"Because he's rich?"

"They don't come no nicer," Mrs. Wojiaski said. "Rich goes on top of that."

Dr. Antoinette Parker had also discussed Lieutenant Colonel Lowell with Dr. Barbara Gillis.

"As a shark swims through the sea, automatically eating everything that comes his way, Craig paddles around, genetically compelled to copulate with everything female he can get in a horizontal position. Once you understand that, everything else about him falls into place."

Then why should I go out with him?"

"Well, for one thing, he's a very nice guy," Toni Parker had told her, "and from what I hear, he has received very few bad comments on the postcoital critique."

"Will he take no for an answer? Or am I going to have to wrestle with him?"

"I don't know. I don't think he's ever been turned down," Toni said.

"I think I have just been told I have the duty tonight."

"Oh, I think you should go," Toni said. "As Oscar Wilde pointed out, Doctor, celibacy is the most unusual of all the perversions." "Very funny."

"And maybe you're the one," Toni said. "He was looking at you very strangely last night."

"What makes you think I would want to be the one?"

"Psychiatrist," Dr. Parker had laughed, "heal thyself."

Dr. Gulls was surprised and disappointed when they drove back to the officers' open mess from Fayetteville. Lowell did not suggest a nightcap, and when he walked her to her car, he didn't so much as touch her arm.

"I'm glad you were free," he said. "We'll do it again sometime."

The more she thought about it, the more the truth became evident.

She had been examined and found wanting by Duke Lowell.

God damn him, the arrogant bastard!

And then she had another thought.

Maybe the reason he hadn't tried to get into her pants, or even acted as if that idea had any appeal to him, was that he thought she was different from other women. She had caught him looking at her strangely several times, and she didn't think that was because she had seaweed from the steamed clams stuck between her teeth.

But if that was the case, why the "We'll do it again sometime" remark? Sometime was pretty damned vague.

The bottom line in the second line of reasoning was the same as the first: God danm him, the arrogant bastard!

There was only way, Dr. Barbara Gills decided, to handle Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell. When he called if he called she would have other plans.

(Two) Office of the Commanding General U.S. Army Special Warfare School and Center 1040 Hours, 3 March 1962 "Come in, Craig," General Hanrahan said. "Sit down on the couch beside Mac."

Lowell went to the couch and sat down beside MacMillan on the couch. There were two green berets on the couch, both with the silver leaf of a lieutenant colonel pinned to the flash. A set of silver paratrooper wings, pinned to a piece of cardboard, sat on top of one of the berets.

"You seem extraordinarily quiet, Craig," Hanrahan said.

"I've been had," Lowell said. "With great skill and obviously after a good deal of careful planning. What is there to say?"

"While there are humorous elements, you'll notice we are not smiling, nor do either of us intend to crack wise about what you did," Hanrahan said.

"What was done to me," Lowell corrected him, and then the anger took over. "I hope you don't really think I'm going to pin those wings on me, much less wear that absurd hat."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Craig," Hanrahan said seriously.

"Getting thrown out of an airplane does not a paratrooper make," Lowell said.

"Sometimes it does," Hanrahan said.

Lowell looked at him with his eyebrows raised but said nothing.

"Tell him, Mac," Hanraban said.

"I don't understand the point of all this," Lowell said.

"Tell him, Mac," Hanrahan repeated.

"I had to throw Paul out his first time," MacMillan said reluctantly.

"What?" Lowell asked. Brigadier General Paul T. Hanrahan's parachutist's wings carried two stars for two combat jumps into German-occupied Greece during World War II. He and MacMillan had become paratroopers when the Eightysecond Airborne Division was still the Eighty-second Infantry Division, and the entire airborne forces of the United States Army had been two test companies.

"I said he froze in the door the first time, and I had to pry him loose and throw him out," MacMillan said. "For Christ's sake, don't make any smart-ass remarks about it."

"And with all the imaginative devices that come to someone who is afraid, I have been putting off making my own first HALO," Hanrahan said. "So you're one up on me, Craig. You've made yours."

Hanrahan was obviously telling the truth.

"I was thrown out," Lowell repeated.

"You made the jump," Hanrahan said. "After a special course of instruction conducted by the former assistant HALO project officer, you made a HALO descent by parachute. You are on TDY orders here. We will cut special orders stating that you are now HALO-qualified and that, in consideration of your previous experience commanding indigenous troops in combat, you have been certified as Special Forces qualified."

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Paul," Lowell said.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's too late," Hanrahan said. "The orders have been cut."

"I keep asking why," Lowell said.

"There are a number of reasons, some of them selfish, and some of them accruing to your advantage."

"My advantage? A lot of people are going to get a big laugh out of this."

"I just got off the horn from Jack Holson," Hanrahan said. "I led him to believe that once it had been explained to you, you were so enthusiastic about HALO that you insisted on getting qualified. He seemed quite pleased. h fact, General Holson offered the opinion that under your layer of smart-ass, you've always been a pretty good officer."

"There's a layer of dishonesty in all this," Lowell said.

"Let's say irregularity,"" Hanrahan said. "To reiterate, you did make the jump. And the element of imegularity is nothing compared to the way I understand you got your first commission, or the irregularity with which Paul Jiggs elected to give you command of Task Force Lowell. Irregularities are sometimes necessary for the good of the service."

"And how is this going to be for the good of the servicer "Craig, you if anyone should understand what we're trying to do here. You should not be standing on the sidelines, making cracks about the berets. You should know better, damn it."

