“No autographs,” Boris said, backing up. “I am here incognito.”
Dr. Pierce now got out of the car. Juan Francisco jumped out of Horsey’s arms and ran into Hawkeye’s.
“Aunt Antoinetta,” Juan Francisco said, “this is Dr. Hawkeye!”
“Who is this man?” Doña Antoinetta asked, indicating Boris, who had climbed onto the roof of the limousine.
“If she doesn’t know who I am, why does she want to kiss my hand?” Boris asked. “More important, how come she doesn’t recognize the world’s greatest opera singer?”
The third limousine glided up, the door opened, and the Archbishop of Swengchan jumped out.
“Get off the roof of that car,” he ordered, “before I throw you off.”
“Dago Red,” Hawkeye said, deciding to follow the military axiom that when in doubt, act as fast as possible, “say hello to Juan Francisco. Juan Francisco, say hello to Dago Red.” He threw Juan Francisco, like a basketball, to Dago Red. Dago Red caught him.
“I’ve heard a good deal about you, young man,” he said.
“And I heard a lot about you, Dago Red!” Juan Francisco replied.
“I think I should tell you, Father—if you really are a priest,” Doña Antoinetta said to Dago Red, “that an archbishop is due here momentarily.”
Dago Red looked at Hawkeye.
Hawkeye looked at Pancho.
“Madame,” Hawkeye said, “may I present the Very Reverend Pancho de Malaga y de Villa, private secretary to His Eminence John Patrick Mulcahy?”
“How do you do?” Doña Antoinetta said. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Monsignor, you look very young to be a monsignor.”
“How kind of you to say so,” Pancho said. “Madame, may I present the Archbishop of Swengchan?”
Dago Red put Juan Francisco back on his feet. “I’ve heard of your generosity to the nursing school,” Dago Red said. “I’m very glad to meet you.”
“If you’re an archbishop,” Doña Antoinetta said, clutching her crucifix as if she intended to ward off the devil with it, “why have they been calling you, you should excuse the expression, ‘Dago Red’?”
The archbishop looked at the monsignor; the monsignor looked at Hawkeye. Hawkeye looked at Trapper John.
“I can explain that,” Trapper John said, somewhat lamely.
“Who are you?” Doña Antoinetta demanded.
“Aunt Antoinetta, this is Dr. Trapper John,” Juan Francisco said.
“If you were so kind to little Juanito as he and my brothers have led me to believe,” Doña Antoinetta said, “you couldn’t possibly be as corrupt as you look. Explain.”
“Among the archbishop’s many other accomplishments,” Trapper John said, “is his ability to speak Gee Eye fluently.”
“Gee Eye?”
“One of the more unusual languages of the Far East,” Hawkeye said. “Especially in Frozen Chosen.”
“Frozen Chosen?”
“Sometimes known as the Land of the Morning Calm,” Trapper John said.
“And to the United States Army as Korea, Republic of,” Hawkeye added.
“So?” Doña Antoinetta said.
“In Gee Eye,” Trapper John said, “ ‘Dago Red’ means ‘distinguished clergyman.’ ”
“And His Eminence graciously permits those of us who were privileged to know His Eminence when he was nothing more than a U.S. Army chaplain to continue to call him ‘Dago Red,’ ” Hawkeye said.
“As well as some people of unusual goodness and all-around worth that he’s met since,” Trapper John said. “Tell the nice lady that she can call you ‘Dago Red,’ too, Dago Red.”
His Eminence looked pained, but quickly realized that there was nothing else to do under the circumstances.
“I would be pleased to have you call me ‘Dago Red,’ Doña Antoinetta,” he said.
“Some people,” Doña Antoinetta said, “are not what they appear to be. Beneath a façade of Christian respectability, behind a veneer of community respect, there sometimes lurks the worst kind of sinner.” Dago Red, Hawkeye, and Trapper John waited for the axe to fall. “I must respectfully decline the honor of being permitted to call you ‘Dago Red,’ Your Eminence.”
“But why?” Dago Red asked.
“Perhaps Your Eminence will be gracious enough, while you are here, to hear my confession,” Doña Antoinetta said. “That will explain everything.”
