The answer, at least, returned promptly: COME AHEAD. CONVINCE FERD
Anne said something extremely unladylike as she crumpled up the telegram and threw it in the trash. Having to talk with anyone except Jake Featherston himself was galling. But Ferdinand Koenig wasn't a flunky, or not precisely a flunky. He'd been in the Freedom Party even longer than Featherston had, and had twice been his running mate on the Party ticket. The main difference between him and Jake was that he wasn't colorful.
And so, swallowing her pride again, Anne wired, ARRIVE NEXT
As she usually did when coming up to Richmond, she booked a room in Ford's Hotel, just north of Capitol Square. The room she got gave her a fine view of the square. In happier times, it would have been a peaceful, restful, patriotic view. She could have looked out on the grass and on the splendid statues of George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston.
She could still see the statues. Tents and shanties swallowed almost all the winter-brown grass. Men walked aimlessly from one to another, some smoking, some sipping from whiskey bottles. Here and there, women hung out laundry on lines that ran from tents to trees. Children ran this way and that.
Columbia and Charleston had shantytowns, too. Even St. Matthews had a little one. But Anne had never seen any to match Richmond's. The capital of the Confederate States was a great city. When things went wrong, they went wrong more visibly here than anywhere else.
She asked the house detective, "How bad are things? Will my clothes and suitcases still be in my room when I get back?"
"Likely so, ma'am," he answered. "We work hard at keeping the trash out of the hotel. We had some trouble with that when things first went sour, but we don't let it happen any more. It's just a matter of taking pains."
Giving pains, too, she thought. The house dick was about six feet three, with shoulders wide as a barn door. He wasn't visibly armed, but she was sure he had brass knucks or a blackjack stashed where he could get at them in a hurry. She wouldn't have wanted to run into him if he found her anywhere she wasn't supposed to be.
When she waited on the street for a taxi, though, beggars hurried across Capitol Street to try to pry money out of her. She knew that, if she gave anything to anybody, none of them would ever leave her at peace. Closing the motorcar door on them was a relief.
"Where to, ma'am?" the cabby asked.
"Freedom Party headquarters," Anne answered. She wondered if she would have to give him the address.
As things turned out, she didn't. The driver nodded. "Take you right over there. It ain't far at all. I'm thinking about voting that way myself come November, matter of fact."
Alert guards armed with bayoneted Tredegars stood outside the headquarters. They wore what was almost but not quite Confederate Army uniform. Their clothes weren't quite the same as what the Tin Hats put on. These men looked somehow more menacing than most members of the big veterans' outfit. Anne didn't know whether that was the cut of their uniforms or the expressions on their faces. Some of each, she thought.
"You're Mrs. Colleton, come to see Mr. Koenig?" one of them asked.
Anne shook her head. "I'm Miss Colleton, and you'd better remember it."
"Sorry," the disconcerted guard muttered, and passed her on into the building.
She had to ask two more people how to find Ferdinand Koenig's office, which struck her as inefficient. When at last she got there, a pretty secretary led her inside. Koenig looked like a man who'd done time in the trenches. He had fierce eyebrows, a jutting jaw, and a rumbling baritone voice. "Good to see you again, Miss Colleton," he said. "It's been a few years, hasn't it? Sit down. Make yourself at home. Tell me why you've decided the Freedom Party isn't such a bad thing after all."
He looked like a bruiser. He didn't sound like one, though. He'd been Jake Featherston's right-hand man for a long time now. That almost certainly meant he could think as well as break heads. Anne said, "When I left the Party, you were still tainted by what Grady Calkins did. Our politics have never been that far apart, whether I was formally with you or not."
"You're saying you're a fair-weather friend. You'll back us if we look like winners and dump us if we don't," Koenig said. "Question is, in that case, why should we want to have anything to do with you?"
"Because we're going the same way. Because I can help you get there. You'll know what I did in South Carolina. When I wasn't with you, I was trying to bring the Whigs more into line with what you've been saying all along."
Ferdinand Koenig paused to light a cigarette. After blowing out a cloud of smoke, he said, "And you were doing us a favor by this, you say?"
"No, I don't think so, and that isn't what I said," Anne answered. "But I think I was doing the country a favor. That's what this is really all about, isn't it?-what happens to the Confederate States, I mean."
Another cloud of smoke rose from Koenig. "That's… some of what this is about," he said at last. "The rest of it is, why should we trust you now? You walked away once, walked away and left us in the lurch. Who says you won't do it again?"
