Jack Portet went to his room, actually a three-room suite, opened the letter from the government in St. Louis, read it, and then changed into tennis clothes and walked down the wide stairs to the pool.

His father raised his eyebrows at him quizzically. Jack handed him the letter.

It said that his friends and neighbors had selected him for induction into the Armed Forces of the Unites States of America, and that he was to present himself at the Armed Forces Induction Center, St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday, January 2, 1964, at 9:00 A.M., bringing with him such personal items as he would need for three days.

"You knew it was coming," his father said.

"Shit," Jack said. "If I had the courage, I would put mascara on my eyelashes, swish in, and kiss the doctor."

His father chuckled.

"Then the Belgians would get you," his father said. "They don't care about fairies. One way or another, you're going in uniform. "

III.

(One) 1277 Melody Lane Ozark, Alabama 1305 Hours 24 December 1963 "Don't argue with me, Porter," lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell said to Porter Craig, Chairman of the Board of Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes, Investment Bankers. "I'm, a Norwich University graduate now, and don't you forget it."

"Oh, Jesus," Porter Craig said. He stopped himself just in time from demanding what the hell being a college graduate had to do with the question of where to set up a just delivered folding" table (intended for use as a bar)in the-living room of the house.

Lieutenant Colonel Lowell, who, was a tall, muscular, handsome man with a mustache, and Porter Craig, who was shorter a bit overweight, and balding, were cousins. Between them they owned just about equally 84 percent of the stock in the investment banking firm. Porter Craig did the actual running of it, although for tax purposes Lowell was carried on the books as Vice Chairman of the Board. Lowell was a career Army officer.

He was now in civilian clothing: a tweed sports coat, a red cashmere sleeveless sweater" gray flannel slacks, loafers. In civilian clothing, Porter Craig often thought, Craig Lowell looked like a model in one of the ads for twenty-four-year-old Scotch whiskey in Town & Country magazine. In uniform, Porter thought, especially when he elected to wear his decorations, Craig Lowell looked like every man's dream: handsome, heroic, dashing, and just a bit wicked.

Craig Lowell had been expelled from Harvard as an eighteen- year-old and then drafted. He had won a commission (a battlefield promotion which for political reasons couldn't be called that), while serving with the U.S.- Military Advisory Group in Greece. Then he had been released -into the reserve. The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania had been happy to have the heir apparent to half of Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes in their student body, whether or not he had been granted the usually prerequisite undergraduate degree; and he had graduated from Wharton summa cum laude. But before he could move into the office reserved for him at the firm, the Korean War had broken out, and he had been among the first reserve officers called up to fight it.

He had never again taken off his uniform.

Porter Craig had at first believed that there was a sort of joining the Foreign Legion element to Craig Lowell's Army career.

His wife had been killed in an automobile accident in Germany and by a perverse coincidence on the same day Lowell had been decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross and won a battlefield promotion to major in Korea. Later he had come to understand that Lowell would probably have-not stayed long with the firm under any circumstances; he far preferred soldiering to banking.

But Colonel Lowell had now become, as he had said, a college graduate. And this, Porter Craig thought, was both another example of the idiocy of the military mind and of the military's eager willingness to throw-the taxpayers' money down the toilet.

Apparently a routine review of his records had uncovered the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Lowell was not possessed of a baccalaureate degree, a requisite for a regular Army officer. The summa cum laude from Wharton apparently didn't count, because that was a master's degree, and the regulation clearly specified baccalaureate. Nor did Craig Lowell's career (he was already a lieutenant colonel when The Great Discovery was made) seem to count, nor his awesome display of medals for valor.

The regulation required him to have a baccalaureate degree.

And that, incontrovertibly and indisputably, was that. And further, in keeping with the Army's tradition of having a contingency plan for every contingency and to hell with what it costs the hardworking taxpayer, there was a program to deal with the requirement.

The program was called Bootstrap. Under it, the Army had sent Lieutenant Colonel Lowell back to college, not only paying his tuition, but keeping him on full pay and allowances while he spent just under a year picking up the- necessary credit hours.

