'd been in position to hit the Yankees one last lick, I'd have done it, and I'd have done it regardless of whether the war was supposed to be over or not. What do you think of that, sir?"

Now Brearley looked like a horrified puppy. He coughed a couple of times before blurting, "No wonder you back the Freedom Party!"

"The United States worked for fifty years to get their revenge on us," Anne said. "I don't know how long I'll have to wait for my turn. I hope it isn't that long. However long it takes, I think it'll come sooner from the Freedom Party than from anybody else out there right now."

Tom Colleton said, "Mr. Brearley's right about one thing, though: if the United States ever get word of what the Bonefish did, they can put us in hot water on account of it. If Roosevelt wins a third term, he'll do it, too."

"Then we have to see that the United States don't find out about it," Anne said, doing her best to put Brearley in fear with her expression.

It didn't work. She should have realized it wouldn't work, not if he'd gone through the war in a submersible. He said, "If you want to make sure the story gets to the United States, arranging an accident for me is the best way to go about it. I didn't come here without taking the precautions a sensible man would take before he stuck his head in the lion's mouth."

"I didn't threaten you, Mr. Brearley," Anne said: a technical truth that was in fact a great, thumping lie.

"Of course not," Brearley said-another lie.

Anne wondered if she ought to offer to pay him to keep the secret of the Bonefish from reaching the United States. After some thought, she decided not to. If he wanted money in exchange for silence, let him bring it up. If he wanted Confederate paper money in exchange for silence, he was a bigger fool than he'd shown himself to be.

Her brother said, "Mr. Brearley, you do understand that, whatever score you may want to settle with Mr. Kimball, you're liable to hurt the whole country if this story gets told too widely." Anne looked at him now, in nothing but admiration. She hadn't been able to come up with anything nearly so smooth.

Brearley nodded. "Of course I do. That's why I've kept quiet for so long. You may call me a great many things, but I love my country. If you'll forgive me, I love my country too well to want to see it fall into the hands of the Freedom Party."

"I'll forgive you for that," Tom Colleton said. "Whether my sister will is liable to be a different question."

Brearley glanced at Anne. She looked back, bland as new-churned butter. "I don't agree, but Mr. Brearley didn't come down here forme to change his politics, either," she said.

Brearley looked relieved. Anne almost laughed in his face. One thing he plainly didn't understand about the Freedom Party was that so many people joined it because they wanted revenge: revenge against the United States, revenge against the Negroes in the Confederate States, and revenge against the government and Army that had failed to live up to the CSA's long tradition of victory. Hunger for revenge had led Anne into the Party. Now she had one more piece of revenge to attend to, as opportunity arose: revenge against Tom Brearley.