The Archbishop of Swengchan smiled, somewhat wanly, at Doña Antoinetta.
And at that moment, a bellboy appeared with a telephone, which he handed to Uncle Salvador Gomez y Sanchez. He listened to what was being said and then spoke.
“Doña Antoinetta,” he said, “I have just been informed that the aircraft carrying the good Reverend Mother, the holy relics of Blessed Prudence, the choir, the marching band, and the ceremonial goats has just landed.”
“Holy relics of who?” Hawkeye asked.
“Ceremonial goats?” Dago Red said.
“There will be a slight delay,” Salvador went on. “The a cappella choir, I have been informed, and the Knights of Columbus Marching Band are coming right over. But Reverend Mother, I have been told, has been pressed into emergency service assisting a doctor with an unexpected delivery, and will be delayed.”
“Whose unexpected delivery?” Dr. Trapper John McIntyre asked.
“I’m sure we shall learn in good time,” Dago Red said.
“I want to know about the holy relics of Blessed Prudence,” Hawkeye said.
“In the meantime,” Dago Red went on, “I wonder if we could be shown to our rooms. It was a tiring flight.”
“Forgive me, Your Eminence,” Doña Antoinetta said. “Brothers, show our guests to their rooms.”
“Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa,” the archbishop said, “will stay behind to see the band and the choir to their quarters, won’t you, Pancho?”
“I see what you mean,” Pancho said.
“And just as soon as that’s been done, you will come to see me, won’t you, Pancho?” Dago Red said. “I have the feeling I’m going to need you.”
“Of course, Your Eminence,” Pancho said.
“Pancho,” Hawkeye said, “keep an eye out for Dr. T. Mullins Yancey, too, will you?”
“My God,” Boris said, from the roof of the limousine. “I’d forgotten all about him and the Painless Polack.”
“T. Mullins Yancey?” Doña Antoinetta said. “The name is familiar.”
“He’s a friend of Dr. Pierce’s,” Dago Red said. “I hardly know the gentleman.”
“But he is part of the group, Pancho,” Trapper John said. “If you get my meaning.”
“Just as soon as I see him, I’ll see that he joins the group, Doctor,” Pancho said.
“Let’s go to our rooms, then,” the archbishop said. “Boris, get off the roof of that car and go with Hawkeye.” He then took the arms of the Baroness d’lber-ville and Esmerelda Hoffenburg and led them through the HOT door of the Winter Palace.
Doña Antoinetta, although her face didn’t show it, was more than a little disturbed. Here was an opportunity she hadn’t expected. Confessing to an archbishop! And not just any archbishop, but a widely traveled one, one who even spoke Gee Eye. She allowed her mind to consider that he really must have heard some astonishing confessions in the mysterious East, and she wondered how hers would compare with them.
Lost in thought, she suddenly found herself standing alone at the entrance of the Winter Palace; all the others had gone inside. She regained control of herself and entered the lobby.
Normally when walking through the lobby she averted her eyes from the newsstand. The racks of the newsstand were filled with literature of the sort that a lady might best avert her eyes from. But now her eyes were drawn to the newsstand; something seemed to attract her eye. And then she saw it. There was a large cardboard display of paperback books. A large yellow-and-red sign announced:
NOW IN PAPERBACK: HIS GREATEST WORK!
T. MULL
INS YANCEY’S TOUR DE FORCE
375,000 COPIES SOLD IN HARDCOVER at $12.95
NOW IN PAPERBACK FOR ONLY $4.95!
Doña Antoinetta walked over to the newsstand and looked in the cardboard display carton. There was only one copy of the book left in the bin. There must have been at least two hundred copies of the book, she realized. She picked up the last copy and examined the cover.
NEVER TOO MUCH; NEVER TOO LATE!
Abstinence is Aeger;
Absolute Abstinence is Acataleptic
By Theosophilus Mullins Yancey
M.D., Ph.D., D.V.M., D.D.
Chief of Staff
The Yancey Foundation Clinic
Manhattan, Kansas
Liberally illustrated with color photos, drawings, and maps.
