MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “Thank you,” Mary said.

  “My pleasure,” the archbishop said, and hung up. He turned to Monsignor Pancho de Malaga y de Villa. “Pancho, when they talked about hair shirts and crosses to bear in the seminary, I never thought they would be anything like this!”

  FROM DEPARTMENT OF STATE

  WASHINGTON DC

  TO US EMBASSY

  MOSCOW USSR

  FOLLOWING PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT OF THE US TO CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET TO BE DELIVERED, IMMEDIATELY:

  JUST THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THAT YOU, LIKE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, CAN TRUST ME WHEN I SAY SOMETHING OR MAKE A PROMISE. MY PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE, THE HONORABLE SENATOR GEORGE H. KAMIKAZE, HAS JUST SENT WORD THAT HE, SHUR- LEE STRYDENT, AND FIFTY POUNDS OF MY HOME- GROWN BOILED PEANUTS ARE PRESENTLY EN ROUTE TO PARIS, FRANCE, WHERE THEY WILL BE JOINED BY BORIS ALEXANDROVICH KORSKY-RIMSAKOV AND FLY ON TO MOSCOW. WHAT FURTHER PROOF DO YOU NEED THAT I’M SOMEBODY WHO CAN BE TRUSTED? YOU-ALL COME TO SEE US.

  END PERSONAL MESSAGE.

  A half hour before Mary Pierce telephoned the archbishop in his Vatican apartment, Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa had been faced with a moral dilemma. The Archbishop was a man of simple taste who disliked public displays of respect to him personally and who was actually uncomfortable when confronted with the (he felt) rather ostentatious prerogatives of someone holding his high rank in the church hierarchy de jure and de facto (the rumors of his close personal friendship with the Pope were quite true).

  Archbishop Mulcahy had “suggested” (which was his way of giving orders) that the cardinal archbishop of Paris “not be bothered” with the news that he was coming to town. If the cardinal archbishop knew Archbishop Mulcahy was coming to town, the train would be met by an official delegation of high-ranking prelates and an official limousine.

  What the archbishop wanted to do was simply arrive anonymously and with no fanfare whatever and proceed, probably by the Metro, which is what they call the subway in Paris, to Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov’s apartment. In the archbishop’s mind, a position the Monsignor both understood and felt great sympathy for, he was not functioning as a high-ranking prelate of the church, but simply as a priest, paying an unannounced pastoral call on one of his flock who he knew was in difficulty.

  The archbishop had often confessed that he would have been much happier had he never been called to high rank, that the happiest period of his priesthood had been the time he had been Chaplain (Captain) Mulcahy, U.S. Army, assigned to the 4077th M*A*S*H in Korea. There he had been able to function as a priest, bringing moral and spiritual guidance to a group of people he had truly loved, even though only a small percentage of them happened to be of the Roman Catholic persuasion.

  The monsignor understood all this, and he knew how much pleasure it gave the archbishop to be able to rush to the assistance of one of “the old 4077th M*A*S*H gang,” as the archbishop thought of it.

  The problem was that bitter experience had taught the monsignor that too often when the archbishop dropped in unexpectedly on “the old 4077th M*A*S*H gang” certain members of that “gang” (in particular, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov) were engaged in certain activities with members of the opposite sex, which the archbishop would really rather not know about. In deference to the archbishop, of course, Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov and the others would cease and desist such activities if they knew His Eminence was going to appear.

  “Anything Dago Red wants,” as Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov so often said, “Dago Red gets.”

  Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa also knew, again from painful experience, that when the singer was gathered together with Colonel Horsey de la Chevaux, Dr. Theosophilis Mullins Yancey, and His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah of Abzug, it followed as the day follows the night that the premises would be literally inundated with members of the opposite sex whose morals would make them unlikely candidates for Holy Orders.

  All it would take, the monsignor knew, to have the girls sent back whence they came was a telephone call announcing the archbishop’s arrival. One little telephone call, and that motley crew of sinners, as the monsignor thought of them, would be sitting around Boris’s apartment, wholly sober, fully clothed, and engaged in innocent little games, the stakes for which were wooden matches.

