MASH 06 MASH Goes to Morocco

by Richard Hooker

  By the time the Chief of Mission had paddled to the poolside telephone, it was in use. It was in use by a rather attractive French female, and it was only after a moment that the Chief of Mission became aware of what she was saying, rather than what she looked like.

  “Now don’t give me that,” she said sharply. “I know he’s in the hotel. I know Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov when I see him! Now you connect me immediately!”

  There was a pause. Now the Chief of Mission’s every sense was alerted. The word had come from the Secretary of State himself that Korsky-Rimsakov’s passport was to be picked up, and that, at all costs, he was to be kept out of Morocco.

  “Cher Boris Alexandrovich!” the woman went on, “I recognized your voice immediately. This is Chou-Chou!” Another pause. “What do you mean, Chou-Chou who? Who did you just give a benefit for in Paris?”

  The Chief of Mission waved furiously for the Ambassador to paddle over, so that he, too, could hear what was being said, proof that this man had somehow sneaked into the country against the express prohibition of the Secretary of State himself. The Ambassador’s attention, unfortunately, was directed toward an amply bosomed young woman about to make a swan dive from the high diving board.

  “Well, Cher Boris Alexandrovich,” the blonde said, “if Papa did something like that, I give you my word he’ll be sorry he did. He knew the only reason I came along with him was so that I could thank you personally. I can’t imagine why he would forbid your plane to land here.”

  The diver made her splash and, for a moment, the Chief of Mission thought he would now be able to get the Ambassador’s attention. But another young woman took up a place on the high diving board. The Ambassador’s concentration was complete.

  “If you want to know how I look in a bathing suit,” the blonde on the telephone said, “look out your window. I’m using the poolside telephone.” She raised her free hand and waved in the direction of the hotel.

  “Oh, you can fit me in at six o’clock? I’m so glad!” the blonde said. “Until then, Cher Boris Alexandrovich!” She made little kissing noises and then hung up the telephone.

  The Chief of Mission watched her walk away, and then picked up the telephone. He telephoned the Royal Chef de Protocol and got another bad bit of news. Not only was the Chef de Protocol rather reluctant to issue an invitation to the King’s party at all, but he made it plain that the Ambassador could not expect to sit at the head table. The King was bringing two personal guests, and the Foreign Minister was bringing the United States Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of State, who was going to officially apologize for the conduct of the Consul General in Casablanca. With the Sheikh of Abzug, the Sheikh of Hussid, and their guests, plus the Sheikh of Abzug’s grandson and his special guest, there was barely room for the President of France and his wife. The Ambassador and the Chief of Mission were welcome, of course, to enjoy the King’s hospitality if they clearly understood that they would be in the category of supernumeraries, along with the King’s golf professional and his chauffeur.

  The Chief of Mission paddled furiously back to where the Ambassador was floating around.

  “The balloon has gone up, Chief,” he said. “We’re in trouble.”

  “Look at the … form … of that diver,” the Ambassador said. He waited until the diver had entered the water and then turned to the Chief of Mission. “What are you spluttering about? Try to remember you’re a diplomat.”

  “Well, for one thing, that Korsky-Rimsakov person is here.”

  “Impossible!” the Ambassador said. “They revoked his passport, and the Foreign Minister himself assured me, before we left Rabat, that if he did show up in Morocco, he would send him out of the country on the same plane.”

  “He’s here, Chief,” the Chief of Mission said. “I just saw him waving to a blonde from his hotel room.”

  “Waving to a blonde?”

  “Yeah, she was making a date to meet him at six o’clock.”

  “I’ll check into it,” the Ambassador said. “What else?”

  “The Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of State, Potter, is here.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “He’s going to be sitting at the King’s table. The Chef de Protocol said he’s going to offer the King official apologies for the American Consul in Casablanca.”

  “Well, that can be hardly called bad news, now can it?” the Ambassador said. “He can tell her Uncle Amos why she got fired.”

