The Baroness and Esmerelda were not surprised when Cher Boris Alexandrovich readily agreed to go for a little ride with them in what they described as “their plane.” He was, he told them, with typical Korsky-Rimsakovian modesty, one of the charter members of the Mile-High Club and, now that he’d had a little caviar and champagne, would be delighted to personally sign their qualification cards for forwarding to club head quarters.
He was, however, slightly annoyed when the plane landed several hours later and he looked out the window to see ORLY rather than JOHN F. KENNEDY.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Have I been zooming around the clouds with another drunken Frog at the controls?”
“Boris, darling,” the Baroness said, “forgive our little trick. We need you.”
“Need me?” he replied, tartly. “You’ve just had me. Twice. Each. There is such a thing as too much exercise, you know, even for someone in my superb all-around physical condition. I suppose all the caviar is gone, too?”
There was only a half-pound of caviar and one jeroboam of Dom Perignon ’54 left, barely enough to stave off starvation and dehydration as they rode into Paris in the Baroness’s Daimler.
On the way, Boris agreed to sing Hoffmann, provided he had their solemn, unqualified assurance that singing was all that he had to do. “I will,” he said, “have to go directly from the stage to the airport if I am to be on time to sing Otello in New York. I will have no time to squander on the President’s mistress.”
“They are now married, Cher Boris Alexandrovich,” Esmerelda corrected him.
“I knew that man wasn’t to be trusted,” Boris said. “He has beady eyes and wears a rug. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s gotten married.” He looked out the window and saw where on the Champs-Élysées they were. “Turn left on Rue Pierre Charron,” he said to the driver. “Take me to the George V.”
“I had hoped, Cher Boris Alexandrovich,” Esmerelda said, “that we could go to my apartment.” After being jabbed painfully in the ribs by the Baroness, she added, “All of us, of course.”
“I know what you hoped, my dears,” Boris said, “but you have had all the exercise I can spare. I now require sustenance—a small steak and perhaps three or four dozen oysters.”
As a matter of fact, Boris was tempted to accept Esmerelda’s invitation. He felt the need for a little more exercise. He had already planned to write Dr. T. Yancey Mullins personally to inquire whether the good doctor’s research into high-altitude exercise paralleled his own. It probably had something to do with partial weightlessness, or perhaps the high oxygen content of the artificial pressurization; but his own experiences (which he would publish pseudonymously in The Journal of the Mile-High Club) suggested that high-altitude exercise was not as debilitating as exercise at sea level.
He knew, however, that any further exercise at this time with the Baroness and Esmerelda would tend to give them the impression that their services were somehow special. They had, he reminded himself, already received twice as much exercise as he normally permitted. If he gave them anymore, they would become insufferably smug and arrogant. It had happened to him many times before. Once he had had to hide out for three weeks in a Trappist monastery.
They did not, as he hoped they would, remain in the Daimler when he walked into the George V, but trailed after him, already presuming that they had special privileges. He was delighted when he saw Hassan and some other Arab in the lobby. Hassan was always so grateful for his discards.
The pressure on the Deuxième Bureau to locate Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov and Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, therefore, had come from what are known as “the highest quarters.” Leaves were canceled. Two companies of the Gendarmerie Nationale were placed at the disposal of the officer-in-charge, and the Police Commissioner for the city of Paris was personally ordered by the President of the Republic himself to place his entire force at the orders of the Deuxième Bureau.
It was all to no avail. Checkpoints at rail and air terminals, and along all roads leading out of the city turned up nothing. The vice squad, considerably embarrassed, reported that they had checked every hotel register in the city and come up with nothing. The Gendarmerie Nationale, armed with photographs of the singer and a police-artist’s sketch of Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, checked every saloon, bar, bistro and Wimpy Burger stand in Greater Paris, and got nowhere. Boris and the Sheikh had apparently vanished from the face of the earth.
