Geoff had heard all about the Army Security Agency from a guy he had known at Princeton. Stripped of the bullshit, what they taught you was Morse code, and what you did for eight hours a day was sit at a typewriter and transcribe intercepted radio messages. The former ASA man Geoff had met at Princeton had told him that it was probably the worst fucking job in the fucking army.

Geoff told the sergeant he didn't think he'd be interested in that, and remained immune to the blandishments and threats that followed. The sergeant, who was having trouble making his quota, made good his threat concerning what would happen to Recruit Craig if he refused the golden opportunity offered him. He would be handed a fucking rifle and spend his two years running up and down hills and sleeping on the ground.

Recruit Craig was ordered from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for basic training and for individual training leading to the award of Military Occupational Specialty 745, "Light Weapons Infantryman."

Recruit Craig met Staff Sergeant Douglas B. Foster the moment he stepped off the bus at Fort Jackson. Foster was thirty, a well-built, rather short man who had been in the army thirteen years. He had enlisted in the army after failing his junior year at Westwego High School in Louisiana. He had been a private in Germany when the Korean War broke out. Two years later he had been sent to Korea, where he served with the Forty-fifth Infantry Division, which was part of the Oklahoma National Guard.

Although he ultimately rose to sergeant with the Forty-fifth Division, his assignment there had not been a happy one. Fully eighty percent of the officers and men were either national guardsmen or reservists, who held the regular army in varying degrees of scorn. Foster reacted by regarding everyone not a member of the regular army with equal scorn. He still disliked draftees and Yankees, and held in even greater contempt Yankee draftees who had gone to college and thought their shit didn't stink.

Ou his return from Korea, Sergeant Foster had served with the First Infantry Division ("The Big Red One") at Fort Riley, Kansas, as a squad leader in Company "F' of the Eighteenth Infantry Regiment. There he had met and married a Manhattan, Kansas, girl six months before their first child, a girl, was born. And a month after he had been promoted to staff sergeant, in 1960, a second girl was born to them. It was difficult to make it on a staff sergeant's pay. If there was anything Staff Sergeant Foster disliked more than a draftee Yankee college boy, it was a rich draftee Yankee college boy.

Because he had heard that promotions came quick there, Staff Sergeant Foster had applied and been accepted for duty as a basic training instructor shortly after Lisbeth Marie was born. His hopes proved to be unfounded up till now. Foster had been at Fort Jackson for twenty months and had not been promoted. He had run ten cycles of trainees through the program without a nice nod in his direction from his superiors.

The very first time they had met, Recruit Craig and Staff Sergeant Foster had not liked each other. Craig had looked Foster in the eye, directly, as he learned that men did.

"I'll look at you, soldier," Staff Sergeant Foster had said to Recruit Craig, "but when I want you to look at me, I'll tell you!"

"Yes, sir."

"You don't say sir' to sergeants, soldier!"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"You look like a wise-ass to me, soldier," Foster said. "Are you a wise-ass?"

"I try not to be, Sergeant, in my present circumstances."

The only thing that Recruit Craig managed to do in basic tralmng that met the standards of Staff Sergeant Foster was superior firing with the U.S. rifle, M 1. That was judged by the number of holes in or near the bull's-eye and was not a matter of opinion.

On the other hand, Recruit Craig was unable to meet Staff Sergeant Foster's standards of a clean rifle, and it was necessary for him to clean his weapon an average of four times each day of the live-fire training program. Neither could he seem to give his boots and shoes a luster that met the sergeant's approval. Nor draw the blankets of his bunk tight enough so that a quarter bounced on it would rise high enough to satisfy the sergeant. The sergeant, to express his displeasure, would then overturn the bunk.

When Staff Sergeant Foster was alone with his platoon, he referred to Recruit Craig as "Recruit Asshole" or simply "Asshole."

Recruit Asshole came to the conclusion that Staff Sergeant Foster was trying to provoke him into doing something foolish, like belting him in the mouth, and vowed that he would control himself. Basic training would eventually be over and he would leave. It couldn't possibly be as bad as this elsewhere in the army.

