The Vice-President spoke up quickly. “Because their——”
“Shut up!” bawled the President; “I’m asking him!”
“Because pigskin is anathema to them,” continued Whitepaper piously. “It would be considered a mortal insult.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!” The President was rocking furiously again.
“Why wasn’t I briefed?” yelped the Vice-President.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” rapped Overreach. “You’re not pinning this one on me!”
“Why not?” jeered the Vice-President. “You’ve already been pinned more times than the Sweetheart of Sigma——”
“Cut it out!” bellowed the President, leaping to his feet. Then his tone grew severe and he wagged a warning finger in Whitepaper’s face. “Now you, Whitepaper; you’re supposed to be on top of things in that area. In a few weeks the old King may cool off and then we can pick up the pieces—maybe. But in the meantime, I expect utmost care and precaution in seeing to it that no incident, no matter how trifling, crops up again in Fawzi Arabia. You hear? No matter how trifling!”
“Amen,” responded Whitepaper, who was no fool.
Chapter Ten
“YOU’RE SURE you can do it?”
“A trifle, lady, a trifle.”
It was dusk and they sat on the wide white steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Behind them the Great Emancipator sat frozen in marble brood, bathed in soft light. Jenny Ericson, munching popcorn, licked salt from her fingers and complained. “Your fee is no trifle.”
“But lady!” whined the man. “Consider de risk I take!” Fat-nosed and fifty, he was spotted, rumpled elegance in fez and blue pin-striped suit. His jewel-encrusted tie clasp was dull with the yellow stain of his breakfast egg, and his face was walnut ice cream on a hot day in August. He was Mahmoud, royal procurer for the harem of King Fawz, and in his day had surprised many a streetwalker. “You know de penalty for t’eft in my country?” he bleated. “Dey cut off your hand. And in a——” He broke off, eying her popcorn hungrily. “Can I haff one uff dose?”
Jenny held out the popcorn bag, dark with the stains of butter, and Mahmoud gratefully dug out a handful. “In a case like dis,” he resumed, “if dey find out I smuggle a newspaper lady into de harem, well—dey cut off——” He tossed some popcorn into his mouth and emitted uncertain throat noises.
She eyed him like Carry Nation spying W. C. Fields in his jockstrap on a peak in Darien. “How perfectly revolting!”
“And how, you sa’d it!” Mahmoud reacted with feeling.
“Now how are you going to get me in?”
“Wit’ one uff de regular shipments.”
“Shipments! You collect harem girls in shipments?”
Mahmoud, picking his teeth with a forefinger, felt faintly irritated. “De King gets tired uff de same faces, you understand; we haff a big turnover. I haff to deal in volume.”
Jenny coughed butter and salt. “Now wait a minute!” She fell to coughing again and Mahmoud pounded her on the back, but she shrank from his touch and sat at a challenging distance. “You—you told me the King wasn’t—interested!”
“Dat’s right, dat’s right! On my heart, I swear it!” he avowed, his hand flying to his breast. “He’s an old man, lady; de women, he keeps dem for—for—prestige! Show de flag and all dat! Once I get you inside de harem no one will bodder you! You will live like de odder girls and take all de pictures you want!”
She relaxed.
“Only please lady—be careful! If dey see a camera——!” Mahmoud’s finger described a slashing arc across his throat.
Jenny Ericson laughed softly. That kind of danger was her meat; she thrived on it; it seemed to fill some gaping void in her life.
She flashed a miniature camera slung from a chain around her neck. “Don’t worry,” she smirked at Mahmoud. “A miniature.”
“Oh!” He leaned his head in. “Japanese?”
“German.”
He immediately lost interest and eyed the popcorn bag again. “Lady, could I——?”
Jenny thrust out the bag, and as Mahmoud’s fingers scrabbled around noisily, she looked over her shoulder at the sad face of Lincoln. “Harems,” she mused aloud. “I wonder what he would have thought of them.”
Mahmoud leaped to his feet like a bolt of outraged innocence, making sure to seize the bag on his way. “Look—lady!” he yelped. “I am not a white slaver! De girls want to go, girls from all ofer de world, dey are paid a fortune!”
