The Hunting Trip (23 page)

“I've heard those rumors,” Friendly Frank said. “But let's deal with the situation at hand. You have two years before you're twenty-one
and can take a commission. You have that college-level GED, which means you're only two years shy of the four years you need to get a college degree. How are you fixed for languages?”

“Well, I've become fluent in German since I've been here, and I had what I guess you could call a cram course in Hungarian pillow talk conversation.”

“Well, here's what I suggest, Sergeant Williams. You reenlist for six years, which will get you a three-thousand-dollar reenlistment bonus. That bonus is nonreturnable if you are discharged for the convenience of the government to accept a commission as an officer and gentleman. Then you get yourself over to the Free University of Berlin and matriculate. It's not really free, but the Army will grab the tab. In your spare time, you take a heavy load of light courses—the theory and practice of volleyball, for example, or elementary basket weaving, things like that—and one more language. I suggest French. And as soon as you turn twenty-one, and have your degree, let me know, and I will be happy to have you commissioned as First Lieutenant Philip W. Williams the Third. How does that sound?”

“Where do I sign, Friendly Frank?”

X

PHIL'S
REALLY
NEW PATH OF LIFE

[ ONE ]

Berlin, Germany

Saturday, December 18, 1948

P
hil intuited from the look on Pastor-in-Chief Peter O'Shaughnessy's freckled face that he was less than thrilled with Phil's announcement that Phil had just “shipped over” for an additional six years of military service, and his reasons for so doing.

Confirmation came almost immediately.

“Oh,
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,” Colonel O'Shaughnessy said, and then asked rhetorically, “What in the names of all the
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saints am I going to do with you now?”

“I gather ‘Congratulations and good luck' is not an option, sir?”

“Technical Sergeant Williams, let's try walking our way through the situation from the beginning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That would be the incidents that occurred on the Glienicke Bridge, a/k/a the Bridge over the River Havel.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“I will never forget, Technical Sergeant Williams, that except for your selfless courage and dedication to duty, which caused you to shield the body of Major Natasha Grebenshchikov, NKGB, with your own, that her boyfriend, Colonel Alexis Gorbachov, NKGB, would have emptied the fifty-round magazine of his Kalashnikov NKGB Senior Officer's Special into me as the jackass on which I was mounted ass-backwards galloped toward freedom.”

“I guess one might say that, sir.”

“I'm saying that. So that's one point for you, Technical Sergeant Williams.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“And you get another point for your selfless generosity in taking me into your apartment in the field grade bachelor officers' hotel despite knowing—having seen that my body odors were causing the paint on then Pastor-in-Charge Caldwell's Cadillac to blister—what damage I was likely to do, and indeed did, to the paint and varnish inside your apartment.”

“It was the decent thing to do, sir.”

“Nevertheless, it gets you another point. Which makes two.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I now realize, Sergeant Williams, that, in fairness, I have to go back to things which occurred before the incidents on the Bridge over the River Havel.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Two come immediately to mind. One is your splendid work in reviewing agents' reports for ambiguities and grammatical errors. For that you get, as they say in the
las plazas de toros
in Spain and
elsewhere known to bullfighting, both ears and the tail. Plus another point, for an interim total of three.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And of course you certainly deserve a point for your contribution to intergovernmental cooperation in intelligence matters with a friendly ally.”

“I don't understand that, sir.”

“Pastor Caldwell told me that after you took care of Second Lieutenant Charles William George Michael Bertram of Her Majesty's Own Scottish Light Lancers, the son of the Earl of Abercrombie and aide-de-camp to QT, which is the beard Sir Oswald T. Cholmondeley, OBE, KCG, and DSO uses while running MI-5, relations with our brother intelligence service have never been better. Apparently the young officer you now call Bertie took QT riding at the Pferd und Frauen before they left Berlin and ol' QT had a jolly good time. How many points does that make?”

“I believe four, sir.”

“Right. And then you get a fifth because of your relationship with Ralph Peters, formerly Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell, who became deputy director for Soviet Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency when Bill Colby rose from the dead and became CIA director, thus vacating the deputy director for Soviet Affairs position.”

“I don't think I understand, sir.”

“Before Ralph Peters, who was then of course still Colonel Caldwell, left Berlin, which was the day after I arrived here to become pastor-in-charge, we had quite a chat about you. He said that he had come to look on you as the son he and Victoria never had. He said for that reason he had told the Cadillac Division of the General Motors Corporation that the vehicle they had provided to field-test Fitzwater Cold Tanned Leather seats in the car of an officer on foreign service
had been worn out by the testing, and that he had sold it for one dollar to a deserving young person of his acquaintance, and therefore they should not expect to get it back.

“He then went on to say that his observation of you had convinced him that you possessed to an extraordinary degree the character traits an OSS, now CIA, officer should have. That is, you were a Saint Malachi's Old Boy, as he himself was, and also had demonstrated an unusual ability to lie convincingly and were not troubled by the prissy moral standards of the middle and lower classes when they got in the way of what your duty called upon you to do.

“He said that were it not for your youth, he would take you into the CIA the day after you got out of the Army. He said he asked Ralph Peters, who was of course by then Born Again Bill Colby, for a waiver of the rule which says CIA officers have to be old enough to vote, and that Born Again Bill turned him down.

“Ralph, the new Ralph, the former Colonel J. F. Caldwell, then said it was probably a good thing. Once you got out of the Army, you could spend the two years before you reached your majority by going to Harvard, into which institution, having passed the college-level GED test, you could matriculate as a junior. Then, upon reaching your majority, you could join the agency.

