“If Colonel Montsacre had not been … as you put it, Excellency … ‘playing usher,’ we would not know of this development. We would have been presented with a fait accompli.”
“You mean, it’s not finally settled?”
“It is not in writing, Excellency—not yet. But the Sheikh has given his word, and he has never gone back on it before.”
“There is a first time for everything,” the President said. “I presume, M’sieu le Minister, that you have a plan?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Well, out with it. I’m a busy man and I need my sleep.” He looked over his shoulder. Petit Chou-Chou, tiring of affairs of state, had slipped out of her peignoir and, wearing a rather transparent garment whose hem rose a foot above her knees, got into the bed.
“I don’t quite know where to begin, M’sieu le President,” the head of the Deuxième Bureau said.
“Start somewhere!” the President said sharply. “We’re dealing with the future of France!”
“Well, from what we have been able to put together,” he said, “the connection, the American Connection, so to speak, goes from Sheikh Abdullah to Sheikh Hassan to Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov …”
“The opera singer? That Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov? What’s he got to do with it?”
“Papa,” Petit Chou-Chou said, suddenly sitting up erect in bed, “is that Cher Boris Alexandrovich on the phone?”
“No, Mon Cher Petit Chou-Chou,” the President said very gently, “we are just talking about him.”
“Isn’t that interesting?” she said, “What are you talking about?”
“As I was saying, Excellency, the connection runs from Sheikh Abdullah to Sheikh Hassan to the singer to Chevaux. The latter three are all friends.”
“You’re trying to tell me that opera singer outwitted the entire Foreign Ministry and is about to deliver the Abzugian oil fields to the Americans?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what do you plan to do about it?”
“The obvious thing, sir, would be destroy the bonds of friendship.”
“Good thinking,” the President said. “Have you a plan to do that?”
“The Arab culture places a good deal of emphasis on hospitality,” the man from the Deuxième Bureau said.
“Get to the point,” the President said.
“The Sheikh of Abzug, as a first step, has extended an invitation to both Chevaux, the man, and to the singer to visit him. His pride would be deeply injured if they didn’t show up.”
“That’s a good idea,” the President said. “The last I heard, nobody was quite sure where Abzug was, anyway.”
“The Sheikh customarily entertains guests at the Mamoumian Hotel in Marrakech,” the man from the Deuxième Bureau said, “because there are no hotels, of course, in Abzug itself.”
“Well, how are you going to keep Korsky-Rimsakov and that foul turncoat to France, Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, from going to the Mamoumian Hotel in Marrakech? Everybody knows where that is.”
“Cher Boris Alexandrovich is going to be at the Mamoumian in Marrakech?” Petit Chou-Chou asked.
“Possibly,” the President said, “possibly.”
“What I propose, Mr. President,” the man from the Deuxième Bureau said, “is that you, Your Excellency, be at the Mamoumian Hotel when it becomes apparent that Monsieur de la Chevaux and Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov have grossly insulted Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug by not being there as they have been invited to be.”
“You want me to go to the Mamoumian?” M’sieu le President said, thoughtfully. “Good thinking, Minister!”
“Papa,” Petit Chou-Chou said, “my headache is gone. I will go with you!”
“Anything Chou-Chou wants,” the President said automatically, “Chou-Chou can have.”
“Excuse me, Excellency?” the Minister for Internal-External Security asked.
“I said, I will go to the Mamoumian,” the President said. “But you haven’t told me how you plan to keep the others away.”
“Trust me, M’sieu le President,” the Minister said.
“Trust you? I trusted you so far, and look what it got me!” he replied, tartly. “Tell me!”
“We will arrange for the plane carrying M’sieu de la Chevaux to be diverted from Marrakech Airport … to Casablanca, probably … and then we will see that he stays in Casablanca.”
“And what about the singer?”
“No problem at all, Excellency. He is at the moment aboard the Concorde …”
“Aboard the Concorde? What is he doing aboard the Concorde? The Minister of the Treasury tells me that the Republic of France cannot afford to transport me, your beloved President and Chief of State, aboard the Concorde, and you tell me that this singer is aboard it?”
