It was not a case of him simply indulging an urge to attempt to restore things to a semblance of what they had been, but his duty, as he saw it, to provide a home for a number of his late wife's relatives (with the exception of his daughter, none of his own had survived both the Nazis and the Russians), whose property had suffered similar damage and confiscation in Pomerania, East Prussia, and Poland, and who were obviously unable to take the various People's Democratic functionaries to court and demand justice.

And then there was the question of Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg Lowell, who was the last male in whom there was the blood of the Von Greiffenbergs. Privately the Graf had often thought that it was rather a pity that the man who had married llse was so wealthy. If it had not been for that, it would have been easy to arrange for him to live in Germany and gradually instill in him the idea that the boy should take the German nationality that he could by right claim.

It was not that Graf von Greiffenberg did not like Craig Lowell. He liked him very much, and was pleased that since the Von Greiffenberg blood had been diluted by marriage to a commoner, that commoner was at least of English stock and a gentleman warrior, much as Von Greiffenbergs had been gentlemen warriors for centuries. The only real difference Generalleutnant Graf von Greiffenberg, Retired, had with Lieutenant Colonel Lowell was that Lowell simply would not consider the merits of having Peter-Paul take German citizenship.

While that question was still up in the air, Schloss Greiffenberg was the boy's home. Living there could not help but teach him something of his heritage.

The Alouette landed on a pad between the tennis courts and the apple orchard. The Graf took his luggage and started toward the villa. He had reached the tennis courts, and the Alouette had already taken off again when the butler came out to take the luggage.

The butler informed him that the Herr Oberst was in the crypt.

"We will not disturb him," the Graf said. "And my grandson?"

"He is in Kassel, Herr Graf, with his friends. Herr Ness drove them."

"I'd forgotten," the Graf confessed. "How long has Oberst Lowell been... down there?"

"About thirty minutes, Herr Graf," the butler said. "I gave him lunch when he arrived, and then he said he had work to do. Half an hour ago he went to the crypt."

The Graf went into the library and waited for his son-inlaw to appear.

When Lowell came into the library a few minutes later, he went right to the whiskey cupboard and poured a stiff drink. He did not see the Graf as he entered, nor even when he went to the windows and looked through them, down to the ancient city of Marburg.

But he seemed to sense the Graf's eyes on his back and turned to look at him.

"I didn't know you were here," Lowell said. "My dear Craig, I'm so glad to see you. Did you have a good flight?"

Lowell snorted. "Let's say interesting," he said.

"If I had known earlier when you were coming, I'd have had Peter-Paul meet you. I've been in Helsinki."

Anyone who really believed that the Graf had left the intelligence business when he had retired from the army probably believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Goodness of Man, Lowell thought.

"What's he doing in Kassel?" "Something with friends, I don't really know." "You don't seem very surprised to see me," Lowell said. "Nothing you do surprises me, Craig," the Graf said.

"I have been run out of the country," Lowell said. "There are some people who are afraid I'll say something to the Secretary of Defense I shouldn't."

"And how did Mr. McNamara offend you?" the Graf asked with a laugh.

"They're afraid we're going to agree," Lowell said.

"No wonder they banished you," the Graf said. "For how long?"

"For thirty days," Lowell said. "Well, it will give you a nice holiday, and you can spend some time with Peter-Paul."

"I'll be here about ten days if I'm welcome that long," Lowell said. "And then I'm going on to Indochina."

"That doesn't sound like a holiday," the Graf said.

"Jo."

"I think I'll have some of that whiskey," the Graf said. When he got close to Craig Lowell, he put his arm around his back and gave a little hug. It didn't take a second, but it was for Generalleutnant Graf von Greiffenberg a remarkable display of affection.

Lowell laughed. The Graf looked at him curiously.

ask you what "Courtesy would require," Lowell said "that I you were doing in Helsinki. But I don't think you want me to ask, do you?"

"I was seeing friends," the Graf said smoothly. "May I ask why you're going to Indochina?"

"I presume that's a personal question?" "Of course.

"I think we're going in there," Lowell said. "We just sent a bunch of airplanes over there."

"On an old aircraft carrier called the Card," the Graf said. "It stuck in my mind because it was a rather odd name."

"My, you do keep current, don't you?" Lowell asked, lightly sarcastic. "What else can you tell me that I didn't know?"

"How about a quote from MacArthur?" the Graf said. "Don't get involved in a war on the Asian land mass"

"I like the other one better," Lowell said. "There is no substitute for victory." I'm afraid we're going to do the same thing we did in Korea. Spend a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and when the war is over, be just about where we were when we started."

"I was in China as a young officer," the Graf said. "A very young officer, come to think of it. I came away with the impression that there is no way western armies could win. It would be Russia times ten."

He waved Lowell into one of four identical high-backed red leather armchairs facing a low table and settled himself in an opposing chair. They both put their feet on the table.

"The only chance we have is mobility," Lowell said.

