The Hunting Trip (16 page)

“Sir, are you referring to CIC Administrator Angus McTavish and CIC Administrator G. Lincoln Rutherford?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“Sir, you're not suggesting that they were incarcerated at those places you mentioned, are you?”

“I'm not suggesting anything of the sort, son. I'm
telling
you. Angus McTavish was doing fifteen to twenty-five in Leavenworth for having sold three elephants, a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a Perdido Key beach mouse, and a San Francisco garter snake that he didn't own to the Bronx Zoological Gardens. The judge, who was a tree-hugger, really socked it to him because the beach mouse and the garter snake were on the protected species list.”

“And CIC Administrator Rutherford, sir? In a mental hospital for the criminally insane? He's insane, sir?”

“That's what he was trying to convince them of when ol' Bill got him out so that he could help me stem the tide of the Red Menace. In an attempt to avoid life behind bars as a recidivist offender, Geronimo was trying to sell the shrinks on the notion that only a crazy person would do what he did, and thus he should be adjudged innocent by reason of insanity. He said a sane person, especially one who was half Native American and had had the honor of being social secretary of
the Harvard Law School Alumni Association, Inc., would not have done what he was accused of doing.”

“Which was, sir?”

“Embezzle four point three million dollars from the Chiricahua Apache Tribe's Geronimo Resort and Casino, Inc., in Arizona and another million and a quarter from the Apache Widows & Orphans Relief Trust, both of which he was serving,
pro bono
, as legal counsel.”

“But they're CIC administrators, just like me!”

“Son, now that you have entered the smoke-and-mirrors world of intelligence, you're going to have to learn to think things through before you open your mouth.”

“I'm not sure what you mean, sir.”

“How does one get into the CIC, Phil?”

“Well, first you have to be in the Army.”

“Right. And how tall do you have to be to get in the Army? And how tall is Angus McTavish? See where we're headed?”

“Mr. McTavish could not be in the Army because he's about four feet ten inches tall . . .”

“And a bit overweight, wouldn't you say?”

“Yes, sir. But how about Mr. Rutherford? He's of normal height and weight.”

“How do you think he could undergo a complete background investigation without it being discovered that he is a criminal recidivist, sometimes known as a Three Strikes, You're Out Loser?”

“I take your point, sir.”

“They are beards, son.”

“Beards, sir?”

“There had to be some reason for me having those two around the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation besides the real one.”

“What is the real one, sir?”

“I break that down into Sales and Logistics, Phil.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Sales is the part where Geronimo Rutherford goes behind the Iron Curtain and seeks out two kinds of people. First are ballet dancers and high wire trapeze artists. Attractive ones. Sweet ones. Gentle ones. Geronimo then sells these young women on the many advantages of immigrating to the West, in other words, how much we're willing to pay for their services. If you're ever called upon, Phil, to talk attractive, sweet, gentle young women into swapping their virtue for cold cash, get a Harvard-trained lawyer to do your talking for you.”

“Yes, sir, I'll make a note of that.”

“The second ethnic group Geronimo seeks out behind the Iron Curtain contains the senior Soviet and Soviet Bloc NKGB officers we're trying to turn. He arranges to get himself seated beside one of the latter at the Bolshoi or a circus. Then when some attractive blonde is pirouetting around the stage in
Swan
Lake
, or hanging from her knees on a trapeze, he says something like, ‘Boy, I'd really like to hide the old salami in something like that. How about you?'

“One time in three point six times, he gets an affirmative reply. Once that happens, we have our defector. If you ever need to talk some respectable senior officer into betraying everything he holds dear, get yourself a Harvard-trained lawyer to do your talking for you.”

“Yes, sir. I'll make a note of that.”

