The Captains Read online

  They smiled at each other.

  “Besides, I owe Sandy a lot, and he’s a hard guy to pay back.”

  “I owe him a great deal, too,” his father-in-law said.

  Lowell walked to the door and examined a box with five porcelain buttons, and selected one and pushed it, to summon the floor waiter.

  He turned and looked at his son and his father-in-law. P.P. had gotten off the floor and was standing behind his grandfather, with his arms locked around his neck.

  “Found yourself a new pal, have you, Squirt?”

  “Grosspapa,” the child said.

  The old count smiled.

  “Yeah,” Lowell said. “Grosspapa.” He looked at his father-in-law. “What am I going to call you?” he asked.

  “Whatever you like,” the count replied.

  “To Ilse,” Lowell said, “you’re ‘Papa.’ To the squirt, you’re ‘Grosspapa.’ But how about us? I’d feel a little uncomfortable with ‘Dad,’ and I don’t think you’d like calling me ‘Son.’”

  “You say what you think, don’t you?” his father-in-law replied.

  “How about ‘Colonel’?” Lowell asked.

  “‘Colonel’ would be fine. And you?”

  “How about calling me ‘Craig’?”

  “Whatever you like,” the older man said, adding, “Craig.”

  “Grosspapa,” P.P. said.

  “He’s your Mama’s papa,” Lowell said. “And your Grosspapa. And to me, he’s the Colonel. How’s that grab you?”

  “He’s Mama’s papa?” the boy said, as if surprised.

  “Right,” Lowell said.

  “And my Grosspapa,” the boy said, possessively.

  The Colonel looked on the edge of tears.

  The floor waiter knocked discreetly at the door, and was told to enter.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said.

  “What we’re going to have to have,” Lowell said, “in about fifteen minutes, is breakfast for, let me see,” he counted on his fingers, “six. Plus two children. An American breakfast. The Felters are Jews, so we’ll skip bacon and ham. How about rump steaks? Fried eggs, pommes frites, steaks. Orange juice. Milk for the kids. Bread, as well as croissants. And coffee. Bring some coffee and croissants right now, would you please?”

  “Thank you very much,” the floor waiter said, bowed, and left.

  Lowell glanced at his father-in-law. There were tears in his eyes, and a tear ran down one cheek.

  “Take it easy, Colonel,” Lowell said, gently.

  “Everything has happened too quickly,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Lowell said, uncomfortably.

  “I keep wondering if I have gone mad,” the colonel said. “Or if I will wake up.”

  “There’s a corny American expression, Colonel,” Lowell said. “‘All’s well that ends well.’”

  “‘Corny’?” the colonel asked.

  “Trite,” Lowell said.

  “You learn to lower your expectations,” the colonel said. “Until you are pleased that your dream of being warm, or not hungry, has come true.”

  “I expect,” Lowell said, uncomfortably.

  “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Craig,” the colonel said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Lowell said.

  “I used to dream of food,” the colonel said. “Of beef and butter. Of real coffee.”

  Lowell said nothing.

  “I’m hungry!” P.P. announced. “When do we eat?”

  “Are you really hungry?” Lowell said.

  “I’m really hungry.”

  “We’ll have some nice liver in just a few minutes,” Lowell said.

  “You will not! I heard you! You said steak!”

  “Do you like steak for breakfast, P.P?” the older man asked.

  “It’s all right,” the child replied, having considered it.

  “Steak for breakfast,” the colonel said. “My God!”

  Lowell said nothing.

  “When I came back,” the colonel said to Lowell, “I got off the train in Bad Hersfeld, and saw an old comrade of mine. He told me that my wife had taken her life and that he believed my daughter had gone to East Germany to look for relatives. He tried to encourage me by saying the Red Cross was very good about finding people in such circumstances.”

  “Well, that’s all behind you, Colonel,” Lowell said.

  “I told myself that I would do what I could to find her, to do what I could for her,” the colonel went on. “And then, this…”

  “Yeah, well, what the hell,” Lowell said.