“He asked me to keep an eye on you after he went off to become Ralph Peters, until your enlistment was up and you could go to Cambridge. And I agreed to do so, even though, frankly, I thought that I was far more entitled to the worn-out Cadillac than you were, inasmuch as I had spent years driving a horse-drawn cart over the icy cobblestones of Moscow.

“But I digress. What was the point count, again?”

“Five, sir.”

“Right. Well, you started off with five points, but you quickly began to burn them up. I hadn't been here three days before a
delegation of officers resident in the field grade bachelor officers' hotel called on me, saying the presence of an
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
enlisted man in their hotel was prejudicial to good military order and discipline, and asking what I planned to do about it.

“I told them you were there because of intelligence matters which I of course could not discuss with them, but not to worry because you would soon be leaving. What I had in mind, of course, was you going home and getting out of the Army.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then the president of the Berlin Chapter of the West Point Protective Association called on me with regard to what they called in a somewhat heated conversation ‘that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
enlisted man of yours who hasn't even finished
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
high school.' They were upset about you living in the hotel and also that the man we now call Ralph Peters had designated you as the marksmanship instructor which caused a number of their members to have to spend their Saturday mornings messing with dangerous submachine guns, which was detrimental to their self-images as well as their lives.

“I got rid of the delegation by telling them to be patient, that that situation was about to change. What I had in mind, of course, was you going home and getting out of the Army.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then Gwyneth came up. That really tied a can to the old cat's tail.”

“Gwyneth, sir? Who, or what, is Gwyneth?”

“Isn't that her name?”

“Whose name, sir?”

“The Red Cross Comfort Girl you've been chauffeuring around town in that Cadillac, which really should be mine.”

“The name of the young lady to whom I believe you refer, sir, is Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn Krauthammer.”

“Well, let me tell you about Gwendolyn Krauthammer, Technical Sergeant Williams. The deputy chief of staff of Berlin Brigade came to see me and asked if he could talk to me man-to-man and out of school. To which I replied of course he could.

“‘Pete,' he said, ‘I'm calling you Pete because this conversation is man-to-man and out of school. If I called you Lieutenant Colonel O'Shaughnessy then you would have to call me “sir” because I'm a chicken colonel and you're only a light bird. You understand?'

“So I said, ‘Yes, sir,' and he went on, ‘Do you have any idea what threat that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
staff sergeant of yours is posing to the rest of the life of one of our sweet and innocent Red Cross Comfort Girls?'

“‘No, sir,' I confessed, ‘I don't.'

“‘Do you know what happens if a Red Cross Comfort Girl gets any closer, socially speaking, to an
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
enlisted man than a ten-foot pole would permit?'

“‘No, sir,' I confessed, ‘I don't.'

“‘Well, then,' the colonel said, ‘I'll tell you. They have a ceremony in the Bingo & Parcheesi Room of the Red Cross Comfort-the-Poor-Enlisted-Men Building. The Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl calls the other Comfort Girls to attention. Now, mano a mano, so to speak, I don't know how they get away with calling the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl a girl. She's at least sixty, weighs about three hundred pounds, and generally gets around in a wheelchair, but they do.

“‘Anyway, she calls the girls to attention, and she-who-is-about-to-get-the-boot is dragged before the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl—'”

“Sir, may I say something?”

“Not until I'm finished.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Where was I? Oh. The deputy chief of staff of Berlin Brigade
went on, ‘and the charges of which she has been found guilty are read.' In your case, your Gwendolyn would have been found guilty not only of having been seen riding around Berlin in a Cadillac driven by an
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enlisted man, but also at the bar of the club of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation in the company of said
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enlisted man drinking vodka martinis and exiting the field grade bachelor officers' hotel at oh-six-hundred hours, suggesting she had spent the night there in the room the
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enlisted man isn't even supposed to have—”

“Sir?”

“I told you once not to interrupt me until I'm finished. Don't make me have to tell you that again.”

“Yes, sir. No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“‘All of the forgoing bringing shame upon the reputation of Red Cross Comfort Girls and justifying her discharge from said organization under dishonorable and shameful conditions.'

“Then the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl would snatch the
Hello! My name is Gwendolyn. How may I comfort you?
sticky label from Gwendolyn's tunic lapel. Then she would cut all the Red Cross buttons from Gwendolyn's uniform tunic. Then, as the Red Cross Comfort Girls Jazz Quintet played ‘The Rogue's March,' Gwendolyn would be marched out of the Bingo & Parcheesi Room onto the street and the door slammed after her. Her life, obviously, changed for the worse and forever.”

“Now, sir?”

“Now you may speak, Technical Sergeant Williams.”

“What you have just described, sir, just would not happen.”

“How so?”

“Because Gwendolyn, with one hand on the Bible, would swear on the heads of the children she hopes to have with Second Lieutenant
Oscar Hormell the Third, to whom she is now affianced, that all of the charges are absolutely false and without basis in any facts whatsoever.”

“Why would a sweet Red Cross Comfort Girl like Gwendolyn swear something false and blatantly dishonest like that?”

“Because if she admitted to them, the chances of her marching down the aisle with Second Lieutenant Oscar Hormell the Third would be reduced to zilch, if not lower. He's a West Pointer. They like to think their women are pure.”

“But what if the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl subpoenaed you before her bar of justice?”