If he had correctly understood the mumbling second lieutenant who had read the Articles of War aloud to them, doing violence to a noncommissioned officer in the execution of his office was "punishable by death or such other punishment as a court-martial shall decide." Recruit Asshole didn't think they would actually punish him by death, but he probably would find himself in the stockade. And time spent in the stockade would not count against the one year, nine months, and however many days it was he had remaining to serve.

That morning, the press of his other duties had kept the platoon leader, a second lieutenant three months out of Officer Candidate School, from personally conducting the daily inspection of the barracks. Staff Sergeant Foster had conducted the inspection.

Recruit Asshole's bunk was sloppily made, and the bunk was turned over. Recruit Asshole's face cloth was hung crookedly on his bath towel and was thrown to the floor.

And then Staff Sergeant Foster found the buttonhole on Recruit Asshole's left hip pocket to be frayed. He ripped the button off and then faced Recruit Asshole.

"You think it would help you remember that buttons are to be sewed on good if you ate it, Asshole?" "I doubt it, Sergeant." "Eat it, Asshole!" "I respectfully decline, Sergeant." "That's an order, Asshole!" "I believe it to be an unlawful order, Sergeant." "You're refusing to obey an order?"

"I am respectfully declining to obey an order I believe to be unlawful, Sergeant." "You don't like me, do you, Asshole?" Recruit Asshole said nothing. "I ast you a question, Asshole!" "No, Sergeant, I don't like you," Recruit Asshole said. "Just what do you think of me, Asshole?"

When Recruit Asshole said nothing. Staff Sergeant Foster repeated: "I ast you a question, Asshole!"

"I think you're a semiliterate cretin with psychological problems," Recruit Asshole replied. Staff Sergeant Foster knew what semiliterate meant, and what psychological problems meant, but he was goddamned if he'd ask Asshole what cretin meant.

"Then why don't you do something about it, Asshole? You a fairy, or what?"

"I'm not a fool, Sergeant," Recruit Asshole said, saying more than he knew he should be saying, but unable to stop himself. "I would like to knock you on your ass, but I'm not going to pay for the privilege by going to the stockade for it."

"Is that all that's stopping you, Asshole?" Staff Sergeant Foster rose eagerly to the challenge. "Then I'll tell you what: Tonight, you and me will just step outside the barracks, and I'll take my jacket off, and then it'll between us. Man-to Asshole You want to try that?"

"I can think of nothing I would like better," Recruit Asshole heard himself say.

He regretted it during the balance of the day. It was a no wing situation.

At 2107 hours Staff Sergeant Foster appeared at the head of the stairs.

"Attention in the squad bay!" one of the trainees called, and every one jumped to attention.

"Recruit Craig," Staff Sergeant Foster called out cordially, "could I see you outside a moment?"

Recruit Craig walked down the aisle between the bunks to the staircase.

When he was at the head of the staircase, Staff Sergeant Foster snapped off the lights in the squad bay.

"Hit the sack, the rest of you," he said.

The trainees did as they were ordered, but no one slept. They knew what was about to happen.

There was some talk of going to the adjacent company and calling the platoon leader at his quarters. It was generally agreed that Staff Sergeant Foster was going to do more than knock the shit out of Craig; he was liable to hurt him really bad. Everyone agreed that somebody should call the lieutenant and tell him, but no one was willing to volunteer to do it themselves.

Ten minutes later it sounded like someone was falling up the steps. One brave soul got out of his bunk, took his flashlight, and went quickly down the aisle.

It was Recruit Asshole. He looked awful. He was bleeding from the mouth; his nose was bleeding and crooked, as if broken; and he was holding his right wrist in his left hand.

"I think I broke it," he said as he was helped to his bunk.

"You hit him, huh?"

"Hit him? I hope I killed the sonofabitch!"

