The Colonels, page 4
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“One moment, please, Colonel Hanrahan,” she said, pleasantly. “We’re trying to locate Major Felter for you.”
She pushed a button on her control console.
“Go,” a male voice said. He was speaking from a heavily guarded underground room in the Defense Communications Agency, a large, featureless building across Washington.
“Scramble One for Mouse,” she said.
“Hold,” he said.
There was another voice on the line a moment later, another female, this one in a temporary communications link in the Signal Telephone building at Fort Rucker, Alabama.
“Canary verifies scrambler.”
“Mouse, please,” the White House operator said.
“Mouse is 60 to 120 seconds from scrambler,” the operator at Fort Rucker replied.
“Advise Mouse call is from Colonel Hanrahan.”
There was the sound of a telephone ringing.
“Captain Parker.”
“Major Sanford Felter, please,” the Fort Rucker operator said.
“Just a second,” the man who answered the phone said, and then, more faintly, as if the telephone was away from his mouth, “Mouse, it’s for you.”
The White House operator restrained a giggle. Obviously the people who had given Major Sanford T. Felter his code name weren’t the only ones who thought him mouselike.
“Major Felter.”
“Major, this is not scrambled,” the Fort Rucker operator said. “You have a call from a Colonel Paul Hanrahan.”
“Put it through,” Felter said.
“Colonel Hanrahan,” the White House operator said, “we have Major Felter for you.”
“Yes, sir?” Major Felter said, happily. “How are you, sir?”
“Exhausted, Felter. I just got off a plane from Saigon.”
“Welcome home, sir. I’ll look forward to seeing you very soon.”
“Mouse, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
“This is not a secure line, Colonel. Is it classified?”
“You tell me. Is an attack by the Vietminh on Americans classified?”
“Why should it be?” Felter said in a moment. “I guess the Vietminh already know about it. Anybody we know?”
“Pat, the kids, and me,” Hanrahan said. “I think they were after a Frenchman named Jannier…”
“Father or son?”
“Son. We were on our way from the plantation to the airport.”
“Any damage?”
“Not to us. I think he expected it.”
“Forgive me, Colonel. I didn’t think to ask about Pat and the kids.”
“They’re all right. Scared, but all right.”
“Thank God,” Felter said. “I’m glad you told me, Colonel. It may have some significance.”
“That’s the point, Mouse. I didn’t say anything over there. I wanted to get out of the country, and I knew…”
“If there was no damage to you, that was the smart thing to do. I’d have done the same.”
“I hate to admit how relieved I am to hear you say that, Mouse,” Hanrahan said.
“Forget the whole incident, Colonel,” Felter said.
“I didn’t ask about Sharon and the kids, either.”
“Fine, just fine,” Felter said. “And trying to take the phone away from me this very moment is another familiar face.”
“Who?”
“The Duke,” Felter said.
“And what outrage has he been up to lately?” Hanrahan asked. Major Craig W. Lowell had earned his nickname, “the Duke,” as a second lieutenant under Hanrahan in Greece.
“At two this afternoon, Colonel, there were ten T34s in the inventory. At two fifteen, Duke blew half of them up.”
Hanrahan chuckled. He didn’t know what was going on, but nothing Major Craig W. Lowell did would surprise him.
“Put him on, Mouse,” Hanrahan said. “I want to hear about that.”
“Colonel, sir,” Lowell’s happy voice came on the line.
Hanrahan saw Patricia gesturing frantically at him, pointing to her watch.
“Hello, Duke. Call me at Bragg. Good-bye, Duke,” Hanrahan said, and hung up.
“Oh, hell,” Lowell said.
“Major Felter, please,” the White House operator said.
“They want to talk to you again, Mouse.”
“Felter.”
“Major, your party disconnected. He was calling from a pay booth at the airfield in Atlanta.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a click when Felter hung up.
“Breakdown Scrambler One for Mouse.”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
“Standing by.”
(Two)
Dr. Antoinette Parker had never been quite able to control her feelings that military courtesy was an amusing absurdity. One man calling another “sir” went back to the medieval “sire,” with its implication that the senior was the father of the junior. Her husband had pointed out to her that military courtesy wasn’t very much different from the protocol of academe or medicine. Her father, he pointed out with infuriating logic, was more than a little sensitive about his prerogatives as a professor. None of his subordinates dared fail to call him either “doctor” (or, preferably, “professor”). He added somewhat smugly that she herself was outraged if a nurse called her anything besides “doctor.”
Intellectually, she had to agree with him. Emotionally, she still thought it was absurd.
But when Major General Jiggs appeared at the screened-in porch at the end of the World War II hospital ward that had been converted to quarters, what she said, without thinking about it, was, “Good evening, sir.”
“I’m sorry to intrude, Doctor,” General Jiggs said. “But I had an idea Major Lowell might be here. I suppose I should have called first…”
“They’re celebrating his reprieve,” she said, stepping away from the door, gesturing with an inclination of her head and a smile for him to come in.
“I suspected they might be,” he said. Then he looked at her. “They’re?” he asked.
“At the moment, General,” she said, “it’s the brotherhood. I felt out of place.”
