Porter thought he knew why Craig was doing that.
Craig Lowell had a child, a boy, who had been born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1947. But now Peter-Paul Lowell lived with his maternal grandfather in Germany. Lowell had talked to him on the telephone earlier in the day. And the conversation had been stiff, brief, and awkward-a disaster. It was not hard therefore for Porter Craig to conclude that since for all practical purposes he had no son of his own (or a son who at sixteen took offense at being called an American), Craig Lowell had transferred his parental emotions to Geoff Craig.
Porter Craig recognized the symptoms of jealousy both in himself and in his wife; and perceiving them, he suppressed them. For one thing, short of causing a scene, which was the last thing he wanted, per se, and because it might force Geoff to make a, decision he didn't want him to make, there was nothing he could do to make Craig stop playing visiting father-in-law.
If Craig Lowell wanted to put the goddamned bar in, the middle of the living room and cover it with a tent, so what?
The important thing to keep in mind was that Geoff was home alive from Vietnam, that he was married to a really very nice girl, that it was Christmas, and that he and his wife were spending it in their son's home.
The reason for the bar was that Lowell was going to entertain.
He was going to have what he called "some people call." The Commanding General of Fort Rucker, for instance, Major General Robert F. Bellmon, had quickly accepted the invitation, or rather his wife had. And other local big shots were also scheduled to appear.
Porter Craig soon realized that Craig Lowell was at least as interested in having Geoff and his wife meet the local big shots as he was in entertaining them, and Porter understood that as a gesture of affection and concern for Geoff.
Geoff came in as Ursula was spreading a sheet over the folding table. He had a case of whiskey in his arms, and he was leading a red-jacketed bartender, who was also carrying a case of whiskey. When the bartender set his case down, he immediately went out for another.
Porter forced from his mind the unkind thought that if there was one thing you could say about soldiers, it was that they drank like goddamned fish, and then he started for the table to help Geoff with the whiskey.
Craig Lowell made no such move. He sat in the most comfortable chair In the room, drinking champagne from a stemmed glass and puffing on one of his enormous black goddamned cigars.
And when the telephone beside him rang, he answered it on the first ring.
As, if he owned the goddamned place, Porter Craig thought.
And then immediately reminded himself that Craig Lowell did in fact own 227 Melody Lane. He had bought it when he had been stationed at Rucker.
"Ursula," Lowell called out, "dein Bruder."
Ursula, a blonde who looked as solid and wholesome as a girl on a dairy poster, went to the telephone. Porter was surprised and concerned to see the worried look on her face.
He couldn't hear the conversation, and of course it was doubtful he would have understood it if he could have heard it, for his German wasn't that good. But it was obvious that she didn't like what she was hearing. And just as obvious to Craig Lowell, who took the phone from her.
"Hier ist Oberst Lowell," he said. "Was ist Los?"
Porter Craig understood that much.
Whatever was Los, it triggered in Lowell a series of orders, delivered in staccato German. And then he hung the phone up.
"I don't believe he missed his plane," Ursula said to Craig Lowell, softly, and in English.
"Neither did I," Lowell said. "That's why I'm going for him."
Now Geoff picked up that something was going on, and the last half of Lowell's sentence.
"Going for who?"
"Your Kraut brother-in-law," Craig Lowell announced. "He called up and said he had missed his plane and couldn't get another reservation. You can't bullshit a bullshitter. He thought he would be in the way here, the damned fool. I told him I'd be there in two hours."
"Where is he?" Porter Craig asked.
"Fort Bragg. Actually, Fayetteville. Now, because he said he was calling from the airport, he'll actually have to go to Fayetteville. Serves the bastard right. You want to ride along, Porter?"
"No, thank you," Porter said.
"I do," Geoff said. When Craig Lowell looked at him asking for an explanation, he gave one: "For, one thing you've been at the bubbly-"
"Half of one lousy glass," Lowell interrupted.
"And I would like the time," Geoff added.
Craig Lowell owned a private aircraft, a Cessna 310H, which was "a "light twin." So far as the Internal Revenue Service was concerned, the Cessna belonged to the bank, where it was used for the transportation of bank executives. The first time any executive of Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes (other than Craig Lowell) had actually seen it was the day before, when Craig had picked up the Porters in Atlanta and flown them to Ozark.
"I thought you were still in the this-is-the-cyclic-and-that's: the-skid portion of your training," Lowell countered.
"I've been taking commercial lessons," Geoff said, and added, "I've got three hours in a 310."
"The party." Ursula protested.
"We'll be back in four hours," Lowell "said. "I know your brother will be waiting for us. I could tell by... the way he said, "Jawohl, Heir Oberst! I could even hear him click his heels."
"Keep the party going, honey," Geoff Craig said, and went for his coat.
"Thank you, Craig," Ursula Craig said softly to Craig Lowell.
