Sex and the High Command (12 page)

“I’ll finish the game for Hathaway. What’s stakes?”

“Quarter to win. Fifty cents to rummy.”

“Let’s double it.”

“Okay,” the doctor said. “It’s Hathaway’s money.”

Pope drew the seven of clubs, rummied and laid the money and the cards on the bed. “It’s your deck, Doctor.”

“By the way, John, Mr. Powers called. He wants you to call him,
rapido
. An emergency.”

“Where’s the telephone?”

“Two doors to your left, in the Father Superior’s office.”

“What’s a silent order doing with a telephone?” Pope asked.

“Mr. Powers had it installed.”

Down the hall. Pope came to an open door of an office with a desk inside and a tall man, partially bald, seated behind the desk. Without his robe, the man could have been head of a steel company. Pope pointed toward the phone in the corner, and the man nodded in assent.

Since the phone had no dial. Pope knew it was a direct line. He lifted it, and the night duty officer answered.

“Brooks,” Pope said.

“One minute, John. Mr. Powers wants you.”

Gravel rolled in the next voice on the line. “This is Mr. Powers. What’s your situation, John?”

“I just brought her in. She should be coming out from under in about an hour. Her indoctrination shouldn’t take long.”

“I need you here, fast. As soon as you’re through, go immediately to the highway patrol in Charlottesville, and get an escort in. I’ll wait up.”

“State again, sir?”

Glancing at his watch, Pope saw that it was eight fifteen. It would be well after midnight before he reached Washington.

“No. Papa Pepite is asking for our help. Something big has broken in Manhattan. I’ll brief you when you get in.”

“Thank you,” he said automatically to the monk after he hung up.

“My pleasure,” the monk answered him.

“Oh, you can talk?” Pope felt silly after the question, and added, “Quite a place you have here. Father. Are all the suites as lush as the girl’s?”

“No,” the Father smiled. “That’s Mr. Powers’ doing. Is there anything I can do for you, my son?”

“Neither the girl nor I have eaten supper.”

“When she’s ready, ring the bell by her bed. A brother will serve you.”

“I may take you up on that… but I’m worried about that large window.”

“Mr. Powers had bullet-proof glass installed. It opens on a garden in the quadrangle, completely enclosed. In addition, Mr. Powers is sending three of you men to protect her. They’ll be here by ten, but she’s quite safe.”

“What’s in the room adjoining hers?”

“A bedridden monk. Brother Johannis. The bathroom door locks from the girl’s side, but the brother has not moved from his bed in ten years. His muscles are atrophied.”

“Then I won’t disturb you further. Thank you. Father.”

Cabrone was leaving when Pope got back to the room, and the doctor wished him luck.

“I might need it,” Pope admitted. “Her father works for me down in Atlanta. She might remember me from a photograph taken during his trial.”

After the doctor had gone, Hathaway entered, carrying Cora Lee wrapped in a nylon nightgown, and laid her on the bed. “Imagine that, John. All this beauty with no props. I only brushed her hair.”

From across the room, he noticed the tempo of Cora Lee’s breathing change, and he said, “Begone, Hathaway. She’s coming around.”

Hathaway counted out her money on the table and said, “Thanks for the dollar. I saw you stack the deck.”

“Good,” he said. “If you were watching me, the girl is safe with you.”

Hathaway’s room was next door, to the right. Standing in the doorway to check for forgotten articles, she said, “You may have to massage her legs below the knees. They’ll feel dead when she awakens.”

“Leg massages are my specialty,” he said. “Good night, Nurse.”

Pope took off his coat and threw it over the chairback. He sat down on the edge of the bed and slapped Cora Lee’s cheeks, sharply. “Wake up, Cora Lee!”

Her eyes opened and she looked up at him. He sent his eyes out of focus, brought them in again, and saw her smile at his expression of friendly sympathy.

“Hello,” she said amiably, and closed her eyes again.

He reached down and pried her left eye open with his fingers and said, “Cora Lee Barnard, are you in there?”

She opened both eyes and laughed. “You’re funny. Are you a doctor?”

“No, ma’am. What’s your name?”

“Cora Lee Barnard, you just said.”

“Was I right?”

“You were if you weren’t lying to me.”

“Cora Lee, I’ve never told a lie in my life, and I’m one hundred and eighty-two years old.”

