"'Know the area' can be interpreted in a number of ways," Bellmon said.

"They will be expected to do nothing more than assistant military attaches do anywhere," Felter said. "Keep their eyes and their ears open, of course, and make the usual reports. I don't want them for agents."

"I don't suppose it would matter if you did, would it?"

"No, but I'm telling you the truth." Bellmon looked at Felter thoughtfully.

"You didn't have to say that," he said. "And if you hadn't shown up with 'he whose name cannot be safely mentioned,' I don't think I would have given you such a hard time."

"They also serve who skulk and spy," Felter said with a smile.

Bellmon chuckled.

"All you want to do is talk to these three officers and pick your best two, is that it?"

"They'll have to be trained in long-distance flight without the usual navigation aids. Will that be any trouble to arrange?" Bellmon shook his head no.

"I thought you could have me introduced to them as the Army liaison officer to the State Department," Felter said. "Sent here to interview them."

"Sure," Bellmon said. "Have you got their names?" Felter reached in his pocket and handed Bellmon a sheet of paper.

"You want to use my office, Sandy?" Bellmon asked.

"Let's keep it informal. What about over a beer, at the club, after lunch?" Bellmon nodded and handed the list to Captain Oliver.

"Johnny, get in touch with these people. Go through their department heads and inform them it is the General's desire that they attend him in .the bar of the club at 1330. If you're asked for details, as I suspect you will be, tell them there is some Washington big shot here who wants to talk to them. OK, Sandy?"

"Make that State Department big shot," Felter said, smiling.

VI.

(One) Washington, D. C.7 February 1964 When First Lieutenant Karl-Beinz Wagner came to Washington from the Army Language School in California, he traveled in civilian clothing. He took a taxi from Washington National Airport into the District of Columbia, and to a somewhat seedy motel almost on the Maryland border. There he called the number he had been given.

Colonel Sanford T. Felter, in a baggy suit, arrived at the wheel of a battered Volkswagen thirty minutes later.

"You just leave your uniforms here and I'll take yare of them;" Felter said. "What did you tell Ursula?"

"That I was going to Panama on TDY to the Jungle Training" School and that I would probably be gone six months."

"And she believed you?"

"My sister does not expect me to lie to her," Wagner said evenly.

Felter nodded.

"We're going to go from here to the airport," Felter said.

"You'll take the shuttle to New York, to LaGuardia and then take the bus to Kennedy. You're on the seven-eighteen Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. When you have cleared customs, put your American passport in this and drop it in the Poste Restante."

"Yes, Sir."

Felter then handed Karl-Heinz a manila envelope that looked German-slicker, less substantial-than an American envelope. It had a Frankfurt address written on it and there were German stamps on it.

"Yes, Sir,"

Wagner repeated and put the envelope in his jacket pocket.

Felter handed Karl-Heinz a second, smaller envelope. It contained a West German passport, issued in West Berlin.

"Is this counterfeit?" Karl-Heinz asked.

"No. Not the passport. The, Exit Berlin stamp is homemade, but that's all."

"That suggests, Sir, that the German government is involved?" Karl-Heinz said, making it a question.

"Just one very highly placed German, in whom I have absolute confidence."

"And some members of his staff."

"Just one man," Felter conceded. "This is a private operation." Karl-Heinz nodded.

"After you've gotten rid of the American passport, take the bus into Frankfurt. Buy some clothes. Something that exOberleutnant Wagner would buy. Not that I don't admire the suede jacket. . . ."

Wagner smiled. "Danke schon, Herr Oberst."

"Then go to..the offices of Hessische Schwere Konstruktion," Felter went on. "It's on the sixteenth floor, Erschenheimeclandstrasse 190. That's not far from the Farben Building, so there will be a slight risk you might run into somebody you know. Be prepared for that." Felter looked up to see if Wagner understood. He nodded once that he did. What he understood was that during the war, the enormous corporate headquarters of the I. G. Farben corporation was purposefully spared destruction when Frankfurt was bombed so that it could be used as the American headquarters for occupied Germany. The U.S. Army has occupied it since 1945.

