The Berets Page 2

  Ellis dropped to his knees beside it and with a quick gesture pulled up his left trouser leg and came out with a knife. He inhaled audibly and plunged the knife tip into the plastic. It was tough and it took him a little while to saw through enough of the plastic to make a flap. He pulled the flap aside. There was a face, eyes and mouth open. The peculiar odor of decaying flesh seemed to erupt from the plastic. Ellis’s face turned white, and he jumped to his feet, turned to the Cuban—(who was still counting money)—spun him around, and then put the tip of the knife against his carotid artery, where the jaw meets the neck. A torrent of gutter Spanish erupted from Ellis.

  “Ellis!” the captain said in alarm.

  “That’s not Commander Eaglebury,” Ellis said in English. Another torrent of angry Spanish erupted, and the Cuban yelped as Ellis nicked him with the point of his knife.

  There was the sound of actions being worked. The “owner” and his “friend” stepped to the door of the main cabin. Each held an Armalite AR-15 .223 Remington automatic rifle in his hands.

  “Are you sure, Ellis?” the “owner’s friend” said.

  Ellis didn’t reply.

  There was a yelp of pain and terror from the Cuban as Ellis nicked him with the knife, and the Cuban said something very quickly to him.

  “The lying sonofabitch says he must have made a mistake,” Ellis said. “He says that he just happens to have another body, which must be the one we’re after.”

  He moved the Cuban to one of the fighting chairs and forced him into it with the knife point, nicking him again. Blood was running down the man’s neck and onto his khaki shirt. He was wide-eyed with terror and moaning a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  Ellis leaned over the rail and spoke to the Cubans still in the boat. “Untie it,” he said in English to the mate. “I’m sending them back for the right body.”

  “And if they just take off?”

  “Then I’ll slit this sonofabitch’s throat and feed him to the fish,” Ellis said.

  “Take it easy, Ellis,” the captain said.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ellis said in moral indignation. “What a rotten fucking thing to try to do!”

  And then he thought of something.

  “Hold it! Take this one with you,” he said, and then repeated that in Spanish. He turned to the mate. “Help me get this over the edge,” he said.

  The body was lowered into the boat. The smell of decaying flesh turned Ellis’s face white again.

  Halfway back to the gray and blue boat, the Cubans in the small boat heaved the black-plastic-wrapped body over the side. It disappeared from sight for a moment and then bobbed to the surface.

  Five minutes later a second body was hauled onto the Over Draught II. Ellis took his knife again and slit the wrapping. He looked at the captain and nodded his head. The captain saw there were tears in his eyes.

  “Give this…person…the briefcase,” the captain ordered icily. “And allow him to get into the boat. But don’t turn it loose. We’ll take them with us for a thousand yards or so.”

  “I’d like to slit his fucking throat,” Ellis said.

  “No, you can’t do that, Ellis,” the captain said evenly, then ran quickly up the ladder to the flying bridge.

  “Is there some tape or something,” Ellis asked, “to seal the body bag again?”

  “I’ll get some,” the mate said.

  Ellis dropped to his knees and waited for the tape, holding his nostrils closed against the smell of the putrefying flesh.

  The Over Draught II moved slowly through the water for a thousand yards and then cut the small boat free. The moment it was free, the captain opened his throttles.

  The gray and blue boat made no move to pursue them, and when it was clear that they were not going to fire on the Over Draught II, the “owner” and his “friend” put their Armalite AR-15s down. The owner went into the cabin and returned with a blanket, which he laid over the black-plastic—wrapped body.

  “I think we’d best leave him there,” he said gently to Ellis.

  Ellis nodded, sat down in a fighting chair, and stared out over the stern, carefully not looking at the blanket and what it concealed.

  Fifteen minutes later he got up and walked into the cabin. He went to the refrigerator and took out a can of Schlitz.

  “Jesus!” the “owner’s friend” said in awe. Ellis looked at him and then out the window, where the other man was pointing.

