“Now he’s getting out of bed,” Munson asserted. “He’s going to the window… opening the window… getting some air, perhaps…”
Harrigan leaned in further, straining ears that had long since paid the price of his firing handguns.
“Sounds like two people talking,” Harrigan commented.
“That’s what we thought,” Munson said, nodding, “but we couldn’t be sure…. Who would he be talking to, and in English? It’s not a bodyguard.”
As the tape played on, the voices diminished. Then suddenly a crack! and snick!, snick!, snick!
The remaining tape returned to room tone.
The chubby technician stopped the tape, and returned to his sandwich.
Harrigan was silent for a moment. “I want to hear it again,” he said. He plucked the sandwich from the technician’s thick fingers. “And crank it up, this time. Starving kids in Korea don’t have headphones, you know.”
The chubby tech frowned, but—after a nod from Munson—complied.
As the tape replayed Harrigan’s heart began to race.
“Is that a woman’s voice?” Munson asked.
“Goddamn,” Harrigan said.
“We had no reports of K being any kind of letch. No women, before. What do you make of—”
Harrigan was grinning. “I’ll be goddamned if that scatterbrained blonde didn’t save all our asses!”
Munson gave Harrigan a puzzled look; even the chubby guy seemed interested.
“What scatterbrained blonde?” Munson asked.
“The one in bungalow seven,” Harrigan said without glancing back—he was already halfway out the door, praying a Chinese assassin hadn’t beaten them to the punch.
That K wasn’t already dead, with Marilyn Monroe another casualty on the floor of that comfy bungalow, her brains truly scattered.
Chapter Eleven
MAD TEA PARTY
WASHED IN THE ivory glow of a full moon on this clear starry night, the homely portly man and the lovely young woman—looking a bit like father and daughter, or perhaps uncle and niece—sat in a large teacup.
The pair had the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party attraction to themselves, that whirling ride of colorful Volkswagen-sized cups-on-saucers, which was motionless at the moment, and… like everything else in the vast amusement park around them… shrouded in darkness but for the occasional security light. Across the way, its garishly painted movie-flat-style façade muted in the wee hours, stood Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, free of laughter and screams, draped in an eerie stillness, while the turrets of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle loomed starkly over all, its fairy-tale majesty turned ominous and medieval by night.
In her jeans and knotted-at-the-navel plaid blouse, Marilyn Monroe—sitting close to Nikita Khrushchev—shivered, and not merely from the cool night breeze. Beyond them, a gentle wind sang in a ghostly voice as it swirled the dust off the hard-dirt floor of the midway, carrying off candy wrappers like captives. A crushed Mouseketeer cap, one of its ears ripped askew, lay discarded on the ground.
Evidence that people had once been there.
It was as if the bomb had dropped, Marilyn thought, and she and Khrushchev were the only ones left alive in a city whose buildings still stood, but where life had been snuffed out by radiation. It was as if, beyond the vast orange groves, Los Angeles had vanished, destroyed in one horrific second, leveled in a white flash, leaving only piles of ashes on bare bones….
“You’ll think me silly,” she whispered to her gnome-like companion, “but I’m… frightened.”
With a smile of surprising warmth, Khrushchev took her hand; his hand was warm too, and firm, giving her comfort.
“I also am frightened,” he admitted, without shame, his voice as strong as his face was placid. He might have been a suitor, holding his sweetheart’s hand, under a moonlit sky.
They had been mostly silent during the twenty-five-minute drive from Beverly Hills, taking the all-but-deserted Santa Monica Freeway south, to the Disneyland exit. Khrushchev did not question her idea to hide him at the amusement park, but she’d explained her thinking, nonetheless.
“We need to get you out of the city,” she said, “and then in the morning, when there are crowds at the park… do you know our expression, ‘safety in numbers’?”
“No,” he said, “but it is good one.”