While Porter Craig did not exactly approve of his cousin's Army career; he wasn't exactly unhappy to have the firm mostly to himself either. But Craig Lowell was not the only member of the family who seemed to have succumbed to the siren call of the military. For Porter Craig was now worried - about the parallels between Craig Lowell and his only-son, Geoffrey. Geoff had-also been drafted when he had flunked, out of college. And then after Craig had gotten him out of a mess in basic training (Geoff had beaten up his sergeant), he had gone to Vietnam as a Green Beret buck sergeant; and he had returned the previous August with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, more, Purple-Hearts than his father liked to think about, and the silver bar of a first lieutenant: He had also, as Mrs. Porter Craig frequently observed married a German girl-as Craig himself had done as a young man.

Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig, his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Porter Craig, were now all pretending, that Geoff still remained in the Army because the Army was not permitting. officers to resign at ,this time-even those who had 'survived Vietnam'. But Porter Craig thought the odds were seventy-thirty that Geoff would stay in the Army, period. He was in flight school; and the-life of an officer flying airplanes has a-great deal more appeal for a twenty-three-year--old like Geoff than going back to school for four years in order to prepare himself to sit behind a desk.

Porter Craig understandably wanted his son in the bank, but he was not a fool. He understood that this was not: the time to discuss the issue; So he looked on the bright side of things, starting with the all-important fact that Geoff had come home from Vietnam alive. And he had come home not only an officer, but a responsible and unusually mature young man.

And then there was Ursula, whom Porter Craig credited with having had a very great deal to do with placing and keeping Geoff on the straight and narrow. Porter saw in Ursula a potentially invaluable ally in his campaign to move Geoff out of the Army and into the bank. He had thus been very carefully sowing "1 Want You Out of the Army" seeds in her mind, seeds he was confident would be fertilized when nature took its course and she got in the family way.

Lieutenant Colonel Lowell and Mr. and Mrs. Portet Craig were at the moment the Christmas holiday guests of Lieutenant and Mrs. Geoffrey Craig. A most unusual-occurrence, as both Porter Craig and his wife were well aware: Craig Lowell had last participated in a family Christmas gathering when he was seventeen. And yet when Geoff asked him to come, Lowell decided to fly in from Florida (where he was assigned to something called STRICOM) for this gathering without-hesitation. And he'd flown in early, and with the obvious intention of staying long.

Porter thought he knew why Craig was doing that.

Craig Lowell had a child, a boy, who had been born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1947. But now Peter-Paul Lowell lived with his maternal grandfather in Germany. Lowell had talked to him on the telephone earlier in the day. And the conversation had been stiff, brief, and awkward-a disaster. It was not hard therefore for Porter Craig to conclude that since for all practical purposes he had no son of his own (or a son who at sixteen took offense at being called an American), Craig Lowell had transferred his parental emotions to Geoff Craig.

Porter Craig recognized the symptoms of jealousy both in himself and in his wife; and perceiving them, he suppressed them. For one thing, short of causing a scene, which was the last thing he wanted, per se, and because it might force Geoff to make a, decision he didn't want him to make, there was nothing he could do to make Craig stop playing visiting father-in-law.

If Craig Lowell wanted to put the goddamned bar in, the middle of the living room and cover it with a tent, so what?

The important thing to keep in mind was that Geoff was home alive from Vietnam, that he was married to a really very nice girl, that it was Christmas, and that he and his wife were spending it in their son's home.

The reason for the bar was that Lowell was going to entertain.

He was going to have what he called "some people call." The Commanding General of Fort Rucker, for instance, Major General Robert F. Bellmon, had quickly accepted the invitation, or rather his wife had. And other local big shots were also scheduled to appear.

Porter Craig soon realized that Craig Lowell was at least as interested in having Geoff and his wife meet the local big shots as he was in entertaining them, and Porter understood that as a gesture of affection and concern for Geoff.