  A hundred yards to their right the water was turbulent, and a large gray-black submarine sail rose from it. Before the hull was visible, figures could be seen on the top of the sail, and an American flag appeared, flapping in the breeze.

  The captain slowed the boat and maneuvered closer to the submarine until, at about the moment the submarine stopped dead in the water, he was ten yards away from her.

  An officer with an electronic megaphone appeared on the sail. “Captain’s compliments, Captain,” he said. “Will you come aboard, please?” his amplified voice boomed.

  A moment later the captain appeared at the cabin door.

  “They want you, too, Lieutenant,” he said.

  Ellis, beer can in hand, followed him.

  Sailors on the submarine threw mats of woven rope down from the deck to form a cushion between the submarine and the Over Draught II. After that, two sailors jumped onto the boat and pulled her alongside with boat hooks.

  The captain grabbed hold of a ladder on the submarine’s side and began climbing. Ellis took a final swallow of his beer, threw the can into the sea, and followed him.

  The captain got onto the deck. He saluted the officer standing there and then the national colors.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir.”

  “Permission granted,” the navy officer said, returning the salute.

  When Ellis climbed up, the navy officer smiled at him.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” he said.

  Ellis saluted him crisply and then the colors, as the captain had done.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir?” he said.

  “Permission granted,” the navy officer said.

  “Will you come with me, gentlemen?” another navy officer in stiffly starched khakis said, and led them to an opening in the sail. They climbed an interior ladder and found themselves on the top of the sail.

  An officer wearing the silver eagle of a navy captain on his collar smiled and offered his hand.

  “Lieutenant Davis?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re Lieutenant Ellis?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain handed Ellis a cryptographic machine printout.

  OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

  NO. 11-103 2305 ZULU 28NOV61

  SECRET

  FROM COMSUBFORATL

  COMMANDER USS GATO

  DP. IMMEDIATELY RELIEVE COMMANDER NAVAL AUXILIARY VESSEL OVER DRAUGHT II REMAINS LT COMMANDER EDWARD B. EAGLEBURY USN. TRANSPORT USN YARD PHILADLEPHIA. LIEUTENANT THOMAS J. ELLIS, USA, TO ACCOMPANY.

  CZERNIK REARADM USN.

  Ellis handed it back to the captain, who handed it to Lieutenant Davis.

  “You have luggage aboard that boat, Lieutenant?” the captain asked.

  “No, sir,” Ellis said.

  “We can probably fix you up aboard,” the captain said.

  Ellis was surprised first to hear a strange whistle and then to see the captain come to a salute. He looked where the captain looked.

  A steel stretcher—Ellis knew the correct nomenclature but couldn’t think of it—had been lowered onto the Over Draught II. The plastic-wrapped body had then been strapped into it and was now being hauled back aboard. Half a dozen officers and ten sailors were standing at attention, saluting, as a sailor blew on a funny-looking whistle.

  After he had been captured, interrogated, and executed as a spy by security forces of the People’s Democratic Republic of Cuba, the remains of Lieutenant Commander Edward Eaglebury, U.S.N., were being paid the appropriate naval hon
ors as they came aboard a United States ship of war. When they had the black-plastic-wrapped bundle on the deck, it was hurriedly taken into the sail.

  “Permission to leave the bridge, sir, and the ship?” Lieutenant Davis asked when the whistling stopped.

  “Granted,” the captain said. “Well done, Lieutenant.”

  “Ellis is the one who did things well, sir,” Davis said. He offered his hand to Ellis. “See you around sometime, I hope, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Thank you for everything,” Ellis said.

  Ellis watched as Davis emerged from the sail and nimbly made his way back onto the Bertram yacht. As soon as he was aboard, the mate, who was at the controls, pulled the boat sharply away from the submarine.

  “Make turns for fifteen knots,” the submarine commander said softly, and an enlisted man standing behind him repeated the order into a microphone. Water churned at the rear of the submarine and she began to move. Ellis looked forward and saw the last of the sailors scurry into a round opening in the deck.

