Sex and the High Command (10 page)

“Well, Ben, what do you think of your new boss?” Flugel’s voice dropped from a bellow to a series of grunts.

“An admirable officer,” Hansen said.

“That’s a good, safe answer. I love the old son of a b - - - -! If anybody can round up a little a - - for my boys, it’s that old c - - - lapper, and it’s about time, too. Down around Quantico, they’ve quit calling us - - - - - - - - Marines. Now, they’re calling us the fist  - - - - - - - Marines.”

When Hansen was shown to his seat, Flugel introduced him to an Army general whose name he did not catch because the general was eager to recite a new limerick of his own composition to Flugel and Beauchamp. Hansen could hardly believe his ears.

On the bridge stood the young Duke of Buckingham,

Thinking of teats and of sucking ’em.

While observing the stunts

Of the c - - - - in the punts

And the tricks

Of the - - - - - - -

Who were - - - - - - - ’em.

Flugel he could understand. Profanity was a part of the act with the Marine, but these officers were talking like sailors after a long sea voyage.

Admiral Beauchamp leaned over and said, “Say, Generals, did you hear the one about the strip-tease artist…” when an officer near the entrance called them to attention.

Admiral Primrose entered, accompanied by the Secretary of Defense. Primrose’s deeply inset eyes, brooding now, were cold and remote, his frame was held rigidly, arching slightly backward, and it carried his head atop it like the bust of Julius Caesar. Toward the dais was striding the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, every whit as impressive as Napoleon on the heights above Austerlitz, Stonewall Jackson riding into Port Royal, or Robert E. Lee in repose. “Carry on, gentlemen. Be seated,” he said.

As the audience sat, the admiral handed a gavel from the lectern to the Defense Secretary. “Today, gentlemen, the duties of the chair will be assumed by the Secretary of Defense.”

Hansen was close enough to hear Pickens say, “Sug, you’re throwing me to the wolves.” As Pickens spoke, it struck Hansen that Primrose had not reached his position by ingratiating himself with civilians; he had reached the top because he was the toughest and most able of a tough and able group of men.

Oglethorpe Pickens rapped the gavel. “Gentlemen, before I call this meeting to order, I want you all to know we are winning the battle against the monosexists. As Secretary of Defense, I promise you, gentlemen, the boys will be back in the trenches by Christmas.”

There was cadenced applause for the Alabaman, who ended it with a rap of the gavel. “Meeting is now in session. The floor belongs to the Chief of the Joint Chiefs. Gentlemen, observe the rules of order.” He sat down.

Admiral Primrose stepped forward, his eyes sweeping the faces before him, and said, “Gentlemen, I am charged to express the President’s high appreciation for your planning in Operation Queen Swap. From myself and from Admiral Piagorski a ‘Well done!’ ”

Joint Russo-American planning. So, that was Queen Swap, Hansen thought. A combined operation against the pesky Chinese.

“Gentlemen, I have decided to postpone Queen Swap indefinitely in favor of Operation Chicken Pluck.”

“G - - d - - -,” Porky Flugel roared. “What in the hell is Operation Chicken Pluck?”

“A political operation and not open for discussion.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a - - - - -.”

“Does the Commandant of Marines request the floor?” Pickens asked.

“You f - - - - -’ right, I do!”

“Does the Chief of the Joint Chiefs yield?” Pickens asked.

“For ten seconds,” the admiral answered, removing a stopwatch and placing it on the lectern before him.

“If we don’t swap queens while the iron’s hot,” Flugel said, “the iron’s going to get as cold as a witch’s teat.”

The gavel sounded.

“For the reason given inadvertently by the General Commanding the Marine Corps,” the admiral said, “my decision to postpone Queen Swap is unilateral. The Russians have not been informed.”

Good, Hansen thought. After the Russians and Chinese had flailed the hailstones out of each other. Uncle Sugar could move in and pick up the pieces.

“Point of order,” someone called.

Pickens looked over at the source of the request. “Does the General Commanding the Armies request the floor?”

“General Ware would like the floor.”

“Does the Chief of the Joint Chiefs yield?”

“Six seconds!”

Speaking rapidly in a clipped Northern accent. General Ware said, “Admiral, this unilateral decision seems a breach of military honor…”

The gavel rapped and the general fell silent. Hansen could have sworn that Ware did not get his full six seconds.

