The Colonels, page 19
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
“Just for the record,” Bellmon said, “I heard that the berets are gone.”
“Pity,” Lowell said. “I would have cheerfully given two dollars to see Mac in a beret.”
“I don’t quite understand your attitude,” Bellmon said. “I thought Mac was a friend of yours.”
“I didn’t say he isn’t,” Lowell said.
“You seem remarkably cavalier about his problems,” Bellmon said.
“Who sent him to Bragg? General Black?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you think they would have sent a light bird who damned near killed somebody, punching him off an officer’s club balcony, who was neither a holder of the Medal or an old pal of the Vice Chief of Staff?” Lowell asked. Bellmon did not reply.
“Going someplace where they have your bust in the post Hall of Fame is not exactly being sent somewhere unpleasant,” Lowell said. “Such as, for example, the Southern Command in Panama, where they were going to send me. I don’t feel sorry for Mac, Bob. Sorry.”
“It was an entirely different matter,” Bellmon said.
“Forgive me, General, for not realizing that pleasuring a willing lady in what I thought was the privacy of my home was not, by a quantum jump, a more serious violation of good order and discipline than almost killing another officer.”
“You can wisecrack to me as a friend, Craig,” Bellmon said, obviously making an effort to control himself. “But I would be grateful if you would avoid using my rank when you do.”
“I certainly meant no offense,” Lowell said.
“None was taken,” Bellmon said, curtly.
“Well,” Lowell said, mocking him, “maybe just a little.” He held up his hands, the thumb and index finger spread just a little apart.
“Before we landed in the rough, as we so often seem to, Craig, I was about to thank you for what you did last night.”
“I didn’t do much,” Lowell said. “The first thing Brandon did when he woke up this morning was call the Chief of Information and tell him about the brutal, unprovoked assault.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I was at Jiggs’s reception.”
“Oh,” Bellmon said.
“He also told me that he had a call scheduled with Black. I didn’t think they’d court-martial Mac, particularly since there is no permanent damage to Brandon. But I didn’t think they would leave him here, either.”
“It’s a hell of a note,” Bellmon said, sadly. “The day after you get promoted, you get sent somewhere in disgrace.”
“Let me say something to you as a friend, Bob,” Lowell said.
“I don’t suppose I could say no?”
“Whatever you owed Mac—if indeed you owed him a damned thing—for leaving him behind in the POW camp in Poland in War II, you have paid back a hundred times. Unless he goes up there and immediately starts throwing people off balconies, Mac is home free. He’s got his twenty years in, and he’s got his silver leaf, and the worst that can happen to him now is that they’ll force him to retire. You’ve done your duty to him, it’s over.”
“I wish that I possessed your ruthlessness, Lowell,” Bellmon said. “When I telephoned him and told him to depart for Bragg no later than Monday, I felt like I was kicking my family dog.”
“Well, just consider where the family dog will be on Tuesday night,” Lowell said. “In the 82nd Division O club, with a litter of eager little puppies at his feet, listening to the old dog tell them how it was at Sicily or Normandy, or wherever. He won’t be allowed to buy a drink, which will of course delight him; and no one will say, ‘Mac, for Christ’s sake, we’ve heard that story fifty times.’”
Bellmon looked at Lowell without expression for a moment. Then he smiled, and patted his arm.
“You’re right, of course, Craig. Thank you.”
“I told Jiggs I’d call him after I’d spoken to you,” Lowell said.
“There’s the phone,” Bellmon said. “Help yourself.”
Barbara Bellmon came into the office as Jiggs was telling Lowell that he had just heard from General Black about Mac’s transfer to Fort Bragg.
When he hung up the phone, Barbara handed him a drink. “Danke schoen, gnadige Frau,” Lowell said.
“Did he ask you?”
“Did who ask me what?”
“Then he didn’t,” she said. “Damn him!”
“Ask me what?”
“About your house,” she said.
“What about it?”
“About renting it to us,” she said. “Just until spring, when my brother leaves the Farm.”
“I presumed that’s where you would be,” Lowell said. The Bellmon family for four generations had owned a farm twenty miles from Washington. Any of the Bellmons who happened to be stationed in Washington lived there during his assignment.
“Not until May,” she said. “Then Tommy’s going to England.”
“Well, as they say in Poland, my house is your house, of course.”
“He won’t ask you for it,” Barbara said.
“Send him in,” Lowell ordered. When she hesitated, he said, “Go on, Barbara.”
Bellmon came in the office a minute later.
“I have this friend with a problem,” Lowell began.
“I thought you had something from General Jiggs,” Bellmon said.
“My friend’s problem is that he suddenly had to move,” Lowell said. “Which means that his house is empty. It’s not a trailer, and he couldn’t bring it with him.”
“Barbara came to you,” Bellmon accused.
“That’s what friends are for. When you have a problem, you go to a friend. You will recall, Bob, that I’ve gone to you on occasion.”
“The last time you came to me, I wanted to see you thrown out of the army,” Bellmon said.
“So I forgive you, OK?”
“What are you going to do with the house?”