  Unfortunately, if Colonel de la Chevaux were informed that the archbishop was coming, he regarded it as his special privilege to ease the archbishop’s burdens. This translated to a fleet of limousines at the railroad station, an eight-room suite at the Ritz, and the like. So it was with His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah. As a token of his respect for the man he had dubbed El Doog Nehtaeh, he would dispatch to meet the archbishop the same fleet of limousines, plus his bodyguard, and a brass band to accompany the procession to the Ritz, the whole of which hostelry he would engage for the length of the archbishop’s stay.

  His only hope was to speak with Prince Hassan. Prince Hassan, despite his own low morals, could be counted upon to understand the archbishop’s position. And so, although he knew he was going against the archbishop’s wishes, Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa had telephoned the Royal Hussidic Embassy, which was located in the Hotel Continental, just across from the Tuileries Gardens.

  And so it came to pass that when the archbishop, dressed as a simple priest and carrying his own rather battered overnight case, descended from the second-class railroad car which had carried him from Rome, he almost immediately recognized a familiar face.

  It was a round little face, with a moustache and a small pointy beard and dark sunglasses, surmounting a round little body (five feet by four feet) wrapped in gold brocade robes. Behind it, in silver brocade robes, stood five six-foot-three gentlemen in dark glasses, each robe bulging suspiciously as if it concealed, for example, a submachine gun.

  “Why, Prince Hassan!” the archbishop said. “What a pleasant coincidence!”

  “Isn’t it?” the prince said. “How nice to see you, Your Eminence!”

  “Whatever are you doing here in the Gare de l’est?” the archbishop said, shaking the Prince’s hand. “You remember Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa, of course?”

  “How nice to see you, Monsignor,” the prince said. “Isn’t this an interesting coincidence?”

  “You were saying what you were doing here?” the archbishop said.

  “Oh, we just stopped in for a moment to watch the locomotives,” Prince Hassan said. “Can we drop you anywhere?”

  “We wouldn’t want to put you out,” the archbishop said. “We’ll just take the Metro and be on our way.”

  “By another strange coincidence,” the prince said, “now that we’ve seen the locomotives, we’re on our way to Orly. By a strange coincidence, Drs. Pierce and McIntyre are about to land. Isn’t that a strange coincidence?”

  “Yes, it is,” the archbishop said, looking strangely at the monsignor.

  ‘And there’s a radiotelephone in the car,” the prince said, “so we can call the maestro and let him know that we coincidentally bumped into each other.”

  “That would be nice,” the archbishop said. “As a matter of fact, that’s why I came to Paris, to see Boris.”

  “Isn’t that an interesting coincidence?” the prince said.

  FROM THE COMRADE COMMISSAR OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, USSR

  TO THE COMRADE AMBASSADOR

  EMBASSY OF THE USSR

  PARIS, FRANCE

  THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET IS IN RECEIPT OF A TELETYPE MESSAGE ALLEGEDLY SENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE IMPERIALIST CAPITALIST U S OF A IN WHICH IT IS ALLEGED THAT AN INDIVIDUAL PURPORTING TO BE SENATOR GEORGE H. KAMIKAZE IS EN ROUTE TO PARIS, FRANCE, WITH FIFTY POUNDS OF BOILED PEANUTS AND AN INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFIED AS SHUR-LEE STRYDENT, SEX, OCCUPATION, AND PURPOSE UNSPECIFIED. IT IS FURTHER ALLEGED THAT THE INDIVIDUAL PURPORTING TO BE A US SENATOR WILL MEET WITH BORIS ALEXANDROVICH KORSKY-RIMSAKOV AND THEN BRING HIM TO MOSCOW.

  THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET O
RDERS THAT THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE TAKE WHATEVER STEPS ARE NECESSARY TO INSURE THAT BORIS ALEXANDROVICH KORSKY-RIMSAKOV AND THE PERSONS IN HIS PARTY BE ISSUED WITH A VALID VISA PERMITTING THEM TO ENTER THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS.

  THIS MATTER IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO BOTH THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET AND TO THE UNDERSIGNED FOR REASONS THAT ARE NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. YOU ARE REMINDED HEREWITH THAT PARIS IN THE SPRING IS A FAR, FAR NICER PLACE TO BE ABOUT THE PEASANTS’ AND WORKERS’ BUSINESS THAN, FOR EXAMPLE, ITABURSK, SIBERIA, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER.

