by Ted Gup
Boteler marveled at the Brits’ ability to tune out the violence. “Through it all,” he wrote, “the British cling grimly to their social traditions; the Queen’s birthday was celebrated the other night in all due pomp and splendor, in as heavily-guarded a location as you could imagine. The invitations for the affair carried a little note requesting everyone to check their personal weapons at the door.”
Four days later, on June 6, 1956, Boteler wrote his brother, Charles, and Charles’s wife, Deenie. “I certainly covered a lot of ground in switching from Korea to this place, although I suppose the change would be remarkable in any place after Korea. One thing is certain—I’m not likely to get bored from inactivity here. So far, as an American, I’m a man nobody hates, which can’t be said by anybody else—except other Americans.” Boteler wrote admiringly of the mountains. Each Sunday he would go for a swim in the Mediterranean.
But the security precautions were taking an ever greater toll on him. “All the restrictions imposed by the trouble have made living a little difficult,” he wrote. “It’s hard to get around at night, which cramps my style no end, and you always have to be careful where you go, and how . . . Still, with reasonably prudent behavior, the chances of getting involved in anything are almost non-existent—about the only way would be by chance.”
Three days later, on June 9, he seemed to relax somewhat. In a letter to his father that began “Dear Dad,” and was timed to arrive for Father’s Day, he wrote, “Most every night EOKA drops a bomb on the front porch of some Englishman’s home, making a big noise and not much else.” His Greek lessons were going well and he was becoming accustomed to his diplomatic cover. “I diddle around with routine consular tasks, such as issuing visas, dealing with problems of assorted Americans, etc. The rest of my time is spent trying to find out what’s going on here in the political field. This job will be a good deal different than the last one I held; it shouldn’t prove nearly so demanding of time and nerves, but a great deal more interesting and rewarding.”
The week passed. The temperature climbed to 112 degrees. Boteler was now making friends with a number of local Greeks, some of whom took him to the racetrack on Sunday. There he bet every race and lost each one. In his off-hours, when he wasn’t playing bridge with the locals, he was reading. He had polished off a number of novels since arriving, among them Fräulein and Islands in the Sun.
On June 11, 1956, he wrote Anne. “Dear Sweetheart,” the letter began. He described his efforts to meet as many locals as possible, part of his covert assignment to gather intelligence on the political situation on the island and to find a way to penetrate the terrorist group EOKA. Near the end of his letter he wrote, “I’ve finished ‘Marjorie Morningstar’ which I found interesting, although certainly not very weighty. It’s about a girl whose true love runs off overseas because she won’t go to bed with him. You never quite find out whether the author thinks she was right or wrong. In case you’re wondering, that’s not why I came to Cyprus, incidentally.”
Boteler described the grand celebration for the Queen’s birthday. Some fourteen hundred people were in attendance amid the strictest of security, but, lamented Boteler, “no dancing—after $400 worth of preparation for the big moment, I didn’t have a chance to show off at all.”
He closed, “Your letters arrive regular as clockwork—every day, almost, or so it seems. I’ll have to set a schedule if I’m going to keep up with you. Be good, darling; I miss you. Love—Bill.”
There followed another letter five days later. It was dated June 16, 1956. Boteler was at the consulate. It was afternoon. He had just finished reading a letter from Anne. “There are signs that the situation is improving here,” he wrote. “The British appear to be having much more success in dealing with EOKA, although that’s certainly not the answer by itself. I personally don’t expect any radical political changes for quite some time, but then I could be wrong.” His letter ended simply. “Well, back to work . . . Don’t worry too much about missing me—I like it. All my love—Bill.”
The next day, June 17, the British continued their massive man-hunt for EOKA’s leader, Grivas, who was believed to be in the forests of the Troodos Mountains. For ten days some five thousand crack troops worked to cordon off sixty-five square miles of rugged mountain terrain, closing in on their prey, as if driving a tiger out of the concealment of high grass. But even as the British believed they were closing in, the wily Grivas had already slipped through their clutches and had given orders for a renewed terrorist assault on British positions throughout the island.