On the afternoon of the second day, however, there was a development at once encouraging and baffling. The assistant manager of the Paris Opera received a telephone call from a person alleging to be the missing singer. His telephone, of course, was connected to a tape recorder, a standard procedure when the very real possibility of kidnapping had to be considered.
The message (“This is Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov speaking. I will require a box for this evening’s performance. The President’s box will do.”) was brief, the words appeared slightly slurred and, at first, it was believed that it was simply a hoax. But when the tape was replayed in the laboratory of the Deuxième Bureau and run through the audiospectographic computer (where it was compared with the singer’s voice patterns taken from phonograph records), all doubt was removed. It was Korsky-Rimsakov’s voice. He, at least, was alive. They could only hope against hope regarding Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug.
At seven forty-five that evening, three gendarmes on duty in front of the Opera jumped in front of a battered Volkswagen bus which came onto the Place de l’Opera, and by its flashing turn signals, indicated its outrageous intention to join the line of glistening Rolls-Royce, Citroën, Mercedes-Benz and Daimler limousines discharging their formally dressed passengers at the main entrance of the Opera.
The gendarmes, blowing their whistles furiously, managed to stop the Volkswagen bus, which, on closer examination, appeared to be not only driven by a United States Marine in full dress uniform, but jammed full of other ornately uniformed Marines and their female companions, none of whom could be called ladies unless of-the-evening was appended to the appellation.
At this point, the canvas sunroof of the Volkswagen bus slid back, and Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov’s massive head and shoulders appeared.
“Get out of the way, you chinless idiot!” he screamed at the gendarme sergeant. “Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov is here!”
The whistles stopped blowing. A hush fell on the area—even those Parisians whose enjoyment of opera comes from standing outside the police barriers and offering pungent observations about those who actually enter the building.
Boris put his fingers into his mouth and whistled, attracting the attention of the chauffeurs of the two limousines—a Citroën and a Cadillac—nearest the official discharge point. “All right, Alphonse,” he bellowed to the driver of the Citroën, “move it out of there.” He pointed a finger at the second chauffeur. “And, you, Gaston, hold it right there!” A place was thus created at the official discharge point into which, following instructions from the vehicle commander, the Volkswagen bus quickly moved.
Boris had, of course, been recognized. The general manager and two of his assistants, on hand to greet the Very Important People, came to the curb itself as the Volkswagen’s side door slid open.
Two Marines and their female companions emerged, and then Cher Boris Alexandrovich himself. He graciously acknowledged the applause of the crowd, raising his hands over his head in the manner of politicians’ accepting the nomination of their party for high political office. Then he turned back to the Volkswagen bus.
“O.K., Abdullah,” he said, “there’ll be time for more of that later. Out you go!”
His Royal Highness Abdullah ben Abzug, supported on one side by still another U.S. Marine and on the other side by a rather plump mademoiselle with frizzy red hair, stepped onto the sidewalk.
“We are honored,” the general manager of the Opera said, somewhat in shock, “to have you with us this evening, Your Highness.�
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“Up yours,” Sheikh Abdullah said grandly. “Mud in your eye.” He had learned much English in the last two days, which he had spent in an apartment on the Rue Monsieur. It had been rented cooperatively by eight members of the United States Marine Guard Detachment of the American Embassy. He and his friend Boris had met these splendid young men at the Crazy Horse Saloon, and one thing had followed another (mostly elixir drinking and exercise).
“I called before to arrange for a box,” Boris said to the general manager. “I presume it’s ready for my guests?”
“Yes, of course, Maestro,” the general manager said.
“Then what are we standing around on the sidewalk for?” Boris demanded. He linked arms with Sheikh Abdullah and, trailed by the ladies His Highness now thought of as “The Broads” and the detachment of Marines, they marched up the grand staircase of the Opera, between the lines of the Garde Nationale whose dress uniforms were almost, but not quite, as splendiferous as those provided the U.S. Marines.
