The Book of Honor (33 page)

But King was not one to be content flying the air equivalent of a bus route. He wanted to see the world, he was deeply patriotic, and he was not afraid of taking risks, especially when he could be compensated for his daring. Nor was keeping his mouth shut a burden. It was second nature to him.

By temperament he was perfectly suited for his next employer—Air America, the CIA's proprietary airline. For years, King flew countless covert missions over Laos and Vietnam. Mostly he flew Twin Beech Volpars on low-level photo reconnaissance missions. Many of these flights put him over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. King reported to Jim Rhyne, one of Air America's most senior pilots. But Rhyne and King were more than colleagues, they were friends. Even among the rough-and-tumble cohorts of Air America, the sangfroid of these two low-flying pilots was the stuff of fables.

Berl never discussed his work with his family and they never asked. Still they worried for him and with good reason. Sometime in 1963 he was shot while flying a mission over Laos. The bullet pierced his right thigh and arm. He came home to convalesce and stayed with his brother Clarence, then a policeman living in California. Only Clarence knew the truth of Berl's wounds. The rest of Berl's family was told that he had been involved in a motorcycle accident.

No sooner had he mended than he was back in the air. It was duty, not money, that motivated him, but the money was deeply appreciated, as if he could use it to correct his own grim past. In 1966 he purchased a new home for his mother and father in Nettleton, Arkansas, right next to the home he had grown up in. It was one of his great pleasures in life to know that his mother would at last have some measure of comfort.

But that peace was shattered in February 1969 when one of King's younger brothers, David, was killed by a sniper in Vietnam. King's sister Velma pleaded with Berl not to go back to Southeast Asia after David's death, but Berl was determined. “Sis,” he told her, “I have to. I don't know if you realize how close the Communists are to the United States, and how many of them have infiltrated the government and what a mess everything is in.”

By the time that the war in Southeast Asia was winding down, Berl King had become one of the unspoken heroes within the ranks of Air America, a pilot who time and again had survived flying through storm and enemy fire, over fog-enshrouded mountains, and in planes whose air-worthiness was often suspect.

It was only fitting that on June 30, 1974, it was Berl King who piloted the very last Air America flight out of Laos. In a modified Twin Beech Volpar, with a short-takeoff-and-landing capability, King prepared to fly from Udorn to Bangkok to Saigon. The Air America base manager in Udorn, Clarence Abadie, watched pensively as King lifted off on course “Tango zero eight.” At the bottom of this last flight order, Abadie scribbled a few lines of tribute not only to King but also to the other pilots with whom he had served:

“So ends the last sentence of the final paragraph of the saga that may have an epilogue but never a sequel. It has been to each participating individual an experience which varied according to his role and perspective, however there is a common bond of knowledge and satisfaction having taken part in something worthwhile and with just a slight sense of pity for those lesser souls who could not or would not share in it. This last flight schedule is dedicated to those for whom a previous similar schedule represented an appointment with their destiny.”

With the end of the war in Southeast Asia there was suddenly a huge glut of former Air America pilots, “kickers,” and crew members looking for jobs with the CIA, but the Agency was loath to take them, fearing that their former affiliation with Air America—by then widely identified as a CIA proprietary—would compromise the security of future covert operations. The Agency's James Glerum, chief of Special Operations Group, had to get special dispensation from his superiors to carve out two exceptions to the Agency's ban on Air America pilots, arguing that they possessed extraordinary flight skills. One of these was Berl King, who was brought into the CIA on staff following the collapse of South Vietnam. The other was Jim Rhyne, King's friend and superior.

Less than four years later it was Rhyne who would deliver the eulogy for King following the North Carolina crash. No one understood better than Rhyne the risks that King had taken during his career. Years earlier, in January 1972, Rhyne had been in an Air America Volpar on a mission dropping leaflets along the Chinese border hoping to get information on a missing U.S. C-123 that was believed shot down by the Chinese. Rhyne's plane came under intense ground fire. Bullets ripped through the aircraft. One of them shredded the control wires connected to the rudder. There were but two thin strands of cable left, and these Rhyne plied deftly, guiding the disabled aircraft home. But the same eighty-five-millimeter rounds that had ripped apart the cables had also shredded Jim Rhyne's leg. There would be no saving it.

