Special Ops Page 9

  “ ‘Kicked out’ is the term,” Colonel Lowell said. “It seems to be a family tradition. Geoff got the ax, too, from Fair Harvard, didn’t you, Geoff?”

  “Guilty,” Geoff said.

  “Do they send you those once-a-month pleas to send them a check?”

  “As regularly as clockwork,” Geoff said.

  “Anyway, Jack,” Geoff’s mother said. “Both Craig and Geoff started out as enlisted men, like you. They . . . left college . . . and as a consequence were drafted.”

  “I finished college, and I still got drafted,” Jack said.

  “And they earned their commissions on the battlefield,” Helene Craig said proudly.

  “I can’t let that slip by, Helene,” Lowell said. “Geoff got his commission that way, but I earned mine on the polo field.”

  “Excuse me?” Jack said.

  Barbara Bellmon giggled. “That’s absolutely true.”

  “There I was, Jack, the happiest draftee in the United States Constabulary,” Lowell said. “In Bad Nauheim, Germany. I was the golf pro for the brass. I got paid to play at least eighteen holes a day. I had a private room at the golf club, no reveille, no formations, no chicken—”

  “What’s the Constabulary?” Jack asked.

  “It was a military force consisting mainly of eighteen-year-olds, ” Lowell said seriously, “who raced around Germany in highly simonized tanks and armored cars, sirens screaming, while the Germans, who were supposed to be awed, had a hard time to keep from laughing out loud.”

  “It was more than that, and you know it,” Barbara said, adding, “My father was the commanding general.”

  “Her father played polo, and hated the French, which is certainly understandable,” Lowell said. “And then it came to his attention that I also played a little polo. I soon found myself playing as number three on the U.S. Constabulary polo team. That was even better than being the golf pro.”

  “Daddy was determined to beat the French team—” Barbara said.

  “Determined to really whip, humiliate, the French team,” Lowell interrupted. “A wholly commendable ambition. But there was a little problem. Frog officers won’t play with enlisted men, theirs or anybody else’s. And the star—I say, with all modesty— of the U.S. Constabulary polo team was PFC Lowell.”

  “So Daddy got Craig a commission,” Barbara said, chuckling.

  “Just like that?” Jack asked.

  “One day I was a PFC, and the next day a second lieutenant, Finance Corps—detailed Armor,” Lowell said. “My understanding of the arrangement was that I would get out of the Army as scheduled, and that my new exalted status as a commissioned officer and gentleman was my reward for helping Ol’ Porky kick the sh—soundly defeat the French.”

  “Porky?” Hanni asked.

  “Major General Porterman K. Waterford,” Lowell said. “His pals, of whom I was not one, called him ‘Porky.’ ”

  “And then my father passed on,” Barbara said softly.

  “At Baden-Baden,” Craig Lowell said. “The score was nine-two for the good guys. In the last minutes of the last chukker, Porky got his mallet on the ball, and with me keeping the Frogs out of the way for him, galloped three quarters of the way down the field, took a magnificent swat at the ball, and drove it squarely between the posts. That made it ten-two. Porky raised his hand to acknowledge the applause and fell out of his saddle dead. God, what a good way to go!”

  My God, Jack thought, that’s a true story.

  “Bob—he was a major—and I were at Fort Bragg when Dad died, so I didn’t meet Craig until later, at Fort Knox. He went to Greece first.”

  “Leave Greece out,” Craig said. “This is supposed to be the story of the Packard.”

  “I can’t leave Greece out,” Barbara said. “It’s part of the Craig Lowell saga.”

  Marjorie returned. She went to Lowell, hugged him, and kissed his cheek.

  “You’re a wicked, wicked man, and I love you very much.”

  Obviously, she is a little plastered, not that it’s going to do me any good, and just as obviously, she’s read whatever’s on that piece of paper he gave her, Jack thought. I wonder what the hell it was?

  “Greece?” Jack’s father asked. “What were you doing in Greece?”

  “Eating a lot of lamb, mostly,” Craig said. He looked at Jack.

  “Sandy Felter was there, and Red Hanrahan. He was our colonel.