“According to my reasoning,” the admiral said, “the breach has been made already, by them. The CIA believes a fall-off in defections from behind the iron curtain is a point in favor of Queen Swap, the CIA’s opinion fortifies my belief it is not. The fall-off represents a firmer hand in control of the party apparatus. That hand, gentlemen, does not belong to Premier Gregorovitch. If there has been a withdrawal within the Soviet Union, the Russian men will not let us know it because they are quite willing to swap a dead pig in a poke for our half-dead pig.”

It was seeping into Hansen’s mind that this plan might not be as innocent as he had first thought. Operation Queen Swap was beginning to shape up as treason by the High Command. Unaware of the turbulence he had created in Hansen, the admiral continued, “Now, hear this! In accordance with the Eisenhower Directive, I submit nothing to the President without your approval. I want you all to leave here satisfied with my decision, so you’ll be shown two photographs of the resort town, Zhadanov, on the Azov Sea. The first was taken by the nuclear sub
Patrick Henry
, three years ago, on a July afternoon on the second Saturday of the month. The second was taken three weeks ago, second Saturday, as before, same time of the day. We know that the withdrawal had not begun three years ago. So, pay close attention to the differences between the two photographs.”

Admiral Primrose clicked a cricket and the room lights dimmed. A panel, twenty feet square, in the middle of the Sahara Desert, slid back to reveal a high-resolution photograph projected on a screen. It was a beach scene with crowds. Behind a boardwalk, on piers behind the beach, were pastel-colored buildings, their shades drawn against the sun. Most of the bathers were stumpy and towheaded, and the girls, for the most part, had performed the unique feat of making their bikinis look dowdy. Hansen scrutinized the shadows under the boardwalk carefully to see if the Russians had concealed suicide boats.

When the admiral clicked the second time, the picture was replaced by another and very similar photograph. Checking for differences, Hansen detected only that the stucco had peeled on the center building, and it had cracked vertically on the building to the right. Allowing for individual differences, the bathers were essentially the same, the ratio of men to women held the same, and there were still no suicide boats under the boardwalk.

Out of the darkness, the admiral asked, “Any comments from the floor?”

“You G - - d - - - right!”

“General Flugel has the floor,” Pickens said.

“Blow up the faces of that couple on the top steps leading from the boardwalk to the beach.”

As the projectionist complied, cropping the photo to that area, Hansen saw a blond lad, about eighteen, alert, keen-faced, bending down over a lovely, dark-haired, dark-eyed little Ukrainian miss. He could see the twinkle in the lad’s eyes as he bent to his sweetheart. Ironically, Hansen thought, an espionage photograph had captured and preserved the image of young love on the threshold of life.

“Notice her lips,” General Flugel’s voice boomed through the darkness, “wetted and slightly apart. Gentlemen, when they hold their mouths like that, that means the - - - - - - - - is ready, with a slow rising on the ‘poon’ and a rolling snap to the ‘tang.’ Bring it back a little. Notice how she’s sort of slung forward at the pelvis? I haven’t seen hunching like that since I got kicked out of the Epworth League. Her - - - - - is burning a hole in her bloomers. But look at that boy. Notice how that shagpoke’s leaning down on her. He’s sneaking a squint at her titties.

“That boy wouldn’t make a Marine,” the general said sadly, and then his words picked up tempo. “But take a look at that lower right-hand quadrant—Blow it up!—see that old bag with her - - - toward us? Notice how she’s drooling as she looks off the camera to the right? She’s looking at a boy who would make the Marines because he’s getting his under a beach blanket, off the photograph to the right.”

To Hansen’s astonishment, the woman’s face did seem lewdly intent, but how in the world could the general see what was happening off the photograph?

“Will the general please yield the floor?” Hansen could not determine from Pickens’ tone whether he was asking or ordering.

“Skipper,” Flugel ignored the civilian to direct his remarks to the admiral, “I take this photograph as proof positive that we’d better haul - - - to Russia on the next convoy out, and I’d like to pick up a print of that scene of a beach to add to my collection.”

“General Hogarth, aide to General Ware, would like to comment,” a voice with a Southern accent came out of the darkness.

