by Ted Gup
But there was also work to be done and preparation for his next assignment. Until then, he had been stationed in countries of obvious importance to the Agency—Germany and Korea. Both were viewed as bulwarks against Communist aggression. They had been rife with opportunities to send agents back behind enemy lines to gather information and wreak mischief. There were innumerable Agency operatives in both countries, and Boteler had been but one member of that largely invisible corps of spies.
But when Boteler was informed of his next overseas assignment, he was rendered almost speechless. Cyprus, his superior had intoned. Boteler had only the vaguest notion of where it was, much less why the United States should care about the fate of so small and rocky an island in the Mediterranean. Comprised of a mere 3,572 square miles, it was about twice the size of Long Island and located 40 miles from Turkey and 530 miles from the Greek mainland. Worse yet, he was to be the only case officer on the entire island. There wasn’t even a formal CIA station there yet. Boteler was to open a base there, bases being subordinate to stations.
But already by late 1955, Cyprus was assuming a strategic significance that dwarfed its diminutive size. The British, America’s closest ally, were being pushed out of Egypt by Gamal Abdel Nasser and were now desperate to relocate their army, air, and sea bases. At stake was Britain’s capacity to defend its lifeline to Mideast oil. Without it, Great Britain was lost, its industry crippled. Cyprus had been under British rule since the Crown acquired it in 1878 from Turkey, ironically in exchange for its help against the Russians. Expelled from Egypt, the Brits designated Cyprus their new Mediterranean redoubt. They set about to build formidable military bases even as their sources of oil came under increasing threats from Egypt’s ultranationalistic Nasser.
But as Britain expanded its presence on the island, the domestic stability of Cyprus began to collapse. The Cypriot population was 80 percent ethnic Greeks and 20 percent Turkish Moslems. The Greek majority hungered to be unified with Greece, a movement known as enosis. A terrorist faction calling itself EOKA, for the National Organization of the Cypriot Fight, launched a campaign of violence against the British to drive them from the island and win unification with Greece. EOKA was headed by a shadowy figure who called himself simply Dighenis, but who was in fact a former Greek colonel, George Grivas. Adding to the volatility on the island, its ethnarch, or spiritual leader, the charismatic Archbishop Makarios, was championing enosis and secretly fomenting social unrest in aid of EOKA.
Meanwhile, a mere forty miles across the sea, the Turks feared that if such a union with Greece should occur, ethnic Turks would be persecuted or slaughtered. The millennia-old enmity between the Greeks and Turks was becoming more edgy with each passing month. In Turkey there were anti-Greek riots. In Greece there were anti-British riots. On Cyprus the number of Brits killed by EOKA was climbing.
The deteriorating situation in Cyprus was of far more than academic interest to the United States. The CIA and National Security Council watched in horror as three bedrock members of the NATO alliance— Britain, Greece, and Turkey—drifted further and further apart. Greece made not-so-subtle threats to abandon NATO and seek neutrality. It withdrew from some planned exercises. Turkey, a NATO member that bordered the Soviet Union, drew further away from the United States. If the situation unraveled much more, the alliance itself could crumble and the Soviets, emboldened by their closeness to Nasser and the erupting feud among NATO allies, might seek to expand their grip on the region. They might even make a play for its oil reserves.
The United States also had its own parochial interests in Cyprus. It was there that the CIA had a major communications relay station through which all cable traffic, open and encrypted, passed on its way to and from the Middle East and Washington.
As Boteler’s briefings continued, he came to understand that far more was at stake than the little island of Cyprus.
In the months before being posted there, he steeped himself in the history and culture of Cyprus and the surrounding region. But because there was no U.S. military presence on the island, he could not use military cover to conceal his mission. Instead, he would have to adopt a more conventional cover—that of the diplomat. Like Doug Mackiernan before him, his cover would be vice-consul. And to pass for a diplomat he would need to develop certain skills and familiarize himself with the attendant duties of a vice-consul.
He would also, it was decided, need to learn to dance. Cyprus was, after all, a proper British protectorate and there would be formal parties and balls to attend. They couldn’t have this handsome young diplomat arrive with two left feet.