  After which the Army sent me to Fort Knox. Pick up the saga there, Barbara.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Craig arrived at Fort Knox, and shortly thereafter the Greek ambassador and entourage arrived. There was a retreat parade, and the ambassador hung the largest medal I have ever seen on Craig.”

  “Cut to the chase, Barbara,” Lowell said. “This is supposed to be about my prescience in buying the Packard at a distress sale price.”

  She ignored him.

  “It’s absolutely enormous,” she went on. “It’s called . . . the Order of St. George and St. Andrew, and it’s about the size of a saucer, and it hangs around his neck on a purple thing—a sash, I guess.”

  “Well, there I was, Jack, in downtown Louisville,” Lowell interrupted, “and there in a showroom was the Packard. And I realized—I come from a family of bankers, as you know—that it would certainly, and rapidly, appreciate in value, so I naturally took advantage of the investment opportunity and bought it.”

  He obviously doesn’t want to talk about the medal, Jack decided. I never heard of it, but if it was presented by the Greek ambassador, it’s not the Greek good conduct medal.

  “You bought it because you were tiddly,” Barbara said, laughing. “You and Phil Parker had been drinking all afternoon in the bar at the Brown Hotel.” She paused and looked at Geoff. “You know Major Parker, don’t you, Geoff?”

  “The great big black guy? Flies Mohawks?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “He and Craig were roommates in the student officer company, ” Barbara Bellmon explained. “So they took the car to Knox and started driving it around the post.”

  “I drove it around the post,” Craig corrected her, “with the top down, and with Phil riding in the backseat, graciously returning the salutes of all who saw us.” He smiled at the memory.

  “They were blissfully unaware that the post commander also had a yellow Packard convertible of which he was very proud . . .”

  “He had the cheap one, the 120, two doors, straight-eight engine, with the spare tire hidden in the trunk,” Lowell said. “The one outside is a V-16, and proudly carries its spare tires in the front fenders.”

  “. . . and the post commander,” Barbara went on, “naturally came to the conclusion that there were two second lieutenants in the student officer company who were ridiculing him. It was awkward for Bob. The general knew that Phil’s father had rescued Bob—”

  “Which is another story, Mother,” Marjorie said. “Which you can tell everyone tomorrow. Jack and I have had a busy day, and want to go to bed.” She stopped, horrified at what she had just said.

  “Presumably separately?” Lowell said, making it worse.

  “Craig,” Helene Craig said indignantly, “that was uncalled-for. ”

  “So you just kept the car, Colonel?” Jack asked, quickly changing the subject.

  Lowell looked at him with gratitude in his eyes.

  “I gave it to my mother’s husband, for services rendered,” Lowell said. “He collected cars. He had it restored from the frame up. And when he died, he left it to me, and I didn’t have the heart to sell it, so I shipped it down here.”

  He looked at Marjorie.

  “Sweetheart, everyone knows that was a slip of the tongue. Now kiss Jack, chastely, and go to bed. I’ll take Jack to Jack’s bed, and he’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll kiss him later,” Marjorie said. “It’s not a spectator sport. Good night, everyone.”

  She turned and marched out of the room.

  Christ, I don’t even ge
t a good-night kiss, chaste or otherwise.

  “Barbara Bellmon, especially with a couple of drinks in her, tends to take long trips down memory lane,” Colonel Lowell said to Sergeant Portet just inside the door to House C. “But she’s one of the world’s good people. And you’re damned lucky to be able to marry a girl just like the girl who married dear ol’ Bob Bellmon. ”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “I’m going to get out of here at first light,” Lowell said. “The Packard will be at the airstrip, and the keys in the ashtray.”

  “Colonel, I don’t know . . . I don’t want to ding that magnificent car,” Jack said.

  “Then don’t ding it,” Lowell said. “The boat—House C is closest to the ocean—will be here at half past seven.” He pointed to the rear of the house. “Breakfast aboard. Have a good time, Jack. And welcome to the family. The first time I saw you and Marjorie together, I thought that was going to happen.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Good night, Jack,” Lowell said. “Sleep well.”

