"I wish I could tell you more," Willcox answered. "I am, however, not a free agent, any more than you are, sir. Probably less than you are, for I doubt the apron strings holding you to your government are as tight as the ones I am compelled to wear."

"I doubt that-but then, I would, wouldn't I?" Jackson said. He and Willcox looked at each other with wry sympathy. Soldiers from one side often had more in common with soldiers from the other than with the civilians who told them what to do. "You have no better word to give me, General? Nothing I can send to Richmond to help ensure that we remain untroubled here?"

"If I had it, I would gladly give it: I assure you of that," Willcox said. "But I cannot give what I do not have."

"Very well." Jackson 's nod was almost a bow. "I thank you for your time, sir, and I thank you for your courtesy. Please do take it as given that, should you at any time desire to visit me at my headquarters, you shall have no difficulty in passing through the lines and you will be most welcome there."

"You are very kind, sir." Willcox did bow. After further protestations of mutual esteem, the two men parted. Jackson made his way back into Confederate-held territory. He got aboard his horse there; entering the U.S. lines mounted might have made him seem like a man who judged himself a conqueror, and so he had refrained (even if he did so judge himself).

As he rode south, devastation gradually diminished. Single buildings and then whole blocks appeared, as if they were growing out of the rubble. His headquarters, being beyond the range of U.S. artillery, were set among unharmed trees and houses on the outskirts of town, and were quite pleasant. Taken as a whole, though, Louisville would be a long time recovering.

He wired Longstreet the results, or rather lack of results, of his meeting with General Willcox. The answer came back within a few minutes: WILL ANOTHER BLOW AID IN SHIFTING THE YANKEES? IF SO, CAN YOU

I CAN, he replied by telegraph, WILLCOX JUDGES BLAINE DOES NOT

He paced back and forth, awaiting the president's judgment. Longstreet was right; telegraphic conferences were not all they might be. After a while, the clicker brought the president's response, HAMMERING FULMINATE OF MERCURY UNWISE, Longstreet Said. WE CAN WAIT.

ALL IN READINESS HERE AT NEED, Jackson wired.

I ASSUMED NOTHING LESS, Longstreet eventually answered, I RELY ON

That last wire made Jackson feel good. He knew Longstreet had sent it for no other reason than making him feel good. Knowing why Longstreet had sent it should have lessened the effect. Somehow, it didn't. Jackson took that to mean Longstreet was a formidable politician indeed.

He chuckled, which made the telegrapher waiting for his reply give him a startled look. "Never mind, son," Jackson told him. "It's nothing I didn't already know."

Alfred von Schlieffen's office in Philadelphia was neither so comfortable nor so quiet as the one he had enjoyed down in Washington . Nor did the German military attache have here the reference volumes he'd used there. That Philadelphia did not lie under Confederate guns was at the moment, in his view, less of an advantage than the other factors were annoyances.

He had-he hoped he had-the books he needed here. He looked from an account of Lee's advance up into Pennsylvania, the advance that had won the War of Secession for the CSA, to an atlas of the world. Tracing Lee's movements day by day, fight by fight, gave him a fresh appreciation not only of what Lee had accomplished but also of precisely how he had accomplished it.

Indirect approach, Schlieffen scribbled on a sheet of foolscap. He had been studying Lee's campaigns since he came to the United States; they were not so well known to the General Staff as they should have been. When he traced on the map the Army of Northern Virginia's movements, he saw strategic insight of the highest order. He had seen some of that all along. Now he saw more. He also saw, or thought he saw, how to apply that insight to his own country's situation. Up till now, he had been blind to that.

Had Beethoven had this inspired feeling, this dazzling burst of insight, when the theme for a symphony struck him? For his sake, Schlieffen hoped so. The German military attache felt like a god, noting the movements on the map as if he were looking down on a world he had just made and finding it good.

He underlined indirect approach. Then he underlined the words again-for him, an almost unprecedented show of emotion. Lee's goal all along had been Washington, D.C., yet he'd never once moved on the capital of the United States. He'd swung up past it and then around behind it, smashing McClellan's army and ending up here in Philadelphia before Britain and France forced mediation on the USA.

But Washington had been the Schwerpunkt of the entire campaign. Not only had Lee taken advantage of the U.S. government's urgent need to protect its capital, he had also used the great wheel around the city to gain the Confederacy the largest possible moral and political advantages.

Schlieffen flipped pages in the atlas. Since it was printed in the USA, the states of the United States and Confederate States came before the nations of Europe, and were shown in more detail. Provincialism, Schlieffen thought scornfully. But the maps he needed were there, even if toward the back of the book.

"Ach, gut," he muttered: the map of France also showed the Low Countries and a fair-sized chunk of the western part of the German Empire. In the Franco-Prussian War, the armies of Prussia and her lesser allies had moved straight into France and, after smashing French forces near the border, straight toward Paris. That coup would not be so easy to repeat in a new war; he had seen for himself how stubborn good artillery and good rifles could make a defense.

As if of itself, the index finger of his right hand moved in a wide arc, from Germany around behind Paris. He smiled and scribbled more notes. That sort of manoeuvre would make the French come out and fight in places they had never intended to defend and hadn't spent years fortifying. And what Frenchman, even in his wildest nightmares, could imagine Paris attacked from the rear?

The finger traced that arc again. Schlieffen noticed it ran through not only France but also through Luxembourg, Belgium, and perhaps Holland as well. In case of war between Germany and France, all three of the Low Countries were likely to be neutral. Would this manoeuvre be valuable enough to justify violating that neutrality and bringing opprobrium down on Germany 's head?

"Ja," Schlieffen said decisively. Whether the General Staff would agree with him, he did not know. He did know his colleagues back in Berlin had to see this notion, and had to see it soon. Even if they did not accept it, it would give them a new point of departure for their own thinking.

He was writing furiously, moving back and forth between the maps of France and Pennsylvania, when he noticed someone knocking on the door. The knocking was loud and insistent. He wondered how long it had been going on before he noticed it.

"How is a man to get any work done?" he muttered, and gave the door a resentful stare. When that failed to stop the knocking, he sighed, rose, and opened the door. Kurd von Schlozer stood in the hallway, looking less than happy himself. "Oh. Your Excellency. Excuse me," Schlieffen said. "How may I serve you?"