“As ye sow, Boris, so shall ye reap!” the archbishop said.
“Tea and piety and ice and snow,” Boris said. “I’d rather have the hellfire and brimstone.”
“How about some coffee?”
“You mean, I have a choice?”
The door opened, and His Royal Highness Prince Hassan, also in night clothes, stepped in.
“Are you awake, Cher Boris?” he asked.
“Thank God you’re here, Hassan. I wouldn’t want to be down here all alone. Furthermore, most of my troubles can be blamed on evil companions. You, in particular. I’ll tell Him that.”
“What’s he talking about, Dago Red?” Hassan asked.
“I don’t know,” the archbishop replied. “But then, I seldom do know what he’s talking about.”
“You mean, Hassan, that you don’t know? That you haven’t looked out the window?”
Hassan obligingly looked out the window.
“What am I supposed to see?”
“I see miles and miles of nothing but snow and ice. What do you see?”
“The same thing,” Hassan said.
“And that doesn’t bother you? The prospect of going through eternity with cold toes and the sniffles?”
“It won’t be quite that long, Boris,” Hassan said. “I came in to tell you that we just heard on the radio that Horsey and François Mulligan will land in about five minutes.”
“I’m dreaming, that’s what it is,” Boris said suddenly, and with certainty in his voice. He reached up and pinched his cheek. He yelped in pain.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what that was all about,” the archbishop said. “But my curiosity’s got the best of me. Why did you pinch your cheek so hard that it hurt, Boris?”
“To wake up from this entirely unpleasant nightmare,” Boris replied reasonably. “No offense, Dago Red.”
“None taken,” the archbishop said.
“This is somewhat confusing,” Boris said finally, sitting up and putting his hands to his head with infinite tenderness. “If I pinched myself so hard that it hurt in order to wake up, how come I’m still here, barely able to bear the pain of my exquisite agony? And why is all that ice and snow still out there, horizon to horizon?”
He peered out the window again.
“Here comes a helicopter,” he said. “A red one. I would have thought that He would travel around in something that had a little more class. Maybe in a golden chariot; maybe on a white cloud.”
“That’s probably Horsey and François ,” Hassan said. “I told you they radioed that they were almost here.”
“Not that I don’t know, of course, where we are,” Boris said. “But I want to make sure you know where we are. Where are we, Hassan?”
“On the North Slope of Alaska, Boris, near Prudhoe Bay.”
“Of course, of course,” Boris said. “That explains all that goddamn ice and snow. And the next question, obviously, is—what the hell are we doing in Alaska?”
“Boris,” the archbishop said. “If I asked you, would you reply truthfully?”
“Asked me what?”
“Where you thought you were?”
“You wouldn’t do that to me, old buddy, would you?”
“I might,” the archbishop said. “But perhaps not just now.”
“I suppose you know, Dago Red, what we’re doing here? It sounds like something you’d think up.”
“It was your idea, Boris,” Hassan said, a tone of surprise in his voice. “It came to you while you and the Painless Polack and T. Mullins Yancey were flying paper airplanes off the Eiffel Tower.”
“Yes, of course it did,” Boris replied. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?” He paused. “But do you remember why I wanted to come to Alaska?”
“You decided we all had to go to Miami, Boris,” the archbishop said.
“My God! How much whisky did you force me to drink, Hassan? Miami is even worse than the North Slope of Alaska. You must have misunderstood me.”
“You do remember talking to Margaret on the overseas telephone, don’t you, Boris?” the archbishop asked.
“Margaret? Margaret who? I don’t know anyone named Margaret. . . . Oh, you mean Hot Lips. Yes, of course, I remember talking to her.”
“The important thing, Boris,” Archbishop Mulcahy went on, “is whether you remember what you talked about.”
“It’s a good thing for you, Dago Red, that I have a profound admiration for those who serve the Church. Otherwise, I wouldn’t take kindly to the suggestion that I was drunk out of my mind and don’t remember what I said.”
“I’m glad you remember,” Mulcahy said. “I would hate to think that you’d forgotten.”