  He was relieved when the floor waiter rolled in a tray with a coffee service and a plate of croissants on it.

  “You get one croissant, P.P.,” Lowell said to his son. “To hold you until breakfast comes.”

  “Why can’t I eat now?”

  “Because Uncle Sandy and Aunt Sharon are coming, and we’re going to wait for them.”

  He watched as his father-in-law very carefully buttered a croissant and ate it with tiny bites, savoring each morsel.

  There came another knock at the door.

  “Entrez!” Lowell called.

  The door opened.

  A slight, balding man pushed the door open and peered cautiously in.

  “Come on in, Sandy,” Lowell said, walking up to him, and putting his arm around his shoulder.

  “Guten Morgen, Herr Oberst Graf,” the little man said, in fluent, vaguely Berliner-accented German.

  When Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg had returned to Marburg an der Lahn after five years of Soviet captivity, Sanford Felter had been waiting for him at the railroad station. Not, as the count had first believed, as one more policeman to take away his freedom again, but to take him to a reunion with his daughter, and a son-in-law and grandchild he knew nothing about.

  Lowell stepped behind Sandy Felter, kissed his wife, and snatched Sanford T. Felter, Jr., aged two, from his mother’s arms.

  “Thank God, he looks like you, sweetheart,” he said.

  “Craig!” Sharon Felter said. She was a dark-haired, light-skinned, slightly built woman with large dark eyes.

  “One ugly bald man in a family is enough,” Lowell said.

  “Herr Oberst Graf,” Felter said. “May I present my wife?”

  “You must forgive my appearance, Mrs. Felter,” the older man said, bowing over her hand. “I am honored.”

  “Oh, we’ve heard so much about you,” Sharon said. “Oh, forgive me. I didn’t say it. Welcome home!”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Ilse’s asleep,” Lowell said. “Go throw her ass out of bed, Sharon.”

  “I will not!” Sharon said. “Craig, really, sometimes…”

  He walked to the bedroom door.

  “Hey, Ilse! Up and at ’em! Sandy and Sharon are here.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Sharon said, walking to the bedroom door. “Ilse, I told him not to.”

  And then she went into the bedroom and closed the door after her.

  “Breakfast is on the way,” Lowell said. “Or it’s supposed to be. Help yourself to some coffee.”

  “We ate before I called,” Felter said.

  “Well, you’re just going to have to eat again. I know your idea of breakfast. A hard-boiled egg and a stale roll.”

  Felter shook his head, and then opened a briefcase. He took out a manila folder and handed it to Lowell.

  “What’s this?”

  “The colonel’s service record,” Felter said. “A certified copy, anyway, and the findings of the Denazification Court.”

  “I don’t understand,” the colonel said.

  “American law forbids the immigration of Nazis, Colonel,” Felter explained. “You have to be cleared. This will clear you.”

  “How the hell did you get that overnight?” Lowell asked.

  “I didn’t get it overnight,” Felter said. “I worked on that damned thing for years.”

  “Hey, buddy,” Lowell said. “Thanks.”


  “You’re welcome,” Felter said.

  “Captain Felter suspected for some time that you were alive, Colonel,” Lowell said to his father-in-law. “He’s really the one who got you out.”

  “How does one express his gratitude for something like that?” the colonel asked.

  “As briefly as possible, please,” Felter said, with a smile.

  “Take off your coat and stay a while,” Lowell said.

  “Your thugs grabbed our luggage the minute we pulled up outside,” Felter said. “At least I hope they were your thugs.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I hope you know where to find our luggage, what room we’re in, that sort of thing.”

  “I think you’re down the hall. Get on the phone and ask.”

  “What do I say? ‘This is Mr. Felter, where am I?’” Felter asked, and chuckled.

  Lowell laughed. Felter took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair. Then, as discreetly as he could, he reached in the small of his back, withdrew a Colt .45 pistol, which he slipped into the briefcase, and then set the briefcase on the floor beside the couch.