“It is,” she nodded. “In the morning, we’ll contact the authorities… and the press… and you’ll be safe, from whoever it is that’s after you.”
Khrushchev did not share his thinking with the actress, but he agreed with her strategy—right now he could not know who was involved in this conspiracy. Was it a coup? Or had his “loyal” KGB men been bribed by an enemy, the Nationalist Chinese perhaps? By morning his own troops would rally, and that agent Harrigan—about the only American he trusted right now—would have sorted much of it out, the surface at least, though the twisting undercurrent of a conspiracy might remain concealed. Certainly the premier was not about to go to the local police, who were the minions of Mayor Poulson, who himself could have put the assassination attempt in motion, out of some misguided sense of patriotism.
“Will your family be all right?” the actress asked with touching concern, looking over at him as she drove.
“I believe so. They are not targets. Only I…. Will we hide among the people at Disneyland?”
“Oh, there’s no one there now—it’s closed.”
“And how will we get in?”
She smiled a little. “We’ll sneak in.”
“Won’t there be guards?”
“No. Not even a night watchman. The local police keep an eye on it, but there’s no security staff or anything.”
“Los Angeles police?”
“No—Anaheim.”
“Anna who?”
“Anaheim… it’s a city. Not a city really—a little town. That’s where Disneyland is close to.”
Marilyn had been a guest at the amusement park—built on one hundred and sixty acres surrounded by orange groves—when it had opened just four years ago near tiny Anaheim. She’d been given an after-hours tour by Walt Disney himself—Mr. Disney had great affection for her, ever since she’d posed gratis for his artists who were designing Tinker Bell for his movie Peter Pan—and had left the park when things were closing up and the security people were leaving. Mr. Disney had mentioned to her that the Anaheim police kept an eye on Disneyland for him, after dark.
She hoped things hadn’t changed since then.
As she had exited the freeway and onto an asphalt road that led to the park, Khrushchev leaned forward, peering through the windshield, straining to get a first glimpse of the extraordinary American landmark.
Marilyn had been going over and over the assassination attempt in her mind, and assumed her companion had been doing the same. But right now—as they approached the train station front entry to the park, the immense empty asphalt parking lot at left—the premier seemed unconcerned with the threat on his life, and more like just another impatient kid, anxious to get to Disneyland.
“Is locked,” he had said disappointedly, as they passed by the dark entrance, its front gate shut tight for the night.
“Don’t worry,” she replied, waving this off, “that’s not our way in, anyway.” Remembering her own visit, and how she’d been smuggled inside from the back, she was heading around behind the sprawling acreage.
Following the Disneyland railroad line, the lane curved around the property, which was protected by a chain link fence (“I do not think that this we can climb,” Khrushchev opined). Marilyn drove slowly—with only the moonlight to guide her—and it seemed to take forever, with no view of the park at all, merely a vague sense of trees and foliage.
Finally the chain link fence ended, giving way to a carefully planted border of bushes and trees. At the back of the park was a dirt access road—a service and employee entrance—which branched off at left to some Quonset hut equipment sheds, and curved to the right where soon a
waist-high metal gate barred the way.
“That,” Nikita said, “we can climb.”
And they did, after parking the Buick back behind some tall bushes, the premier graciously lifting the actress up by her small waist, so that she could hop over the barrier; and then he climbed over himself, surprisingly nimble.
Marilyn took the lead as the unlikely couple strolled in the moonlight, first across the railroad tracks, and then across landscaped grass to the midway, where a pole offered signs pointing in various directions.
Marilyn, a veteran of Disneyland, explained their options. To the left was Tomorrowland, with a spaceship ride and exhibits by major American industries. To the right lay Adventureland, where riverboats churned along a tropical river (when the park was open, that is); and Frontierland, with stagecoaches and paddle-wheel steamers. Straight ahead was Fantasyland, the home of Sleeping Beauty and Never Never Land.
“Let us rest,” Nikita suggested.