  “You have the conn, sir,” the captain said to an officer beside him. “When you are ready, take her down. Lieutenant Ellis and I are going below.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the officer said, and then called over his shoulder: “Captain leaving the bridge.”

  “Captain leaving the bridge,” the sailor parroted.

  “Right this way, Lieutenant,” the captain said, gesturing for Ellis to climb back down the ladder.

  They climbed down what seemed to Ellis like three or four floors, into a room jammed full of officers and sailors and an awesome display of gauges and controls.

  “I don’t quite understand your role in this, Lieutenant,” the captain said. “Is that a question I’m permitted to ask?”

  “I was with Commander Eaglebury in Cuba,” Ellis said. “He jumped in with my ‘A’ Team a couple of days before the Bay of Pigs.”

  The captain’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Your ‘A’ Team? Eaglebury went in as a Green Beret?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I see,” the captain said. “This your first time on a submarine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll try to make you comfortable,” the captain said.

  A Klaxon horn sounded.

  “Dive, dive, dive,” a voice said over the loudspeaker.

  Ellis had no idea what was going on, but he was impressed with a feeling that everyone seemed to know what he was doing and was doing it without orders. After a minute or so the activity seemed less frenzied.

  “And now we dive?” he asked as he felt the deck tilt slightly forward.

  The captain pointed to a gauge. It read DEPTH IN METERS, and the indicator was inching past fifty.

  The officer who had been left on the sail came up to where the captain stood.

  “Take her to two hundred and fifty, Paul,” the captain said, “and make turns for forty knots.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Sparks?” the captain said, and a sailor stepped up to him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Message COMSUBFORATL,” the captain said. “Reference your operational immediate whatever-the-number-was, in compliance.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the radioman said.

  “You can send messages from down here?” Ellis asked, surprised.

  The captain smiled at him. “No, and we can’t make forty knots, either,” he said.

  The officer who was running the ship chuckled.

  “I’ll be in the wardroom,” the captain said. “I need a cup of coffee, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lieutenant Ellis could be talked into having one.”

  (Two)

  The Situation Room

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  2105 Hours, 28 November 1961

  An army warrant officer ran the tape from COMSUBFORATL through the cryptographic machine. Soon a printout appeared, which he then carried to a vice-admiral standing with his hands on the hips, watching the ship location chart on the wall. He waited until the admiral finally noticed him and handed the printout to him wordlessly.

  “Thank you,” the admiral said absently, and read it.

  OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

  NO. 10-105 0105 ZULU 29NOV61

  SECRET

  FROM COMSUBFORATL

  CNO ATTEN: THE PRESIDENT

  MESSAGE FROM USS GATO RECEIVED 0047 ZULU 28NOV61 INDICATES REMAINS LT COMMANDER EAGLEBURY RECOVERED. GATO PROCEEDING USN YARD PHILADELPHIA. ETA 1230 ZULU 29NOV61.

  BERRY REARADM FOR COMSUBFORATL

  The admiral looked around the room and then walked across it toward a slight and balding man in a mussed gray suit, sitting at a small stenographer’s bench—not unlike a school desk—and bent over a sheath of yellow teletype paper. The man showed no sign that he was aware that the admiral was standing over him.

  “Got a minute to spare, Felter?” the admiral asked dryly.

  The small man closed the sheath of Teletype messages and stood up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was…what do I say?…‘concentrating.’”

  “We’ve heard from COMSUBFORATL,” the admiral said, and handed him the message. After he had read it, the admiral continued: “You’re going to see the President?”

  “Just as soon as I finish the summary,” Felter said.

  “Then you can give him this,” the admiral said.

  “Yes, sir,” Felter said.

  The admiral walked away. Felter sat back down and resumed reading the sheath of Teletype messages in front of him. When he finished he got up from his stenographer’s bench and went to a desk occupied by a navy chief officer. He smiled at him and made a gesture with his hand, asking for the chief’s chair.

