The Hunting Trip (19 page)

Phil looked for Magda, but didn't see her.

[ FOUR ]

A
ngus drove Phil to Magda's apartment building on Onkel Tom Allee, where she was waiting for them, which explained why Phil hadn't seen her as they had raced across Pariser Platz.

“Ah,” she greeted them.
“Itt, az én drága litte gombóc.”

“Excuse me, Countess?” Phil inquired politely.

“She said,” Angus, who of course spoke Hungarian, translated, “‘Ah. Here you are, my precious little dumpling.' And I don't think she was talking to me.”

“It's nice to see you again, too, Magda,” Phil said.

“While I can barely wait to wrap you in my arms, Phil, my precious little dumpling, that will have to wait until I deal with the dwarf here.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Countess, anything at all?” Angus asked politely.

“Let's go over what's already on the schedule,” Magda said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Angus said.

“Starting with what you're going to do in Budapest.”

“Right. Trust me, Countess, to handle that. When the Moral Righteousness Sub-Committee of the Central Committee of the
Hungarian Communist Party sees the pictures of the colonel whooping it up with those thirteen- and fourteen-year-old ballerinas, the colonel will be on the next prison train to Yeniseysk, Siberia.”

“Possibly. But I've heard disgusting things about the comrades on the Moral Righteousness Sub-Committee, things I wouldn't want repeated in the hearing of my
Drága és futkároznak mindenféle messze mén . . .”

“That means ‘my precious and so far unridden stallion,'” Angus, glancing at Phil, furnished helpfully.

“. . . that make it equally possible that those degenerates will develop a sudden interest in the ballet,” Magda went on. “Well, we'll just have to see how that turns out and then decide how to handle it. Now, what are you going to do for me here in Berlin?”

“Well,” Angus said, “make absolutely sure that Pastor General Caldwell doesn't get a whiff of what's going on with you two.”

“And what else?”

“Make sure that none of the amoral women in Berlin, of whatever nationality, get within fifteen feet of Phil here.”

“If my
Drága és futkároznak mindenféle messze mén
is to be sullied, I will do the sullying,” the countess said. “And what's going to happen to you, Angus, if I hear that my
vanília fagylalt tölcsér . . .”

“Your what?” Phil asked.

“Vanilla ice cream cone,” Angus furnished.

“. . . has been anywhere near naked women and horses in any combination, not only in the Pferd und Frauen but anywhere?”

“You have made me fully aware of the dire consequences to myself and G. Lincoln Rutherford if something like that happens, Countess.”

“Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Hungarian redhead, Angus. You might wish to write that down. You may go.”

“Yes, ma'am, thank you, ma'am,” Angus said, and left.

—

“Well, my
vanília fagylalt tölcsér
,” Magda said to Phil. “Do you have any questions?”

“I have many questions, Magda, but the one that interests me the most is why are you so peeved at the husband you left behind?”

“Well, since I certainly don't want to discourage your curiosity
vis-à-vis
the intimate details of either my persona or my body, my
vanília fagylalt tölcsér
, I will tell you.

“The deal I struck with that
a kurvapecér
—that means son of a bitch—was that I would come out with Angus, bringing half of the family jewels, and that he would follow later, bringing the other half with him. Then we would go to Palm Beach, I would set him up in the automobile business—he was a used-car salesman before he joined the secret police—and then we would divorce and I would then go to Palm Springs.

“I found out yesterday—I didn't tell the pastor so as not to ruin their weekend at the tables in Baden-Baden—that the
a kurvapecér
never had any intention of holding up his end of the bargain. He's got word to me that he prefers ballerinas half my age—”

“How old are you, Magda?”

“Almost twenty-eight. As I was saying, he said he prefers fourteen-year-old ballerinas to middle-aged women, and to afford them he needs to keep the other half of my family jewels. ‘So have a good time in Palm Springs, and
auf Wiedersehen
!'”

“So you'll be leaving Berlin?”

“Tuesday morning, my
vanília fagylalt tölcsér
, so we don't have time to waste standing around talking. I'll bet you two dollars I can get my clothes off faster than you can get yours off. And then we'll play ice cream cone to get things rolling. How does that sound?”

—

And here
the author must draw the curtain of modesty across the stage of this romance novel, except to say that when Phil left Magda—whom he had learned to call his
Forró magyar Nyalókát
, which means Hot Hungarian Lollipop—at Tempelhof Field the next Tuesday morning, he was twenty pounds lighter in weight than he had been when he went one hundred straight and won the Browning Diamond Grade
und so weiter
and was no longer able to claim that he was the last living seventeen-year-old virgin in the
world.

IX

PHIL'S LIFE TAKES A NEW PATH (PART 1)

[ ONE ]

Berlin, Germany

Monday, August 11, 1947

P
astor Caldwell of course learned of Phil's triumph at the First Annual Berlin Brigade Brandenburg Gate Skeet Shoot just about as soon as he and the missus returned from Baden-Baden. He was, after all, the CIA's Berlin station chief and expected to know everything that happened on that Island of Freedom in the Red Sea, so to speak.