“Perish the thought,” Boris said. “You say we’re going to Miami?”
“Just as soon as we get Horsey and François on board the plane.”
“Wake me when we get there,” Boris said, lying back on the bed and pulling the silk pillow over his head again. “I sang last night, you know, and I need my rest.”
Chapter Ten
FROM INTERPOL PARIS
TO F.B.I. WASHINGTON D.C.
CENTRAL PARIS REGION GENDARMERIE NATIONALE ARE HOLDING A SUSPECT CHARGED WITH GRAND THEFT OF COSTUMES BELONG TO THE PARIS NATIONAL OPERA AND RESISTING ARREST. SUSPECT WAS APPREHENDED IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA WHILE ATTIRED IN VESTMENTS OF A BISHOP OF CATHOLIC CHURCH. SUSPECT HAD NO IDENTIY PAPERS. SUSPECT FIRMLY MAINTAINS HE IS PATRICK MICHAEL O’GRAGARTY, AMERICAN NATIONAL, EMPLOYED AS BlSHOP OF DIOCESE OF GREATER MIAMI AND THE FLORIDA KEYS. SUBJECT IS MALE CAUCASIAN, APPROXIMATELY FIFTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, HAZEL EYES, GREY HAIR, FIVE FEET SIX INCHES TALL AND WEIGHING 190 POUNDS, FLUSHED COMPLEXION AND STOCKY BUILD. GENDARMERIE NATIONALE AUTHORITIES BELIEVE HE IS IRISH, BUT DOUBT, BECAUSE OF LANGUAGE SUSPECT HAS BEEN USING, THAT HE IS CONNECTED WITH ANY RELIGIOUS BODY. GENDARMERIE NATIONALE FEELS IT IS MOST PROBABLE HE IS MEMBER OF IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY, AND INQUIRY IS BEING MADE OF BRITISH AND REPUBLIC OF IRELAND AUTHORITIES. PLEASE ADVISE.
J. MORGENBLAU, INSPECTOR IN CHARGE
INTERPOL PARIS
“Chancellory of the Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys. Good morning.”
“Good morning. I wonder, if he’s not tied up or anything, if I might speak with the bishop?”
“Might I inquire who’s calling?”
“I’d rather not say, if it’s all the same to you. I won’t take but a moment of his time.”
“Well, I’m sorry, sir, we just can’t let just anyone speak with the bishop.”
“This is a very personal matter.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we have our rules. You just can’t run a diocese without rules, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“Very well. This is the F.B.I.”
“The F.B.I.! As in Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
“Correct. Now put me through to the bishop.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”
“What do you mean, you can’t do that? This is the F.B.I. calling!”
“So you say. But how do I know that?”
“Because I’m telling you, that’s why!”
“But, certainly, sir, you must realize that just any one at all could call up and say he’s from the F.B.I. How do I know you’re not an impostor?”
“I want your name and social security number,” the man from the F.B.I. said officiously.
“I’m sorry, sir, we are not permitted to give out that information.”
“Why not? All we want is the facts.”
“Right on the bottom of my social security card it says, in big letters, ‘Not to be used for purposes of identification.’ Are you asking me to defy the Social Security Administration? Shame on you! So far as I’m concerned that proves you’re an impostor, up to God only knows what nefarious scheme. Good day, sir.” The phone went dead in the ear of the agent in charge, Miami area Federal Bureau of Investigation. But he hadn’t become an agent in charge by giving up easily.
“Finklestein,�
� he said to his deputy agent in charge, “there’s something fishy going on over there. I can feel it in my bones. Who’s our undercover informant in the chancellory?”
“I hate to tell you this, Chief,” deputy agent in charge Finklestein confessed, “but we don’t have one at the moment. We’re working on it, and the situation should be corrected within the foreseeable future, but at the moment, we just don’t have an informant.”
“Just two months ago—no more, I remember—I O.K.’d the expenditure of some of our secret funds to pay for an informer at the chancellory.”
