John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

by William Peter Blatty

  “UNLESS FAWZ U. defeats Notre Dame, Mister Goldfarb goes to Moscow.”

  “Is that an ultimatum or a musical-comedy title?” growled the President of the United States.

  “An ultimatum, sir,” replied Deems Sarajevo.

  The President eyed him coldly over his shoulder. “It was merely a rhetorical question, Deems.” He turned and stared out the window. From somewhere on the White House lawn came the brilly sounds of an Easter egg hunt. “Find out their price.”

  “Whose, sir, the Fawzians?”

  “No, you imbecile, Notre Dame!”

  “But——”

  “Deems!”

  Sarajevo nodded miserably and left, grunting an almost imperceptible acknowledgment at Blaise Hus, who was just coming in.

  “Mr. President?”

  The President wheeled. “Hus? How are you explaining all this in the foreign press?”

  “We’re giving it the Bolshoi Ballet treatment.”

  “What’s the Bolshoi Ballet treatment, Blaise?”

  “You know—‘intercultural exchange.’”

  “I see.”

  The President’s silence was alarming and Hus shifted quickly to another subject. “The big problem is our own press.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “This one’s really sticky, though. For example, the New York Clarion says it’s a farce and is blaming it all on the Peace Corps.”

  “The Peace Corps,” murmured the President dully. “If I get one more letter writer…” He let it hang.

  “What do you think?” prodded Hus.

  “‘I think we are in rat’s alley where the dead men lost their bones.’”

  “Sir?”

  “T. S. Eliot.”

  “What about the Clarion?”

  “Cancel their subscription.”

  “We’ve already canceled it.”

  The President came up quietly beside Hus and put an arm around him. “Know what I like about you, Blaise?”

  “No, sir,” beamed Hus.

  “You don’t panic in an emergency.”

  Hus looked into his eyes but they were inscrutable. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now tell me again about the Bolshoi Ballet.”

  Hus felt the President’s fingers digging hard into his shoulder and he saw now which way the wind was blowing. He leaped to still another category, pulling a rolled-up newspaper from under his arm and spreading out the front page. “Seen this?”

  The President stared at the headline: N.D. BATTLES ARAB PRINCES IN FIRST POST-SEASON CLASH, ORANGE BOWL SET AS SITE. Below was a story that made reference to the Arab line as the “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” and there were also some quotations from the mouth of Clip Markhoff: the coach of the undefeated Notre Dame squad complained of “crippling injuries” and opined bleakly that “we’re gonna need the breaks to pull this one out.”

  The President glared up. “Yes, Blaise?”

  Hus pointed to a smaller article on the same page. It concerned the hue and cry by Miami’s Jewish colony over the profanation of the Orange Bowl. “Arab killers in our midst!” thundered a quote from Intractable Kibbutz, a leader of the Zionists in Miami, and there followed a long, rambling statement touching upon such exquisite issues as “Fedayeen in the Fontainebleau” and other matters of blood.

  The President threw a wild look at Hus.

  “They’re pressuring the Orange Bowl authorities,” bleated the USIA head.

  “And what are you doing about it?”

  “That’s it—we can’t do anything. Public Law 22 prohibits us from making any attempt to propagandize the American people!”

  The President eyed him blackly. “Just remember that when appropriation time rolls around.”

  Overreach burst into the room. “The Orange Bowl committee’s backed out!” he blatted. “We’ll have to reschedule it in Fawzi Arabia!”

  “I wasn’t satisfied with being rich,” muttered the President.

  Chapter Forty-one

  THE IMAM carefully examined the bloodstained medallion cradled in his perfumed hand, peering in close at the inscription:

  I AM A PROPHET—IN CASE OF ACCIDENT, DON’T UTTER!

  “What does it mean?” he hissed into the telephone.

  “He saw visions,” explained Ibn Caliban at the other end.

  “Bloody sight better than your twangling instruments.”

  “Whatever, Your Imamship.”

  “What about the remains?”

  “Under six feet of desert.”

  The Imam grunted.

  “I—I stuck a wooden cross over the grave.”

  “What?” thundered the Imam.

