"We'll need separate checks, waiter," Hanrahan said. He didn't think that it mattered to Lowell that he had more money than God and thus could easily afford grabbing checks, but mooching was mooching, and Hanrahan was determined to pay his own way.

"Yes, sir," the waiter said.

Lowell looked at Hanrahan, smiled and shook his head.

The beer was served immediately.

"Do me a favor, Craig," Hanrahan said. "Don't needle Ellis."

"I hadn't intended to," Lowell said.

"I think that business with the body on the boat was more of a strain than he's letting on."

"Oh," Lowell said. "I wondered why he's been so flaky."

"Okay," Hanrahan said.

"Why the hell did you send him? I could just have easily gone."

"Felter said send him," Hanrahan said.

"He told me the Cubans tried to sell us the wrong body," Lowell said.

Two heads at the adjacent table turned. Lowell smiled politely at them. They smiled back, sure that they hadn't heard correctly. Hanrahan shook his head.

Lieutenant Ellis, now in uniform, arrived as the waiter was serving the steamed clams.

"Bring the lieutenant a beer," Lowell said.

The waiter looked at Ellis.

"I'll have to see some proof he's twenty-one," the waiter said.

Lowell took his water glass and poured it on the floor. Then he filled it with beer from a bottle. He set it in front of Ellis.

"Now bring me a beer, please, and quickly," Lowell said icily, "for I become very difficult and cause unpleasant scenes when I think an officer of the United States Army has been insulted by an unwashed plate jockey."

The maitre d', sensing trouble, hurried to the table.

"Is everything all right, Colonel Lowell?"

"We need a round of beer and another waiter," Lowell said. "Aside from that, everything's fine."

More heads had turned. The maitre d'h6tel made a quick decision.

"Of course," he said. "Immediately."

"That's a good fellow," Lowell said. He picked up his beer glass.

"Mud in your eye, Lieutenant Ellis," he said.

"Fuck him!" Warrant Officer (Junior Grade) Wojinski said. Embarrassed, but touched that Lowell had come so ferociously to his aid, Ellis took a sip of the beer. Then he put the glass down and gingerly removed the hot cheesecloth that covered his clams. He looked at them suspiciously. He was going to have to eat them, he understood. And the lobster that was going to follow. It would be the first time he had eaten either.

What this was, he thought as he watched MacMillan fork a clam, dip it in melted butter, and then pop it in his mouth, was field training at Elgin Air Base all over again. High class but the same thing. Eating strange food because the alternatives were going hungry and looking like a jackass in front of the others.

That made him think of Edward B. Eaglebury, whom they were going to bury tomorrow. Eaglebury, wearing the stripes of an army sergeant first class, had been a member of Ellis's "A" Team (Training) 59-23 at Eglin. It wasn't until after they had returned to Bragg, after they had spent all that time in Eglin's swamps, finally reduced to killing and eating a wild hog, that he had learned Eaglebury was an Annapolis graduate and a lieutenant commander in the navy.

"You seem dubious about the clams, Ellis," Lowell said to him.

"I never had any before, Colonel," Ellis said. He forked a clam, dipped it, and put it in his mouth. It wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. Strange but not slimy. He had been afraid it would be slimy.

"I thought all of you Green Berets were trained in eating exotic foods," Lowell asked innocently. "Snakes, lizards, that sort of thing."

"Shut up, Lowell," MacMillan said. "Lay off the Green Beret remarks."

"Oh, I am heartily sorry, Colonel MacMillan," Lowell said mockingly. "It's just that I am simply intrigued by all the stories I hear about those of you who wear the girl scout hats."

"Well, you won't have to be intrigued much longer," MacMillan said. "Those sonsotbitches at CO NARC just outlawed them."

"How did you hear about that?" Hanrahan asked.

"I got friends up there," Mac said. "I was going to tell you just as soon as I had a minute alone with you."

"I found out two days ago," Hanrahan said. "They sent me a copy of the directive first class."

"Can they make it stick?" Mac asked.

"I'll have to issue the order when we get back," Hanrahan said.

"Can Felter help?" Mac asked.

"No," Hanrahan said simply.

"Shit!" Ellis said, more loudly than he intended.

"I didn't know that, of course," Lowell said. "I was just kidding."

"Oh, fuck you, Lowell!" MacMillan said.

He was far more angry at the loss of the green berets than at him, Lowell realized.

"Watch your tongue, Mac," Hanrahan snapped.

"The reason the pride of Mauch Chunk feels he can talk to me in that obscene and ungentlemanly way, Ellis," Lowell said lightly, "is that he has been privileged to know me since I was a PFC."

"Privileged'?" MacMillan said incredulously.

"All right, then: honored," Lowell said agreeably.

"He was a lousy PFC, Ellis," MacMillan said.

The awkward moment, Lowell hoped, had passed.

