MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (13 page)

“Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing the names,” the senator said.

“I’m sure that if they asked Boris, he’d go,” Kris said. “They saved his life in Korea.”

“Well, we’ll get in touch with this.”

“There’s only one small problem, George,” Kris said.

“Which is?”

“Neither Hawkeye nor Trapper John like You-know-who any better than we do. Perhaps it would be best if
you didn’t mention his name. If you do, they’re liable to refuse.”

“I understand perfectly, Kris, and thank you so much.”

“Anytime, George,” Kris said. “And I won’t tell a soul, I promise, where you called from.”

“Thank you, Kris,” the senator said. “There are those who wouldn’t understand.”

He replaced the telephone in its cradle.

“Presuming that you are capable of shelling boiled peanuts and eavesdropping simultaneously, sir,” the senator said, “a recapitulation of my conversation with Madame Korsky-Rimsakov O’Reilly would be redundant.”

“What did he say?” Jim-Boy asked.

“He said you heard it,” the Secretary of State replied.

“What have we got on these two guys, Hawkeye and Trapper John?” Jim-Boy asked.

“There is an extensive file on them in the Absolutely Top Secret Papers of the former Secretary of State, sir,” the Secretary of State said. “Unfortunately, it’s in Latin, and it will take some time to translate.”

“Give them to me,” the senator said. “My Latin is fairly fluent. Not as fluent as my Russian and my Greek, but more fluent than, say, my Urdu and my Pakistani.”

“Smartass,” the Admiral said under his breath.

“Give him the file,” Jim-Boy ordered.

“He doesn’t have a security clearance,” the Admiral protested.

“He does now. Senator, you are herewith and hereafter declared a
nonthreat
to the security of the nation. You can read the file.”

The Senator spent the next fifteen minutes reading the file, alternating wide grins and gasps of shock and surprise with little chuckles and an infrequent guffaw. Finally, he wiped the smile from his face and turned to Jim-Boy.

“My first reaction, which you would think of as a gut-belly feeling, is to permit you to enlist the services of these two gentlemen in getting Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov to Moscow,” he said. “But I realize that emotion is partisan in nature, because if you did so, you would be back counting peanuts in about three weeks. Therefore, I offer this nonpartisan advice: Whatever you do, don’t send Drs. Pierce and McIntyre to Russia with Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov.”

“I don’t have any choice in the matter,” Jim-Boy said. “Those are the last two names on the list.”

“Don’t ever say that I didn’t warn you,” the senator said.

“I have had three of my brilliant innovative ideas,” Jim-Boy said.

“I was afraid of something like that,” the senator said.

“The first thought is that I will personally talk to them … little people like that, you know, when I talk to them … and explain the situation. I feel sure that they will volunteer to come to the aid of their country in its hour of need. And if they don’t, of course, there’s always the IRS.”

“Good thinking, sir,” the Admiral said.

“My second brilliant innovative thought is the matter of an official escort for them. We can’t send you, Cy-Boy. We know what happens when you’re off alone with the Russians. Before I know it, you’ve agreed to give them General Motors. So you’re out. And the Admiral is out, too. They don’t like admirals. What we need is a high-ranking public official, say a senator—and not an ordinary run-of-the-mill senator, either, but a smart one—one who speaks Russian, for instance
…”

“Not on your life,” Senator Kamikaze said. “There’s a limit to what even someone like me is willing to do in the way of sacrifices for his country.”

“Of course, you don’t have to go,” Jim-Boy said. “I would understand completely. Just as I’m sure those right-wing lunatics who voted you into office would understand what you were doing here with me all afternoon and into the evening. Confessing the error of your ways and begging forgiveness.”

“I did no such thing!” Senator Kamikaze said, righteously indignant.

“I know that, Senator, and you know that, but people sometimes get the wrong idea. And you can just imagine what they’re going to think when I have you named an Honorary Democrat.”

“You wouldn’t!” Senator Kamikaze said, horror in his voice.

“I would, too, unless you agree to go to Moscow with this singer.”

“Here I am, in office less than a year, and already I’m compromising my principles,” the senator said. “There must be a special virus in Washington.”

“You do this for me, Senator, and I promise no one will ever know that you ever talked to me.”

“I’ll have to have that in writing,” the senator replied.

“Now that’s settled, we can turn to my third brilliant innovative idea of how a country should be run,” Jim-Boy said.

