MASH Goes to Morocco

by Richard Hooker

  A glass was thrust in his hand.

  “Chug-a-lug,” Horsey ordered.

  “I don’t drink intoxicants,” Omar said, somewhat stiffly.

  “Hot Lips said to get a couple of belts into you,” Horsey replied. “Think of it as medicine.”

  Omar obediently tossed it down. It burned his throat and he coughed. Horsey slapped him on the back. “Atta boy, Omar,” he said. “Now one more.”

  “I am forbidden by the Prophet to partake of fermented grapes,” Omar said.

  “That’s not fermented grapes; that’s distilled Kentucky corn,” Horsey said.

  “I suppose that’s something quite different,” Omar said, and tossed another belt down. A warm glow spread through his stomach. He took a deep breath and realized he felt much better. As a matter of fact, he could not recall ever feeling quite so good.

  “Horsey,” he asked, “that man singing on the phonograph—who is he?”

  “One of the Knights,” Horsey said. “He had those records made special for us.” ‘

  “Remarkable voice,” Omar said. “If he wasn’t singing “The Wabash Cannonball,” I’d swear it was Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer.”

  “That’s ol’ Bull-Bellow, all right,” Horsey said, grasping his hand. “It’s a real pleasure, Omar, to meet a fellow music lover.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There were six members of the Gendarmerie Nationale, backed up by an armored car and a light tank of the Royal Moroccan Cavalry, blocking the Rabat-Marrakech road. Their search of the cars was detailed and thorough, and the cars-to-be-searched were backed up along the road for half a mile when the first sounds of the sirens on the motorcycles were heard.

  There was a good deal of hectic activity, whistle-blowing and shouting, as a path was cleared for the Royal Motorcade. In a moment, it appeared over a rise in the road: four motorcycles, sirens screaming; a Land-Rover filled with four heavily armed members of the Royal Bodyguard; a second Land-Rover carrying only a driver and three golf bags; the Royal Mercedes-Benz 600, His Majesty’s personal flag flying from both front fenders; and, bringing up the rear, still another Land-Rover filled with heavily armed, ornately uniformed members of the Royal Bodyguard.

  The personnel manning the roadblock snapped to attention and saluted. The Royal Rolls skidded to a halt. His Majesty himself, in full robes, jumped nimbly from the car, followed by two other regal gentlemen, similarly attired.

  “What’s going on here?” His Majesty demanded.

  “Captain Belli ben Khan, Your Majesty,” the officer in charge said, “officer in charge of the roadblock.”

  “What is the purpose of the roadblock?” His Majesty asked, returning the salute.

  “There are two crazy Americans in Rabat, Your Majesty,” Captain Belli ben Khan said. “We have orders from the Foreign Minister himself to insure they do not leave the city.”

  “Two crazy Americans? How do you know they’re crazy?”

  “The Foreign Minister himself, Your Majesty, has told me,” the captain said. “He said they believe they are doctors, and they are not, no matter what the cost, to be permitted to go to Marrakech.”

  “I see,” His Majesty said. “Well, carry on, Captain!” He turned back to the Mercedes and made a little bow. “After you, Hawkeye,” he said.

  His Majesty turned. “Captain, you don’t have any idea where the Foreign Minister is at the moment, do you?”

  “Yes, Sir, Your Majesty,” the captain replied. “He passed through here not fifteen minutes ago, together with an American diplomat. He said he was going to Marrakech.”

  “Well, we’ll catch up with him there, I suppose,” His Majesty said. He turned again and bowed to Trapper John. “After you, Trapper,” he said, graciously.

  “I get sick to my stomach if I have to ride in the middle,” Trapper said.

  “Well,” His Majesty said generously, “in that case, I’ll ride in the middle.” Golfing partners like these, he realized, were hard to come by. He got in, Trapper John followed him, the door closed and, with screaming sirens, the Royal Motorcade resumed its journey toward Marrakech.

  “Instruct the pilot to divert to Mecca,” His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug said, upon wakening. “I am dying, and I wish to die in Mecca.”

