MASH 08 MASH Goes to Hollywood Read online

  Shortly after talking to Dr. Pierce on the telephone, Colonel de la Chevaux departed Bayou Perdu International Airport aboard Chevaux Petroleum’s Learjet Number Two for Paris. His trip had a double purpose. For one thing, he wanted to see with his own eyes the damage that Boris had caused backstage at the Paris Opéra during his unsuccessful search for the property master, and secondly, he knew that His Royal Highness Prince Hassan would be upset over his missing buddy, and he suspected that it would be far better to gently, and personally, tell Hassan that Boris was doing thirty days on the Spruce Harbor County road gang as penance for drunk-and-disorderly conduct than it would be to try to pass on this information over the telephone, especially since it was common knowledge that Hassan’s phone had been tapped by the French Secret Service, or Deuxieme Bureau.

  Colonel de la Chevaux was somewhat surprised to see all the Le Discorde aircraft lined up at Paris’ Orly Field. Both of the Le Discordes that Air France owned, of course (the wooden mockup and the one that actually flew), were there, parked so as to impress the tourists.

  But there also were three other Le Discordes sitting there. Two bore the insignia of Air Hussid (a spouting oil well, framed with dollar signs), but neither of them was the Le Discorde converted to cargo service. The third Le Discorde bore the insignia of Air Abzug (golden wings with Arabic letters spelling out “THIS IS MINE, SHEIKH ABDULLAH”) on nose, wings, and vertical stabilizer.

  Immediately upon disembarking from his Learjet, Colonel de la Chevaux got on the telephone. The Royal Hussid Embassy (located in the Hotel Continental) replied that His Royal Highness Prince Hassan was off on the kingdom’s diplomatic business and there was no indication of when he might return.

  The embassy of the shiekhdom of Abzug denied unequivocally that His Majesty was in France. That meant only one thing. Horsey trotted through Orly Field’s terminal building, jumped into a cab, and gave an address on a side street off the Champs Elysees.

  He knew he had guessed right when he saw the fleets of cars lining the street and the two dozen robed bodyguards slouching around amusing themselves by pointing their silver-plated submachine guns at the gendarmes and passersby.

  Horsey paid off the cab, jumped out, and started to run across the street.

  There was a burst of submachine-gun fire at his feet. He stopped in his tracks. He glowered at the robed Arabs running toward him.

  “What’s the matter with you clowns?” he said, in fluent Arabic. “Don’t you recognize Ol’ Horsey?” *

  (* Colonel de la Chevaux, who has something of a flair for languages, has “picked up” what he terms the “lingo” of the lands in which he has “'sunk holes.” He is thus able to conduct business negotiations with high- ranking officials of every country in which Chevaux Petroleum has “sunk holes” except for Nigeria, Nigeria was formerly a British colony, and most of its senior officers speak Oxfordian English. When transacting business in Nigeria, Colonel de la Chevaux, to his great embarrassment, is forced to employ an interpreter.)

  “May Allah forgive us!” one six-foot-three Nubian bodyguard said, falling to his knees and banging his head three times on the sidewalk.

  “It is His Most Gracious Excellency, Sheikh Seroh Ecaf,” another bodyguard said. “And we nearly killed him! Forgive us, oh merciful one!”

  “I’ve told you guys and told you guys,” Horsey said, a little annoyed, “first you look and then you shoot!”

  “We humbly beg your pardon, oh noble sheikh!” the two said, in unison.

  “Just watch it,” Horsey said. “It’s just lucky for you that you can’t hit your own. . . .” He stopped. “Stop banging your foreheads on the sidewalk!” he said. “Enough, already!”

  He continued across the street, past other bodyguards who snapped to attention as he passed, and passed through the well-guarded doors of the place where he had known Prince Hassan and the sheikh would be. The sign over the door read “CRAZY HORSE SALOON.”

  His Royal Highness Prince Hassan, as a devout follower of the Prophet, was a total teetotaler. When Horsey entered the darkened room, His Highness was weeping softly into his Gatorade, barely able to see Miss Susie-Q and her Counterrotating Mammary Protuberances on the stage. His Majesty Sheikh Abdullah was also, of course, a devout follower of the Prophet, and while he scrupulously followed the Prophet’s admonition to abjure the fermented grape, he also noticed that the Prophet had nothing whatever to say about the fermented plum, and he was therefore weeping into a large glass of slivovitz, to which potable he had been introduced by the missing Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov.

  “Ah, Horsey,” the sheikh said, getting to his feet, wrapping Horsey in his arms, and kissing him wetly on each cheek. “You have come, beloved friend, to share our sorrow.”

