W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels

by The Colonels(Lit)

  "No," she said. "Despite her having heard you saying she looked and talked like a character in a New Yorker cartoon, Mrs. Pelton insists on paying for the reception. That's the bride's family's responsibility, anyway. Everything else, Bob and I are paying for, and that's not open to debate. You know how Bob feels about the Graf. And, luckily, we can afford it."

  Lowell took a pen from his pocket and wrote a name on the guest list.

  "Who did I forget?"

  He nodded his head toward It. Colonel Tom Warner.

  "Since you have on here the name of every other sonofabitch who ever wore a uniform," he said, "might as well include him. He's both a nice guy and a comer." It had been a surrender, Barbara Bellmon thought, rather than a long and bloody battle. In his own way, she knew, Craig Lowell was grateful to her. Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center Washington, D.C. 0830 Hours, 20 June 19S9

  The commanding general of the Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center, a physician and a major general, was more than a little surprised by the telephone call he received from the major general commanding the Military District of Washington.

  "Are you sure you've got the right woman, Ernie?" he asked. Ernie was sure.

  "I'll take care of it," the commanding general of Walter Reed said. He buzzed for his secretary.

  "Will you ask Colonel Horter to come see me right away?" he directed.

  "And arrange for a car... no, tell my driver to stand by."

  "Yes, sir."

  Lieutenant Colonel Florence Horter, Army Nurse Corps, reported to the Medical Center commander in operating theater greens. He noticed that there was a spot of blood on her lower sleeve. Colonel Horter might not be awed enough by his summons to change into a uniform, but he didn't think she would purposely show up in bloody greens.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?"

  It. Colonel Horter was a plump, plain-faced woman of fifty-five. She had been an army nurse for eighteen years, and now had a number of highly placed friends in the army medical establishment. The commander had been told by two distinguished surgeons one in the service and one now teaching at Johns Hopkins that they preferred Florence Horter as a gas passer over anyone else they knew, including all the doctors of medicine who chose to specialize in that branch of the healing arts.

  Her record had seen her assigned to Walter Reed, where she was carried on the TOE as a senior operating room nurse. She functioned, in fact, as a gas-passer, unless she honored some distinguished cutter by volunteering to assist him. She had recently developed the unfortunate habit of referring to interns and some residents as

  "Sonny," which offended their sense of dignity enough so that official complaints had been raised. She was also feuding with the Chief of Nursing Services, whom she had described as a "company clerk in a skirt."

  But while she enjoyed the respect of some eminent physicians, she was not the sort of woman who traveled in high places, and she was about to travel in about the highest Washington had to offer.

  "Colonel," the Medical Center commander said, "it is the desire of the commanding general of the Military District of Washington that you present yourself at the V. I.P waiting room of the Air Force Special Missions Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base not later than 1100 hours.

  Dress is optional, which I take to mean you can either wear what my wife would call a dressy dress, or army blue."

  "What's going on?"

  "The Military District commander if indeed he knew-did not elect to take me into his confidence. You will return to Washington later this afternoon. My driver will take you out there."

  "And you don't know what it's all about?"

  "I haven't the faintest," he confessed.

  (Five) Andrews Air Force Base Washington, D.C. 1105 Hours, 20 June 1959

  The dispatch of Air Force Special Missions Flight 6 20 09, a V. I.P configured C- 131 (that is, an air force Convair originally configured to serve as Air Force Two when the Vice President did not require a larger aircraft) was delayed five minutes by the failure of Colonel Sanford T. Felter to appear.

  He was brought by a yellow-and-black checkered pickup truck out to the aircraft as it sat just off the threshold to the active runway. The stair to the rear door was lowered and Felter and an army nurse (of all things) in full uniform, her hair blown out of place by the prop blast of the idling engines, came up the stairs.

  The DCSINTEL was aboard the plane with several assistants, as was the Deputy Chief of Naval Intelligence. And so were two (of four) Deputy Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency; a Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and Spires I. Ranaldo, an assistant Secretary of State with some kind of vague, high-level intelligence function. None of these officials were used to being kept waiting, and especially. not by a light bird. But no one asked Feller where he had been. They were afraid that the simple question, "Where the hell have you been?" would get the same answer Felter had often given before: "I was with the President."

  The flight to Idlewild International on Long Island took about forty minutes, but they were in the stack over New Yotk for nearly an hour, until the pilot demanded a landing priority. The glistening Convair taxied up to the terminal at almost the same moment as Lufthansa Flight 606 (inbound from Frankfurt am Main) did.

  "Perhaps," Felter announced loudly, "it would be best if Colonel Horter and I went to meet the Graf."

  It wasn't a command, certainly, but it was a reminder that there was a chance one or more of them would be recognized.

  "I'll come, Felter," Spires I. Ranaldo announced, "and get them through customs."

  "I didn't thihk about that," Felter confessed.