  He sat down, pulled open a desk drawer and took from it a sheet of paper. The paper had three lines of type printed at the top.

  TOP SECRET (Presidential)

  Eyes of the President Only

  Duplication Expressly Forbidden

  TOP SECRET (Presidential) was repeated at the bottom of the sheet.

  Felter rolled the sheet of paper in the IBM electric typewriter and began to type very rapidly. At the top he wrote in the date and the hour and ONE PAGE ONLY. Then beneath that, in short paragraphs, he summarized the intelligence information that had come into the situation room since the last summary at noon. He stopped toward the end of the page in order to decide between an assassination of a Turkish lieutenant general and the recovery of the remains of Lieutenant Command Edward B. Eaglebury.

  The assassination went in. It was the more important of the two items. Then he ripped the sheet of paper from the typewriter and stood up.

  “If there’s no call for these by 0800, Chief,” he said to the chief petty officer, handing him the sheath of Teletype messages, “will you have them shredded, please?”

  “Yes, sir,” the chief said.

  Felter folded the summary in thirds, put it in an envelope, and walked out of the Situation Room. There was a marine guard at a small desk by the elevator. When he saw Felter he opened a drawer, took a Colt .45 pistol from it, and laid it on the desk.

  “I’ll have to come back for it,” Felter said. “I’m going upstairs, not out.”

  “Yes, sir,” the marine guard said, and put the pistol back in the drawer.

  Felter got in the elevator and rode it to the Presidential Apartments.

  “Are you expected, sir?” the Secret Service man in the foyer asked when he stepped off the elevator.

  Felter shook his head no.

  “Just a moment, sir,” the Secret Service man said, and went to the double door at the end of the corridor. He knocked and then opened the door immediately.

  “Mr. Felter is here, Mr. President,” he said.

  Then he turned to Felter and nodded his head to him.

  “The President will see you, Mr. Felter.”

  Felter pushed the door open and went inside. The President was in his rocking chair with a glass of w
hiskey in his hand. The Attorney General was sitting in an upholstered chair, also with a drink in his hand. There were two nice-looking women sitting in other chairs, each with a drink.

  “I hope this is a social call, Sandy,” the President said.

  “I have the summary, Mr. President,” Felter said. “And this.”

  He handed the President the envelope with the summary. The President took it, read it, and handed it to his brother. Then he took the message from COMSUBFORATL and read that.

  The Attorney General laid the summary faceup on a table.

  “Are you finished with that, Mr. Kennedy?” Felter asked, walking to the table with the evident purpose of reclaiming the summary.

  “I will be, Colonel,” the Attorney General snapped, “just as soon as I Xerox a copy for the Kremlin.” Bobby did not like Colonel Felter—probably, the President thought, because they were so much alike.

  “Easy, Bobby,” the President said almost sharply. He walked to the table and picked up the summary and held it out to Felter.

  “Would you like to inform the Eagleburys, Sandy?” the President asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “All right,” the President said, noting that the pout had returned to his brother’s face. He thought he had asked a simple question and gotten an immediate, direct answer. He understood Felter’s directness and his brevity. Bobby thought Felter’s brevity was insolent.

  “Would you like to represent me at the funeral?” the President asked.

  “If I can be spared here, I would be honored, sir.”

  “Well, you plan on it,” the President said. “We’ll see how things are going. I imagine Colonel Hanrahan and his people would like to participate.”

  “Yes, sir,” Felter said.

  “I’d like to go myself,” the President said.

  “Jack, you’re not going to have the time,” the Attorney General said.

  “I probably won’t,” the President agreed. “But set it up anyway, would you, Felter? Very quietly. If I can find the time, I’ll go.”

  “Yes, sir,” Felter said.

  “And check to see that the navy yard in Philadelphia knows what’s going on. I’m sure they’ll want to do things right.”