Sex and the High Command (8 page)

“We assume your opponent will be an amateur, also. We’ll use the three weeks to train you in public speaking and to teach you formal English. Once you’ve won. Senator Dubois will handle administrative chores.”

“Chief,” the admiral interjected, “I’ve weighed this matter from your point of view. You’ll be granted a leave of absence from the Navy which will permit you to return if you should lose the election, and you’ll receive, as of today, an appointment to rank of commander, USN.”

“As of right now,” the President added. “Make a note, Mr. Culpepper, that Commander McCormick’s new pay base commenced at four forty-five p.m., Washington time.”

“Welcome aboard, Commander,” the admiral said.

Surprisingly, the new commander still bridled. “But, sir, I got three weeks shore leave coming and I figured on heading for the hills to shag me a bride.”

“Commander,” the President said, “it’ll be extremely difficult to find a virgin in three weeks. Vita-Lerp has spread like wildfire and we old married hands can tell you that your marriage won’t last.”

“Then, sir, I’d better get mine while the getting’s good.”

Oglethorpe Pickens spoke up. “Mr. President, I should think that the resources of the federal government, abetted by the FBI, should be able to provide one nubile hill girl to permit the commander to woo while he works.”

“I agree,” the attorney general said. “Mr. Powers, perhaps your bureau’s Knoxville chief might…”

“Are you suggesting that we kidnap some young lady, Axminister?” the President asked.

“Mr. President,” Mr. Powers interrupted, “I won’t need the Knoxville chief. The young lady will come of her own free will. I’ve got John Pope.”

“Who is John Pope?” the President asked.

“John Pope is one of my operatives who has never failed a mission. He comes from those hills, and he’s got a gentle way of looking that can persuade a woman to do anything or a hoodlum to sing.” He turned to Commander McCormick. “You want a woman. Commander? OK! I’ll send you a Bertillon chart and you check off her measurements. John Pope will fill the order promptly and in detail.”

“I’m not particular, sir. I just want me some pretty little mountain doozy, not over eighteen, with a good shape, who can cook crackling bread.”

“With or without the hymen?” Mr. Powers barked.

“Well, if I was going to take the job, what with this John Pope being so powerfully persuasive, I reckon you’d better throw in the hymen.”

“I’ll have the hymen certified by a bureau doctor and present the certificate to you.”

McCormick still looked dubious. Hansen felt the time had come for him to intervene in the matter. Speaking in a low but authoritative voice, he said, “McCormick, quit shilly-shallying. Stand up and volunteer!”

McCormick stood up. “Gentlemen, I just had a conference with Captain Hansen and I got the word. If this John Pope brings me a doozy with a maidenhead, you boys have done got yourself a President.”

After the medal-awarding ceremony, the Navy men emerged to find darkness had fallen. As Hansen and the admiral waited for the commander to bring up the station wagon, Hansen, from long habit, checked the skies. Between a rift in the clouds he could see the stars, and he could feel their remoteness in the voids of space. The cold stars and the priesthood, the colored senator had said.

Sensing his junior officer’s unease. Primrose said, “Captain, I know you’re a man who looks at facts, but these are hard to look at. It helps if you practice what the literary boys call a willing suspension of disbelief.”

“I’m learning that tactic. Admiral, but one fact I can’t accept, no matter how hard I try, is that Senator Dubois will be the last manchild on the merry-go-round.”

“Don’t ever,” the admiral said. “As old and as disinterested as I am, if there were one available woman left in the world with Honeysuckle Dubois and me, Meriweather Primrose would walk off with the prize.”

“I was thinking more of my wife,” Hansen chuckled, “who is true-blue Navy. However, it seems to me that the government is making a mountain out of a molehill, and Secretary Lamar seems to agree with me.”

“Lamar has a hidden ace… The whole situation sounds irrational,” the admiral agreed, “but, after all, it’s only our own rationality which gives order to the irrational… Hmm, that sounds like Ogie.”

“Ogie?”

“Oglethorpe Pickens, the Defense Secretary. Now, Captain, when we return to the BOQ, you’ll probably have a message to call your wife. Do so. Tell her you were brought here to receive a Presidential citation. Tell her you’ve been appointed to my staff, which you have been, effective since you tossed that idea on the table. You’ll be in Washington over the weekend. Express a longing to see her, but don’t discuss the subject of today’s meeting with her, other than your DSM. Never let her suspect that you know that she’s gone over to the other side.”