That should have been the end of Rhyne's covert career, but six months after his leg was amputated at the knee, he was back flying for Air America. He would go on working covert operations well into his sixties. The Green Berets even bestowed upon him an honorary beret, and his work for the Agency was often among the most sensitive. As Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner is said to have remarked in mock disbelief, “You mean I sent a one-legged man on this mission?”

But there was something else that connected Rhyne to King and the fateful North Carolina crash. It had been Rhyne who was scheduled to fly the aircraft that night, and only at King's insistence did he relent. King was not quite as familiar with the precise landing setup as Rhyne, and his death was, ironically, perhaps the result of his own meticulous precision with the aircraft. His approach was exactly as was called for, but for a foot or two more of altitude. All of this Jim Rhyne reflected on as he prepared to read his brief eulogy for King at the Farmer's Union Funeral Home in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The date was July 19, 1978, and Rhyne, supported by his prosthesis, stood close by his friend's body, enclosed in a casket the undertaker's catalog listed as “Roman Bronze.”

“I am here today to represent and speak for Berl's many friends, fellow pilots, air crews and associates,” Jim Rhyne began. “Among these professionals of the aviation community both overseas and throughout the country he was known and respected for his outstanding airmanship. As a friend, he was sincere, understanding and generous. As a man he was courageous in the face of danger, calm and resolute in times of stress and kind and helpful to those less fortunate.

“Berl had been flying for many years and had logged over 18,000 hours. Much of his flying was done under difficult, primitive and hazardous conditions in southeast Asia. Berl was one of the best of an elite group of pilots known throughout commercial aviation for their versatility, experience and performance in a demanding and dangerous profession. With his passing the select ranks of these intrepid men are irreversibly thinned. The loss is irretrievable. The hard unforgiving school of unique flight operations is of another time—an era past. Men of his caliber, skill and dedication are rare. The pipeline for their development is virtually gone. Berl's image stands proudly as an example for those few who have the fortitude, persistence, and skill to follow him as a true professional. Those of us who honor him today will always remember him as such. Now that he has left, his spirit continues to serve as it will forever. God rest his soul.”

King was buried beside his mother, Mabel, in the Jonesboro Memorial Park Cemetery. His father is buried in another cemetery—in keeping with his wishes, close to his son David, killed in Vietnam in 1969. On Berl King's simple gravestone are written the words “RDM3 US NAVY KOREA.” There was nothing from the quarter century after the Korean conflict that the family felt it could safely refer to on the stone.

But for the siblings of Berl King, his death brought neither peace nor answers. Clarence King, his older brother who was in law enforcement, attempted to piece together what had happened. He was stymied at every turn. A senior Agency official made it clear that no one was to make inquiries, including the family. “They wanted us never to open our mouth to anybody and we've never been any different,” recalled Clarence two decades later. “We were not to talk about this, period.”

The family was not even free to select which attorneys could close Berl King's estate. Instead, the Agency provided the names of three Washington-area lawyers who had been cleared by the CIA. The first attorney demanded that the family give him a checkbook and leave the rest to him. Suspicious, the family went to the second attorney on the Agency's list. A short time later he was found dead, floating in the Potomac River. Finally they turned to Jim Rhyne to handle the estate. King's family asked Rhyne if there was any risk that the family could be sued either by survivors of the crash or by the decedents' families. Rhyne assured them they would never hear from anyone again. What he did not mention is that the families of the two military men killed in the crash, Luis Lebatarde and Walter McCleskey, were never told it was a CIA flight.

Like many families who have lost loved ones in the CIA's clandestine service, it is often hard to separate paranoia from reality, so enveloped are their lives in secrecy. King's entire funeral had been photographed, and only certain people were allowed to attend. Clarence King says he was warned by an Agency employee to be careful what he said on the phone, that his and his siblings' telephones were tapped by the Agency. He was also told that for a time he would be followed by someone from the CIA's security section, that he would do well to simply ignore the person and go about his life. So long as no one mentioned the CIA to the press or public, there would be no problem. Some months later the Agency returned King's wallet to the family. It had been cleaned out of all but a driver's license.

