"I thought you might have something like that in mind," Evans said dryly.

"When I spoke with Colonel Dills, he told me that one of his problems is getting around the Congo. It's as big as the United States east of the Mississippi, you know. No roads, and not much scheduled air transport."

"He's supposed to have access to the planes assigned to the embassy," General Evans said. "But you know how that works.

The tea-and-crumpet crew gets priority."

"The Ambassador mentioned that he was short of aircraft, but that his request for another L-23 was turned down."

"Drop the other shoe, Colonel."

"I told him I thought I could arrange for another L-23 and crew," Felter said, "with the understanding that it go to Colonel Dills. I made the point, I think, that I don't want Colonel Dills to have to justify his use of the airplane."

"And he went along?"

"After some discussion he seemed to understand that if Colonel Dills had his own airplane, he wouldn't be competing with the embassy staff for one of theirs. And that I was not in a position to get him an aircraft for general embassy use."

"What do you want from Colonel Dills, Felter? Which means, what do you want from me?"

"I want copies of everything Dills sends you."

"You can get that anyway."

"If you could make Dills's reports available to Lowell, I could probably get them quicker."

"OK.".

"And there may be, from time to time, certain things I'd like to have Colonel Dills do for me," Felter said. "Things I would prefer did not get into either diplomatic or military channels."

"Requests which would pass through Lowell?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Such as?"

"Take people here and there to have a look at things."

"Spooks? Goddamn it, Felter. I don't want Dills involved in, something like that."

"I understand Special Forces is going to conduct some training exercises overseas," Felter said. "I thought maybe you would want some of them to take place in the Congo."

"And without letting the JCS know about the foreign training areas having been changed, of course?" Evans said sarcastically.

"I don't think you routinely advise the JCS about training missions involving so few people," Felter said. "I'd really be surprised if they ever became cognizant of these missions."

"And who would get burned if they found out? They'd come after me," Evans said. "And I'd have to tell them."

"Tell JCS I was responsible."

"Tell your Green Berets to be very discreet, Colonel Felter," General Evans said, "and pray we don't get caught." The telephone rang again and Evans picked it up.

"Send him in," he said, and hung up-.

The door opened. Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell, in a superbly tailored tropical worsted uniform, entered the room. He marched within twenty-four inches of General Evans's desk, saluted crisply, and formally announced: "Lieutenant Colonel Lowell reports to the Commander-in-Chief as ordered, Sir."

Evans returned the salute. He noticed with approval that Lowell wore his double-starred Combat Infantry Badge above his Senior Aviator's wings. Whatever faults he might have, Lowell had his priorities in order.

"I believe you know Colonel Felter, Colonel?" General Evans said.

"Yes, Sir. I have that privilege. Good afternoon, Sir."

"I also heard you're old buddies."

"Yes, Sir," Lieutenant Colonel Lowell said. "The Colonel and I go back to when he had hair." He walked quickly to Colonel Felter, wrapped his arms around him, and picked him off the floor.

"Damn, I'm glad to see you, Mouse!" he cried happily.

"For God's sake, Craig!" Felter said furiously, struggling to free himself. General Evans, with a valiant effort, suppressed a smile.

It wasn't exactly the decorous behavior to be expected of two senior field-grade officers, but if the story were true- and Evans believed it to be-that Lowell had plucked Felter off the beach at the Bay of Pigs ten minutes before that operation went down the tubes, it could be overlooked.

V.

(One) U.S. Army Reception Center Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri 5 January 1964 Recruit Jacques Emile Portet, US 53 279 656, had been in the United States Army not quite seventy-two hours. He had nevertheless already formed two conclusions about the experience: that he didn't like it and that it was the intention of the United States Army to as quickly as possible send him to Indochina where he would be killed.

He had gotten in a fight with the system within hours of having taken one step forward (signifying his willingness, however reluctantly, to accept the opinion of his friends and neighbors, those faceless sonofabitches, that he should be inducted into the Army) and raised his hand to swear that he would not only defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but that he would obey orders of the officers and noncommissioned officers appointed over him.

He and the other inductees with him had been taken by Greyhound bus from Saint Louis to Fort Leonard Wood, where they had been given a welcoming speech, which included a long litany of what the Army could and would do to anyone who decided to go home, or talk back to a sergeant, or consume controlled substances, or have in their possession lethal weapons or pornographic material.