  “In fact, I’m sorry about the whole thing!” blurted Ibn Caliban with sudden feeling. An ominous hissing came through from the other end. “Listen—don’t hang up,” babbled Ibn Caliban. “Wait, now—listen—can I send you some literature?” The hissing grew louder, more terrifying. “Many now living will never taste death!” shrieked the spy hysterically, and hung up, breathing hard. Then he turned, facing Miss Beaver. “I was never really wicked, you know. I had these—compulsions. You know? Hot flashes, like.”

  Miss Beaver smiled gently. “You’re sweet,” she said. Then she patted the bed. “Come,” she beckoned to her first convert.

  Ibn Caliban approached humbly. “Listen—there’s something I’ve got to explain…” he began miserably.

  Chapter Forty-two

  RUMORS OF the game showered down upon the Arab world like meteors on a warm September evening. No one could make any sense of the gossip until a soothsayer in Baghdad declared that the men from South Bend were the first wave of a new Crusade, and he was quick to corroborate his claim by pointing out that the so-called “Fighting Irish” were under direct command of a “warmongering Pope with a record of looting.” Fat merchants rubbed their hands together gleefully, for Crusaders were remembered as notoriously free spenders, but several bands of pacifist nomads decided to stay continually on the move, for they wanted no part of military conscription. Weren’t things bad enough?

  There were more drastic reactions. Jordan mobilized troops along the Israeli border. Syria seized the pretext to mobilize troops along the Lebanese border. Nasser cabled Farouk for advice on whether to permit the Notre Dame team through the Canal. And the Imam of Doom sent an emissary to the Notre Dame campus with instructions to “circulate among the players in the coffee shop,” offering them a bounty of “5000 shekels for every Fawzi prince slain in the encounter.”

  Fawz, on his throne, fidgeted over his guest list, adding and crossing out names with a long quill pen.

  Should I ask Nasser? he wondered. Might look funny if I don’t. But then the bastard will want to sit in the royal box and hog the spotlight. Plus the fact that he tried to have me assassinated last year. And I didn’t even know he was mad at me! A good snub will serve him right! Fawz crossed out his name with heavy lines. Then he added those of Billie Burke, for whom he had long harbored a strange, secret lech, and Brigham Young. He was very muddled when it came to dates.

  “Sam Spiegel,” he wrote laboriously, for he had a few juicy things to tell the movie producer about Lawrence of Arabia. Then, Spiegel, Spiegel, he pondered. Was that a German name? Or Jewish! Oh, damn all this protocol! He crossed out the name, started farther down the list, then came back again to the black lines across Nasser’s. Probably won’t let my oil through the canal, he brooded. Spiteful, spiteful, spiteful! He regretfully reinstated the name.

  Groucho Marx? He happily started scribbling, then suddenly threw down his pen, sibbing. Marx was definitely Jewish! Damn Israel, damn Harry Truman, damn—— He picked up the pen again with firm resolve. The Marx brothers’ comedies were his favorites of all time, and he would not be deprived of this pleasure!

  “Groucho Agajanian,” he wrote.…

  Chapter Forty-three

  THROUGH THE porthole window of a chartered plane a Notre Dame player stared blankly at powder-blue sky. “I don’t get i
t,” he muttered; “I still don’t get it.”

  No-Neck Palomides, massive in the seat beside him, gazed stolidly at his seat belt, dreaming of incredible destruction. “Ya think they play dirty?” he rumbled.

  “I guess,” shrugged the fleet end beside him; “coach said it would be an even game.”

  The two seats in front of them were occupied by a pleading Deems Sarajevo and a frozen-faced Clip Markhoff. The Notre Dame coach sat with arms folded, eyes expressionless.

  “Who’s going to know?” squealed the Secretary of State. “You’ll be in the middle of Arabia, for God’s sake! Who’s going to know?”

  “It ain’t ethical,” grunted Markhoff.

  “Eth-ical!” yipped Sarajevo. “What in blazes have ethics to do with diplomacy?”

  “No!”

  “One point! You couldn’t lose by one lousy little point?”

  “No! And that I promise you!”

  “Markhoff,” threatened Sarajevo icily, “do you know the penalty for treason?”

  “No, but I know the penalty for losin’! Talk to Terry Brennan!”

  “I’ve talked to Terry Brennan! He’s here on this plane! So are Paul Brown, Earl Blaik, and Cactus Jack Curtice! They’re all ready to help the Fawzians!”

  “Cactus Jack never beat nobody,” sneered Markhoff.