“Helga hasn’t. Admiral.”

“Good! Continue to believe that and you’ll find it easier to pretend.”

In the station wagon, the admiral huddled in a corner of the back seat, lost in speculation and his huge raincoat. Hansen respected his silence until Primrose aroused himself to say, “Remember, gentlemen, no word around the Pentagon, tomorrow, about Operation Chicken Pluck.”

“Yes, sir.”

All three were silent as the commander steered the vehicle into the dinner-hour traffic, overpaying honors to the speed limit. Hansen could understand his preoccupation. Finally, the admiral asked, “Captain, what’s your estimate of the situation?”

“A Navy man puts his trust in God and the High Command, but he has to believe in his family, too. My family is two girls, and women make up half the country. I’m still one hundred percent American.”

“Yes, Captain. I’m a widower, but it must be shattering to realize your wife, daughter, or sweetheart, is an enemy.”

In matters of policy, the admiral was supreme. In matters relating to Helga and Joan Paula, Hansen was the authority. His girls would never defect, he knew, but holding his disbelief in suspension, he went along with Primrose. “You’d think, Admiral, they’d have more gratitude after all the groceries and shoes we buy them.”

“Gratitude is a two-edged sword. Remember Polonius.”

Hansen was grateful that he was not being asked a question. The admiral had said “Remember Polonius” as he might have said “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Primrose continued, “One must learn to think with nonhuman concepts. Are you listening. Commander?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Perhaps you are both using what the literary boys call personification: Because a man feeds a dog and the dog greets him with tail wagging, the man assumes the dog feels love. Actually, as Pavlov infers, the tail-wagging is a conditioned reflex that gets a bone tossed to the dog.”

Hansen followed the admiral’s reasoning up to that point, but he balked when Primrose continued: “Perhaps we err by reading into women the qualities of human beings. Some authorities hold that a woman never experiences an orgasm during intercourse. Her pretended enjoyment is tail-wagging for the bone tossed to her; she is protecting her biological supply line.”

“Admiral,” the captain said, “I might concede your point except it contradicts my experience. Once, as a young ensign on liberty in Bangkok—aptly named city—during summer, in a period of the full moon, I was seated in a park at twilight, with the perfumes of the tropics around me and temple bells tinkling over the old city. As I sat, a girl, half French and half Siamese, came walking by…”

For reasons of traffic safety, Hansen had to edit his tale of young love in old Bangkok. McCormick had a tendency to swerve out of his lane at the high points, but the story convinced the admiral. “That was incredible. Captain.”

After a moment of awed silence, the admiral huddled deeper into his coat, and the voice that came from its folds seemed disembodied. “That was twenty years ago. They don’t need us anymore. Logically, we should be permitted to wither away, but they won’t let us. The Cajun-bourbon erred when he said they would leave us the stars. They won’t. They’ll cancel the Venus landing. Yet, I can understand them. Vita-Lerp is their Declaration of Independence from us.”

“But, sir,” the captain asked, “if a man can’t believe in American womanhood, what can he believe in?”

“No longer in God
and
the High Command,” Admiral Primrose said. “Only the High Command. God’s on their side. He’s joined the opposition.” Now the voice that issued from the coat was an oracle sounding from the depths of a grotto. “He’s correcting His error. I could never understand why He let Himself get involved with the inefficiencies of bisexuality. Monosexuality was His only way to go. Still, we have the Navy, we three. For me, the Navy fills my needs.”

As the three men drew down their cones of silence and rode over the bridge, lightning glittered and thunder muttered to the northeast. After they arrived at the bachelor officers’ quarters and received their room assignments, the OD reported to Hansen that his wife had called and wanted him to return the call. The admiral suggested that they meet in the bar for an aperitif after Hansen completed his telephoning, but McCormick declined—he was skipping dinner because he had not slept the night before.

Helga bubbled with pleasant chatter. The mentholated oil of eucalyptus had her cold under control, and she was excited over his DSM, but still disappointed. “Darn the Navy, anyway, Ben. I missed connections last night, and now, this. Do you know it’s been eighteen months, twenty-eight days, and sixteen hours since I carved a notch on my bra?”

Hansen chuckled. “Now, tell me about your day.”