The box set aside, as a precautionary measure, for Cher Boris Alexandrovich was not, of course, the Presidential (formerly Imperial) box. The President himself and Madame President were occupying that one. Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug was led to the box immediately adjacent. He set his bottle of slivovitz carefully on the box’s railing and sat down somewhat heavily.
“I gotta go change, Abdullah,” Boris said. “I’ll see you afterward.”
“Mud in your eye,” Sheikh Abdullah said, gesturing regally with his hand for one of “The Broads” to come kneel on the floor beside his chair.
By now, he had been spotted by the President himself, who exhaled in deep relief that His Highness was safe.
Then he stood up and leaned across the opening between the boxes.
“May I say how delighted I am to see Your Highness safe and sound,” he said.
Sheikh Abdullah smiled and raised a friendly hand of greeting. “Your mother wears army shoes,” he said. “Mud in your eye.”
There was a flurry of excitement as someone was passed through the thick lines of security men (once they had him safe and sound, no chances were being taken) and given access to the box.
His Royal Highness Hassan ad Kayam entered the box.
“Oh, there you are, Hassan,” Sheikh Abdullah said, in Arabic. “Where have you been all this time?”
“I trust you are well, my friend?” Hassan said.
“I am well,” Sheikh Abdullah said. “Mud in your eye. And I have made a decision.”
“What decision is that?”
“I have decided to permit oil exploration and exploitation,” the Sheikh said.
“I’m delighted to hear that,” Hassan said.
“Would you like one of these?” Sheikh Abdullah asked, gesturing at the redhead behind him and the blonde kneeling beside his chair. “My friends and I have more than enough to go around.”
“Not just now,” Hassan said. “You say you are going to go ahead with the oil development?”
“Put it from your mind,” the Sheikh said. “All problems are solved. I have personally spoken on the telephone with Mr. Horsey de la Chevaux, the good friend of my dear friend Boris Alexandrovich, and he is at this very moment flying in the first technicians from some place called Louisiana.”
“I am delighted to hear that, Your Highness,” Prince Hassan said, without very much enthusiasm at all.
“Mud in your eye,” the Sheikh intoned. He leaned forward to smile at the President of France. He caught the eye of the President’s wife.
“Up yours,” he said, in his warm, benevolent tone. “Your mother wears army shoes.”
And then the house lights dimmed and the conductor raised his baton.
Chapter Four
The Annual Report to Stockholders of Chevaux Petroleum International (64 four-color pages, 8 by 10 inches, circ., 34,560) has on its first inside page the following statement: “Founded in 1954 by Mr. Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux in Louisiana, Chevaux Petroleum International and its subsidiaries now operates in 119 countries around the world and, under Mr. de la Chevaux’s enviable leadership, has increased its volume of business and profit figures each year since its founding.”
That’s the truth, but not, as the lawyers say, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Neither is the caption under the Bradford Bachrach photograph of Mr. de la Chevaux which fills page three of The Annual Report to Stockholders:
Col. Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Chevaux Petroleum International, is descended from the very earliest Louisiana settlers. He founded the corporation shortly after returning from military service in Korea, during which he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star and the Expert Combat Infantry’s Badge, not to mention three Purple Hearts for wounds received in action. In addition to his business activities, he is a well-known leader in charitable and fraternal affairs (especially the Knights of Columbus, in which organization he has long held high office) and yet finds time for the fine arts. Among his many friends in the arts is Mr. Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the opera singer, whose annual appearance in New Orleans to open the season at the Daisy-Mae de la Chevaux Memorial Opera House is the major feature of the New Orleans social-cultural season.
The truth again, but nothing like the whole and unvarnished truth.
Horsey de la Chevaux did indeed earn the D.S.C. and the other medals in Korea, but not as a colonel. He was at the time a sergeant of the 223rd Infantry Regiment, and was seriously wounded while leading his platoon up Heartbreak Ridge. He was carried off the ridge by Pfc. Bob Alexander, the nom de guerre of Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov, who was then serving as his Browning automatic rifleman.