“That's Sales. Logistics is getting the girls and the NKGB this side of Check Point Charley. That's where Angus McTavish's circus heritage comes in. Throughout history, Phil, as I'm sure you know, circuses—or is that circi?—have continuously moved across the European Continent much as the Bedouins move across the shifting sands of the Sahara on their camels. That is, without paying any attention at all to international borders and that sort of thing. To put a point on it, to circus people making their historic rounds, the barbed wire, ferocious German shepherds, land mines, et cetera, which close the
Iron Curtain to ordinary people, are nothing but a minor bump in the road.

“What many people don't ask themselves, as they should, when visiting a circus is, ‘Where does the circus get their elephants, hippopotami, and other pachydermi and their tigers, lions, and other panthera?'

“The answer is obvious, unless of course you're a Socialist and believe the government should have its nose in everything, including providing circuses with their wild animals. There are businesses serving that need. Wild animals are bought, sold, and traded much as used cars are by businessmen hoping to turn an honest, or mostly honest, dollar doing so.

“Putting all these factors together, what I then had ol' Bill, now Ralph, do was buy a couple of wild-animal cages, a selection of tigers, lions, and other savage animals, and two elephants which were surplus to the needs of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey. He then prevailed upon the Air Force to airlift them into Berlin. Once they were here, I had the cages modified to suit our needs and repainted appropriately. I was then ready to hook the elephants up to tow the animal cages and send A. McTavish Used Wild Animal Dealer into the sphere of Soviet influence.

“And I did so.

“Soon, Angus was able not only to reestablish relationships with other members of his circus family in circuses all over Eastern Europe and in Russia itself but able to cross back and forth over the border with no more effort and just about as much speed as a Ping-Pong ball being whacked by a Japanese Olympic Ping-Pong Team champion.

“The way it works is that the elephants tow Angus and the cages full of young, healthy savage beasts behind the Iron Curtain. He sells the beasts to circus proprietors, taking as partial payment their savage beasts that are getting a bit long in the tooth. Then the elephants tow Angus and the trade-in savage beasts in their cages back across the
border. We then donate these decrepit wild beasts to Kiss A Tiger, Inc., Rhinoceri Are Beautiful, Inc., and other such lunatic do-gooder organizations, and begin looking for younger ones available at a good price.

“So far, the NKGB has not figured out what has happened to all the senior NKGB officers, ballet dancers, and high wire trapeze artists who have gone missing, and as far as we know they don't have a clue that they have departed Holy Mother Russia, or the Hungarian Republic, et cetera, in elephant-drawn wild-animal cages, comfortably ensconced behind cupboard doors reading, ‘Caution, Wild Animals DO NOT ENTER!'”

“That's very clever, sir,” Phil said.

“I like to think so,” SSA Caldwell said. “I've often been told I'm clever. But right now, I face a conundrum that baffles me.”

“What might that be, sir?”

“Well, because I absolutely need you to find the ambiguities, et cetera, in the reports my semi-literate CIC agents prepare for my signature, you and I are going to be spending a good deal of time together.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Please don't take this the wrong way, son. But when a man my age, and a man—really, boy—your age spend a lot of time together, a lot of people begin to wonder, often aloud, if there isn't something a bit odd about the relationship. If you take my meaning?”

“I'm afraid I do, sir.”

“I thought of one beard we could put on you. But, on reflection, it wouldn't work as no one in his right mind would allow someone of your tender years near a loaded pistol.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Well, if you had, which I am quite sure you couldn't possibly have, qualified with the ol' .45 in Basic Training . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“. . . the beard we could put on you would be that of my bodyguard. I don't have one now, although ol' Bill, now Ralph, says I really should, as after I saw my
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phalanx of
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West Pointers trying, and failing miserably, to qualify with Ol' Reliable on the range, I vowed never again to be within a thousand yards of a
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West Pointer with a loaded modern-day equalizer in his hand.”

“I don't think I follow you, sir.”

“Bodyguards have to carry guns, Phil. That's not just in Regulations, if you think about it, it actually makes sense.”