Geoff came in as Ursula was spreading a sheet over the folding table. He had a case of whiskey in his arms, and he was leading a red-jacketed bartender, who was also carrying a case of whiskey. When the bartender set his case down, he immediately went out for another.

Porter forced from his mind the unkind thought that if there was one thing you could say about soldiers, it was that they drank like goddamned fish, and then he started for the table to help Geoff with the whiskey.

Craig Lowell made no such move. He sat in the most comfortable chair In the room, drinking champagne from a stemmed glass and puffing on one of his enormous black goddamned cigars.

And when the telephone beside him rang, he answered it on the first ring.

As, if he owned the goddamned place, Porter Craig thought.

And then immediately reminded himself that Craig Lowell did in fact own 227 Melody Lane. He had bought it when he had been stationed at Rucker.

"Ursula," Lowell called out, "dein Bruder."

Ursula, a blonde who looked as solid and wholesome as a girl on a dairy poster, went to the telephone. Porter was surprised and concerned to see the worried look on her face.

He couldn't hear the conversation, and of course it was doubtful he would have understood it if he could have heard it, for his German wasn't that good. But it was obvious that she didn't like what she was hearing. And just as obvious to Craig Lowell, who took the phone from her.

"Hier ist Oberst Lowell," he said. "Was ist Los?"

Porter Craig understood that much.

Whatever was Los, it triggered in Lowell a series of orders, delivered in staccato German. And then he hung the phone up.

"I don't believe he missed his plane," Ursula said to Craig Lowell, softly, and in English.

"Neither did I," Lowell said. "That's why I'm going for him."

Now Geoff picked up that something was going on, and the last half of Lowell's sentence.

"Going for who?"

"Your Kraut brother-in-law," Craig Lowell announced. "He called up and said he had missed his plane and couldn't get another reservation. You can't bullshit a bullshitter. He thought he would be in the way here, the damned fool. I told him I'd be there in two hours."

"Where is he?" Porter Craig asked.

"Fort Bragg. Actually, Fayetteville. Now, because he said he was calling from the airport, he'll actually have to go to Fayetteville. Serves the bastard right. You want to ride along, Porter?"

"No, thank you," Porter said.

"I do," Geoff said. When Craig Lowell looked at him asking for an explanation, he gave one: "For, one thing you've been at the bubbly-"

"Half of one lousy glass," Lowell interrupted.

"And I would like the time," Geoff added.

Craig Lowell owned a private aircraft, a Cessna 310H, which was "a "light twin." So far as the Internal Revenue Service was concerned, the Cessna belonged to the bank, where it was used for the transportation of bank executives. The first time any executive of Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes (other than Craig Lowell) had actually seen it was the day before, when Craig had picked up the Porters in Atlanta and flown them to Ozark.

"I thought you were still in the this-is-the-cyclic-and-that's: the-skid portion of your training," Lowell countered.

"I've been taking commercial lessons," Geoff said, and added, "I've got three hours in a 310."

"The party." Ursula protested.

"We'll be back in four hours," Lowell "said. "I know your brother will be waiting for us. I could tell by... the way he said, "Jawohl, Heir Oberst! I could even hear him click his heels."

"Keep the party going, honey," Geoff Craig said, and went for his coat.

"Thank you, Craig," Ursula Craig said softly to Craig Lowell.

(Two) Fayetteville (N. C) Municipal Airport 1520 Hours 24 December 1963 Ursula Craig's brother, First Lieutenant Karl Heinz Wagner, Infantry, United States Army, sat drinking a cup of coffee at a table in the coffee shop of the terminal. He was in uniform. He wore a green beret, but had taken it off and neatly folded it and then laid it on top of his overcoat on a chair.

The coffee shop was crowded with soldiers, most of them paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and their supporting units. There were also some Special Forces men. And two tables, away from his were six noncoms wearing green berets, but without the flash certifying that they were fully qualified. They had smiled nervously at Lieutenant Wagner when they had come in, but they hadn't asked to join him even though, they knew him.