Jenny stood up facing him. “You’re positive—absolutely positive about the King?”
Mahmoud held the popcorn bag over his heart. “Putting your confidence in me.”
Butter stained his lapel.
Chapter Eleven
MILES WHITEPAPER tugged at his ear lobe with great delicacy, a quality that characterized even his indifferent actions. The forty-year-old end product of three generations of American diplomats, his soul wore gray cutaways and he brushed his teeth in the manner of one arranging peace talks on an unidentified warship. He loved to say “Boxer Rebellion.”
“Yookoomian,” he muttered into the silence of his office.
Ashley stepped in quietly from the outer room. “Yes, Mr. Whitepaper?”
When his Sub U. doxy’s father had taken a high post in Washington, she had pressed him to “place” Ashley “in government somewhere.” And so their trysts continued unabated as Ashley postponed, for the time being, his plans for the establishment of a new cult in Los Angeles, having contented himself with burying a set of golden scrolls in the Hollywood hills, near the Greek Theater, against the glorious day when he would return and be “guided” to them by a “vision.” The scrolls proclaimed him a prophet and promised unspeakable death to widows who refused to sign over to him their wealth and worldly possessions.
“Yookoomian,” brooded Whitepaper, poring over the dossier on his desk. “The name ‘Jenny Ericson’… isn’t she the troublemaker?”
“Iceberg Ericson? Indeed, sirrah, indeed.”
Whitepaper looked up irritably. “‘Sir,’ Yookoomian, ‘sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why ‘Iceberg,’ Yookoomian?”
“That’s her nickname. She’s got others. The news hounds on the Hill call her ‘The Virgin Queen.’”
“A rather distasteful metaphor.”
“Not a metaphor, sir, a fact. She’s actually never been——”
“That will do!”
“Yes, sir.” Ashley shifted his stance and feigned interest. “Why did you ask, sir?”
Whitepaper adored the opportunity to play bigdome, and he did it in style. “In view of the situation in Fawzi,” he intoned pompously, “I’ve rescinded all visas for travel there. You recall I’d approved hers earlier. Now she’s appealing.”
Ashley looked intent and caring.
“I’m going to turn her down.”
“Very wise, sir.”
“Yes.” Whitepaper closed the Ericson folder gingerly. “She’s due here at three. I don’t want to see her. Handle it.”
* * *
At ten minutes to three, in the corridors of the State Department Building, John Goldfarb wandered bewildered, tentatively examining the legends on doors, now and then consulting the slip of paper clutched in his hand. He was lost and did not feel proud. He arrived at a confluence of four corridors and paused, baffled, then faced around stiffly in each direction like a Tyrolean in a Swiss clock, whirring faintly at the quarter hour. He started down one corridor, changed his mind, bumbled back and started down another. Then he returned to the confluence and checked the slip of paper again. Jenny Ericson, striding smartly, was past him by the time he noticed her, and “Miss,” he called, “I wonder if you could——”
She snubbed him deliberately. Pentagon wolves were the worst, the absolute worst, but these foreign-service cats were the slickest and most dangerous. She recalled how the U. S. Ambassador to Ceylon had once goosed her in a corridor and then suavely explained th
at in Ceylon it meant “Good morning.” Then there was that protocol officer from—— She stopped in her tracks. And turned. “Hey—aren’t you——?” She walked back slowly. “Sure!” she exclaimed. “Wrong-Way Goldfarb!”
The moment Goldfarb recognized her, the memory of love turned to hate crashed over him in ugly waves festooned with seaweed and jellyfish and things like that.
“Screw you,” he uttered, walking away from her.
“Hey,” yipped Jenny, following him. “What’s the big idea? I made you famous again.”
“Thanks for nothing, hack!”
“My pleasure, Wrong-Way!” She emphasized the word spitefully, and Goldfarb stopped and stared flaming bamboo splinters under the fingernails at her. “Blow it out your barracks bag, Iceberg. I believe that’s your nickname.”
“I believe you’re a horse’s nose.”
“Ah, go play with your tripewriter.”
They were not getting along.
Goldfarb turned away again, but Jenny plucked the slip of paper from his hand, jeering, “Lost again, little boy? Let Mommy help you!”