The hunters became the hunted. As British troops in the mountains narrowed their search, a forest fire broke out, likely the work of EOKA. The winds changed and many soldiers were within range of exploding petrol tanks. Twenty soldiers died and sixteen were severely burned. At an abandoned campsite all that was found of the elusive Grivas was a dashing photo of the mustachioed leader wearing a beret, a cardigan, a Sam Browne belt, and a .45 automatic slung at his side.
That same evening, June 17, 1956, Boteler worked late. He was tired and needed a break. He had spotted a small café, the Little Soho, in the old walled part of the city, that he had been eager to try. By then the U.S. consul, Raymond F. Courtney, had warned American personnel not to visit the old city at night and to avoid popular restaurants. Each member of the consulate had promised to honor the restriction. Courtney considered such outings too risky.
On the way out of the consulate, Boteler bumped into Courtney and told him he was headed for the Little Soho. Courtney raised an eyebrow as if to remind him of the restrictions. He told Boteler that if he felt he had to go because it was in the line of duty—related to his collecting intelligence—then he understood. Otherwise, it was simply too dangerous. Boteler nodded and went out into the hot night air.
He reached the Little Soho shortly after 7:30 P.M. It was a small café on a narrow lane, barely wide enough for a British jeep, and just a block off Ledra Street, dubbed “Murder Mile” for all who had recently been killed there. The café’s windows were covered with wire to deter any would-be terrorist from hurling a grenade into the restaurant. Ordinarily the door was locked and opened only when the owner, Mr. Tunk, recognized one of his patrons. But on this night of stifling heat, it was too hot to observe that precaution.
The door was wide open, letting in a welcomed breeze that offset the heat from the kitchen and its ovens, plainly visible through a large plate-glass window. Inside were nine or ten tables. The specialty was Hungarian fare. It was known to be especially hospitable to the British and their Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Sometimes it even served as an impromptu command post when the Brits made security sweeps through the city, raiding Cypriot homes and businesses or searching for caches of weapons and fugitive terrorists.
When Boteler arrived, many of the tables were taken. Boteler took a seat at a small table closest to the door. Just behind him was the owner’s parrot, perched on a wooden swing in his cage. Boteler nodded a hello to several groups of men whom he had come to recognize as fellow Americans in the preceding week, though he did not know them by name. Despite the consulate’s warnings and the pledges by U.S. personnel not to venture out unnecessarily, most of those in the restaurant were Americans, and all of these, CIA.
It was curious that Boteler, while the only employee of the CIA’s Plans Division on Cyprus, was virtually surrounded by covert CIA officers posing as State Department employees. They were there to man one of the CIA’s largest radio relay facilities. The age of Morse code was in its final years, and these men, tethered to headsets and keys, spent their days transmitting all the open and encrypted messages that flowed between Washington and its embassies throughout the Mideast, including Baghdad, Kabul, Ankara, Damascus, and Cairo.
Cyprus was the ideal spot for such a facility. It was free of industrial interference and centrally located. On clear days the CIA communicators could even listen in on the conversations of cabdrivers idling at hotels in Cairo and Beirut. Their
division of the CIA was known by the cryptonym KU CLUB. It was the communications agency within the Agency.
On this hot night in mid-June, many of them had gathered in disregard of security restrictions that they had signed and initialed only months earlier. They had also been advised to do whatever they could to distinguish themselves from the British, who were targets of the terrorists. One long-standing CIA suggestion was to wear bow ties, something the British never did. But on this night they could not be bothered. They were just out to enjoy a cold beer and a decent meal.
