The Colonels, page 52
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
He went to the bar and set glasses neatly in a line, one for everyone present, and poured brandy in each glass.
He picked his up and sipped at it.
“There’s soda and ice, if anybody wants it.”
No one moved until Jane Jiggs picked up one of the glasses and drank it down neat. Then she poured more. After that Jiggs, Hanrahan, and Wojinski helped themselves.
“Sharon has a right to be told,” Jane said.
“Let me tell you something about Sharon, Jane,” Lowell said. “Every time the Mouse goes off on one of his little trips, Sharon is convinced she’s seen him for the last time. I’m not going to be responsible for telling her he’s dead for sure…until I know for sure. I repeat, ‘How do we know he’s dead?’”
“Because the CIA says so,” Jiggs said.
“Screw the CIA,” Lowell said. “What do we know for sure?”
Hanrahan started to speak, stopped, and looked at Paul Jiggs, who nodded his permission. The security dam had been breached; they might as well go all the way.
“We know Sandy jumped into Cuba on the morning of 7 April,” Hanrahan said.
“He jumped into Cuba? In Christ’s name, why?” Lowell exploded.
“Because Eaglebury was captured and executed,” Hanrahan said.
“Did you get that from the CIA, too?” Lowell asked, bitterly. “Or is that a fact?”
“Unfortunately, it’s a fact,” Jiggs said. “The Mexican ambassador gave the State Department a photograph. Which came into their hands from unspecified Cuban sources. Apparently they wanted to inform us they know of certain plans.”
“A photograph of what?”
“Of Commander Eaglebury after he had been tortured and shot through the back of his neck,” Hanrahan said.
“Oh, my God!” Jane Jiggs said. She had not heard that before.
“He was the man you stole the radios with?” Melody Dutton Jannier asked.
Jiggs and Hanrahan looked at her in confusion.
“Yes, ma’am,” M/Sgt Wojinski said.
“The CIA is apparently going on the assumption that during Eaglebury’s interrogation, other things came out,” Hanrahan said, carefully.
“That means the Mouse jumped right into the bastards’ arms,” Lowell said. “With all he knew, he shouldn’t have gone anywhere near Cuba!”
“I can’t comment on that, Craig,” Hanrahan said. “Did you know he was relieved as Action Officer?”
“No, I didn’t,” Lowell said. “Why?”
“When Kennedy took office, they put the whole thing in the hands of the CIA.”
“Those bastards play games,” Lowell said. “Are you suggesting that he was set up?”
“I am not,” Hanrahan said. “He must have been picked up in the execution of his mission.”
“Which was?”
“Obviously what Eaglebury failed to do. I can’t tell you more than that, Craig,” Hanrahan said. “I don’t even know if what I was told was the truth.”
“Jesus Christ!” Lowell said, angrily. He glowered for a moment at the TWX, and then went on. “But we don’t know for sure that he’s dead, right? For all we know, he could be sitting with Ellis and that goddamned nav-aid in the mountains.”
“What makes you think he’s with Ellis?” Hanrahan asked.
“I set up that nav-aid mission,” Lowell said. “And I know Eaglebury jumped in with it.”
There was no reply.
“Well, do we? What do they have to say?” Lowell snapped.
“Communication with Ellis is limited,” Hanrahan said. “He doesn’t have a transmitter. Felter took him one, but it hasn’t been on the air.”
Lowell screwed up his face thoughtfully, poured himself another drink, and then poured it back into the bottle.
“Someone’s going to have to tell Sharon,” Jane Jiggs said, softly.
“Not me,” Lowell said. “And I don’t think anybody else should, either, at least not until I get back.”
“Back from where?” asked Jiggs.
Lowell looked at him and raised his eyebrows at what he obviously considered a dumb question.
“General, I respectfully request ten days’ ordinary leave,” Lowell said. “I have something like ninety days accumulated leave to my credit.”
“Don’t be an ass, Craig,” Jiggs said. “What the hell could you do down there?”
“I won’t know until I get there,” Lowell said.
“That show is about to get going,” Jiggs said.