He grabbed for the paper. “Hey, give me that!”
She fended him off with a swat of her handbag and scruted the slip of paper. Then looked up with wild triumph. “Hahhaaah!” she squealed viciously. “You’re in the wrong building!”
John Wrong-Way Goldfarb snatched up the paper and ran. Ran, ran, through the narrow halls of a familiar nightmare. When he had vanished from Jenny’s sight, she licked her lips as though she were Queen Victoria and they had won the Victoria Cross.
Three minutes later a muffled squawk of outrage splatted all over the drapes in Whitepaper’s reception room. “What?” shrieked Iceberg Ericson.
“Well,” began Ashley again, “the situation is——”
“Look, Neville,” she interrupted, “you get in there and tell him I want to see him! Now! Or would you like Strife to start another little purge in the State Department?”
“But——”
“Come to think of it, you look like a pervert!”
The inner walls of Ashley’s stomach grinned. He felt strongly tempted to demonstrate the vivid extent of his normality here and now, the subject appearing suitable, but he was not yet ready to announce his prophetic mission. Best keep his job. He rose and evaporated into Whitepaper’s sanctum Araborum.
Jenny seized the moment. Her hands flew to her hair, deftly extracting bobby pins, and the schoolmarmish bun tumbled to her shoulders like instant Rapunzel. She whipped off her glasses, clicked them folded into her purse.
Ashley reappeared. “You may go——” He paused, eying her strangely. She smiled. “You may go in,” he finished. She moved past Ashley with a slow, rolling glide, an auburn-sailed felucca, quaint in the sun’s fading rays. The door closed behind her.
Ashley floated down into his chair with the lightness of a twig, leering knowingly: so under the glacier lurked a hot fox; a cunning, devious broad; a soul mate. Good luck, Goldilocks. Get your visa. I’ll never tell.… Ashley fixed dreamy eyes on the wall-to-wall world map opposite his desk. Red plastic flags spouted from crisis areas, making it almost impossible, actually, to read anything beneath that scarlet sea. Ashley’s fond eye lingered lovingly for a moment where Samoa should have been, then shifted to Tahiti, and he idly pondered the possibilities of future missionary work there, wondering whether tagging Marlon Brando as antichrist might not provide a truly fresh approach.… What was all that snickering in there? Oh. But of course. Iceberg was taking Miles Bigdome over the highs and lows. A good, loyal little flunky would warn him, clue him. But Ashley smarted from numerous indignities at the finely manicured hands of his foreign-service lord. Hadn’t he belittled him before the Secretary of State? Hadn’t he called him a donkey? Hadn’t he preferred Cassio for the lieutenancy? Hadn’t he——?
Whitepaper’s office door flew open, and Ashley’s chief appeared, cradling Jenny’s elbow in his hand. “Now do be careful, my dear,” he simpered. “Covering a gazelle hunt can be far more dangerous than you imagine.”
Hah, gloated Ashley, gazelle hunt, my ass!
“Oh, you’re sweet to worry about little old me,” cooed Jenny girlishly. “But I will stay far from the shooting, really I will.”
“Do, my dear, do; the Bedouins are atrocious marksmen.”
Fox, fox, fox, thought Ashley. And the tomb of Herod having been exhumed, naught was discovered but a tiny white skeleton and a red, bushy tail.…
“Meanwhile,” continued Whitepaper, “remember what I told you about washing your vegetables in Tide. Or Duz. Or whatever. And don’t drink water unless it’s been boiled.” He attempted a fatherly chuckle. “Can’t have our little reporter getting ‘gyppy tummy.’”
“‘Gyppy—!’ Oh, how dar-ling!” Her laughter was the tinkling of tiny temple bells, clear on the soft air of evening.
“Yes,” snickered Whitepaper. He felt encouraged and arched his eyebrow with comic expectation. “Delhi belly?” he ventured seductively.
“‘Delhi—?’ Oh, you State Department men,” she tittered; “you are the cleverest things. You must have such a time fooling around everywhere and all!”
