The Hunting Trip

by William E. Butterworth, III

  “I told you once not to interrupt me until I’m finished. Don’t make me have to tell you that again.”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “‘All of the forgoing bringing shame upon the reputation of Red Cross Comfort Girls and justifying her discharge from said organization under dishonorable and shameful conditions.’

  “Then the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl would snatch the Hello! My name is Gwendolyn. How may I comfort you? sticky label from Gwendolyn’s tunic lapel. Then she would cut all the Red Cross buttons from Gwendolyn’s uniform tunic. Then, as the Red Cross Comfort Girls Jazz Quintet played ‘The Rogue’s March,’ Gwendolyn would be marched out of the Bingo & Parcheesi Room onto the street and the door slammed after her. Her life, obviously, changed for the worse and forever.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Now you may speak, Technical Sergeant Williams.”

  “What you have just described, sir, just would not happen.”

  “How so?”

  “Because Gwendolyn, with one hand on the Bible, would swear on the heads of the children she hopes to have with Second Lieutenant Oscar Hormell the Third, to whom she is now affianced, that all of the charges are absolutely false and without basis in any facts whatsoever.”

  “Why would a sweet Red Cross Comfort Girl like Gwendolyn swear something false and blatantly dishonest like that?”

  “Because if she admitted to them, the chances of her marching down the aisle with Second Lieutenant Oscar Hormell the Third would be reduced to zilch, if not lower. He’s a West Pointer. They like to think their women are pure.”

  “But what if the Senior Red Cross Comfort Girl subpoenaed you before her bar of justice?”

  “I would consider it my duty as a Saint Malachi’s Old Boy to lie through my teeth about even knowing Gwendolyn. And, because I have what Ralph Peters described when he was Pastor-in-Charge Caldwell as the ‘innocent face of a child,’ I would be believed.”

  Colonel O’Shaughnessy looked thoughtfully at Phil for a long moment.

  “I can see why Ralph Peters sees a future in the CIA for you, Williams. You’re as devious and as amoral as any man I’ve ever known. So let’s see how we can make that happen.”

  “Sir?”

  “And at the same time get you out of my hair here, without giving Ralph Peters the idea that I haven’t been looking after the young man he’s come to look upon as the son he never had as he asked me to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re to be relieved of your duties as editor in chief and chief firearms instructor of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation and appointed chief of the armed enlisted courier section.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what that means.”

  “You will be transporting classified documents between the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation and other CIA installations all over Europe. You will, for example, transport classified documents between Berlin and the Franco-American Wine Lovers Society, which is at 49 Rue Pierre Charron in Paris, France. This is in the Eighth Arrondissement, just a few steps from the Hotel George V, which is at 31 Avenue George V, which is where the CIA maintains a small, but rather nice, suite year-round in case Ralph Peters finds himself in Paris and needs a place to rest his weary head.

  “I feel sure the Honorable Mr. Peters will have no objection to you, whom he regards as the son he never had, using the suite when he is not in Paris. Or even if he is, in which case you could sit around the La Galerie lounge together swilling champagne and swapping memories of Groton and Saint Malachi’s.

  “You will drive the Cadillac, which really should by all rights be mine, from Berlin to Paris, carrying with you whatever documents I decide to share with the Franco-American Wine Lovers Society. You will hand over the Cadillac to the valet parking service of the George V, telling them they can bury it in the garage as you won’t be needing it for a while.

  “You being in Paris with the Cadillac will serve the dual purpose of getting two thorns out from under the saddle of the Berlin Brigade, to wit: the Cadillac and you in the field grade bachelor officers’ hotel.

  “As you will be on temporary duty traveling away from your home station, you will be paid per diem in lieu of rations and quarters. And as you will be armed to protect the classified documents you will be transporting, you will also be paid the additional per diem pay authorized for personnel performing hazardous duty while away from their home stations.