Seated behind Boteler, at a table for two, were Jim Dace and Jim Coleman. Dace was thirty-one and dining on one of his favorite meals, chicken livers and rice. At a larger table in the center of the restaurant, fifteen feet from Boteler, sat Chuck Groff and Donald P. Mulvey. Mulvey was an Agency “commo” man who maintained the radio equipment. He had arrived in Cyprus six days earlier. With them was Jack Bane, who was enjoying a steak and nursing a Tom Collins. He was a CIA engineer who worked on the heating and air-conditioning units at the relay station.
At precisely 9:39 P.M. the movie let out up the street and a commotion could be heard as people exited the theater. Just then two boys, neither yet in their teens, appeared at the door of the Little Soho restaurant. Each had something in his hands, an oblong pipelike object that they tossed into the restaurant. Both objects came to rest beneath Boteler’s table. The boys ran, disappearing into an alleyway.
Dace remembers the smell of punk like the Fourth of July. It was the fuse burning, the scent of cordite. Coleman, too, smelled it. Their glances met, then Dace turned away for a second, and when he looked back in Coleman’s direction, he found Coleman curled up on the floor. Dace threw himself as far from the smell as he could, crouching so low he remembers it was as if he were trying to crawl into his own shoes.
He looked up just long enough to see Boteler rising from his chair, attempting to distance himself from the impending blast. But Boteler’s feet became entangled in the legs of the chair.
Groff stood up and flipped the table over for protection. In the brief moment that followed, Bane and Groff dove to the floor. Mulvey remembers hearing the hiss of a fuse.
Then came the first of two deafening blasts.
The room filled with smoke. The lights went out. Shards of glass from both the front window and the rear one by the kitchen flew in all directions. Shrapnel ripped into Boteler’s heart, his stomach, and his legs. And still, somehow, he stumbled forward toward the door.
When the bombs exploded, whatever came out of them skidded across the terrazzo floor. Bane, who was lying facedown, felt a hot piece of shrapnel slash at his chest, leaving what would be an oblong scar. It came to a rest in his neck, a quarter inch from his artery. His corduroy pants were tattered and bloodied. In all he suffered five wounds, the deepest one being in his right leg. Dace felt the searing of shrapnel in his buttocks and feet. His shoes and pants were full of blood. He looked down to see his left hand, between the forefinger and thumb, peeled open like a rose.
Dace gathered himself up and staggered to the door, blood squishing in his shoes. There, lying in the doorway, was Boteler, his stomach opened by the blast and his legs mangled. The blood from his left femoral artery rose like a gusher, three feet into the air. A British soldier looked on in horror. “My God,” cried the soldier, “he is still alive.” But an instant later the blood stopped and Boteler was still. The life had gone out of him. He was twenty-six.
The concrete walls and floor of the restaurant had been pocked by fist-sized holes from the shrapnel, but somehow the parrot that perched directly behind Boteler had survived the blast with only a few ruffled feathers.
Greek Cypriot witnesses to the explosion milled about the scene, showing no apparent concern either for the explosion or for the young man’s body lying in the doorway. None of them offered assistance to the wounded, and several were observed to be grinning and chatting away as if at a social gathering.
Boteler’s body was taken to the British military hospital. Bane and Dace were taken into surgery. Both recovered. Shortly after the attack, police took into custody three youths. Privately the police admitted they doubted the boys were the perpetrators.
That night, in Washington, Boteler’s father, Charles, received a telegram. “Department regrets to inform you of the sudden death your son at Nicosia as result bombing cafe, and extends deepest sympathy. Advise religious preference and disposition effects and remains.” Signed “Myron S. Garland, Department of State.”
News of Boteler’s death spread quickly. Anne Paffenbarger’s mother handed her the morning paper. That was how she learned that Boteler had been killed. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and collapsed on her bed, and spent the day crying hysterically. Her father knelt down beside the bed and tried to comfort her, but it was no use. For a long time she would wake up in the depths of the night sobbing uncontrollably.
