MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (26 page)

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET ORDERS THAT THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE TAKE WHATEVER STEPS ARE NECESSARY TO INSURE THAT BORIS ALEXANDROVICH KORSKY-RIMSAKOV AND THE PERSONS IN HIS PARTY BE ISSUED WITH A VALID VISA PERMITTING THEM TO ENTER THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS.

THIS MATTER IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO BOTH THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET AND TO THE UNDERSIGNED FOR REASONS THAT ARE NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. YOU ARE REMINDED HEREWITH THAT PARIS IN THE SPRING IS A FAR, FAR NICER PLACE TO BE ABOUT THE PEASANTS’ AND WORKERS’ BUSINESS THAN, FOR EXAMPLE, ITABURSK, SIBERIA,
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER.

THE CHAIRMAN AND I HAVE FULL FAITH IN YOU, BUT THE CHAIRMAN SUGGESTS THAT AS YOU ARE TENDING TO THIS IMPORTANT WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ BUSINESS YOU KEEP IN MIND THE SAGE OLD RUSSIAN PROVERB, QUOTE NEVER TRUST A MAN WHO TELLS YOU HE CAN BE TRUSTED UNQUOTE.

IN THE NAME OF THE SOVIET WORKERS AND PEASANTS

THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

P.S. NEITHER THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN’S PATE DE FOIS GRAS NOR THE UNDERSIGNED’S TWICE A WEEK SHIPMENT OF FROZEN PHEASANT UNDER GLASS WERE IN THE LAST DIPLOMATIC POUCH AS THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE. IF YOU ARE STILL AMBASSADOR WHEN THIS IS OVER, YOU ARE DIRECTED TO LOOK INTO THIS IMMEDIATELY.

As
soon as
Chevaux One-One-Seven touched down at Paris’s
Orly
airfield and had taxied to its parking spot, a small convoy of vehicles drove out to meet it. (In compliance with Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa’s request for absolute simplicity, Prince Hassan had ordered that his bodyguard travel in the smallest vehicles in the embassy
motorpool
. The bodyguard was jammed into small Fiats, and His Highness himself, the archbishop, and Monsignor de Villa were in a Cadillac Seville.) *

(* The makers of the Cadillac Seville placed second, with their philosophy “Less Is More,” in the competition which saw Mr. Wesley St. James carry off the “
Phineas
T. Barnum Award,” although it is reliably reported that they intended to refuse the award, in the interests of modesty, had they won.)

As soon as the crew door popped open and the nylon rope ladder came tumbling down, the archbishop, with Monsignor de Villa and His Highness right behind him, went climbing up it.

He marched purposefully down the long (and empty) main fuselage, and then climbed up a ladder leading to the second-floor passenger lounge. He frowned and blushed a little at the sound of a bawdy song which came from the passenger lounge and filled the cargo compartment.

His quite natural expectation was to find Hawkeye and Trapper John in a very good mood indeed, to judge from the song, but this is not what happened. Trapper John and Hawkeye were sitting together,
undrunk
beer before them, looking quite disconsolate.

They were glad to see him, of course, jumping to their feet when they saw him enter the lounge, running to him, kissing him wetly on the forehead, and inquiring into his all-around health.

“What are you two guys up to?” the archbishop inquired after he had been set back on his feet.

“Dago Red, have you ever had one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong?” Hawkeye said.

“Yes, of course,” the archbishop replied. “But before we go any further, can you ask your friend to stop singing that very
risque
song?”

“He won’t listen to us,” Hawkeye said. “Maybe you can reason with him. He’s in the same line of work.”

“Who is he?”

“The Reverend Born-Again Bob Roberts,” Trapper John said.

“A clergyman?”

“So to speak,” Hawkeye said. “The minute we got in the air, he got airsick, and Trapper John gave him a little snort to settle his stomach. He’s been that way ever since. I didn’t know until now just how many verses there are to ‘Roll Me Over, Yankee Soldier’!”

“I was led to believe that you were accompanied by a young woman,” the archbishop said.

“When he started to sing, we sent her up front, to ride with the crew,” Hawkeye said. “That’s something else that went wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a raving beauty,” Hawkeye said.

“Like Hot Lips as a young woman, times two,” Trapper John said.

“And in her photograph, Dago Red, she was simply magnificent,” Hawkeye said.

“The ugliest woman I had ever seen,” Trapper John said admiringly. “And I have seen some ugly women in my day.”

“But, stripped of all her clever feminine tricks of makeup and disguise, she’s simply gorgeous,” Hawkeye said.

“She can probably sing, too,” Trapper added. “The way things have been going for us, she can probably sing like an angel.”

“I don’t quite understand,” the archbishop said. “But before we go any further with this, I’ve had all I can handle of that bawdy singing. Will you excuse me a moment?”