“Within the next couple of days, I would guess,” Lowell agreed, “if Ellis and his guys are still there…They can’t stay forever.”
“Next Monday,” Hanrahan said. It was Thursday. Jiggs, startled, gave him a dirty look, started to say something, and then changed his mind.
“Then I’ll have plenty of time to get down there,” Lowell said.
“I officially forbid you to go anywhere near there, Craig,” Paul Jiggs said. “I’m sorry, Craig.”
“What the hell can you do to me?” Lowell asked.
“Court-martial you, if it comes to that.”
“Let me tell you something, Paul,” Lowell said. “Just before I left Hawaii, I had a couple of drinks and made a telephone call. I told my cousin to get our senator on the horn and discreetly inquire when I could expect to be promoted. Black’s going to send an aviation battalion to Vietnam. In my innocence—and since Black had just expressed his deep appreciation for my splendid services—I thought, if I could get that little silver leaf, I could command it.”
“You’re getting the Legion of Merit for what you did for Black in Vietnam,” Paul Jiggs said.
“You’ll mail it to me, of course?” Lowell said, sarcastically. “Pray permit me to finish, General. What our senator found out, General…and I find it difficult to believe that you didn’t know this…is that I have been passed over twice for promotion, and as soon as this Cuban thing is settled, I will be involuntarily separated. So let’s stop the crap.”
“They’re throwing you out, Duke?” M/Sgt Wojinski asked.
“On my ass, Ski,” Lowell confirmed.
“Sonsofbitches!” Wojinski said. “That ain’t right!”
“But it is the fact. So what else can you threaten me with, Paul?”
“OK,” Jiggs said. “Go ahead, make a goddamned fool of yourself. You won’t get near Cuba. Or for that matter, Nicaragua. If the Cubans don’t shoot you down, our people will. I told you, it goes on Monday.”
“Don’t be a fool, Craig,” Jane Jiggs said.
Lowell picked up the telephone and dialed a number.
“You want to get your ass in a really big crack?” he said to whoever answered.
“Who is that?” Jiggs demanded.
“Bring the Commander and a change of underwear to the Ozark airport,” Lowell said, not replying to the question “Right now. I’ll be there.”
He hung up.
“Who was that?” Jiggs demanded.
“Franklin,” Lowell said.
“You’re willing to get him in trouble, too? In this childish gesture of yours?”
“If we get in trouble, I’ll hire him a good lawyer,” Lowell said. “Franklin is a freak like me, General. When his friends are in trouble, they worry about paper-pushers later.”
“That was a cheap shot, Craig,” Hanrahan snapped.
Lowell looked at him, and then at General Jiggs.
“Yes, it was, and I’m heartily sorry,” he said.
“Forget it,” Jiggs said. “I realize you’re out of your mind.”
“I’m going to pack,” Lowell said. “Will you see yourselves out?”
“Colonel,” M/Sgt Wojinski said, “I want to go.”
Hanrahan looked at him.
“And I am going, too,” Jannier announced.
“No, you’re not,” Lowell and Melody Jannier said in almost perfect unison.
“I have no intention,” Jannier said, “aware that I am about to become a father, of doing anything that would in any way endanger me. But I do travel on a diplomatic passport, and diplomatic passports are often very convenient.”
His reply shut both his wife and Lowell up. Lowell because he knew that a diplomatic passport was more valuable than money, Melody because she knew that she could not stop him from going anyway.
“Obviously, Sergeant,” Colonel Hanrahan said, breaking the silence, “I cannot approve in any way your getting yourself involved in Major Lowell’s insanity. You are officially forbidden to do so. On the other hand, if you have any leave coming, I see no reason why you can’t take a few days off.”
“You don’t actually think,” Jiggs said, “that this is going to be anything but a useless tragedy, do you?”
“I think the odds are against them,” Hanrahan said.
“You got some kind of a weapon for me?” Wojinski said.
“Sure,” Lowell said, “come along.”
Wojinski followed him into the house.
Major General Jiggs poured himself another drink and then went into the bedroom after them. Lowell was wearing a German Luger in a shoulder holster, and Wojinski was closing the lid on a case which held two shotguns and a .45 Colt pistol.
