Wagner saw that Felter and the sergeant major were embarrassed by MacMillan's speech and that it angered the civilian.

"I am not interested in a deal, Colonel," Wagner said.

"You're not an officer now," MacMillan said. "Don't get on an officer's high horse with me. You're in no position to reject a deal until you hear what it is."

"I repeat, sir, it is a matter of honor."

"bullshit!" MacMillan said angrily. "You brought your sister with you. You're responsible for her You're living on baked beans and bologna. You make me more than a little sick."

"You're offering me money?"

"I'm offering you early graduation from the course. That would make you a sergeant. I'll sweeten that making it staff sergeant. I'll have Taylor exercise his considerable influence with post housing to get your sister into an on-post apartment. And all I'm asking of you is that you go over there and help the spooks figure out a way to get other people through the wall. If that offends your sense of officer's honor," so far as I'm concerned, you can go fuck yourself, Herr ex-Oberleutnant Wagner."

"Take it easy, Mac," Felter said. "Bullshit. He pisses me off!"

MacMillan's anger, Wagner saw, was genuine. The man held him in contempt, and that wasn't fair. By what right?

He looked at him, and then his eyes dropped to the rows of ribbons on MacMillan's tunic. Even as a young enlisted man, when first called to service, he had had an interest in the enemy's decorations and insignia. He had later prided himself on being able to identify them and to know what their equivalents were.

The ruddy-faced lieutenant colonel glowering at him was an American Fallschirmjdger of some distinction. His parachutist's wings were studded with five stars, each signifying a jump into combat. There was a wreathed star on his Combat Infantry Badge, which meant he had been awarded the American equivalent of the Close Combat Badge twice. He had the ribbon of the French Croix de Geurre (Iron Cross). He had a leaf-stud den Purple Ribbon, the equivalent of the War Wound. And up on top, the first Karl-Heinz Wagner had seen one anywhere except on a decorations-and-awards poster, was a blue ribbon with a number of small white stars on it. That was the American Medal of Honor, the equivalent of the Knight's Cross, with swords and diamonds, of the Iron Cross.

The conclusion Karl-Heinz Wagner reached was that he could not afford to offend such an officer. He was, as Colonel MacMillan had pointed out, a PFC literally living on beans and bologna, whose only chance to improve his position was by graduation from the Special Forces school and getting the promotion that would bring him to sergeant. It was possible that if he continued to defy this officer, he would be dropped from the Special Forces school and from Special Forces. They would then probably assign him to the Eighty-second Airborne Division, with some comment on his service record that he had been found "unsuitable" for Special Forces. It would, under those circumstances, be a long time if ever before he could win a promotion to corporal, much less sergeant.

He really had no choice. He thought that it really had been naive of him to think that he would not be asked to do whatever the army wanted of him, and that what they would want of him would involve his former comrades in arms in the army of the German Democratic Republic.

"When will I go to Germany?" he asked.

"I repeat, Wagner," the small Jewish lieutenant colonel said, "that if you don't want to go, you will not be ordered to go."

"Yes, sir," Wagner said. "I understand that, sir. I am willing to go, sir."

"Don't do us any goddamned favors, Herr Oberleutnant," Colonel MacMillan said.

"That's enough, Mac," Felter said. Wagner was surprised at both the icy tone "I will be obeyed" in his voice, and at the reaction to it by Colonel MacMillan. It required great effort on his part to keep his mouth shut, but he managed it.

"When would you like to have Wagner, Mr. Winston?" Colonel Felter asked.

"As soon as possible, Colonel. Today preferably."

"That's out of the question," Felter replied Immediately. "He has his personal affairs to put in order. We'll leave when he leaves up to Sergeant Major Taylor."

Winston nodded. There was no longer any question in Wagner's mind that the little man was in charge.

"If we put him on TDY to Washington, D.C." and such other destinations as directed," Felter asked, "can we pay him per diem"'

"Instead of to the Seventh Group?" Sergeant Major Taylor asked as his brain searched his encyclopedic knowledge of regulations. "Yes, sir. Exigencies of the service." The General will have to okay it."

"What about civilian clothing, Mr. Winston?" Felter asked.

"I hadn't really considered that, Colonel," Winston said after a pause.

"Perhaps you should have," Felter said dryly. "Taylor, get him the civilian clothes allowance." Yes, Sir.

"Winston, I think that's all we need you for," Felter said. "Wagner will be sent to Washington as soon as his affairs are in order. Unless you have something else?"

(Seven) PFC Karl-Heinz Wagner stood beside Sergeant Major Taylor in front of the personnel sergeant's desk as Taylor ticked off from memory, and the personnel sergeant wrote down, what was required bureaucratically.

By the authority of the commanding general, having considered previous experience, PFC Wagner was determined to have completed the requirements for graduation from the basic course of the Special Warfare School. In consideration of his performance while a student, and of his demonstrated qualities of leadership, he was to be immediately promoted to staff sergeant. He was awarded a primary Military Occupational Specialty of Special Forces operations sergeant, and a second army MOS of engineer demolitions specialist (Special Forces). Staff Sergeant Wagner was to be placed on Temporary Duty with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C." for a ninety-day period. Travel by personal automobile and/or by military and civilian motor, rail, ship, and air transportation was authorized.