  Fat fucking chance of that. And it’s probably a good thing I didn’t get a good-night kiss. Then I would really have a pair of blue balls.

  “Thank you, sir. Good night, Colonel.”

  Lowell touched his shoulder and walked toward his bedroom, and Jack walked to his, which was on the opposite side of the house.

  He turned on the television set and flipped through the channels. There was a Cuban channel, on which a splendidly bosomed Cuban beauty undulated as she crooned a love song.

  Exactly what I don’t need.

  There was nothing else on he was interested in watching.

  Fuck it!

  He took off his clothing, decided they were all he would need to go fishing in the morning, tossed them on a chair, and got in bed naked and turned off the lights.

  He had tossed and turned for perhaps ten minutes when he became aware of a banging on the sliding glass door of the room.

  What the hell is that?

  With my luck, it’s an alligator.

  More likely, the wind picked up and is knocking a chair or something against the class.

  Christ!

  He got out of bed, stormed to the window, moved the curtain out of the way, and slid open the door.

  Marjorie stood there, in a bathrobe.

  “Holy Christ!” he said, and opened the door.

  “Obviously, he told you to expect me? Or do you always sleep in the raw?”

  “Jesus, wait a minute,” he said, and covered his groin with his hands and went for the bathrobe.

  He went back to her.

  She handed him a sheet of paper.

  It was obviously the same sheet of paper Colonel Lowell had given her.

  On it was drawn both a map and a surprisingly good cartoon. The cartoon showed Jack sitting glumly, forlornly alone in a room. Above his head was a picture of what he was thinking: Marjorie, in a bathing suit, with an angel’s crest around her head, kneeling, her hands folded in prayer.

  The map showed the route Marjorie should take from House B to House C if she felt the urge to join him.

  There was a message:

  “If Saint Marjorie would like to bring comfort to a lonely soldier, here’s the route. Love, Uncle Craig.”

  “Oh, baby,” Jack said.

  “God, I love you,” Marjorie said.

  She turned and closed the door and the curtains, then walked to the bed and, with her back to him, took off her bathrobe and pajamas. Then she turned to him.

  “I think you can take the bathrobe off now,” she said.

  [ TWO ]

  15 Nautical Miles SSE of Key Largo, Florida

  1225 4 December 1964

  Captain Jean-Philippe Portet sat in one of the two, heavy, stainless-steel fishing chairs in the stern of the boat, and Sergeant Jacques Portet sat in the other. They both held bottles of Heineken beer.

  Jeanine Portet, who was eleven, gangly, and freckled, was standing, her arms folded over her chest, waiting impatiently for one of the rods to get something on its line. Helene’s Passion VI was trolling for whatever might be down there—Geoff suggested they might get lucky and run into Spanish, and maybe even king mackerel—with four lines, one port, one starboard, and two centerboard.

  Jeanine didn’t care what kind of fish took the bait, just as long as she could jump to the bent rod, take it from the holder, and wrestle the fish into the boat.

  She was one of three females aboard. The other two, Marjorie Bellmon and Ursula Craig, were sunning themselves on the forward deck. Barbara Bellmon, Hanni Portet, and Helene Craig “thought they’d pass,” and Porter Craig excused himself without giving any reason.

  “He wants to play with the kid,” Geoff said. “He’s nuts about the kid, but playing Grandpa is beneath his dignity.”

  Geoff was running the boat. Her full-time captain, a deeply tanned, muscular man in his forties, found himself reduced to being more or less the steward. He didn’t seem to mind either being the steward or having Geoff at the controls. He told them he had joined the Craigs with Helene’s Passion III, and had absolute faith in Geoff’s ability to handle the boat, because he had taught him, starting at age nine, the fine points of small-boat handling.

  Jack was half dozing, thinking of, for perhaps the tenth time, what Marjorie had told him in the very early hours of the morning. It was astonishing, in this day and age, but he believed it.

  “You may not believe this, or even want to hear it, but I will only be a partial hypocrite when I march down the aisle in bridal—virginal—white.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  "Our first time, on the beach at Panama City, was my first time, period.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, and I thought you should know.”