“As M’sieu le President knows,” the man from the Deuxième Bureau explained, very carefully, “Cher Boris Alexandrovich sang tonight at the Paris Opera, a charity performance. The Minister of Culture was forced to make the plane available to him, to bring him from New York, and then to return him to New York. Otherwise, he could not have made an appearance.”
“The Minister of Culture,” M’sieu le President said, suddenly reversing course, “obviously knows what he’s doing. I wish I could say that about some other ministers of this government.”
“The Concorde is a French airplane,” the Minister from the Deuxième Bureau said, “flown by a French pilot, and will land when and where the government of France tells the pilot to land.”
“Anywhere but Marrakech, right?” the President said.
“Yes, Your Excellency,” the Minister said, “and I feel sure that someone of Your Excellency’s well-known diplomatic skills will be able to exploit the situation to the benefit of our beloved France.”
“Quite so,” the President said.
“And I feel as sure that Sheikh Abdullah will be so deeply offended when Chevaux and Korsky-Rimsakov fail to show up, that he will be more willing to change his mind and award France exploitation rights—at terms very favorable to France.”
“Perhaps I have misjudged you,” the President said.
“Thank you, M’sieu le President,” the Minister said. “Have I your permission to proceed with the plan?”
“You have my permission,” M’sieu le President said, “and the gratitude of our beloved France. Good bight, M’sieu le Minister.”
“Good night, Excellency. I regret that I had to disturb your rest.”
“No sacrifice is too great in the service of France,” the President said, and hung up the telephone.
He turned to the Presidential Bed. Petit Chou-Chou was lying on her side, eyes closed.
“Mon Petit Chou-Chou,” he said, with infinite tenderness.
“Not tonight, Papa,” Petit Chou-Chou said. “If we’re going to Marrakech, I’ll need my beauty sleep.”
The President turned and looked out of the window. A wave of self-pity swept over him, mingled with pride, as he watched late-hour strollers.
“If only,” he thought, “the common people knew what sacrifices their leaders have to make for them!”
Penelope Quattlebaum was awakened the next morning at 8:15 by the telephone beside her bed. Her mouth was dry, her temples throbbed, and there was the condition described as “gasidity” by a well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer in her tummy.
She gave off with an unladylike burp and staggered into the rather ornate bathroom of her suite, where she stood for a long time under the shower, trying without complete success to wash the cobwebs from her memory.
The last thing she remembered clearly was being taken by T. Dudley Dulaney to a quaint Paris bistro near the Opera. It was her first Paris bistro, and she had really been impressed with the quaint French artifacts inside the place, as well as the manifestation of Franco-American goodwill in the name: Harry’s New York Bar.
Dulaney had fed her something which tasted very much like Papa’s hard cider and, from the second glass onwa
rd, her memory of what had transpired grew more and more hazy. She remembered only that there had been an unpleasant little scene with T. Dudley Dulaney, who had attempted to press his unwanted attentions on her.
She seemed to remember a Marine and she seemed to remember, quite clearly, a tall, dark stranger with a thick, black mustache; but she was quite sure that what she remembered of what had transpired between her and the tall, dark stranger (the imagery brought a blush of maidenly embarrassment to her pink cheeks) had not really happened.
It must have been a dream. It just didn’t seem at all likely that the tall, dark stranger with that darling black mustache had really come galloping up on a white stallion to snatch her bodily into the saddle behind him, and to gallop up the Champs-Elysées to ravish her with great skill and wild imagination under the arch of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, while a detachment of the Garde Republicaine (who had apparently come to the Arc from the Opera, where she had first seen them) urged him on by playing trumpet adagios.
She dwelt on the details for a couple of minutes, decided it really had been a dream and stepped out of the shower. She wrapped herself in a terry-cloth robe and returned to her bedroom.