One morning Boteler got into his spiffy little Austin-Healey and drove from the Agency through Washington’s downtown to 1011 Connecticut Avenue, the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. He walked down the small flight of steps, entered the studio, and made his way to the reception desk, where he filled out a form, enrolling himself in a series of dance classes—at CIA expense.
The studio manager then led Boteler to a slender twenty-three-year-old dance instructor named Anne Paffenbarger. Who was this young man? she wondered as she extended her hand to him. He was simply the most beautiful of men, tall and lean and dark. It was all she could do to keep from giving herself away with a sigh. Boteler, too, was instantly taken by his own good fortune. Before him stood a heavenly woman of five feet six, her dress breaking at the knee, her hair short and dirty blond. Boteler thought of the actress Jean Simmons. Within moments his right arm was around her slender waist, his left hand in her right, as they swept across the wide floor of the ballroom, practicing a waltz and counting together: “one-two-three, one-two-three.” The hour was over in an instant.
Over the course of the next several weeks Boteler learned the mambo, cha-cha, waltz, and swing, but mostly he returned to be close to Anne. She had graduated a year earlier from Columbia, majoring in Romance languages.
The man who never fell for anyone was now in something of a tail-spin. But neither Boteler nor Paffenbarger would let on to the other that there was anything between them beyond a contract for dance instruction. It was, after all, forbidden for instructors to date students or see them socially. After several weeks Boteler showed up unexpectedly at one of the studio’s evening sessions, an additional opportunity to practice. “I came in just to see you,” he told her. That was the first time that Paffenbarger had any indication that Boteler was as drawn to her as she was to him. “Oh,” was the only response she could muster. But Paffenbarger was not about to let Boteler slip away.
She quit her job at the dance studio and got a position as a clerk at Garfinkle’s Department Store. Nearly every night the two went out on the town. One night he took her to see a film with Gregory Peck, one of his favorite actors. Another evening was spent in a café where a roving singer sang “Moonlight in Vermont.” Paffenbarger imagined that, together, the two of them looked like moonlight itself. After that, the melody would always bring Bill Boteler to mind.
Boteler’s father complained that after his son had spent so much time overseas with the government, he still had hardly any time together with him. Before long Boteler and Paffenbarger spoke of marriage. Boteler suggested that he would have a ring made especially for her. In the meantime he presented her with a pair of earrings, small and delicate silver scrolls with a cultured pearl in the center.
Finally she was introduced to Boteler’s father. He asked what she had thought of his son when they first met. Paffenbarger stumbled for words that would not embarrass her. “She fainted!” quipped Bill. Later, on a country outing, Paffenbarger invited Boteler to climb Sugarloaf Mountain. Boteler feigned puzzlement. “I have been to Katmandu and Mount Everest,” he said. “There aren’t any mountains around here!” Still they drove to the top of Sugarloaf and had a quiet picnic.
They were well suited for each other. By nature, they were both cool and reserved. Both were sober and conservative, not given to emotional gushing. For both, this thing that had happened to them, this spontaneous romance, w
as as unfamiliar as it was intoxicating. Boteler once whispered to her that she was a female version of himself.
When Paffenbarger first asked what Boteler did for a living, he reverted to his old evasive ways. Finally he confided in her that he was with the CIA. But what startled her even more was his disclosure that for weeks the couple had been under CIA surveillance. The CIA’s security section, he said, wanted to know whom he was seeing, how he spent his time, and where he was going. Boteler was ever conscious of being watched. Over time, said Boteler, the surveillance ended.
He would never discuss the specifics of his work, but he let it be known that he was proud of what he had accomplished and that it was thought he would have a bright future.
As the time for his next assignment drew closer, however, Boteler appeared more anxious. He confessed that his next mission had him worried. The night before his departure, Anne and he had dinner with Boteler’s father. After dinner Boteler asked her not to see him off at National Airport. It was something he wanted to do alone. As he prepared to leave, Paffenbarger rushed at him, threw her arms around him, and lost herself completely. She would remember herself flying at him as if she were a missile, and of him catching her in his arms and trying to calm her down.