(Two)
Fayetteville (N. C) Municipal Airport 1520 Hours 24 December 1963
Ursula Craig's brother, First Lieutenant Karl Heinz Wagner, Infantry, United States Army, sat drinking a cup of coffee at a table in the coffee shop of the terminal. He was in uniform. He wore a green beret, but had taken it off and neatly folded it and then laid it on top of his overcoat on a chair.
The coffee shop was crowded with soldiers, most of them paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and their supporting units. There were also some Special Forces men. And two tables, away from his were six noncoms wearing green berets, but without the flash certifying that they were fully qualified. They had smiled nervously at Lieutenant Wagner when they had come in, but they hadn't asked to join him even though, they knew him.
At Camp Mackall, behind his back of course, Lieutenant Wagner was known as "Otto"-as in Major Otto Skorzeny, the legendary, scarred face Austro-German parachutist who had, among other spectacular exploits, planned and executed the brilliant rescue of Benito Mussolini from a well-guarded mountaintop prison. For this he had received the Knight's Cross of the-iron Cross from Hitler himself. When skorzeny was brought before a war crimes tribunal after World War II, a number of Americans, including many senior officers, rushed to testify in his behalf. He was exonerated.
There was a scar on Lieutenant Wagner's face, too, and he spoke with a German accent, and, presumably like Skorzeny, he was a real hardass.
Referring to him as Otto, in other words, was by no means deprecatory. He was looked on with considerable admiration, but he was not the sort with whom one presumed to violate his concept of military courtesy.
Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Wagner was a tall, rugged man who wore his blond hair closely cropped. His uniform blouse was decorated with the Combat Infantry Badge, parachutist's wings, and ribbons indicating that he had been awarded the Silver 'Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and had served in the Republic of Vietnam. There were also several ribbons indicating that he had been decorated by the Vietnamese, including the Medal for Gallantry.
In a locked metal box in his room in the BOQ (Bachelor Officers' Quarters) at Fort Bragg there were three colored ribbons representing military decorations Karl Beinz Wagner did not think it appropriate to wear. On the-other hand, for some perverse reason, he could not bring himself to throw them away, although he had come close on several occasions.
They had been awarded hi
m by the government of the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany) when he had been Oberleutnant Wagner of the Corps of Pioneers. Before he had deserted and crashed through the Berlin Wall in a Skoda truck -- with his sister in the back protected from the expected hail of 9mm submachine fire by stacks of cement bags.
At the Refugee Center he gave his reason for coming through the wall as his desire to make a better life, in freedom, for himself and his sister. But it had been more than that. He hated communism, and communists. And later in America, when the recruiter had asked him why he wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army as a private, he'd given the same reason he had given the West Berliners at the Refugee Center. But the real reason was that he wanted to kill communists. He knew if he said that, they would probably not understand. You had to have lived under a communist regime to understand why someone would hate it enough to want to kill those responsible for it. Karl-Heinz Wagner had been the honor graduate of his basic training company, and this carried with it a promotion to PFC.
And he had met Private Geoffrey Craig in the airport- at Atlanta, where they were both on the same plane to Fort Bragg to undergo Special Forces training. More importantly, Private Geoffrey Craig had met Ursula Wagner at the same time.
By the time PFC Wagner and Private Craig had gone through the Parachute School at Fort Benning, a prerequisite for Special Forces training at Bragg, Ursula and Geoff were looking at each other that way. Karl Heinz Wagner had not really been displeased. Geoff was a nice young boy, though by no means yet a soldier, of course, and by no means prepared as yet to assume any serious responsibilities, such as marriage. And Ursula was a good girl, and levelheaded, and wasn't going to do anything she shouldn't.
When they were almost through the Special Forces basic course at Camp Mackall (a World War II military reservation near fort-Bragg, used as a training base for Special Forces), PFC Wagner was called back to Bragg for an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Sanford T. Felter, a slight and unassuming-looking man on whose uniform PFC Wagner had been -surprised to see both U.S. Army parachute wings and those of the troisieme Regiment de la Legion Etrangere, the French Foreign Legion parachute regiment wiped out when the Indochinese communists had finally overrun Dien Bien Phu.
PFC Wagner was even more surprised to learn that Colonel Felter knew far more about him than he should; far more than he had told anyone in any of the half dozen "interviews" he had been given in West Berlin, in West Germany, and in the United States.
And Colonel Felter had then clanged a stick and a carrot before RFC Wagner's nose.
It was the Army's intention, Colonel Felter told PFC Wagner, to promote him to sergeant when he completed his basic Special Forces training and then send him to Vietnam as the Armorer of a-Special Forces A-Team. This would mean, even for such an experienced soldier such as Wagner clearly was, probably more than six months before he could expect to be promoted.
And that meant that Ursula would be left alone in the United States, living on what allotment she would get from her-brother and on what she could make' from whatever job she could find.
There were "people" in West Berlin very anxious to share ex-Oberleutnant Wagner's knowledge of construction details of the Berlin Wall and of the East German military and civilian agencies charged with: its maintenance.