  “You ain’t dying, buddy,” Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov said, with sympathy born of his own condition, “you’re just a little hung over, is all.”

  “My teeth itch,” His Highness announced, “my eardrums are ringing and I have sand in my mouth. I will shortly be greeting Allah.”

  “All you need is a little of the hair of the dog what bit you,” Boris said.

  “You drank it last night,” His Royal Highness Prince Hassan ad Kayam said.

  “Both cases?” Boris asked, incredulously.

  “Both cases,” Hassan reported, just a trifle smugly. “The last of it as you sang ‘Aloha Oh!’ to your assembled fans at the airport.”

  “My only regret,” Sheikh Abdullah announced, “is that I am being called up yonder before I have had a chance to see my great-grandchildren.”

  “I didn’t know you had any great-grandchildren,” Hassan said. “I didn’t know Omar was even married.”

  “He’s not,” Abdullah said. “But the time comes to all men, including Omar, and I would have been perfectly willing to wait, so to speak, until the time had come to him becoming leaving.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to see your great grandchildren,” Hassan said, soothingly.

  “A lot you know!” the Sheikh snapped back. “You don’t know how I feel.”

  “Hassan, are you trying to tell me there’s not a drop of anything on this airplane?” Boris asked.

  “There was a case of champagne,” Hassan said, “Dom Perignon ’54, as you requested.”

  “That, too?” Boris asked. Hassan nodded. “Every last drop?”

  Hassan nodded again. “You and the Sheikh worked up quite a thirst chasing the Rockettes up and down the aisle,” he said.

  “My God, I forgot about them!” Boris said. “I even forgot about going to Radio City Music Hall. How many did we bring?”

  “Six,” Hassan said. “The others had a midnight show and couldn’t make it. You promised to send the plane back for them.”

  “My God!” Boris said. “Hassan, why did you do this to me?”

  “Tell the pilot to hurry,” Sheikh Abdullah groaned. “I feel the very presence of the Grim Reaper on my brow!”

  “That’s not the Grim Reaper, stupid,” Boris said. “That’s that little air whatchamacallit.” He turned it off. “Where are the Rockettes now?”

  “In the back cabin asleep,” Hassan said. “They’re not used to that much exercise. They’re all pooped out.”

  Boris groaned. “Hey, Abdullah,” he said, “can I ask you something about your religion?”

  “Anything,” Abdullah said. “But ask quickly, before it’s too late.”

  “How do they feel about last-minute converts?”

  The pilot chose that minute to make his little announcement.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “there has been a change in our destination.”

  “I know that, you simpleton,” Sheikh Abdullah said. “I gave orders to be taken to Mecca.”

  “I don’t know anything about Mecca,” he said. “But I just received orders to land at Casablanca, rather than Marrakech.”

  “I don’t want to go to Casablanca, you idiot,” Sheikh Abdullah said. “I want to go to Mecca. I demand that I be taken to Mecca.”

  “I regret, Your Highness,” the pilot said, “that I have my orders, and they are to land at Casablanca. I regret any inconvenience this may cause.”

  “Orders, schmorders,” the Sheikh said. “I am Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug. I give the orders. Allah willed it that way. If He wanted you to give orders, He would have made you Sheikh instead of a lousy flying Frog.”

  “You tell ’em,” Boris said, admi
ringly. “That goes twice for me, buddy, if you want to make anything out of it.”

  “Gentlemen,” the pilot said, his standard French savoir-faire stretched beyond the breaking point, “the President of France has ordered me to take you to Casablanca, and I am going to take you to Casablanca.”

  “The President of France himself?” Boris asked.

  “The President of France himself,” the pilot said, with dignity.

  “Well, it’ll be a long time before I do another benefit for his unwed mothers, I’ll tell you that,” Boris said. “It’s a good thing I’m dying, or this wouldn’t be the end of this.”

  “You are ill, monsieur?” the pilot asked, with concern. The word had come down from the public-relations department of the firm which had built the Concorde that, officially, no one would ever get sick aboard the Concorde.