  “If I’ve told you once, Abdullah, I’ve told you fifty times. I don’t like to be kissed! What if somebody saw me letting you do that!”

  “Have you heard anything, Horsey?” Prince Hassan asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” Horsey said.

  “Is El Noil Sniol all right?” Abdullah asked.

  “As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” Horsey replied. He waved his hand at a waiter, and a bottle of Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon was brought to the table.

  “Don’t keep us waiting,” Hassan said.

  “The thing is, I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Horsey said.

  “Give us a hint,” Hassan said.

  “Boris is doing thirty days on the county road in Maine,” Horsey said, “for drunk and disorderly.”

  “But he is always drunk and disorderly,” Sheikh Abdullah replied.

  “In Maine, it is against the customs,” Horsey explained. “He’ll be out in less than a month, and I think, under the circumstances, that we should not let him know we know what has happened to him.”

  “You mean to say that he has been arrested?” Sheikh Abdullah said.

  “Arrested and sentenced,” Horsey said. “Sometimes known as bagged and jugged.”

  “May I tell Esmerelda and the baroness?” Hassan asked. “They were quite distraught.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Horsey said. “Let’s just keep it between us. O.K.?”

  “Whatever you say,” Hassan said. “I’m just relieved that he is alive.”

  Sheikh Abdullah rose to his feet and walked in the direction of the men’s room. But he stopped at a pay telephone. One of his bodyguards, after a word of command, put a coin in the slot and then dialed the number for him. He spoke briefly on the telephone and then handed the headset to the guard, who hung it up for him.

  Then he returned to the table.

  “I deeply regret that I must take my leave,” he said. “Pressing affairs of state.”

  “Oh, have another snort, Abdullah,” Horsey said. “The broad can wait a little.”

  “The honor of Abzug is at stake,” Sheikh Abdullah said.

  “You guys take the whole business much too seriously,” Horsey said.

  Sheikh Abdullah didn’t reply. He made a regal gesture of farewell, turned around, and marched out of the Crazy Horse Saloon. His bodyguard, waiting on the sidewalk, snapped to attention. He stepped into the back of his Rolls-Royce. Sirens began to scream. Preceded by Land-Rovers jammed full of bodyguards, the Rolls-Royce rolled down Rue Pierre Charron, turned left on the Champs Elysees, and, gathering speed, drove down it to the Place de la Concorde.

  As they passed through the Place de la Concorde, the sheikh looked to his left, at the American embassy, and nodded his approval when he saw another Rolls, like his flying the flag of the sheikhdom of Abzug, roll up before the gates.

  His convoy crossed the Seine and headed for Orly Field. As he had ordered, the royal Le Discorde was ready for him. Ninety seconds after he boarded the plane, Orly Control cleared Abzug Air Force One for immediate takeoff.

  By the time his Le Discorde reached altitude and left French airspace, the high-speed teletypewriter in the bowels of the State Department
in Washington, D.C., was already chattering out its somewhat disturbing message.

  FROM U.S. EMBASSY, PARIS

  TO SECRETARY OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  OPERATIONAL URGENT PRIORITY

  TOP SECRET- FOR EYES OF DEPUTY SECRETARIES OF

  STATE AND UP ONLY

  1. AT 10:15 ZULU TIME THIS DATE THE AMBASSADOR OF THE SHEIKHDOM OF ABZUG REQUESTED AN AUDIENCE WITH THE U.S. AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE.

  2. AT 10:20 HOURS ZULU THIS DATE THE AMBASSADOR OF THE SHEIKHDOM OF ABZUG PRESENTED HIS CREDENTIALS TO THE U.S. AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE AT THE U.S. EMBASSY.

