The Hunting Trip (13 page)

“And I will call you ‘Randy,'” Lady Margaret said. “As I not only have a soft spot in my heart for commoners, I have a small favor I—the earl and I—would like to ask of you.”

“I'm at your service, My Lady,” Randy had replied. He had quickly decided that if the price he had to pay to continue shooting at Castle Abercrombie was putting up with all this nobility
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and Bertie's
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newfound love, then so be it.

“Bertie and I would like you to be Bertie's Best Man when we are united in Holy Matrimony at the High Kirk of Glasgow, sometimes called Saint Kentigern's, on Tuesday next. I suppose it's too much to ask that you have morning clothes?”

Randy had been running around with Bertie long enough to have learned that, in Scotland, morning clothes were different from the mourning clothes—dark suit, black tie, and absolutely no white socks—one wore to a funeral in Mississippi. In Scotland, morning clothes were a pastel version of the long-tailed black “Fish and Soup Monkey Suits” the social elite of Muddiebay wore to Mardi Gras balls. In Scotland, morning clothes were what one wore at a morning social event, such as a wedding at St. Kentigern's in Glasgow.

“Why me, My Lady?” Randy asked.

“Because having a commoner such as yourself will spare Bertie and myself from the tiring business of having to choose between the thirty or forty members of the nobility who will think they are entitled to that honor.”

So Randy was best man at the nuptials of the Earl and Lady Margaret.

—

As time passed,
to his genuine surprise, Randy came to really like Lady Margaret. She was one hell of a shot, for one thing, and when she was not in the family way, she liked a little nip.

One day, when they were having a couple of the latter in the Minor Dining Hall of Castle Abercrombie, the countess said, out of the blue, “Bertie tells me you are acquainted with Philip Williams, the author. Is this so?”

“Actually, I know him rather well. Actually, one might say, My Lady, that I am as close to him as a Southern gentleman, such as myself, ever gets to what we Southern gentlemen think of as
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Yankees. Once a Yankee, we say, always a Yankee.”

“I'd like to meet him,” Lady Margaret said.

“Oh, I don't think so, Lady Margaret.”

“Randy, I thought I told you Maggie doesn't care what you think,” Lord Bertie said. “Produce this chap so that my Maggie can meet him!”

—

Getting ol' Phil
to Castle Abercrombie was easier ordered than accomplished. In addition to his usual suspicion of anything Randy proposed, Phil said from what he had heard it was always raining in Scotland, and that the high point of Scottish cuisine was a dish called haggis, which was made of the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep or lamb stuffed into the stomach of one or the other of said creatures.

And, as a final argument, although he had as a young man known a skirt-wearing Scot who was perfectly normal, sexual preference wise, he was leery of going anywhere skirt-wearing by men was considered normal behavior.

But eventually Randy prevailed, and one day, Bertie having sent it to the airport to meet them, the ducal Rolls-Royce deposited them before the main door to Castle Abercrombie, where the earl and countess awaited them.

Randy said, “For God's sake, try to forget you're a
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Yankee and behave,” and got out of the car.

Phil followed him.

“Your Lordship, Lady Margaret, may I present my friend—”

“I'll be a
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” Phil cried cheerfully. “Tally
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ho, Bertie!”

“Hi-Yo,
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Silver! Away yourself, old chap!” the earl replied.

“Who's the bimbo, Lone Ranger?” Phil inquired. “That can't be Tonto! Not with a set of knockers like that.”

They then embraced.

“I gather that you have met?” Randy and Lady Margaret asked, in chorus.

They had, but relating the details of that here would be getting ahead of the story. That sometimes happens to less skilled writers of romance novels. As the astute reader of same may have noticed, the male and female protagonists therein are often depicted in loving, or lascivious, embrace before any justification for their behavior is offered.

Suffice it to say here that ol' Phil became very close friends of the Earl and Countess of Abercrombie, which had a bearing on how Randy planned to get some time alone with Carol-Anne in Merry England, to wit:

Once everybody got to Dungaress, after they had spent two days in London—or until the ladies had reached their credit card limit, whichever came first—Pancho Gonzales's beloved niece would fall ill. Her loving Uncle Pancho would charter a private jet with a capacity for no more than five passengers to fly her to the famed doctors whose offices line London's Harley Street.

Out of the goodness of her heart, Carol-Anne would volunteer to go along, so that Poor Pancho's Poor Sick Niece would have some female companionship. Randy, who would blame the Poor Sick Niece's illness on the haggis she had eaten before he had Done His
Duty to warn her not to do so, would, stricken by guilt, consider it his duty as a Southern Gentleman to go with them to London.