“Sir, are you, when you say ‘ol' .45' and ‘ol' Reliable' and ‘modern-day equalizer' perchance referring to the U.S. Pistol, Caliber .45 ACP M1911A1?”

“You've heard of it, have you, son? They showed you—but didn't permit you to actually hold—one in Basic Training?”

“With which weapon, sir . . . perhaps you had better sit down . . . I qualified as High Expert on the seven- and twenty-five-yard KD ranges, and on the Pistol Simulated Combat Range. In rapid-fire mode on the latter, I put six of the seven rounds of my magazine into the life-sized human silhouette target's left eye at fifty yards, sir. I flinched, and one shot went in the target's nose.”

SSA Caldwell didn't reply for a long moment, during which he stared intently at Phil.

Finally, he said, “I am ashamed for doubting you as I did, even if only for a long moment until I realized that Saint Malachi Old Boys, even young Old Boys, such as you, never tell whoppers like that one to other Saint Malachi Old Boys unless they're true.”

He put out his hand, and then went on, “Phil, my bodyguard, from this moment, my life is in your capable hands. Let's go find you a
gun.”

VII

PREPARING FOR THE HUNTING TRIP (PART 3)

[ ONE ]

Muddiebay, Mississippi

Wednesday, September 10, 1975

W
ith the exception of Carol-Anne Crandall, the individual looking most eagerly forward to hanky-panky during what had formally become “The Tuesday Luncheon Club's European Excursion” was Mary-Louise Frathingham, co-proprietor—with her husband, Amos—of Muddiebay Exotic & Exciting Vacations Travel, Inc.

Although they presented to the world a picture of a loving, long-married couple who shared not only a business relationship but a trusting and faithful personal one, the latter was not exactly true.

Both did indeed see in “The Excursion” both a cornucopia of kickbacks from all the providers of services to the Excursion-ees plus the chance to direct to ME&EVT, Inc., a great deal of business they didn't presently have. The latter would come primarily, presuming
things were handled properly, from Mr. Randolph C. Bruce, his business associate Señor Pancho Gonzales, and Cadwallader Howard III, president of the Muddiebay Mercantile Company.

Mary-Louise had told Amos of her intention to get close to Randy Bruce during The Excursion for that purpose. Not knowing how really close Mary-Louise intended to get, Amos said he thought it was a splendid idea. He said if she worked on Randy Bruce, he would work on getting close to Cadwallader Howard III to the same end. After thinking about it for a moment, Mary-Louise decided Amos meant with regard to getting more business for ME&EVT, Inc., and nothing else. For one thing, Amos wasn't inclined that way, and for another the
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had his lecherous eye on Bobbie-Sue Smith, the stockbroker's wife.

Mary-Louise had started to think about getting close to Randy Bruce while attending a Special Ladies Only Matinee showing of an old motion picture starring Errol Flynn at the Muddiebay Palace Theatre, Bowling Alleys & Flea Circus.

While it was true that she'd had a couple of beers in the bowling area bar before perusing the flea circus offerings, and had smuggled a third can into the theater concealed in a Jumbo Cola insulated cup, when she thought about it later, it was not alcohol but rather a mental glitch that caused her to envision what she had envisioned.

In the film, Errol Flynn, playing a nobleman turned pirate, had given up his life of high seas criminal to come to the aid of Queen Bess, a/k/a “The Virgin Queen,” when the Spanish Armada was approaching the White Cliffs of Dover with evil intent.

There was a scene in which Flynn, attired in what on a female would have been white panty hose, knelt before Her Majesty. She laid a sword on his shoulder and ordered, “Go and save the British Isles from the Spanish monsters!”

To which Errol Flynn replied, “I hear and obey, Your Virgin Majesty!”

Her Majesty then tapped him on both shoulders and proclaimed, “Rise, Sir Richard!”

He did so, and looked soulfully into the Virgin Queen's eyes.

At that point, Mary-Louise had two thoughts, one being that Mr. Flynn's costume in the groin area was much too small for him. The second thought inexplicably called the diminutive of “Richard” to her mind.