She heard activity, male voices, in the sitting room and, heart beating rapidly, gathered the courage to open the door a crack and peer out. It wasn’t a tall, dark stranger; it was two ancient waiters delivering breakfast. She thought it was really odd that she could remember the face of the tall, dark stranger with such clarity. In her mind’s eye, she could count the whiskers in his mustache and feel the warm, overwhelming strength of his hand on her wrist.
She shook her head to clear it. It wasn’t such a good idea. Her brain seemed to be rolling around inside her skull. She waited, peering through the crack in the door, until the floor waiters left, and then she went out and sat down at the table they had set up.
She poured herself a cup of coffee. It tasted as though it had been prepared from salt water and discarded ball bearings, but it was obviously just what she needed. The strain, the jet lag and then the excitement of actually being in Gay Paris (plus, of course, the hard cider that miserable twerp, T. Dudley Dulaney, had tricked her into drinking) had simply been too much for her.
The coffee took the lining off the inside of her mouth and throat which, under the circumstances (her mouth and throat felt as if they were lined with floor sweepings), was a decided advantage. She gingerly lifted one of the silver covers off one of the plates. Lying there, obscenely, were two fried eggs. It was obviously true that there was a deep streak of cruelty, of sadism, in these French. She picked up a roll, still warm, in the shape of a half moon, broke it and then buttered it. And only then did she see the roses, the red roses, the long-stemmed red roses. She went to them and sniffed. Two dozen long stemmed red roses! She counted them and then counted them again, and rage rose in her again. Twenty-two. Somebody had ripped off two of her two dozen roses!
Who were they from? She searched for a card with even more diligence and eager anticipation than she had for the purloined blossoms, and with no more success.
Probably, she thought, they had come from T. Dudley Dulaney, III. That was like him. He would want to send something like flowers after his most undiplomatic, ungentlemanly conduct of the night before (how dare he abandon her in the middle of a strange city?); he was just the sort of miserable twerp who would sent twenty-two roses instead of twenty-four, thinking the recipient would never bother to count; and, finally, he was the sort of spineless male-chauvinist sexist pig who would send flowers to make amends for outrageous conduct but would not have the courage to include his card.
The telephone rang.
Penelope answered it. “Good morning,” she said, sweetly.
“Good morning, Miss Quattlebaum,” T. Dudley Dulaney, III said. “I trust you slept well?”
“What’s on your mind, Dulaney?” Penelope snarled
“Why, I’ve come to take you to Orly Field,” he said. “Your plane leaves at 10:45.”
“I’ll be right down,” she said. If he thought she would ask him to come up to her suite just because he’d sent her twenty-two lousy, long-stemmed, red roses, he had another think coming.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said.
Penelope dressed. As she began to pull on her panty hose, she saw that the bottoms of her feet were absolutely black. The French, apparently, felt it was easier to install a special foot-washing bath in each bathroom than to invest in vacuum cleaners for the floors. Penelope carried her pantyhose and her shoes into the bathroom, washed her feet in the porcelain device, dried them and finally completed dressing. She wondered if it would be possible for her to buy one of the foot washers in Morocco and send it to Papa for Christmas. Mama was always complaining that his feet smelled, and she thought they both would really be pleased with something like this.
She summoned a bellboy. Two arrived. Penelope followed them down to the lobby. T. Dudley Dulaney, III, who had been sitting in an armchair, rose when he saw the little procession, marched over to Penelope with a nervous little smile on his face and presented her with a bundle of roses.
Penelope was stunned. “Thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure, Miss Quattlebaum,” he said, flushing slightly.
Certainly, T. Dudley Dulaney would not send two dozen roses, less two, to her room and then present her with another dozen in the lobby.
Then who had sent the others?
Her mind’s eye filled with the image of the tall, dark mustachioed stranger on the white charger who had worked his imaginatively evil ways upon her beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Perhaps it hadn’t been a dream….
That was absurd! She forced the imagery from her mind and allowed herself to be led out of the hotel and into an official U.S. Embassy car parked outside.