  “Well, you may not believe this, or even want to hear it, but you certainly show a natural talent for the sport.”

  “You bastard!” she had said, and straddled him, and started to pound his chest with her fists. He had caught her hands and they’d looked at each other, and she had changed her mind about what she wanted to do to him.

  “I’ve decided it’s time to get out of the Congo,” his father said suddenly, breaking Jack’s reverie. “Out of Africa, period.”

  “Really?” Jack asked, surprised. “Why, all of a sudden?”

  His father raised his hand and pointed to Jeanine.

  “That’s reason one,” he said. “When I was sitting in Léopoldville, wondering what that lunatic Olenga might do to her—might already have done to her and Hanni—I was sick with shame that I hadn’t gotten them out when I first began to think about it.”

  “Dad—”

  “Let me finish,” his father said.

  Jack made a “have at it” gesture with his hand, and took a pull at his Heineken.

  “The first time I thought about it was when Kasavubu made Mobutu chief of staff of the Army. That was more than four years ago.”

  Joseph Kasavubu became the first president of the Republic of the Congo when it became independent in 1960.

  “Why?” Jack asked. “I thought you liked Mobutu. I do.”

  “I do,” Jean-Phillipe Portet said. “I liked him when he was a corporal in the Force Publique and I liked him when he was working for L’Avenir. And I still like him—a little less, frankly— now. But he was—is—no more qualified to be a lieutenant general and chief of staff of the Army than I am. I knew that, but I didn’t want to face facts.”

  Captain Portet took a pull at his beer, then went on:

  “Our friend Joseph Désiré Mobutu is now calling himself Mobutu Sese Seko. And did you see the leopard-skin overseas hat?”

  Jack chuckled.

  "Yeah, I saw the hat. What the hell, he’s an African. Why not?”

  “I had dinner with him the night before the Belgians jumped on Stanleyville,” Jack’s father said.

  “ ‘The Belgians’?” Jack quoted. “Not, with chauvinist prid
e, ‘We Belgians’?”

  His father chuckled, but not, Jack sensed, really happily.

  “Let me put it this way,” his father said. “I had dinner with Mobutu Sese Seko the night before my American son, making his American father’s heart beat with pride, jumped on Stanleyville with some other parachutists, who I understand were Belgians.”

  “I’m missing something here, Dad.”

  “When we got off the airplane from Frankfurt,” his father said, “The immigration guy looked at my passport, did a double take, and then said, ‘Well, you’ve really been away a long time, haven’t you? Welcome home, Mr. Portet.’ ”

  “I forgot you had an American passport,” Jack said. “You used that to get into this country?”

  “More important, I have American citizenship,” his father said. “Awarded for the faithful service during wartime of Captain Portet, J. P., U.S. Army Air Corps, 0-785499. I never thought much about it, really, until she was born.” He inclined his head toward Jeanine. “We had three choices: Hanni’s German, so we could have gone to the German consulate in what was then Léopoldville, and registered her as a German. Or, going to the U.S. Consulate, and getting her an American passport. Or going to the Belgian Registry office, making her a Belgian. It didn’t take Hanni and me long to decide that Jeanine would be better off all-around as an American. So Jeanine ‘came home,’ too, after eleven years abroad.”

  “You never told me any of this, Dad,” Jack said.

  Captain Portet chuckled again.

  “The immigration guy took a look at Jeanine’s passport and said, ‘This has expired. You’ll have to get her another one before she leaves the country again.’ ”

  “But this isn’t her first trip here?”

  “She always traveled, as we all did, from the time I went down there to start up Air Congo, on a Congolese passport,” his father said.

  “What are you going to do, move here?” Jack asked incredulously.

  His father did not respond directly.

  “I had dinner with Mobutu the night before the drop on Stanleyville, ” Captain Portet said. “Several significant things were said. He told me he had just come from seeing Kasavubu, who was drunk, and in a rage against the Belgians, who were, he is absolutely convinced, behind Olenga. Mobutu said nothing he could say would shake this conviction, and he quickly stopped trying.”