At Camp Mackall, behind his back of course, Lieutenant Wagner was known as "Otto"-as in Major Otto Skorzeny, the legendary, scarred face Austro-German parachutist who had, among other spectacular exploits, planned and executed the brilliant rescue of Benito Mussolini from a well-guarded mountaintop prison. For this he had received the Knight's Cross of the-iron Cross from Hitler himself. When skorzeny was brought before a war crimes tribunal after World War II, a number of Americans, including many senior officers, rushed to testify in his behalf. He was exonerated.

There was a scar on Lieutenant Wagner's face, too, and he spoke with a German accent, and, presumably like Skorzeny, he was a real hardass.

Referring to him as Otto, in other words, was by no means deprecatory. He was looked on with considerable admiration, but he was not the sort with whom one presumed to violate his concept of military courtesy.

Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Wagner was a tall, rugged man who wore his blond hair closely cropped. His uniform blouse was decorated with the Combat Infantry Badge, parachutist's wings, and ribbons indicating that he had been awarded the Silver 'Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and had served in the Republic of Vietnam. There were also several ribbons indicating that he had been decorated by the Vietnamese, including the Medal for Gallantry.

In a locked metal box in his room in the BOQ (Bachelor Officers' Quarters) at Fort Bragg there were three colored ribbons representing military decorations Karl Beinz Wagner did not think it appropriate to wear. On the-other hand, for some perverse reason, he could not bring himself to throw them away, although he had come close on several occasions.

They had been awarded him by the government of the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany) when he had been Oberleutnant Wagner of the Corps of Pioneers. Before he had deserted and crashed through the Berlin Wall in a Skoda truck -- with his sister in the back protected from the expected hail of 9mm submachine fire by stacks of cement bags.

At the Refugee Center he gave his reason for coming through the wall as his desire to make a better life, in freedom, for himself and his sister. But it had been more than that. He hated communism, and communists. And later in America, when the recruiter had asked him why he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army as a private, he'd given the same reason he had given the West Berliners at the Refugee Center. But the real reason was that he wanted to kill communists. He knew if he said that, they would probably not understand. You had to have lived under a communist regime to understand why someone would hate it enough to want to kill those responsible for it. Karl-Heinz Wagner had been the honor graduate of his basic training company, and this carried with it a promotion to PFC.

And he had met Private Geoffrey Craig in the airport- at Atlanta, where they were both on the same plane to Fort Bragg to undergo Special Forces training. More importantly, Private Geoffrey Craig had met Ursula Wagner at the same time.

By the time PFC Wagner and Private Craig had gone through the Parachute School at Fort Benning, a prerequisite for Special Forces training at Bragg, Ursula and Geoff were looking at each other that way. Karl Heinz Wagner had not really been displeased. Geoff was a nice young boy, though by no means yet a soldier, of course, and by no means prepared as yet to assume any serious responsibilities, such as marriage. And Ursula was a good girl, and levelheaded, and wasn't going to do anything she shouldn't.

When they were almost through the Special Forces basic course at Camp Mackall (a World War II military reservation near fort-Bragg, used as a training base for Special Forces), PFC Wagner was called back to Bragg for an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Sanford T. Felter, a slight and unassuming-looking man on whose uniform PFC Wagner had been -surprised to see both U.S. Army parachute wings and those of the troisieme Regiment de la Legion Etrangere, the French Foreign Legion parachute regiment wiped out when the Indochinese communists had finally overrun Dien Bien Phu.

PFC Wagner was even more surprised to learn that Colonel Felter knew far more about him than he should; far more than he had told anyone in any of the half dozen "interviews" he had been given in West Berlin, in West Germany, and in the United States.

And Colonel Felter had then clanged a stick and a carrot before RFC Wagner's nose.

It was the Army's intention, Colonel Felter told PFC Wagner, to promote him to sergeant when he completed his basic Special Forces training and then send him to Vietnam as the Armorer of a-Special Forces A-Team. This would mean, even for such an experienced soldier such as Wagner clearly was, probably more than six months before he could expect to be promoted.