They would go directly from Heathrow to Claridge's Hotel, where Randy had reserved suitable accommodations.

And for the next week, ol' Phil would take care of the hunters, and Lady Margaret, because ol' Phil would ask her to, and they were buddies, would take care of the ladies.

Everybody would be happy. Showtime!

—

The only thing
that remained to be done was to telephone Pancho, to make sure everything was going as planned with him. Pancho and his niece were critical components of the plot.

He did so immediately after Carol-Anne had hoisted her panty hose up and around what Randy now recognized to be her deteriorating derriere and left so as to be home before her husband came home from the bank.

“Pancho, buddy! How's every little thing?” he greeted his Miami-Cuban coconspirator.

“I told you I'd meet you in the General's Club in the Atlanta airport tomorrow. So why are you calling me?”

“Just checking, amigo. I suppose Consuelo's all excited about going to London?”

“Actually, Randy, Consuelo's not going.”

“What do mean, Consuelo's not going?”

“I mean, she ran off with that jai-alai player she was always eyeing, the one they call Pedro the Perfect because of his body.”

“That's awful.”

“Not to worry. I'm bringing Ginger Gallagher instead.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Ginger Gallagher that
pale-skinned long-legged blonde, the one whose hair hangs down to her waist? The tall one? The one you were chasing around the American Virgin Islands with your tongue hanging out?”

“You got it, Randy. I have always been attracted to gorgeous twenty-five-year-old blondes whose Daddy left them just over half a billion dollars.”

“Pancho, you dumb
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fried banana eater—which, come to think of it, is what Ginger called you—no one is going to think that Ginger Gallagher is your niece!”

“You're right. I guess I just glossed over that possibility. So, what do we do?”

“You're not trying to tell me you talked Glamorous Ginger into going to Europe to fool around with you?”

“What happened, Randy, is that I happened to mention the hunting trip and that Phil Williams is going along. Then she sort of invited herself. She confessed to me that she has a thing about balding middle-aged intellectuals who smoke cigars and know so much about women and life.”

“You're suggesting that she wants to fool around with Phil?”

“That's the impression she left me with.”

“And what's going to happen when she finds out that Phil never fools around?”

“She knows of his reputation in that regard, and obviously considers it a challenge.”

“My question was, what are you going to do when she finds out that what they say about Phil is true?”

“Then perhaps, I was thinking, she might find room in her heart for a Miami-Cuban who would console her when she learned the truth about Phil.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Pancho, but that's what I would call
the dumbest
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thing I've ever heard you say, and I've heard you say a lot of really dumb things.”

“Hope springs eternal, Randy, in the heart of we Miami-Cubans.”

“Pancho, it's too
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late to call this off. You better come up with a niece who's going to get sick in Scotland!”

“Maybe I can meet somebody on the plane. I'm flying to Atlanta on Guatemalan Air, and I know a couple of their stews.”

“I remember Marcella,” Randy said. “Spectacular boobs.”

“No. That was Pilar. Marcella was the one with spectacular legs and the gold diamond-studded teeth.”

“It doesn't matter. We've reached the point of no return on this operation. Tomorrow, you bring either Marcella or Pilar to Atlanta. Leave Ginger in Miami. Take whoever's going to be your niece to the General's Club. Get your niece whatever she wants to drink and sit her down on one side of the room and tell her not to try to pick anybody up. Then you go sit on the other side of the General's Club. I'll meet you there and we'll figure this thing out.”

“I won't be able to leave Ginger in Miami. She said she'll fly there in her private jet, as she has no intention of getting on the same plane with me and having people think we might be traveling companions.”

“Pancho, listen carefully. I have no intention of letting Glamorous Ginger
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up my carefully laid romantic plans. Deal with it!” Randy said, and hung
up.

VI

PHIL LEARNS FROM THE WRATH OF GOD

[ ONE ]

Berlin, Germany

Monday, May 19, 1947

A
s Supervisory Special Agent Jonathan Fitzwater Caldwell III drove Administrator Philip Wallingford Williams III down Onkel Tom Allee toward his Zehlendorf home in what looked like a brand-new Cadillac, Williams said, “This is a very nice car, sir.”

“It's a piece of
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,” SSA Caldwell replied. “But since those
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idiots at Packard drove the company into bankruptcy, and since Henry the Second has never forgiven me for knocking him on his
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at Groton, and won't come up with a Lincoln Continental, it's either a
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Cadillac or a
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Chrysler. Nobody in his right mind drives a
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Chrysler, and actually buying a car myself is obviously out of the
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question.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It's a tax thing, son,” Caldwell explained after he saw on Phil's face that Phil didn't entirely understand what he was talking about. “The company chalks it up to Research and Development. What you and I are doing is testing to see how well Fitzwater Cold Tanned Leather seats will hold up in the car of an officer on foreign service. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Phil lied, and then to quickly change the subject, asked, “Did I understand you to say, sir, that you were at Groton?”

