“Yes, my daughter, it is.”
“Well, that sonofabitch certainly bore — beared? — false witness against me. I just have to swallow that?”
“What would you suggest, my daughter? Since I’m not going to permit you, no matter how far you’ve fallen from Holy Mother Church, to either kill him or turn him into an ice sculpture.”
“I have a suggestion,” Aleksandr Pevsner said. “First thing in the morning, I’ll take him out on the Czarina of the Gulf and put him with the Cubans.”
“What Cubans are those, my son?” the archbishop asked.
“The ones the Cuban DGI doesn’t know that I know they sneaked onto my ship.”
“I don’t understand, my son,” the archbishop said.
“What I plan to do, Your Grace,” Pevsner said, “when we’re five or ten miles offshore, and they have finished restoring the ladies’ restrooms to a suitably pristine condition, is gather the Cubans on the fantail, tell them I know who they are, and ask them how well they can swim.”
“That’s okay with me insofar as ol’ Hockey Puck is concerned,” Agrafina said. “But it seems a little tough on the Cubans.”
“Not to worry, my daughter,” the archbishop said, “I am not going to permit my son Aleksandr to drown twenty-four Cubans.”
“What if I put them in lifeboats, give them plenty of Aqua Mexicana to drink, and make them row back here?”
The archbishop considered that thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “That’d work for me.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Pevsner said. “Take both those clowns down to the Czarina of the Gulf.”
“You’re an evil man, Aleksandr Pevsner,” Charley Castillo said.
“Thank you. I like to think so,” Pevsner replied.
AFTERWORD
For those who may be wondering why this story sounds like M*A*S*H, an explanation:
Years ago, when I was writing the dozen sequels to M*A*S*H by “Richard Hooker”—the pen name for the distinguished surgeon H. Richard Hornberger, M.D., F.A.C.S. — I got to know Dick well enough to ask why he wrote the original book.
In essence, he said that humor can wash out bad memories. And that he wasn’t trying to remember our time in Korea — he was trying to forget it.
I had just begun this book when my son and I went to the annual OSS Society dinner at which former CIA director Robert Gates — whom I regard as a great patriot — was given the William J. Donovan Award.
Also at the banquet were a number of old pals who I also regard as great patriots. Some of them were general officers and some were the spook business equivalent of junior officers and PFCs.
And also at the banquet was a former general officer and soon-to-be former DCI, who attended with his girlfriend, a fellow alumnus of West Point.
So much for Duty, Honor and Country, I thought. Not to mention how not to keep a sweetie on the side a secret.
I suddenly understood why I was having a hard time writing this book about current spooks and Commanders in Chief and DCIs. And, conversely, why I was having such a good time writing “Death of Innocence,” a story about another era — one of magnificent OSS directors, DCIs, spooks, and a superb Commander in Chief named Harry S Truman.
So I figured that if Hazardous Duty were written as a sort of M*A*S*H Goes to the White House and Langley, maybe readers could appreciate it for that — maybe even get a chuckle, helping them to forget for a minute or so the mess we have in Washington, D.C.
W.E.B. Griffin
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