And so he grimaced when a pickup truck approached Eleventh Army headquarters out there in the middle of nowhere, even though the truck was painted U.S. green-gray and he could see it had no machine gun mounted in the bed. No matter what color it was painted, guards made sure it wasn’t carrying a bomb before they let it come up to the tent outside of which Dowling stood.

He started to laugh when the truck door opened and a brisk woman not far from his own age got out. “What’s so damn funny, Buster?” Ophelia Clemens demanded, cigarette smoke streaming from her mouth as she spoke.

“The guards were looking for explosives, but they let you through anyhow,” Dowling answered. “You cause more trouble than any auto bomb or people bomb ever made.”

She batted her eyes at him, which set him laughing all over again. “You say the sweetest things, darling,” she told him. “Do you still keep a pint hidden in your desk?”

“It was only a half pint,” he said, “and now I’ll have to put a lock on that drawer.” That made her laugh. “Come on in,” he continued. “I’ll see what I can find. It’s good to see you, by God.”

“People I talk to aren’t supposed to tell me things like that,” the reporter said severely. “They’re supposed to say, ‘Jesus Christ! Here’s that Clemens bitch again!’” She was kidding, and then again she wasn’t.

“I never do things I’m supposed to. Would I be here if I did?” Dowling held the tent flap wide. “Won’t you walk into my parlor, said the fly to the spider?”

“That’s more like it.” Ophelia Clemens ducked inside. Dowling followed her. He did produce some whiskey, and even a couple of glasses. As he’d seen her do before, Miss Clemens-she’d never married-knocked hers back like a man. “And that’s more like it, too,” she said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Dowling said. “I don’t suppose you came way the hell out here just to drink my booze, so suppose you tell me why you did.”

“I want to do a piece on Camp Determination,” she answered. “I want to show people in the USA what that murderous son of a bitch in Richmond is doing to his Negroes.”

“That would be good,” Dowling said carefully, “but a lot of what we know is classified. I don’t know how much I’m authorized to show the press. Some of what we have shows how we got it, which isn’t so good.”

“This will have to pass the censors before it goes out,” she said. “As for authorization…” She fumbled in her purse, which held only a little less than a private’s pack. “Here.” She thrust a folded piece of paper at him.

He unfolded it. It was a letter from Assistant Secretary of War Franklin D. Roosevelt, allowing and indeed requiring him to tell Miss Clemens what he knew “since this information, when widely publicized, will prove valuable to the war effort.” He set it down. “Well, you’ve persuaded me,” he said. “I’m putty in your hands.”

“Promises, promises,” Ophelia Clemens said. They both grinned. The game of seduction played for farce, with neither of them intending to conquer, was almost as fun in its own way as it would have been for real. “What have you got?”

Dowling produced aerial photos. “Here’s the camp. The side north of the train tracks-that’s this way-holds women and children. The other side, which is older, is for men.”

“Uh-huh.” Like him, the reporter wore bifocals. “How big is this thing?”

“You see these little tiny rectangles here by the men’s side?” Dowling waited for her to nod, then went on, “Those are trucks. They’re about the size of our deuce-and-a-halfs.”

Ophelia Clemens blinked. “The place is that big?” Now Dowling nodded. She whistled. “It’s not a camp. It’s a goddamn city!”

“No, ma’am,” Dowling said. “There’s one big difference. A city has a permanent population. People go into Camp Determination, they go through it, but they don’t come out again-not alive, anyway.”

“And your evidence for that is…?”

He passed her more photos. “This is-was-a stretch of Texas prairie not far from the camp. Barbed wire keeps people out, not that anybody who doesn’t have to is likely to want to go out to the back of beyond. The bulldozers give you some idea of scale here. They also dig trenches. You can see that most of those are covered over. The couple that aren’t…Those are bodies inside.” He gave her another picture. “A low-level run by a fighter-bomber got us this one. You can really make out the corpses here.”

“Jesus!” She studied it. “How many bodies are in here? Have you got any idea?”

“Only a rough one,” Dowling answered. “Hundreds of thousands of people, that’s for sure. The experts who are supposed to be good at figuring this stuff out say it’s unlikely there are more than a million…so far, anyway.”

“Jesus!” Ophelia Clemens said again, more violently than before. “Give me that bottle again, will you? I need another drink. Hundreds of thousands, maybe a million-what did they do to deserve it?”

“They were born colored,” Dowling said. “To the Freedom Party, that’s a capital offense.”

“If that’s a joke, it’s not funny,” she said as he passed her the bottle. Her throat worked when she drank.

“I wasn’t kidding,” he told her. “The other thing you have to remember is, this isn’t the only camp the Confederates have. We think it’s the biggest, but we’ve also been able to disrupt operations here better than anywhere else. The ones farther east, in Louisiana and Mississippi, they go right on working all the time, because we can’t reach them.”

Ophelia Clemens looked from one photograph to another with the kind of horrified fascination a bad traffic accident might cause. But motorcars hadn’t banged together here-whole races had. And one was running over the other. “If they keep this up, there won’t be many Negroes left in the CSA by the time they’re done.”

“No, ma’am. That’s not quite right.” Dowling shook his head. Ophelia Clemens made a wordless questioning noise. He explained: “They don’t aim to leave any colored people alive. Not one. That’s what they’re aiming for. They don’t even bother hiding it. Hell, some of the Freedom Party Guards we’ve captured brag about what they’re doing. Far as they’re concerned, it’s God’s work.”

“God’s work.” She spat out the words as if they tasted bad. “If I believed in God, General, these photos would turn me into an atheist. These photos would turn the Pope into an atheist.”

“I doubt it,” Dowling said. “The Vatican kept quiet when the Turks slaughtered Armenians. It hasn’t said boo about the Russian pogroms against the Jews. So why should Pope Pius give a damn about what happens to a bunch of coons who mostly aren’t Catholic on the other side of the ocean?”

“Who mostly aren’t Catholic,” Ophelia Clemens repeated. “Yes, that’s about the size of it, I’m afraid. He’d bellow like a bull if they were. But since he doesn’t care, what are you doing about it?”

“I’m trying to take Camp Determination, that’s what,” Dowling answered. “It’s not easy, but I’m trying.”

“Why isn’t it easy? This ought to be one of the most important things we’re doing,” she said. “Hundreds of thousands of bodies…Attila the Hun didn’t kill that many people, I bet.”

“There weren’t so many people to kill back then,” Dowling said. “And why isn’t it easy? Because this is a secondary front, that’s why. I’m short of men, I’m short of barrels, and I’m short of artillery. I used to be short of airplanes, too, but I’m not any more. Of course, the Confederates are even shorter on everything than I am. That’s why I’ve managed to come as far as I have.”

“It’s criminal that you’re short.” Ophelia Clemens’ pencil raced across the notebook page. “That smells as bad as all those bodies put together, and I’m going to let the world hear about it.”

“No!” Dowling exclaimed. She stared at him in surprise, anger, and something not far from hatred. “No,” he repeated. “Don’t raise a fuss about it. Please. Don’t.”