“General Hogarth has the floor,” Pickens rasped.

“May I see the upper half of that photograph? Notice, sir, that fewer men are wearing sandals than in the former picture, and more women…”

“Right!” It was Admiral Primrose sounding through the darkness. “And I hope your observation points up to the Commandant of Marines the dangers of overspecialization…”

“It is characteristic of lower classes,” General Hogarth continued, “both in this country and abroad, that the men do not remove shoes…”

“I object,” Flugel bellowed, “some of the best I ever got was in combat boots…”

“That exception proves the rule,” someone yelled from the darkness.

“What son of a bitch said that?”

“Lights,” said the admiral as Pickens pounded the gavel. “General Hogarth’s point is well taken. Women are status conscious in Russia as well as the United States or Tanzania.
They
removed the men’s shoes.”

In the rising light, Hansen was completely at sea. No one from the floor had finished talking, yet the admiral had won the support of the General Staff. When he spoke his voice carried resolution: “Gentlemen, it’s the considered opinion of the Secretary of Defense and me that women control Soviet Russia. Although the evidence is deduced, we have been provided with a means of checking our deductions.

“On Tuesday, a Russian trade commission is scheduled to arrive from Moscow bringing ten females, the first of five hundred for the services, representing down payment on one million bushels of wheat. If the women have been previously segregated, they can be delivered on schedule by the Russian Minister of Trade—unless we get word to the Russian women.

“Providentially, a member of my staff. Captain Benjamin Franklin Hansen, has just returned from eighteen months in the Antarctic. His wife believes that he is unaware of her withdrawal. Captain Hansen is going home over the weekend to speak freely to his wife of the Russian girls.

“As soon as Dr. Carey gets the information to her Russian supporters, they’ll attempt to cancel the trade. If the girls arrive Tuesday, I will seriously consider reopening Operation Queen Swap. If not, we will know the Russian women have taken over.”

Hansen saw plainly, now, that Operation Queen Swap was a plan to occupy Soviet Russia with the connivance of Russians whose armies no doubt would occupy the United States. Technically, it might not be treason, but morally it most surely was. More galling even, he was being assigned to deceive his wife on the theory that she would betray her country in order that the U.S. High Command might assess the effectiveness of the operation. Here was an incredible pyramid of treachery, and the base of this pyramid was the wife of Captain Benjamin Franklin Hansen, USN.

He rose and faced the admiral.

“Sir,” he hurled his words across the bend in the U, “I wish to advise the admiral that this assignment conflicts with my ideas of honor as a gentleman, and it falls, I believe, within the proscriptions established by the Nuremberg Trials.”

Only a slight stiffening of the admiral’s spine and a slight intensification of his gaze was enough to give Hansen the sensation of a freeway driver whose brakes suddenly fail. “Honor? This is no time for midshipman cant! You’re being sent behind the lines on an intelligence mission. Didn’t you read those books?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I was trying to prepare you, in days, to face facts the men in this room have faced, for months. Obviously, one of us has failed. Report to me at 1630, Mister.” Primrose’s voice rose in pitch and tempo as he spoke, and when he snapped the “Mister,” his words had become a whip which cracked against proud flesh.

At 1630, the flesh was still proud and Hansen’s spirit was not humbled. With the anxiety of a midshipman called before the superintendent, he waited in the admiral’s outer office, but there was a difference between a captain and a midshipman. He stood ready to resign his commission if the admiral continued this madcap scheme. Honor might be old-fashioned, but he valued it above his desire for promotion, and his loyalty to Helga was his honor.

When the warrant yeoman announced that the admiral would see him, Hansen walked into a smile and a hand waving him to a seat. “Sit down, Ben. How’d you like the way I handled the boys?”

“You have unique command presence, sir.”

“If you crack the whip before you pat the head, you’re firm but just. If you pat the head, then crack the whip, you’re a salty old seadog, and you know what that’s a synonym for. Cigarette, Captain?”

If this was the pat, Hansen wanted to make it plain that he would not sell his integrity for an Egyptian cigarette.

“No, thank you. Admiral.”

“Captain, I want to commend you for your attitude, so far, but there’s an area which could use a little spit and polish—your sense of humor. Humor in the service invites familiarity which invites contempt, and
double-entendres
cloud clarity.