  “We are both dying. Me before him, but still, both of us,” the Sheikh said. “Look at me!”

  The pilot looked. The Sheikh’s skin was a deathly grey; he appeared to be bleeding to death through the eyeballs, and when he breathed, there was a foul odor which could only be the smell of death. The other one didn’t look much better.

  “I’ll have ambulances meet the plane,” he said, and ran from the cabin back to the cockpit.

  “I’m holding you personally responsible for this whole affair, Hassan,” Boris said. He slumped back in his seat and could be heard murmuring something about the infidelity of those you trust.

  The Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Morocco, just before he and Q. Elwood Potter had left for Marrakech by limousine, had dispatched the Deputy Foreign Minister on a special airplane to Casablanca on a triple mission: he was to arrange for the release of Mr. Rhotten and Congressman Jackson from the Casablanca Mental Sanitarium; to explain that their predicament was solely the responsibility of Miss Penelope Quattlebaum, who had been declared Persona Non Grata; and to convey Mr. Rhotten and Congressman Jackson to Marrakech in the special plane so they could attend His Majesty’s party.

  The plane had the highest priority, of course, in keeping with the diplomatic delicacy of the situation, to insure that the honored guests would arrive in Marrakech in time for the party. The schedule encountered a snag, however, when it came out that a large mongrel dog belonging to one of the attendants at the Casablanca Mental Sanitarium had become strongly attached to Mr. Rhotten’s hairpiece. Apparently in the belief that it was a miniature possum, the dog had carried the hairpiece to his kennel where, for two hours, fangs bared, growling steadily, he waited for the wig to stop pretending it was dead and ferociously resisted all attempts by Mr. Rhotten to reclaim it.

  By the time the rug, so to speak, had been rescued, liberally doused with flea powder and reset in the familiar Rhotten curly coiffure, and Rhotten and Smiling Jack had been taken to the airport, the Air France Concorde was in the pattern, second to land behind a glistening DC-4 of Yugo-Air, the Yugoslavian Tourist Airline.

  “The Rhotten Report’s” film crew had set up their camera at the foot of the stairway to the Air Maroc airliner sent to carry Rhotten and Smiling Jack to Marrakech. Rhotten was going to a thirty-second color bit. He was going to tell all the folks out there in television land of his illegal imprisonment, the result of either gross stupidity or personal vindictiveness (and probably both) of the American Consul General, one Miss Penelope Quattlebaum. He was also going to assure them they had nothing to worry about. Don Rhotten was about to resume his relentless pursuit of his story. They would soon have all the facts.

  He got as far as saying, “This is Don Rhotten …” when the Yugo-Air DC-4 landed, the sound of its engines effectively drowning him out. Mr. Rhotten was understandably miffed, but he waited until the Yugo-Air aircraft had turned off the runway, taxied to the terminal and shut down its engines. Then he opened his mouth again, and got as far as “This is …” when the air was filled with the rather awesome whistling scream of the Concorde coming in to land.

  “It’s a conspiracy!” Rhotten screamed against the noise. “That’s what it is! If they can’t knock me out of the rating one way, Cronkite and Smith’ll stoop to anything!”

  “Now, just take it easy, Don-Baby,” Seymour said. “Whatsisname, that diplomat guy, told me just now that he’s closed the airport until after we leave. It’ll only be a minute.”

  As the Concorde, engines whistling, taxied up to the terminal, stairs were rolled up to the Yugo-Air aircraft, and the forty-eight passengers began to debark. The aircraft was carrying forty-eight Croatian trade unionists, steelworkers given Seven Days in the Sun of Merry Morocco as a token of the appreciation of the state for their faithful labor in the steel mills.

  Since they had been the subject of much official attention in their homeland, they quite naturally assumed that the television camera was there to record their arrival in Morocco. They headed directly for it, several of them waving, two of them holding up signs and all of them smiling broadly.

