Goldfarb felt a hand squeezing his arm, heard the tragic voice of Guz: “I’m truly sorry, my friend, but your suicide kit has been destroyed.”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE PRESIDENT rocked furiously, a newspaper spread-eagled in his hands. Overreach, reading over his shoulder, leaned in for a closer—“Oww!” The leading edge of the rocker had crushed his toe on the backswing.
The President turned and glared at him. Then he slapped at the newspaper. “Is that all you’re doing?”
“Under the circumstances, all we dare,” countered Overreach quickly, striving to look omniscient while clasping his foot.
“All—we—dare!” echoed the President.
“Complete coverage!” snapped the head of CIA. “Every newspaper in Asia!”
“But——”
The President eyed the jutting jaw, looked down at the hand clasping the foot, then looked away. “What’s the use!” he muttered dismally. “Mother of God, what’s the use!” His head drooped to his chest and a recent edition of the Calcutta Clarion slipped from limp fingers to the rug. It was open to the classified section. An ad under the “personals,” in conservative, eight-point type, had been circled in red pencil:
* * *
JOHN GOLDFARB, PLEASE COME HOME!
(signed) “Mother”
* * *
Chapter Twenty-two
THE HAREM was in an uproar. Miss Beaver was now openly inciting the inmates to refuse to bow to Mecca.
“God ain’t no Mecca nor any other heathen idol!” she raved from atop a baby grand in the music room, unburdening her breast of a sheaf of pamphlets. “Now you read this here lit’rature,” she began, and was promptly pelted with a barrage of dates and melba toast hurled by jeering haremites secretly glad of the diversion.
“I am not angry; I pity you,” braved Miss Beaver piously, batting aside the whizzing missiles with a rolled up copy of the Watchtower and then slipped, hammering out a full octave with her inordinately large, bare foot. “I pity, pity, pity you!” In the stereo section several of the angrier young women were readying an improvised mortar that would hurl long-playing Arabic records with reasonable accuracy. They sang as they worked.
The echoes of religious riot pinged into the reading room, where Jenny delicately spat out a grape seed and continued with her interview of the German girl, a pig-tailed Brünnhilde named Astrid Porsche.
“So your mother turned you out of the house when you were fifteen; then what?”
“Vell,” sighed the girl, “den comes der var, you know.”
“I know.”
“Jah. Und den I meet such a nice chentleman, from der Ministry of Propaganda. Ach, such a mouth! But very nice, you know; always he brings me lollipops und Changing Times.”
“Hm-hm.”
“Jah.”
“And then?”
“Und den he asks vat I am doing for der var effort. I say to him, I am chust a girl, fifteen. Bah, he tells me: I should at least prepare to help mit der vounded.”
“What wounded?”
“Dat he don’t tell me.”
“Oh.”
“Den he talks to me aboud artificial res-pir-a-tion.” A glassy look came over her, and she was clearly reminiscing.
Samir loomed above them. “Lady!”
Jenny looked up. “I know the movie for tonight.”
“No movie. King want to see you one hour.”
Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “What for?”
Samir looked inscrutable. “Interview,” he uttered. Then he bowed and vanished into the abyss of his mysticism.
Jenny stared at Miss Porsche. “Have you been interveiwed yet?”
Miss Porsche was in another world.
“Have you been interviewed yet?”
Miss Porsche awoke. “Nein,” she uttered.
Through an arch, vaguely, Jenny glimpsed Sable in the music room and rose to join her. She was tossing grapes at Miss Beaver, who had now taken refuge behind a harp, twanging faintly as her face pressed against the strings.
Jenny nudged Sable. “Have you been interviewed yet?”
Sable leered demurely. “’Ave I ever!” She hurled a muscat, rich in color and texture.
“What was it like?”
Sable stared at her oddly. “You the kind that gets kicks out of talkin’ about it?”
Something wrong here, thought Jenny. Wrong. Something. “What did he ask you?”
“Ask? What ask! ’E’s the King, all ’e does is gloat!”
Dry, dry was her mouth. Creep. Creep up on it. Maybe it won’t see you. “Sable—how old is the King?”