Several scenes later, Mr. Flynn appeared again. He was bare-chested and carrying a sword as he swung on a rope from his ship onto the deck of one of the Spanish ships.

Moments later, as he began to behead Evil Spaniards with his sword, Mary-Louise noticed he was attired only in a leather loincloth, and again for some reason Mary-Louise inexplicably recalled the diminutive of “Richard.”

“Death to those dirty Spaniards who would despoil my Virgin Queen!” Errol Flynn/Sir Richard declared as he lopped the head off another would-be despoiler.

What apparently had happened then was that Mary-Louise's mind had put that information together with some that was already stored. Among that information, especially, was an idle comment made by one of Amos's cronies at their regular Wednesday Evening Fifty Cent Limit poker game. Mary-Louise had been innocently eavesdropping on the poker game in the hope that she would hear Amos boast to the boys about his relationship with Bobbie-Sue Smith. All she knew for sure about that was that whenever the
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was within fifty feet of Bobbie-Sue, he started breathing heavily and began to stroke his pencil-line mustache with his pinkie finger.

Bobbie-Sue did not come up in the gentlemen's conversation.
Randolph C. Bruce did, to wit: “I'm not surprised that
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Randy Bruce gets so much
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. I saw the
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in the shower at the Muddiebay Country Club. The
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is hung like a
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horse.”

The synapses in Mary-Louise's brain coordinated this data and the images and then flashed a combined image, a collage, so to speak, to Mary-Louise's visual senses, her theater of the mind, so to speak. That imagery caused her to spill most of the
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beer in the
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Jumbo Cola insulated cup into her
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lap.

The image was of Sir Randy Bruce, in white panty hose, one hand wielding his sword to behead Spaniards, and the other trying to stuff his you-know-what back into the panty hose from which it had burst free.

From that moment, she had trouble keeping the image from her mind. This was true even while she was making other arrangements for The Excursion. While she was anxious of course to recruit others for The Excursion, to fill up the Twenty-Plus-Two, she was careful not to make the pitch to any of The Tuesday Luncheon Club girls in whom Randy, even in his cups, would be at all interested.

Mary-Louise was now determined to have Randy, whom she now thought of as “Sir Randy,” all to herself at least once or twice for at least an hour of illicit union. She thought this might be possible in London, but it wouldn't be easy.

She had quickly come to a Twenty-Plus-Two arrangement with Claridge's Hotel, and they had been very obliging insofar as room assignment was concerned. She and Amos would be at the center of their rooms on the third floor of the famed London hotel, so to speak. Sir Randy would be on one side of the Frathingham room and Señor Gonzales and his niece on the other. The other ladies and their husbands would be housed across the corridor according to seniority,
with the ugliest and oldest females closest, and the youngest and better-looking farther away.

Bobbie-Sue would find herself at the end of the corridor. Mary-Louise was a little worried about Bobbie-Sue. Ferdinand Smith was a stockbroker, and a stockbroker would stop at nothing to pick up a new gambler in capitalism. That certainly included telling his wife to be very nice to someone who could put a lot of chips into the pot of Wall Street, like Randolph C. Bruce.

Neither could Mary-Louise dismiss the possibility that Bobbie-Sue had also heard that Randy had been very generously treated in the package department.

The first priority of almost all the girls who weren't thinking about hanky-panky on foreign shores was, of course, shopping, and Mary-Louise had spent long hours contacting retail merchandising establishments in London. Most of them, including Harrods, Marks & Spencer, and Selfridges, had been very obliging with regard to the ten percent “steerer's fee” Mary-Louise had asked for.

The second priority of almost all the girls was visiting Buckingham Palace. Mary-Louise understood this interest, which would allow them, once they returned to Muddiebay, to casually drop into their conversations with the less privileged that they had done so, e.g.,
The last time I was at Buckingham Palace, I learned that tea, Earl Grey, of course, is even better when brewed without those lower class toilet tissue bags one sees here, and is instead brewed au naturel and then poured through a sterling silver strainer into one's cup
.