“I’m all ears, sir,” the Admiral said.

“Yeah, I know,” Jim-Boy said. “But we weren’t talking about you.” He turned to the senator. “You’re not going alone, Senator. I mean with just these two doctors and this singer. If the Russians want culture, I’ll give them culture!”

“What, exactly, do you have in mind, sir?” the Secretary of State asked.

“It’s actually a ‘who’ I have in mind, Cy-Boy,” Jim-Boy said.

“Who, exactly, do you have in mind, sir?”

“
Shur
-lee
Strydent
!” Jim-Boy announced dramatically. “How does that grab you?”

“You are, I am forced to conclude,” the senator said, “making reference to
Shur
-lee
Strydent
, the world’s ugliest movie star?”

“Bite your tongue, Senator!” Jim-Boy snapped. “I’m willing to put up with a lot from you in the interest of world peace, but when you start casting aspersions against
Shur
-lee
Strydent
, you’re skiing on thin ice.”

“That’s skating, I believe, sir,” the Admiral said.

“Whatever,” Jim-Boy said. “If
Shur
-lee
Strydent
can pack movie theaters all across this country with her inimitable style of acting and singing, imagine what she can do in Red Square. It’ll make their May Day parade look like a convention of steamship salesmen.”

I
t
is not
true, as some suggest, that
Shur
-lee
Strydent
and her phenomenal success in the entertainment industry is just one of those weird things that happen from time to time in an industry which itself is more than a little weird.

Miss
Strydent
is not, certainly, the ugliest performer ever to have attained fame or fortune. Neither is she possessed of the most blood-curdling singing voice ever to reach the public from the silver screen or over that electronic marvel known as the cathode ray, or boob, tube. And, without digging very far, it is easy to turn up dramatic actresses who are equally unconvincing (or in two cases, even less convincing) than the woman known to the world as “
Shur
-lee
Strydent
, Star of Stars.”

But never before in the long and sordid history of the motion picture star system has there been incorporated in one female performer such an overwhelming lack of talent, such a forbidding anatomical physiognomy, and such an ability to drive strong men to drink by “singing.”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
was born Gertrude
Rumplemayer
to poor and, to tell the truth, grossly dishonest parents ten years before the date given in the
The
Official Biography of
Shur
-lee
Strydent
, Star of Stars.
That is to say, she was born in 1937
(not
1947) in the borough of Richmond, of the City of New York, which is also known to the cognoscenti as Staten Island.

By the time she was nine years old, Siegfried
Rumplemayer
, her father, had been cashiered from the New York City Sanitation Department after having been found guilty in a departmental trial of diverting departmental equipment (specifically, his garbage-can-on-wheels) to personal use.

For more years than the Public Relations Division of the Department of Sanitation likes to recall, Siegfried
Rumplemayer
had used the proud white coat, garbage-can-on-wheels, and push broom of the Sanitation Department as nothing more than a cover for his true avocation —that of high-class dog-
napper
.

One of the more interesting customs of the inhabitants of the Borough of Manhattan of the City of New York* is to possess dogs. The reason for this is probably because it is a pleasant feeling, indeed, to return to one’s apartment after a hard day out there in the jungle to find a furry friend blissfully wagging its tail at the sight of one.

(* The Borough of Manhattan is the island which the Dutch bought from the Indians for $24. The other boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) are generally regarded as unimportant, especially by people who live in (or on) Manhattan.)

The furry friends of Manhattan, however, like their counterparts in, say, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, require some things—like bushes, trees, grass, and fireplugs—which are in far shorter supply in Manhattan than they are in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. If every New Yorker possessed of a dog suddenly descended on the streets of Manhattan with said hound on a leash, a traffic jam of monumental proportions would occur.

This situation gave birth to one of the more interesting occupations to be found in the
Handbook of Occupations:
Dog Walker. A dog walker, as the title suggests, is a person (frequently a highly perfumed gentleman of rather exquisite grace) who earns his living by collecting a dozen or so dogs and taking them all for a walk at once.

It was in this that Siegfried
Rumplemayer
saw his chance to augment his income. He reasoned (correctly, as it turned out) that if people were willing to part with hard cash so that their furry friends could have access to the bushes, trees, and fire hydrants of Central Park, they certainly would be willing to part with even larger sums of cash should their furry friends become “lost.”