But if the Mother Superior was another midget, it was too late to worry about it now. I pulled the car in behind the first clump of busies I came to, and swiftly changed my identity to that of Milton Trench, a man not unlike my former self in that he was clean cut and conservatively dressed, with a neatly starched collar and sober tie. I then drove up to the main building and inquired after the Mother Superior.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside a convent, but they’re fairly well organised nowadays. This one had a reception office for visitors, staffed by a neat young Sister who, in different garb, wouldn’t have looked out of place guarding the portals to an advertising agency. Despite her pleasing appearance, she was a lot tougher than the gatekeeper - although this may have been because I was no longer a priest.
“I’m afraid Sister Marie Therese can’t see anyone today. What is the nature of your business?”
I smiled at her, my old BBC Smoothie smile. “Security, Ma’am,” I said through my nose to simulate an American accent. I flashed my BBC Identification Card, suitably doctored. It would have fooled nobody at close quarters, but as I expected, she didn’t try to examine it closely. “Milton Trench, C.I.A.”
“C.I.A?” she echoed. I could see from her expression she was suitably impressed. “Is this to do with her visit to the President?”
“That’s it, Ma’am,” I agreed. I glanced both ways, as C.I.A. men do in movies. “Let’s keep our voices down, Ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, of course.”
“Now,” I said briskly. “The Mother Superior is due at the White House at 2.30 - right?”
“I’m not sure. I thought it was three.”
“Three o’clock she meets the President. She should get there half an hour in advance.” My smoothie smile again. “Wouldn’t do to keep the President waiting, would it?”
“Oh, no indeed.” She might have been young and attractive, but she was nun through and through. They take everything seriously, but especially punctuality.
“Okay,” I said, “before she meets the President and before she comes to the White House, she needs to be briefed on what’s going to happen.”
“And that’s your job?”
I shook my head solemnly. “No, Ma’am. My job is security. I’m here to check her out.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my lifetime it’s that the really big lies are the ones that get believed. Goebbels made the same discovery in Nazi Germany. All the same, she couldn’t hide her astonishment as she echoed, “Check her out?”
“Only doing my job, Ma’am. How well do you know her?”
“The Mother Superior?”
“That’s who we’re discussing, Ma’am.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what you want to know about her.”
“Has she ever been a member of the Communist Party, Ma’am?”
“The Mother Superior?”
“Ku Klux Klan? Any urban guerrilla group? Subversive movements? Has she ever preached sedition in your hearing? Tried to recruit nuns for the overthrow of the U.S. Government?”
“Mr -” She searched her memory and found the name. “- Trench, are you serious?”
I had, of course, been carried away, a dangerous thing to happen when you’re engaged in assassinating de Gaulle. To retrieve the situation, I said wryly, “I know it sounds pretty silly in the circumstances, but we’re obliged to ask these questions about everybody who visits the President. I guess when they made the rules, they didn’t think to exclude nuns.”
“Well,” said the reception nun with feeling, “you can take it from me our Mother Superior is neither communist nor subversive.” She smiled to show she appreciated I was doing a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. “Is that all you want to know?”
“No, Ma’am. I’m afraid I have to ask to see Sister Marie Therese herself.”
“More regulations, Mr Trench?” She’d obviously pigeonholed me as a Governments twit, which was fine by me since it left her less suspicious.
“Afraid so, Ma’am.”
“Well, regulations or not, Mr Trench, you may have to wait a while. Sister Marie Therese always takes a little walk in the grounds at this time. She enjoys feeling close to nature while she meditates and prays.”
That was an unexpected bonus. I wouldn’t have to lure her from the building. “In that case, maybe you can tell me what part of the grounds she likes to walk in and I’ll slip across quietly and get the whole thing over with so she won’t have to be disturbed any more.”
“It’s a little difficult to explain, Mr Trench, but if you give me a moment I should be pleased to accompany you.”
She over-rode my protests with that horrifying single-minded determination only the truly innocent can generate. An internal phone call produced another Sister to man the reception desk and off we went together.
“I am Sister Martha, by the way,” she introduced herself belatedly. The name didn’t suit her, but nuns seldom have names like Gloria or Lauren.
“Nice to meet you,” I told her, which was a lie despite her looks. The thing was I needed to see the Mother Superior alone. Not even the Mercedes company itself had ever claimed their car boots would hold two nuns in comfort.
The convent grounds were extensive and beautifully kept, providing vistas of rolling lawns, copses, shrubs and even smallish woods. There was no doubt that if you didn’t know your way around, the difficulties of finding a wandering Mother Superior would have been quite considerable.
“I wonder,” said Sister Martha, “if I might ask you a favour, Mr Trench?”
“Yes, certainly,” I said absently. My mind was still on the problem of getting rid of her once we’d reached my victim.
“Would you mind awfully letting me see your gun?”