  3. AT 10:21 HOURS ZULU THIS DATE, THE AMBASSADOR OF THE SHEIKHDOM OF ABZUG PRESENTED THE FOLLOWING NOTE TO THE U.S. AMBASSADOR FOR TRANSMISSION TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE. QUOTE: “IT HAS COME TO THE ATTENTION OF HIS MOST MERCIFUL MAJESTY SHEIKH ABDULLAH BEN ABZUG, MAY HIS TRIBE INCREASE, MAY HIS OLIVE TREES AND HERDS OF SHEEP BE FRUITFUL, MAY HIS ENEMIES DEVELOP BOILS ON THEIR REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS, THAT HIS EXCELLENCY SHEIKH EL NOIL SNIOL, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY AND PLENIPOTENTIARY OF HIS MOST ISLAMIC MAJESTY TO THE WORLD AND IN POSSESSION OF ABZUGIAN DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT NUMBER SIX, HAS BEEN ARRESTED IN MAINE, U.S.A., AND IS CURRENTLY IMPRISONED THERE. THE ARREST OF A DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVE OF HIS MOST ISLAMIC MAJESTY IS A BLATANT, GROSS VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CUSTOM AND AN INTOLERABLE AFFRONT TO THE DIGNITY OF HIS ISLAMIC MAJESTY. THEREFORE, UNLESS THE SAID SHEIKH EL NOIL SNIOL THE MAGNIFICENT IS INSTANTLY, IMMEDIATELY, FORTHWITH, AND WITH PROFUSE APOLOGIES RELEASED FROM IMPRISONMENT, THE GOVERNMENT OF HIS MAJESTY SHEIKH ABDULLAH BEN ABZUG, MAY HIS TRIBE INCREASE, ETC., ETC., WILL CONSIDER THAT A STATE OF WAR EXISTS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE ISLAMIC SHEIKHDOM OF ABZUG. IN THE BELIEF, HOWEVER, THAT THE U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE WILL RECOGNIZE THAT AN INJUSTICE OF THE GREATEST MAGNITUDE HAS TAKEN PLACE AND INSTANTLY IF NOT SOONER ARRANGE FOR THE RELEASE OF SHEIKH EL NOIL SNIOL THE MAGNIFICENT, FROM DURANCE VILE, HIS MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY SHEIKH ABDULLAH HAS MOST GRACIOUSLY DEPARTED FOR THE UNITED STATES TO PERSONALLY ACCEPT THE PROFOUND AND HUMBLE APOLOGIES OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE, AFTER WHICH HIS ISLAMIC MAJESTY WILL GRACIOUSLY ACCEPT THE HOSPITALITY OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE AT THAT LITTLE PLACE ON Q STREET NORTHWEST CALLED, HIS MAJESTY THINKS, THE HOTSY-TOTSY TOPLESS TOREADOR. I HAVE THE HONOR TO BE YOUR MOST OBEDIENT AND HUMBLE SERVANT, SHEIKH OMAR EL KASZAM, AMBASSADOR OF THE

  SHEIKHDOM OF HIS MOST ISLAMIC MAJESTY SHEIKH ABDULLAH BEN ABZUG, MAY HIS TRIBE INCREASE, ETC., ETC.

  4. AT 10:23 HOURS ZULU TIME THIS DATE, THE ABZUGIAN AMBASSADOR, AFTER EXPRESSING THE MOST INSULTING COMMENTS THIS CAREER DIPLOMAT HAS EVER HEARD ON THE WAY THE U.S. DIPLOMATIC SERVICE IS CONDUCTED, DEPARTED THE U.S. EMBASSY.

  FOR THE AMBASSADOR:

  ISAAC S. RONALD

  DEPUTY ASSISTANT CHIEF,

  POLITICO-MILITARY AFFAIRS

  The message was immediately brought to the secretary’s attention, of course. Soon the pathetic cry “Oy vay iz mir!” could be heard emitting from the executive staff sauna bath on the sixth floor, whence the secretary had gone following an appearance on Capitol Hill before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, whose chairman was either unwilling or unable to understand that it would not be a good thing, diplomacy-wise, to serve hog jowls and grits to the emperor of Japan on his formal visit, no matter how popular that was back in the senator’s home town.

  Wrapped modestly in a towel and looking, as he strode purposefully down the highly polished marble corridors of the palace presented to our hard-working diplomats by an adoring populace, not unlike a plump Roman solon of the third century B.C., the secretary went to his office. The sight of him waddling along in his bare feet rather shocked the eighth and ninth grades of Saint Bonaventure’s Junior High School, of Bogota, New Jersey, who were touring the State Department, even though they had been forewarned that a good deal of peculiar things happened around the State Department.

  The secretary went behind his desk and instructed his secretary to get the governor of Maine on the line, instantly.

  “Governor, this is the secretary of state,” he said when the phone buzzed. “What do you mean, how do you know that? Lissen, didn’t my secretary tell you I was? Would a nice shiksa girl like that lie to you?” Pause. “Listen, Governor, Uncle Sammy needs a little favor.” The governor, truth to tell, was not overly awed by our servants of the people in our nation’s capital. The kindest word he had used to describe them in his last speech was “scalawags.” It was fortunate, therefore, that the secretary of state had evoked the image of Uncle Sam. If he had asked for a favor, either personally or in his office as secretary of state, the odds are that the governor would have given him the same suggestion, vis-a-vis his favor, as he had offered the night foreman of the potato chip factory vis-a-vis the factory.