  “You’ve heard of the Mafia, Colonel?” Lowell asked.

  “The Mafia?”

  “The fraternal order of Sicilian gangsters? They always go around carrying guns.”

  “I don’t believe Captain Felter is a gangster,” the colonel said.

  “Captain Felter is a spook,” Lowell said.

  “I don’t know what a spook is,” the colonel said.

  “He’s an intelligence officer,” Lowell said, with mock awe. “Which is not quite the same thing as an intelligent officer.”

  “Oh, Christ, Craig!” Felter said, exasperated.

  “I think you’re embarrassing the Captain, Craig,” the colonel said.

  “I’m used to it, Colonel,” Felter said. “He has been embarrassing me from literally the first day I met him.”

  “You’ll have to pardon my near total ignorance of my son-in-law,” the colonel said. “When was that?”

  “We were on our way to Greece,” Lowell said. “In 1946. I was being sent there in disgrace, and Felter, demonstrating that he is indeed fit to march in the Long Gray Line, had volunteered for the assignment.”

  “The Long Gray Line?” the colonel asked, and then remembered. “Oh, yes, of course. West Point. You’re a West Pointer, Captain?”

  “I went there for a while,” Felter said.

  “And you, too, Craig?”

  Lowell laughed. “Good God, no. I was a reserve officer, just long enough to do my time and get out. Sandy’s the one who has the Pavlovian response to the sound of a trumpet. As anyone who knows will tell you, Colonel, I was a lousy soldier.”

  “Well, some men take to it, and some don’t,” the colonel said, graciously.

  “The military establishment heaved an enormous sigh of relief when they were finally able to kick me out the gate,” Lowell said.

  Felter looked between the two of them, and saw that Colonel Count Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg, three wound stripes, recipient of the Iron Cross with Swords and Diamonds, the eleventh of his line to go to war for his country, accepted what Craig Lowell had said about his military service at face value.

  “I’m sorry, Craig,” Felter said. “I can’t let that stand.”

  “What?” Lowell said.

  “Colonel, when your son-in-law was nineteen years old, attached to the Greek Army as an advisor, the unit with which he was serving…”

  “Knock it off, Sandy!” Lowell interrupted him.

  “The unit with which he was serving,” Felter went on, relentlessly, “Number 12 Company of the 27th Royal Greek Mountain Division, was attacked by a reinforced regiment of Russian-trained Albanian and Greek troops. All the Greek officers were killed. This ‘lousy soldier’ your daughter married assumed command, although he was at the time shot full of holes. When the relief column reached his position, there were only twelve men left alive. But they held their position, inspired by this ‘lousy soldier.’ He’s such a ‘lousy soldier’ that they gave him the Order of St. George and St. Andrew.”

  “You’ve always had a fat mouth, you little shit,” Lowell said.

  “Craig!” Ilse von Greiffenberg Lowell said, shocked as she came in the room. “What’s the matter with you? After what Sandy’s done for us, how dare you talk to him that way?”

  “It’s all right, Ilse,” Sandy Felter said. “It sounded worse than it really was.”

  “They’re always saying cruel things to each other,” Sharon Felter said. “They sometimes make me sick to my stomach. You’d never know how much they love each other, the way they talk to each other.”

  “Oh, shit,” Lowell said. He walked quickly to Felter, wrapped his arms around the smaller man, hoisted him off the ground, and planted a wet and noisy kiss in the middle of his forehead.

  “Put me down, you overgrown adolescent!” Felter demanded.

  “Say ‘pretty please,’ you little prick,” Lowell said. He squeezed Felter in his arms until Felter gave in.

  “Pretty please, you big bastard!” he said. Lowell, laughing, set him down.

  “Now, if that doesn’t prove I love him, what does?” Lowell asked.

  “I’m ashamed of you, Craig,” Ilse said, but she was smiling.

  The floor waiter, trailed by three busboys, arrived with the breakfast, and started to set up the breakfast table.