“Oh,” he said, and smiled at her.
“That will change,” she said. “Barbara Bellmon’s on her way over here with Roxy MacMillan and Sharon Felter.”
“I thought,” General Jiggs said, “that it was bad news that was supposed to travel fast.”
There was the sound of tires on gravel, and they both looked toward the street. A Buick convertible, Barbara Bellmon’s car, had pulled in beside General Jiggs’s staff car. There were three women in the front seat, Barbara Bellmon, tall, lithe, attractive (who looked, Toni Parker often thought, as if she had just stepped from an advertisement in Town & Country); Roxy MacMillan, buxom, redheaded, with prominent teeth (“jolly,” Toni thought); and Sharon Felter, a small, dark-haired woman (whom Toni thought was probably the most gentle, understanding person she had ever known).
“The sisterhood seems to have arrived,” Jiggs said dryly.
The women spilled out of the car and walked onto the porch.
“Where is Jane?” Barbara Bellmon said to General Jiggs, accusingly. Jane was Jiggs’s wife.
“The last I heard, Barbara,” Jiggs said, “she was at the Duttons with you and Melody Greer.”
“I dropped her at your quarters,” Barbara Bellmon said. “She was going to the club to get you and bring you here. I don’t know where Bob is.”
“He and Mac MacMillan are on their way to Washington,” Jiggs said. “How did you find out there is cause for celebration?”
“Sandy Felter called Sharon at the Duttons,” Barbara said. “What’s Bob doing in Washington?”
“E. Z. Black sent for him,” Jiggs said. “He didn’t say why. But my guess is that Bob’s due for a new job.”
“When are they coming back?” Roxy MacMillan asked.
“Bob will be back in time for New Year’s Eve,” Black said. “Mac, probably tonight or in the morning.”
“I’ll call Jane at the club,” Barbara said.
“Thank you,” Jiggs said.
He made a gesture halfway between a nod and a bow and went into the apartment. When he got to the living room, there were four officers sprawled on the Danish modern chairs and couches, and two others leaning on a bar. Each clutched a glass dark with whiskey.
Major Sanford T. Felter was the first to see Jiggs when he entered the room. Felter had been leaning on the bar, and when he saw Jiggs he straightened up, almost coming to attention. The officer he was talking to, “Dutch” Cramer, the old-time, middle-aged, Ordnance Corps chief warrant officer whose rockets had blown up the five Russian T-34s, glanced over at Jiggs; and he too straightened up.
Their movement caught the eyes of the others, and the four men on the chairs and couches started to stand up.
“Keep your seats,” General Jiggs said.
Captain Philip Sheridan Parker IV walked over to General Jiggs.
“What can I get you, sir?” he asked.
“First a drink of that scotch,” Jiggs said. “And then I want a moment of Major Felter’s time.”
“Yes, sir,” Parker said, walking to the bar.
“And after that, probably more of the scotch,” Jiggs said.
Parker made him a drink and handed it to him.
“Thank you,” Jiggs said, with a smile, and then looked at Felter. “Major, if you please?”
Felter followed Jiggs out of the room and down the corridor of the building and then outside, so they were standing under the covered walkway that had been built to roll body carts from one part of the hospital to another.
“This is far enough,” Jiggs said.
“Yes, sir,” Major Felter said.
Jigg thought that Felter looked as if he was wearing his big brother’s, or at least somebody else’s uniform. Felter was in greens, and the tunic was loaded with an impressive array of medals, insignia, and devices. To the shoulders were sewn the patches of the 40th Armored Division, in which Felter had served as a young lieutenant in the waning days of World War II; that of the Military District of Washington; and a curved strip with the word RANGER embroidered on it.
There were four rows of ribbons above the breast pocket, representing the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, and Purple Heart, and others representing medals awarded by the Greek, French, and Korean governments. There was an Expert Combat Infantry Badge with a star signifying the second award. There were U.S. and French parachutist’s wings. On the lapels was the starred insignia of the General Staff Corps, and on a tunic pocket the medallion signifying three years’ service on the General Staff. Hanging from the right epaulet was a heavy, woven golden rope, the insignia of an aide-de-camp to the President of the United States. On his finger was the ring worn by graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
There was an automatic reflex on Jiggs’s part: The GSC insignia on the lapels was wrong. He should be wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp to the President.
But Jiggs immediately remembered that there was no one who was about to correct Major Felter. Felter was in fact assigned to the General Staff Corps, and he was in fact an aide to the President of the United States. Not the sort of aide, however, who stood tall behind the President in his dress blues or the even more ornate blue mess uniform, whispering the names of distinguished visitors. Nor was he expected to dance with the ugly daughter of the Swedish ambassador to the strains of the Marine Corps Band in the Blue Room.
Major Felter was a very special kind of aide. In each of the personal safes of the directors of the CIA, the FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and of the chiefs of Army, Navy, Air Force, and State Department Intelligence, there was a typewritten note on the President’s personal stationery:
Major Sanford T. Felter, GSC, USA, is announced as my personal liaison officer to the intelligence community with rank of Counselor to the President. No public announcement of this appointment will be made.