  THE CHAIRMAN AND I HAVE FULL FAITH IN YOU, BUT THE CHAIRMAN SUGGESTS THAT AS YOU ARE TENDING TO THIS IMPORTANT WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ BUSINESS YOU KEEP IN MIND THE SAGE OLD RUSSIAN PROVERB, QUOTE NEVER TRUST A MAN WHO TELLS YOU HE CAN BE TRUSTED UNQUOTE.

  IN THE NAME OF THE SOVIET WORKERS AND PEASANTS

  THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

  P.S. NEITHER THE COMRADE CHAIRMAN’S PATE DE FOIS GRAS NOR THE UNDERSIGNED’S TWICE A WEEK SHIPMENT OF FROZEN PHEASANT UNDER GLASS WERE IN THE LAST DIPLOMATIC POUCH AS THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE. IF YOU ARE STILL AMBASSADOR WHEN THIS IS OVER, YOU ARE DIRECTED TO LOOK INTO THIS IMMEDIATELY.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as Chevaux One-One-Seven touched down at Paris’s Orly airfield and had taxied to its parking spot, a small convoy of vehicles drove out to meet it. (In compliance with Monsignor de Malaga y de Villa’s request for absolute simplicity, Prince Hassan had ordered that his bodyguard travel in the smallest vehicles in the embassy motorpool. The bodyguard was jammed into small Fiats, and His Highness himself, the archbishop, and Monsignor de Villa were in a Cadillac Seville.) *

  (* The makers of the Cadillac Seville placed second, with their philosophy “Less Is More,” in the competition which saw Mr. Wesley St. James carry off the “Phineas T. Barnum Award,” although it is reliably reported that they intended to refuse the award, in the interests of modesty, had they won.)

  As soon as the crew door popped open and the nylon rope ladder came tumbling down, the archbishop, with Monsignor de Villa and His Highness right behind him, went climbing up it.

  He marched purposefully down the long (and empty) main fuselage, and then climbed up a ladder leading to the second-floor passenger lounge. He frowned and blushed a little at the sound of a bawdy song which came from the passenger lounge and filled the cargo compartment.

  His quite natural expectation was to find Hawkeye and Trapper John in a very good mood indeed, to judge from the song, but this is not what happened. Trapper John and Hawkeye were sitting together, undrunk beer before them, looking quite disconsolate.

  They were glad to see him, of course, jumping to their feet when they saw him enter the lounge, running to him, kissing him wetly on the forehead, and inquiring into his all-around health.

  “What are you two guys up to?” the archbishop inquired after he had been set back on his feet.

  “Dago Red, have you ever had one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong?” Hawkeye said.

  “Yes, of course,” the archbishop replied. “But before we go any further, can you ask your friend to stop singing that very risque song?”

  “He won’t listen to us,” Hawkeye said. “Maybe you can reason with him. He’s in the same line of work.”

  “Who is he?”

  “The Reverend Born-Again Bob Roberts,” Trapper John said.

  “A clergyman?”

  “So to speak,” Hawkeye said. “The minute we got in the air, he got airsick, and Trapper John gave him a little snort to settle his stomach. He’s been that way ever since. I didn’t know until now just how many verses there are to ‘Roll Me Over, Yankee Soldier’!”

  “I was led to believe that you were accompanied by a young woman,” the archbishop said.

  “When he started to sing, we sent her up front, to ride with the crew,” Hawkeye said. “That’s something else that went wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a raving beauty,” Hawkeye said.

  “Like Hot Lips as a young woman, times two,” Trapper John said.

  “And in her photograph, Dago Red, she was simply magnificent,” Hawkeye said.

  “The ugliest woman I had ever seen,” Trapper John said admiringly. “And I have seen some ugly women in my day.”

  “But, stripped of all her clever feminine tricks of makeup and disguise, she’s simply gorgeous,” Hawkeye said.