The next day Boteler went to the Agency to complete his checkout procedure. In Tempo Building L he bumped into his friend from Korea Frank Laubinger. The two lunched in the cafeteria. It was a brief get-together, thirty minutes at most, but Laubinger could not shake the ominous feeling—call it a premonition—that this would be the last time he would see Bill Boteler. Laubinger was not a superstitious man, far from it. But this would be the most intense feeling he would have in his twenty-eight years with the Agency. In his mind, Boteler’s going to Cyprus was tantamount to his friend putting his neck in a noose. He never shared a word of his misgivings with Boteler except to wish him well and to bid him to take care of himself.
On May 7, 1956, Boteler boarded BOAC flight 510 for London. Acting Secretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., had arranged for Boteler to be briefed at each of the capital cities involved in the Cyprus dispute— London, Athens, and Ankara. Boteler’s first two days were spent in London being briefed by the CIA’s station chief and by the British. Three days later he began the second leg of his trip and wrote his first letter to Anne. “Sweetheart,” the letter began, “Pardon the pencil, but I’m out of ink. At the moment, I’m 22,000 feet over Switzerland—I think—on my way from London to Rome, thence to Athens. I’m flying on one of the new Viscounts, which, unfortunately, is not much different from any other plane I’ve ever been on.”
Boteler recounted his two days in London. Between briefings he had walked throughout London, around Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. On his second night he took in Noël Coward’s comedy South Sea Bubble with Vivien Leigh. “I found time to indulge in my favorite sport, barhopping,” he jested, “and thus investigated the insides of several representative public houses.” The next morning he left for Athens and a second round of briefings.
He remained focused on the situation in Cyprus. “Things are not improving on Cyprus; if anything, getting worse,” he wrote Paffenbarger. “The government has refused to suspend the execution of two convicted Greek terrorists, and have announced they will be hung this week. This touched off riots in Athens yesterday, and strikes in Nicosia [Cyprus’s capital]. Right or wrong, the British are sticking by their guns, and there certainly isn’t likely to be any settlement for some time; the people I talked with in the Foreign Office and Colonial Office are frank to admit that.”
“I miss you and am pretty lonely, despite all the new places, people I’m seeing,” he wrote. “I’ll be glad to get settled into a routine of work again, & to get my mind on other matters as much as possible. I’m still not quite sure how I got into this in the first place, but there’s no denying that I’m in it.
“Be good and don’t step on anybody’s feet. Write whenever you can, and smile. My love, Bill.”
In the predawn hours of May 10, the day Boteler wrote his first letter to Paffenbarger, the British hung the two convicted EOKA terrorists, Michael Karaolis and Andreas Demetriou. Both were only twenty-three years old. Their bodies were quickly buried in the corner of the prison grounds, in the hope that behind high walls topped with broken glass, their graves would not become a rallying point for terrorists. It was unhallowed ground where the Orthodox priest could not hold service. Just outside the gates, Karaolis’s mother sat in a chair waiting for the news.
Retaliation was not long in coming. Twenty-four hours later EOKA’s Grivas ordered two policemen shot and buried in secret.
For months the situation in Cyprus had been slipping into chaos. Even as Boteler made his way there, the State Department began to evacuate dependents. Terrorist attacks were now a daily affair. Thus far, attacks had been restricted to assaults on the British, but everyone was now wary. The Brits now had more than 22,000 troops quartered there. British soldiers had taken to covering their cars with wire screens to ward off stones from angry schoolchildren. In the twelve months before Boteler’s arrival, British casualties numbered 47 dead and 125 wounded. At least as many Cypriots had fallen.
The terror campaign was stepped up following the March 9 arrest of Archbishop Makarios. He had been placed aboard a British frigate and exiled to the remote Seychelles islands, a British Crown Colony in the Indian Ocean a thousand miles east of Kenya. The new British governor of Cyprus, Field Marshal Sir John Harding, believed that with a firm enough hand he could quash the unrest. He had won a get-tough reputation fighting the Mau Mau in Kenya and now swore to crush EOKA as well.