Sable flung her entire cluster of grapes, missing juicily. “Seventy, eighty—I dunno. But ’e must ’ave Swedish doctors. I knew a dock worker once in Wales could beat ’is record but——”
Jenny screamed. Screamed, screamed, swooning, falling into Sable’s amazed arms.
“Glory be to God, one of you has seen the light!” brayed Miss Beaver, extending her arms beseechingly through the harp strings. “Bring the poor child to me!” The crowd grew maddened and moved in on her menacingly.
Sable walked Jenny to a hassock. “What is it, ducks? Somethin’ I said?”
Jenny nodded, her hand over her mouth. Sable probed gingerly at her mounting suspicion like a boy reaching into a bird’s nest. “Ducks? Ducks, are you—? I mean, haven’t you ever——?”
Jenny shook her head violently.
“Lor’ strike me blind!” marveled Sable. “You must’ve cost the old coot a bloody for-tune!”
Jenny stuffed the corner of a cushion into her mouth. Sable touched her shoulder gently. “’Ere now, it ain’t as bad as all that. Once ya get used to that one big eye starin’ down at ya it’s downright en——”
Jenny leaped to her feet and ran yipping through the harem, yipping through the door and thwack! Into the arms of Samir.
The eunuch seized her shoulders. “Lady! What?”
Jenny eyed him with horror. “You’re a brown slaaaaaver!” she bawled.
Samir shook her roughly. “Please, lady! Explain!”
“Your friend Mahmoud!” she babbled hysterically. “He lied to me! Lied, lied, lied to me!”
“But—?”
“He said the King wasn’t interested! Pres-tige! Show the flag! FLAG?!” she shrieked. “HE SAID THE KING WAS AT HALF MAST!”
Samir clapped a hand over her mouth and scruted the corridor apprehensively. “Please, you are talking crazy!”
Jenny ripped away the hand. “Well, I’m not crazy enough to hang around here, Fabian!” She poked a finger into his chest. “I’m ready!”
“Ahhh!” Samir, looking relieved, smiled indulgently. “Patience; in one hour!”
Jenny hit him across the mouth. “Not ready for that, you boob; I’m ready to leave!”
Samir took a shocked step backward. “Not possible! Cannot! I must have time to make ready de way!”
“Uh-huh? Swell! Meantime, you tell ‘Sportin’ Life’ that Number 28 won’t play!”
She turned on her heel, but Samir pulled her back, his eyes cold with fear. “You crazy, lady? De King would cut for us de whole neck entirely!”
Jenny’s hand flew to her throat.
“Or worse!” added Samir.
Suddenly it came to Jenny that life was real, life was earnest, and that King Fawz was not Chris Bright. “Honest Injun?” she croaked.
“Whatever,” confirmed Samir. “Nice lady,” he coaxed; “make ready now to see King.” He walked away from her jangling; he did not feel keen.
Jenny shuffled dazedly back into the harem, seeing but unseeing and not really caring. With the uncanny instinct of the blind, she stepped woodenly over the prostrate body of Miss Beaver, who lay writhing on the floor, bound and gagged with strips of shredded damask. As Jenny passed over her, she weebled faintly.
Chapter Twenty-three
THE IMAM’S slitted eyes probed the assemblage of wise toes like a cold wind whistling through sweaty July
. “What news of Ibn Caliban?”
“None,” answered Uris, who had drawn the short straw. “Samir still lives.”
The Imam cleared his throat. “Asps are temperamental.”
“Exceeding!” agreed Uris with alacrity.
The Imam bit his tongue; he had made it too easy for him. He stabbed a fingernail into a passing tarantula, who had never given a thought to such questions as right-of-way. “What do you think?” asked the Imam maliciously, for it was his most general and dangerous question.
The seer named Uris picked his words with care. “It reeks of a Zionist plot.”
“It is worse than a Zionist plot!”
“What could be worse than a Zionist plot?”
“Shut up!”
“I see.”
There was an extended, perilous silence. And when the Imam finally spoke, his voice was ominously soft. “Now I would like to re-examine this whole business of the parachute.…”
Toes writhed piteously.
