MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (20 page)

“Just as soon as the plane gets here,” Wesley said. “It’s bringing the senator out from Washington.”

“What senator?”

“Your senator, darling—Senator Kamikaze.”

“I don’t think I like that,”
Shur
-lee said. “What’s he horning in on my act for?”

“I’m sure our Beloved Leader will explain everything,” Wesley said. He picked up the telephone.

“Tell him I’m having my nails painted and couldn’t possibly talk to him,”
Shur
-lee said. “Just make sure you tell him that I expect the news of my coming to Paris to be spread all over town.”

“I don’t quite understand,” Wesley said.

“There’s a certain sweet someone in Paris, Wesley. When he hears I’m coming, he won’t dare dream that he’ll have a chance to even see me. Then, after he’s had a really good chance to eat his heart out, surprise, surprise!”

A
bearded
,
somewhat
haggard, but still handsome gentleman wrapped in a silk dressing gown, clutching a quart of Piper
Heidsieck
’69 in his hand, walked across the floor of a sumptuously furnished room on Boulevard de la Grande Armée* and pulled back, just half an inch, the heavy silk brocade curtain. Instantly, he dropped it.

(* Some scholars of sociological phenomena suggest that the Hollywood technique of overcoming weakness and gross failure by advertising was actually invented by the French. They cite as proof of their theory the number of military monuments, statues, and street names in Paris paying tribute to the French Army.)

“God, they’re still there!” he said. He referred to a small group of perhaps twenty Frenchmen, four of them carrying placards reading “Paris Den #707,
Shur
-lee
Strydent
Fan Club,” who were marching slowly up and down, under the trees and under the eyes of both the VIP Guard Detail of the Gendarmerie
Nationale
and a detachment of the Royal
Abzugian
Marine Corps.

He was, he knew, safe from them. He didn’t think much of the Gendarmerie
Nationale
, but he had, since he had sought protection in the
Abzugian
Embassy* frequently seen proof of the courage and efficiency of the
Abzugian
Marines. Not one member of the several hundred
Shur
-lee
Strydent
Fan Club members who had tried to catch a glimpse, however brief, of their
adored’s
adored had made it across the sidewalk, much less into the front yard.

(* The
Abzugian
Embassy was in the apartment of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov. It had been so designated after the singer had learned that so declaring it would place him and his guests under diplomatic immunity.)

But that was a two-way street. They couldn’t get in, but he couldn’t get out. At first he thought it was something that would pass with time, but he had recently been forced to consider the chilling thought that it was entirely likely he was doomed to spend the rest of his natural life in this gilded (eighteen-room) prison, and never again be allowed to tread the streets of the world as a free man.

He couldn’t even sneak out of the apartment long enough to play some cards with Boris and the guys at the Legion. Disguised in flowing Arab robes, his beard died black, hidden behind dark glasses, he had slipped out of the apartment and flagged a cab. When he pulled the door open, there were three
Strydent
fans inside, crawling all over themselves for a chance to touch the tender body which had once been close to the (as they phrased it) “divine corpus.” He had made it back to the safety of the Gendarmerie and
Abzugian
Marine lines, but just barely. His robes were gone, and the elaborate headdress, and when the lines finally closed in protection around him, he had been down to the dark glasses and his jockey shorts.

He raised the bottle of Piper
Heidsieck
’69 to his lips, drained it, and started for the wine cellar off the Grand Dining Room for a replacement. He heard the phone ring, but didn’t pay much attention to it, for there were people who did such things as answer telephones. But it kept ringing, even after he had popped the cork on the fresh bottle and taken a couple of healthy pulls. It finally dawned on him what it was. It was Boris’s most private unlisted number—the telephone that even the servants were forbidden to answer, its number known to but a few highly privileged people in the whole wide world.

He paused before deciding to answer it. Most of the people who had the number (Horsey de la Chevaux, “Sexy Doc” Yancey; Prince Hassan; “Scottie”
MacKenzie
, and Sheikh “Up Yours, Abdullah of Abzug) were at this very moment playing cards at the Legion.

But curiosity strikes the male beast quite as surely as it touches the feminine heart. He went into Boris’s bedroom and, after some effort, located the unlisted phone where it was cleverly concealed in a Louis XIV
boite
de
chambre
.