“Well, for the next three months, because I feel obliged to give them that much notice, I’ll have to keep it staffed,” Lowell said. “And I would much rather have them waiting hand and foot on Barbara than on each other.”
“How many are there?”
“Three.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll think about renting it,” Lowell said.
“Not selling?”
“My family got rich by following a simple principle,” Lowell said. “Buy real estate, do not sell it. The house is owned by one of my companies.”
“Tommy, Barbara’s brother,” Bellmon said, “is going to England in May or June. We need a place till then.”
“You’ve got one, Bob,” Lowell said. “Call it house-sitting for me.”
“I’m grateful,” Bellmon said. “It would solve a lot of problems.”
“There is only one problem,” Lowell said.
“What?”
“Keep your hand on your zipper. Otherwise the senator’s wife will be trying you on, or in, for size.”
“Some of us are not possessed by an uncontrollable desire to rut,” Bellmon said.
“You tell me that as a friend, right?” Lowell said, and laughed.
VIII
(One)
Fort Rucker, Alabama
0945 Hours, 3 January 1959
When Brigadier General Robert F. Bellmon told Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph G. MacMillan that he had been reassigned to the U.S. Army Special Warfare School at Fort Rucker, N.C., and was to proceed there immediately, Mac asked only one question.
“Can I go TPA?”
TPA was “travel by personal automobile.”
“I don’t see why not,” Bellmon replied, after a moment’s thought. “You’re going up there TDY until your orders can be cut. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to cut your orders, or whether DA will.”
TDY was temporary duty. MacMillan knew what it meant.
“‘Get his ass off the post right now!’ huh?” he asked.
Bellmon didn’t reply.
“I’ll leave in the morning,” Mac said.
“All right,” Bellmon said.
“How am I going to clear the post without orders?” Mac asked.
Bellmon thought that over a moment, too, before replying.
“Have Roxy pay your club bill, and the golf course bill, that sort of thing. Whatever she can’t handle later, I will.”
Mac nodded again.
“I’m sorry about this, Mac,” Bellmon said.
“I did it,” Mac said. “I’ll take my lumps. How lousy an efficiency report is it going to cost me?”
“Officially, it never happened,” Bellmon said. “If it never happened, then obviously I can’t write that your well-known splendid attributes as a warrior are unfortunately overshadowed by your lamentable tendency to do goddamn dumb things when you’re drinking.”
It doesn’t really matter what the efficiency report says, Mac thought. People are going to hear that I belted Brandon off the balcony. And even those that don’t are going to wonder why a new light bird aviator suddenly gets himself assigned back to airborne.
“Just to keep the record straight,” MacMillan said, “I was mad, not drunk.”
“You ever hear the story about the New York advertising agency, Mac, where the boss put a notice on the bulletin board saying that executives were requested to drink anything they wanted to drink at lunch—except vodka?”
“No,” MacMillan replied seriously, confused.
“He said that their customers couldn’t smell vodka on the breath, and he would rather have them think his executives were drunk, not stupid.”
“OK, it was a dumb thing to do.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You know what I was just thinking?” Mac said, and went on without waiting for a response. “The last time I was stationed at Bragg, they wanted to send me to flight school, and I didn’t want to go. Now they’re sending me back, and I don’t want to go.”
“Lowell pointed out to me that sending you to Bragg can hardly be termed cruel and unusual punishment.”
“I wanted to stick around and finish the Big Bad Bird,” Mac said.
“Drive up, Mac,” Bellmon told him, ending the conversation by putting out his hand. “By the time you get there, your orders will probably be there. You know the number if you need anything from me.”
MacMillan shook Bellmon’s hand briefly, and then met his eyes for a moment. Then he saluted.
“Fuck ’em, General,” he said. “Have the bugler sound the charge.”
He had said almost exactly the same words fourteen years before when he had parted from Bellmon at a German POW camp in Poland.
“Take care of yourself, Mac,” Bellmon said, returning the salute. “Keep in touch.”
MacMillan left Bellmon’s office and got in his Cadillac and drove home.
Roxy came out into the carport before he got out of the car.
“Sandy and Sharon get off all right?” he asked.
Major and Mrs. Felter had come to Fort Rucker for the holidays in Major Craig Lowell’s Aero Commander. Colonel William Roberts, who was now Lowell’s commanding officer, had denied Lowell time off to fly them back.
“I took them to Dothan to the airport,” Roxy said. “We were waiting for the Southern flight when an air force jet, a little one, landed. They sent it for him.”
“Why didn’t he have it land at Laird?” Mac asked.
“He probably didn’t want people to know,” Roxy said, and then she blurted: “So what are they going to do to you?”
What they’re going to do to me, Roxy, is give me some asshole assignment, deputy assistant garbage disposal officer, maybe, or officer in charge of service clubs, so that I will take the hint and put in for retirement. I’m getting thrown out of the army, is what they’re doing to me.
He couldn’t tell her that, not with that look on her face.
“Bragg,” he said. “The Special Warfare School.”
“What’s that?”
“You run around in the woods and eat snakes,” he said.
