Sex and the High Command (20 page)

“You’re getting warm,” the admiral said.

“Quadralingual?”

“You’re getting cool.”

“Cunnilingual?”

Primrose turned to Helga, smiling his pleasure. “It’s amazing how well-informed the younger generation is, nowadays.”

“I’m not too well-informed,” Joan Paula said, slumping down, teenager style, on the sofa. “All I remember from my French lessons is a title from a poem by John Keats,
La Jeune Fille avec Beaucoup Merci
.”

“Age before beauty,” Helga retorted, exercising her command presence. “But since she mentioned the poem, Admiral, do you find any significance in the four kisses that the knight placed on the lady?”

“Not until you asked me,” the admiral confessed.

Literary discussions bored Hansen, and he was relieved when Joan Paula leaned her head on Drexel’s shoulder and said, “Doctor, do you carry aspirins? Mama gives me a headache.”

“Young lady,” Helga said sharply, “if you have a headache, go to your room and lie down.”

“My air conditioner’s stuck.”

“Then, open the window, wide.”

“It’s stuck, too. Dr. Houston, can you operate on stuck windows?”

“I’m a stuck window surgeon.”

“I’ll need medical help in getting to my room.” She looked imploringly at HEW.

“I took an oath to help the suffering.”

As Joan Paula hobbled out with the aid of HEW, Hansen went into the study and rolled out the TV set, plugging it into the living-room jack. He then went into the master bedroom and brought out Helga’s portable, which he set up on the patio. As he tuned in, the announcer came on with a preliminary analysis of the convention. President Habersham was a certain choice for renomination in this historical first joint convention of the Republican and Democratic parties.

Admiral Primrose said there was no point in calling State in from the maze or Defense in from the basketball court since they were both appointees, only quasi-politicians, and would not be interested in the roll call of the states.

On the first ballot, Arkansas nominated its favorite son, Demorest Habersham, to cries of “Speech! Speech!”

Habersham rose. After warning banner bearers not to litter the hall with placards when the convention was over, he went into a talk about not being overconfident and girding oneself for a tough fight ahead. His speech was a hummer.

When a gentleman from Louisiana rose to nominate Senator Dubois, and introduced the patriarch as one of the fathers of the first joint convention, his remark drew prolonged laughter and finally a standing ovation which indicated to Captain Hansen that the senator’s powers of paternity were known to many besides Mr. Powers.

Listening to the delegates praise their favorite sons, Hansen didn’t see how McCormick’s name could ever get on the ballot but, surprisingly, the second roll call narrowed the field to two candidates as delegate after delegate fell in behind Habersham or Dubois.

On the third ballot, Habersham arose and made such a logical and persuasive speech asking for new young faces in the political arena that it seemed natural and sincere when he threw his ballot to McCormick. At the precise moment he stood back and pronounced “Angus Hull McCormick,” a banner unfurled downward to reveal a giant full-color portrait of McCormick in dress blues and wearing the fruit salad of a grateful nation across his left breast.

Most of the guests had wandered in from the playing fields and gardens by the third ballot. After the President’s nominating speech, Hansen went in to fix a fresh batch of martinis for the thirsty.

Sue and Caron were rinsing glasses. Hansen grabbed a towel and pitched in, hearing Sue say, “It was easy to guard against his fall-away jump shots, but he sunk a basket with a reverse lay-up when I had my back turned, so I allowed him two free throws. His first was masterful, but his second rolled around the rim.”

Joan Paula came in to see if she could be of help, but they were almost finished. Hansen asked about her headache.

“I feel wonderful. Drex didn’t have any aspirin, but he gave me an injection. Papa, if I took up nursing, do you think I could get into the Navy Nursing Corps?”

“I don’t think you’d like the bedpan brigades,” Caron answered, “but I’ll sound out the doctor to see if he knows any good nursing schools. Captain, have you a quiet spot I might lure the doctor to, to discuss your daughter’s career as a nurse?”

“The study’s empty, but Old Drex is glued to the television set.”

“I’ll unglue him,” Caron said, gliding out of the kitchen.