How exactly he accomplished what he did will probably never be known, but thirty seconds after he walked to the rear seat, where Reverend Born-Again Bob Roberts was singing between pulls at his half-gallon bottle of Old Stagg, the singing stopped and the bottle had changed hands.

“Now,” the archbishop said, returning to them, “what was all this about?”

“It was one of our better ideas,” Hawkeye said.

“We were finally going to get back at Boris,” Trapper John said.

“Our time had come,” Hawkeye added.

“Revenge is sweet,” Trapper John said fervently.

“Vengeance is mine,
saith
the Lord,” the archbishop replied.

“In this case, Dago Red, I’m sure He would have understood,” Hawkeye said. “We were going to drop in on Boris unannounced with a Total Temperance preacher who usually opens conversations by shouting ‘Put that bottle down,’ and accompanied by the ugliest woman in the world, who wanted to study opera at his side.”

“I am ashamed of myself to realize that, for a moment there, I was tempted to agree that was a splendid idea,” the archbishop said. “But it would have been a cruel thing to do to the ugly woman.”

“The whole thing is moot,” Hawkeye said. “Born-Again Bob is as drunk as an owl, and our magnificently ugly woman ain’t.”

“What?”

“See for yourself,” Trapper John said. “Bobby-Sue, say hello to Dago Red.”

“Well,” the archbishop said. “It’s a pleasure to see someone so young and lovely.”

“She can probably sing, too,” Hawkeye said. “Everything has gone wrong.”

“My name is Mulcahy, dear. I’m a priest.”

“He’s an archbishop is what he is,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh, Your Eminence,” Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
Roberts said, “I’m so embarrassed about Dear Daddy. He’s never done anything like this before.”

“Put it from your mind, child,” the archbishop said. “Sometime, when we have more time, I’ll tell you how it came to pass that I am known to certain close friends as Dago Red. Suffice it to say for the moment that your father is not the first man of the cloth that these two maniacs have gotten drunk. But first things first.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
asked.

“There is no way I am going to permit this sweet and innocent child to get anywhere near Boris!” the archbishop said, with all the considerable firmness of which, on occasion, he was capable.

“But, Your Eminence, I came to Paris to sing for the maestro.”

“It isn’t the singing I’m worried about,” the archbishop said. “I will arrange for that in good time, I give you my word. Presuming, of course, that we are able to straighten things out between him and the President.”

“What do you mean by that?” Hawkeye asked.

“He called me and told me it was my clear patriotic duty to get Boris to Moscow,” the archbishop said. “Now I realize that Boris is misunderstood at times, and that he is, to be frank about it, capable of behavior which will send a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher climbing up the walls. But I think throwing him out of the country is going a bit far.”

“I have just had an unpleasant thought,” Hawkeye said. “That probably
was
really Senator Kamikaze on the phone.”

“I understand he called,” Archbishop Mulcahy said.

“And I gave him, in the belief that he was a phony, my personal guarantee that if he showed up with
Shur
-lee
Strydent
, I would get Boris to wherever he wanted Boris to go.”

“Big mouth!” the archbishop said.

The pilot came into the lounge.

“I thought it was you, Dago Red,” he said, embracing the prelate warmly. “I haven’t seen you since you took your instrument check.”

“Nice to see you, too, Charley,” the archbishop said.

“The reason I came back,” the pilot said, “is that I just heard over the radio that Air Force One is about to land, and they wanted to know where you two are.”

“That’s all we need,” Hawkeye said. He looked out the window and saw Air Force One making its approach.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Trapper said.

“The question is where do we hide this lovely child,” the archbishop said. “Someplace where Boris would never think to look for her.”

“Your Eminence,” Prince Hassan said, “I know just the place.”

“Where?”

“Boris’s dressing room at the Opera,” Hassan said. “There is no place in the world he hates more. He goes there only before a performance, and there’s nothing scheduled for three weeks.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh, you darling little man,” Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
said, bending over and kissing Prince Hassan wetly in the middle of his forehead. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Forgive you for what?” His Royal Highness said, blushing furiously.

“For not instantly recognizing the man who not only is privileged to be the maestro’s most faithful friend, but who has spared the maestro so many of the pains of life!”

“You may consider yourself forgiven,” the prince said. “I will personally take this lovely child and fellow opera lover to Boris’s dressing room.”

“I think I should warn you, Hassan,” Hawkeye said, “that Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
holds a Black Belt in karate.”

“Dr. Pierce,” Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
said, rather sharply, “you are not suggesting, I hope, that it would even enter His Highness’s mind that he is of the opposite gender? Shame on you! We’re opera lovers and above that sort of thing, aren’t we, Your Highness?”

“Absolutely,” His Royal Highness replied.

“Trapper John will go with you,” the archbishop said. “He’s an opera lover himself.”

“Make sure she doesn’t get too good a look at Boris’s etchings,” Hawkeye said.

“Hawkeye and I will go to Boris’s apartment and see if we can’t get to the bottom of this,” the archbishop said.