Ten minutes later there was the sound of a siren, soon followed by flashing red lights. A brave trainee went to the window and reported that there was an ambulance outside.

Five minutes after that, the lieutenant came into the squad bay and turned on the lights and told Recruit Craig that he was under arrest.

Five minutes after that, two military policemen came into the squad bay and put handcuffs on Recruit Asshole and marched him down the aisle and down the stairs and put him in the back of their jeep and drove off with him.

(Five) 204 Wallingford Road Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 204S Hours, 29 November 1961 When the soldiers came in, Dianne Eaglebury, who was nineteen years old, five feet seven, and honey blond, was sitting beside her mother and her sister-in-law on a couch against the wall of the living room.

In the center of the room was her brother's flag-covered casket. It was closed and sealed, and there was something unreal in the notion that Ed was in there, dead, and that she would never see him again. When her father had telephoned her at the Tri-Delt House at Duke, where she was a sophomore, to tell her the bad news, she had wept. Earlier a team of officers from the navy had gone to Ed's quarters at the Anacostia Naval Air Station to tell his wife, Suzanne, that Ed had been killed in the Bay of Pigs invasion and that "recovery of the remains was unlikely." Suzanne had called Ed's father, and he had called Dianne soon after.

She'd wept then and again that night, alone in her bed; and she'd wept when she'd come home for the memorial service at St. James' Church. But she had not wept since they had been informed by the navy that the remains had been recovered; nor when she went with her father and the people from the funeral director's to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to meet the submarine with the casket; nor here in the house. She wondered why she had not.

Ed was to be buried with full military honors, and Dianne wondered about that again when she saw the soldiers. Why didn't they say "naval honors"? Ed was a sailor, a naval officer. And what was the army doing here?

They hadn't been able to get any details about how Ed had been killed just some formal business about it being "in the line of duty in connection with activities near Cuba." Dianne's father had pressed the captain who had taken them to the naval shipyard for details, but the captain said that he just didn't have any details to offer. He seemed genuinely sorry that he didn't, but Dianne's father was hurt and angry and had jumped all over him.

"I lose my only son, and nobody knows how it happened? Goddamn it!"

One of the soldiers was black. He was a very large man, Dianne saw. He stood alongside a tall stunningly handsome blond officer while three of the others, presumably Catholics, went to the priedieu that had been placed by the casket for Ed's Catholic friends. One of these three Dianne recognized. She had seen him at the naval shipyard. She had thought then, and still thought now, that he didn't look old enough to be an officer. Nevertheless he had lieutenant's bars on his uniform, so he must be. All of the soldiers held something green in their left hands, and after a moment Dianne realized they were hats, French berets. She had never seen soldiers wearing berets, and wondered about that too.

While the three Catholics were saying their prayers by Ed's casket, Dianne's father came into the room from the dining room, where a buffet and bar had been set up. Dianne could tell from his flushed face that he had had more than a few drinks.

The handsome colonel led the way to the Eagleburys. As the young officer neared, Dianne saw that he was even younger than she had at first thought. Maybe, she thought, he was somebody's son. But she dismissed that when she saw they were all wearing the same kind of uniform.

"Hello, Suzanne," the colonel said to the widow.

"Hello, Craig," Suzanne said. "It was good of you to come. Dad, this is Colonel Lowell. He and Ed were friends."

"Colonel," Ed Eaglebury's father said to Lowell. "Good evening, sir," Lowell said.

"And this is Ed's mother and his sister," Suzanne said. "My parents are around here someplace."

Lowell shook the offered hands. "May I introduce these gentlemen?" he asked. "Please do," Mr. Eaglebury said.

"Colonel Hanrahan," Lowell said, "Lieutenant Colonel MacMillan, Major Parker, Warrant Officer Wojinski, and Lieutenant Ellis."

"You're Ueutenant Ellis?" Suzanne Eaglebury said in surprise. "You were in Florida with my husband?"

"Yes, ma'am," Ellis said. He was visibly uncomfortable.

