MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (28 page)

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, THE UNDERSIGNED FEELS THAT CITIZEN KORSKY-RIMSAKOV MAY NOT BE WILLING TO COME TO MOSCOW AT THIS TIME.

PLEASE ADVISE.

KIRIL M. LOBOBSKY, JR.,

THE COMRADE AMBASSADOR OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS TO FRANCE

FROM THE SUPREME CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME - SOVIET

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW,
USSR

TO
THE COMRADE, AMBASSADOR OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS

EMBASSY OF THE
USSR

PARIS, FRANCE

IN
REPLY TO YOUR MOST RECENT TELETYPE VIS-A- VIS GRANTING A VISA TO
B. A.
KORSKY-RLMSAKOV:

AS
THE RESULT OF A SPECIAL MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SUPREME SOVIET, IT WAS DECIDED TO OFFER YOU AND THE OFFICIAL AMBASSADORIAL CHAUFFEUR TWO OPTIONAL COURSES OF ACTION:

(a)
PROCEED DIRECTLY TO MOSCOW VIA FIRST AIR

TRANSPORT. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT YOU MIGHT FIND IT USEFUL TO ACQUIRE AS MUCH WARM CLOTHING AS POSSIBLE, SO THAT YOU AND THE AMBASSADORIAL CHAUFFEUR WILL BE COMFORTABLE SHOVELING ICE AND SNOW IN ITABURSK, SIBERIA, FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS, OR

(b)
REPLY WITHIN TWELVE HOURS THAT COMRADE KORSKY-RIMSAKOV IS ON HIS WAY TO OUR BELOVED HOMELAND.

FOR THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS THE SUPREME CHAIRMAN, HIMSELF

The ambassador
of the United States of America
to
the French Republic climbed out, with some difficulty, from the rear seat of the official ambassadorial limousine, a Chevrolet
Chevette
with the glass door and deluxe vinyl hubcaps options, and marched, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances, toward the stairs leading upward to the great silver bird with the twelve-foot unshelled peanut on its tail.

He was dressed, according to the new ambiance, not in the black morning coat and gray-striped trousers one normally expects ambassadors to wear when about the President’s business, but instead somewhat more casually. He was wearing a pair of well-faded blue jeans, a pair of French,
Shriner
&
Urner
“Georgia” model clodhoppers, rough side out, and a gray sweat shirt emblazoned with an admonition to “Keep Georgia Green! Eat More Peanuts!”

This sort of dress wasn’t exactly what he had had in mind when he’d come to an understanding with one of the President’s closest advisers, one
Fernwood
T.
Pluckett
, who had taken a leave of absence from his successful used cotton gin business to help with the campaign.

Pluckett
had told him the Paris embassy was “up for grabs,” and as one businessman to another they had both understood that the successful
grabee
was more than likely going to be the one who made the most generous contribution to the campaign.

The man who was now the ambassador had, purely in the interest of seeing the country saved from the Republicans, made a generous contribution to the campaign coffers, and, sure enough, shortly after Inauguration Day, he had been asked whether he would like to go to Paris.

He replied in the affirmative, frankly regarding the appointment as a fitting reward for a man who had turned one rather grubby drugstore into a glistening chain of same, by dint of hard work, nose to the grindstone, and having married the somewhat ugly daughter of a shopping mall czar. His wife, who liked to think of herself as Madame Ambassador-Designate, had had an all-too-brief moment of triumph in Chicopee Falls, Wyoming, amongst her peers and then they had come to Paris, not as they had anticipated, by a special flight of one of those great silver birds with
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
painted along the fuselage, but as standby (and it turned out, stand-up) passengers aboard a special economy charter flight of Whiz-Bang Airways, their fellow passengers being a delegation of Portland, Oregon, plumbers en route to an international convention in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

He had been right on the edge of submitting his resignation, but had not done so only because he had begun to suspect this is what the man he had come to think of as The Teeth in the White House had wanted all along. The moment he resigned, The Teeth in the White House could appoint another of his Georgia cronies to the position.

What he had been ordered to do now, however, was, as he confided to Madame Ambassador over breakfast in the Rue de Castiglione McDonald’s (the embassy kitchen had been closed as an economy measure; employees were given McDonald’s Happy Clown Meal Tickets in lieu of embassy rations), likely to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

He had been ordered, by teletype, to not only meet Air Force One (which was obviously Teeth in the White House’s means of rubbing salt in the wound), but to do so bearing a bouquet of red roses for a person the ambassador loathed and despised.

But until he actually got to the top of the stairs and saw Miss
Shur
-lee
Strydent
(actually until she put out her bony fingers for him to kiss), he had talked himself into thinking that he would play it as a good soldier, obeying without question the orders of his Commander-in-Chief. “Welcome to France!” he had said bravely.

