The Berets Page 4

  Colonel Lowell was tall, muscular, blond, mustached, and handsome, and in his uniform, complete with fur-felt cap with golden scrambled eggs of a field grade officer on the brim, he drew admiring glances from civilians in the terminal. Ellis felt like a slob beside him.

  Four of the Northeast’s Atlanta-boarded passengers who came into the terminal were also in uniform. They were Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan, who wore the crossed rifles of infantry. He was red-haired, ruddy-faced, and slightly built. Next came Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph G. MacMillan, another infantryman, stocky and round-faced; Major Philip Sheridan Parker IV, Armor, broad-shouldered, six foot three, two hundred and fifteen pounds, and very black; and Warrant Officer (Junior Grade) Stefan T. Wojinski, as pale as Parker was dark, barrel-chested, bullnecked, with two hundred and twenty pounds hung gracefully on a five-foot-eleven-inch frame.

  Aside from the different insignia of rank, they were dressed identically in army-green uniforms. They all wore parachutist’s insignia, and they all wore their trouser bottoms bloused around the tops of glistening paratrooper boots. They all wore Combat Infantry Badges. MacMillan and Parker wore Army Aviator’s wings, MacMillan’s with the wreathed star on top of a Master Aviator. They all wore a strip embroidered AIRBORNE sewn near the top of their tunic sleeves, and below that the embroidered insignia of Special Forces. And they all wore green berets.

  Lowell walked up to Colonel Hanrahan and shook his hand.

  “Yoo-hoo,” he called over the colonel’s shoulder to Major Parker. “Little girl, I’ll take two boxes of the chocolate chip cookies and one of the vanilla wafers.”

  Major Parker shook his head, but he had to smile. When his teeth were exposed against his very black skin, they seemed extraordinarily white.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Craig,” Colonel Hanrahan said angrily. He was having enough trouble about the Green Berets without having to take wise-ass ridicule from Craig W. Lowell.

  Two days before, he had received a CONARC (Continental Army Command) directive. It had not come through normal distribution channels. Instead his copy had come addressed “Personal Attention of Col. Paul T. Hanrahan” in an envelope bearing the return address “Office of the Commanding General, Headquarters, Continental Army Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia.” There was no accompanying letter. The return address had said all that had to be said. The CONARC directive forbade the wearing of “nonstandard headgear, to include foreign ‘beret’-type headgear.”

  Hanrahan thought that Lieutenant General “Triple H” Howard was behind the directive. Not long before, he had defied Howard’s local order banning the green berets by claiming that while the Special Warfare Center and School were on Fort Bragg, they were not subordinate to it. Howard did not have the authority the CONARC commander did over Special Forces.

  Hanrahan hadn’t told anyone of the CONARC order, not even Sergeant Major Taylor, who generally knew everything Hanrahan did. When he got back to Bragg, he would have to issue the order. But now he’d try to ignore it.

  He thought it was perhaps fitting that the beret would sort of be buried with Lieutenant Commander Ed Eaglebury, a naval officer who had won the right to wear one and had jumped into Cuba as a Green Beret.

  “I think you all look just splendid!” Lowell went on, undaunted. “I will sleep soundly tonight, knowing that the nation’s defense is in your capable hands.”

  “He’s been drinking,” MacMillan said flatly.

  “Naw,” Wojinski said mockingly.

  “How are you, Ski?” Lowell said to him, shaking his hand.

  “Hello, Ellis,” Colonel Hanrahan said. “I see that it took you no time at all to fall in with evil companions.”

  “Good evening, sir,” Ellis said.

  “And lucky for you that he has,” Lowell said. “Since you are all famous for not being able to find your way out of a closet, I have assumed logistic responsibility for this mission. If you will all please get your luggage and follow me…”

  “Meaning what?” Hanrahan asked.

  “About the logistics?” Lowell asked. Hanrahan nodded. “I have hotel rooms and wheels and the schedule. I have also previously reconnoitered the area. I know where we’re going.”

  “And you have been at the whiskey?”

  “I have had a nip or two,” Lowell said. “Widows and that sort of thing depress me.”