“Jane will drive you to the airport,” General Jiggs said. “For obvious reasons, I can’t afford to be seen seeing you off on this escapade.”
“Thank you,” Lowell said.
“The last time I saw that GOTT MIT UNS holster,” Jiggs said, making reference to the Wehrmacht belt buckle that Lowell had mounted to the custom-made holster, “was a long time ago.”
“When I was a bright young major, with a very promising career, right?” Lowell replied, dryly.
“In those days, Craig, I thought you thought very clearly.”
“You going to wish us luck, Paul?” Lowell said.
“Sure,” Major General Jiggs said, and offered his hand.
Jane Jiggs was surprised that Melody didn’t try to stop her husband. And then she understood that Melody knew that she could not have stopped her husband except at a price she was unwilling to pay. Melody was wiser than she should have been at her age. It might be because she had already lost one warrior husband. Or it might be that she, like Jane herself, was that rare woman who understood the price that had to be paid for being married to a warrior.
“Melody,” Lowell said, “I need a favor.”
“I regret,” Melody mockingly quoted, “that I have but one husband to give to my country.”
Lowell looked as if he was going to reply, and then changed his mind.
“Call Cynthia at the Time-Life bureau in Mexico City,” Lowell said.
“Cynthia Thomas?” Melody interrupted.
“Yeah,” Lowell said.
“Well! Well!” Melody said.
“I was supposed to meet her down there,” Lowell said.
“You don’t say?” Melody asked, innocently.
“Call her and tell her I can’t make it,” Lowell said.
“Why don’t you call her yourself?” Melody asked, pointing to a telephone.
“Because if I call her,” Lowell said, “she’ll want to know why I can’t come, and I can’t tell her. And that would make her mad.”
“What I should do to you, Craig, is call her and tell her the reason you’re standing her up is a peroxide blonde with a forty-inch bust named Wanda.”
“I thought we were pals,” Lowell said.
“We were,” Melody said, “until you blew the ‘charge’ on your trumpet. You should have known that would cause the goddamned Pavlovian response in the father of my unborn child.”
“All he’s going to do is go wave that diplomatic passport around,” Lowell said. “Nothing more.”
“Said the Tooth Fairy,” Melody said.
“OK, don’t call her,” Lowell said.
“Melody,” Jean-Philippe Jannier, now the French husband, said, “you will do what Craig asks.”
Melody stuck out her tongue at him.
Then they went out and got in the car and drove off.
Major General Jiggs waited until it was clear that Lowell was not going to come back to the house for something he had forgotten before he got on the telephone.
Melody watched as he placed a person-to-person call to Mr. James W. Stemme at the Central Intelligence Agency in McLean, Virginia.
After some delay, General Jiggs reached Mr. Stemme at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. When he’d explained what was up, Mr. Stemme assured Jiggs that there would be no problem. When Lowell arrived in Miami he would be met by agents of United States Customs. Acting on a tip, they would search his aircraft, find contraband, and arrest the airplane’s occupants. After everything was over, they would be released with apologies.
Mr. Stemme thanked General Jiggs for bringing the matter to his attention.
Jiggs hung up.
“Why didn’t you just have the MPs hold him here?” Colonel Paul Hanrahan asked. “Was all that necessary?”
“It’s a long way to Miami,” Jiggs said. “Craig’s a smart fellow. He’ll come to his senses long before he gets there.”
Hanrahan nodded.
“And I didn’t want to have him arrested for wanting to do something I wish I could do myself,” General Jiggs added.
“You underestimate them, General,” Melody Jannier said. “Good try, but it won’t work.”
General Jiggs and Colonel Hanrahan looked at Melody but they didn’t respond. They thought that Melody simply didn’t know what she was talking about.
(Four)
Montego Bay, Jamaica
0945 Hours, 17 April 1961
Lowell, dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt, found Captain Archibald Needham in the bar of the Prince Charles’ Arms’ Hotel. Captain Archibald Needham, chief pilot for Air Hire Jamaica (and its sole stockholder) was, despite the hour, visibly drunk.