“Say you sooth?”

“I say sooth.”

“You look real young for your age. My legs feel paralyzed.”

“Cora Lee, I’m the best friend you ever had. I wouldn’t do this for just any girl, but I’m going to exercise your legs.”

He leaned down and flexed her legs by lifting them at the knee joints and letting them drop. Exercising her legs, he knew, would do little except show her they were not paralyzed, but in her highly impressionable state of mind it would help assure her that he was the best friend she ever had.

“I know you,” she said drowsily.

In her euphoria, she would speak only the truth, and she was not likely to conceal anything. Oh, hell, he thought, and asked her, “Who am I?”

“You’re the shire reeve’s man.”

“Shire reeve?”

The word had a peculiar familiarity.

“Yes, sir. I saw you coming down the hill right after that scorpion stung me.”

“Cora Lee, that wasn’t any scorpion. That was me.”

“You telling me you’re a caeco-demon who changes shapes?”

“No. I shot you with a tranquilizing pellet that put you to sleep.”

“Well, I’m right glad to hear that. I’d hate to have you change into a spreading adder while you’re rubbing my legs.”

Suddenly she sat up. “What air ye y-clept?”

Bemused, he realized she was using words from Chaucer’s era. “John, but quit talking Middle English.”

“Is that what that is? I reckon I’m a little out of my head. John, what you going ’round shooting girls for?”

“I’m a hunter.”

“It ain’t hunting season.”

“There’s no season on girls. Lie back down! Where’d you learn Middle English?”

“From Geoffrey Chaucer. He’s a writer. Mama took me out of school when Papa got put in jail for selling corn… Mama says that’s the way it is with the Barnards. No Ramsbotham’s ever done time. That’s Mama’s family, the Ramsbothams.”

She was rambling, and he was interested in her ramblings. By listening, he could map her recovery from the sodium pentothal, and he knew, now, that she had no idea who he was.

Finally, she staggered back to the subject.

“Mama let me read Chaucer because that was the only book she had from normal school. It was wrote in two columns; one column like he talked and one like we talk, and I liked his way of talking best.”

“His poetry scans better in Middle English,” Pope said.

“You read after him?”

“Most of the
Canterbury Tales
.”

“Why, John, you’re the only boy I ever saw who’s read Chaucer.”

“Cora Lee, you’re the only girl I ever saw who read Chaucer.”

“I wondered why I liked you so much. Which one of them stories did you like best?”

“I suppose
The Miller’s Tale
.”

“I didn’t like the way that one ended,” she said. “That Alison was the meanest thing, making poor old Absolon do what he did. I’d liefer Absolon hadde brender hir haunche-bon than Nicholay’s. I reckon talking Chaucer comes in handy, sometimes. I’d never say anything like that, plain out… Where am I?”

“You’re in sort of a Trappist-Capuchin monastery.”

“Them hunters! If you be my friend, John, why’d you shoot me?”

“Because the future President of the United States wants to come courting, and your mama wouldn’t let any boys into the cove.”

“Does Mama know where I am?”

“At the moment, no, but she knows you’re safe. She’s got a radiophone call, by now, from President Habersham, asking her permission for the next President to come courting. She’ll know where you are, in good time.”

“Good times is something Mama don’t know much of… Is that next President as good-looking as you?”

“That doesn’t make any difference, if he’s going to be President of the United States.”

“I don’t care what he does for a living… How’s he know what I look like?”

“He learned through me. I saw you, once before, when I was on a hunting trip.”

“You think I’m pretty enough for him?”

Here, he thought, was a girl of incredible beauty, an authority on Geoffrey Chaucer, and modest. He could have loved her for her beauty alone, or for her appreciation of Chaucer alone, or for her modesty alone. Suddenly, he hungered to speak with absolute frankness to this girl, to tell her the truth with no holds barred.

“Cora Lee, I’m a policeman of sorts. I have lied to girls—most of the time, as a matter of fact—but I’m your friend and I want to tell you the absolute truth, cross my heart and hope to die.

“You are the most beautiful girl in the world. If your mother had let boys into that cove, you would have seen this with your eyes long ago and felt it with your lips.”

“Shoot fire, you sound like you mean that! Mama was strict. She used to tell me she couldn’t let boys see me because they’d want to get on top of me, and I’d have a woods colt. I never wanted one of them to do that, but then I never saw a boy as pretty as you… John, would you marry me?”