  The three of them went down the stairs of the rear door, and came to a metal door leading to the terminal from the parking ramp under the passenger ramp. The door was normally locked, but an officer in the uniform of a Customs and Immigration Service captain was waiting for them, holding it open.

  Spires I. Ranaldo had not really gone with Felter and the nurse to get Generalmajor Graf von Greiffenberg through customs. He went along to make sure the orders he had issued from Washington were smoothly carried out.

  When Lufthansa 606 had contacted New York Approach Control, there had been an inflight advisory: Generalmajor Graf von Greiffenberg and party were to exit the aircraft before other passengers; they would be met by officials who would clear their baggage through customs as it was taken from the airplane.

  The pilot of Lufthansa 606 was not surprised. Before the passengers had been boarded at Frankfurt, the aircraft and all luggage loaded aboard had been subjected to a minute inspection. The Graf and his party had been the last to board the aircraft, and they had come to the airplane on the ground, alone and by car, rather than through the terminal and on the bus. And when he'd taken off and was passing through 20,000 feet, there had been a "coincidental" meeting of a flight of Luftwaffe fighter planes on a "training mission" that had headed on the same course, two thousand feet higher, until they were out over the Atlantic.

  The Graf was preceded off the aircraft into the terminal by two well-dressed, burly young men, and by his grandson, a twelve-year-old blond boy already starting to turn gawky.

  "My dear Felter," the Graf said, pushing past his escorts to offer his hand to Felter. "What a pleasant surprise!"

  His English was flawless, as much American as British.

  "Uncle Sandy," the boy said, offering Felter his hand. Felter hugged him, which seemed to make the boy uncomfortable not at the affection, but because he thought it made him look like a child.

  And then the Graf saw Florence Horter.

  "My dear Colonel," he said, and took the hand she offered as a handshake and bent over it instead and kissed it.

  It. Colonel Hortei' blushed.

  "Nice to see you, General," she said.

  "What do you think?" the Graf said, pushing the boy toward her proudly.

  "He's beautiful!" Florence Horter said. She blurted: "He looks like both of them!" "Yes," the Graf said. "I've ofte
n thought so. Peter, this is Colonel Horter. She's a friend of your father's, and she was a very good friend to your mother when your mother really needed a friend."

  "How do you do?" Peter-Paul Lowell said, formally, offering his hand.

  She took the hand, and then hugged the boy to her.

  "Your mother would be very proud of you," she said. After she let him go, she turned away and fished in her purse. She came out with a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

  The Graf by then had been introduced to Spires I. Ranaldo, who took the opportunity to express his hope that while the Graf was in Washington, he could find an hour or so for a talk with the Secretary of State.

  When the Graf, graciously, said that he wa honored by the invitation and would make every effort to find the time, Ranaldo was smugly pleased that he had outfoxed the others on the plane, all of whom wanted a private conversation with the Graf.

  They went down the stairs to the parking ramp, and up into the Convair.

  Right on their heels came three Customs and Immigration officers bearing the luggage.

  "Idlewild ground control, Air Force Four at TWA six for taxi and takeoff."

  "Air Force Four is cleared to taxi from TWA six via taxiway three two to the threshold of the active, one zero."

  And three minutes later, after the Convair had traveled down a taxiway parallel to the one on which twenty-three other aircraft waited for their turn to take off: "Idlewild departure control clears Air Force Four as number one for takeoff on one zero. New York area control clears Air Force Four direct Washington Vector Three. Report passing through one zero thousand."

  "Air Force Four rolling."

  Forty-six pilots in twenty-three airplanes either cursed the god damned bureaucrats jumping ahead of them in line, or wondered who the hell Air Force Four was.

  In Air Force Four, Generalmajor Graf von Greiffenberg took It. Colonel Florence Horter's hand in his.

  "Tell me, Florence," he said. "I may call you Florence?"

  "Sure."

  "Have you met the lady?"

  "Yeah. Craig brought her over to my apartment a couple of nights ago."

  "And?"

  "She's all right, General. She's a lot like him. I suppose that comes with having all that money. Good looking. Well stacked. I think they'll be able to make it all right."

  "Good," the Graf said, squeezing her hand. "Good!"

  (Six) The Farm Fairfax County. Virginia 1130 Hours, 21 June 1959

  Barbara Bellmon finally stopped Craig Lowell's nonsense by going out onto the middle of the unpaved road leading to the farm and holding up her arms like a traffic cop devoutly praying that Craig had taught P.P.

  how to drive well enough to stop the Mercedes before he ran into her.

  She thought she alone understood what Craig was up to. Everyone else Bob, the Graf, Sharon, her own kids thought it was another manifestation of Lowell's irresponsibility, to teach a twelve-year-old to drive.. in a Mercedes, for God's sake! And on the day when he was to be married!