They had then been assigned to a processing company, where they had been assigned to a barracks and issued a mattress cover, two sheets, a pillowcase, and two blankets. A specialist fourth class, drunk with his own authority, had then demonstrated the correct manner of making a GI bed and provided his own list of dire consequences for anyone failing to come up to his high standards.

They were then marched to a building where there were white-jacketed GIs, armed with chrome-plated devices, powered by air. These were intended to administer the required regimen of inoculations against disease.

Jack Portet was a believer in inoculations against disease. He had seen with his own eyes what happened to people in the Congo who let slip their appointment with the doctor to bring their international certificate of inoculations up to date. His own ICI was up to date, and that was what posed the problem, for he had also seen what happened to people who took shots that reacted with inoculations they already had. He had no intention of letting himself be injected with something that moments later might cause him to pass out, or writhe on the floor. Or to be, conceivably, dead.

"I'd like to see a doctor before I take any of these," Jack had said as politely as possible.

"Fuck you, lemme have that arm."

"Not until I see a doctor."

"Hey, Sarge! I got a wise guy!" The first physician to whom Recruit Portet explained his problem and showed his international certificate of immunization was a young first lieutenant who had obviously never seen an ICI before. Nor was he familiar with several of the immunization inoculations Recruit Portet's ICI said he had received against the vast array of diseases common to Africa.

Telephone calls were made. The duty officer at the base hospital said that probably the best thing to do was send the kid over there, where they could have a look at his ICI; he would send a staff car. As Recruit Portet's peers, who had taken their shots without causing any trouble, were lining up preparatory to being marched back to their barracks, they saw him, accompanied by a medical corpsman, being loaded into a Ford staff car and driven off.

The Chief of the Hematology and Immunology Service 01 [he Fort Leonard Wood Base Hospital was a pleasant youngish lieutenant colonel who told Recruit Portet that he was lucky he had refused the usual regimen of inoculations.

"Or we'd have probably had you over here wrapped in rubber sheets, getting iced down." He himself administered a tetanus booster, all that Jack needed to satisfy the Army's requirements, and then did what he could to make sure there were no problems in the future. He had the shots on Jack's ICI transferred to his Army inoculations record and added a comment to the effect that no immunization inoculations should be administered to Recruit Portet without a careful review of his immunization record.

"This is serious, Portet," the Colonel said. "Don't let them give you anything until you're sure they know what they're doing." And then he sent Recruit Portet back to the reception center in a staff car.

The damage, as Jack suspected, was done. He had had experience with being an oddball before, at Culver and at the lycee in Brussels. He was an oddball, and therefore a troublemaker, because he was different.

He was not at all surprised that night when he was chosen to be a fire watch, which required that he walk up and down through the barracks for two hours, twice, to make sure that if there was a conflagration there would be someone to shout "Fire" and pull the fire alarm.

On his first morning in the Army he received a partial pay of fifty dollars, with which he was expected to purchase necessary toiletries. Then they were marched to a warehouse, measured, and issued uniforms. In the afternoon they were subjected to a battery of tests designed to measure their intellectual, comprehensive, and visual skills.

On his second night in the Army he was selected to be a runner in the orderly room, which required that he stay awake to answer the telephone while the charge of quarters slept.

He was therefore sleepy and a bit out of sorts when he sat down at shortly after nine that morning in a small cubicle facing the desk of Specialist Fifth Class Roland P. Kohlman.

The enlisted ranks of the Army, above PFC (pay grades E-4 through E-7) were then divided into noncommissioned officers and specialists. Specialists ranked immediately below noncommissioned officers of the same pay grade. E.g., a specialist-5 (spec-5) ranked immediately below a sergeant; a spec-7 immediately below a master sergeant.

"Have a seat," Spec-5 Kohlman said to Jack Portet with a smile. "What happens now is that we put your civilian education and your civilian job skills on your form 20. And then we add to those your scores on the intelligence and aptitude tests, and then we decide where you would best fit into the Army's needs." Jack Portet gave him an uncertain smile, but did not reply.

"Did you finish high school?" Kohlman asked.

"Yes."

"Any college?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Four years."

"What's your degree?"

"History. "

"I meant AB, BS?" There followed a discussion of the differences between the degree-awarding procedures of the Free University of Brussels and those of American institutions of higher learning. Kohlman was told that the Free University of Brussels awarded a diploma in a given subject, such as history, but not a degree. The only degrees they awarded were doctoral degrees, and he had not completed that program.