  “That’s the good news,” the Chief of Mission said. “The bad news is that we don’t get to sit at the head table!”

  “I’m the United States Ambassador,” the Ambassador said. “I don’t know about you, Homer, but I always get to sit at the head table.”

  “We get to sit with the golf pro and the chauffeur,” the Chief of Mission reported. “The head table is full.”

  “I’ll protest this directly to the Foreign Minister himself,” the Ambassador said. “It’s an absolute outrage!”

  “Speak of the devil, Chief,” the Chief of Mission said, pointing toward the end of the pool where Deputy Assistant Under Secretary Potter and the Moroccan Foreign Minister were standing watching the girls climb the ladder to the high diving board.

  “You get back on the phone, Homer,” the Ambassador said. “Call the Gendarmerie Nationale and have them arrest this Korsky-Rimsakov chap at precisely six-fifteen. It’ll look much better if they catch him with some blonde bimbo.”

  With that, the Ambassador rolled off the air mattress and, looking something like a drunken whale, paddled toward where Potter and the Foreign Minister were watching the girls.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of State for North African Affairs was about as glad to see the Ambassador to Morocco (once he recognized the dripping-wet swimmer to be the Ambassador) as the Ambassador was to see the Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of State.

  This feeling of euphoria lasted no more than sixty seconds, however, until they began to compare notes and realized that things were worse collectively than they had been separately.

  The C.I.A.’s man on the Abzugian border (there was no agent, of course, within Abzug) had reported, top-priority, that the first reaction to the American presence in Abzug had been revealed. Orders had gone out to all border patrols and troop installations to arrest on sight and immediately guillotine in six slices, vertically, the American television-news journalist Don Rhotten and the Hon. Edwards L. “Smiling Jack” Jackson. The Abzugian security forces furnished a very professional description of the wanted men, including the information that while Jackson’s silver locks were real, Rhotten wore a toupee, contact lenses, and caps on his teeth. The order had come personally from Omar ben Ahmed, heir-apparent to the Sheikhdom. The offense was against paragraph seventeen of the Abzugian Code: “interfering with the love life of a member of the royal family.”

  The Fleet Marine Force, Mediterranean, was standing by to rescue, by force if necessary, the Chevaux Oil Corporation personnel. They would helicopter into action the moment the guillotine dropped on either Mr. Rhotten or Mr. Jackson.

  The emissary sent to deliver the notification that she was now Persona Non Grata to Miss Penelope Quattlebaum had not been able to locate the lady. Furthermore, there was a pronounced lack of cooperation on the part of the Casablanca Gendarmerie; the officer in charge, Inspector Gregoire de la Mouton, had even refused to see him.

  There was, peripherally, the same emissary reported, evidence that slavery was not dead in Casablanca. A bearded giant had sold six American girls to a group of Yugoslavian tourists. Full details on the transaction were a little fuzzy, but an investigation was under way.

  “You don’t think, Mr. Deputy Assistant Under Secretary, that this Quattlebaum female would show up here?”

  “She wouldn’t dare!” Potter said.

  The Moroccan Foreign Minister reported, with some chagrin, that the Gendarmerie Nationale operating in the Rabat area was, so far, unsuccess
ful in locating the crazy Americans who had escaped from Deputy Assistant Under Secretary Potter’s control. The authorities had turned up a fiacre driver, however, who informed them that he had taken two men meeting the description to a point near Le Club Royal de Golf de Maroc and, while Potter discounted the suggestion, the gendarmerie were forced to proceed on the presumption that the two maniacs might attempt to somehow establish contact with His Majesty Himself.

  The worst news of all was that the C.I.A. agent assigned to cover the man from the Deuxième Bureau who covered the French President had learned of a brilliant move on the part of the Deuxième Bureau. They had motion pictures of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the close friend of Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, mocking everything that Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug held sacred. As shameless evidence of his scorn for all things Arabic, the singer had arranged for two men, in full and apparently authentic Arabian costumes, to accompany him on a six-hour-long drunken debauchery in New York City, during which one of the men costumed as an Arab had staggered into the Radio City Music Hall and, by gestures, offered to buy the entire corps de ballet. What he intended to do with the corps de ballet was evident from the gestures.