  “Now, after you deliver the classified documents to the Franco-American Wine Lovers Society you will hold yourself in readiness to transport other classified documents the Franco-American Wine Lovers Society might wish to transfer to another CIA installation, such as the Anglo-American Fishing Foundation in London, England, or the Italian-American Opera Lovers Guild in Rome, Italy.

  “Don’t expect that call to duty to come quickly. It won’t come for a month or six weeks, perhaps even a longer period. But when it does, you will saddle up and transport it. Say, to Rome. You will not, I repeat not, drive the Cadillac, but instead take the train. In Rome, you deliver the documents to the Italian-American Opera Lovers Guild and then rest from your travel for at least five days in the suite in the Hotel Majestic at Via Veneto 50 that the CIA rents on a year-round basis in case the Honorable Ralph Peters decides to call on His Holiness the Pope and needs someplace to stay before and after doing so.

  “Then you will return to Paris and await another call to duty. While you are waiting, you can continue your education. Because you will not be in Berlin, you obviously won’t be able to do that at the Free University of Berlin, which isn’t free anyway, in case you haven’t heard. My suggestion is that you matriculate in the Off Campus Program of Troy State University, located in Troy, Alabama, which offers correspondence courses in the types of subjects—The Theory and Practice of Volleyball 101 and Cheerleading for Males 101, for but two examples—which practically eliminate the possibility of failure, in which you are, or should be, interested. Getting the picture, Technical Sergeant Williams?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Now, if you can keep your nose to the grindstone, and don’t do anything foolish, such as blowing your per diem in lieu of rations and quarters and your hazardous duty pay on Parisian hookers . . . Allow me to digress a moment.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you have an overwhelming urge to deal with your raging teenage hormones, do not go to the Bois de Boulogne, despite its reputation for being an area where strikingly beautiful women gather hoping to find carnal congress with men.”

  “May I ask why not, sir?”

  “I don’t know how to put this to someone of your age, but I feel duty bound to try, and not only because the Honorable Ralph Peters would really put my ass in a sling if I didn’t warn the young man he thinks of as the son he never had about the hazards the Bois de Boulogne poses for someone like you.”

  “What about the Bois de Boulogne, sir?”

  “How do I put this delicately? Look at it this way, Technical Sergeant Williams. While the women in the Bois de Boulogne are without doubt as strikingly beautiful as women come, when it comes time to void their bladders, they do so as we do.”

  “I don’t think I understand, sir.”

  “I was afraid I was going to have to draw you a verbal picture, and I was right. All right. What the strikingly beautiful women of the Bois de Boulogne do when they have to take a leak is stand up at a urinal, get a good grip on their EXPLETIVE DELETED!! tools, and aim them at the holes in the bottom of the urinal, meanwhile trying not to splash any of the You Know What on their shoes. You take my meaning?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I do.”

  “Where was I? Oh. If you don’t do anything foolish, like coming back to Berlin for any reason unless I summon you, when the next nearly two years are up, you will have a college degree, your majority, and your commission. Go
t it?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  [ TWO ]

  Paris, France

  Sunday, October 2, 1949

  Not quite one year later, Phil walked out of the Hotel George V just before midnight and made his way to the Champs-Élysées, which is the wide street that runs down the hill from the Arc de Triomphe de L’Étoile traffic circle, which is where Napoleon is buried.

  He was a changed man from the boy he’d been in Berlin. For one thing, he was almost an alumnus of Troy State University, of Troy, Alabama, which meant he was not far from being First Lieutenant Philip W. Williams, Military Intelligence Corps, U.S. Army, just as soon as he turned twenty-one.

  The Troy State relationship had been a profitable one for him. They offered a plethora of courses that weren’t all that difficult—he finished The Theory of Snooker Pool 202, for example, one afternoon while having his hair cut in the barbershop of the Hesperia Emperatriz Hotel on López de Hoyos in Madrid, Spain.