An hour and ten minutes later, aboard an Air Maroc DC-9, Miss Penelope Quattlebaum, still wondering about the source of the roses, departed Orly Field, Paris, on the last leg of her journey to her first diplomatic post
Chapter Ten
There is very seldom any waiting to tee up at the Le Club Royal de Golf de Maroc in Rabat, Morocco, for the very simple reason that only the King of Morocco and a few, very carefully selected guests of His Majesty play at the club.
The whole subject of golf in Morocco is a rather delicate one. Most of His Islamic Majesty’s loyal subjects, for one thing, think there is something a little absurd in full-grown men swinging a weighted stick at a small, white ball, and then, with apparent great delight, chasing the ball several hundred yards to have another whack at it. A game, the object of which is apparently to nudge a ball into a gopher hole, is rather alien to the Moroccan concept of sport.
Moreover, His Islamic Majesty’s loyal subjects have certain prejudices regarding proper attire for their monarch who is, after all, both King and Keeper of the Faith. They might begin to ask certain unanswerable questions if it should become common knowledge that His Majesty, from time to time, when the press of his duties permits, could be seen wearing a plaid tam-o’-shanter, an open-necked, lavender shirt, polka-dot knickers and argyle socks in the very act of enthusiastically attacking a small, white sphere with a stick. Choosing golfing partners has thus long been one of the major problems weighing heavily upon His Majesty’s shoulders. There are, to be sure, many golfers among the Diplomatic Corps, but His Majesty is understandably reluctant to play with any of them. He frankly feels that doing so would give them a chance to blackmail him.
Shortly after His Majesty had learned the Ancient & Honorable game during a vacation in Switzerland—and frankly, he became quite infatuated with it—he had dispatched six wholly trustworthy members of his staff to the Ancient & Honorable Course at St. Andrew’s, Scotland. They had orders to stay there until they had learned the rules of the game, had equipped themselves suitably with equipment and had been able to cover eighteen holes in no more than ninety strokes.
While they were gone, Le Club Royal de Golf was constructed at Rabat,
ostensibly for the pleasure of the Diplomatic Corps and other infidel aliens.
This was, of course, a subterfuge. His Majesty had no intention whatever of allowing his links to be trod down by beet-faced Englishmen, languid Frenchmen and loudly laughing Americans. When very, very discreet inquiries were made by the Diplomatic Corps to the Royal Chef de Protocol regarding the estimated completion date of the Le Club Royal de Golf, they were put off with observations that building a golf course in the desert was a massive engineering undertaking and that completion was sometime in the future. An announcement would be made.
Sending the six equerries to St. Andrew’s had been only a very limited success. One of them had defected, although this story had been effectively kept secret. (What had happened was that Ali ben Baba [Lieut. Col., Cavalry] had been taken, so to speak, under the wing of the Hon. Violet T. MacSporran, spinster daughter and only child of Baron Glenwyddie. Miss MacSporran had turned to golf when it had become patently apparent to her that marriage had become a remote possibility. Her interest in Lieut. Col. Ali ben Baba had been platonic at first, simply the desire of an experienced golfer to help a duffer with his chip shots. When her best efforts to help him failed, she took him home to see what her father could do with him. The Baron, who had been a Cavalry man himself, and the Colonel hit it off immediately. Lieut. Col. Ali ben Baba was invited to participate in the Glenwyddie Hunt and, mounted upon the Baron’s personal horse, had immediately endeared himself to the Hunt Club by his spectacular horsemanship. It was the first time that anyone had ever seen the fox run down by a fiercely yelling horseman who then, at full gallop, had leaned out of the saddle to effortlessly snatch the fox up by his tail. A man like that was obviously too valuable to lose and, after a little chat in the library of Castle Glenwyddie about the generous dowry the Baron was prepared to offer, it was announced that the Lieut. Col. Ali ben Baba has asked for, and received, the hand of Miss Violet. He would resign from the Moroccan Cavalry and devote his full time to the Glenwyddie Estates.)
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