MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (30 page)

“You’re just like those lousy Russians,” Boris snapped. “You won’t take no for an answer!” He covered his eyes with his hands so that he wouldn’t have to see his reflection in the mirror. “El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent speaking,” he said in
Abzugian
, a tongue consisting in the main of grunts, groans, and sneezes, with a
belchlike
sound for emphasis.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Wesley St. James chirped. “What the hell was that?”

“That was
Abzugian
, you
couthless
oaf. Who are you and what do you want?”

“This is Wesley St. James, the well-known—one might even say world-famous—King of Daytime Drama. I am calling on behalf of Ms.
Shur
-lee
Strydent
.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Boris replied.

“Am I speaking with El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent, Defender of the Faithful, and under whose diplomatic immunity is Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
?”

“Yes, you are,” Boris said. “But make it quick—I’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m calling to inform you, sir, that Ms.
Shur
-lee
Strydent
has graciously decided to honor your embassy with her presence. And Ms.
Strydent
would be most grateful if her visit came as a surprise to Mr.
O’Mulligan
.”

Boris said something naughty and pushed the telephone away from his head.

“I wonder why people get so upset when you say that to them, Boris,” Dr. Yancey said. “You don’t have to be a sex expert such as myself to know that it’s physiologically and anatomically impossible.”

“That was for you,
O’Mulligan
,” Boris said. “That ugly lady friend of yours is on her way over here.”

“
Shur
-lee
Strydent
? On her way here?”

“Indeed. And if you were anything but an ill-mannered Irish house guest, you’d give her what she wants and get her off my back.” He jumped out of bed and started to dress.

“That’s an awful thing to even suggest!” Dr. Yancey said. “Shame on you, Boris!”

Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
began to weep.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop that!” Boris said. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a full-grown Irishman crying!”

“Then take me with you!” Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
said. “I beg you, Boris, in the name of decency, don’t leave me here to face that thing alone!”

“That
would
be beastly of me, wouldn’t it?” Boris said thoughtfully. “Very well, put your pants on and be quick about it!”

“What about us?” Monique, Angelique, Jeanine, and Jacqueline asked all at once.

“You’ll just have to make do with Doctor Yancey and Abdullah,” Boris said. He turned to his liaison officer, Lieutenant Antoine de la
Foret
of the Gendarmerie Na-
tionale
. “Call up the Armored Personnel Carrier,” he said. “Mr.
O’Mulligan
, Horsey, and I are off to the opera!”

“Your every wish, Maestro,” the lieutenant said, is my command!”

“I know,” Boris said. “Get going!”

As
the
M-113 armored personnel carrier of the VIP Protection Detachment of the Gendarmerie
Nationale
clanked up in a cloud of blue smoke under the balcony of Maestro
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
apartment, so the singer and his party could descend by knotted rope to enter it, the little convoy bearing His Eminence Archbishop John Joseph Mulcahy, Monsignor
Pancho
de Malaga y de Villa, the Reverend Born-Again Bob Roberts, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce came racing down the Boulevard de la Grande
Armee
, blue lights flashing,
whoopers
whooping, and, most importantly, with the silk embroidered flag of the Sheikhdom of
Hussid
flapping briskly on the right front fender of the Cadillac Seville.

Despite a certain suspicion that so small an automobile could be carrying anyone of real importance, the Gendarmerie on the scene decided to give the benefit of the doubt to the flag of
Hussid
. After all, if the
Hussids
were piqued with the French, there would be an instant decline, in the amount of 38 percent, of the petroleum available to la Belle France. The gendarmes cleared a path for the convoy.

The first man out of the car was the archbishop. He looked up as Boris slid down the knotted rope from the balcony.

“I’ll be damned,” Boris said. “Dago Red!”

“You probably will,” the archbishop agreed. “What’s going on here?”

“It’s a long story,” Boris said, as he disappeared through the hatch of the personnel carrier. “And I just don’t have the time to tell it right now. I’m on my way to preserve the good name of one of the great opera stars of all time.”

Another man slid down the rope, a face the archbishop seemed to recall having seen somewhere.

“And a good day to you, Father,” he said in an unmistakable Irish brogue as he entered the personnel carrier through the hatch on top.

And then Horsey appeared and slid down the rope.

“And how are you today, Your Eminence?” he asked, just before he disappeared inside the personnel carrier and the hatch clanged shut after him. Belching blue smoke, its siren screaming, its tracks tearing up the pavement, the armored personnel carrier set forth up the Boulevard de la
Grand
Armee
toward the Arc de Triomphe de
L’Etoile
.

The archbishop jumped back in the car. “Follow that tank!” he ordered.