If PFC Wagner were willing to go to West Berlin and share his knowledge with the "people" interested in it, for a period of three or four months, the Army would graduate PFC Wagner now from Special Forces. And as a staff sergeant rather than a sergeant. As a staff sergeant, Wagner would De authorized on-post quarters for his dependent. Quarters would be immediately made available and since his West Berlin duty would be TDY (Temporary Duty), his dependent would be authorized to occupy the quarters during the absence of her sponsor. Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Felter said, he would have a word with the PX, and Ursula would be given a job while he was gone.
Private Geoffrey Craig assured Staff Sergeant Wagner that he would look after Ursula as long as he could. Karl Heinz Wagner believed him, of course, but he didn't quite understand what Geoff Craig had in mind.
Staff Sergeant Wagner had been in West Berlin not quite three weeks when there was a radio message from the United States:
CIA LANGLEY 1915 ZULU 8 MAR 62
ROUTINE ENCRYTPED
STATION COMMANDER FOXTROT
DIRECTION DEPUTY DIRECTOR DELIVER FOLLOWING
SOONEST S/SGT KARL-HEINZ WAGNER, USA
SERGEANT GEOFFREY CRAIG AND URSUEA MARRIED THIRTY MINUTES AGO NEW YORK CITY PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SERVICE VESTRY SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH. DEPARTED" IMMEDIATELY FOR STUDENT DETACHMENT USA ENGINEER SCHOOL FT BELVOIR VIRGINIA. THEY WILL ATIEMPT TELEPHONE TOMORROW. NICE WEDDING.
REGARDS
S.T. FELTER LTCOL INF
When Geoff and Ursula telephoned afterward, Karl-Heinz Wagner, realizing that he was facing a fait accompli, did not upbraid Geoff for the marriage. At least he'd married her, and in a church. Instead, he told them that until they got their feet on the ground, he'd be happy to help a little financially. When Geoff turned him down, Karl-Heinz thought that was simply (stupid) pride speaking, and that he would arrange to help them tactfully.
By the time he came home from Berlin, Geoff had been sent to Vietnam. Ursula was staying with Geoff's mother and father in New York, and Karl Heinz thought it was nice, of the parents to take her in. He had actually wondered if it would be a financial burden for them.
Ursula and her mother-in-law had met his plane from Berlin. With a chauffeured limousine. And taken them to the Craig apartment, fourteen rooms on two floors-on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. As they drove up Park Avenue and turned onto Fiftieth Street, Mrs. Porter Craig touched Karl-Heinz Wagner's arm with a hand bearing at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds on it and pointed out Saint Bartholomew's Church.
"That's where they married," she explained. "My husband is on the vestry. When Geoff was a little boy, he sang in the choir there.
The Craigs were nice, but they made Karl-Heinz uncomfortable. Though raised in a communist state, he had acquired a strong sense of class differences. He was a peasant and the Craigs were aristocrats.
Seven months after Geoff had gone over to Vietnam, Karl Heinz had followed him. By that time, Geoff had won a battlefield commission and had been an A-Team commander.
Karl-Heinz had won a commission in Vietnam too, but directly, rather than as a result of anything he had done specifically. One day they had called him into Group and told him there had been a TWX (Teletype Message) from the States saying that he was qualified, under some obscure provision of Army: Regulations providing for the direct commissioning of linguists, and that he might as well take it.
He was commissioned as a first lieutenant, assigned to Headquarters, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and then immediately reassigned back to Special Forces. He was sure that Lieutenant Colonel Felter's hand was involved somehow.
First Lieutenant Wagner, newly returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had killed a number of communists; was assigned to the Special Forces School as an instructor- in demolitions and jungle warfare.
Wagner ordered another coffee and Danish when the waitress came over and folded her arms and looked hard at him. After she'd gone off to get these, he thought some more about his present situation. When Geoff had asked him to come spend Christmas with himself and Ursula, he'd very much wanted to go. But that had become impossible. What he now thought of as his Communist Class Consciousness had grabbed hold of him when he heard that Geoff's mother and father were also coming.
And then he had learned that Geoff's cousin, Colonel Lowell, was also coming. He might have been able to handle Geoff's parents, but not the Colonel. That had been the deciding factor.
Colonels and Lieutenants Don't Mix. Since he knew that Ursula wouldn't agree with him, he'd arranged to miss his plane and then called her to tell her. And then Colonel Lowell had come on the line and said he would fly to
Fayetteville to pick him up.
It hadn't been a suggestion, it had been an order.
He didn't know what he was waiting for, just that he Was waiting, and he was therefore surprised when he heard a familiar voice behind him.
"Excuse me, Sir," Geoff Craig said, "but does that silly hat mean you're a Green Ber-ette?"
Karl-Heinz Wagner turned to look at him. And so aid a dozen heads, including the six Green Beret noncoms in training. Geoff was wearing a Santa Claus hat, with its tasseled top reaching down to his shoulders, and there was a corsage of tiny Christmas tree balls pinned to the lapel of his suede jacket.
"Ach, Gott!" Lieutenant Wagner said, shaking his head and getting to his feet.
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