  “He’ll help beat you!”

  “So what are ya worried about?”

  “We want you to lose graciously!” bawled the Secretary of State.

  A stewardess hove into view. “Gentlemen, would you——”

  “No, I don’t want any damn Chiclets!” barked Sarajevo.

  “All you want is the moon!” snapped Markhoff.

  Sarajevo glared at him. “Benedict!” He got up and made his way slowly to the rear lounge, where he dumped himself into a seat and irritably picked up a magazine.

  “Hey, guy,” came a drunken voice. “Meet my frien’.”

  The Secretary of State looked to his side and saw an obviously inebriated Miles Whitepaper with his arm around a burly, uneasy-looking man in a houndstooth sport jacket. “Him an’ Man Tan,” hiccoughed Whitepaper, “gonna win the Col’ War, you betcha.”

  Sarajevo glared with distaste at Whitepaper and then looked again at his companion. He frowned. “I say, aren’t you—Crazy-Legs Hirsch?”

  “Th’ same!” beamed Whitepaper, gesturing with drunken pride.

  Sarajevo was about to say something when the man in the seat facing him lowered his newspaper. Sarajevo’s eyes bulged. “Overreach!” he gasped.

  “Shhhhhh!” cautioned the CIA chief, a finger to his lips.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I can’t discuss it,” whispered Overreach.

  “Jesus! Don’t you ever coordinate anything? You couldn’t let us know you were on the same plane?”

  “Shhhhhhhhhh!”

  Chapter Forty-four

  NO-NECK Palomides thundered up and down the Fawz U. football field and, watching him, Goldfarb was tempted to plead “insanity” and accept whatever consequences ensued. Both teams were out for practice. The entire area was ringed with Arab guards.

  “Well?” probed Jenny.

  “I dunno,” muttered Goldfarb. “I dunno.” He had gone sleepless devising ingenious plays for his princes. His Bedouins were savage, his backfield well drilled. But he felt the vibrations through the soles of his shoes as No-Neck pounded across the field, and he knew humility. Those flashing green jerseys. They beat you by just walking out on the field.… He looked down at Jenny. “I’m not running away,” he said defensively.

  “I never said a word!”

  “Okay.”

  She looked past him at a group of men huffing toward them. “Oh-oh: here come the brass!” She slipped out of the way as the men marched up to Goldfarb in single file.

  Deems Sarajevo got to him first. “Good luck, my boy,” he intoned, taking Goldfarb’s hand firmly in his own. “The prayers of the National Security Council are with you!”

  Then the Air Force chief of staff moved up, resplendent in his blues, and proceeded to scrut the coach icily from his turquoise kaffiyeh down to his open-toed sandals. “You’re a disgrace to the uniform!” he snapped crisply, and was immediately shoved aside by the U. S. Vice-President.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of landmarks?” he bawled. “Celestial navigation? Anything?”

  The Vice-President was pushed forward by Secretary of Defense Charles Maginot, who gripped Goldfarb’s shoulders firmly and probed deep into his eyes. “Look boy,” he pleaded earnestly; “win this one and you can name your next assignment: Kobe, Saipan, Uganda—anything!”

  Then the entire group turned to stare disjointedly as Miles Whitepaper wobbled into the scene with his burnt offering of Crazy-Legs Hirsch. “Look!” he boasted thickly, gesturing at Hirsch. “A lil burnt cork an’ a fez an’—touchdown, Fawz U.!”

  “This is highly irregular!” harrumphed the Secretary of Defense.

  Goldfarb, shaking his head, strode moodily to a water bucket. As he leaned over, reaching for the ladle, a Notre Dame player doing push-ups a foot away from him whispered, “Frampton, CIA; cover man, Gulbenkian!”

  Goldfarb gaped.

  “We’ve worked out an escape plan!”

  “Who worked out an escape plan?”

  “Mr. Overreach himself!” hissed Frampton/Gulbenkian.

  Goldfarb tossed the contents of the ladle at him. “I’m not volunteering for any suicide missions!”

  Frampton/Gulbenkian blinked. “You crazy?”

  “Listen! You tell Overreach that when I go I’m taking a U-2 plane and a concubine with me!” Goldfarb tossed the ladle into the bucket with a splash and moved quickly to supervise his Bedouins. Frampton/Gulbenkian leaped up to inform Overreach, who promptly fainted in the end zone.