DDE
Major Felter did not wear his medals, or his uniform, on duty.
When Paul Jiggs had heard that Felter was coming to Rucker, he had been curious to know why. Jane Jiggs had found out for him from Barbara Bellmon.
By coincidence, many of Felter’s old friends were for various reasons at Rucker, and Roxy MacMillan had impulsively called Sharon and asked her to come down for the New Year’s Eve party. At first the idea had seemed absurd on its face, but then Sharon Felter had realized how very much she wanted to be what she was, an officer’s lady, rather than what her neighbors thought she was, the wife of a middle-ranking economic analyst at the CIA. Sharon very much wanted to walk into an officer’s mess for the traditional New Year’s party on the arm of her dress-uniformed, highly decorated husband.
Sharon had confessed to Barbara Bellmon that she had had to get a little drunk to find the courage to demand of her husband that he bring her to Rucker. But it had worked. Felter had reluctantly agreed. They had arrived at Rucker just before Ed Greer crashed to his death. And their arrival had been preceded by a directive from the Defense Communications Agency calling for the installation of a secure radiotelephone, radioteletype link to Washington for Felter’s exclusive use. The nature of his duties were such that Felter was never supposed to be more than 30 seconds away from a commo link to the White House, never more than 120 seconds from a secure, scrambler connection to the commander in chief.
He didn’t look like a Counselor to the President, Jiggs thought, or a highly regarded, very influential intelligence officer. He would never be asked to pose for a recruiting poster. Ranger-qualified majors with the Combat Infantry Badge and the DSC are supposed to look like John Wayne, and Major Sanford T. Felter was a stoop-shouldered, balding, bespectacled little Jew.
“Yes, sir?” Felter asked politely.
“If you are in a position to do so, Major,” General Jiggs said, “I would like you to tell me what happened between Lowell and General Black.”
Jiggs was aware that Felter was considering whether he should answer the question. It took him a long moment.
“Craig’s story is that the army couldn’t afford, in a public relations sense, to court-martial him,” Felter said, finally. “That, in effect, Colonel Tim F. Brandon saved his skin.”
Colonel Tim F. Brandon was the Pentagon public relations officer handling the rocket-armed helicopter “problem.”
“Is that what he told you?” Jiggs asked.
“No, sir, he told me what really happened.”
“And you are not in a position to tell me?”
“I’ve been considering if I should,” Felter said, frankly. “Apparently what happened, General, is a combination of things. The root of General Black’s anger with him was based on Lowell’s direct disobedience to an order of General Black’s.”
“What order was that?”
“General Black thought it best that Lowell keep his distance from me. He ordered him to do so.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” Jiggs said. “Why? Because of where you work?”
“Primarily that, of course,” Felter said. “But also, I think, because of Craig’s involvement with the rocket-armed chopper. From the general’s point of view, of course, it was logical.”
“And, of course, Lowell didn’t keep his distance?”
“He came to see me, and my wife and children often used the swimming pool at his house in Georgetown.”
“You didn’t know about Black’s order?”
“No, sir.”
Black, Jiggs thought, was not about to tell a man who saw the President of the United States at least once a day who he was not supposed to see, even if that man was only a major.
“And that’s the real reason they were throwing him out of the service?” Jiggs said.
“The specific reason was Craig’s affair with the senator’s wife,” Felter said. “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“I tried to talk to General Black,” Jiggs said. “Lowell is just too valuable an officer to lose just because he satisfied some unsatisfied woman who happened to be a senator’s wife. He wouldn’t even hear me out.”
“He reminded me that I am a major,” Felter said, “when I tried to speak to him about Lowell.”
“Then what changed his mind?” Jiggs asked. This was the question he hoped he would be able to ask Major Sanford T. Felter.
“Craig told me that General Black told him that he had come to understand that he had violated a basic principle of command, sir,” Felter said. “That one should never issue an order that one knows cannot be obeyed. Lowell is closer to my wife and children, and to me, than to anyone else in the world. With the best intentions, he could not cut us out of his life. General Black apparently finally understood this. That, in any event, is what he told Lowell. I believe it to be the case.”
“And how do you see his putting Lowell in charge of the rocket-armed helicopter program?”
“I believe the general was rather pleased with Major Lowell’s demonstration of the capability of the rocket-armed helicopter,” Felter said, dryly. “I don’t see, now, how the air force can take it away from us.”
“No,” Jiggs said, “neither do I.” And then he added, “One more question, Major?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Why did you decide to tell me this?”
“I don’t know of anyone Lowell respects more than he does you, General,” Felter said. “I hoped that you might he able to speak to him, to convince him that this is, in fact, his last chance.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Major,” General Jiggs said. “I’m going to go back in there and get drunk with him, and swap war stories, and then tomorrow morning, when we’re both hung over, I’m going to call Duke Lowell into my office and read him the riot act like he’s never heard it before. When I get through with that sonofabitch, he’ll rush right over to the chaplain’s office and sign up for the men’s choir.”
“I believe, sir, the general has a splendid idea,” Major Felter said.
(Three)