  “I’m sorry you have been inconvenienced by all this,” Hanrahan said sarcastically.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the Mouse?” Lowell asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

  Hanrahan shook his head. “Felter’s not here?”

  “No, and I get that ‘I’ll relay your message to Colonel Felter’ bullshit when I try to call the White House,” Lowell said.

  “Maybe he’s driving up,” Hanrahan said. “Maybe he brought Sharon.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Lowell said.

  They were at the baggage carousel. A liveried chauffeur trailed by a red cap walked up.

  “Point out your luggage to these gentlemen,” Lowell said, “and give them the tags.”

  “Is he just dressed like that?” Hanrahan asked softly. “Or does he have a long black car to go with that uniform?”

  “Actually, it’s maroon,” Lowell said. “And there’s no divider, so watch what you say.” He saw the look in Hanrahan’s eyes. “It’s not as expensive as you think, Paul, and it makes a lot of sense to have a car that can hold us all and someone to worry about it and run errands.”

  “Never look a gift jackass in the mouth, I always say,” Hanrahan said.

  He felt a little guilty. Lowell was probably right about the car. Hanrahan, having never hired a chauffeured limousine, had no idea what one cost. But it was probably less than it would have been to hire two taxicabs, and with all their luggage they would have had to hire two.

  When they were all loaded in the limousine, Lowell announced that they were going to Old Original Bookbinder’s Restaurant. Ellis, however, would proceed to the hotel, where he would “climb into a uniform, then join us at the restaurant. At Bookbinder’s we will victual, and then we will all go out to Swarthmore and pay our respects to the family, and finally we will return to the hotel,” Lowell said. “Are there any questions?”

  “You seem to have everything under control, Colonel,” Hanrahan said, paused, and added, “for once in your life.”

  “In case anyone gets lost,” Lowell said, “and with MacMillan we always have to keep that in mind, we’re in the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, in Penthouse B.”

  “Penthouse B?” Hanrahan asked dryly.

  “They made me a deal,” Lowell said. “You would be surprised, Paul, how seldom they have a chance to rent a suite like that. They’re willing to bargain.”

  The penthouse, which was like a two-story house on the hotel roof, was the first penthouse Lieutenant Ellis had ever seen, except in the movies. The ride from the hotel to the airport, similarly, had been his first ride in a limousine. He’d heard the stories about Colonel Lowell being very rich, but until tonight, when Lowell had summoned him from the in-expensive room he had rented to the penthouse, it had seemed like so much bullshit. If a man had more money than he could spend, what was he doing in the army?

  (Two)

  The Presidential Apartments

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  1815 Hours, 29 November 1961

  The President raised his eyes from the noon-to-four-P.M. summary, and looked around for its author. Colonel Sanford T. Felter was on one of the scrambler telephones. The President waited until he was through and then called his name.

  Felter walked over to him.

  “Is everything laid on to go to Philadelphia?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve decided to do it,” the President said. “What shall we have Salinger tell the Fourth Estate?”

  Something close to a smile curled Felter’s thin lips.

  “That’s not my area of specialization, sir,” Felter said.<
br />
  Pierre Salinger, the presidential press secretary, hearing his name, looked across the room at the President. The President beckoned to him.

  “You will inform the gentlemen of the press that I will depart in ten minutes by helicopter for Camp David. Only Mr. Felter will go with me.”

  “You’re going to Camp David? Why?”

  “Actually, I’m going to Philadelphia,” the President said. “But I don’t want the press disrupting a funeral. Which they would.”

  “Jack,” Salinger said, “is that smart?”

  “I got him killed, Pierre,” the President said. “The least I can do is tell his family I’m sorry. And spare them the press while he’s being buried.”

  “What are you going to tell Johnson?”

  “I presume the Secret Service knows where he is,” the President said. “I can’t see any reason why he has to hear about this. Don’t tell him unless you have to. I will go from Philadelphia to Camp David. You can send a couple of pool photographers out there in the morning to take my picture getting on the helicopter.”