"I just came from Cologne by helicopter," the Graf said. "Thirty-odd minutes. By road it's two and a half hours. In this weather it would take four or five." "I didn't hear a chopper," Lowell said, surprised. "It was French, I'm afraid," the Graf said. "An Alonette."

"Wait till you see what we have on the drawing boards," Lowell said loyally. "And even starting to come off the line."

"I've heard," the Graf said. "Is that what they have you doing, Craig? War plans?"

"That's a tactful way of putting it," Lowell said. "I think of it more as Paper-shuffling."

"And do you think it will work?" the Graf asked. "Will what work?" "The substitution of aircraft and helicopters for trucks?"

"I'm afraid not," Lowell said seriously. "The logistics to keep them in the air boggle the mind. But we have not heard, I don't think, the last bugler sounding the charge."

"Meaning what?" "Despite reports to the contrary, cavalry is not dead." "I still don't think I follow you," the Graf said.

"That frightens me a little, Herr General loitnan Graf," Lowell said, "if you, of all people, can't see where we're going."

"Tell me," the Graf said seriously.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Lowell said, half mockingly. "Our subject for the day is the role of cavalry in the modern army. There will be a verbal quiz following the lecture and a written examination on Friday."

Von Greiffenberg laughed.

"There have been from the earliest days three basic types of ground forces. These are the infantry, which takes and holds ground, the artillery, which bombards enemy positions prior to an infantry attack, or enemy forces when the enemy attacks; and the cavalry, whose primary characteristic is mobility. Mobility originally with horses and later with tracked vehicles gave the cavalry the ability to breach a weak point in the enemy lines and then to exploit that breakthrough by interrupting the enemy's lines of supply.

"From time to time, throughout history, well-meaning people have upgefucht cavalry's noble role."

The Graf chuckled. He knew what q'gefucht, a word coined by American GIn in Germany, meant.

"The first such upgefuching occurred when the noble cavalry warrior was encased in several hundred pounds of armor, which required an enormous horse just to carry him and reduced his speed to about that of the foot soldier. He could no longer rush about, breaching the enemy's lines, and infantry soldiers found him an easy target. If all else failed, they could push him off his horse. Cavalry was dead.

"Nobody told the Americans this, however, and they used cavalry in their revolution with great success. Cavalry was again alive and well, to the point where the Confederate cavalry of J. E. B. Stuart kept the Yankees from quickly winning the War Between the States for a longer period than the preponderance of forces indicated they should.

"In the American Civil War, too, the amateur soldiers came up with something that truly offended traditionalists. They bastardized artillery's noble role. Everybody but the Americans on both sides knew that one put artillery in its place and kept it there until the battle was over. But not knowing this sacred rule, American cavalrymen hitched teams of horses to artillery pieces and galloped all over the battlefield with them, using them where they were needed at that moment, including, it must be noted, in the advance.

"Comes Brother Gatling, shortly followed by Brother Maxim and Brother Browning, with their machine guns. Horses made a splendid target, and cavalry again was dead.

"Comes a limey, name of Winston Churchill, who sees the requirement for a means of warfare to overcome his current problem, which is sort of a stalemate. Both he and the Germans are running out of infantrymen to send into the mouths of machine guns. Churchill's solution is a mechanical horse. It has tracks, which permit it to climb in and out of shell holes and across trenches. It has armor plate, which turns small-arms fire. It has the capability to move quickly about the battlefield and breach the enemy's lines at his weak points. He calls this strange device a tank."

"After first making pro forma protestations that this device is the tool of the Devil and has no place in battle between Christian gentlemen, the Germans start building their own tanks. Too late. A name is needed for this new form of warfare, and since cavalry is obviously dead, someone decides that armor' has a nice ring to it. So the word is passed that cavalry is dead, and armor is born.

"Comes the second War to End All Wars. A German chap named Guderian, who understands the role of cavalry, attacks the French. Even though they have more and better tanks than he does, they do not understand the role of cavalry and think of their tanks as mobile pillboxes for support of the infantry. French tanks move at the speed of the French infantry. German tanks move like cavalry: They go as fast as they can move and to hell with their flanks. This, Herr Generalleutnant, is known as the Blitzkrieg, and shortly after Guderian puts it to work, the French are waving white flags."

"That's very good," Von Greiffenberg said, laughing. "You've given this speech before, I take it?"

"Have I ever? But indulge me, I'm not through."

"By all means."

"On the American side we have some interesting generals. One of them is sort of a cavalryman by the name of Patton."

"Sort of a cavalryman?"

"He was an infantry officer," Lowell said, "but understood this was a mistake of judgment on his part. In his heart he was cavalry. He was quite a polo player, you know. Polo is not an infantry sport. Infantry takes walks in the woods."

Von Greiffenberg chuckled.

"And who were the other interesting' American generals?"