  Once the Sheikh of Abzug saw those films, America could simply forget about getting so much as a drop of Abzugian oil. There was a particularly good (from the French point of view, of course) sequence showing the singer nearly in hysterics as the “Arab” stumbled and fell down the Music Hall main staircase, over and over, but somehow never lost hold of his bottle.

  “And we can’t get the films back?” the Ambassador asked.

  “Not a chance,” Potter replied. “All we can do is go to the party and hope for the best.

  At six-thirteen, Chou-Chou, with quick little steps, went to the door of Cher Boris Alexandrovich’s suite and pushed it open. She was proud of her strength of character. It hadn’t been easy, forcing herself to be thirteen minutes late, but what would he have thought of her if she had shown up on time?”

  There was a figure in the dark room by the window.

  “Cher Boris Alexandrovich?” Chou-Chou called, thinking that the figure was somewhat shorter and fatter than she remembered Cher Boris to be.

  “Come in, madame,” the figure said.

  “You’re not Cher Boris Alexandrovich!” Chou-Chou said. “What is this?”

  “Madame, I am Sheikh Hassan ad Kayam. I regret that Cher Boris has been called away.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “As a matter of fact, the French President had some porno movies he wanted Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug to look at, and Boris went along to smooth things over.”

  “What do you mean, smooth things over?”

  “Apparently, the President of France issued orders that the Sheikh’s airplane wasn’t to be allowed to land here. The Sheikh was going to cut his heart out for that. Boris made him promise he wouldn’t … what with the party, and all, it would have been awkward … but I don’t think he believed him. He went along to make sure that nothing … untoward … happened.”

  “But who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “Sometimes, madam, when ladies realize that Cher Boris simply can’t squeeze them into his busy schedule, they are willing to accept, so to speak, a supernumerary.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” Chou-Chou said.

  “Well, you win some, and you lose some,” Hassan said, philosophically.

  At that moment, the door crashed inward, and eight of the largest members of the Marrakech Barracks of the Gendarmerie Nationale burst into the room.

  “Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, we arrest you in the name of the King!”

  “I’m not Boris,” Hassan said.

  “You can say that again,” Chou-Chou said. “Lock this little twerp up and throw the key away!”

  “Grab the broad, too,” one of the gendarmes said.

  “The Foreign Minister said to be sure she didn’t get away. He wants pictures of them together.”

  “I assure you,” Hassan said, as he was carried out of the room between two of the gendarmes, “that I am not whom you seek, and that there has been an error made somewhere.”

  Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug howled as he watched the motion pictures of himself rolling down the flight of stairs.

  “Wonderful!” he cried. “You will make me a copy, of course? And a copy for my good friend, Boris Alexandrovich?”

  The lights snapped on.

  “Your Highness is pleased?” the President of France asked.

  “I am delighted,” Sheikh Abdullah said. “I am so delighted that I will not cut your heart out, as I intended.”

  “Thanks a lot, President,” Boris said. “You can send my copy over to the Opera House.”

  He put his arm around the Sheikh’s shoulders, and they walked out of the room, still chuckling.

  “That really was a nice thing for the French to do,” the President heard the Sheikh say. “Maybe they’re not all such black-hearted bastards, after all.”

  “What the hell is that?” Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce asked of Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre. They were on the sixteenth green of the Marrakech Country Club, on their second round of the day on those links.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would say that it is a full-grown man in formal clothes, crawling on all fours,” Dr. McIntyre replied.

  “Hawkeye, please!” the King said. “I’m putting.”

  “Zeekink, there’s a strange creature crawling toward you on all fours,” Hawkeye said. “Is it dangerous?”

