One of the reasons he glowered at those papers was that they should have got to him weeks before they did. Before the shooting started, he’d run Confederate espionage operations in the USA. Two countries hardly separated by language made spying here easier in many ways than it was in Europe. Some Confederate operatives had been in place in Washington and Philadelphia and elsewhere since before the Great War.

There were two problems with that. Shooting and moving armies and closed ordinary channels of mail and telegraphy made it harder for information to get across the border-which was why these papers were so late. The other problem was, what were the damnyankees doing in the CSA? Ease of spying cut both ways, worse luck.

Formally, counterintelligence was on Brigadier General Cummins’ football field, not his. He wasn’t sorry about that, or most of him wasn’t. Even guzzling coffee as if they’d outlaw it day after tomorrow, he did have to sleep every once in a while. He didn’t see how he could conjure up enough extra hours in the day to do a proper job if more responsibility landed on his head.

Jake Featherston and Nathan Bedford Forrest III, the head of the Confederate General Staff, thought he could handle it if he had to. He had a hard time quarreling with either of them, because they both had more in their laps than he did. But he was a relentless perfectionist in ways they weren’t, and couldn’t let go of things till they were exactly as he wanted them. He had enough insight to understand that that wasn’t always a desirable character trait. Understanding it and being able to do anything about it were two different things.

Someone knocked on the door. Down here, the rule was that you didn’t walk in till you were invited. Potter checked to make sure nothing sensitive was out in the open before he said, “Come in.”

“Thank you.” It was Nathan Bedford Forrest III. Potter started to come to attention; Forrest waved him back into his chair before the motion was well begun, saying, “Don’t bother with that silly nonsense.” The great-grandson of the cavalry raider in the War of Secession had a fleshier face than his famous ancestor, but his eyes, hooded under strong dark brows, proclaimed the relationship.