“Oh, you darling little pudgy little man,” Ms.
Strydent
had said. “Are those somewhat ratty-looking roses for me?” She had then extended her hand to be kissed and that had been too much.

“No,” the ambassador, suddenly losing control, had replied. “They’re not.”

“Then who are they for?” Ms.
Strydent
had demanded to know, somewhat warily.

“For whomever this is,” the ambassador said, thrusting the roses into the arms of Senator George H. Kamikaze.

“Actually,” the senator replied, “I am Senator George H. Kamikaze.”

“You’re kidding!” the ambassador said.

“That’s once,” the senator said. “Say it twice more and you get to eat the roses!”

“And he’s not kidding, either, chubby,” Wesley St. James said. “I can’t wait to get back home so I can tell our Beloved Leader what this guy did to me.”

“You don’t say,” the ambassador said.

“I do, too, say,” Wesley St. James said. “He pulled Jujitsu on me, threw me to the floor, and made me eat my toupee. That sort of thing just isn’t done to the King of Daytime Drama. You just wait till I tell Jimmy. He’ll fix your wagon!”

“Let’s get right down to business,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said. “After all, we are here at the request of our Beloved Leader. I trust this singer who I have graciously permitted to share the billing with me is all packed and ready to go?”

“The lady, so to speak,” the senator explained, “is making reference, in her quaint patois and abominable diction, to Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov.”

“I have been unable to communicate with him,” the ambassador replied.

“Well, see to it instantly,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said. “A superstar like myself is not accustomed to waiting around for little people. And while you’re doing that, I wish to grace the Royal
Abzugian
Embassy with a visit.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” the ambassador said.

“You’re not actually telling me I can’t do something I want to do!”

“The area in the vicinity of the Royal
Abzugian
Embassy has been declared a disaster zone by the French government,” the ambassador said.

“You don’t seem to understand, little pudgy little man,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said, “that you are talking to the superstar’s superstar. What the French government says or does not say doesn’t matter in the least so far as
Shur
-lee
Strydent
is concerned. Now summon me a limousine!”

“I don’t have one,” the ambassador confessed. “At least one where there is a fair chance of you being able to get through the door. But I’ll tell you what I do have.”

“What’s that?”

“A slug for the telephone,” the ambassador said. “You can call the
Abzugian
Embassy and ask them to send their limousine for you. They have dozens of them, not like some embassies I know.”

“See to it, Wesley,” Ms.
Strydent
said. “Telephone there and speak with their ambassador, El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent. Tell him that if he sends a limousine for me, and doesn’t tell Darling
Seanikins
that I’m coming, I’ll sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ for him alone.”

“I have to avail myself of telephonic communication myself,” Senator Kamikaze said. “Where might I find such a device intended for the use of the public?”

“Do you always talk like that, Senator?” the ambassador asked.

“If you mean do I customarily express my thoughts with conciseness and grammatical perfection, the reply to your interrogatory is in the affirmative.”

“You’re kidding!”

“That’s twice,” the senator replied.

“There’s a pay phone over there,” the ambassador said, pointing. Both Wesley St. James and the senator set out for the phone booth simultaneously. The senator not only reached it first, but, after straight-arming Mr. St. James, who seemed to be trying to use it first, was the first to drop his coin in the slot and put the device to work.

Meanwhile, traveling behind motorcycle escort, the Cadillac Seville bearing His Royal Highness Prince Hassan, Bobby-Sue/
Brunhilde
Roberts, and Trapper John McIntyre raced through the Place de 1’Opera, and skidded to a halt by the stage door to the Paris Opera itself. Trapper John’s suggestion that they stop by Harry’s Bar for a little snort to cut the dust had either not been understood or had been ignored by the chauffeur.

“What the hell,” he said. “There is probably something to drink in Boris’s dressing room.”

And so there was, it being a contractual provision of the maestro’s arrangement with the French National Opera that his dressing room be equipped, at all times, with chilled champagne, an extensive list of whiskey and brandy, and
Fenstermacher’s
finest Milwaukee pale pilsner on tap.

“Can I offer you something, Bobby-Sue?” Trapper John asked, as he drew a foaming glass of
Fenstermacher’s
from the tap.

“Ordinarily, no,” Bobby-Sue replied. “But under these circumstances, perhaps a little—no more than three fingers—of that Courvoisier.”

“Three fingers of Courvoisier?” Trapper John asked, surprised.

“I told you, Doctor, I know everything there is to know about Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov. If ‘Cher Boris,’ as I believe he is known in these parts, takes three fingers of Courvoisier to, as he so charmingly puts it, clear the pipes, it certainly behooves me to follow in his path.”