Inasmuch as the exigencies of the service made it impossible to determine the exact nature of his duties or their location, he was authorized the appropriate Zone of the Interior or Foreign Service per Diem allowance in lieu of rations and quarters, thirty days per diem to be paid in advance. Inasmuch as the nature of his duties would require the wearing of civilian clothing, payment of a three hundred dollar civilian clothing allowance was authorized. Finally it had been determined by the commanding general that the peculiar nature of Staff Sergeant Wagner's duties were such that quartering of his dependent in on-post government housing was necessary for both security and compassionate reasons, and the post housing officer, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was to be requested to inform the commanding general if there was any reason why Staff Sergeant Wagner's dependent could not be assigned the next noncommissioned-officer's-dependent housing to become vacant.

"Can you think of anything else?" Taylor asked the personnel sergeant.

"Advance pay?" "thirty days advance pay," Taylor said. "Do all that right now, Phil."

"Can't you hear the rattle of my typewriter?"

"Now we'll run you out to McCall and you can pick up your gear," Taylor said to Wagner as he led him out of the headquarters toward a jeep. "In the morning the paperwork will be done. I know the sergeant in post housing, so you can move your sister in tomorrow, get her settled, and then go to D.C. the day after tomorrow. Sound all right?"

"Fine," Wagner said. Thank you very much, Sergeant Major Taylor."

"Listen, don't let what Colonel Mac said bug you too much."

"I understand him," Wagner said.

"I don't think you do," Taylor said. "I soldiered with him in War Two. When he was an enlisted man. I was with him at Anzio. We were Pathfinders. What it was, Wagner, believe me, was that he knows what it's like to be busted. He thought you were just being a little stupid about not taking a good deal when one was offered."

"With respect, Sergeant Major," Wagner said, "I think you are wrong." "I am?"

"Lieutenant Colonel MacMillan is a soldier. A very good soldier. In almost direct proportion to how good a soldier a man is, he has contempt for a turncoat. I am in the unfortunate position of having to agree with him."

"I think you're full of shit, Sergeant," Sergeant Major Taylor replied. "And also dumb, if you haven't figured out yet that we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. Or did you come through the wall because they caught you with your hand in the officers' club cash box?"

"Of course not," Wagner said.

"So far as I'm concerned," Taylor said, "a turncoat is somebody who changes sides when it looks like his side is about to lose."

"Perhaps you are right," Wagner said.

Taylor did not feel that Wagner had been altogether convinced of the logic of his argument.

XIV.

(One) Camp McCall, North Carolina 2115 Hours, 4 February 1962 Private Geoffrey Craig had been retired for the evening for almost an hour when he was summoned to duty. It was the first time in forty-eight hours that he had either undressed before retiring or slept within the relative comfort of a sleeping bag, mountain; on a cloth, ground; beneath a shelter half. It was in fact the first time he had had his clothes off in forty-eight hours, the previous two days having been spent acquiring the skills necessary to move cross-country under adverse conditions (in this case, snow mixed with freezing sleet), using a compass.

Before retiring, it had been necessary for him to infiltrate into the cadre area to steal a second shelter half from the supply room. Following the sudden and unexplained departure of PFC Karl-Heinz Wagner, he had no buddy, and thus only half of the two shelter halves necessary to form a pup tent. The cadre having proven themselves totally unconcerned with his problems, he had the option of finding what shelter he could from his shelter half or of acquiring a second half.

It had been constantly reiterated that the first qualities a Green Beret must have were self-reliance and resourcefulness. He had taken that to heart, his conviction buttressed by his awareness that unless he got the second half to make a pup tent, he was going to sleep under a blanket of snow and freezing rain. The obvious thing to do was steal a shelter half, and he had, and he was not going to concern himself for the moment with the shit that was going to hit the fan when the cadre supply sergeant found that the padlock had been torn off the supply quonset, a shelter half had been stolen, and a case of ten-in one rations broken into and pilfered.

Also, Private Craig had had damned little to eat in the past forty-eight hours, and he had concluded that it was just as well to be hung for a wolf as a lamb. After all, what could they do to him? Send him to the John Wayne Course at the Camp McCall School for Boys?

"Drop your cock and pick up your socks, Candy-Ass," the cadre sergeant said to him. "Your beloved country has need of your services."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!"

"Yours not to reason why, Candy-Ass," the cad reman said. "Yours but to get your ass out of that bag before I shovel snow in it."

He wondered if the theft had already been discovered and if he had been discovered to be the culprit. If that was the case, they were liable to roast his ass over a slow fire.

Under the circumstances, he decided, that might not be as bad as it sounded.

He dressed in winter underwear over his T-shirt and shorts, and with difficulty managed to get his feet in his mostly dry and thus quite stiff jump boots. He had a great deal of difficulty in lacing the boots. It was as dark as the womb in his pup tent, and his fingers were wooden from the cold.