“I hate to tell you this, Chief,” deputy-agent-in-charge Finklestein said. “I’d hoped to break it to you gently when the time was right and we had corrected the situation.”
“Stop beating around the bush!” the agent in charge said. “You can’t ever expect to become an agent in charge yourself if you can’t answer a simple question.”
“He defected, Chief,” deputy agent-in-charge Finklestein said.
“Defected?” the agent in charge said, incredulously.
“Defected,” Finklestein repeated firmly. “They got to him, Chief. One of our best men, too.”
“Just give me the facts, Finkelstein.”
“A week ago come Thursday, he became a monk,” Finklestein said.
“That’s awful! He’ll tell them everything he knows.”
“It’s not as bad as it first appeared to be, Chief. He talked to me before he made the move.”
“You knew it was going to happen? And you didn’t stop him? Why didn’t you have him locked up?”
“He outwitted me, Chief,” Finklestein said. “I told you, before he turned traitor, he was one of our best men. He planned his defection very carefully.”
“You should have had him thrown in the slammer for cheating on his income tax,” the agent in charge said firmly.
“How could I know if he had?”
“Everybody does, stupid!” the agent in charge replied. “And when we can’t catch somebody fair and square, we always have that. You just weren’t thinking, Finklestein. You let the side down.”
“You didn’t let me finish, Chief,” Finklestein said. “I told you, he came to me and told me he was, as he put it, going to change sides.”
“He came and told you that, and you let him go! We’ve been over that before.”
“But he told me he wasn’t going to blow the whistle on us,” Finklestein said.
“Ha!” the agent in charge snorted. “At this very moment he’s singing his head off, the lousy canary!”
“Not so, Chief,” Finklestein said. “He didn’t become an ordinary, or talking, monk. He joined the other kind.”
“What other kind?”
“The kind in Kentucky that don’t talk. Trappists, I think.”
“Sounds subversive to me,” the agent in charge said. “They don’t talk at all?’’
“Not a word.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. And our man, our ex-man, promised me, Boy Scout’s honor, that he’d stay there for at least a year, until we had time, as he put it, to ‘cover our tracks.’ ”
“Well, that was certainly decent of him—for a rotten defector monk, I mean.”
“I thought so, Chief,” Finklestein agreed.
“But the bottom line, when you get to it, Fink, is that we don’t have anybody in the chancellory now, do we?”
“Afraid not, Chief. We’re working on it, but the best we’ve been able to do is send a gilder over.”
“What’s a gilder?”
“You know that gold cross on the roof? A gilder’s the guy who puts the gold on it. He worked as slowly as possible, trying to keep an eye on the place, but two days was as long as he was able to stretch it. And he really couldn’t see anything from up there anyhow, except the monks—the local, talking kind— walking around in the garden.”
“Then it’s up to us, Fink,” the agent in charge said. “When the troops fail, the commanding officer has to go into the line, right?”
“Right, Chief,” deputy agent-in-charge Finklestein said. “What have you got in mind?”
Forty-five minutes later, a panel truck pulled up in front of the Chancellory of the Diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys. A magnetic sign was stuck on each door:
“GREATER MIAMI BIBLE SUPPLY COMPANY”
BIBLES TO THE TRADE
WHOLESALE & RETAIL
“WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD”
“BEWARE OF IMITATIONS”
Two bearded men wearing coveralls got out and, after looking nervously up and down the street, walked across it and up the walk to the door of the Chancellory of the diocese of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys. One of them, who was carrying a small cardboard box, pushed the doorbell. Inside, they could hear chimes playing “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” In a moment the door was opened by a gentleman in clerical collar. He did not, the agent in charge realized immediately, look anywhere near as friendly as Bing Crosby, and he was several sizes larger.
“Good morning, sir,” the agent in charge said. “Do I have the honor of addressing His Excellency the Bishop of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys, also known as O’Grogarty, Patrick Michael?”
“No,” the large, ugly, rather unfriendly gentleman in the clerical collar said. “Whatever you guys are selling, we don’t want any.”