And that meant that Ursula would be left alone in the United States, living on what allotment she would get from her-brother and on what she could make' from whatever job she could find.

There were "people" in West Berlin very anxious to share ex-Oberleutnant Wagner's knowledge of construction details of the Berlin Wall and of the East German military and civilian agencies charged with: its maintenance.

If PFC Wagner were willing to go to West Berlin and share his knowledge with the "people" interested in it, for a period of three or four months, the Army would graduate PFC Wagner now from Special Forces. And as a staff sergeant rather than a sergeant. As a staff sergeant, Wagner would De authorized on-post quarters for his dependent. Quarters would be immediately made available and since his West Berlin duty would be TDY (Temporary Duty), his dependent would be authorized to occupy the quarters during the absence of her sponsor. Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Felter said, he would have a word with the PX, and Ursula would be given a job while he was gone.

Private Geoffrey Craig assured Staff Sergeant Wagner that he would look after Ursula as long as he could. Karl Heinz Wagner believed him, of course, but he didn't quite understand what Geoff Craig had in mind.

Staff Sergeant Wagner had been in West Berlin not quite three weeks when there was a radio message from the United States: CIA LANGLEY 1915 ZULU 8 MAR 62.

ROUTINE ENCRYTPED.

STATION COMMANDER FOXTROT.

DIRECTION DEPUTY DIRECTOR DELIVER FOLLOWING.

SOONEST S/SGT KARL-HEINZ WAGNER, USA.

SERGEANT GEOFFREY CRAIG AND URSUEA MARRIED THIRTY MINUTES AGO NEW YORK CITY PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SERVICE VESTRY SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH. DEPARTED" IMMEDIATELY FOR STUDENT DETACHMENT USA ENGINEER SCHOOL FT BELVOIR VIRGINIA. THEY WILL ATIEMPT TELEPHONE TOMORROW. NICE WEDDING.

REGARDS.

S.T. FELTER LTCOL INF.

When Geoff and Ursula telephoned afterward, Karl-Heinz Wagner, realizing that he was facing a fait accompli, did not upbraid Geoff for the marriage. At least he'd married her, and in a church. Instead, he told them that until they got their feet on the ground, he'd be happy to help a little financially. When Geoff turned him down, Karl-Heinz thought that was simply (stupid) pride speaking, and that he would arrange to help them tactfully.

By the time he came home from Berlin, Geoff had been sent to Vietnam. Ursula was staying with Geoff's mother and father in New York, and Karl Heinz thought it was nice, of the parents to take her in. He had actually wondered if it would be a financial burden for them.

Ursula and her mother-in-law had met his plane from Berlin. With a chauffeured limousine. And taken them to the Craig apartment, fourteen rooms on two floors-on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. As they drove up Park Avenue and turned onto Fiftieth Street, Mrs. Porter Craig touched Karl-Heinz Wagner's arm with a hand bearing at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds on it and pointed out Saint Bartholomew's Church.

"That's where they married," she explained. "My husband is on the vestry. When Geoff was a little boy, he sang in the choir there.

The Craigs were nice, but they made Karl-Heinz uncomfortable. Though raised in a communist state, he had acquired a strong sense of class differences. He was a peasant and the Craigs were aristocrats.

Seven months after Geoff had gone over to Vietnam, Karl Heinz had followed him. By that time, Geoff had won a battlefield commission and had been an A-Team commander.

Karl-Heinz had won a commission in Vietnam too, but directly, rather than as a result of anything he had done specifically. One day they had called him into Group and told him there had been a TWX (Teletype Message) from the States saying that he was qualified, under some obscure provision of Army: Regulations providing for the direct commissioning of linguists, and that he might as well take it.

He was commissioned as a first lieutenant, assigned to Headquarters, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and then immediately reassigned back to Special Forces. He was sure that Lieutenant Colonel Felter's hand was involved somehow.

First Lieutenant Wagner, newly returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had killed a number of communists; was assigned to the Special Forces School as an instructor- in demolitions and jungle warfare.