Sex and the High Command (16 page)

“Cora Lee, this beats me. Are you already spoke for?”

“That’s natural colloquial English, for these parts,” Steward assured himself, aloud.

“Well, not exactly,” Cora Lee said.

“Pope must have locked in on her.” A Federal monk spoke from the shadows. “That Pope could have the Presidency for four terms if he was willing to take a desk job.”

Pride of organization was talking, Hansen knew, but something had gone wrong with this courtship, and the same dumb amazement he felt was in McCormick’s voice. “Cora Lee, how can a girl be spoke for not exactly?”

“I never been spoke for, but I’ve done been spoke for to.”

There was an astonished silence, and McCormick blurted, “Who you done been spoke for to with?”

“His name’s puddin’ and tame,” her voice lilted from the speaker. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

“Cora Lee,” McCormick said, “I can beat the time of any man lest you’re promised to some boy right here in these hills. Where’s this boy you done been spoke for to with at?”

A thud from Steward’s direction caused Hansen to glance over and down, to see that the grammarian operative had toppled from his stool. In the blue light of the radio shack, Hansen could see the eyes staring into infinity, and he knew faulty grammar had killed the grammarian. A heart which had beat through three prepositions at the end of a sentence had been stopped by four.

Captain Hansen preferred hiatuses to the topic he knew would arise on the trip to the airport. With Admiral Primrose, alone, he could have kept the subject tabled. With Defense joining them, the conversational mixture grew volatile. When Dalton Lamar decided to hitchhike with Defense, Hansen knew that a ewe grazing on a roadside lawn would trigger the flash point.

Since the Secretary of the Interior was hitchhiking, Defense assigned him the pull-down seat forward, across from the captain. As they pulled away from the Pentagon, Interior said to Hansen, “I hear you witnessed a tragedy last night.”

“Yes, sir. One of the FBI men suffered a heart attack while monitoring the young people’s conversation.”

“Whooo-eee! What were they talking about?”

Providentially, Defense intervened to change the subject. “Gentlemen, I got a directive from State this morning, allocating percentages from the preinventory allotment. State figures twenty percent for State for arranging the allocation, ten percent to Agriculture for handling the legwork, ten percent to Interior, and sixty percent to Defense. Any surplus goes to the Senate to be disposed of as the majority leader sees fit, by order of the President.”

“How do you figure sixty percent for Defense, Ogie?” Dalton Lamar seemed aggrieved.

“Well, Dalt,” Defense said, “Labor canceled out when Frumenti was committed to Saint Elizabeth’s, this morning. So we figured ten percent for administrative overhead, ten percent for Navy, ten percent for Army, ten percent for Air, and twenty percent for the Marines.”

“Twenty percent for the Corps!” Dalton Lamar exploded. “But the gyrenes are a part of the Navy.”

“There was that surplus from Labor,” Pickens explained, “and, well—you know Porky.”

As the two civilians discussed the budget, Hansen’s thoughts returned to religious problems. If he accepted faith, he would have to take up Bible-reading for Jesus and finish Mahan for the High Command. If the Russian girls went to the General Staff, as Helga suspected, he would certainly go for his family. Of course, if no Russian girls came off the plane… He didn’t care to think about that.

When Defense’s party arrived at the officials’ gate, there was a large group of civilians behind restraining ropes. For a secret trade mission, it was well attended, and Hansen voiced the observation to General Flugel who waddled up under a load of medals in his dress blues with the red stripe down the leg. Flugel dismissed the gathering as clerks from State and Agriculture who had learned of the swap when handling the paper work.

Hansen noticed Senator Dubois behind the restraining line and went over to shake hands. Of all present, in or out of uniform. Senator Dubois was the most impressive, with his tall, aristocratic good looks and thatch of white hair. He seemed apologetic for his presence. “I thought I’d just amble over, Cap’n, to see those white ladies cakewalk off the plane.”

Dubois’s deference and soft accent were pleasant. If all Negroes emulated this one, Hansen thought, there’d be no racial ill will; but Interior was not so pleased by the senator’s presence, Hansen found when he returned to the group. “If that watermelon eater so much as whistles,” the South Carolinian said, “I’m going to cut me a slice of CASP.”

“CASP?” Hansen was happy that Primrose was occupied with State, for there had been a question mark in his ejaculation.