  (Three)

  Old Original Bookbinder’s Restaurant

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  1835 Hours, 29 November 1961

  They were given a table on the second floor. Walking to it, they passed a glass case in which live lobsters crawled.

  “When the waiter comes, he will lie to you,” Lowell announced as they sat down. “He will offer the confidential information that most people think smaller lobsters are tastier. That’s simply not so.”

  The waiter did just that.

  “Bring us the five largest lobsters in the tank,” Lowell said. “And steamed clams all around. And beer for everybody.”

  “We’ll need separate checks, waiter,” Hanrahan said. He didn’t think that it mattered to Lowell that he had more money than God and thus could easily afford grabbing checks, but mooching was mooching, and Hanrahan was determined to pay his own way.

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said.

  Lowell looked at Hanrahan, smiled and shook his head.

  The beer was served immediately.

  “Do me a favor, Craig,” Hanrahan said. “Don’t needle Ellis.”

  “I hadn’t intended to,” Lowell said.

  “I think that business with the body on the boat was more of a strain than he’s letting on.”

  “Oh,” Lowell said. “I wondered why he’s been so flaky.”

  “Okay,” Hanrahan said.

  “Why the hell did you send him? I could just have easily gone.”

  “Felter said send him,” Hanrahan said.

  “He told me the Cubans tried to sell us the wrong body,” Lowell said.

  Two heads at the adjacent table turned. Lowell smiled politely at them. They smiled back, sure that they hadn’t heard correctly. Hanrahan shook his head.

  Lieutenant Ellis, now in uniform, arrived as the waiter was serving the steamed clams.

  “Bring the lieutenant a beer,” Lowell said.

  The waiter looked at Ellis.

  “I’ll have to see some proof he’s twenty-one,” the waiter said.

  Lowell took his water glass and poured it on the floor. Then he filled it with beer from a bottle. He set it in front of Ellis.

  “Now bring me a beer, please, and quickly,” Lowell said icily, “for I become very difficult and cause unpleasant scenes when I think an officer of the United States Army has been insulted by an unwashed plate jockey.”

  The maître d’, sensing trouble, hurried to the table.

  “Is everything all right, Colonel Lowell?”

  “We need a round of beer and another waiter,” Lowell said. “Aside from that, everything’s fine.”

  More heads had turned. The maître d’hôtel made a quick decision.

  “Of course,” he said. “Immediately.”

  “That’s a good fellow,” Lowell said. He picked up his beer glass.

  “Mud in your eye, Lieutenant Ellis,” he said.

  “Fuck him!” Warrant Officer (Junior Grade) Wojinski said.

  Embarrassed, but touched that Lowell had come so ferociously to his aid, Ellis took a sip of the beer. Then he put the glass down and gingerly removed the hot cheesecloth that covered his clams. He looked at them suspiciously. He was going to have to eat them, he understood. And the lobster that was going to follow. It would be the first time he had eaten either.

  What this was, he thought as he watched MacMillan fork a clam, dip it in melted butter, and then pop it in his mouth, was field training at Elgin Air Base all over again. High class but the same thing. Eating strange food because the alternatives were going hungry and looking like a jackass in front of the others.

  That made him think of Edward B. Eaglebury, whom they were going to bury tomorrow. Eaglebury, wearing the stripes of an army sergeant first class, had been a member of Ellis’s “A” Team (Training) 59-23 at Eglin. It wasn’t until after they had returned to Bragg, after they had spent all that time in Eglin’s swamps, finally reduced to killing and eating a wild hog, that he had learned Eaglebury was an Annapolis graduate and a lieutenant commander in the navy.

  “You seem dubious about the clams, Ellis,” Lowell said to him.

  “I never had any before, Colonel,” Ellis said. He forked a clam, dipped it, and put it in his mouth. It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Strange but not slimy. He had been afraid it would be slimy.

  “I thought all of you Green Berets were trained in eating exotic foods,” Lowell asked innocently. “Snakes, lizards, that sort of thing.”

  “Shut up, Lowell,” MacMillan said. “Lay off the Green Beret remarks.”