Chapter Twenty-four
FAWZ STOOD throbbing in a blue cloud of curses. He could not get the can of spray deodorant up the sleeve of his gown.
Sibbing and struggling, the King thrust and prodded; and ripped an inner lining. For one dangerous moment he stood motionless; then savagely he rammed the can through the opening at his neck, straining, groping.…
Whooooshhhhhhhhh!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” Foos! I’ll order a gross! (he never thought in dialect.)
There came a knocking at the door.
Hah!
Fawz ran to his golf cart, leaped into it, and rested his chin on the back of his hand, striving to look like Ramon Navarro. Then he noticed that he still clutched the can of deodorant. Farooba! Not pretty! Not kingly! Not Fawz! He bolted out of the cart and tucked the can under a bed pillow; then immediately thought better of it. He retrieved the can hastily and thrust it twanging through strings into the throat box of an oud, which he tossed onto a hassock, and then flew leaping back into the cart.
“Come, come!” he gleed, as he lowered his head to compose his robes. Suddenly he was aware of a presence. He sniffed, his great mastiff of a nose wrinkling with revulsion. Then he looked up and saw Jenny. Her eyes were crossed, her knees were bowed and her toes pigeoned inward. Her hair was the weed that grows on dried-up creek beds. She was also a walking clove of garlic.
“Eeeeeee-yech!” observed the King as tactfully as possible.
“Hi, fellah!” Jenny waved at him, her voice the mad rasp of an illiterate raven. “What a layout!” she croaked, her gaze surveying both sides of the room simultaneously in bisecting lines. Then she looked gleefully at the bed. “That’s it, hey? Wowee! King-size!” She leaped onto the mattress, bouncing up and down with mad shrieks of laughter that would have given Rochester’s wife fresh hope for togetherness. Then she threw herself on her back, her head cradled against clasped hands so that she could eye the King idiotically through her feet. “Okay, big boy, where’s the action?”
A stunned Fawz contemplated the sooty black soles of her bare feet like Toscanini discovering Jerry Lewis in his first-violin section.
She wriggled grimy toes. “Whatsamatter, cat gotchyer tongue?”
The King’s eye glistened with horror.
“Ain’tchyer gonna sing ‘Desert Song’ or somethin’? Hah? ‘Home on the Range?’ ‘Leather-Wing Bat?’”
Fawz could not utter. Not a word, not a foos.
Jenny leaped up, pulled a wad of gum from her mouth and pressed it against the bedpost. Then, “Wait a minute,” she reconsidered aloud; “not too sanitary.” She pulled at the wad, and it yielded up its sticky substance in long, thin strings. “Judas!” croaked Jenny Ericson and, pressing the gum back onto the bedpost, she leaned in her head and bit it off. Then she stomped to the hassock, gum and splinters protruding from her sloppily painted lips. She picked up the oud and stuck the gum against its stem. Something rattled faintly. Jenny held the oud closer to her ear, shaking it violently.
“Whatchyer got here?” she screeched. “Mice? Rats? King-size bedbugs?”
She heard the golf cart accelerating violently and turned in time to see gold-lamé robes swirling out of the room. From the corridor came the drone of the cart: hurtling, zooming, careening away, in its wake the faint falling of plaster.
Jenny collapsed onto the hassock. A thin geyser of spray spurted upward from the oud.
* * *
Fawz burst into the harem with a screech of burning rubber and hurled a look of doom at Samir. Then he swooped wantonly upon the prostrate, writhing form of Miss Beaver and, finding her fetching in her bonds, the perfect response to his mood, he leaned over powerful arms and scooped her into his lap, bursting into the hall again with a cackle of sin triumphant. He did not think twice about her gag or bound limbs, for he assumed that such conveniences were expressly planned for him by Providence; he was King, and rank had its privileges.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Down the corridor, faster, faster! Fawz rounded a corner with a screech.
Glimml! A pedestrian!
Brakes screamed and the girl in the corridor flattened herself against a wall, face first. Fawz seized her arm, gearing for a reprimand, and whipped her around.
Ech! What foos was this?!
“Your Majesty!” quavered Jenny Ericson. It had happened too quickly. She was unfortunately—except for the smell—her lovely self.