  And the Troy State Faculty Senate Board had just granted him credit for four years of physical education after he submitted his certificates of certification from the Royal Korean Archery & Taekkyeon Academy, located on Dried Fish Street in London, for their evaluation.

  One certificate was for Dojunim and the other for Taekkyeon.

  What had happened was that while wandering around London one day he happened across the RKA&TA, as it was known. Not having fired a bow and arrow since he was six years old, and having nothing better to do at the time, he figured what the hell, pass a little time, give it a shot.

  Two hours and twenty pounds sterling later, he had learned that while shooting a Korean bow and arrow set was more physically tiring than pulling a trigger, it wasn’t any harder for him to hit with an arrow what he was pointing it at than it was for him to go one hundred straight at skeet or trap.

  This earned him a certificate, presented with many smiles and bows by pajama-clad Anglo-Koreans, saying he was now a / , which is Korean for Dojunim, which means Damn Good Shot with Bow and Arrow, which he didn’t pay much attention to at the time.

  The next time he was in London, he went back to the RKA&TA to take a few more shots with a bow and arrow. This time there was a Korean in the RKA&TA who spoke English.

  By then Phil had learned how to speak French and had greatly improved his Hungarian so that the next time—he prayed that there indeed would be a next time—he found himself sharing a pillow with Magda, Countess Kocian, they could chat more easily. But Phil didn’t speak a word of Korean and the last time he’d been in the RKA&TA it had been all sign language, grimaces, and a lot of bowing.

  This time a short gentleman, who when speaking sounded like the Queen, told him there was another Korean martial art called Taekkyeon, one that is characterized by fluid, dynamic footwork and utilizes a wide variety of kicks and fist and elbow strikes, as well as pressure point attacks, throws, and grapples.

  He went on to say that as a result of Phil having been declared a / as a result of his remarkable bow-and-arrow marksmanship, the RKA&TA was willing to train him in this ancient art without any cost to him at all.

  Phil, thinking that an intelligence officer as he was about to be might well find himself in a situation where he might have to defend himself, and that a knowledge of a wide variety of kicks and fist and elbow strikes, et cetera, might be useful in that regard, accepted.

  It took him a half-dozen more visits to London before he was judged to be skillful enough kicking, striking, et cetera, to be a Taekkyeon Black Belt, but eventually it happened, and he saw himself enrolled in the leather-bound books of Taekkyeon as a Master (Beginner’s Class) of the ancient art.

  And then he just about forgot both certificates until he got a request for funds, described as “Alumni News,” from Troy State University. He received similar alumni news publications from all but one of the boarding schools from which he had been booted at least once every two months.

  Insofar as the boarding schools were concerned, they were quite willing to forget the circumstances of his having left the schools, and consider him an alumni, as long as he was prepared to cut a check.

  The alumni news magazines showed pictures of all the good things that could be done on campi providing of course that the generous alumni cut a check.

  The Troy State Alumni News showed a picture of a blonde in short shorts holding a bow and arrow, and said that if the generous alumni cut a generous check, the Troy State Archery Range could be doubled in size.

  Phil certainly had no intention of cutting a check, generous or miserly, to Troy State as he had never been on the campus or for that matter knew where in the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Alabama was and didn’t much care. But there was something about the picture that held his attention besides the partially exposed buttocks of the blonde and he kept looking at it.

  Then he knew.

  If they have an archery range, he reasoned, archery is probably on the curriculum. When he checked the catalog, there it was. Not only was, but was sort of a big deal. In addition to Archery 101, there was Intermediate Archery 102, Advanced Archery 201, and Master Class Archery 202.

  The problem was a line that read: Archery is On-Campus Study only.

  He thought about that, and decided all they could say was “Hell no,” and shipped off his certificates from the RKA&TA and asked that they be evaluated for credit.

  The faculty apparently knew all about / because their reply was quickly forthcoming. He would not only get credit for four years of regularly scheduled physical training, but inasmuch as they would love to have a bona fide / on the faculty, they were enclosing for his consideration an application for employment as a junior assistant athletic coach (Archery) on his graduation.