The first intel he received was from a man he had working undercover as a photographer at the
Berliner Tageblatt
newspaper. The photographer had managed somehow to elude G. Lincoln Rutherford at the Brandenburg Gate and was thus able to give Pastor Caldwell a stack of 8 × 10-inch photographs he had taken during the event.

They provided proof positive that Phil had not only been a participant, wearing his corporal's uniform, despite his orders not to
draw attention to himself, and thus the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation, but also that he had compounded this sin by winning the Grand Prize, a Browning Diamond Grade
und so weiter
shotgun.

The photos also showed a man clearly recognizable as the Berlin Brigade's commanding general trying to hammer a fire hydrant into the Pariser Platz with his personal Remington 1100 Skeet Special shotgun.

Pastor Caldwell got another version of what had transpired from Lieutenant Colonel William “Don't Call Me Bill” O'Reilly, who had tears in his eyes when he reported what the commanding general of the Berlin Brigade had said to him
vis-à-vis
his—O'Reilly's—role in the competition.

Summarized here because there is not enough space to chronicle
verbatim
what the general said in his fifteen-minute speech, O'Reilly said the general said that he was shocked that a fellow West Pointer would be complicit in sending in a “ringer” disguised as a simple corporal into the skeet competition, thus depriving a “sportsman” skeet shooter, such as himself, of the opportunity to bask in the glory of winning the contest, and the Browning Superposed
und so weiter
that went with it, and that if Colonel O'Reilly thought the general would ever again punch Colonel O'Reilly's ticket for any reason whatsoever he probably believed in forgiveness of the unforgivable and in the Tooth Fairy.

There were other reports of what happened, but the one in which the pastor placed the most faith was the one he got from Magda, the Countess Kocian. Poor Dear Magda, as the pastor thought of her after learning what her
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
husband had done to her, said that she knew how lonely Phil would be with the Caldwells out of town.

With that in mind, Magda said, she had walked all the way from
her Onkel Tom Allee apartment to the pastor's office, where she suspected Phil might be. What she had in mind, Magda said, was taking “the poor boy” to the movies.

She said that as she approached the office, she saw three of the pastor's officers enter it, including Captain Brewster, whom she knew the pastor thought of as the dumbest
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
West Pointer he had ever met.

She was naturally worried, she said, that they were intent, as Angus McTavish and G. Lincoln Rutherford had been, on taking advantage of Phil's innocence for their amusement, as Angus and Geronimo had when they had taken the boy to Pferd und Frauen and caused him to go steeplechasing with a naked woman on a Clydesdale.

Eavesdropping at the door, Magda said, she had learned that was indeed their purpose, except that it had something to do with a German experimental theatrical performance at the Brandenburg Gate and not a naked woman on a Clydesdale. But inasmuch as she knew experimental actresses could be inclined to loose morals, Magda said that she knew she had to do something to save Phil from the evil intentions of the dumbest
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
West Pointer the pastor had ever met.

So, reasoning that if they could get “Poor Philip” into trouble so easily, they could probably keep him out of trouble with equal facility, she had called Angus McTavish and G. Lincoln Rutherford and told them (a) it was clearly their Christian duty to rescue Philip, and (b) that if they did so and she told the pastor, which she promised to do, that would more than likely get them off the pastor's
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
list.

“And then,” Magda finished, “I went to my apartment and prayed that they were going to be successful.”

“Magda, my dear,” the pastor gently intoned, “what was going on at the Brandenburg Gate wasn't a theatrical performance—”

“But there were all those pictures in the papers of that bald, fat man destroying something by beating it against a fire hydrant while screaming foul obscenities at the top of his lungs. What else could that be but an experimental theatrical performance?”

“That wasn't just ‘something,' Magda, dear. It was a Remington 1100 Skeet Special.”

“A what?”

“It's not important, Magda, dear. Pray continue.”

“My prayers were answered,” Magda said. “Angus delivered Phil to my apartment door.”

She thought:
At least that much is absolutely true.

“So if you can find forgiveness for Angus and Geronimo in your heart, Dear Pastor?”

“I'll take that under advisement. So, what happened next?”

“Poor Philip was terribly shaken up. It was all I could do to resist my female urge to hold him against my breast to comfort him. But I did.”

At least until I got rid of the dwarf.

“And then what happened?”

“I finally got him calmed down.”

I am not going to tell you how I did that.

“Good for you. And then?”

“The poor exhausted—physically and emotionally—boy dozed off.”

That must have been three hours later.

My, how time did fly!

“And?”

“I draped something . . .”

Actually that was me.

“. . . over him and let him sleep.”

Probably for at least thirty minutes.

“And then?”

“I didn't have the heart to send him to his cold and lonely room in
the field grade bachelor officers' hotel, so I arranged for him to spend the night . . .”