"I was very young and impressionable," he said. "And I trusted MacMillan when he approached me and told me that he was going to make me an officer, and I would get more pay and nicer uniforms, and people would salute me and call me' sir So I went along with him. And the nextihing I know, I'm on a mountaintop in Greece, and they've lost my pay records. It's three degrees colder than at the north pole, and there are no American uniforms, so I'm wearing British battle dress, which is made from rejected horse blankets, and people are shooting at me."

Hanrahan laughed.

"MacMillan, meanwhile, covering his ass as always, has gone back to the States," Lowell went on. "So you will understand why, whenever he says something to me, I put one hand on my wallet and the other on the family jewels."

"Ellis," Hanrahan said. "That is known as disinformation. A complex web of lies built upon a fragile foundation of truth."

"It's all true," Lowell insisted. "Don't revise history."

"I was advisor to a Greek mountain division Ellis," Hanrahan said. "And I requested experienced tank officers in the grade of captain and above. What they sent me was Lowell, who was eighteen years old and a second lieutenant, and who had never been inside a tank. That much, at least, is true."

"It's all true," Lowell repeated. "There I was, shivering in my horse-blanket uniform, eighteen years old, and the colonel, here, was making a daily speech about how the entire fate of western civilization as we know it was resting on my shoulders."

"Mr. Wojinski told me about you in Greece, Colonel," Ellis said.

"Wojinski lies," Lowell said, nodding at the middle-aged warrant officer.

"How do you know what I told him, Duke?" Wojinski asked.

"The thing to remember about Colonel Lowell, Ellis," Major Parker said, "is that he is insane. If you keep that in mind, everything else he does falls into place."

"I'm insane? I'm surrounded by people who eat snakes, jump out of perfectly functioning airplanes, and wear girl scout hats, and I'm insane?"

"There he goes with that hat shit again," MacMillan said, and then stopped as two waiters appeared with trays of steaming lobsters.

"So far as the hat is concerned, Craig," Colonel Hanrahan said, "we brought one for you."

"I don't understand," Lowell said.

"You will wear it tomorrow," Hanrahan said. It was clearly an order.

"May I ask why?" Lowell asked. It was a subordinate asking a question of a superior, not a challenge.

"Because Lieutenant Commander Eaglebury was killed as a Green Beret, and will be carried to his grave by Green Berets. This will probably be the last ceremony in which people will wear green berets. Indulge me; we Irish are emotional and love symbolism."

"I am not, Colonel, a Green Beret," Lowell said softly.

"Just wear the ha , Craig, and don't argue with me," Hanrahan said angrily,. and then softened. "But you are. You've commanded foreign troops in combat. You're as entitled as Felter and me."

"Yes, sir," Lowell said. He looked thoughtful a moment, then shrugged.

He looked over at Mac MacMillan.

"You don't eat the red part, Mac," he said. "Open it up and eat what's inside."

"Fuck you, Lowell," Lieutenant Colonel MacMillan said.

Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan was on the curb outside Bookbinder's, about to enter the maroon limousine, before he thought of the check.

"We didn't pay the bill," he said, looking at Lowell.

"The bill has been taken care of, Colonel," Lowell said.

He remembered that during the flap about Ellis's beer, the headwaiter had called Lowell by name.

"You fixed it with the headwaiter," Hanrahan accused.

"Would the colonel enter the vehicle, please"" Lowell said "The colonel is blocking the sidewalk."

"Damn you, Craig," Hanrahan said, and got in the limousine.

(Four) Company "C," First Battalion Eleventh Infantry Regiment U.S. Army Basic Training Center Fort Jackson, South Carolina 2105 Hours, 29 November 1961 Company "C" occupied four two-story wooden barracks built in 1941 to last five years. Two barracks faced the other two across an open area, itself about as long as a barrack. To one side were two one-story frame buildings. One housed the orderly room, the mailroom, and the arms room. the other the supply room.

Company "C" consisted of four platoons, each of forty men. Each platoon had a barracks, the Third Platoon occupying one of the barracks closest to the orderly room and supply-room buildings. Each platoon consisted of four squads, each of ten men. The third and fourth squads of the Third Platoon occupied the second floor of the Third Platoon's barracks. At the top of the stairway were two private rooms. These were occupied by the acting squad leaders of the two platoons. The other basic trainees' bunks and equipment were in the squad bay, nine trainees on each side.

The interior of the barracks was open frame work. To the two-by-four stud beside each bed, a shelf had been nailed. The shelf supported the trainee's helmets, protective, steel; their liners, helmet; and their caps, service, brimmed. The shelf support studs had been drilled, and lengths of pipe had been inserted in the holes. The trainees hung their uniforms from the pipes: overcoat; raincoat; field jacket; tunic # 1 (with trousers inside); tunic # 2; shirts khaki, #1 through #3, fatigue jacket # 1 (with fatigue trousers inside); fatigue jacket # 2. Beside fatigue jacket # 2 was hung bath towel # 1 (on a wire hanger) with face cloth #1 on top of bath towel #1, centered. Each trainee kept beneath the left side of his bed near the aisle his two pairs of Boots, combat, his pair of Shoes, Low Quarter, and his shower clogs, the toes lined up so as to be directly below the left frame of the bunk. His laundry bag was tied to the end of his bunk, immediately to the left of the name plate hanging from the center of the bunk's frame.