“Needham, you sonofabitch!” Lowell said.
“Well, good morning, Mr. Lowell,” Needham said.
“You gave me your word,” Lowell said.
“Oh, don’t be an ass,” Needham said, so clearly and so angrily that Lowell suspected he wasn’t quite as drunk as he wanted to appear. “Haven’t you heard the radio? Radio Havana is already boasting that your invasion is a disaster.”
“So what?”
“So I have no intention of flying you anywhere. This isn’t the Battle of Britain, you know. Western civilization is not really hanging in the balance.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get there?”
“Don’t go,” Captain Needham said. “Discretion, I’ve heard, is supposed to be the better part of valor.”
“And I thought I could take an English gentleman’s word,” Lowell said.
“You must know how absurd you sound, Old Boy,” Needham said. “And I don’t think you’re naive. So I must ask myself, why did he say that?”
“I’ll fly it,” Lowell said. “You just come along.”
“But that’s why I got drunk,” Needham said. “So I would not be of any use to you in case you were either very persuasive or kidnapped me at the point of a gun.”
“Just come along and show me how to fly it,” Lowell asked, reasonably.
“I’ll tell you what I will do,” Needham said. “I will buy that Catalina of yours…for ten thousand American dollars less than you paid me for it.”
“You are a miserable sonofabitch,” Lowell said.
“And the day after tomorrow, I will be a live, if miserable, sonofabitch,” Needham said.
“Fuck you,” Lowell said, ineffectually. It was all he could think of to say. Hitting Needham would accomplish nothing.
He walked out of the bar.
He heard Needham chuckling behind him.
When he got to the airfield, Jannier, Franklin, and Wojinski were sitting in the shade of the wing of the airplane. The airplane was an amphibian, a Consolidated Vultee Catalina. This particular airplane was relatively new. It had been delivered to the U.S. Navy as a PBY-6A in 1944. Two 1,200-hp Pratt & Whitney “Twin Wasp” radial engines, sitting on the wing above and just behind the cockpit, drove it at a top speed of 179 miles an hour.
The airplane was designed for long-range reconnaissance before radar was more than an engineer’s interesting idea. Two ovoid bubbles were on the sides of the fuselage. And there was another observation position in the nose in front of the cockpit windows.
When the airplane had been sold as surplus, the machinegun ports in the observation windows had been filled with Plexiglas, and the cabin interior outfitted with sound-deadening insulation and seats. No other changes were required to modify the plane for commercial use. Indeed, the Catalina was ideally suited for service in the Caribbean and West Indies. If there was an airfield, it used the wheels. When there was no airfield, the wheels folded up against the fuselage, and the Catalina had the water to use for a landing field.
Flying south from Ozark, Lowell had known they would need an amphibian. And he knew that he was going to need a Catalina, because all the other amphibians (the Grumman Widgeon, for example) would not be able to carry Ellis’s “A” Team.
He had also suspected that Paul Jiggs (with Hanrahan’s unspoken agreement) had given in to his going to Cuba too easily. There would almost certainly be military police waiting for them at Miami. And so, twenty miles out of Tallahassee, he had gotten on the horn and told Valdosta area control to close out his Miami instrument flight plan. He had announced his intention of going back to Tallahassee for fuel.
He had then dropped down to the deck and flown right down the center of the Florida peninsula to Palm Beach.
The only thing that surprised the proprietors of the Palm Beach Flying Service was that the pilot of the Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes Aero Commander was colored. It did not surprise them at all (for this was Palm Beach, where the rich were accustomed to getting what they wanted) that they wished to charter another aircraft with crew to continue their journey to Jamaica.
The American Express card offered in tender of payment identified the holder as Vice Chairman of the Board, Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes. A quick telephone call to American Express had gotten a blanket OK for whatever Mr. Lowell wished to charge.
They weren’t even surprised that the big, Polish-looking character with them had a Colt .45 pistol tucked in the waistband of his trousers. Bodyguards for the very rich were not at all uncommon in Palm Beach.