Interior good-naturedly explained. “It’s a word sociologists invented. It means colored Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”

“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about color,” Hansen remarked.

“I didn’t, until this weekend,” Lamar said. “I had this little girl down in Alexandria, and she had this thing against light rays and radio waves. Recluse, I reckon you’d call her. I mean, she was an insulated recluse. Never went out into sunlight or starlight, never listened to radio or watched television. Ben, she wouldn’t even talk on the telephone for fear she’d catch cancer of the eardrums. We used to correspond by notes; but that little girl was really something.”

Dalton Lamar sighed. A mystic look of loss came into his eyes. “Last week, her colored maid slipped her a capsule and Saturday morning, I got my ‘Dear John’ note, by special delivery.”

“Too bad,” Captain Hansen commiserated.

“Well, I got a plan. Walloper. Old Ack-Ack’s going to help.” He looked over at his older friend as if he expected a life preserver to come sailing out of Defense’s pocket, and he looked so young and lost and pathetic that Hansen turned away to join Primrose and Flugel and rid himself of compassion in the emotionally aseptic presence of the military.

The admiral was explaining to Flugel that he had lost his plea to billet the girls in the Marine barracks because the Russian ambassador had insisted that they spend their first night at the Red embassy. Flugel’s language drove Hansen closer to State, who was now talking to Interior in a fatherly voice so heavily accented that Hansen had to strain to understand some of his words.

“There are villages on the Kane Basin,” State was explaining, “and the bushmen of the Kalahari and the Carstenz Topper areas, but the largest uncontaminated area is in the triangle between the Lanak La, Shaba Gompa, and the Nanda Devi. Wouldn’t you agree. Defense? But Lanak La is a pass and it’s over eighteen thousand feet up.”

A Marine enlisted man with a walkie-talkie came up, saluted the admiral, and said, “Sir, the tower reports it’s clearing the field for the Ilyushin Six twenty.”

“Cross your fingers. Captain,” the admiral said. “If the girls come out, you’ll still have a home to go home to.”

“I’ll have a home, sir.”

“I’ll wager a day’s leave, Friday, against a day’s work, Saturday,” Primrose said.

“Admiral, you’ve just put a three-day pass to Virginia Beach in my pocket.”

“There she’s blowing,” Porky Flugel bellowed.

Dipping below a veil of high haze and banking lazily, the giant six-jet Ilyushin hove into view, her red star glinting in Maryland’s sunlight. With engines screaming, it nosed down as if the pilot were flying into the ground, but it swooped at the bottom of the dive, canted its wing angle, and dropped as lightly to the runway as a leaf fluttering onto a pool of water.

“Jesus,” Flugel said, “that pilot lands like a ballet dancer.”

Engines muted to sibilance, the aircraft, clumsy, trundled toward the gate, and as it neared the waiting officials, the Marine band broke into a slow-tempo version of
La Marseillaise
.

Slowly, the door opened. From its emptiness, a lattice extended and unfolded, frame after flopping frame, until a long ramp reached from the door of the plane to the ground. With a swish, a red carpet rolled from the plane’s interior down the entire length of the ramp and a good six yards beyond. It was the famous Russian red-carpet treatment, where the Reds furnished their own carpet.

A man wearing a silk hat, striped trousers, and carrying a wicker basket filled with bottles stepped to the doorway and blew a kiss to the crowd.

“Harjanian’s brought his own vodka,” Primrose said.

Harjanian, if such it were, bowed with a flourish to the waiting officials, swept his hand toward the doorway in a gesture of fanfare, and stepped back into the plane.

Out of the dark interior walked a woman. The band stopped, precisely in the middle of a bar. Blond and regally tall, she stood in the sunlight, motionless for a moment. Her proportions matched her height, a fact made instantly obvious by the red leotard she wore. Hansen hated to admit it, but this Russian was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and when she began her progress down the gangplank, she floated with incredible buoyancy.

“Isn’t that Alicia Mayonovna?” State turned to Primrose.

Primrose wasn’t listening. A second woman had emerged, a statuesque redhead, whose litheness beneath her leotard was that of a controlled panther. Even the neck muscles, which threw her proud head back, were beautiful. Hansen had to catch his breath as he revised his judgment on the first woman. Admiral Primrose almost yelped, “Marushka!”

Marushka restarted the band, but the tune was different.