“Ah-haaaaah!” exclaimed Fawz with a mischievous eye. He wagged a playful finger at her. “You play trick!”
“Who, me?”
“Hoo hoo hoo—you!” He prodded her navel with an exploratory forefinger.
Jenny began to blubber. “Your Majesty—please, I’ve—I’ve never—done it before!”
The King’s eye grew hot with the combined lust of every grunion hunter who has ever lived.
Jenny instantly realized her mortal error. “I mean I——”
“Shurrup, poosey-kat! You very special! Very, very special!”
Fawz scruted Miss Beaver like something he had picked up at a white-elephant sale. But he found her eyes strangely placid, even eager, above her gag, and he opted against dumping her. It was one of his usual lightning decisions.
“Hee!” he glipped at wild-eyed Jenny. “Tomorrow night!” And pausing only to fondle Miss Beaver in a refreshingly unambiguous manner, he accelerated away, droning, gloating.
Jenny stared after him, stunned and sick and frightened and whimpering. “Oy vay!” she uttered, and then quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, wondering who might have heard.
* * *
Miss Beaver’s first words, when her gag was removed, were, “Repent, repent, you foolish, foolish King!” Fawz ripped away her bra, loosing a shower of fluttering tracts.
Chapter Twenty-five
A CHILL December gust stirred fresh mutterings in a heel-smudged newspaper fluttering on the sidewalk; whipped an empty cigarette package against Meyer Mu Meson’s weary ankle. One A.M. He shifted the protest placard to the other shoulder, and his face pressed against the iron palings surrounding the White House grounds. It was such a lovely dinner, he thought. So much good talk. And warm. Yes, warm. His free hand pulled the high muskrat collar tighter around his neck.
The President’s mansion hulked dark through the trees. Not a light was burning, except in the ground-floor executive office. Mu Meson could make out the solitary figure of the President hunched wearily over his desk, his head cupped in his hands. Yes, a splendid dinner.… Mu Meson was getting hungry again. From his coat pocket he withdrew a handkerchief, tastefully embossed with whirling red electrons vivid against a field of white mice, and he extracted the last of the cookies, wondering how the President would feel about putting a few goodies in a brown-paper bag.
Mu Meson heard the wail of an infant and looked up. He saw the President lift his head and stare up at the ceiling of his room. Suddenly light flooded the window of the room above, and the physicist could make out the silhouette of a woman moving into it, throwin
g on a robe. Abruptly the crying ceased. The President put his head back into his hands.
“Coffee, sir?”
Mu Meson stared gratefully at the White House sentry, and accepted the steaming mug, so warm to his hand. “Look,” he began, “do you think that one of the kitchen crew might…?”
Inside, at his desk, the President loosed soft murmurings into his cupped hands. “Let’s debate, I said; let’s debate. I couldn’t leave well enough alone.…” He twitched uncomfortably, then reached down and pulled something out from under him. He hurled the pair of jodhpurs across the room, and then returned to his maunderings.
The intercom buzzer sounded. The President lifted a weary head and flicked a switch. “Yes?”
“Mr. President, the Secretary of State.”
“Okay.” He flicked it off and contemplated his desk blotter.
Deems Sarajevo lanced in on little cat feet, bowing stiffly from the waist and looking grave. “Mr. President?”
“Deems,” muttered the President without looking up, “there’s a line that goes: ‘Somewhere the sun is shining…’ You’re a big foreign-service man; tell me where.”
Sarajevo’s accents were bleak. “Surely not in Fawzi Arabia, sir.” He knew the proper tilt of the head, the subtle intonation of the voice. The son of a millionaire industrialist whose fortune was based on the invention of a jamless zipper, he had knocked about the little-theater circuit before drifting into teaching. His Harvard accent, a gleaming ability to imitate Robert Donat playing Mr. Chips, and a trick of answering his students’ questions with still another question had combined to mold from the clay of his nescience a glowing academic reputation. It was not altogether true that his appointment as Secretary of State was repayment of his father’s contributions to various election campaign funds. It was simply marvelous casting. Otto Preminger would have given his right arm for him to appear in “Advise and Consent.”*