When it sank through, I actually stopped walking. “My gun?” In the instant, I’d recalled a theory of Van Rindt that handguns - in common with candles, church spires, Cleopatra’s Needle and the Eiffel Tower - were phallic symbols. Had the symbolism emerged into the American language? Was it possible Sister Martha was coming on to me?
“You do carry one, don’t you? I thought all C.I.A. men were armed.”
I felt relief flow through me. Her interest was really in the firearm after all. “They are - we are. What do you want to see it for?” Fortunately I had the Luger. It wasn’t exactly standard issue for the C.I.A. - more suitable for the Gestapo really - but I doubted she would know the difference.
She smiled depreciatingly. “It’s childish, I know, but we lead such a sheltered life here. It could be the only chance I’ll ever have.”
I didn’t understand a word of it, but I produced the Luger anyway. “There you are.”
Sister Martha stared at it, a small frown on her face. “I thought the Colt 38 was standard issue to the C.I.A.”
I blinked, but recovered quickly. “Except in special circumstances. This is a German Luger,”
“I know,” she said.
We passed out of sight of the main building and stopped in the shade of a large chestnut tree. I allowed myself just the briefest fantasy on what it would be like to goose a nun. Sister Martha really was remarkably attractive.
“Is it loaded?” she asked.
I nodded. “Never know when we might have cause to use it.”
“Even in a convent,” she said smiling.
I smiled back, while inside my head the fantasy hotted up a bit.
“Do your regulations permit you to let me hold it?”
For one heart-stopping instant I had the lunatic idea she’d suddenly tuned in to my fantasy, then I realised she meant the gun. “Not really,” I said. “But -” I glanced around me. “- in this case I think we can safely ignore regulations.” I was, in fact, recalling a litt
le homily Van Rindt had once delivered on the subject of women and guns. They were, he said, quite fascinated by pistols. This was in line with the theory I’ve just mentioned that guns, like hosepipes, were equated symbolically with the male penis. Had I then begun I stir Sister Martha’s sexuality? The thought was rather flattering, even if her reaction was symbolic rather than overt. I handed her the Luger.
She snapped off the safety catch like an expert. “All right, Mr Trench or whatever your real name is - turn round and place your hands against the trunk of the tree.”
I stared at her blankly. The Luger was pointing right between my eyes without even a suggestion of a tremor. “Now Sister Martha -” I began.
“Save your breath, buster,” Sister Martha advised me. “That phoney ID. didn’t fool me for a minute. Nor your phoney accent. You think just because I’m a nun I’m a fool? Up against the tree!”
The look in her eye and the tone of her voice stopped any arguments I might have had stone dead. I turned and placed my hands on the tree. To my astonishment, she frisked me with the expertise of Kojak.
“Can I turn round now?” I asked.
“Slowly,” Sister Martha warned.
I turned round slowly. “What happens now?”
“We go find the Mother Superior. She can decide what to do with you.”
I never felt such an idiot in all my life, but there was nothing I could do except wait. Common sense told me a nun couldn’t be all I hat expert with a gun - although Martha looked as if she’d been born with a Luger in her fist - so that sooner or later she was bound to make a mistake. When she did, I would move with the speed of a striking snake. How could this poor child know she was dealing with the man destined to eliminate de Gaulle?
We found the Mother Superior beside an extensive ornamental lake. She was not, incidentally, a midget. In point of fact, she was rather large, although age had given her face the appearance of a prune. She watched us approach impassively. “Another Peeping Tom, Sister Martha?”
‘I don’t think so, Mother Superior,” Martha said. “He came in pretending to be with the C.I.A. He knew all about your business at the White House.”
“I shouldn’t lay too much store by that, my child. It was in the newspapers.” She turned her eyes on me. “Now, young man, what have you to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“In that case, you may have something to say to the police. Sister Martha, would you be kind enough to phone them?”
“Yes, Mother Superior,” Martha said.
“I shall keep him here, out of the way of the Sisters.”
“Yes, Mother Superior,” Martha said again. It was obviously a familiar enough routine (God knows how many prowlers they must have dealt with in this way) because Martha handed over the gun quite automatically.
And at that point I moved with the speed of a striking snake. I dived and snatched the gun, ramming Sister Martha with my shoulder. I regretted having to do it to so lovely a young woman, but there was no alternative. She was a shade more solid than I’d anticipated so that the Luger jerked out of my hand and fell with a plop in the lake. Martha went down, striking her head against a small stone shrine to the Holy Virgin Mary and her eyes rolled upwards. At a glance I estimated she would be out of the action for at least ten minutes and probably longer - more than enough time for what I had to do.
I recovered my balance. “Now, Mother,” I said, “I’m not going to hurt you, so you can save us both a lot of trouble by keeping quite still.” I fumbled in my pocket for the length of nylon cord I planned to use to tie her and as I brought it out, she kicked me in the crotch
The pain was excruciating, but as I doubled up all I really felt was surprise. Which changed to astonishment when the old bag straight-fingered me on a nerve-point in the shoulder. I collapsed in a heap and watched in wracked amazement as she hitched up her habit and came at me with a flying drop-kick. I rolled at the last possible second, but she spun round in a wonderfully fluid movement and came at me again. It was unbelievable, but I recognised the sequences she was using from a film I’d once seen on the training of Korean commandos. Of all the people in the world I might have picked to overpower, I bad chosen a nun who knew karate.