Although the nature of his wounds was such that loss of his right leg seemed inevitable, military surgeons at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) managed to save the limb. After a lengthy hospitalization, Sgt. de la Chevaux was medically retired from the Army with a thirty percent pension, and returned by Greyhound bus to his ancestral lands in the Mississippi Delta, an area known locally as Bayou Perdu.
The land, indeed, had been in the De la Chevaux family for generations. The title to the land had come to a long-forgotten ancestor from His Most Catholic Majesty, Louis XIV, of France. It had remained in the family, largely because the 16,000-acre tract was mostly underwater much of the time, and officially described in later years by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as “marsh and swamp, unfit for agriculture or human habitation.”
The De la Chevaux family manse was a clapboard shack precariously perched on pilings over the swamp. Transportation between the nearest road (three miles distant) and the community of Bayou Perdu itself, a half-mile away, was by water—specifically, by hollowed-out cypress log, known as a “pirogue.” The community of Bayou Perdu consisted of: six houses, identical in all respects to the De la Chevaux home; St. Antoine’s Roman Catholic Church, a clapboard shack above which had been raised a Cross to mark its religious function; Pepe La Roche’s General Store & Muskrat Skin Buyer; and the largest building in town—two clapboard shacks joined by a ramp—housing the Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus which, since the population was entirely Roman Catholic and the male population, without exception, members of the K. of C., filled the function of social center.
Mr. de la Chevaux, then known to his friends as “Horsey,” had barely reaccustomed himself to being home—to spending his days poaching for deer and tending his still and his nights in the warm companionship of his fellow Knights of Columbus (of which he was Knight Commander of the Golden Fleece)—when the first surveyors appeared.
Actually, the surveyors who appeared, in National Guard amphibious tanks, were the second set of surveyors dispatched to the area by the State Highway Department. The first set of surveyors, who had arrived in swamp-flies (small, flat-bottomed vessels, powered by aircraft engines mounted aft), had been driven off with rifle fire by the inhabitants of Bayou Per
du in the mistaken belief they were agents of the Alcohol Revenue Department.
When the amphibious tanks appeared, Horsey de la Chevaux, who had been, after all, “a non-commissioned officer of the very highest ability and valor” (so said his D.S.C. citation), knew that this particular battle had been lost before it got started. Not even the heavy .50-caliber machine guns he had thoughtfully shipped home in pieces from Korea for use against Les Revenues would be of any good against tanks.
Flying a white T-shirt atop a cypress pole, Horsey, whose leg was still a little stiff, had poled out in his pirogue to meet the Revenuer tanks. Intelligence had been faulty. The occupants of the tanks were not after the stills at all (as a matter of fact, before they left, they had purchased twenty-one gallons of the local brew), but simply surveying the land. There was money from Washington, with which the state of Louisiana planned to construct a four-lane super-speed highway between Texas on one side and Mississippi on the other. The route of the projected road ran right through the De la Chevaux land holdings.
Horsey de la Chevaux was not at all interested in selling any of his land, even for such a practical purpose as a highway; but there didn’t seem to be anything at all that he could do about it. When he consulted Father François LeGrand, pastor of St. Antoine’s, Father François explained the legal principle of eminent domain to him. The state had the right, the good Father said, to take his land from him, paying fair market price, whether or not he wanted to sell it, if they could go to court and demonstrate that the public need would thus be better served.
“Take the land, O.K.,” Horsey had replied, fingering the Garand M-1C sniper’s rifle he had also sent home from Korea as a souvenir. “But dem bastards still be building dere highway when Sweet Jesus make duh Second Coming.”
Father François was a persuasive man, and Horsey was dissuaded from engaging in guerrilla warfare against the duly constituted Highway Construction Authority of the state of Louisiana. The condemnation proceedings proceeded according to bureaucratic custom. For a 100-yard-wide swath through his land, Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux would receive $60,000.
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