"Geoff!" Ursula flared.

"On the other hand, I am a high-class commissioned officer and gentleman, and a rated rotary-wing aviator," Geoff went on. "The guardhouse lawyer in me tells me that I can get away with it. All I need is to get past the exam."

"You're talking-presuming you can fly-eight, ten, maybe twenty hours in the air. Plus ground school. The examination's a bitch."

"I know," Geoff said. "I had a guy teaching me, a captain, but they're running him through some kind of a special course and he's not available. And it's forbidden for officers to teach people how to fly, or crop dust, etcetera, etcetera."

"Where would you get an airplane? Can you charter something around here?"

"No," Geoff said. "But Beech was more obliging. I've got a Twin-Bonanza on a six month's dry charter sitting at the Ozark airport." Jack's eyebrows rose in surprise but he said nothing.

"I'll pay you the going rate," Geoff said. "And throw in some unusual employee benefits-such as my wife's cooking and introductions to other hopeful maidens around town."

"If you're serious, sure. I'd be happy to."

"What got to you, the cooking or the introductions to the available maidens?"

"The going rate," Jack said.

"Starting tomorrow morning?"

"Why not? That'll be the end of our Scotch drinking, though."

"OK," Geoff said. He put out his hand. "We have a deal?"

"Deal. "

"Now I will cook our supper," Geoff said. "I am one of the world's great beefsteak broilers. And afterward, if she's a good girl, I will get Marjorie an apple."

Barbara Bellmon was watching Johnny Carson when she heard Marjorie's MGB putter up the driveway.

She didn't want to give the impression that she had been waiting up for her daughter, and she started to get up to go upstairs.

But then she figured the hell with it, she wasn't waiting up for her, and let herself fall backward onto the couch.

"Hi," Marjorie said when she came in the house.

"How did it go?"

"He and Geoff got along like thieves," Marjorie said. "They have the same sense of humor. It was mutual-appreciation night.

And he speaks German, so Ursula thought he was just fine."

"But I gather you're not quite so enthusiastic?"

"Geoff made-somewhere among his many other wiseass remarks-the crack that the way Jack was looking at me made him think we were in the Garden of Eden and I was hungrily eyeing the apple." Barbara Bellmon had to laugh.

"That's awful," she said.

"What's worse," Marjorie said, "so did I."

"Oh, my!" Barbara Bellmon said.

IX.

(One) Fort Rucker, Alabama 18 April 1964 "General," Captain John C. Oliver said as he stood in Bellmon's office doorway, "they say they have no Colonel Felter."

"Are they still on the line?"

"No, Sir," Oliver said.

"Get the number again," Bellmon said and picked up his telephone. He listened as his secretary gave the Fort Rucker operator the number he wanted in Washington, D.C. The called party answered on the third ring.

"The White House. Good afternoon."

"I have a person-to-person call for Colonel Sanford T. Felter," the Fort Rucker operator said.

"One moment, please," the White House operator said, and then came back on the line a moment later. "I'm sorry, Operator. We have no one here by that name."

"This is Major General Robert F. Bellmon, United States Army," Bellmon said. "Please put me through to Colonel Felter."

"I'm sorry, Sir," the operator said. "There is no one here by that name."

"Put the duty officer on the line," Bellmon ordered.

"I beg your pardon, Sir?"

"I happen to know that the White House switchboard is operated by the Signal Corps and that a duty officer is always on duty.

I wish to speak to him."

"One moment, please, Sir." It was a good thirty seconds, which seemed to Bellmon con- x (One) 227 Melody Lane Ozark, Alabama 1725 hours 22 April 1964 Ursula Craig kissed her husband when he and Jack Portet walked through the sliding plate-glass door into the kitchen, cans of beer in their hands.

Ursula had her hair in braids, was without makeup, and looked, Jack thought, wholesome and radiant, like a cover for Mother to Be magazine.

"I wonder how we could make that contagious," Jack Portet said to Marjorie Bellmon, who was at the kitchen counter spreading cheese on crackers.

Oh, shit! I didn't mean that the way she's going to think. I meant the kiss!

Marjorie looked at him in surprise, then noticed the horrified look on his face and took pity on him.

"If the cops had seen you riding around with that beer in your hand," Marjorie said, "I'd be passing these to you through the bars of the Dale County jail." She went to him and started to push a cracker into his mouth.

He caught her hand and they looked at each other.

"The kiss we can arrange," Marjorie said quietly, and kissed him, quickly and almost chastely, but still intimately. "I'll have to give a lot of thought to the other suggestion." Jack brightened immediately. "Every journey," he intoned solemnly, "begins with a first, small step."

"If I didn't know better," Geoff Craig said, "I would think he really meant that he would like to spread a little pollen on her."

"Geoff!" Ursula said furiously, her face coloring.

"Hello, Geoff," Colonel Sanford T. Felter said, walking into the kitchen from the living room. "I hope you don't mind me coming here uninvited." Geoff, smiling, walked to Felter with his hand extended.

"Don't be silly, Colonel," he said. "It's good to see you, Sir."

"I saw you at the funeral," Felter said, "but you got away before I had a chance to speak to you."

"You were surrounded by the brass," Geoff said. "Ursula been feeding you?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Jack, this is Colonel Sandy Felter," Geoff said. "I'd say he's a friend of the family, but that's a little inadequate. He and my cousin Craig have been buddies since they were second lieutenants."