At the stroke of 2000, Joan Paula had the second martini of her life as she engaged in an animated conversation with Brockton Hall, whose interest in botany was showing. Joan Paula wagered that a morning glory would open from the light of a flashlight, and Hall called her bet. They got a flashlight from the kitchen and hurried to the rear garden wall where the morning glories grew.

Even as they left, Dubois was rising to transfer his state’s vote to McCormick, and he delivered one of his honeysuckle specials which closed on the deferential note which was his trademark. “And so I weave the twenty-two votes of that noble and gracious land of Louisiana into a garland, and place it on the brow of that fine young Southern gentleman whom you white folks need and deserve as President, Angus Hull McCormick.”

After Louisiana, it was a shoo-in. New York swung it to McCormick and the roll call became a formality.

Dr. Drexel and Caron came in from the study to get in on McCormick’s acceptance speech, and Hansen relaxed over his fifth martini to hear Sue Benson say to McWhorter Douglas, “I like any game that’s played with balls.”

Her remark gave the captain pause until he realized that the sturdy little athlete was challenging Labor to a game of Ping-Pong in the basement rumpus room. Labor figured they could get in a couple of quick games before the acceptance speech, and he was correct. There was another call of the states to make McCormick’s nomination unanimous, and Hansen went out to the patio to ring the triangle and summon his guests to hear McCormick’s acceptance speech. It was a good thing that the introductory speaker was so long-winded. It took all of twenty minutes for the guests to assemble.

There was an intake of breath from the ladies as McCormick walked onto the TV screen, and a sigh was expelled as he began to speak. In his gentle, warm, and intimate voice, he extolled the virtues of home and hearthside, of building a life together, of greetings and warm meals awaiting after a hard day’s work. Helga’s eyes misted over, and she reached out and squeezed the captain’s hand. McCormick had the audience in the palm of his hand, inside the convention hall and inside the Hansen living room.

Then, McCormick paused. The moment had come when he would request his running mate on the Vice-Presidential ticket.

“I am proud to request my friend and fellow Southerner, that noble and just patriarch, the Republican senator from…” He looked over at his idiot sheet. “From Florida.”

Well, Hansen reflected, the Republicans had done it again. Just as Primrose had predicted, they had nominated the wrong man.

Primrose turned to State. “That speech is the greatest thing you’ve done since the Northeast Asia Accord.”

“No, Admiral,” Cobb disputed him gently. “It’s the second-greatest thing I’ve done.”

In touching sympathy with the Secretary of State’s inner reverence, Caron Drake reached over and squeezed his hand. “You’re so capable, Ack-Ack,” she said.

Suddenly Helga sang out, loud and clear, “Girls, the admiral and I have sat here all evening. Before I prepare the buffet, why don’t we girls escort the admiral out and show him the grounds?”

Her suggestion brought unanimous applause and shrieks of delight from the ladies present.

“Gentlemen,” the admiral said, “it looks as if I’m being shanghaied. Would you keep an eye on the eleven o’clock news? I want a report on Dubois’ reaction.”

All the men gathered around the television set in silence as the admiral, with his escort of side girls, was squealed over the side.

Hansen, settling down to his sixth martini, felt like complimenting his male guests for their restraint. Under prevailing conditions of mass celibacy, he had feared improprieties inadvertently voiced, but circumspection had been the order of the evening. Even as he complimented his guests, inwardly, a few minutes before he passed out, a hint of death-row humor came in a remark from State.

“Wonder how Old Dalton Lamar’s making out in Tibet.”

Dalton Lamar had done well in Tibet until almost the precise moment of the Defense Secretary’s remark, which was made just before midnight, Friday, Washington time, but a little before noon, Saturday, Tibet time, near the settlement of Tsien La, population 19, elevation 15,826 feet.

At first, it had been a matter of getting acclimated. Not only was the hamlet far above timber line, it was above the optimum for Rocky Mountain goats. But after a man learned to walk and breathe at the same time, the air was bracing.

Overcoming linguistic barriers with sign language had been easy, but social mores were more difficult. At first, he had worked himself into an untenable position with the father of his present family by communicating with the wrong daughter, but he had extricated himself with a judo toss, no doubt a record for such things. He estimated its distance at 8,500 feet, roughly. Clouds below precluded a more accurate estimate.