  "I learned how to drive when I was twelve," Lowell had answered. "And I need something to do, anyway." It wasn't that, Barbara thought, or it wasn't only that. Lowell was delighting in his son, which was a perfectly normal thing for a father to do and especially understandable for a father who saw his son as rarely as Lowell saw his.

  The Mercedes skidded to a stop four feet from her.

  "I hate to do to this to you, P. P.," Barbara said, walking to the boy at the wheel. "But the sheriff is sending some people to control the traffic, and if they catch you doing this, they're going to put your father in jail." "I see," he said.

  "Balls," Lowell said.

  "Would they really take him to jail?" Peter-Paul Lowell asked.

  "Yes, I'm afraid they would," she said, as much to Lowell as to his son.

  "We'll take one more lap around the block," Lowell announced. "And then we'll quit. OK?"

  "Please," the boy said.

  The "block" Lowell referred to was the dirt road running around the Farm. Each leg was a mile long.

  "Once more, Craig," Barbara Bellmon said, and stepped aside.

  Spinning its wheels, the Mercedes roared off. Lowell turned around in his seat and thumbed his nose at her, a wide smile on his face.

  She went through the gate in the stone fence. There had been no place to erect the caterer's tent except on the tennis courts, because all the fields had been sown. That meant that the tennis courts would have to be resurfaced after three hundred people half of them women in high heels had walked all over them for five or six hours. They would have to pay for that. Cynthia's aunt was paying for the reception, but Barbara could hardly send her a bill for Repairs to Two Damaged Tennis Courts.

  Not that she minded; but there were going to be still other expenses involved in getting Craig to the altar. Bob had insisted that they pick up the bill for the bachelor party the night before: one hundred men eighty percent of them officers at the Army and Navy Club. One hundred dinners at $11.50 each plus whatever the bar bill would he was quite a bit of money.

  And the simple little lunch she had planned to have for the "family"

  before the other guests arrived had gotten out of hand. She had originally thought it would be just her family, plus Craig, the Graf, and P. P." and maybe the Felters. But the two characters with the Graf, while they looked and acted like bodyguards, had turned out to be captains in the Bundeswehr, which meant they could not be handed a couple of sandwiches. And then Bob had told her that Sandy had called and said he was sending "some people" over six of them who had to "look like" guests. That meant they would have to be fed, too. When the number of people to be fed at the small, informal, "just family" lunch had passed twenty, she had called the caterer and ordered luncheon for thirty, with a reserve.

  The guests would start arriving about half past one. Craig's stepfather, and his cousin Porter Craig and his family, had been originally scheduled to be. put up in Craig's town house. But Porter Craig had telephoned to tell her that they had decided to turn the town house over to Mrs. Pelton and her party. They would be in the Hay-Adams Hotel instead.

  "Are you sure you can get rooms?" Barbara had asked. The Hay-Adams was across Lafayette Square from the White House. It was expensive, chic, and sometimes hard to get in.

  "Oh, I'm sure they'll take care of us," Porter said, with such easy certainty that she had wondered if Lowell's family owned that, too.

  Perhaps not the hotel, she had corrected herself, but the holding company which owned the holding company which owned the bank which owned the hotel.

  Lowell and P.P. had spent the night with the Felters, in Felter's small house in a subdivision of Alexandria. They had driven out to the Farm in the morning in the roof-down Mercedes, which had been what triggered P.P. "s driving lesson.

  At ten the night before, all the Macmillans but Roxy had shown up at the Farm by auto from North Carolina. They had to be put up at the Farm, too, of course. Mac and Bob had been in the stalag the Graf had presided over. At nine that morning, Lowell's airplane, flown by Warrant Officer Bill Franklin, had landed at Washington National. He had aboard Jane Jiggs and Melody Greer from Rucker, and Toni Parker, Roxy Macmillan, and Patricia Hanrahan from Bragg.

  In what was obviously a fortunate coincidence, both the commanding general of Fort Rucker and the president of the Army Aviation Board had to visit Washington. They shared the piloting of an aircraft to get there, on which there was room to carry Captain Jean-Philippe Jannier, whose presence at the French Embassy in Washington had been requested by the French Military Attachd. They had refueled enroute at Pope Air Force Base and at Fort Bragg, where, by a fortunate coincidence, Colonel Paul Hanrahan and a MI Sgt Wojinski just happened to be at Base Operations, hoping to hitch a ride to Washington.

  Barbara Bellmon wasn't all that close to Phil and Toni Parker, but she had insisted that they and Warrant Officer Franklin stay at the Farm.

  They were all very close to Lowell, and besides,
she would never give them the slightest impression that their color could bar them from the Farm.

  The house was full. If anyone else arrived, they would have to double up in the motel.

  Barbara had wondered about transportation from Washington to the Farm.

  The question had also occurred to Mrs. Pelton, who announced that they had brought cars with them from "the city" and suggested that her chauffeur "serve as sort of a head waiter," to see that the cars were dispatched when and where needed.

  "How many cars are there?" Barbara had asked.