She beamed at me. “Thank you, Father. I feel much better for that.”
At least one of us did. I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped my brow. If priests went through this sort of thing every week, it was little wonder so many of them were leaving the Church to get married. I swallowed. “Do you think you might bandage me now? I really must be off to my fete.”
“Yes, of course,” she said brightly.
She started with my right foot - the one Ivimy sprained - and proved expert at the job. I watched her with admiration, although my mind was still on the fact she was a sex maniac. “What’s your name?”
“Marian. What’s yours?”
“Father Ignatius O’Rourke,” I said automatically.
“That’s Irish, isn’t it? You don’t sound Irish.”
In fact I hadn’t been bothering with my Irish accent, which I found a severe strain on the vocal cords. It was another small example of carelessness, exactly the sort of attitude that could abort my mission or, worse still, get me caught afterwards. “It’s only Irish extraction. I’ve never actually been to Ireland.”
“You don’t sound American either.”
“Don’t I really? It must be the Boston education.”
That seemed to satisfy her. She finished off the foot. “Where next?”
“I suppose,” I said casually, “I should look as if I’d broken a few ribs.”
“If that’s how you want it,” Marian shrugged. She had obviously decided I was less than totally sane.
I slipped gingerly out of my jacket and she helped me unbutton my shirt. At close range I noticed she was wearing a trace of musky perfume. As the shirt came off, her eyes glazed slightly and she licked her lips. “I’ve never seen a priest half stripped before,” she murmured huskily.
I knew what was coming and I hadn’t time to cope with it. “You must think of me as half dressed, rather than half stripped,” I told her inanely. She was, I suppose, no more than twenty years old.
She reached out and lightly scratched my chest, producing the beginnings of a powerful erection. “You mustn’t do that,” I said even more inanely. “I’m a priest.”
“Yes,” she murmured. She began to bandage me. If I hadn’t experienced it, I would never have believed being bandaged could be an erotic experience. But it was. Intensely. She did my right arm and started up the throat to the face. She was leaning over very close, her breasts pushing out through the sweater to press against my shoulder. “Do you really never do it, Father Ignatius?” she whispered.
“Do what?” I asked hoarsely. The problem was it had been far too long since I really had done it. My reactions were already well out of control, needing only the slightest additional nudge to push me over into frenzy. I kept seeing her bent over that school desk, a situation I dearly wished to duplicate, with or without the blackboard pointer.
“Have a woman.”
My face had now disappeared beneath a swathe of bandages so that, thank heaven, she could no longer see my expression which must by then have degenerated to the point of drooling idiocy. “We’re not allowed to,” I said desperately.
With great deliberation, she unzipped my fly. I groaned.
“It’s very nice,” she said. “All warm and wet and soft and exciting.”
I knew! I knew! I could remember. My mind dropped into limbo, an external observer of interesting events. My body, on the other hand, decided de Gaulle could go screw himself - I now had better things to do.
“What nice underpants,” Marian murmured. “I always thought priests wore long johns.” She began to ease them down and somebody knocked loudly at the door.
The sound brought me abruptly to my senses. I scrabbled at my underpants and trousers. “That will be the Bishop,” I said loudly. I began to struggle into my shirt and jacket.
Marian moved sulkily to the door and opened it. There was a small man in a blue peaked cap and uniform outside. “Listen, lady.” he said. “There’s nobody home next door at number 20. You wouldn’t know where General Ivimy hangs out, would you?” It was my chauffeur, prompt at fourteen hundred hours.
“No,” Marian said and began to close the door.
“Yes!” I called. “I’m General Ivimy.” I hobbled out, remembering to limp badly on my right foot.
“You the General ordered a car for two o’clock?”
“That’s it, boy,” I told him in my best impersonation of Ivimy’s voice. I caught the expression on Marian’s face and hissed by way of explanation, “Undercover work, you know.” Then I hobbled off to collect my crutch and my gun while my chauffeur waited patiently to drive me to my destiny.
Chapter Fourteen
The White House was very nice, but not, frankly, the sort of place you would visit more than once unless you had to. The basic problem with it was, of course, its frequent changes of tenant. American Presidents do not qualify for office on the basis of aesthetic expertise. Furthermore, the structures of one are not always totally demolished to make room for the mistakes of the next. As a results the internal fittings represent a cosmopolitan mixture of tastes and styles, almost all of them quite appalling. Add to this the fact that the building functions not only as a stately home, but also as a communications centre and office block and you can see why the inside, despite neatness, cleanliness and ostentatious opulence, still comes over as a bit of a shambles.
I limped through these corridors of power in the charge of a nervous young executive named Stephen Gribbin. I could see a lot of myself in Stephen - my old self, that is, before I found my Purpose. He was conservative, polite and choc-a-bloc with smarm, intensely ambitious, sycophantic and arrogant by turns, highly efficient and fairly obviously nursing an incipient ulcer. I knew to look at him he was dreadfully unhappy, but never had the time to find out why. He probably worked an eighteen hour day and tried desperately to enjoy himself at weekends. The contrast between him and I was, in all modesty, striking. I wondered why everyone didn’t become a political assassin. For sheer peace of mind, it beat executive work into a cocked hat.