But NATO threatened to unravel. Greece had withdrawn its ambassador from London. In Athens the street where the British Embassy stood was renamed for the two EOKA terrorists hung in Cyprus. At Athens’s request, the United States canceled a planned visit of the Sixth Fleet to the Greek island of Crete. NATO’s southern flank was now on the verge of disintegration. The Soviets watched with relish as their foes fell to arguing among each other over a rocky scrap of island.
On May 15 Boteler arrived in Nicosia, Cyprus, having completed briefings in Athens, Istanbul, and Ankara. The next day he wrote his father. “Living here is going to be much more of a problem than in Germany or Korea, but also much more pleasant. I have had to find and rent an apartment, furnish it, hire a maid, and in general, set up housekeeping. Fortunately, the bills will be footed by you know who . . . Things are pretty restricted here, although, by and large, you wouldn’t be outwardly aware of any difficulty . . . The British are very wary, and terrorism continues. Lord knows it should be an interesting tour; however, it’s a damn pretty island, and I hope things calm down somewhat, so that I can enjoy it more fully.”
His second day in Nicosia he took out a fountain pen and wrote a letter to Anne. “I’m not disappointed in Cyprus,” he wrote, “although it’s a shame things are the way they are, as movements are severely restricted. The British are really taking it in the neck, and top British officials are guarded by hordes of soldiers.” Meanwhile Boteler attended to the mundane duties of a vice-consul, his cover position, furnished his apartment, and tried to orient himself. Back in Washington, Anne had returned to Arthur Murray. In closing his letter, Boteler wrote, “Hope things aren’t too grim at A.M. [Arthur Murray]; write whenever you can, & don’t forget I miss you. Much love, Bill.”
Boteler was fascinated with Cyprus, particularly Nicosia’s old city within the walls, where most of the shops were and where, unfortunately, much of the violence was as well. Boteler had asked permission to live inside the old city but was turned down for security reasons. That first week in Nicosia was even more violent than the previous week. “The British are taking extreme repressive measures, but they don’t seem to be doing much good—the entire population is solidly against them,” Boteler wrote his father.
Day by day, Boteler observed the British crackd
owns even as he developed an increasing fondness for the local Cypriots. “Despite the continuing violence, you seldom feel as if there’s anything unusual going on,” he wrote. “Americans are well thought of, and on friendly terms with the locals; still they have to stay at home at night also.” Boteler had not yet met many of the nearly three hundred Americans still on Cyprus. He was now beginning to chafe against the restrictions he faced. He was young, lonely, new to the country, and unable to explore it with the vigor with which he had become accustomed in Germany and Korea.
“No one, of course, has the slightest idea how things are likely to turn out, but it seems fairly certain that the situation isn’t going to be settled any time soon,” he wrote his father. “All of which makes my job more enjoyable, but my social life more restricted.”
Under diplomatic cover he was now representing the U.S. government. He immersed himself in the Greek language and made good headway. He marveled at the British, who showed no such interest in learning the language. It was late spring and he yearned to keep up with what was going on with baseball. He asked his father to pass along “a little inside dope on our heroes” from time to time. “Incidentally, didn’t I say Mantle [Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees] would have a great year—and didn’t I also say the Phils would win a pennant? Forget the last.”
By the end of May, Boteler was feeling cooped up. “We as Americans aren’t at war with anybody and nobody seems to hate us, but we have to go through the same drill as everybody else in most respects,” he wrote Anne on May 27, 1956. He felt confined, and instead of his beloved Austin-Healey, he had settled for a Morris Minor, a two-door sedan with what he contemptuously described as a “1/2 cylander [sic] engine.” Again he expressed his fascination with the old part of Nicosia, dangerous though it was.
By June 2 Cyprus seemed to be slipping into a war. Wrote Boteler to his father: “Things are indeed progressing unsatisfactorily, at least from a personal point of view. Otherwise, they couldn’t really be much worse, or at least so it seems at the moment. My arrival seems to have touched off a chain of events which has generally tended to heighten the tension here, and no doubt to attract more publicity for Cyprus elsewhere. The latest event was the bombing of an American home last night . . . generally regarded as accidental, but you never know . . . Lord knows where it will all lead.” No one was hurt in the bombing, but it was a reminder of everyone’s vulnerability.