  “She can probably sing, too,” Trapper added. “The way things have been going for us, she can probably sing like an angel.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” the archbishop said. “But before we go any further with this, I’ve had all I can handle of that bawdy singing. Will you excuse me a moment?”

  How exactly he accomplished what he did will probably never be known, but thirty seconds after he walked to the rear seat, where Reverend Born-Again Bob Roberts was singing between pulls at his half-gallon bottle of Old Stagg, the singing stopped and the bottle had changed hands.

  “Now,” the archbishop said, returning to them, “what was all this about?”

  “It was one of our better ideas,” Hawkeye said.

  “We were finally going to get back at Boris,” Trapper John said.

  “Our time had come,” Hawkeye added.

  “Revenge is sweet,” Trapper John said fervently.

  “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” the archbishop replied.

  “In this case, Dago Red, I’m sure He would have understood,” Hawkeye said. “We were going to drop in on Boris unannounced with a Total Temperance preacher who usually opens conversations by shouting ‘Put that bottle down,’ and accompanied by the ugliest woman in the world, who wanted to study opera at his side.”

  “I am ashamed of myself to realize that, for a moment there, I was tempted to agree that was a splendid idea,” the archbishop said. “But it would have been a cruel thing to do to the ugly woman.”

  “The whole thing is moot,” Hawkeye said. “Born-Again Bob is as drunk as an owl, and our magnificently ugly woman ain’t.”

  “What?”

  “See for yourself,” Trapper John said. “Bobby-Sue, say hello to Dago Red.”

  “Well,” the archbishop said. “It’s a pleasure to see someone so young and lovely.”

  “She can probably sing, too,” Hawkeye said. “Everything has gone wrong.”

  “My name is Mulcahy, dear. I’m a priest.”

  “He’s an archbishop is what he is,” Hawkeye said.

  “Oh, Your Eminence,” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde Roberts said, “I’m so embarrassed about Dear Daddy. He’s never done anything like this before.”

  “Put it from your mind, child,” the archbishop said. “Sometime, when we have more time, I’ll tell you how it came to pass that I am known to certain close friends as Dago Red. Suffice it to say for the moment that your father is not the first man of the cloth that these two maniacs have gotten drunk. But first things first.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde asked.

  “There is no way I am going to permit this sweet and innocent child to get anywhere near Boris!” the archbishop said, with all the considerable firmness of which, on occasion, he was capable.

  “But, Your Eminence, I came to Paris to sing for the maestro.”

  “It isn’t the singing I’m worried about,” the archbishop said. “I will arrange for that in good time, I give you my word. Presuming, of course, that we are able to straighten things out between him and the President.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Hawkeye asked.

  “He called me and told me it was my clear patriotic duty to get Boris to Moscow,” the archbishop said. “Now I realize that Boris is misunderstood at times, and that he is, to be frank about it, capable of behavior which will send a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher climbing up the walls. But I think throwing him out of the country is going a bit far.”

  “I have just had an unpleasant thought,” Hawkeye sai
d. “That probably was really Senator Kamikaze on the phone.”

  “I understand he called,” Archbishop Mulcahy said.

  “And I gave him, in the belief that he was a phony, my personal guarantee that if he showed up with Shur-lee Strydent, I would get Boris to wherever he wanted Boris to go.”

  “Big mouth!” the archbishop said.

  The pilot came into the lounge.

  “I thought it was you, Dago Red,” he said, embracing the prelate warmly. “I haven’t seen you since you took your instrument check.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Charley,” the archbishop said.

  “The reason I came back,” the pilot said, “is that I just heard over the radio that Air Force One is about to land, and they wanted to know where you two are.”

  “That’s all we need,” Hawkeye said. He looked out the window and saw Air Force One making its approach.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Trapper said.

  “The question is where do we hide this lovely child,” the archbishop said. “Someplace where Boris would never think to look for her.”

  “Your Eminence,” Prince Hassan said, “I know just the place.”

  “Where?”

  “Boris’s dressing room at the Opera,” Hassan said. “There is no place in the world he hates more. He goes there only before a performance, and there’s nothing scheduled for three weeks.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Hawkeye said.

  “Oh, you darling little man,” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde said, bending over and kissing Prince Hassan wetly in the middle of his forehead. “Can you ever forgive me?”