  A small melee resulted. Mr. Rhotten, after first furiously waving his arms in an attempt to drive them away, finally resorted to physical force and tried to push them out of camera range. This was mistaken (Rhotten was unable to push very hard; his most furious efforts were regarded as polite pushes) as an attempt to arrange them before the camera, as they had been arranged before cameras in Zagreb. Those who had been pushed to the rear in Zagreb were now, of course, determined to be in the front line.

  As this was going on, the door to the Concorde opened and Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, blinking in the harsh sunlight, appeared at the head of the stairs.

  He looked over at the melee and at the Yugo-Air aircraft, and immediately came to the very logical conclusion that both Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug’s and his own prayers had been answered. Where there were Yugoslavians, there was bound to be slivovitz.

  Brushing aside four stretcher bearers who were trying to make their way up the steps to the Concorde, he walked quickly toward the Yugoslavians.

  “Good afternoon, brothers,” he said in Croatian. “Which of you is going to offer a thirsty traveler a little snort of slivovitz?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Boris asked.

  “How about this?” a Yugoslavian trade unionist asked, holding up a four-color brochure published by the Bienvenu a Merry Morocco Tourist Agency, showing a bikini-clad blonde on one of Morocco’s glistening beaches.

  Boris looked back to the Concorde. Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug was, somewhat shakily, making his way down the stairs. Behind him, the first of the six Rockettes had appeared in the door for her first view of Morocco.

  “The price,” Boris said, gesturing, “is six bottles a broad, payable in advance.”

  “Four,” said the first Croatian.

  “Five, and you got yourself a deal,” Boris said.

  The Deputy Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Morocco, who had been waiting inside the terminal with Congressman Jackson, had seen the Concorde landing, and then he had watched as the door opened and Boris debarked. His eyes had widened when he saw His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug make his appearance. He ran as fast as diplomatic dignity would permit to the foot of the stairway.

  “Good afternoon, Your Highness,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug demanded.

  “I am the Deputy Foreign Minister, Your Highness.”

  “I have come to Mecca to die,” His Highness said. “You may make the necessary arrangements for me to do so.”

  “This isn’t Mecca, Your Highness,” the Deputy Foreign Minister replied.

  “Why not?” His Highness said. “I distinctly gave orders that we were to go to Mecca.”

  By now the Rockettes had come down the stairs, to be immediately surrounded by Yugoslavian trade unionists, who smiled and took their arms possessively.

  Boris, holding a bottle of slivovitz in each hand, elbowed his way through the crowd.

  “Here you are, Abdullah,” he said, “el
ixir!”

  “My prayers have been answered,” the Sheikh said, reaching for one of the bottles. “I should have known that I was too young and too good to die.” He took a deep pull at the bottle neck, quivered a little, took another pull then smiled. “Mud in your eye,” he said to the Deputy Foreign Minister.

  “Your Highness,” the Deputy Foreign Minister said, after a moment, “may I take the liberty of inquiring what Your Highness is doing in Casablanca?”

  “I don’t really know,” His Highness said. “I was en route to Marrakech when I suffered my attack.”

  “The plane wouldn’t land at Marrakech,” Boris said. “The pilot came back and said that the President of France said we couldn’t land at Marrakech.”

  “That’s right!” the Sheikh said.

  “I’m sure there’s some mistake, Your Highness,” the Deputy Foreign Minister said. “Why would the President of France say something like that?”

  “No problem,” the Sheikh said, after another pull at the bottle. “Your King has told me, many times, that what is his is mine.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Your Highness,” the Deputy Foreign Minister said.

  “You doubt my word? The word of Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug?”

  “No, of course not, Your Highness. If the King said that what is his is yours, then what is his is yours.”

  “Now that we understand that,” the Sheikh said, “we will take that plane,” he said, pointing at the Air Maroc aircraft, “which is your King’s, and therefore mine, to Marrakech.”

  “That poses a certain, small problem, Your Highness,” the Deputy Foreign Minister said.

  “Which is?”

  “Could I infringe on Your Majesty’s well-known generosity?” the Deputy Foreign Minister asked, thinking quickly.