Dr. T. Mullins Yancey was obviously the man who’d been mentioned in the telegram, one of the distinguished physicians traveling with Doctors Pierce and McIntyre. Even the bishop had said he was familiar with the name.
And here she was, about to make a fool of herself. A distinguished author and physician would be right here in her own Winter Palace, and she was unfamiliar with his writings. As a matter of fact, she realized, she didn’t even know what “aeger” or “acataleptic” meant. But no matter, she would soon find out; with one notable, memorable exception, she was already an expert on abstinence. And she was a quick reader. By the time Dr. T. Mullins Yancey arrived, she would have read enough of his philosophy to discuss it intelligently with him. There couldn’t be all that much to read; after all, it was “liberally illustrated.”
Doña Antoinetta put the book under her arm, paid the clerk (who looked, for some odd reason, a little surprised at her choice), and marched across the lobby to the elevators.
(* Aeger: (adj.) (from Latin aeger) Sick.)
(* Acataleptic: (adj.) (from Latin acatalepticus) Incomprehensible.)
Chapter Eighteen
Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore had long held the belief that if God had intended man to fly, he would have given him feathered wings. The truth of the matter was that he was afraid to fly, and flew only in the gravest national emergencies. He had last flown—and the memory still gave him the chills— some four years before in such an emergency. A subversive, pinko newspaper in his hometown had published a story saying that the senator’s hometown had no fewer than seven of his close relatives on the government payroll. As this outrageous slander (there were only four close relatives; any fool knew that second cousins weren’t close relatives) had been published two days before the election, it had been necessary for him to summon an Air Force plane to fly him home. His re-election was clearly in the national interest, and he had done his duty as God had given him the light to see that duty.
At this time, he had solemnly vowed that hell would freeze over before he would risk his skin and run the risk of depriving the country of his services by soaring off again into the wild blue yonder. Like most politicians, he believed what he said at the time he said it, and like most politicians he understood that a reappraisal of the situation might well result in the necessity of amending his position, but he hadn’t considered in his wildest dreams (and he had some wild dreams) that a circumstance might arise under which he would again climb aboard an aircraft.
But Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore was in love, not withstanding the fact that for thirty-one years that had been a Mrs. Cacciatore and that there were seven little Cacciatores at his home and hearth.
He was in love with a woman, moreover, upon whom he had never laid an eye. And Cupid’s arrow had skewered him in the mostly unlikely place, geographically (rather than anatomically) speaking: in Listening Room Six of the Audiovisual Center of the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Building.
The senator, at first, had reacted to the tapes sent by Miami’s (Acting) Agent-in-Charge Finklestein as befitted a man who had been married some thirty-one years and who had seven assorted little Cacciatores at his hearth. He had, in other words, been shocked, mortified, and outraged at what he’d heard.
But then, slowly at first, and then with a sudden swiftness, he had realized that what he had been listening to were not the lewd and lascivious outpourings of an over-sexed Cuban, but were, rather, the cries of a lonely woman for masculine attention and affection.
As she recounted, with amazing recall of detail, her one encounter with someone of the opposite sex, the senator realized that he was the man of her dreams. He had, after all, a massive hairy chest (one of his grandchildren had so cutely said, “Grandpa’s got more hair than a gorilla”), arms of steel, and deep passionate eyes.
“You understand, Senator,” the man from the F.B.I. who had played the tape recordings for him said, “that we couldn’t use these in a court of law. Not only are tape recordings made without the knowledge of the recordee illegal, but the courts, in their constant coddling of the criminal, have frowned upon tape recordings made in the confessional.”
"‘Shut up, you dummy,” Senator Cacciatore had snapped. “Don’t try to tell Christopher Columbus Cacciatore about the law. I write the law, dummy. What do you think we senators do all the time, anyway?”
It was a rhetorical question, to which no answer was expected and to which none was offered.
“My God—Fisch!” the senator then said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“What’s Fisch—Senator Fisch to you, dummy—up to?”