  But the governor could not, as a patriotic man, refuse a favor asked in the name of Uncle Sam, who was after all a Maine man. *

  (* This is the subject of some historical controversy! not, however, in Maine.)

  “What’s the favor?” he asked, with what cannot truthfully be described as great enthusiasm.

  “It seems you’ve got some Abzugian in the slammer up there,” the secretary of state said.

  “What’s an Abzugian?”

  “It’s like an Arab, but worse,” the secretary replied.

  “You say he’s in the slammer? What did he do?”

  “You’re the governor,” the secretary replied. “You should know.”

  “I’m the governor, not the warden of the state prison,” the governor replied. “But go on. I always like a little joke.”

  “I don’t know what he did,” the secretary confessed. “All I know is that unless he gets a pardon, we’re in trouble, Governor.”

  “What do you mean, we’re in trouble?” the governor inquired.

  “It means war,” the secretary said. “We just got an ultimatum.”

  “From some country I never heard of?”

  “Trust me. I know it exists,” the secretary said. “The . . . whatchamacallit, the head man, the sheikh, is a personal friend of mine.”

  “With friends like yours, Mr. Secretary, this country doesn’t need any enemies,” the governor said.

  “What do you want me to do, Governor, get down on my hands and knees and beg?”

  “Why not?”

  “So I’m on my hands and knees,” the secretary replied. (This was, in fact, what is known as a little diplomatic white lie. He feared that if he actually got on his hands and knees, the towel would fall off. He didn’t like to think what his secretary would think if she should come into his office and see him there, on his knees, in his birthday suit.)

  “O.K.,” the governor said. “What’s his name? I’ll pardon him on condition that you get him out of Maine and keep him out.”

  “His name is El Noil Sniol the Magnificent,” the secretary said.

  “You’re kidding,” the governor said.

  “I am not kidding,” the secretary said in righteous indignation. “That’s what it says on the teletype, and I’m looking at it.”

  “What do I do with him when I pardon him? Just kick him outside the prison gate?”

  “No!” the secretary said. “Hang on to him. Just as soon as I get off the phone, I’m on my way to come get him.”

  “What do you want him for?”

  “He’s really the Abzugian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,” the secretary said.

  “Then how did he wind up in my jail?”

  “I wish I knew,” the secretary said. “Look, it’s been nice talking to you, Governor, but my towel just slipped.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My towel just came off,” the secretary replied. There then came a female scream, “You dirty old man!”, a female voice cried, “Shame on you!”, and at that point the connection was broken.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zelda Spinopolous entered the world of show business, if not kicking and screaming, then with something less than the breathless enthusiasm of m
ost young women in similar circumstances.

  She had heard, of course, of screen tests and of their importance in the selection of actresses for roles of absolutely minimal importance, not to mention instant stardom, and she prepared carefully for hers. The screen test was conducted in ABS Television’s Chicago studios. She entered the building a rather startlingly good-looking young female, in the first blush of womanhood. She spent a full hour preparing herself in the dressing room provided for her and blessing the memory of her childhood chum Oscar Whaley, who had taught her a theatrical trick, what is known in show business as a “schtick,” which he felt she could put to good use.

  Finally she was led before the cameras, having first sent out word that she was so nervous she couldn’t stand the thought of having anyone, especially her mother, on her set. Mrs. Gustaphalous Spinopolous (the crew having had previous experience with stage mothers) was gotten off the set by the simple device of calling her to the telephone for a little chat with a vice-president of ABS, who conducted a lengthy interview with the mother of the star, allegedly for release to what he termed the “printed media.”

  The wholesome, attractive, indeed even sexy young woman who had come to the studios from the biology laboratories of the University of Chicago was gone. The blond hair was now parted neatly in the middle, brushed tight against the skull, and caught up in a sort of scraggly bun in the back. The blue eyes were now visible only through thick granny glasses perched crookedly on her nose. A good deal of mascara had been applied, but below the eye, so that it gave the appearance that Miss Spinopolous was approaching death’s dark door. Additional mascara had been applied over two of her normally pearly white teeth, giving the appearance that those teeth were missing. Her figure, which had been previously covered by a rather close-fitting pair of blue jeans and a crisp white blouse, against which her mammary development had pushed attractively if modestly, was now wholly concealed within an ill-fitting cotton dress she had had the foresight to pick up at the Salvation Army.