Jack appeared with the tool roll from the Jaguar and handed it to Oliver.

"It's my wedding present-"

"Our wedding present," Marjorie corrected him. wedding present," Marjorie corrected him.

"-you put it together."

"Can the bride handle putting aluminum foil around the spuds?" Johnny asked.

"I'll supervise," Jack said.

Marjorie guessed correctly that it would take Enrico and Johnny at least as long to assemble the grill as it would take to bake the potatoes; they were done five minutes before the gas under the artificial charcoal lit.

This was followed by the smell of the preservative being burned off the interior parts of the stove, which lasted about five minutes. Cooking the thick steaks from the commissary took another fifteen minutes, but finally they were all sitting at her new dining-room table, and Jack was pouring wine into her new wineglasses.

The new telephone rang.

An hour after the dead telephone she had found on her first day in the apartment had been brought to life by a man from the phone company, another man from the phone company arrived at her door.

"It's already working, thank you very much," Marjorie had told him.

"Is this B-14, Lieutenant Portet?"

"Yes, it is."

He handed her his Installation Order: One unlisted private line telephone to be installed Apt B- 14, Foster Garden Apartments (Lieutenant Portet) Bill to Finance Officer, JFK SWC Fort Bragg. No deposit required. (US Govt).

Jack reached over his shoulder and picked up the new telephone from her new dining-room sideboard.

"Hello?"

The acoustics were such that the caller's voice could be clearly, if faintly, heard.

"Jack, is Johnny Oliver there with you?" General Hanrahan asked without any preliminaries.

"Yes, sir."

"De la Santiago?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would it be reasonable of me to presume that all of you have had a couple of beers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Put Oliver on."

"Yes, sir."

Jack held out the phone to Oliver, who got up, went to the sideboard, and took the telephone from him.

"Captain Oliver, sir."

"I just had a call from Felter. He wanted you up there tonight," Hanrahan said.

"Up where, sir?"

"I will now call him back, and tell them that none of you are in any condition to fly tonight. Tomorrow's Special Orders will contain a paragraph confirming and making a matter of record the following verbal order of the commanding general. You, Portet, and de la Santiago are placed on five days' temporary duty to Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C. Travel by U.S. government aircraft is directed."

"Yes, sir."

"Supplemental orders: Take Felter's L-23. You serve as instructor pilot for de la Santiago, as the flight will also serve as his cross-country check ride in L-23 aircraft."

"Yes, sir."

"Schedule your flight so that you can present yourself, in suitable civilian clothing, to Lieutenant Colonel Lowell, at the National Aviation Club- you know where that is, Johnny?"

"Yes, sir. In the Hotel Washington. General Bellmon goes there a lot."

"-not later than noon. Reservations have been made for the three of you in the hotel."

"Yes, sir. For five days, sir?"

"That's not set in concrete," Hanrahan said. "When was de la Santiago supposed to finish his parachute qualification?"

"Two more jumps tomorrow afternoon, sir, and the night jump tomorrow night."

"I'll have Ski reschedule that. Any questions, Johnny?"

"No, sir."

"Good night, Johnny."

Hanrahan hung up.

Oliver hung up the telephone.

"Everybody get that, or do I have to repeat it?" he asked.

"Five days?" Marjorie asked.

What the hell am I going to do here by myself for five days?

"He said he wasn't sure about that," Oliver said, and then went on, thinking out loud: "It's about two-twenty up there. Call it two-thirty. Another hour to get them to give us a car and get into Washington, three-thirty. Thirty minutes to change clothes. Four hours. Plus an hour for the You Damned Well Better Not Be Late factor, five hours. So we want to break ground at 0700."

He looked down at the table.

"The twelve-hour rule be damned," he said. "I'm going to have wine with my steak."

He sat down and reached for his knife and fork.

"As part of your flight training, Mr. de la Santiago," he said, "you can get on the horn and check the weather for us."

"Did he say what Uncle Cr-what Colonel Lowell wanted?" Marjorie asked.

Johnny shook his head.

"Now that you're married to a junior officer, Miss Marjorie, you better understand that they don't tell us peasants nothing."

"I'll call when I know something, baby," Jack said.

De la Santiago went to the telephone and dialed a number from memory.

"We may not get out in the morning," he said when he had finished listening to the weather forecast. "Or at least into Washington. There's a front coming in from the West."

"We're going to have to try," Oliver said. "You can ride out there with us, Jack. We'll be at my car at six."

"I'll take him out to the field," Marjorie.

"You don't have to do that, baby."

"I want to," she said. "I'll even throw in breakfast for your friends."

And then I'll come back here and wash the breakfast dishes, and see if I can get the dirt from the stove out of my new carpet, and then I will twiddle my thumbs for five days.

"I accept," Johnny said.

"Thanks, baby," Jack said.

[ FOUR ].

Room 914 The Hotel Washington Washington, D.C.

0830 11 January 1965 When the doorbell chimed, Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell, wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe, got up from the room-service breakfast table, walked to the door, and opened it.

Two men were in the corridor. One was a bellman, carrying a uniform in a plastic bag. The other was Colonel Sanford T. Felter.

"Good morning, Colonel," Lowell said cheerfully. "Let me have a couple of bucks, will you, please?"

Felter shook his head, but took out his wallet and handed Lowell two one-dollar bills. Lowell gave them to the bellman.

"Thank you," he said, and took the uniform from him.

Felter walked to Captain Portet, who was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the table.

"Thank you for coming, Captain Portet," he said. "I realize it's an imposition."

"I got to ride in a Learjet," Portet said. "Good to see you, Colonel."

"Did Craig explain what this is all about?" Felter asked.

Lowell ripped the plastic cover from the uniform, balled it up, threw it at a wastebasket, missed, shrugged, and then laid the uniform against the back of a couch and began to pin insignia and ribbons on it.

"He led me to me to believe you wanted to ask me about General Mobutu," Portet said.

The telephone rang.

Lowell picked it up.

"Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes," he said, then: "Good morning, Porter. Hold it a minute, will you?"

He waved at Portet and Felter.

"It's my cousin," he said. "I want you to hear this. Both of you."

Felter looked annoyed, but he followed Portet to where Lowell was standing, and both stood behind him so as to be able to listen to the conversation.

"Okay, Porter, what have you got?" Lowell said.

"Who's with you?"

"Colonel Felter and Captain Portet," Lowell said.

"The Gresham Investment Corporation has a two-room suite, 1107, in 27 Wall," Porter Craig announced. "They have been in there four months, on a two-year lease."

"What does Dun and Bradstreet have to say about them?"

"Not much. They've got a little over two million in Chase Manhattan. No other assets that D and B knows about. The officers were listed, or course, but I never heard of any of them, including J. Richard Leonard."

"What about their credit references?"

"They gave us the Riggs Bank in Washington as a credit reference. I called a fellow I know there, and he assures me their credit is impeccable. I asked him how he knew, and he said I should trust him, they were as solid as the U.S. Treasury."

"Interesting," Lowell said.

"I thought so. I called their office a minute ago. A woman answered the telephone. I asked for Mr. Leonard. She wanted to know who was calling, and I lied to her; I said I was my friend in the Riggs bank. She told me Mr. Leonard was in Washington, and she knew I had that number. I didn't ask for it."

"Porter, you're wonderful," Lowell said.

"You want me to inquire further?"

"No, thanks," Lowell said. "I just hope this Leonard guy doesn't call your friend at Riggs, and he remembers you called him."

"I don't think that's likely," Porter Craig said. "I told him that it was a random check of credit references by the 27 Wall Street Corporation, and that I thought we could probably save us both time and money by me calling him."