“I certainly would! If that Presidential candidate drops dead between now and election day, girl, you’ll be spoke for, by me.”

“John, way you talk makes me feel good all over.”

He noticed he had taken her hand as he talked, and he thought: He had been assigned to go and get her, have her chastity certified by the doctor, and then convince her that she should accept McCormick’s suit. His mission was accomplished.

Pope slipped his eyes out of focus and said, “Cora Lee, your mother never said anything about you getting on top of a boy, did she?”

“Not that I recollect.”

“Would you do it for me?”

“You’re my friend, John, the only one I got. I reckon I’d do anything for you ’cept brender your haunch-bon.”

She had controlled spontaneity, he decided. In the beginning, her movements were shy, tentative, exploratory. She seemed to be searching for the correct rhythm, and he let her have her head, offering no suggestions. Finally, she sighed and rippled, quivered and swayed; then, she stifled a squeal and slapped, buckled, moaned, rocked, rattled, rolled, pitched, shimmied, groaned, walloped, pounded, and yelled. When she writhed, screamed, slapped and bounced, soared, and fell, he conceded.

“How about that?” she hooted, before she collapsed.

Hansen had to admit, Helga was a hummer. With skill and experience, she accomplished as much as the Bangkok belly dancer had accomplished with youth and enthusiasm.

It had all started with an impish challenge at the Norfolk Airport after he missed his plane from Washington. During her extended wait, Helga had had a few “drinkies,” and she was in the little girl’s room when he arrived in the bar. He spotted her table from her coat and her book, so he ordered another martini for her and a double for himself at the service bar. While waiting for the bartender to fill the order, he overheard a man down the bar say, “I saw a dame down twelve martinis and walk away.”

“Must have been a Swede,” his companion remarked. “They stow booze like water.”

Hansen took the order to the table and was waiting when she returned from the ladies’ room, radiant-eyed, to greet him with a hug and kiss.

Hansen related the Scandinavian story he had overheard at the bar, but Helga was not amused. “Jealousy,” she said. “Men can’t bear to see a woman beat them at their own game.”

“I’m not so narrow,” he said, as they clicked glasses for their first drink together after nineteen months, so many days, and some odd hours. (He had lost count in the Washington rat race and had to accept her tally.) “I recognize female superiority in all departments but one.”

“That’s because you’re generous-minded, Ben, and I agree. You’re a much better ship handler than I am.”

“I supposed I should have said two departments,” he said.

“No. One,” she demurred.

“After dinner,” he said, “I’ll demonstrate what I mean.”

From a slouching position in her chair, she looked him over with a calculating gaze. Then she downed her drink, slapped the glass on the tabletop, stood up, and said, “To hell with dinner! I’m taking you home, and I’m driving.”

Drive she did. She slowed the family jalopy to ninety when she hit the off-ramp at Virginia Beach, and geared down to a sedate sixty for the drive through residential streets. Fortunately, they had the house to themselves, for Joan Paula was out on a date with a boy from MIT, and now, he had to agree with Helga. His capable Swede excelled in all departments but ship handling.

When the sough-sough of her breathing slowed above him, he said, “Scuttlebutt around the Pentagon has it that the girls have formed some sort of conspiracy to withhold favors from the boys. You’ve just proved the rumor wrong.”

He felt her body grow tense. Her voice was flat and dull.

“No, Ben, the scuttlebutt’s correct. There is a conspiracy. It has grown into something evil and powerful.”

“Sounds interesting,” he said, contented in the deepening euphoria engendered by gin and satiety. “Sounds like something… affecting national… security.”

Forspent, he slept.

Russia, Primrose had said, was a nation of paranoiacs.

As Hansen shaved the next morning, it occurred to him that Primrose might have picked up a few delusions of persecution himself, while stationed in Moscow. Despite Hansen’s carefully phrased leading remark, last night, Helga had evinced no further interest in scuttlebutt around the Pentagon. On the basis of her behavior, the FEM conspiracy had no intelligence network, and even if a general withdrawal did occur, it would not include Helga Hansen.

Helga had been more excited over Joan Paula’s new beau, a lad from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As Hansen splattered himself with cologne, he shrugged. He would prefer a promising young bachelor officer, but he was growing accustomed to eggheads.