“Well, once we ascertained the senator’s identity, Senator, we of course instructed Acting Agent-in-Charge Finklestein to offer all courtesies.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Senator Fisch is working with Acting Agent-in-Charge Finklestein in the investigation of this subject,” the F.B.I. man said.
“How dare you call that poor, brave, sweet, and lonely woman a subject?”
“I would like to call her what she sounds like,” the F.B.I. man said, “but we are not allowed to comment upon subjects’ sexual proclivities. But don’t worry, Senator. We’ll get her. If we can’t get her for her sexual behavior—the statute of limitations has obviously run out—we’ll sic the Internal Revenue Service on her. We’ll avenge the Friendly Sons of Italy, or my name isn’t Carlos Michelangelo Nervino, Sr.”
“Tell me, dummy,” Senator Cacciatore said. “Your mother was maybe German? French? Polish? I find it hard to believe that a one-hundred-percent Italian would wind up eavesdropping on other people’s conversations for a living. You’re a disgrace to the fair name of Italy.”
And with that, knowing what Fate insisted that he do, Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore dashed out of Listening Room Six of the Audiovisual Center of the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Building, ran down the broad marble stairs, and leapt into the back seat of the Cadillac limousine provided for his use by the grateful taxpayers.
“Get on the radio telephone,” he instructed his research advisor.* “Call Andrews Air Force Base and have them warm up the fastest jet in their fleet for a flight to Miami.”
(* As a gesture to show that they were not above belt-tightening in the national interest, the Senate had voted unanimously to eliminate chauffeur-driven limousines for all but a few senior senators. Technically, the limousine in which Senator Cacciatore rode about was a “utility vehicle, general purpose" and the driver of same, who had previously driven the senator’s limousine, was on the Federal payroll as a “research advisor’’ (GS-12, $22,560 per annum).)
“Yes, sir, Senator,” the research adviser said. “Who’s going to Miami?”
“I am, dummy,” the senator replied. “On the way to Andrews, stop by a florist. I need a dozen long-stemmed roses.”
“Yes, sir, Senator.”
“And you better stop by a liquor store, too,” the senator said. “I’ll need a couple of bottles of champagne for dear Antoinetta . . . dear Tony . . . and I’ll need a little something to give me courage to face the flight.”
The senator had one more thought as they raced through Washington traffic.
&n
bsp; “Call the office,” he said. “Have them send a telegram to Senator Fisch, care of the F.B.I. in Miami. The message is, ‘Whatever you’re doing, Fisch, stop it!’ ”
“Yes, sir, Senator,” the research advisor said.
His Eminence, John Patrick Mulcahy, Archbishop of Swengchan, attired in the formal vestments of his office, examined himself in the mirror. He had dreamed, when he had first decided to take Holy Orders, of bringing the word of God to savages.
His dream and prayers had been answered, in a manner of speaking, he told himself. He had pictured himself sweating in a tropical climate like this one— but the location he’d had in mind had been a hut in Africa or a rude church carved of native teak in the upper reaches of the Amazon, not an air-conditioned penthouse in a hotel called the Winter Palace in Miami Beach, Florida.
He had seen himself, in his mind’s eye, in tattered shirt and shorts, only his reversed collar setting him apart from the others in the jungle. Well, no one, His Eminence realized, seeing him as he was dressed now, was liable to mistake him for a white hunter or a timber cutter.
But as far as pagan religions were concerned, His Eminence was convinced that no assembly of African cannibals or Amazonian spirit worshippers could possibly be harder to bring into the fold than the followers of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc.
His thoughts were interrupted by a discreet knock at his door.
“Your Eminence?”
“Come on in, Pancho,” the archbishop said. “And help me get out of all this.”
“Your Eminence, I have the honor of presenting the compliments of His Excellency Patrick Michael O’Grogarty, Bishop of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys,” Monsignor Pancho de Malaga y de Villa said formally.
“Oh?”
“His Excellency begs the privilege of an audience,” Pancho said.
“Is he out there?”
“Yes, he is, Your Eminence,” Pancho replied.
“Ask him to come in, Pancho,” Dago Red said. “And get us some coffee, will you?”
MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Page 20