Not long after the crash, Clarence and sister Velma went to pack up King's belongings at his northern Virginia home. It was clear to them that the CIA had already been through the house making sure nothing sensitive was left behind. It was an eerie feeling as if everything had been set up by the Agency—it was all too perfect.

King's bed was still turned down just as it had been when he got up the morning of the flight. His sandals were by the bed, as if awaiting him still. There were only hints as to the nature of his life and travels—Persian rugs, an opium scale of teak in the shape of elephants, a cigarette lighter presented by the president of Thailand. In an effort to identify his assets, the family called King's stockbroker. The moment the broker learned it was with reference to Berl King, she told them to call from another phone, that King's phone was bugged.

Members of King's family are still not completely convinced that Berl was even aboard the ill-fated aircraft. His sister Velma believes that, with the Agency, anything is possible, and knowing her brother's devout sense of duty, she does not put it past him to disappear at the CIA's request and to continue a life of covert operations under a pseudonym. She knows how wildly unlikely all this sounds, but no more so than much of her brother's life in the shadows. “There will always be a tiny bit of doubt in my mind,” she says, twenty years after the crash. “I have become so jaded about our government since all this happened. I have become very skeptical. They tell you what they want you to know whether there's a grain of truth or not. A lot of times, they don't tell you anything.”

Seated in the cockpit next to Berl King that July evening in 1978 was Dennis Gabriel, a tall, broad-shouldered figure with thick black hair, muscles upon muscles, and a torso that formed a perfect “V.” The two men, King and Gabriel, had known of each other for a long time, their paths first having crossed more than a decade earlier in the Far East. Both men were quiet, self-effacing, but supremely confident of their skills. Both were unflappable.

But that is where any similarities ended. Where King had grown up in abject poverty, Gabriel was the son of privilege. His father, Philip Louis Gabriel, was a wealthy California industrialist, a Christian émigré from Lebanon, whose financial interests ranged from automotive components to a television studio. Denny Gabriel grew up with a cook, a housekeeper, and gardeners. He attended private Catholic schools. At eleven his parents divorced, and Denny, who was close to his mother, seemed to withdraw into himself. Early on, he demonstrated an interest in a life of travel and adventure. He read the stories of Jack London and talked of becoming a fighter pilot like his two uncles.

Despite scoring a hefty 146 on the IQ test, he showed no particular gift for academics. After a stint at Berkeley, he transferred to Washington State University, majoring in political science and French. To these he would later add Arabic and Spanish. Intensely private, he seldom gave even a clue as to his personal goals or feelings. Physically he was a remarkable specimen. At six feet two and 220 pounds, he excelled in the competitive Pacific Coast Conference in both discus and shot put. He possessed an explosive strength tempered by uncommon gentleness.

Gabriel had grown up in California. By 1961 he had set his sights on training for the 1964 Olympics in the decathlon. He graduated from Washington State on June 3, 1962. During his senior year he was approached by a CIA recruiter, and in 1963 he entered the Agency through a program code-named IU Jewel, one of the major Agency recruitment efforts of the decade. Most of those who entered the Jewel Program came out of the military, particularly Special Forces. But some, like Gabriel, were recruited right off the college campus, based on their unique interests and skills, be it trekking, mountain climbing, hunting. All were rugged outdoorsmen. Gabriel had it all—a rugged physique, a black belt in judo, a fearless demeanor, and a pilot's license.

Denny's roommate those first months with the Agency was Bill Miller, a solid six feet one inch. But Gabriel could literally lift Miller over his head without the slightest strain. Denny neither drank nor smoked and constantly watched his diet. Like Berl King, he was painfully shy at social gatherings, and though he possessed the looks of a Hollywood movie star, he winced when invited to parties and squirmed if ever the center of attention. Besides, he was already dating Renier Barnes, a vivacious redhead whose own gregarious ways more than offset his own awkwardness. Renier, also an employee of the Agency and fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and French, would become his wife on December 30, 1967, at St. Thomas Apostle Church. (The Agency confiscated all the wedding photos except those of immediate family.)