They came in slow procession, all moving with ineffable grace, all beautiful, and Hansen was forced to comment aloud, “By heavens, Admiral, these girls are lovely!”

“They should be,” the admiral snapped. “They’re the front row of the Bolshoi Ballet.”

“What do you make of this, Sug?” Acworth Cobb turned to the admiral.

“Negative-negative,” Primrose snapped. “Harjanian is one smart Armenian.”

There were more than ten, there were twenty, floating past a Marine guard which stood rigidly at attention.

“He’ll want our whole wheat crop,” Cobb added.

“I’ll get Agriculture as soon as he lands,” Interior said, “and have him call Canada.”

“I suppose. Admiral,” Hansen said, “this means my Friday.”

“Captain, you can have Thursday and Friday, with my blessing. But, Captain, eat sparingly of wheat products.”

“Well, Sug,” State said, “I reckon this means we’ll have to throw something to the Senate and House. There’s twenty of them.”

With his next remark. Primrose scratched the High Command from the list of contenders for Hansen’s faith.

“Senate is already in. The President made an arrangement with Senator Dubois that if he waived his claim to any of the first ten on the initial shipment, he would have first choice on any over ten, half to him and half to the remainder of the legislature.”

“Hellfire,” State said, “old Honeysuckle’s done cut himself in on five prime pieces.”

Helga had been right! Those eager lads in the Marine band, now lustily playing away on
A Hot Time in the Old Town
, had been betrayed, sold out to the lechery of their own officers and the government. With absolute certainty, Hansen knew there would be no apportionment of the remaining shipment to enlisted personnel, unless the Russians sent 480 female lepers.

Four hundred and seventy-nine!

“Look at that!” Flugel bellowed. “Sug, I called my shot. I said she landed like a G - - d - - - ballet dancer.”

The twenty-first female stood in the doorway of the plane. She was short and broad with a Mongol’s jet-black hair, and pinned upon her leotard, above a magnificent left breast, were the silver wings of an aviator.

“Oglethorpe,” Flugel turned to Defense. “Dubois can’t take fifty percent of an odd number without splitting her down the middle. I want that stuff!”

A surprisingly considerate Secretary of Defense turned to the captain. “Ben, you’ve been keeping your own counsel. Would you like it?”

“I’m positive that I would, sir, but I’m married.”

“Very well. Porky. You can share her with Dalt. There’s plenty there for both.”

Hansen depended on his reflexes to carry him alongside the admiral when the Secretary of the Interior suggested a toast to Mother Russia in the VIP lounge.

After a double bourbon downed quickly to allay his bitterness, Hansen loosened up over a second and discussed with animation the girls whose arrival had brought rationality to these men regarding the so-called men versus women conflict. He was particularly interested in the lady pilot. For him, Helga was the most beautiful woman in the world, but he had to admit that Helga did not have the pelvic development of the little Mongolian aviatrix. The Mongol created a nostalgia in a salt-water sailor for the good old days of hammocks, and after his second double, he said to Flugel, “You know, General, to me the most attractive girl of them all was your little flygirl.”

“By God, Ben, I agree with you. That madam had ’em.”

“There’s no true beauty without some hugeness of proportion,” Defense said.

“Of course, since she came out late, she stood alone,” Hansen rationalized aloud, and then a thought struck him: These men had taken his trust in women somewhat lightly. Now, he would turn tables on them and play the pessimist.

“Harjanian never came out,” Hansen spoke slowly, “because the little Mongol went back to strangle him with his own scarf. That’s why she came out last.”

“She was changing into leotards,” Flugel said.

“No, sir,” Hansen insisted. “The flygirl’s on Vita-Lerp—spiked with hashish.”

“Ben might have something,” Primrose said. “Porky, you look like a messenger boy. Grab a bottle of vodka from the bar and bull your way aboard the plane to deliver it to Harjanian, as a gift from me.”

Well, Hansen thought, twenty minutes later as he climbed into the limousine and turned down the folding seat, he couldn’t put his faith in these boys, but you didn’t have to approve of something to enjoy it. He was reminded of the Sunday-school teacher who went to the motel when the limousine’s telephone buzzed.

Nobody called that number unless it was urgent business, Hansen knew, but whose business? Defense’s, Interior’s, Primrose’s, or had Helga’s loyal partisans uncovered a secret message in a ladies’ washroom and were passing it along to him for immediate action?