Traffic around the edifice known as the Arc de Triomphe, which sits on sort of a hill at the top of the Avenue de la Champs-Elysees, flows in a counterclockwise direction. As the armored personnel carrier, the motorcycle outriders, the
Citroëns
carrying the bodyguard, and the Cadillac Seville moved, so to speak, from noon till nine, a 1948 Cadillac flower car (a
hearselike
vehicle used normally to carry floral tributes to the late lamented from the funeral home to the cemetery) moved, so to speak, from six o’clock toward three o’clock. It was all that Hertz could come up with on such short notice in response to Mr. Wesley St. James’s demand for the most suitable vehicle they had to transport the superstar’s superstar. The French are well known for the ingenuity and imagination they can display once they hear the magic words “price is no object.” The vehicle in question was ordered to
Orly
while it was en route from a funeral home to a cemetery. There was a small problem at the beginning, when some cars in the funeral cortege simply kept following the flower car when it made an abrupt right turn off the Boulevard de Sainte Michele, but the driver, rising to the challenge, managed to shake most of them before he got to
Orly
by running stop lights and going the wrong way down one-way streets.

No more than half a dozen cars still followed the flower car when it pulled up before Air Force One, and Ms.
Strydent
, far from thinking that anything was out of place, naturally presumed that the flowers were intended for her and that the people in the cars following were simply members of her fan club. It was well known, of course, that the French cried at the drop of a hat.

She climbed into the flower car with Mr. St. James and they set out for the Boulevard de la Grande
Armee
and her darling
Seanikins
. As they moved through town, she became aware that she had been recognized. People were staring at her.

“Start handing me flowers,” she ordered Wesley St. James. “I can’t let my adoring public down!” Wesley St. James immediately began disassembling the floral tributes.

Alternately throwing kisses, forget-me-nots, and lilies of the valley to the hordes of fans, she was so caught up in what she interpreted to be the adoration of her fans that she didn’t even notice the armored personnel carrier going the other way around the Arc de Triomphe.

Suddenly, the flower car skidded to a halt.

“What are we stopping for?” Ms.
Strydent
demanded somewhat sharply.

“This is the Royal
Abzugian
Embassy,” the chauffeur said. A gendarme rushed up.

“What’s going on here?”

“I am
Shur
-lee
Strydent
herself!” Ms.
Strydent
announced. “I am here to see His Excellency El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent!”

“He just left,” the gendarme said.

“Hey, Abdullah,” an unmistakably American voice called out. “You want to see something funny? Get a load of the ugly broad in the flower car!”

Ms.
Strydent
looked up and saw Dr. T. Mullins Yancey on the balcony.

“Yoo-hoo,” she called. “Funny little man with freckles! I’m looking for Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
.”

“You’re out of luck,” Dr. Yancey called down. “He just left.”

“You don’t happen to know where Darling
Seanikins
went, do you, funny little man with freckles?”

“Hey, are you
Shur
-lee
Strydent
?” Dr. Yancey inquired.

“Who else could I possibly be?” she replied modestly.

“Who else indeed?” Dr. Yancey said. “I hope this won’t ruin your whole day, lady, but I had the feeling he left because he didn’t want to see you.”

“Oh, my,”
Shur
-lee said. “Darling
Seanikins
just couldn’t bring himself to believe that I was really coming. Tell me, Freckles, what about some singer named
Korsky-Borsky
or something like that?”

“What about him?”

“I have graciously agreed to permit him to appear with me in Moscow,” she said. “Is he there?”

“Boris regrets a previous engagement,” Dr. Yancey said. “He won’t be going to Moscow.”

“Well, I can understand that,” she said. “No one in their right mind wants to be in a position where their talent might be compared to mine. Be a darling little man, Freckles, and tell Darling
Seanikins
that I’ll drop by again on my way home from my triumphal tour of Russia.”

“My pleasure,” Dr. Yancey said.

“Back to the airport, chauffeur,” Ms.
Strydent
ordered. “And drive slowly this time, so that my fans can get a good look at me!”

By the time this had taken place, the armored personnel carrier had traveled down the full length of the Champs-Elysees, sent cars and pedestrians scattering as it passed through the Place de la Concorde, narrowly missed the Battle of Waterloo Monument in the Place Vendome, and finally skidded to a halt by the stage door of the Paris Opera.

Senator George H. Kamikaze had arrived moments before and been shown to the dressing room of Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov by one of the guards. He had just raised a glass of
Fenstermacher’s
finest old Milwaukee pale pilsner to his lips when Boris strode into the room.

“Senator Kamikaze, I presume?” he said. “I can tell by that ridiculous hat.”

“Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov, I presume?” the senator said. “I can tell by the whiskey breath by which you are preceded by a good ten yards.”

“Hark!” Boris said, suddenly sharply, cocking his head to one side.

A woman’s singing voice could now be heard: “For love, like tender flowers, is swiftly dead and gone. My friends, embrace this alluring occasion. Let’s revel and laugh until dawn!”