"When you get to HSK," Felter went on, "ask for Herr Neider. He will expect you, and he will be, under the impression that you've just come from Berlin." Wagner nodded.

"They will put you up for a day or two while they take care of the paperwork and then give you a ticket to Durban via Johannesburg," Felter went on. He handed Wagner two envelopes.

"There's five thousand dollars in American money in one and the equivalent in South Africa rand in the other."

"What is it for?"

"Necessary expenses," Felter said, and then added dryly, "The clothing, for one thing."

"Very nice."

"There is an elaborate accounting procedure set up for these funds, Karl-Heinz, but no one has ever asked me how they were actually spent, beyond 'necessary expenses.' Far be it from me to suggest that you consider them a bonus, and I have every confidence that you won't spend a dime of it that is not in the interest of the United States government."

"It would be suspicious if a recent East German defector had a lot of cash."

"On the other hand it might explain why he defected," Felter said. "People are generally far more willing to accept that a man is a thief or an embezzler than that he risked his skin for something as unimportant as freedom."

"You think that is what I should say?" Karl-Heinz asked.

"I think you should think about it. You know what you're supposed to do. How you do it is up to you. ]f you really get into trouble, or learn something you feel I should know right away, contact the Embassy in Johannesburg. Ask to speak to Mr. Edward T. Watson."

"Who is he?"

"He doesn't exist," Felter said. "But that will get you put through to either the Ambassador, the Charge d'affaires, or the CIA Station Chief. When you get through to one of them, tell them to open the Eagle envelope. That will be in the Ambassador's safe. It will inform them who you are and that you are working for me, and instruct them to immediately do what they can for you, and to get in touch with me. It also directs them to transmit whatever message you want to send. But until that envelope is opened, no one at the embassy will know you're in South Africa."

"Edward T. Watson," Wagner said, and then repeated it several times to fix it. in his memory.

"Durban is a resort town," Felter said. "Vacationers send a lot of postcards. You will send one every week to Mr. Watson. If there is no postcard from Mr. Watson in any seven-day period, the Ambassador has been instructed to open the Eagle envelope."

"OK.".

"I wish I had some clever suggestion, beyond buying a car from him, about how to get you up close to Michael Hoare," Felter said. "But I don't."

"If there are soldiers or ex-soldiers, in Durban," Karl-Heinz said, "there will be a soldiers bar. I will find it."

Felter grunted his approval.

Forty-five minutes later Karl-Heinz Wagner boarded the Eastern Airlines New York shuttle at Washington National Airport.

(Two) The U.S. Army Armor Center Fort Knox, Kentucky 18 February 1964 Recruit Jacques Emile Portet was in the sixth week of the eight-week basic training cycle which would see him designated as a light weapons infantryman when he was called out of a lecture on the care and cleaning of the U.S. Rifle M16Al and ordered to report to the orderly room.

He found the First Sergeant, the Company Commander, and a young man in civilian clothing about his own age waiting for him.

"This is Mr. Gregory;" the Company Commander said. "You are to go with him." Mr. Gregory did not smile or offer his hand. Instead, he gave Jack a brief glimpse of a gold badge and an identification card in a leather folder.

"Will you come with me, please?" he asked.

Gregory had a car. It was a Ford four-door sedan, and it was immediately clear to Jack that before it had been repainted an unpleasant shade of blue, it had been painted olive drab. Gregory; who seemed very impressed with his own status, was obviously some kind of an Army cop, an Army detective. Jack was curious rather than upset.

I have the strength often, he thought, amused, because in my heart I'm pure.

Since his run-in with the medic who had tried to give him the full array of inoculations at Fort Leonard Wood, he had stayed out of trouble with the Army. Indeed, he was privileged to be the platoon guidon bearer as an indication of his Platoon Sergeant's opinion that he was less a complete fuck-up than his peers.