Finally he zipped the sleeping bag shut, crawled out of the pup tent, and put on his field jacket. It was hard as concrete, and he wondered if the goddamned snow-soaked sonofabitch was actually frozen. He had a hell of a time getting the zipper ends together with his wooden fingers.

"One must always try to remember, mustn't one," the cad reman said, "that it is extremely difficult to shoot the bad guys if one has forgotten one's rifle?"

"Shit!" Private Craig said. He bent over and pulled his M-14 from beneath the pup tent and slung it over his shoulder, then followed the cad reman off into the dark. He had been issued a flashlight, but he had forgotten it, and he couldn't go back for it now. "Where are we going?"

"I am going to bed," the cad reman said. "You're going to Fort Bragg." "What the hell for?" The way this system works is that the privates have to do what the sergeants want them to do," the cad reman said. "You may have noticed that you are a private."

A supply detail, Private Craig decided, a one-man goddamned supply detail. He was going to be put in the back of a three-quarter-ton truck and have his ass frozen off between here and Bragg, where he would load something heavy, like cases of groceries, onto the three-quarter-ton and then have his ass frozen all the way back to McCall, where he would then be permitted to unload the heavy cases of groceries.

When they got to the motor pool the first sergeant was there. For a moment, until he realized that the cadre had all sorts of things, like electric lights, that made it possible for them to stay up after the sun went down, he was surprised to see him up so late.

"Two envelopes, Craig," the first sergeant said to him, holding one up in each hand. "One goes to Headquarters, and the address is on the other side. You will deliver them and then return. Can you remember all that, or would you like to take notes?"

"I think I can remember it," Geoff said.

"You'd better," the first sergeant said. And then he said something that for him was extraordinarily compassionate and tender. "You don't have to rush back here. Why don't you take a shower and a shave while you're on post? You smell like a leprous goat." "Who's going to drive me?" Craig asked.

"I couldn't steel myself to ask one of my delicate cad reman to drive all that way through the ice and snow," the first sergeant said. "Take my jeep."

It was as cold as a witch's teat on the twenty-mile trip back to Fort Bragg, even though Geoff put up the hood on his field jacket and pulled the cord so tight that only his nose stuck out of the opening. He had to hold his head very carefully so that he wouldn't be blinded if he moved it within the hood.

He delivered the envelope to the Charge of Quarters in the headquarters building, and then asked if there was someplace he could take a shower.

"You better deliver the other envelope before you worry about taking a shower."

Geoff looked at the other envelope. It was addressed to Apt 2C, Building Q-404, 14 Carentan Terrace.

"Where is this?" he asked, showing the envelope to the charge of quarters.

"NCO housing area," he was told. "Go onto the main post, drive past the main post theater on your left, and then turn left toward the division area."

"What the hell is this, anyway?"

"How the hell would I know?"

Building Q-404 turned out to be a two-story frame building a duplex, if that was the word with two apartments on each floor of each half of the building. Deciding he didn't dare leave the rifle in the jeep, he slung it over his shoulder and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

The door of 2-C had a sign on it: S/SOT. WAGNER.

He wondered who the hell Staff Sergeant Wagner was, and what was his importance to the system that he got personal messenger service from Camp McCall. He knocked at the door and waited. He could hear the sounds of television in other apartments and the sound of a kid giggling in delight, and then he heard footsteps inside the apartment, and the rattle as a door chain was unlocked.

"Ach du Leiber Gott!" Ursula said when she saw him. She covered her mouth with her hands.

"Jesus Christ!" Geoff said.

Ursula surprised him by throwing her arms around him, right around the dirty, cold field jacket.

In a moment, as if suddenly aware of what she had done, she said, "I'm so glad to see you." There had been time, before she broke away, for him to feel the warmth of her back through her bathrobe.

"Where's Karl-Heinz?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "They sent him someplace he couldn't tell me."

"Whose apartment is this?"

"His ours, They made him a staff sergeant, and I am entitled to live here." She looked at him, met his eyes, and asked, "What are you doing herer He took the envelope from his field-jacket pocket and handed it to her.

"What's this?"

"I have no idea."

"Come in, God, what's the matter with me? You look frozen. Let me get you a cup of coffee. You want something to eat?"

She led him into the kitchen, put water in a kettle, and turned the stove on.

She turned to look at him, and there was movement beneath her night gown and bathrobe, and he knew that she was naked beneath it.

"Take off your jacket," she said. "You're not going anywhere until you're warmed up."

"I think I'm in love with you," he said.

"You're a fool," she said. "A young boy and a fool. I don't want you ever to say something like that again." She paused, as if considering what she had said. "Love? How can you even think of love? You're a fool!"

She turned angrily from him and found a small jar of instant coffee.

"Do you want me to go?"

"I want you to take off your jacket and warm yourself," she said.

He took the field jacket off and hung it on the back of a chair. The apartment was completely furnished, simply but completely. He decided that since they didn't have any money, the furniture belonged to the army.

"Tell me about Karl-Heinz," he said.

"What do you know?" she asked.