"No one at all, if I don't happen to like the way you're going," Anne said. "But as long as we're heading in the same direction, wouldn't you rather have me on your side than against you?"
"Maybe," he answered. "Maybe not, too." His eyes measured her. She didn't care for that gaze; Koenig might have been looking at her over the sights of a rifle. "You don't pull any punches, though, do you?"
"I try not to," Anne said. "Getting straight to the point saves time."
"Maybe," Koenig said again. He didn't say anything more till he'd finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in an brass ashtray made from the base of a shell casing. Then he went on, "You talk a good game, I will say that for you. I'm not going to tell you yes or no. I'm going to pass you on to the Sarge. He'll make up his mind, and we'll go on from there. How does that sound?"
"I came to Richmond to see him," Anne answered.
Ferdinand Koenig shook his head. "No, you came up here to see me, remember? Now you've passed the first test, so you get to see him. See the difference?"
"Yes," Anne said, though she'd always assumed she would pass it.
"Well, come on, then." Koenig heaved his bulk out of the chair. He led her down the hall, up a flight of stairs, along the corresponding hall on the next floor up, and into an office. The secretary there wasn't decorative; she was, in fact, severely plain. That probably meant she was very good at what she did. Koenig nodded to her. "Morning, Lulu. Here's Miss Colleton, to see the boss."
Lulu gave Anne the once-over. She sniffed, as if to say, What can you do? Anne bristled. The secretary took no notice of that at all. With a small sigh, she said, "Go right in, Miss Collins. He'll be expecting you." She wasn't the sort who'd get names wrong by accident. That meant she'd done it on purpose. Anne bristled all over again, and again got nothing resembling a rise from Lulu.
When she walked into Jake Featherston's office, the leader of the Freedom Party rose and leaned across the desk to shake her hand. He wasn't handsome. Still, those strong, bony features and the energy that sparked from him made mere handsomeness seem insipid. Anne had had that thought before. "Sit down," he said, waving her to a chair. "Sit down and tell me why I should pay any attention to you after you went and left us when we needed you bad."
He hadn't forgotten. Anne doubted he ever forgot anything that went against him. They weren't so far apart there. She answered, "Two reasons: my money and my brains."
He frowned. "If you had any brains, you never would've walked out on us in the first place."
"No." Anne shook her head. "I back winners. If you think you looked like a winner after Calkins killed President Hampton, you're not as smart as you think you are. But times are hard again, and in hard times the Freedom Party shines. So… here I am."
How many people gave him such straight talk? Not many, Anne suspected. What would he do when he heard it? Get angry? Yes, by the slow flush that mounted to his cheeks and by the way his eyes flashed. But he held it in, saying, "You're a cool one, aren't you? You're telling me straight out you'd walk away again if you saw us in trouble."
"No," Anne replied. "What I'm telling you is, this time I expect you to win."
"And you want to come along for the ride," Featherston said.
"Of course I do," Anne answered. "Sooner or later, we're going to have some things to say to the United States. If you don't think I want to be part of that, you don't know me at all. And I can help. At your rallies, you're still using tricks I figured out for you ten years ago, and you know it."
"You spent the last few years trying to teach the Whigs new tricks," he said.
"Yes, and they're old dogs-they couldn't learn them," Anne answered. "They've been in power too long. They can't learn anything any more. That's why they've got to go."
"They're dogs, all right, the sons of-" Featherston caught himself. "Well, I have plans for them, too. You'd best believe that. Way they've stomped on the people of the Confederate States… You're dead right they've got to go, Miss Colleton. And I aim to get rid of 'em."
Anne wondered how he meant that. Literally? She knew he was ruthless. Was he that ruthless? Maybe. She wouldn't have been astonished, but even the most ruthless man faced a formidable barrier of law. Anne nodded to herself. Here, that kind of barrier might not be bad at all.
"You come back in, you'll follow the Party line?" Jake Featherston asked.
You'll do as I say? was what he meant. Anne had never been one to do as anybody said. But if she said no, she'd have no place in the Freedom Party, not now, not ever. That was ever so clear. This is why you came to Richmond, she reminded herself. Do you want to go home empty-handed? Part of her said she did. She ignored it. Nodding to Featherston, she said, "Yes, I'll do that."
He didn't warn her-no, You'd better, or anything like that. "Good," he said. "We've got a deal." He didn't ask for her soul, either. But why would he? She'd just handed it to him.
AmericanEmpire: TheCenterCannotHold