Bath towel #2, face cloth #2, and other items (undershirts, men's, cotton, w/sleeves; under drawers, men's, cotton, w/snap fasteners; socks, men's, wool, cushion-sole; and so on) were kept in a prescribed order in the locker at the foot of each bunk.

The arrangement of clothing and footlockers was subject to inspection at any time, and in the seven and one half weeks the men of "C-One-Eleven" had been in basic training, they had learned to store their gear neatly and according to regulation.

Regulation forbade the use of bunks between the hours of 0355 (when first call was sounded, via a phonograph record played over the PA system) and 2055 hours, when Lights Out was sounded. On this particular night, for some reason, Lights Out had not been sounded, although it was ten minutes after the schedule called for it. Because the trainees had been taught to do nothing unless expressly ordered to, they had not felt free to remove the blanket placed in the prescribed manner over the pillows and get into their bunks.

Some of them lay on the floor beside the bunks; some of them sat on their foot lockers; and others were gathered around the red-painted #10 cans, the "butt cans" nailed to pillars along the aisle between the two rows of bunks.

To a man, they were wondering whether Staff Sergeant Douglas B. Foster, their platoon sergeant, was actually going to do what he threatened to do. What he had threatened to do was knock some of the smart-ass out of Recruit (E-l) Geoffrey Craig II.

Like most other men in his family (his father being the notable exception), Geoffrey Craig II was tall, blond, lithe like a tennis player, pleasant-faced, and blue-eyed. Like forty percent of the other trainees, he was a draftee, involuntarily summoned by his friends and neighbors to military service for two years' active duty, to be followed by either three years in the active reserve or National Guard, or five years in the inactive reserve.

Like twenty-five percent of the other draftees, Recruit Craig had two or more years of college, in his case Princeton. He was the first Craig in six generations who had not attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the opinion of Porter Craig (38), his father, Harvard had been devoured by the Jews and the Communists. He had expressed his displeasure with the takeover by no longer responding to the semiannual plea for funds and by enrolling his two sons in Princeton, to which he now sent the not unsubstantial financial contribution he had formerly sent to Harvard.

Porter Craig, Sr." had not yet made up his mind what to do about St. Mark's School, from which he, his father, and his grandfather had graduated. St. Marks had fallen into something like the same crap at Harvard, encouraging kids who had no real business at St. Mark's to enroll. But the difference, Porter Craig, Sr." had been informed, was that the "recruited" students were recruited on the basis of test scores alone, and not because they belonged to some racial or ethnic minority. That was one thing. What Harvard was doing was something else: scouring the slums and the South for "disadvantaged" people to bring to Cambridge.

Recruit Geoffrey Craig had been summoned to military service following the completion of his junior year at Princeton, after the university had informed his draft board that he had failed to maintain a satisfactory academic average. His father was less concerned than he pretended to be about Geoff's grades, having graduated with a C minus average himself. Thus, after appropriate huffing and puffing, he had sent Geoff to Europe for the summer with instructions to give serious thought to his future. At the time, both had hoped that even though Geoff lost his "academic deferment," he would not be called up. They weren't taking everybody for the draft.

But his faceless friends and neighbors, after due consideration of the pool of young men available to them, had decided that the defense of the country required the military service of Geoffrey Craig II, and Geoff had had to come home from Salzburg and report to the Armed Forces Induction Center in Lower Manhattan for a preinduction physical.

What private hopes both of them had that the doctors would discover some disqualifying physical condition were not realized. Geoff was pronounced to be in perfect physical condition and was informed that he should settle his personal affairs and await the actual call to service.

On the appointed day and at the appointed hour, Geoffrey Craig II, more than a little hung over, had taken a cab to the Armed Forces Induction Center, had toyed with and discarded the notion that he should tell the army shrink that he was a closet faggot, and shortly after noon on a crisp afternoon in early September had taken one step forward, raised his hand, and solemnly sworn that he would defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that he would obey the orders of the officers and noncommissioned officers appointed over him.

He and sixty-six other young men, most of them draftees, had been taken by bus to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where they were given a series of inoculations designed to protect them from disease; had the Articles of War read to them by a commissioned officer; were given short haircuts; uniforms; and were subjected to a battery of tests to determine their suitability for various military occupational specialties and training.

Recruit Craig was summoned to an interview with a sergeant representing the Army Security Agency. His education, the sergeant told him, together with the really fine scores he had made on the Army General Classification Test (AGCT), qualified him for the Army Security Agency. After basic training, if he so chose, he would be given classified special training and assigned to duties having to do with the security of army communications.