“Actually,” deputy agent-in-charge Finklestein said, “we’re not selling anything.”
“What’s in the box?”
“A Bible,” the agent in charge said, hastily tearing the box open. “See for yourself. Now what could be more innocent, I ask you, than a Bible?”
The large gentleman in the clerical collar took the Bible, examined the title page, and then held it by the binding and shook it, as if he expected something to fall out. Nothing did—except the sales slip from Sears, Roebuck, which the agent in charge had neglected to remove when, thirty minutes before, on the way over, he had purchased the Bible.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” the larger clerical gentleman asked.
“It’s a present for Bishop O’Grogarty,” Finklestein said.
“From who?”
“From an admirer who wishes to remain anonymous,” the agent in charge said, smoothly. “Now, if you will just tell the bishop we’re here, so we can get his signature on the receipt, we’ll be on our way, and the bishop can start reading his nice, new Bible. You’ll notice that it has four-color pictures of all the saints and people like that, and a place for him to put down the names of his children.”
“What are you two creeps up to?”
“Why, nothing at all, nothing at all,” the agent in charge said. “Forgive me for saying this, Father, but you seem unduly suspicious for a man of the cloth.”
“I seem suspicious? Now, why should I seem suspicious? Because two creeps show up here in beards, the mustache of one of which has come unglued, with a Sears, Roebuck edition of the St. James Version of the Bible for the bishop? Now, why should that make me suspicious?”
“I can’t imagine,” the agent in charge said.
“Is there something we should know about St. James?” Finklestein asked. “Is he in hot water with the Vatican or something?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” the priest said. “Let me just say that we prefer the Douay version around here.”
“You should have checked that out, Finklestein,” the agent in charge said.
“Don’t try to blame me, Chief. We only use the first part of that book. You’re the one who should know. You’re always bragging about being a Baptist elder.”
The agent in charge looked thoughtful a moment, then looked up at the priest.
“Are you, sir, going to tell the bishop we are here?”
“No,” the priest said succinctly.
“In that case,” the agent in charge said, ripping off his beard with his left hand as he reached for his official F.B.I. badge and credentials with the other, “we must tak
e you into our confidence....”
The priest slammed the door in his face.
“Now what, Chief?” Finklestein asked. “Shall we break the door down?”
“Of course not,” the agent in charge said. “Only Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms can go around smashing down doors and wrecking places without a warrant. We have to be paragons of legal and moral prudence in our work. What we’ll do is go by the phone company and put a tap on their line.”
“Good thinking, Chief,” Finklestein said.
“You don’t get to be an agent in charge by being a dum-dum, Fink, remember that,” the agent in charge said. He handed Mr. Finklestein the Bible. “On the way, we’ll stop by Sears and get our money back, They sold us the wrong one, anyway.”
Inside the chancellory, the large priest, who was in fact a monsignor and chancellor of the diocese watched as the two gentlemen walked back to their van, got in, and drove away.
He lit a cigar, took a couple of thoughtful puffs, and then went to his desk and reached for the phone.
When a pleasant female voice came on the line, he said, “This is Monsignor Moran in Miami. Is Monsignor Clancy available?” The monsignor was. “Hey, Jack, Bob Moran in Miami. How’s tricks?”
“Rather calm for a change, Bob. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, the boss told me, just before he went to Europe, that if anything came up I couldn’t handle, I should get in touch with your boss.”
“He’s out playing golf, Bob. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything I can do?”
“Couple of things I can’t understand,” Monsignor Moran said. “For one thing, I can’t find the bishop in Paris. I’ve tried three times. The hotel says that he went out at about eight o’clock last night, bound for the opera, and hasn’t been seen since.”
“How odd! And what else?”
“You won’t believe this, Jack, but so help me, I haven’t so much as sniffed a cork since the boss left. But just now two weirdos with glued-on beards came knocking at the door. They had a Sears, Roebuck edition of the St. James Version of the Bible, and they wanted to give it to the bishop.”
MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Page 11