The 3rd Armored Division (Training) was housed, several miles from the main post, in frame buildings, their paint showing the ravages of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had passed through them since the early days of World War II.

Mr. Gregory, without saying a word to Jack, drove him to the main post, which Jack had seen before only out the windows of a bus or from the back of a truck.

It was a pleasant, tree-shaded area looking very much like an upper-class neighborhood of Saint Louis, its streets lined with substantial red-brick office buildings and homes and even a theater. There were women pushing baby carriages on sidewalks. It was civilization, Jack thought.

Gregory parked the robin's-egg-blue staff car behind one of the Williamsburg-style office buildings and spoke Jack's name for the first time.

"Come with me, please, Portet."

"Por-tay," Jack said. "It's pronounced Por-tay."

Mr. Gregory looked at him without expression and did not reply.

Then he led Jack into the building and down a glistening linoleum corridor to a door over which hung a neat sign reading G-2.

Even before the lecture on the organization of the Army, Jack had known that G-2 meant Intelligence. That explained Gregory's badge. That goddamned clerk at Fort Leonard Wood had started some sort of bureaucratic mess that was going to mean trouble.

There was a sergeant behind one desk and a rather good looking secretary behind another in an outer office.

"Is the Colonel free?" Mr. Gregory asked. "This is Recruit Portet." He pronounced it, Jack noticed, "Por-tet." The Sergeant pushed a button on his intercom.

"Colonel, Gregory is out here with the fellow you wanted to see."

"Send them in," a deep voice replied.

"Report to the Colonel," Mr. Gregory said. Jack had recently been instructed in the proper way to report to a commissioned officer, but had never actually done it before, except in practice with another basic trainee.

He knocked on the door, waited until he was told to enter, and then marched in, located the commissioned officer, marched to his desk, stopped two feet before it, came to attention, raised his hand in salute, and barked: "Sir, Recruit Portet reporting as ordered, Sir!" Then he waited for the salute to be returned before lowering his hand, meanwhile staring six inches over the commissioned officer's head.

The Colonel waved informally toward his forehead and said, "At ease, son. Take a seat."

The Colonel was a full colonel, a man Jack judged to be in his early forties, getting a little bald and a little plump. His blouse wore a large display of ribbons, topped by a Combat Infantry Badge and parachutist's wings. There was an oblong plastic name tag on the blouse with MARX etched into it.

"Sit down, Portet," Colonel Marx said when he saw that Jack had made no move toward one of the two chairs facing his desk.

"And relax, we're not going to shoot you right now. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Jack thought Colonel Marx was the friendliest officer he had encountered since the doctor at Fort Leonard Wood.

"Yes, Sir, I would. Thank you."

"Gregory?" Colonel Marx asked.

"No, thank you, Sir," Gregory said, which removed the last question in Jack's mind that Gregory was a soldier, or an officer, in civilian clothing. An enlisted man, Jack realized. Otherwise the Sergeant outside would not have dared call him by his last name.

Colonel Marx raised his voice: "Two coffees, please, Sergeant Towe !" The Sergeant delivered two china mugs of coffee and handed one to Jack.

"Portet, you are currently the subject of a CIC investigation," the Colonel said. "You know that CIC stands for Counterintelligence?"

"Yes, Sir."

"There are some people who (a) find your background fascinating," the Colonel said, "and (b) tend to disbelieve your qualifications as you gave them to the personnel assignment clerk."

"I had the feeling, Sir, that he thought I was making it up."

"Were you?" Colonel Marx asked not unkindly.

"No, Sir."

"The problem is compounded by the CIC's inability to find out much about you," Colonel Marx said. "You actually have a commercial pilot's license with an ATR rating?"

"Yes, Sir."

"If you had to prove that, how would you go about it?"

"I'd check with the FAA, Sir. Or the Department of Commerce."