Spec-5 Kohlman was suspicious of Recruit Portet from that point onward.

His suspicions that he was dealing with either a wise guy trying to award himself a background to which he was not entitled or a pathological liar deepened as the interview proceeded.

If Portet were to be believed, he was fluent in German, French, and had some knowledge of Flemish.

So far as Kohlman was concerned, the straw that broke the camel's back came when he asked Portet if he had any civilian work experience, and Portet told him that he had been a pilot.

"A commercial pilot?" Kohlman asked doubtfully.

Jack Portet was no fool. He knew that he was being disbelieved.

"A commercial pilot with an ATR."

"A what?"

"An Airline Transport Rating."

"You were an airline pilot?"

"That's right."

"Who did you work for?"

"Air Simba," Jack told him. "In the Congo."

"You don't happen to have your pilot's license with you, do you?"

Shit! Jack Portet thought. Now he will be absolutely convinced I'm bullshitting him.

"It's with my passport and other papers I didn't think I'd need in the Army. In a safety deposit box in the First National Bank of St. Louis." Spec-5 Kohlman thought over the best way to handle this character for a moment before he went on.

"I think you ought to know that it's a court-martial offense to tell me something to be entered on your official records that isn't true."

Fuck you, Jack Portet thought. Check it out.

He said nothing.

"Is there anything you've told me here that you would like to change before we go any further?"

"Yeah," Jack said, "about the languages?"

"What about them?" Kohlman asked, convinced that he had now opened the floodgates of truth.

"Add Swahili to the list," Jack Portet said. "I speak pretty good Swahili." Recruit Jacques Emile Portet posed something of an administrative problem for the reception center. Interviews with both the sergeant major and the assistant personnel officer for classification and assignment did not get from him an admission that he was telling a tale. The assistant personnel officer was prone to believe him.

He spoke a little French himself, and Portet had replied with obvious fluency when the Lieutenant asked, "Parlez-vous Francaise" that he did indeed speak the language.

In the end it was decided to turn the whole matter over to the CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) for an official investigation. The CIC wanted to hear about anybody being inducted who had a "foreign association," and if Recruit Portet had indeed gone to the Free University of Brussels, that was certainly a foreign association.

Several days later Recruit Portet was placed on orders transferring him to the 3rd Armored Division (Training) at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic training as an Armored Infantryman.

His records were flagged with a coded notice saying that he was currently the subject of a CIC investigation.

(Two) Fort Belvoir, Virginia 13 January 1964 First Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Wagner was in the copilot's seat of the DeHavilland L-20 Beaver when it landed at Fort Belvoir's Army Airfield, under verbal orders of the Assistant Adjutant of the U. S. Army Special Warfare School to report to Room 23-B-19 in the Pentagon.

"I don't know what the hell they want," the Assistant Adjutant said. "You ever hear what they say, 'Yours not to reason why. . . '"

"Yes, Sir," Karl-Heinz had said. Then he went to the BOQ and put on a class-A uniform and threw two changes of linen into a plastic overnight bag he had been given for having his Volkswagen repainted. Then he drove the Volkswagen to Army Ops at Pope Air Force Base and caught the regularly scheduled, if unofficial and technically illegal, morning courier flight to Washington.

The Army was forbidden by the Key West Agreement of 1948 to operate regularly scheduled air transport service. Doing so would step on the Air Force's prerogative of providing aerial transport to the Army. When the Army utilized the daily Air Force flight from Pope (which touches the Fort Bragg Reservation) to Washington, they billed the Army for each passenger seat at a rate only microscopically less than charged by civilian airlines.

The Army had Beavers: six-place, single-engine aircraft designed for the Canadian-Alaskan bush country and first used by the Army in Korea. It cost much less to fly a Beaver from Fort Bragg to Washington than the Air Force charged for flying five people there. The Air Force could not tell the Army when or where to schedule their training flights, so every day the Army scheduled a Beaver cross-country training flight from Bragg to Belvoir (which is outside Washington) and gave the pilots permission to take along any military personnel who needed a ride to Washington.

Karl-Heinz Wagner got to ride in the copilot's seat because he was senior passenger and it took only one man to fly a Beaver. The other passengers were all enlisted men, one on leave, the others running errands to the Pentagon.