“Yes, that’s the foreign service,” exhaled Whitepaper, striving to look symbolic of pax Americana.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Whitepaper.” She took a step into the hall. “You’ve been such a dear.”
“Your servant, Miss Ericson.”
“G’byyyye,” she lilted, waving.
“Au revoir!” he singsonged, waving.
“Sayon-a-ra,” she topped him, vanishing.
Whitepaper stared after her. “Yookoomian,” he uttered fondly, “a mere, sweet child.”
Neither poppy nor mandragora, gloated Ashley. But why not make it sporting? “You don’t think she’s trouble, sir?” Hint! Hint!
“Yookoomian,” snapped Whitepaper haughtily, “I’d like to see more of that kind of trouble in the Mideast.”
* * *
Goldfarb’s anger ebbed quietly in the taxi. It was all over now, he comforted himself; all over. Wrong-Way Goldfarb was dead. Henceforth he would be cloaked in the anonymous glory of a Scarlet Pimpernel, a Zorro, an Agent X-9. He glanced at the slip of paper again and wondered what Mr. Overreach had in mind.
Chapter Twelve
THE KING’S transistor surged above the din of conversing nobles in the throne room, and a gleeful Fawz sang along with the music: “Got no diamond, got no yacht…” This was the day; today Ammud returned, and the paramount sheiks of the kingdom had been collected for a formal reception. It was not the custom; it was merely the King’s whim. “… still I happy wit’ what I got, I got sun in morning and moon at night!” Fawz cackled raucously, then turned off the radio and began combing his beard. The comb was gold. The beard was ordinary human hair.
Outside the throne room, Guz scanned the corridors, nervous. If the plane were late there would be the devil to pay. He was thoughtfully hefting the green robe draped over his right arm, hoping for an early retirement, when his head turned at the sound of clattering feet along the hall. Ammud! The young man raced up to him and put an arm of greeting on his shoulder. Guz knelt before him, kissing his hand. “Your Highness, my heart fills with relief—er, joy.”
“And mine,” came a joyless answer. Ammud stripped off his brass-buttoned blue blazer.
“Your royal father cannot wait to see you!” bubbled Guz, rising and extending the green robe. The prince whipped it out of his hands, started to slip it over his shoulders and then froze, scruting it oddly. The ghost of an overwhelming sorrow haunted his eyes, the ghost of Samson fingering his crew cut and wishing it were yesterday. Guz caught the look. “His Majesty’s idea,” he explained. Ammud slowly pulled on the robe, the corners of his eyes beginning to moisten. Then he stepped into the throne room.
Horns triumphant baroomed and brattled, and the sheiks, stilling their gutturals, formed a path to the throne. Ammud glided through them, regal as a Banbury horse. Acr
oss the back of his green robe blazed the gold-stitched legend: NOTRE DAME.
Fawz drummed impatient fingers on the burnished arms of his throne, his one eye ablaze with joy. At last, at last! Ammud ascended the steps. He bowed formally and started to kneel, but old Fawz, crying out “Sucks to formalities!” leaped out of his chair and embraced him, his scarred cheeks wet with the salt of heart’s longing.
“Huzzah!” cried the sheiks with a single huz and, as the King waved a command over Ammud’s shoulder, the royal musicians, lurking behind potted palms, brazened the air with the wild, cacophonous rhythms of oud, drum and fife, and dancing girls leaped forward, snaking and writhing to the wild sounds of abandon, as hands clapped in time and throats roared approval. It was all very Arabic.
“Hah!” throated Fawz, holding his son at appraising arm’s length.
“Aiwah,” returned Ammud, avoiding his look.
“Come! Come!” cried Fawz in gleeful accents, pulling the boy over to a near casement and thrusting aside a sheik who was grappling unequivocally with a belly dancer. He pointed through the casement. “Look!” he boomed over the sounds of revelry. “Special for make practice! Make ready-ready for game!” He was pointing to the football field.
Ammud’s gaze brushed sadly over the gold lamé tackling dummies, the platinum goal posts gleaming in the sunlight. He swallowed hard. “Papa,” he braved bleakly, “not going to be game.”
Fawz looked frimmled.
“I not go back.”
“Eh?”
“They cut me from squad.”
“Eh?!”