  None of this was on Phil’s mind as he walked out of the George V just before midnight and walked down Rue Pierre Charron to the Champs-Élysées. What he wanted to do was see if he could be of any service to fellow Americans, especially female Americans in their twenties.

  He had learned that America’s institutions of higher learning provided their female students “a year of study abroad” to widen their knowledge of the world by letting them spend a carefully chaperoned year in La Belle France.

  More to the point, he had learned that many of these young ladies, after having spent the day examining the Eiffel Tower and the treasures of the Louvre, would escape their chaperones and head for the Champs-Élysées looking for a little of the romance they had heard was so common in the City of Lights but had not been on display at La Tour Eiffel, as it was known in Paris, or the Louvre.

  When Phil encountered such young women, who usually traveled in pairs or trios, he would approach them—not getting too close—and smile and announce that he heard them talking, knew them to be Americans, and as an American himself who lived in Paris, wondered if he could be of any use whatever to them.

  Once in two point three times, one of the young women would ask, usually dubiously, “You live in Paris?”

  If that happened, Phil would reply, “Yes, mam’selle, I do.”

  Once in two times, that would trigger the response, “Student, are you? At the Sorbonne, or possibly the École Superior Polytechnique?”

  Phil’s study of the opposite gender had taught him that females took pleasure in demonstrating their knowledge even if they didn’t have much knowledge. In this case, this meant that the female who asked if he were possibly a student at the École Superior Polytechnique almost certainly didn’t have the faintest idea what that was, although she knew both how to pronounce it, and that there was an accent aigu over the É in École.

  Phil, with a slight smirk on his face, would then reply, “No, mam’selle, I am not a student at either the Sorbonne or the École Superior Polytechnique.”

  If he got this far, the chances were 95 to 1 the next question to him would be, “Then what do you do here in Paris?” />
  To which he would reply, “I’m afraid, mam’selle, that I am not permitted to answer that question, even to patriotic fellow Americans, in public, but if you’re really curious, there is a small café around the corner, Le Café Cricou, where I can show you something that may answer your understandable curiosity.”

  This was the critical point in the confrontation. There were two possible next moves by the female side. One was that Phil would be told “forget it”—unless the young ladies were students at one of the ivy-covered female institutions, such as Wellesley or Sarah Lawrence, in which case he would be told to go EXPLETIVE DELETED!! himself, and they would walk away.

  If he got them into the Café Cricou, however, the battle was nearly over. The female patrons of the Café Cricou were primarily practitioners of the oldest profession and they practiced it on the Champs-Élysées. Many of them were friends of Phil’s. He had on many occasions, during his every-other-week exercise with the Cadillac to keep its tires from going flat on the bottom, filled the Cadillac with Cricou girls and driven them out to the Bois de Boulogne for a picnic.

  The strikingly beautiful women of the Bois de Boulogne, who in fact stood in order to take a leak, deserted the Bois in daylight hours, leaving its tree-shaded grassy expanses free for picnics and other such innocent activities. Phil furnished the Cadillac and the occasional bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Cricou girls furnished the Camembert, the baguettes, the oysters, the fried chicken, et cetera, and a good time was had by all.

  The result of this was whenever Phil went into the Café Cricou, at least four, and often more, Cricou girls, who wore skirts slit nearly to their waists and ten-inch stiletto high heels, would walk over to his table and give him a little kiss.

  Additionally, the Edith Piaf impersonator at the piano would, when she saw Phil come in, segue into her (actually Miss Piaf’s) signature song, “Je ne regrette rien” which means, roughly, “I ain’t sorry ’bout a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! thing,” and blow him a little kiss.

  All of this of course impressed the young American ladies Phil had talked into going with him into the Café Cricou. And then he topped this by showing them his CIC credentials and badge. This visibly dazzled them as, truth to tell, he knew damned well it would.