"My husband described you, Lieutenant, as tough as nails." I expected someone a hundred pounds heavier, ten years older, who chews spikes."

Dianne's attention was diverted by someone new entering the room. A neatly dressed man in a business suit walked in, carrying a floral display on a metal stand. He crossed the room and placed the display right in front of the casket, thus concealing the two displays behind it. Then he turned and left the room.

"Honey," Dianne's father said, a touch of annoyance in his voice, "see what that's all about."

Dianne walked to the flowers, bent over them, and took the card from an envelope wired to the stand.

While she was doing this, a tall man entered the room and moved quickly toward the casket. He made the sign of the cross and then dropped to his knees at the priedieu.

I wonder who he is, Dianne wondered. He looks just like Kennedy.

She dropped her eyes to the card in her hand. There was a gold-embossed National Seal and an engraved legend: THE PRESIDENT.

and Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy She looked at the man on his knees, and for a moment their eyes met. And then the President rose and walked to where the soldiers and other Eagleburys were clustered. There was no question it was Kennedy; the soldiers had come to attention, and there was a buzz of whispers. As Dianne walked after him she saw two men standing by the door. The Secret Service. A small, wiry, balding man in a not very well-fitting suit came to the door and was passed inside by the Secret Service. was a brave man, Mrs. Eaglebury," Dianne heard the last part of the sentence, "and his death was not in vain."

"We are honored that you could come, Mr. President," Suzanne said.

"It is my privilege," the President said.

"Mr. President," Dianne's father said, "I would like to know how my son died."

Dianne wondered if her father would have had the courage to say that to the President of the United States if he weren't half plastered. She decided that he would have.

The President seemed to consider that for a moment before replying. "Is there somewhere private?" he asked.

"There's a butler's pantry off the dining room," Mr. Eaglebury said.

The President looked over his shoulder and spoke to the small man in the ill-fitting suit.

"Felter, ask whichever of these gentlemen may have the information Mr. Eaglebury wants to come with us, will you, please?"

"Yes, Mr. President," Felter said.

Dianne was surprised to see there were two more Secret Service men inside the dining room. When they saw where Dianne's father was headed, followed by the President, they sped across the room and went into the butler's pantry ahead of them.

The President turned and looked at Dianne.

"I'm John Kennedy," he said, and offered his hand.

"This is Ed's sister, Dianne," Dianne's mother said.

"I'm very sorry about your brother, Miss Eaglebury," he said.

Felter came in the room, followed by the handsome colonel and the very young lieutenant.

"Colonel Hanrahan and Lieutenant Ellis, Mr. President," Felter said.

"Thank you, Felter," the President said. "These officers were intimately involved with Commander Eaglebury in the mission during which he gave his life. Colonel H?anrahan is commanding officer of the Special Warfare School; Lieutenant Ellis was commanding officer of the Special Forces team with which Commander Eaglebury infiltrated into Cuba. Will you take over, Hanralian?"

Hanrahan looked hesitant. So Felter began the story.

"The mission was duo fold he said. "Lieutenant Effis's A' Team was charged with establishing a radio direction finder on the ground, which would permit aircraft to locate themselves in relation to the invasion site. Commander Eaglebury had an even higher priority covert mission, and went in with Ellis's team in the uniform of an army sergeant."

"What was that even higher priority mission'?" Mr. Eaglebury asked.

Felter looked at the President.

"Tell him, Felter," the President said. "I decide who has the need to know."

"Commander Eaglebury believed that the Russians were constructing missile sites on Cuba," Felter said. "It was his intention to bring back proof that they were." "The initial phase of the mission was successful," Colonel Hanrahan said. "That is, the parachute drop."

"My husband parachuted into Cuba?"

"Yes, ma'am," Hanrahan said.

"And you, too, Ellis?" Suzanne Eaglebury asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Ellis said. Dianne looked at him in disbelief. He was a boy.

"And then what happened?" Suzanne asked. Hanrahan raised his palm toward Ellis.