Chapter Twelve
I got away from the old rat-bag eventually, but not before she’d broken my left arm. Between that and the fact my Luger was now rusting at the bottom of her ornamental lake, it struck me as a very bad beginning to my day of destiny. I should have had more faith, for my luck changed quite quickly.
If America has one saving grace, it’s that money really counts. If you have it, you can make things move; and if you have a lot of it, you can make them move fast. Hence, no later than mid-morning, I was sitting on a couch in Washington’s Belvodine Hospital watching while a friendly young black intern put the finishing touches to my cast.
“You got a clean break there, sir,” he told me cheerfully, “so you shouldn’t have any complications. It may start to itch a bit when the bones begin to knit, but I can give you some tablets to take your mind of it. And some pain-killers in case there are any twinges.” He pushed me gently back down on the couch. “Now, let’s make sure nothing else needs looking at.”
He began to prod my ‘abdomen with firm, sure fingers. I was stripped to the waist and a mass of noticeable-bruises. Why Johnson didn’t send Sister Marie Therese in to clean up Vietnam was beyond me.
“Your ribs are fine,” the doctor told me. He pressed. “Any pain here?”
“I’m all sore,” I told him honestly.
“Yea, but any special pain?”
“No.”
“How about here, Mr Reichmann?” I’d signed myself in as Karl Reichmann, a Swiss financier with the misfortune to have fallen out of a tourist coach.
“No.”
“Or here?”
“No.”
He straightened up. “Well, the internal organs seem to be in one piece. We’ll take X-rays, of course, just to be sure.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said in my clipped Germanic accent. I didn’t have time for X-rays, although how I was going to get to de Gaulle now was something I hadn’t quite worked out.
“That’s your decision, sir, and your privilege. But if any pain develops - kidneys, liver, stomach, heart, spleen - don’t wait around. Get right back in here and we’ll check it out.”
A blonde nurse walked briskly past and without thinking I fantasised she was wearing only a pair of white see-through briefs. My reaction to the thought brought a painful reminder of the Mother Superior’s first well-placed kick. “Would you now check my generative organs, doctor?” I requested stiffly. “I am fearing they may have suffered damage.”
“Sure.” He pulled screens round the couch to spare the blushes of the nurses and eased down my trousers. “Well,” he said, “you’ve still got two of everything you need. Some bruising, though - I shouldn’t do any running for a day or two.” He frowned. “Did your penis always bend like that?”
“Yes,” I told him. “A professor in Zurich has told me it is no more than the loss of skin elasticity on one side.”
“That would do it all right.” He gave me a last professional glance and said, “Well, I think you can safely get dressed now. I’ve done about all I can for you.”
Getting dressed took a little time in my delicate condition, but since I was a paying customer, he stayed around to keep me company; or perhaps just make sure I didn’t leave without asking for the bill. “You know, sir,” he said pensively, “the longer I work in Casualty, the more I get to thinking accidents come in cycles.”
“Really?” I said, more or less disinterested at this stage.
“Happens all the time. You mightn’t see a knife wound in months, then one comes in and the next thing you’re treating knife wounds every day for weeks
. Or broken feet. You get them a lot of big building sites. Somebody gets careless and drops a concrete block. Get one workman in with that problem and you get a dozen lining up right after him. Now take your case - “
“Excuse me, please. Would you help me with my tie?”
“Sure.” He’d obviously been asked to do it before because he was an expert. “Now take your case,” he said again. “How often do you think somebody’s likely to fall out of a coach and hurt themselves badly enough to need hospital treatment? Once a year? Twice a year maybe in a city this size? Let me tell you, sir, this very morning we had an old soldier in with multiple rib fractures from falling from a coach. And now you, with bruises and a broken arm from the same thing.” He grinned, a dazzling slash of white against the black skin. “But at least you don’t have to see the President bandaged like a mummy.”
On the instant, my mind grew crystal clear and razor sharp. “What?” I said.
“You got it, sir. He has an appointment with the President of the United States this very afternoon to get some charity certificate. And he’d going to turn up there looking like the ghost of Tutankhamen.” He shook his head. “Man, that’s something I’d really like to see.”
“Who is he, this man?” I asked casually.
The doctor finished knotting my tie. “Can’t tell you that, Mr Reichmann. Medical ethics.”
It made no difference. I had a mental file on every human being in the presentation party and there was only one old soldier amongst them. His name was General George Ivimy.
General George Ivimy Retd., that is, thank God. His address, a suburban villa by the sound of it, was printed in a phone book in the hospital lobby. I made a, mental note, then went out to the car where I sat and thought.
Madame de Gaulle's Penis Page 9