"We've met," Felter said, giving his hand to Jack Portet. "Or at least we've talked on the telephone."

Jack, taken aback, was about to say something but Felter cut him off. "Since Craig Lowell was a second lieutenant," Felter corrected Geoff Craig with a smile. "When we met, my talents had already been recognized and I was wearing a silver bar."

"I didn't know you knew Jack," Geoff said.

"I know a good deal about Jack," Felter said. "For example that he's been teaching you how to fly fixed-wing airplanes."

"I gather that's come to the attention of our Supreme Leader?" Geoff said. "You didn't come here to drop a word to the wise in my ear, did you by any chance?"

"Actually, I came here to ask you how you'd feel about an assignment as an assistant military attache-a flying attache-in the Congo," Felter said.

"I thought we had a deal, Colonel," Jack said coldly.

"What the hell?" Geoff asked, confused.

"The deal was you didn't go to the Congo," Felter said to Jack. "Geoff's not part of that deal."

"Is somebody going to explain what the hell's going on?" Geoff demanded.

"I'm just a little curious, too, Uncle Sandy," Marjorie said suspiciously, "about how come you know Jack."

"'Uncle Sandy'?" Jack asked, softly and incredulously.

"How much time do we have?" Felter asked Ursula, speaking German.

"I made a leg of lamb," Ursula replied, also in German. "It'll be another forty minutes. The Bellmons and the Hodges are due any minute now."

"What did they say, Jack?" Marjorie demanded suspiciously.

"I'm apparently about to meet your father and mother."

"I thought that's what she said. And now I really want to know what's going on."

"That will give us a few minutes to talk, Geoff," Felter said.

"I really am here on business, I'm afraid." Geoff looked at him and then at Ursula. Ursula's face showed surprise and concern.

"What kind of business?" she asked softly in English.

"Nothing to worry about," Felter said.

"As Lord Cardigan said to the Light Brigade," Geoff said.

"'Just canter down the valley toward Balaklava, fellows. Nothing to worry about.'" Felter laughed. It was obvious to Marjorie that neither Ursula nor Jack Portet understood the reference to the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. But Marjorie did. And she had known all of her life that Colonel Sanford T. Felter was in the upper echelons of Intelligence. She wondered first what Felter wanted from Geoff, and then she felt sorry for Ursula. And then she was surprised at the enormous relief she felt when she realized that whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with Jack.

Then Felter added, "You too, Jack, if you don't mind."

"We can use the office," Geoff said.

"That'll be fine," Felter smiled at Ursula. "The Army has to find replacements for the people who died in the plane crash, Ursula. They were about to be assigned as assistant military attaches to the embassy in Leopoldville. I think Geoff qualifies. That's what I want to talk to him about."

"Oh," Ursula said, clearly not sure what that meant.

Marjorie glanced at Jack. He was looking at Felter from eyes that were cold and suspicious.

And then the three of them disappeared down a corridor.

Jack expected to find a bedroom converted to an office by the installation of a small desk pushed against a wall. What he found looked as businesslike, but was far more elegant than the office of the-President of the First National Bank of Ozark.

A large, gleaming mahogany desk held a leather blotter pad, a multibutton telephone, and a dictating machine. The chair behind it was high backed and upholstered in light-brown leather.

Against the wall was a matching credenza, and at one end of the desk a small table held a typewriter. An IBM Selectric, to judge by the plastic cover. There was a conference table, one end butted against the desk, holding another telephone. There was space for five people, each to be seated in smaller versions of the chair behind the desk. There were filing cabinets, each with a combination lock:, a small refrigerator, and a bar. Behind the desk was a picture of a very handsome mustachioed young officer having a medal pinned to his blouse by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. Beneath that photograph a frayed, battered, grease-spotted battalion guidon had been framed. On the guidon were sewn on lettering, 73RD HVY TANK, and someone had added, apparently with a grease pencil, the legend TASK FORCE LOWELL.

"What the hell is this place, anyway?" Jack asked.

"When my cousin Craig used this house as a bachelor pad," Geoff replied, chuckling, "he didn't like the office the Army gave him at Rucker. He worked out of here."

"It looks as if he walked out of here five minutes ago," Felter said.

"I don't use it," Geoff said. "I'd feel I was intruding; sometimes think this is the only home he has."

"That's MacArthur giving him the Distinguished Service Cross," Felter said, walking to and pointing at the photograph.

"And the guidon is the one he flew from his tank when he made the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. They teach that operation at both the Armor School and Command and General Staff;"

"I'm awed," Jack said."

"Here is the Colonel as a young man," Geoff said matter of factly, pointing at one of the photographs on the wall.

Jack went and looked. Despite a bushy, wax-tipped mustache, the photograph showed an obviously very young Lieutenant Craig W. Lowell. He had an M 1 Garand rifle cradled in his arms like a hunter. At first Jack thought the photograph was a joke, posed for laughs, but then he realized that it was no joke. Lowell's foot, like a hunter's foot on a prized lion, was resting on the shoulder of a man lying on the ground. The man's eyes and mouth were open and there was a bullet hole almost in the exact center of his forehead.

"Greece," Colonel Felter said softly. "He was nineteen. When he was wounded and evacuated to the hospital in Germany, I found that roll of film in his things and, sent it home to my wife to have it developed. I've always wondered what they thought at the Rexall Drug Store when they saw that snapshot."