  “Oh, I am heartily sorry, Colonel MacMillan,” Lowell said mockingly. “It’s just that I am simply intrigued by all the stories I hear about those of you who wear the girl scout hats.”

  “Well, you won’t have to be intrigued much longer,” MacMillan said. “Those sonsofbitches at CONARC just outlawed them.”

  “How did you hear about that?” Hanrahan asked.

  “I got friends up there,” Mac said. “I was going to tell you just as soon as I had a minute alone with you.”

  “I found out two days ago,” Hanrahan said. “They sent me a copy of the directive first class.”

  “Can they make it stick?” Mac asked.

  “I’ll have to issue the order when we get back,” Hanrahan said.

  “Can Felter help?” Mac asked.

  “No,” Hanrahan said simply.

  “Shit!” Ellis said, more loudly than he intended.

  “I didn’t know that, of course,” Lowell said. “I was just kidding.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Lowell!” MacMillan said.

  He was far more angry at the loss of the green berets than at him, Lowell realized.

  “Watch your tongue, Mac,” Hanrahan snapped.

  “The reason the pride of Mauch Chunk feels he can talk to me in that obscene and ungentlemanly way, Ellis,” Lowell said lightly, “is that he has been privileged to know me since I was a PFC.”

  “‘Privileged’?” MacMillan said incredulously.

  “All right, then: ‘honored,’” Lowell said agreeably.

  “He was a lousy PFC, Ellis,” MacMillan said.

  The awkward moment, Lowell hoped, had passed.

  “I was very young and impressionable,” he said. “And I trusted MacMillan when he approached me and told me that he was going to make me an officer, and I would get more pay and nicer uniforms, and people would salute me and call me ‘sir.’ So I went along with him. And the next thing I know, I’m on a mountaintop in Greece, and they’ve lost my pay records. It’s three degrees colder than at the north pole, and there are no American uniforms, so I’m wearing British battle dress, which is made from rejected horse blankets, and people are shooting at me.”

  Hanrahan laughed.

  “MacMillan, meanwhile, covering his ass as always, has gone back to the States,” Lowell went on. “So you will understand why, whenev
er he says something to me, I put one hand on my wallet and the other on the family jewels.”

  “Ellis,” Hanrahan said. “That is known as disinformation. A complex web of lies built upon a fragile foundation of truth.”

  “It’s all true,” Lowell insisted. “Don’t revise history.”

  “I was advisor to a Greek mountain division, Ellis,” Hanrahan said. “And I requested experienced tank officers in the grade of captain and above. What they sent me was Lowell, who was eighteen years old and a second lieutenant, and who had never been inside a tank. That much, at least, is true.”

  “It’s all true,” Lowell repeated. “There I was, shivering in my horse-blanket uniform, eighteen years old, and the colonel, here, was making a daily speech about how the entire fate of western civilization as we know it was resting on my shoulders.”

  “Mr. Wojinski told me about you in Greece, Colonel,” Ellis said.

  “Wojinski lies,” Lowell said, nodding at the middle-aged warrant officer.

  “How do you know what I told him, Duke?” Wojinski asked.

  “The thing to remember about Colonel Lowell, Ellis,” Major Parker said, “is that he is insane. If you keep that in mind, everything else he does falls into place.”

  “I’m insane? I’m surrounded by people who eat snakes, jump out of perfectly functioning airplanes, and wear girl scout hats, and I’m insane?”

  “There he goes with that hat shit again,” MacMillan said, and then stopped as two waiters appeared with trays of steaming lobsters.

  “So far as the hat is concerned, Craig,” Colonel Hanrahan said, “we brought one for you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lowell said.

  “You will wear it tomorrow,” Hanrahan said. It was clearly an order.

  “May I ask why?” Lowell asked. It was a subordinate asking a question of a superior, not a challenge.

  “Because Lieutenant Commander Eaglebury was killed as a Green Beret, and will be carried to his grave by Green Berets. This will probably be the last ceremony in which people will wear green berets. Indulge me; we Irish are emotional and love symbolism.”

  “I am not, Colonel, a Green Beret,” Lowell said softly.