Or,
The last time I was at Buckingham Palace, or “Buck House” as we frequent visitors call it, I learned that H.M.'s Little Darlings, by which I mean Her Majesty's Corgis, really like to snack on bangers, which is what we Buck House frequenters call hot dogs and not what it sounds like
.

Et cetera.

Here Mary-Louise ran into a problem that she had not yet resolved.

After two letters to Buckingham Palace to ensure she would get her standard ten percent finder's fee had gone unanswered, she had gotten on the phone. She was put through to the Palace, but when she asked to speak to the person in charge, and the person on the line asked “in regard to what?” and she told him, he laughed, said, “Bugger off, Yank, and sober up!” and then hung up.

After this happened three times, Mary-Louise decided it was a problem she would deal with once they got to Old Blighty, even if that meant slipping a few bucks into the hands of the guys with the funny hats who guarded the portals, and that in the meantime she would extol the virtues of Abercrombie Castle to the ladies. The pictures of the castle that came up in her research showed that it was just about as large as Buckingham Palace, and when she showed them to the ladies, they were delighted.

Getting the ladies in there, Mary-Louise decided, would be a snap. Randy had told her the pheasant and grouse shooting would take place on the grounds of the palace and that she didn't have to trouble herself with the financial arrangements as he would handle that himself as “Bertie and Maggie, the gamekeepers,” were old friends of his. All she would have to do, Randy said, was collect the thousand-dollars-per-shooter fee from the Excursion-ees, give it to him, and he would handle getting the money to the gamekeepers.

All she was going to have to do, Mary-Louise decided, once she had lured Randy into her bed, was get him to ask his friend the chief gamekeeper to let the ladies into the castle. She thought that if she could get Randy into a good mood—and she certainly intended to try—he might even reconsider his blunt refusal to even consider giving Mary-Louise her standard ten percent finder's fee.

[ TWO ]

I
n sunny Miami, Señor Pancho Gonzales had had time to consider his last conversation with Randy, during which Randy had pointed out that no one was going to believe that Ginger Gallagher was his niece and that he had announced he had no intention of letting Ginger
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up his romantic plans.

He gave the problem more thought. Even if he took Ginger to Scotland, and ol' Phil was there, there was no way Ginger was going to feign a mysterious illness treatable only by Harley Street medical professionals and allow herself to be flown to London for treatment.

If ol' Phil was in Scotland, that's where Glamorous Ginger was going to be. If she couldn't get ol' Phil in the sack, it would be her first failed seduction in her entire twenty-five years, and she had her reputation to uphold.

He concluded that, for once, Randy was right about something: Ginger could not go to Scotland, or even to Atlanta or London as waypoints on the way to Scotland. Ginger was going to have to stay in Miami.

Pancho bit the bullet, so to speak, and called Ginger in her penthouse apartment, which overlooked Biscayne Bay. He told her that on reflection he had come to conclude that her going to England and Scotland was not such a good idea.

“I must beg to disagree,” Ginger said. “First, Pancho, I should tell you that I have just finished reading Dear Phil's latest book,
Love and
Lust in the Kremlin Necropolis
, which confirmed yet again my belief that Tolstoy, Dickens, Hemingway, and Pat O'Malley are vastly overrated.

“My dream now is to sit at the master's feet, or perhaps in his lap,
and absorb through osmosis, or, preferably some other more intimate contact, some of his saintly genius.

“Since Master Philip is going to be in Scotland, perhaps researching a book on the subject of Zen and pheasant shooting, I am going to be in Scotland, and you, you
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fried banana eater, are going to take me to him, or you will wish that you had fallen off of that
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shrimp boat on which you escaped from
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Cuba with five
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dollars and the shirt on your
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back and
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drowned. Please tell me that we understand each other, Pancho, baby.”