“Oh, just a woman’s day, Ben. I went over and helped Anne lay out Ralph. He was forehanded. He shot himself in the chest so he looked perfectly natural with a suit on. Anne and I almost got into a cat fight. She’s planting a rose over his grave to give his memory a little beauty. I suggested an oak tree because a tree could use his calcium, and the oak tree
is
Ralph.”

“I agree, Helga. A rose bush is too feminine. Ralph was as sturdy as Gibraltar.”

“That’s exactly what I told her, Ben! I said to her, ‘Anne, if Ben were here he’d want you to ship Ralph’s remains to the Gib and bury them in the rock.’ But she’s stubborn.”

“She should have listened to you, Helga. By the way, dear, I think we should start thinking about a dishwasher for the kitchen.”

“We have Joan Paula.”

“I know, Helga, but…” If the admiral had not been waiting, Hansen could have spent hours with her.

Later, over a bourbon, he related the conversation to the admiral, who listened with interest. Primrose agreed with Helga and him that an oak tree would have been more appropriate than a rose bush over Johnson’s grave, but, rolling his glass around on its bottom rim, the admiral asked, “Why didn’t someone suggest a tombstone?”

“By heavens,” the captain said, “I never thought about that!”

“I know,” the admiral nodded. “You’re so committed to improbabilities that you’re overlooking the probable. Well, Ben, what did you think of your first cabinet meeting?”

Hansen thought for a moment. They were in a social atmosphere, the admiral was topping off his second martini, but a naval officer was always under observation by his seniors. “Some of the arguments weren’t too well defined. Of course, I have a clear idea of Operation Chicken Pluck, but I drew a blank on Alternate Plan B.”

“Our first Plan B,” the admiral explained, “was to contest the swearing-in of any President-elect endorsed by the FEM’s. Dr. Carey has attacked the Constitution, and the President swears to uphold it when inaugurated. The old Plan B backed up Operation Queen Swap, which was a military operation, but constitutional. Truthfully, I’m happy to shelve Queen Swap. Through sheer intuitive logic—that’s reasoning from unknown facts—I found a flaw in the operation which I’ll explain at a little staff meeting, Friday.”

Hansen nodded an understanding he didn’t fully possess because Primrose was talking too fast and he was halfway through a double bourbon, his second.

“It’s easier to grasp politics when you’re swacked,” the admiral said, “so drink up.” Primrose lifted his glass in a junior officer’s toast. “To a bloody war or a sickly season! Now, we’re bringing in Operation Chicken Pluck. This one can’t fail, but it’s an obvious attempt to circumvent the Constitution. Enter, now, Demorest Habersham, the constitutionalists’ exemplar, who regards the first law of the land as holy writ. I tell you, Ben, that man
loves
the Constitution. When Bertha booted him out of her bedroom, Old Demorest grabbed a copy of the Constitution, rolled it into a cylinder, and went to bed with
it
… Steward, another round! Understand this, Ben… Operation Chicken Pluck elects as President a great lover who doesn’t
know
doodly squat about the Constitution. Operation Chicken Pluck elects as Vice President a great fornicator but a poor lover, a wily politician, and Honeysock Dubois doesn’t
care
doodly squat about the Constitution. Old Honeydew Sucklebois would suspend the Bill of Rights to get a year knocked off the age of consent. Now, who’s throwing his lily-white weight behind these two frauds? None other than our good old constitutional altar boy, D. Habersham.”

Primrose topped off his third martini, almost below the stem of the glass, and resumed, “Once he’s nominated those two frauds, in comes the new Plan B.”

Hansen nodded as an expediency and said, “He seemed upset about Alternate Plan B.”

“And well he should be,” Primrose said, “because that’s my plan! Constitutional, but a military doomsday plan. The code name’s Operation Ultimate Thule. That one’s a brain wrencher.”

Bemusedly he rolled his empty glass around on its empty bottom and looked over at Hansen with eyes that were balanced on the edge of reveries. “Ben, are you a Christian?”

Here it comes, Hansen thought, and braced himself. “Yes, sir.”

Primrose set his glass firmly on its bottom. His face hardened. His eyes focused. “Then, Captain, pray that the President never invokes Operation Ultimate Thule.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Hansen’s answer was deliberately formal. Admiral Meriweather Primrose had issued an order.