Boteler’s teammates from Haverford learned one by one of Boteler’s death from the morning paper or from the news on their car radios. As the first American fatality in the Cyprus conflict, his death was front-page news. But it was reported as the death of a State Department employee, a vice-consul. Never was there the suggestion that he was a covert operative of the CIA. His cover was intact.
Boteler’s body was shipped to Washington’s Gawler Funeral Home at 1752 Pennsylvania Avenue. His diplomatic passport—number 7758—an essential part of his cover identity, was returned to the State Department.
In Washington the State Department declared Boteler’s killing “a blind and senseless” act. In Nicosia Governor Sir John Harding expressed his sorrow to the U.S. consulate and visited the two Americans still convalescing in the hospital. In Athens the Greek minister of foreign affairs, Evanghelos Averoff, expressed that government’s “deepest regret” at Boteler’s death but also did not miss a chance to exploit it for political advantage. “As all Greeks,” he said, “I am deeply saddened by the fact that American blood was shed on the martyred island of Cyprus, which is under British Administration.” In London former president Harry Truman was asked by reporters if Boteler’s death might affect U.S. views of the Cyprus problem. “I sincerely hope that it will not have any terrible repercussion at home, although it is likely to do that,” he said. “I shall be very happy indeed if that situation can be cleared up and settled.”
There were also private expressions of sympathy to the Boteler family. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose brother, Allen, headed the CIA, wrote Boteler’s father the day after the killing. “He died in the line of duty, courageously advancing the high interests of the United States. In the short time he served with the Department of State he earned the friendship and admiration of all his colleagues.”
The CIA, even in its official letter of condolence, did not let on that Boteler had still been working for the Agency. Deputy Director Lieutenant General Charles Pearre Cabell wrote Boteler’s father: “Since we knew him better and longer than his more recent associates, I can add that his service with us was marked by rapid advancement and assignments of unusual responsibility. He had been promoted twice and a third promotion was in process when he resigned to accept the appointment with the Department of State in Cyprus, an assignment which he knew to be hazardous and challenging. During his employment with this Agency, William was characterized by his superiors as ‘an outstanding young officer’ with special reference to his initiative, drive, managerial ability, high standards of accomplishment, and acceptance of responsibility. We regarded him as a young man of highest promise, whose death is a serious loss to the public service.”
Boteler’s funeral was held at 2:30 P.M. on Thursday, June 21. Family, friends, and CIA colleagues gathered at Gawler’s Funeral Home, a few blocks from the White House and just five blocks from CIA headquarters. Seven pallbearers carried the casket. Three were teammates and friends from Boteler’s days at Haverford—Hal Cragin, who had sold him his life insurance policy five years earlier, Bud Garrison
, and Ed Hibberd. A fourth was Haverford line coach William Doherty. The other three men had been Boteler’s childhood friends or under his watch at summer camp.
As organist Marguerite Brice played “Hark! A Voice Saith All Are Mortal,” mourners entered the room and penned their names into a book of remembrance. Among those in attendance were Archibald Macintosh, acting president of Haverford, Assistant Secretary of State George V. Allen, and CIA colleague Frank Laubinger, who had lunched with Boteler a month earlier and had tried to stifle his own ominous premonitions. There, too, was Hugh J. Cunningham, a senior Agency officer who signed the book “representing Mr. Allen W. Dulles,” director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Following the funeral, Boteler’s body was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery on Pershing Hill, not far from where the general himself is interred.
Six days after his death, at 10:30 Saturday morning, June 23, a memorial service was held in Boteler’s honor at the Church of St. Paul in Nicosia. The archdeacon of Cyprus, A. W. Adeney, offered a prayer that began, “Look down, O Lord, upon our island and illuminate it with thy celestial brightness, and from the sons of lights, vanish the deeds of darkness. ” The U.S. flag flew beside the altar. Rarer still was the vision of a Greek monk and a Turkish religious leader there together, along with the consuls of every nation with representatives on the island. Hardly anyone in attendance had had the chance to meet Bill Boteler. He had been on Cyprus barely one month.