Lowell did not respond.

"The first obligation of an officer is to defend his country," Hanrahan said. "His second obligation isto keep his men alive while doing so. You tell me anyone in the army who is more dedicated to that than we are. My selfish reason for all this is that you are presently in a position with your mouth close to the ear of the Secretary of Defense. I had hoped that doing this would make you remember that you had once been one of us, that we still think of you as one of us, and that you would represent our interests accordingly. Apparently, I was wrong."

Lowell stood up. He looked at General Hanrahan. Then he bent over the table and picked up the green beret and walked to the mirror on the back of General Hanrahan's door and put it on.

"Now that I'm a Green Beret, I presume I am permitted to kick in the balls anybody who laughs at me wearing this?"

"We expect it of you, Colonel," MacMillan said, then stood up and went to him and pinned the parachutist's wings to his tunic pocket.

(Three) Apartment 2-C, Building Q-404 14 Carentan Terrace NCO Housing Area Fort Bragg, North Carolina 1045 Hours, 3 March 1962 Ursula Wagner came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of pants labeled SATURDAY and nothing else. Geoffrey Craig, who was lying in the bed naked under the sheet, had severa] thoughts. He first wondered idly if it was coincidence or Teutonic orderliness that had her wearing Saturday's pants on Saturday. Then he wondered if her odd modesty was Germanic or a personal quirk. She seldom took her pants off where he could see her without them. On the other hand, possibly because she had the most marvelous set of boobs he had ever seen in his life, she had from the first been wholly unconcerned with her nakedness above the waist.

"I have something to tell you," Geoffrey Craig said.

"Tell me after you get dressed," she said. She went to the closet door. On a hanger on the doorknob was his freshly pressed class "A" uniform. It had on it the Special Forces insignia and the three stripes of a sergeant. She lay it on the bed.

Last night he had lay in the bed and watched her sew the patch and the insignia on. His emotions had been ambivalent. It was a touching, tender scene of the woman doing for her man. He had also been able to see her breasts under her bathrobe, which had given him an enormous erection. "You have marvelous teats," he said to her. She shook her head in exasperation.

"Get dressed," she ordered. "You can't be late." "I'm rich," he said.

"Get dressed," she repeated. "Did you hear what I said?"

"I'm rich too," she said. "I am very happy, and I am rich too."

"I mean rich rich," he said. "Money-type rich."

She looked at him strangely.

"Which means, among other things, that you can go with me to Belvoir," he said. "I think it would be better if we got married before we went, or as soon as we get there, but your argument that we can't afford it is now invalid."

"What are you saying?" she asked, concern in her voice.

"Let me put it this way," he said. "My income from the trust funds I have now, which does not include, of course, the trust funds I will come into possession of at age twenty-five, gives me an income that is at least as large as what the post commander is paid."

"You do not fool me?" Ursula asked.

"I do not fool you," he said.

"Oh, mein Gott." she said tragically.

"It's not a social disease," he said. "Why does it make you unhappy?"

"Thatis why you never talk about your family," she said "No, it isn't," he said.

"Yes, it is," she accused. "And you have been talking of marriage!"

"That's exactly what I am talking about," he said.

"And what will your family say when they hear you want to marry somebody like me? Oh, damn you, Geoffrey!"

"Actually," he said, "I was thinking the best way to handle that is with a fait accompli. Hi, there, Dad. Say hello to my wife."

"And he would think, and your mother would think, that I am some cheap foreigner who has married you for their money."

"No they wouldn't," he said, although he considered that a very likely possibility. "And it's my money, not theirs. And besides, you wouldn't be the first kraut in the family."

"Kraut," she quoted bitterly. "You see!"

The second German lady," he said.

"What are you talking about?"

"My cousin Craig, the one who's a colonel, was married to a German woman," Geoffrey said. "She was killed in an automobile accident a long time ago."

"He's an officer, he married a German lady," Ursula said. "He would think what your mother and father would think."

"Well, we'll find out soon enoug "What do you mean?" h," Geoffrey said.

"I am not to run away' after the parade. Tourtillot said that a Colonel Lowell' wants to see me."

"I am not going," she said.

"You'll go if I have to carry you over my shoulder," he said.

"I don't want to go," Ursula said, tears in her eyes.

"There's only one thing you have to make up your mind about," he said. "Do you love me or don't you?"

She looked at him and sobbed.

"Do you or not?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Yes or no, goddamn it, Ursula!"

"Yes. You know that, yes."

"Well, in that case, it's you and me, sweetheart. Fuck everybody else, including my parents, Staff Sergeant Karl-Heinz Wagner and Colonel Craig W. Lowell."

(Four) It wasn't much of a reviewing stand, but then, it didn't get much use, and there weren't all that many Green Beret graduation ceremonies.

The usual procedure was for the graduating class to march 388 WRRGnffln onto the parade ground (normally the athletic field) and then, on command, to file onto the reviewing stand, where they shook hands with the commanding general. He congratulated them by name. They took two more steps, and in a complicated (and thus previously rehearsed) maneuver, they shook the right hand of the Deputy Commandant for Special Projects while simultaneously reaching out with the left for the diploma. They then reformed where they had been.

When they had all reformed, Sergeant Major Taylor would give the command to "Discard hats," the hats would be thrown into the air, green berets would be put on, and the formation would be over.