On the midway, next to a carousel, was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party attraction, which had caught Khrushchev’s attention—he smiled as he surveyed the surrealistically oversize cups, decorated with modern-art squiggles. And it was there they now rested, sitting in a teacup, whose center was a circular wheel for children to hold onto, when the party was going strong.
Finally, Marilyn broached the subject they had both avoided, the elephant in the living room no one was mentioning (a Dumbo attraction nearby may have sparked this comparison in her mind). And they began to openly discuss… to confront… the assassination attempt that had brought them to the slumbering Magic Kingdom.
“It just couldn’t have been America that did this terrible thing to you,” Marilyn said.
“No?” Nikita grunted a humorless laugh. “America hates me.”
She shook her head. “That’s not true—some people fear you, maybe… but that’s how you want it, isn’t it?”
That made him smile a little; he shrugged a partial admission of guilt.
“Anyway,” she continued, “it’s not our way—assassinations just don’t happen here.”
“Oh? Tell that to your President Lincoln.”
“That was a long time ago, Premier Khrushchev.”
He touched her hand. “Not so formal, please. Call me Nikita. We are friends.”
She placed her other hand over his. “Then you must call me Marilyn.”
“Marilyn. Is lovely name.”
“Nikita has a certain… poetry, too.”
He chuckled. “That is first time I have heard such.”
Somewhere crickets chirped… real ones, not Jiminy.
Tentatively, Marilyn said, “Those men tonight… they weren’t Americans. They were your people…”
“Working perhaps for you.”
Her forehead tensed. “I… I wish you wouldn’t say it that way. It sounds like you think I sent them, personally.”
The sublimely ugly face melted into an apologetic smile. “Sweet child, I did not mean this.”
“I know… I know.” Marilyn shook her head. “And you’re right—someone must have hired those two… the ones I heard talking. But someone else double-crossed them.”
He frowned in confusion; his eyes almost disappeared into his face. “What is this… ‘double-crossed’?”
Marilyn looked up at the sky, and the moon and a million stars stared back; she felt very small, but surprisingly—considering their situation—safe. Their discussion of death and double-dealing seemed oddly abstract.
She told him, “Double-cross is when someone you trust puts a knife in your back.”
Nikita let go of her hand and turned his massive body away from her. Muttering to himself, though still speaking English, he said, “Who could this someone be?”
“In your case?”
He looked at her, mildly surprised she had responded to his rhetorical question as if he’d posed it to her. The premier of Russia normally did not, after all, turn to actresses for political insights.
“Well, let me think for a second….” She placed one platinum-painted fingertip to her lips, and furrowed her brow, a child in class racking her brain for just the right answer.
He patted her hand. “Dear friend, I only meant—”
“My best guess would be Red China.”
The eyes of the fat man sitting in the oversize teacup were large as saucers. Then he threw back his bucket head, and laughed heartily.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“This answer—I am… impressed you would offer your… opinion. But this is not good opinion. Meaning no offense.”
“Not a good opinion, huh?”
“Surely you know that the Chinese, they are fellow communists, our comrades.”
“And here I thought you got it when I explained what a double-cross was.”
The premier’s smile faded, and his eyes narrowed again. “What do you mean by this?” he asked, something sharp in the previously friendly voice.
Marilyn shrugged, folding her arms over her bosom. “It’s just that I’ve found in my life that it’s the people I trust most who end up hurting me.”
Nikita grunted and folded his own arms and lapsed into a brooding silence. Was he displeased with her remark? She decided to change the subject.
“You know,” she said, “I read the speech you gave in Moscow to the Twentieth Congress… after you took over from Stalin?”
He frowned, skeptically. “This is not possible.”
“Oh but it is possible. I read every word of it.”
His mouth dropped open. “Even I,” he said, astonishment widening his eyes, “do not have a complete transcript of this speech. I did not write—I speak for six hours, from my mind.” He tapped his skull with a thick finger. Then he leaned close to her, the eyes in his face like ball bearings. “Where did you get this?”