  “I don’t see it,” the King said, “because if I do see it, I will be forced to cut off its head. It knows that I’m not to be disturbed on the golf course.”

  He made his putt, which saw him go par for the hole, and that good feeling made him gracious.

  “Off your belly, Foreign Minister,” he said, “and speak your piece.”

  “Your Majesty, I would like to speak to you privately,” the Foreign Minister said, “on a matter of the most urgent importance.”

  “I have no secrets from my golf cronies,” the King said. “Out with it!”

  “I have just learned of a grievous error on the part of the Gendarmerie Nationale,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Mistaking him for a well-known American criminal, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the Gendarmerie Nationale arrested Sheikh Hassan ad Kayam.”

  “What do you mean, well-known American criminal? Boris Alexandrovich is the world’s greatest opera singer,” Hawkeye protested.

  “And my pal,” Trapper joined in. “What kind of a country do you run here, anyway, Zeekink?”

  “You know this man?”

  “Very well,” Trapper John said. “One hell of a drive; pretty good on the fairway, but rotten with his putter.”

  “You have locked up a golfing friend of my friends?” the King asked. “A man with whom your beloved King could play a few rounds of golf?”

  “Not only him, Your Majesty,’” the Foreign Minister said, “but the wife of the President of France.”

  “You don’t say?” the King said. “Before I have you executed, is there anything you wish to say?”

  “It is still worse, Your Highness,” the Foreign Minister said. “The whole incident was recorded on television film.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Mine, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, get the film back before you turn yourself in to the police,” the King said. “I’ll apologize for your stupidity tonight at the party.”

  “It’s not quite that easy, Your Majesty,” the Foreign

  Minister said. “The film was taken by an American television journalist named Don Rhotten.”

  “That’s Row-ten, I think,” Hawkeye said.

  “You know this man, Hawkeye?”

  “From what I understand, he is not a nice man,” Hawkeye said.

  “I would be very embarrassed if television in your country showed such clear evidence of the stupidit
y of my Foreign Minister,” the King said. “Is there anything you can do?”

  “Not until we finish the game, Zeekink,” Hawkeye said. “Then we’ll have a whack at it.”

  “You heard my friends,” the King said. “You will arrange whatever it is they wish arranged. If you do a good job, I will see that you are simply hung, rather than drawn and quartered.”

  “While we’re finishing the round,” Trapper John said, “round up a lady named the Reverend Mother Emeritus and a guy named Horsey. They’ll help us to understand the situation.”

  “You heard him,” the King said. “And don’t bother crawling away, you idiot, run!”

  “My shot, I believe?” Trapper John said, as he bent to address the ball.

  It was going to be a Don Rhotten Special, a thirty-minute program beamed live via satellite from Marrakech (with time out for commercials, a total of 11.5 minutes of film, including openings and closings).

  Don Rhotten watched it with great pleasure. It was all there: the crazy diplomatic broad, the dumb Frog broad going to the hotel-suite door, and then being carried out by the cops, the whole story. He was going to really zing them with this one. And since he had placed himself in the protection of the American Ambassador, he didn’t have to worry about those nutty Abzugians wanting to slice him in six pieces, not that he believed that for a minute.

  He watched himself, with a smile of deepest pleasure, as he closed the program: “This has been ‘The Rhotten Report,’ and this is Don Rhotten, in mysterious Morocco.”

  “Great,” he shouted. “Fantastic! Dan Rather, eat your heart out!”

  The lights should have gone on at that point. They didn’t.

  “Put the lights on!” Rhotten ordered.

  The lights didn’t go on. Instead a slide of Don Rhotten, a still, flashed on the screen. There was always time for a few moments of that, Don Rhotten thought, and turned to look at himself again.

  “Does he or doesn’t he?” a voice which sounded very much like that of Benjamin Franklin Pierce, M.D., said. The slide changed. It showed Mr. Rhotten, bare headed, so to speak, attempting to get his toupee back from the dog in the Casablanca Mental Sanitarium.