“We’re having drinks first in the Secretary’s office, General,” Stephen told me* “Give everybody a chance to meet everybody else. Then just before three, we’ll move up to the Oval Office. Did you know President de Gaulle will be there?”
“Former President de Gaulle,” I growled. I’d done quite a lot of growling in my guise as a General and quite enjoyed the effect it had.
“Yes, of course,” Stephen said. “Did you know him? During the war, I mean?”
That was a point. I remembered de Gaulle had been chased out of France by the Germans long before the Americans landed, but he’d come back along with the British, leading the Free French, so it was possible Ivimy might have bumped into him. Not that it mattered. Since Stephen. obviously didn’t know the answer, I made one up. “Never had the pleasure, son. Our theatres never seemed to overlap, as you might say.”
“No,” Stephen nodded. “I see.”
When he said ‘Secretary’s office’, I’d assumed he meant Secretary of State, but it transpired that where we were really going was to the office of the Secretary to the President, a man called Christopher Gray. Everybody seemed to have gathered by the time we arrived. The room was small and consequently appeared overcrowded. Everybody seemed to be drinking.
“Well now,” Stephen said brightly. “Here we are.” He turned to an older version of himself standing just inside the door and said, “Chris, this is General George Ivimy - he’s had an accident this morning.” He smiled, then sobered. “General, this is the President’s personal secretary, Christopher Gray. I don’t think you’ve met before.”
“Nice to know you, General,” Christopher said, smiling smoothly.
“Won’t offer to shake hands, son,” I growled, nodding down at my bandages “No, indeed.”
“Nasty business, by the look of it. What happened?”
“Nothing serious. Slipped getting off a coach and was dragged a bit. It proved too much even for an old leatherskin like me.” Then, because I could never leave well enough alone, I added, “Odd, isn’t it? Come through the war without a scratch and all it takes is a civilian coach to leave me in this state.”
Gray frowned. “Hardly without a scratch, General. I seem to recall you picked up quite a bit of shrapnel - outside Paris, wasn’t it? The action that led to your decorations?” Like most of the well-trained bastards involved in Washington politics, this one obviously had the habit of memorising a file on everybody he was scheduled to meet, a P.R. move to give them the impression they must be famous since he knew all about them. It was something I’d forgotten in my anxiety to reach de Gaulle. But it meant l’d have to be very careful indeed for the next half hour.
I grinned bravely, not that it showed through the bandages. “Never felt that little business really counted, son. Only in hospital three months.”
“Five, surely,” Gray frowned.
“As long as that, by God? Memory’s not what it was.”
He let it go at that, thank heavens and asked, “Can I got you something to drink, General? Burbon, isn’t it?”
“It is and you can’t. The medics have me on something they tell me won’t mix with hooch.” In point of fact, I wanted to keep my one hand free. Success or failure in an assassination can well depend on whether or not you have to leave a glass down before going for your gun.
“Well, in that case let me introduce you to some people. I know there are many here anxious to have the honour of meeting you.”
“Delighted,”. I said. “Lead on into the fray, son.”
The charitable workers were a boring lot in the main, full of nerves and self-importance. One goon, a businessman from somewhere in the Mid West, tried to regale me with his own war experiences when he heard the military title. But Gray, to his credit, slid me gracefully away. As the introductions wore on, it dawned on me he was treating me as one of the more important persons there, and I wondered why. What with World War Two, Korea and Vietnam, clapped out old Generals must have been fairly thick on the ground just then. And my war record, what little I knew of it, didn’t seem nearly distinguished enough to point me out for special treatment.
Then Gray was introducing me to another guest and suddenly I had a new problem to worry about. “General,” he said, “this is Sister Marie Therese, Mother Superior of the Third Washington Order of the Sisters of Mercy.” She was exactly as I liked to remember her: black and white, prune-faced and deadly.
She smiled stiffly. “How do you do, General?”
“Fine, Ma’am, just fine. Apart from a few scratches.” It was amazing how nobody commented on the fact I was bandaged like a Nagasaki survivor. It was even more ironical in her case since she’d contributed the only genuine injuries I had.
“And this,” said Gray, “is Sister Martha.”
For a moment, despite the introduction, I didn’t recognise her. She was dressed in a pale grey trouser suit that hugged every contour of her luscious body. I blinked, remembered my accent just in time, and said, “Did you say Sister Martha?”
“Another of the Order,” Gray explained.
“But you’re wearing civilian clothes,” I pointed out. My breathing was starting to come a bit heavy. As a Protestant, I’d never been particularly kinky about nuns, but for Sister Martha I could try. I wondered what she was wearing under the suit. What sort of underclothes did nuns wear anyway?
“It’s permitted on special occasions, General.” She glanced at her hellish Mother Superior. “By special dispensation.”
“Sister Martha is what we call a progressive nun,” the Mother Superior put in. Her tone lacked any discernible note of approval.
I looked down at the glass in Sister Martha’s hand. “And drinking too, I do declare.”