  * * *

  On the field, a forward pass flew over No-Neck’s head, dribbling to within a few feet of the King’s golf cart. No-Neck stooped to retrieve the ball and, as he drew himself erect, he found himself staring directly into the hostile, flaming eye of King Fawz.

  “Ssssssssssssssssssss!” hissed the King.

  No-Neck’s tiny eyes blinked uncertainly. His every instinct cried out for him to upend the golf cart together with its occupant, but something about the old man’s eye, the jut of his jaw, restrained him. He mutely turned and strode away, unaccountably angry with himself.

  “Lousy Irish!” muttered the King to his back. No-Neck heard, but kept walking.

  * * *

  Night fell upon the palace, and with it a portentous hush violated only by the soft scrapings of the royal plasterers. From a window in his room, Goldfarb scanned the starry eyes of night and pulled peril tighter around his shoulders like a comforting cloak. He gloried in it. How he wished the game were being played on the Feast of Crispian! Bedouins against undefeated Notre Dame! Was ever shining knight more grossly disadvantaged? Was ever opportunity greater? “Notre Dame,” he murmured, “you’ve got till twelve o’clock to get out of town. You hear? Twelve-thirty the latest!”

  * * *

  In his quarters Fawz sat in the golf cart facing a mirror, gingerly fitting a football helmet over his head. It was flaming red, and across its brow blazed the legend: REAL KING. Fawz grinned at his reflection. Then he practiced looking determined, jutting out his jaw. “Hoo rah! Shah shah! Rah!” he rorfled quietly.

  The pounding at the door startled him. “Come!” he yipped, throwing off the helmet. The door opened slowly. “Ahhhh!” beamed Fawz at Jenny, and quickly replaced the helmet, which he thought dashing on him. “Finish Agajanian, hah?”

  Jenny leaned against the door, eying him nervously. “Your Majesty, I’ve come to——”

  “Da Joosh got no sex apple!” boomed Fawz suddenly, and made a rush at her in his cart. Jenny ducked aside nimbly and the cart shattered a potted palm into flying shards.

  “Hah!” growled Fawz.

  “Your Majesty!” pleaded Jenny. “You don’t
understand! I came to tell you how——”

  “Know how!” roared Fawz thickly and, ramming the cart into reverse, succeeded in crushing a camel saddle to splinters.

  Jenny raced across the room and leaped up onto the bed. “Your Majesty!” she yelped.

  He was coming at her again. Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! droned the onrushing engine.

  “I came to tell you how to beat Notre Dame!” bawled Jenny. “What’s more important, that or sex?”

  Smoke spurted up from squealing tires and Fawz sat motionless. “A puzzlement!” he rumbled.

  “Will you please listen!” begged Jenny.

  The King’s struggle was brief but titanic. “Hokay,” he grumbled at last. “But better be hot stuff!”

  * * *

  Later that evening Clip Markhoff was summoned before the throne of Fawz and, upon returning to his mammoth charges, announced that they were to “turn up in the throne room tomorra night for some wog food.” As he stepped out into the hall again, he bumped headlong into Ibn Caliban. Both men froze and weasel eyes matched weasel eyes for long, tense moments. “Who the hell are you?” snarled Markhoff at last.

  Ibn Caliban’s reply was meek. “Ibn Caliban, the court eunuch. Also third-string quarterback.”

  Markhoff smirked contemptuously. “Goddam fag,” he rumbled and shoved his way past the reconstructed spy.

  Ibn Caliban stood motionless, watching the coach retreating down the hall and yearning to slit him. Miss Beaver might not approve. But what would be the harm in a tentative jab? Perhaps just break the skin slightly, for old times’ sake?

  “Many now living won’t,” muttered the eunuch direly. Then he remembered his appointment with the second-string quarterback.

  Chapter Forty-five

  BELLY DANCERS writhed to throbbings and pulsings while the gentlemen from South Bend, Indiana, sprawled feckless on perfumed cushions, feasting on stuffed mongoose.

  “You sure we should be watchin’ this?” muttered a burly tackle.

  The halfback beside him shrugged. “When in Rome…”

  “Whaddya think I’m talkin’ about?”

  “Shuddup an’ eat; we got dispensations.”