He picked it up.

“Sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep, Old Bull Bellow,” a decidedly American, and as decidedly masculine, voice said, “but we’ve reconsidered.”

“Oh, thank God!”

“My God, what happened to your voice?” the male caller demanded. “You sound, comparatively speaking, like a soprano.”

“This isn’t Boris,” he said.

“Then why did you answer his private telephone?” the caller reasonably inquired. “And if you’re not Boris, who are you?”

“I was afraid for a moment that you would be
Shur
-lee
Strydent
,” he said.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say to somebody!” the caller said, horrified.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“I asked first,” the caller countered.

“I’ll tell you, if you don’t spread it around,” he said.

“Deal.”

“This is Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
,” Sean said.

“Never heard of you. Where’s Boris?”

“Not until you tell me who you are,” Sean replied.

“John Francis Xavier McIntyre, at your service.”

“Never heard of you, either,” Sean said.

“But as one Irishman to another, in that sacred bond between brothers, you will tell me, won’t you, why you answered Boris’s phone?”

“It was ringing,” Sean replied.

“I mean, what are you doing in Boris’s bedroom?”

“Answering the phone,” Sean replied.

“Where is Boris, you exception to the rule that all Irishmen are favored with superior intelligence?”

“Who did you say this was?”

“Trapper John McIntyre, you travesty on the good name of Irishmen!”

“Trapper John! El Pecker Checker? Himself?”

“Himself,” Trapper John said. “Now, where’s Boris?”

“Let me say, sir, that this is an entirely unexpected honor and privilege.”

“Thank you. Where’s Boris?”

“He’s playing poker at the American Legion,” Sean said. “Would you care to leave a message?”

“No, I want to talk to him,” Trapper John said. “There’s another phone on the bedside table. The dial part is in the shape of a heart. I don’t like to say, out loud, what the handset part is shaped like. It was a gift from the Monte Carlo Corps de Ballet.”

“I wondered what that was,” Sean said. “I thought it was some sort of an anatomical specimen.”

“It’s actually a trophy, cast from life,” Trapper John said. “Now, listen carefully. I will use little words. Pick up that obscene object and dial Boris at the American Legion. Tell him I want to talk to him. You can relay the messages.”

“Got you,” Sean said. With great reluctance, he picked up the obscene object in which the mouthpiece and earphone were concealed and dialed the number of the American Legion.

“Pecker Checker, sir,” he said after a moment. “Boris isn’t there
any more
. Boris is on his way here. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Is anybody there?”

“Mr. Horsey de la Chevaux is there,” Sean said. “He answered the telephone and told me that Boris isn’t there.”

“Tell Mr. de la Chevaux that I’m on the other phone.”

“Mr. Horsey, Mr. Pecker Checker is on the other phone,” Sean dutifully repeated. Then, “Pecker Checker, sir, Horsey says, ‘How y’all?’ ”

“Tell Horsey I’m just fine, thank you, and ask him if he can send a plane to pick up Hawkeye and me and some people I want Boris to meet.”

Sean repeated the message.

“Pecker Checker, sir, Mr. Horsey says to say ‘How y’all’ to Hawkeye, too.”

“Tell him Hawkeye says ‘How y’all’ back,” Trapper said. “What about the airplane?”^

“Is that the Hawkeye who is also known as the ‘Sainted Chancre Mechanic’?”

“One and the same. What about the lousy airplane?”

“Mr. Horsey says he’ll get right on it. He says it may take some time.”

“How long is some time?”

“As much as a couple of hours,” Sean said.

“Tell Horsey thank you and goodbye,” Trapper John said.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Pecker Checker, sir,” Sean said. There was a click in his ear and the conversation was over. Very gingerly, trying not to look at it any more than he had to, he started to hang up the object over which he had been conversing.

“What are you,
O’Mulligan
, some kind of a pervert?” Boris Alexandrovich
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
booming bass voice inquired. “I take you into my apartment, I protect you from all those
weirdos
, I even feel sorry enough for you to bring you a present, and how do you repay me? By
laciviously
fondling my thing, that’s how!”