She smiled. At least this time my phoney accent wasn’t giving me away, probably because everything I said came out muffled by the bandages. “Only soda water, I’m afraid, General. But you’re drinking nothing at all.”
“Like to keep a clear head during these operations, Ma’am.”
Then, in the middle of a fantasy during which I tore every stitch of clothing from Martha’s saintly body, Cray was sliding me on to meet the next batch of nonentities. As he did so, Martha turned slightly so I noticed a small square of Elastoplast on her left temple, presumably to cover the bruise given to her by the Virgin Mary and myself.
Cray left me eventually, as duty called him elsewhere. I chatted for a moment or two with the American version of a dowager, all electric blue satin and ample bosoms, then drifted towards the door. When the call came to the Oval Office, I wanted an early place in the line. It would give me a clearer shot at de Gaulle. Surreptitiously, I checked the position of my gun, lodged beneath my coat in the bandages of my broken armpit. A crossover movement of my good hand (bandaged. though it was) would have it out and cocked in a fraction of a second. I’d practised the manoeuvre - without actually drawing the gun - several times in the car on the way to the White House until I noticed the driver looking at me .curiously in the mirror.
“It is Mr Trench, isn’t it?”
For perhaps half a second, I thought the voice must be talking to somebody else, then the name registered chillingly and I looked round. Sister Martha was standing beside me, an odd expression on her face. Apparently my accent hadn’t been good enough to fool her this time either.
Chapter Fifteen
The office of the President’s secretary is not, as you would imagine, close to the office of the President. It’s not even on the same floor. As a result, when the time came to move, we were separated out into neat little parties by Messrs Gray and Gribbin and herded into a downgoing lift. My little party consisted of the electric blue dowager, two elderly male twins whose names I forget, Gray himself, a retired banker and me. Sister Martha, to my relief, was herded off with her Mother Superior into another lift.
To say I was disturbed is putting it mildly. I was only minutes away from de Gaulle now and the last thing I needed was my cover blown- especially by a nun, whose word, I assumed, would be doubted by nobody. Was she in the process of blowing it now, I wondered, babbling away to the nervous Mr Gribbin in the other lift about the maniac who had attacked her in the convent and was now at large in the White House? Or worse, was she whispering the secret to the dreaded Mother Marie Therese? Would I step from the lift to have my other arm broken and important portions of my lower anatomy further mangled by that lethal old penguin?
I was a nervous wreck by the time the lift doors opened, but in the event nothing happened other than a knowing glance from Sister Martha. She slipped beside me as we all walked up the corridor and whispered quietly, “I’m sorry about the business this morning.”
I grunted, wishing I knew what the hell was going on.
The Oval Office has probably changed now, but at that time it was like walking into an aquarium, the result mainly of a green tint in the windows behind the desk. It must have played havoc with the President’s television viewing, of which he did quite a lot apparently since there were three screens built into the wall opposite his desk. Over to one side was a fireplace, unlit at the moment, this being summer and very warm; and up above it an oil painting of the cadaverous Abraham Lincoln. Over the other way were French windows leading out into a rose garden. I was just thinking what a nice touch this was when a door in the west wall opened and in strode the old cowboy himself, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Although these were the days when the peccadilloes of American Presidents were kept from the general public, I was, as a former member of the media, privileged to inside information. And the inside information on Lyndon was choice. The Washington Press Corps, after years of Boston sophistication with the
Kennedys, found it almost impossible to adjust to him. He represented American core values that had somehow been mislaid in Camelot - things like Stetsons, big bellies, chaw-tobacco, swearing and high-heeled leather boots. At his first Press Conference, the new President had been asked, Mr President, considering the cultural differences inherent in this country’s black , Hispanic and other minorities, do you feel confident that the integrationist policies embraced by the previous Administration may be fully expedited at the present time? It would have elicited a thoughtful response from Jack, but the new President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson barely glanced at the reporter as he picked up some sort of hound-dog by its ears and asked, “What sort of chicken-shit question is that?” To my indescribable horror, he came straight across to me.
“By God, George,” said the new President of the United States, “you look as crappy as my granny when she caught her tits in the mangle!” He laughed and poked me in the ribs, an action that might have killed me if they’d really been broken. “Heard you had an accident, but I never thought you’d turn up looking like some goddam mummy’s ghost. What happened to you, boy - start a bar brawl you couldn’t handle?”
My bowels turned to ice. Disaster was piling on, disaster. Not only did Sister Martha know I was a phoney, but it was obvious the President knew General George Ivimy well. No bloody wonder I’d got VIP treatment from both Gray and Gribbin. “Fell out of a coach, Mr President,” I muttered.
“What’s this ‘Mr President’ bullshit?” Johnson asked me frowning. “Since when did old campaigners like you and me stand on ceremony?” He turned away from me to address the assembled gathering. “Friends,” he said, “I’d like you all to meet one of my oldest, closest friends, the hardest drinker, dirtiest fighter, and best goddam all round military man this country ever produced - General George Ivimy!”
Madame de Gaulle's Penis Page 11
