“Once or twice, but I didn’t like it. It’s not all it’s quacked up to be.”

“Ouch. Don’t do that again. I think I’d rather-” Sam broke off. However bad Cooley’s occasional puns were, he didn’t prefer being under Confederate gunfire to listening to them.

The exec did start zigzagging at random. That would have been better with another ten knots, too, but you did what you could with what you had. Sam thought it helped. They took another hit and a couple of more near misses, but nothing that slowed them down. And, even though those were some of the longest fifteen minutes of Sam’s life, they finally ended.

By then, all the shells were coming in astern of the Josephus Daniels. When the Confederates realized as much, they ceased fire.

“Now we’re home free, if one of their airplanes doesn’t find us,” Sam said.

“You’re full of cheerful thoughts, aren’t you, sir?” Cooley said.

“Like a sardine can is full of sardines, son,” Sam answered. “Straighten out and head for home. I’m gong to assess the damage. Keep straight unless we’re attacked. If they jump us before I’m back to the bridge-” He broke off again. “Belay that. I’ll take the conn. You go assess the damage and report back.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Cooley didn’t question him. The Josephus Daniels was his, Sam Carsten’s, no one else’s. Responsibility for her was his, too. He couldn’t stand the idea of anything happening if he wasn’t there when it did. Cooley said, “I’ll hustle, sir.”

Sam stared at the Y-range screens as the ship sped up toward Maryland. No aircraft heading his way, nothing on the water. He didn’t think the Confederates had anything bigger than a torpedo boat operating in the bay, but a torpedo boat could ruin you if you didn’t spot it till too late.

Cooley came back. “Sir, looks like four to six dead, a couple of dozen wounded. We’ve got one wrecked 40mm mount-that’s the worst of the damage. The rest is mostly metalwork. All things considered, we got away cheap.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cooley,” Sam said. We got away cheap. The dead and the maimed would not agree with the exec. Sam found that he was inclined to. War measured what you dished out against what you took. By that grim arithmetic, the Josephus Daniels had got away cheap.

Hyrum Rush had gone back to Utah and been passed through the lines into Mormon-held territory under flag of truce. As far as Flora Blackford was concerned, even that was better than he deserved. His parting words before getting on the train that would take him west were, “You people will see what this costs you.” If he hadn’t been under safe-conduct, that would have been plenty to make Flora lock him up and throw away the key.

“The nerve of the man!” she spluttered when his warning-his threat? — got back to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. “We should never have talked with him in the first place!”

“There I agree with you completely,” Robert Taft said. “You will have more luck persuading the administration than I’m likely to, though.”

Taft was a famously acerbic man, and also one given to understatement. He remained the leading hard-line Democrat in the Senate. Flora worried about agreeing with him. He no doubt also worried about agreeing with her.

“I’ve never said Socialists can’t make mistakes,” Flora answered. “I have said they aren’t the only ones who can make mistakes. Some people don’t recognize the difference.”

He gave her a tight smile-the only kind his face had room for. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” he said, and she found herself smiling back.

They had plenty to do, questioning officers and men about the bloody fiasco at Fredericksburg. About the most anybody-including Daniel MacArthur-would say to defend it was, It seemed like a good idea at the time. Trying to pin down why it had seemed a good idea was like trying to scoop up water with a sieve. The committee remained very busy and accomplished very little.

Like anyone else these days, Hyrum Rush had to go up through Canada to travel from east to west. Flora kept track of his progress through Franklin Roosevelt. “I hope you’re making him cool his heels up there,” she told the Assistant Secretary of War.

“We thought about it, Congresswoman,” he said. “We thought about it long and hard-believe you me we did. Finally, though, we decided that showing him how bad our bottleneck up there really is would only encourage him. And so we hustled him through instead.”

Flora thought about that. Reluctantly, she nodded. “You’re inconveniencing him most by inconveniencing him least,” she said.

Even over the telephone, his laugh made her want to laugh along with him. “That’s just what we’re doing, Flora,” he said between chortles. “The only thing is, I didn’t know it was what we were doing till you told me just now. I’m going to steal your line every chance I get, and most of the time I’m not going to give you any credit.”

“Who in politics ever does give anybody else any credit?” Flora said, which only set him laughing again.

She stopped worrying about Hyrum Rush once she heard he’d got back to what his people called Deseret. Sooner or later, the U.S. Army would grind it out of existence-for good this time, she hoped. Utah and the Mormons had been a running sore on the body politic for much too long.

The biggest question facing the Joint Committee was whether it would have the nerve to tell the War Department to put somebody besides Daniel MacArthur in charge in Virginia. Flora was convinced the man didn’t deserve his command. But she also saw he had an aura of invulnerability about him-not because of his battlefield talents but because of his personality.

George Custer had had an aura like that during the Great War. Even Teddy Roosevelt had moved carefully around him. Of course, Custer and Roosevelt-the other Roosevelt-had been rivals for years, ever since the Second Mexican War. But no one in the present administration had anything close to TR’s own strength of character. That being so, any decisive steps without prodding from the Joint Committee struck even Flora, a good Socialist, as unlikely.

She was saying so, pointedly enough to dismay Chairman Norris, when an explosion made the building shake. Plaster pattered down from the ceiling. Somebody said, “That was a close one.”

Somebody else said, “Damn Confederates haven’t sent any day bombers for a while-begging your pardon, Congresswoman.”

“Oh, I damn them, too,” Flora said. “You don’t need to doubt that for even a minute, believe me.” She looked down at her notes. “May I continue, Mr. Chairman?”

“You have the floor, Congresswoman.” Senator Norris looked as if he wished she didn’t.

“Thank you, sir.” The florid politeness that had once seemed so unnatural to her was now second nature. “As I was saying-”

But before she could say it, a man in a guard’s uniform stuck his head into the meeting room. “We’re evacuating the building. That was an auto bomb near the front entrance. We don’t know if they’ve got any more close by.” He grimaced. “We don’t even know who they are, dammit.” He didn’t apologize for swearing in front of Flora.

They. The enemy within never went away. Who was it this time? Confederate saboteurs? Mormons living up to Hyrum Rush’s promise? Rebellious Canadians? British agents? Any combination of those groups working together? Flora didn’t know. Somebody was going to have to find out, though.

“Please come with me,” the guard said.

“Before we do, let’s see your identification,” Robert Taft snapped. Flora reluctantly allowed that that made good sense. If the man in the uniform was part of the plot… People were going to start looking under beds before they went to sleep if this went on.

The guard showed Senator Taft his identity card without a word of protest. Satisfied, Flora nodded. Flora wondered what Taft would have done if the man had gone for his pistol instead. Probably thrown himself at it-he had the courage of his convictions, as well as plenty of courage of the ordinary sort.