“Those guys who wear the funny hats?”
“You got it,” he said.
“You off flight status?”
“Bellmon didn’t say. Probably. I was thinking about that on the way home. I can probably get back on jump status. Pay’d be the same if I can.”
“This is real bad for you, huh?”
“I won’t know until I get there,” he said. “Red Hanrahan’s there. He’ll give me the straight poop. The worst that can happen is that I’ll have to retire.”
“When are you going?”
“In the morning. You want to pack me enough for a couple of weeks?”
She nodded.
“What do we do with this house?” Roxy asked.
“Rent it out,” he said. “What else?”
He walked to a utility room at the end of the carport. He took a can of beer from an extra refrigerator, opened it, and drank deeply. Roxy watched him, shaking her head “no” when he offered her a beer. Then he took off his tunic and laid it on the washing machine and started to put on a set of coveralls.
“What are you going to do?” Roxy asked.
“Change the oil, check it out,” he said. “Take the goddamned Fort Rucker stickers off the bumpers.”
“What do you want for supper?”
“I don’t care,” he said.
She nodded and went back into the kitchen.
(Two)
Aboard Special Missions Flight No. 59—34
1105 Hours, 3 January 1959
The pilot, a handsome air force major, pushed aside the curtain that separated the cockpit from the cabin. Stooping under the low cabin ceiling, he made his way to where Felter was sitting.
“There’s a chopper waiting for you at Andrews, Mr. Felter,” he said.
Felter, without thinking about it, closed the portfolio on the folding desk in front of him. The portfolio was printed with red diagonal stripes and the words “Top Secret.” It had been put aboard the aircraft, in the custody of a courier, so that it could be given to Felter as soon as he got aboard. It contained the latest intelligence from Cuba.
On New Year’s Day, a bearded doctor of philosophy named Fidel Castro had driven into Havana in a jeep and taken control of the country.
Felter looked at the pilot as if he were thinking of something else, and it was a moment before he spoke.
“Get on the radio, please,” he said, “and kill the chopper. Put us into Washington National.”
“Sir, I mean a presidential helicopter,” the major said.
“I don’t want to arrive on the East Lawn in a chopper to save five minutes,” Felter said. “Put us into Washington National.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said, and, stooping, made his way back to the cockpit.
Felter reopened the Top Secret folder and returned his attention to the messages. There was an almost wistful tinge of hope in the reports that some of the people close to Castro were bona fide democratic revolutionaries, but Felter believed it was only a matter of time before Castro allied himself with Moscow and acknowledged that he was a “Marxist.”
There were no Marxists, of course, in the Kremlin, or anywhere else in the Soviet bloc. Marx had not even envisioned communism for Russia. There was a totalitarian state in Russia, which called itself “communist,” but which was, in fact, continuing the expansionist, colonialist foreign policy of the Russian Tsarist Empire. At the moment, Sanford T. Felter was one of perhaps a dozen men in the American intelligence community who knew how much aid the romantic, bearded hero of the revolt against the old Cuban government had received from Russia. And who understood the threat that a Soviet colony ninety miles off Florida would pose to the United States.
He read the file again, once or twice shaking his head in either disbelief or resignation, and then closed the red-striped cover. After he’d finished, he leaned into the aisle and motioned with his finger.
A tall, thin, clean-cut young man came to him. He was wearing a dark blue vested suit. His necktie was pulled down, and the vest unbuttoned. There was a Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver in a holster on his belt. There was a briefcase attached to his wrist with a stainless steel wire and a handcuff.
Felter handed him the folder.
“Burn these,” he said. “Send me confirmation.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man said, stuffing the folder into the briefcase and then locking it.
“We’re going into National,” Felter said. “Is that going to pose transportation problems for you?”
“No, sir. We have people there. I’ll be all right.”
“Thank you,” Felter said.
The young man went back to his seat. Felter got out of his seat, made his way forward to the cabin, and knelt in the aisle beside Sharon, who had a copy of Reader’s Digest and the remnants of a sandwich on the fold-down table in front of her.
“We’re going into National,” he said. “If the car won’t start, take a cab, and leave word for me at the White House.”
“All right,” Sharon said.
“I don’t know when I’ll be home,” he said.
“I know,” she said, and placed her hand on his and smiled at him. “Is it bad, honey?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”
(Three)
The White House
Washington, D.C.
1155 Hours, 3 January 1959
The taxi turned off Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped before the gate. Felter got out of the cab as a guard came out of the guard shack. The guard recognized Felter and signaled to the guard shack. Felter paid the cab, and then held up his White House pass for the guard.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the guard said.
As Felter walked to the gate, the gate slid open just wide enough to admit him. When he was inside, it closed after him. He walked up the curving drive and entered the side entrance. A guard and a marine sergeant in dress blues were waiting for him.
“You’re to go to the Situation Room, Mr. Felter,” the marine sergeant said, and led the way to the elevator. Once the door had closed after them, Felter reached under his coat and came out with a .45 ACP pistol. He handed it to the marine.
“Thank you, sir,” the marine said.