“I did say that. Why am I not surprised to learn you know what Groton is? But how is it that you do?”

“My father is a Groton graduate, sir.”

“And you didn't go there? Why not?”

Well, as soon as he gets a look at my final report of complete background investigation, he'll know, so I might as well get it out of the way now.

“I did, sir,” Phil said, “for a while. Before the Reverend Doctor Peabody decided that I would, and Groton would, be happier if I finished my secondary education elsewhere.”

“Amazing! Those are the exact words Old Endicott P. used on me when he gave me the boot after I knocked two teeth out of Henry the Second and set him on his
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. I wound up in Saint Malachi's. You're familiar with Saint Malachi's?”

“I was at Saint Malachi's, sir.”

“What an amazing coincidence!” SSA Caldwell said. “But I gather you didn't finish?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“So Colonel ‘Don't call me Bill' O'Reilly said. He mentioned something
en passant . . .”

“What happened, sir . . .” Phil began, and then related what he had done with Bridget O'Malley's intimate undergarments.

“Well, I can see how that might trigger the disapproval of
Reverend James Ferneyhough Fitzhugh, D.D. He always was a bit of a prude. Papa always said he thought Old Ferney was a Methodist who didn't have the balls to come out of the closet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I just thought of something else Papa was always telling me,” SSA Caldwell went on. “‘Anyone who fools around with Irish girls or buys his clothes at Brooks Brothers is asking for trouble.' I suggest you keep that in mind.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

“Ah, here we are,” SSA Caldwell said, as he stopped the car before his home.

—

Once inside,
he introduced Phil to his wife. She was a tall, slim woman who reminded Phil of his Aunt Grace, his father's sister. In other words, the lady came across as an icy-blooded Back Bay Bostonian who looked askance at anyone who could not prove they were directly descended from a passenger who had traveled in first class on the
Mayflower
.

“Victoria, this is Philip Williams,” SSA Caldwell said. “We were at both Groton and Saint Malachi's together.”

“How is that possible, Jonathan? He looks like he's nineteen years old.”

“Actually he's seventeen. I didn't mean we were at Groton and Saint Malachi's during the same time period. What I had hoped to convey is that he's one of us, and that hereafter you can no longer complain that you have absolutely no one of our kind, save me, of course, here in Berlin, with whom to converse.”

“In that case, how do you do, Philip?”

“Have Frau Whatsername bring some croissants and coffee into the library,” SSA Caldwell ordered. “Phil's going to have another shot
at examining something that idiot Brewster was supposed to examine but failed miserably to do so adequately.”

“Well, Jonathan, you know what you're always saying.”

“Specifically, what am I always saying?”

“About West Pointers. That when dealing with them one must remember where they came from, and the heavy baggage that forces them to carry through life.”

“When Phil and I have finished, you two can chat.”

—

A half hour later,
Phil had detected another seven ambiguities, thirteen grammatical errors, and six strikeovers, in the
Report of Successful Recruitment of NKGB Colonel Vladimir Polshov
that Captain Brewster had presented to SAA Caldwell as perfect in every respect and ready to be taken By Hand of Armed Officer Courier to the Hon. Ralph Peters, Deputy Director for Soviet Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency, in Langley, Virginia.

“
Entre nous
, Phil, what I would really like to do to that West Point
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is shove that
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West Point ring he's always knocking so far up his
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that the phony ruby in it would pop out of his left
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nostril. But, lamentably, I cannot do so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It wasn't this way in the Office of Strategic Services, Phil, as I'm sure you understand . . . No. On reflection, I'm sure you don't understand—you're not old enough to understand. So you'll just have to take my word as a fellow Saint Malachi's Old Boy that it wasn't this way in the good ol' OSS. The OSS was staffed with our kind, Phil, gentlemen who knew what an ambiguity was when they saw one and rarely made a mistake in grammar.

“God, during the war we used to have Hasty Pudding Club soirees
once a week in Claridge's Hotel in London. They said OSS stood for Oh, So Social, and by God it did!