"There were many, but for the purposes of this brief lecture, I will discuss only two. Both associated with the Second Armored Division. Ernest Harmon and his successor, I. D. White. Both cavalrymen. White, by the way, as a young aide-de-camp, laid out the golf course at Fort Knox from the back of a horse; and he, too, was one hell of a polo player. The important point here is that Harmon and White fought the Second Armored as cavalry. And Patton used his armored forces in the Third Anny as cavalry."

"You really think that's the case?"

"White took a real screwing," Lowell said. "He should have gone in the history books as the first American general ever to take Paris and the first American general ever to take Berlin. He was outside Paris Semis, I think when he was ordered to hold in place and let the Second French Armored pass through his lines for the honor of taking Paris. Later he had his first elements across the Elbe and was prepared to take Berlin when he was ordered to hold in place and let the Russians have it."

"That must have hurt," Von Graffenberg said.

"Yeah, but I'm digressing. So far as I'm concerned, the greatest cavalry maneuver in history was Patton's. In the Battle of the Bulge he disengaged two divisions, moved them a hundred miles through a blizzard, and had them attacking in forty-eight hours. That's cavalry!"

"I agree, but I seem to be missing your point."

"Since our tanks, our armor, had done so well, everybody jumped on the bandwagon and decreed that armor was the force of the future. They had disbanded cavalry during the war, and now they came out with a new insignia for armor. A tank. I. D. White, who was arguably the best if not the senior armor officer on active duty, insisted rather violently, I've been told that cavalry was not dead and demanded that cavalry sabers be superimposed on the new tank of armor insignia."

"Was that White Von Greiffenberg asked, surprised. "That was White," Lowell said.

"I never heard that before," the Graf said. "Odd. I should have thought Hasso von Manteuffel would have said something to me. He and White became close after the war, you know."

"That was White," Lowell repeated. "And now we're finally at my point. The lecture is about over. It has no more come down from Mount Sinai graven on stone tablets that cavalry has to be mounted on horses or tracked vehicles than it has come down that infantry has to be armed with pointed sticks or machine guns. Cavalry is a technique, a philosophy, not a particular tool."

"And you're saying the new cavalry horse is the helicopter?"

"Absolutely," Lowell said. "With what we have now, we can pick up a squad of troops and three days' rations and ammunition, and deliver them at one hundred miles an hour, rested and ready to go, anywhere in a hundred-mile radius. We've got helicopters on the drawing boards that can pick up a 155-millimeter cannon, its crew, and its basic load of ammunition, and in an hour set it down on a hilltop someplace a hundred miles away."

"That sounds like artillery," the Graf said. "Mobile artillery was stolen from cavalry in the Civil War," Lowell said. "It's time we took it back."

"You're talking about a division, aren't you? Maybe even divisions?"

"Absolutely," Lowell said. "Air cavalry divisions. The whole thing air-transportable."

"And you think they'll work against a guerrilla army in Vietnam?"

"I don't know," Lowell said. "We'll have to find out. I do know that conventional forces won't. If we use conventional forces, we'll have to carry the war to North Vietnam. Or even to China."

"Don't get involved in a war on the Asian land mass," Von Greiffenberg quoted again.

"I don't think I'm personally going to get involved in a war anywhere," Lowell said. "I am the consummate paper shuffler and lecturer."

"You'll get a command," the Graf said.

"I am beginning to wonder if that isn't wishful thinking," Lowell said.

"Both Bob Bellmon and Paul Hanrahan have been named general officers," the Graf said.

"And Bill Roberts," Lowell said. "And Paul Jiggs is a major general," the Graf said. "You are not without friends."

"There are a number of very powerful people in the army who think all of them are mad. Kennedy gave Hanrahan his star. He'd never have been recommended for it."

"The point is, they have their stars," the Graf said. "One day you will, I am sure."

"The eternal optimist. Or do I look that down in the mouth?" "Neither," the Graf said. "A professional opinion." "I don't believe that for a minute," Lowell said. "But I like to hear it. Where's the court?" It was his son-in-law's very rude term for the dozen displaced East Germans and Poles who were related to the Graf and now made their home in the schloss. They demanded of the servants the respect due their titles, and Lowell found this amusing.

"Most of them went to Bavaria," he said. "Ludwig put it rather cleverly. He said that the only reason Hessians pretend to enjoy Christmas and New Year's is because they know Lent will shortly follow." "Ludwig is the fat Pomeranian?" Lowell asked, laughing. The Graf nodded. "The Graf von Kolberg." "Peter-Paul didn't go with them?" "There's a good deal of you in Peter-Paul," the Graf said. "He tends to make sarcastic comments when my relatives are all gathered around remembering better days. Peter-Paul is much more interested in the films than in the Almanac de Gotha."

"The films?" Lowell asked. "Why did you say that?"

"It's true. Is that so unusual?"

"I have been invited to a film festival in Berlin," Lowell said. "I met an actress I know on the plane."

"How many actresses do you know?" the Graf teased.

"One," Lowell said. "That one."