Another shrug. “From the State Department.”
Nikita just stared at her.
“If you want a copy,” she said, “I could probably get you one.”
His smile was wry but his eyes were admiring, and not just of her beauty. He spoke in hushed tones. “We are first in space, yes. But in spying…” He shook his head. “… you Americans always win.”
Matter-of-factly, Marilyn explained: “I told Agent Harrigan that I just had to read that speech, before I’d agree to meet you…. I just had to know.”
He squinted at her, curiously. “Know? Know what?”
She touched his chest, the silk of the pajama top smooth as a baby’s bottom. “What was in your heart, silly.” To this day she wished she’d insisted on such research on the President of Indonesia.
Nikita said nothing, his face empty… and yet filled, for the first time, with a humanity that revealed the man behind the world-leader façade.
Marilyn reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. “Your anguish… it was genuine.” Her voice was hushed, reverent. “I’m not embarrassed to say it made me cry.”
Nikita turned his face away from her. And when he looked back his eyes seemed moist, or was that only the reflection of moonlight?
For several long moments, neither said a word.
Finally, Nikita Khrushchev spoke.
“When I was younger, Stalin was like a father to me.” Another humorless laugh rumbled his chest. “But at end, he was sick… sick in his head. You could only trust him like… like you could trust ice in late spring.” Nikita heaved a world-weary sigh.
She said nothing, waiting for him to go on.
He did. “Lenin warned Central Committee. On his deathbed he say, do not pick Stalin as my successor! Because he knew this man was ruthless and would abuse power. But old fools do not listen. Imagine this! To not listen to father of our country! If George Washington said, ‘This is man you should not trust,’… you would not trust that man, am I right?… But they thought they knew better than Lenin.” He smirked disgustedly, adding, “As my people say, long whiskers cannot take place of brains.”
Again Marilyn
said nothing, sensing his need to talk.
“So many, many Russians died in purges,” Nikita said, shaking his head, sorrow in his eyes. “Best we had—doctors, teachers, engineers… all killed as ‘Enemies of People.’ You see, Stalin—he was afraid of intelligentsia. They might question his directives.”
He smacked a fist into a palm, making her jump a little.
“And military!” he said, eyes flaring. “He executed most of Old Guard in Red Army—honest men, good men—men I have serve with, who go to their deaths not knowing why. I tell you, dear friend, it is wonder we defeated Germany.”
She was shaking her head in dread. “But… but how could he be so… vicious… ?”
“How could Hitler murder so many? When madness starts, it is hard to stop.” Nikita lowered his head. “I should have seen it, what was happening. My lids were open, but my eyes… my eyes, they were closed.”
Marilyn rested a hand on his shoulder. “You mustn’t blame yourself for what somebody else did.”
“Once,” Nikita continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I go to see Stalin. I say, ‘Comrade, I have reports that the people in Ukraine are starving, we must do something.’ Well, Stalin did not want to hear that collective farms were not working. ‘Nonsense,’ was all he said. So I got on train and go down there.”
She listened intently, fascinated by the frankness of this man, this powerful man.
“When I arrive,” he was saying, “I start to… poke around. I go to this rundown shack outside village. There I find woman standing behind wood table with butcher knife in hand. On table is slab of cut-up meat and she poke knife at me, afraid I will take her meal. I say, ‘Dear lady, I do not want your meat. I want to know how you are and if you have food.’ She looked up at me with crazy eyes and she say, ‘Already I have eaten Little Maria. Now I will salt down Little Ivan. This will keep me for some time.’”
Marilyn gasped.
Nikita nodded at her unspoken question. “It is as you imagine: this woman had gone crazy with hunger and butchered her own children.”
“But… but I can’t imagine,” Marilyn said, horrified, covering her mouth with splayed fingers.
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