“But that's all gone, Phil. At the risk of sounding self-pitying, I find myself all alone here in Berlin battling the Red Menace.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me tell you how it was, Phil. One day I was sitting in the Harvard Club on West Forty-fourth Street wondering how I could serve my country in the war to end all wars without having to associate myself with riffraff when I bumped into a chap I knew from the Hasty Pudding Club. I asked him how he planned to solve that conundrum and he said he already had—he had gone into the OSS.

“I didn't even know what the OSS was. He replied that OSS was the acronym for something that had slipped his mind, but everybody called it the Oh, So Social, and what they were going to do was make life unpleasant for Herr Hitler. That sounded like what I was looking for, so I asked him how one might associate oneself with the OSS.

“He replied that he had been recruited for the OSS several weeks before while having a little taste of Famous Pheasant and a dozen oysters on the half-shell in the Oak Room bar of the Plaza Hotel . . . You know whereof I speak, I presume, Phil?”

“Yes, sir, my father used to take me there after sailing my sailboat in Central Park. It's not far from my father's apartment, and he used to say my sailing my sailboat exhausted him to the point where he needed sustenance before going farther downtown to Jack & Charley's on West Fifty-second for more recuperative sustenance.”

SAA Caldwell nodded. “Well, anyway, my chum said he'd been in the Oak Room and this chap, a complete stranger, approached him and asked if perhaps the phrase
So then we'll conquer all old Eli's men
had any meaning for him.

“Of course it did. It was the fourth line, first verse, of ‘Ten Thousand Men of Harvard.' So, my chum told me, he told this chap of
course he well knew the fight song and why. Then this chap asked my chum if he had any interest in serving his country in a manner appropriate for a Harvard man. When my chum replied in the affirmative, this chap told him about the OSS, and one thing led to another, and soon, my chum told me, he was in the OSS.

“So I got in a cab and went up to the Plaza and into the Oak Room, hoping to encounter the chap my chum had told me about. To no avail. I had to go back to the Oak Room three times, the last time wearing a crimson Harvard sweatshirt, before I was approached.

“But once I established contact, things moved very swiftly. A week later, I was at the Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., serving our country. There was a training program. This included training in marksmanship. Once it became apparent this would be a waste of my time and theirs . . .”

“Excuse me?”

“Phil, you would be astonished, as I was, to learn how few people in the OSS, including Harvard men, could tell a howitzer from, say, a Browning Diamond Grade Superposed 12-bore with a gold trigger and selective ejectors. The training program began with we students being handed single-shot Sears, Roebuck Economy Model 12-bores, which we were to fire at a barn door to give us confidence.

“While I was waiting for my turn at the barn door, a murder of crows flew over, and in a Pavlovian reflex I dropped four of them with the Economy Model single shot they had given me. Actually, I got four of the vexatious buggers with three shots. I was then told I could go to the Congressional links and play some golf for exercise until my classmates caught up with me, marksmanship wise.

“The Congressional links weren't Winged Foot or Baltusrol, of course, but it wasn't as completely plebian as I thought it might be . . .

“I digress. Cutting to the chase: Shortly thereafter, I found myself in London, in a small but adequate suite in Claridge's Hotel, and
shortly after that in Scotland, at Castle Jedburgh, where some characters released from prison for the purpose—Irish Republican Army terrorists and English safe crackers—taught us how to blow things up and crack safes, and then I traveled back to London and Claridge's.

“There I met a chap, Bill Colby, who was a gentleman even though he'd gone to Dartmouth. One night at the bar, ol' Bill told me that he was going to France in the morning and asked if I'd like to tag along.

“The next afternoon I dropped my first bridge into a river with seven pounds of an absolutely marvelous explosive called C-4, and the day after that, I got my first locomotive, which was really great fun, lots of noise and huge clouds of steam. And three days after that, we were back in Claridge's.

“And so my war went. Three weeks in London chasing the girls—this was before Victoria, of course—then a week in France—once two weeks in Albania—blowing things up and then back to London for what the OSS called R&R, for Rest and Recuperation, and what we in Hasty Pudding called I&I, for Intercourse and Intoxication. And then back to the Continent for another week of great fun blowing things up. What more could a real man ask? Am I shocking you with this, Phil?”

“No, sir.”

“But all good things come to an end, and so inevitably did World War Two. So there I was, a changed man—I was by then a major—knowing I really did not want to spend the rest of my life in automobile upholstery . . .”

“Excuse me, sir? ‘In automobile upholstery'?”

“I thought I explained that to you while I was explaining why I am driving that piece of
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Cadillac. You're going to have to learn to listen carefully to me, son, while I'm talking.”

“Yes, sir. I'll try.”

“All right then, one more time. No. I'll go back to the beginning.
Perhaps if I do that, I won't have to go through everything again in the future.”