In lewd and lascivious behavior with me.

“. . . in my apartment.”

“How arranged?”

“You know, simple things. Putting a mattress on the floor . . .”

With incense candles burning all around the mattress, teaching him what a
Forró magyar Nyalókát
was and how to do the Hot Hungarian Lollipop.

Boy, was he a quick learner!

“That was very kind of you, Magda.”

“Not at all. Then on Sunday, we had a late breakfast . . .”

Steak Tartare, and raw eggs, to give him back his vigor, washed down with a medicinal bottle of
Egri Bikavér
—“Bull's Blood”—which I thought might—and indeed did—live up to its reputation for restoring exhausted vigor.

“. . . and then I consoled him for the rest of Sunday. Which, as I'm sure you know, Pastor, the Scripture refers to as a ‘day of rest' and which I interpreted to mean that I should encourage the dear exhausted boy to spend the day in bed. Which he did, until duty called and he had to go to Tempelhof to meet you on your return from Baden-Baden.”

“Rest assured, Dear Magda, you will get your reward in heaven,” Pastor Caldwell said.

“I hope you can find it in your heart, Pastor, in Christian compassion, to forgive him for not following to the letter your instructions.”

“Forgive him? Don't be absurd! After he made a jackass out of the Berlin Brigade commander—I have never liked that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
ring-knocking West Pointer
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
—I'm going to promote him to sergeant!”

“He'll be so pleased! You are a good man, Pastor Caldwell.”

“So I keep hearing. Is there anything else I can do for you, Dear Magda, before you fly off to your new life in America tomorrow morning?”

“Do you suppose it would be possible for you to send Philip by my apartment?—before he picks me up to take me to Tempelhof, I mean. I could use a little help packing, and I'd like to give him a little something to remember me by.”

“I'll have him there by the time you get there. And you may tell Phil, Dear Magda, that he may consider any request from you to do anything—anything at all—that you would like him to do as a direct order from me to do it.”

[ TWO ]

S
ergeant Philip W. Williams realized, as he drove away from Tempelhof Airfield and seeing Magda fly off to her new life in Palm Beach, that his life had really changed as a result of what had happened in the previous thirty-six hours.

He knew he would have to give the matter a good deal of thought, but realized it would be better to wait until he had a couple of hours' sleep before he started thinking about anything.

His cheerful, willing obedience to Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell's order to do anything at all Magda wanted him to do had taken a good deal of doing, and since his enthusiastic compliance with that order had lasted until five minutes before it was time to drive her to Tempelhof, he was a little tired.

But despite what he had presumed would happen now that he was no longer the world's only seventeen-year-old virgin,
id est
that he
would henceforth be spending his spare time in joyful lewd and lascivious activities with an unlimited number of members of the opposite gender, that simply didn't happen.

Truth being stranger than fiction, in the months that followed he was as chaste
post
his instructive weekend with the countess as he had been
ante.

There were several reasons for this. Not among them was what Angus McTavish and G. Lincoln Rutherford believed to be the reason behind Phil's chastity, which was that they had spread the word among Berlin's ladies of the evening that Phil had at least two venereal diseases that were absolutely immune to the curative effects of penicillin.

The truth, however, was elsewhere.

Phil had gone hunting, so to speak, just about as soon as his depleted stock of hormones had returned to normal,
post
Magda. But when he started to reply in kind to the smiles, or winks, of the ladies of the evening who had heard what Angus and Geronimo had said about him and decided it was bull
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
, he remembered that Magda had taught him
vanília fagylalt tölcsér
, how to play ice cream cone, and realized he didn't want to become quite that cozy with any of the ladies winking at him.

And then he was very busy with his duties at the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation. Not only in an editorial sense, but in connection with his new additional duties as chief firearms instructor of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation.

Lieutenant Colonel William “Don't Call Me Bill” O'Reilly had changed the protocol for the exchange of spies on the Glienicke Bridge.

What the protocol had called for
ante
the change was a detachment of eight enlisted men, each armed with a Caliber .45 ACP M1A1 Thompson submachine gun, under the command of a first lieutenant.
Post
the O'Reilly change, the detail was of eight company grade officers, attired in the Class A—“pinks and greens”—uniform, with white accoutrements, under the command of a field grade senior officer.

It had come to Colonel O'Reilly's attention that the next spy exchange was not to be done in secrecy in the dead of night, as most of them were, but in broad daylight and in the glare of television floodlights. And this was to be done with the full cooperation of the Communist authorities.

The American spy the Russians had caught was forty-nine years old, and was using the name Boris Tolstoy. When the NKGB caught Boris, he had been moving stealthily around Moscow on a wagon pulled by a scraggly horse. The wagon had a sign reading “I buy empty vodka bottles” on its side. Some of the latter apparently hadn't been completely empty, as the American spy had been arrested for driving a junk wagon under the influence of alcohol. When Boris tried to claim his rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, his jig was of course up.