  Felter watched them, and then, out of the blue, said: “Speaking of war, I just heard on AFN that that’s not a border incident in Korea, but a real invasion.”

  “What’s not a border incident?” Lowell asked.

  “According to AFN—” Felter said, and then digressed to explain. “AFN is the U.S. radio station in Germany, Colonel, and according to the news broadcast I heard just now, what they first said was a border incident is now a real invasion. Seoul is about to fall.”

  “Have a nice war, Sandy,” Lowell said.

  “What a terrible thing to say!” Ilse snapped.

  “He doesn’t mean half the things he says,” Felter said. “If you understand that, you can learn to put up with him.”

  “Can we eat now?” P.P. asked.

  (Two)

  Washington, D.C.

  5 July 1950

  By direction of the President, the Secretary of the Army was authorized and directed to call to active duty for the duration of the Korean police action 2,500 company-grade officers of the various arms and services then carried on the rolls of the inactive reserve.

  The officer corps of the United States Army is composed of four components. There is the regular army, those officers whose profession is arms, who meet the criteria established by the Congress for the regular army, and who plan to serve until retired. The number of regular army officers is provided by law. Before World War II, the number of officers on active duty who were not regular army was minuscule. During World War II, the percentages were reversed, and only a few officers could be recognized—by their shorter serial numbers—as regular army.

  The bulk of regular army officers come from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and from the other service academies: Virginia Military Institute, Norwich, the Citadel, Texas A&M, and a very few others. But it is possible for individuals, normally reserve officers on active duty, to apply for integration into the regular army, and some are accepted.

  The second component of the officer corps of the United States Army is the corps of officers assigned to the National Guard. Technically, these officers hold commissions granted by the governors of the various states, since in peacetime the National Guard is under the control of the various governors. These officers simultaneously hold reserve commissions in the United States Army.

  The third component is the reserve officer corps, which is in turn composed of four components:

  1) Reserve officers on extended active duty: those who plan to remain in uniform until retired. These officers serve at the pleasure o
f the Congress, and they enjoy no guarantee of service until retirement (as do officers holding a regular army commission).

  2) Reserve officers on active duty: generally involuntary, such as those officers called to active duty after graduation from a Reserve Officer Training Corps program at a college or university. They serve on active duty for a specified period of time.

  3) Reserve officers of the organized reserve: those officers assigned to a reserve unit, which meets one evening a week or one weekend a month. They also serve two weeks of active duty for training in the summertime. These officers receive a day’s pay and allowances for each training session and earn retirement credit for such service.

  4) Inactive reserve officers: those reserve officers who hold commissions, but are not members of the active army, the National Guard, or the organized reserve. They undergo no training and receive no pay.

  The officers the army wished to call to duty for the Korean peace action were officers in the last category, the inactive reserve.

  Whenever possible, such involuntarily recalled officers were to be given a thirty-day notice so that they could wind up their personal affairs. It was recognized, however, that due to the critical situation in the Far East, this would not always be possible.

  A critical shortage of company-grade officers existed in the combat arms. In the absence of a pool of officers recently graduated from the various service schools, who could be assigned to troop units, it was decided that a pool should be formed from the ranks of the inactive reserve of officers meeting the following criteria:

  (a) Of appropriate grade and age. (You need young men in the line units.)

  (b) Combat experience. (When you get right down to it, somebody who has heard a gun go off in his ear is really the best guy to lead troops in combat; there’s no substitute for combat experience.)

  It was argued that calling such officers to active duty, particularly when it was not going to be possible to give them even thirty days to wind up their personal affairs, was not really fair to the officers in question. For one thing, they had already been shot at. For another, not only had they not been getting paid the way other reserve and National Guard officers had been paid (a day’s pay for two hours’ “training” once a week), but they had been specifically assured that if they kept their commissions in the inactive reserve, they would be called to duty only in the event of an all-out war, and only after the National Guard and active reserve had been called to duty.