It had taken only minutes for him to adjust to the odor of rancid yak butter which the girls used as hair ointment and as a skin lotion, although he still found himself moving to windward, occasionally, of the girl he happened to be courting.

By American standards, the diet was tedious for anyone who had not acquired a taste for yak. He ate yak steaks broiled over yak chips, with a side dish of yak curds followed by yak cheese and topped off by a cup of yak milk, but he enjoyed the life. He had formed an equitable division of labor with the working force of the village, a fourteen-year-old lad who tended the yak herd while Lamar entertained the ladies.

With his blue eyes and loving ways, he was a novelty in a land where over half the menfolk were priests and the name Dalton Lamar commanded respect. When he first crawled down the trail and announced himself, the late village elder had bowed deeply, and the other villagers had followed suit. They had thought him the Dalai Lama.

It wasn’t Shangri-La, but it was better than Washington, D.C., in the summer, and it was all his. Thus his territorial imperatives were clamoring that Saturday morning when he heard a drone and looked up to see a helicopter hovering over his mountain.

With the rotor blades invisible over the slender fuselage, the helicopter reminded him of a fingerling sidling up a stream of clear water, and at its altitude, it had to be Russian. It would spot the yak herd on the plateau, and if it chose to land, the yak boy would not have sense enough to lead them away from the women.

Lamar grabbed his rifle and headed for the pass.

This was Chinese territory, and the Russians were violating China’s airspace. If the Russki airmen were figuring on a female foray, he could shoot them and toss their bodies into India. Indians didn’t have jurisdiction over Russians murdered by Chinese.

His prechosen point of defense was a cluster of boulders around a shoulder of the cliff away from the village where the path to the grazing grounds widened to an area about sixty yards wide, the north half of which, in the shadow of the cliff, was a permanent snowfield. On the far side of the area, almost three hundred yards away, the path cut a narrow defile through a crest before it dropped down to the grazing plateau.

He made it to the boulders and crouched down, inspecting the helicopter through the telescope of his elephant gun.

The machine was hovering and losing altitude. At its present height, he couldn’t determine whether the pilot was attempting to land or dropping for a closer look, but under the magnification of his sights, the red star was missing from the fuselage. Very present, however, was the white globe on a blue field of the United Nations.

That neutral flag might fool the Chinks, he thought, but it was not about to fool Old Dalton Lamar.

His heart sank with the sinking aircraft. It was landing on his plateau. Once its rotor blades sank beneath the crest line, he adjusted his sights for two hundred yards and waited with growing eagerness and anger.

Lamar was not a rabid anti-Communist, but he was anti-male, and as long as he had to kill a man, he’d prefer to shoot a Russian or a Chinese rather than an Englishman or an Italian. He was rather happy they were not Italians. With a woman at stake, Italians, he suspected, would try harder.

He hoped the yak boy had sense enough to lead them to the next village, thirty miles away, but he stifled the hope. If the boy had that much sense, he’d have sense enough to deploy the Russians and advance on Lamar in a skirmish line.

With a clip in the rifle and three in his pockets, he figured he had more than enough ammunition to take care of a full load from the helicopter. Estimating their tactics, Lamar reasoned that they would come single file through the cleft with the yak boy in the lead as their guide. He didn’t want to kill the boy. If he did, he would be short-handed around the ranch.

First through the defile came a yak. It was a cow with distended udders, and indignation prodded Lamar’s anger at the sight. Not only were the Ivans after his women, they were forcing his boy to drive his heifer in for milking so they could have an evening of drinking and wenching at his expense.

After the yak came the yak boy, and at an interval behind the boy came a Russian, red star glinting on the fold of his fur cap, with his rifle at the ready.

Lamar sighted through his telescope, focusing his crosshairs on the soldier’s chest. At this range, his field of vision encompassed the whole soldier, and Lamar could see the face of a beardless youth, barely out of his teens. Those were the worst kind!

He squeezed off a bullet.

When the heavy-caliber slug hit the Russian’s chest, the soldier did a standing backflip with his rifle at the ready and rocketed back through the defile, the soles of his boots vanishing last. Immediately, there was an answering crack from a smaller-caliber rifle, and the yak boy pitched forward, shot from behind. Before the thunder of the elephant gun and the rip of the carbine ceased to echo from the peaks, two human beings lay dead.