Come be my O.R.G.Y.

There were eleven witches assembled at the house when we arrived. With Doña Maria, that made twelve—-not quite a coven, but it would do. They had gathered in a large room lit by flickering candles. The ceremony was to be a long and elaborate one. I realized that as far as my part was concerned, I’d have to play it by ear.

Doña Maria supplied me with a long, white cloak with a hood. It was a little Ku-Kluxy for my taste, but I doffed my other duds and put it on anyway. She handed me a long whip and led me to the center of the room. An intricate design had been drawn in charcoal on the floor. In the middle of the design some pillows had been arranged. I sat on them and waited.

Doña Maria disappeared for a few moments. When she came back, she was wearing a long, loose, black garment identical with those worn by the other witches. It hung from the shoulder to the floor in front and back, but the sides were completely open and the only thing holding it together was the loose collar. As the witches moved about, the garments swirled between their legs. In profile, bosoms were visible, as was the plumpness of an occasional derrière. All the witches wore domino masks which didn’t so much conceal their features as lend an air of the mysterious to them.

The witches formed a large circle around the mystical diagram. They linked arms and began to chant some sort of mumbo-jumbo that sounded like no language I knew. The chant had a strong rhythm to it though, and soon they Were doing an intricate dance in time with it. The circle pulsated as they came towards me and then backed away. The tempo increased and the witches began to perspire. Their eyes glittered wildly in the candlelight and they seemed completely possessed by the ceremony. With their heads bobbing from side to side, and their long hair flying wildly, they really did seem witchlike. The throbbing circle they’d formed was like the erotic lips of some disembodied, ultra-female mouth.

The circle closed tightly around me and they fell to their knees. Their arms weren’t linked now, and their hands reached skyward and then fell to the floor as they prostrated themselves before me. Their bodies jerked convulsively from side to side and their chant mounted to a shrieking crescendo.

Then one of them broke from the circle and threw herself flat on her back directly in front of me. She was a small, dark girl with high breasts that were too fat for her slender torso. She writhed on the floor, panting, shrieking a high-pitched, monotone wail.

Her fingernails were very long and very sharp. Her hands seemed like claws now as they ripped at the loose, black garment in a spasmodic frenzy. One of her hard-breathing, globular breasts sprang free. Its large, round aureole—about the size of a silver dollar—was blood red against the dusky skin of her breast. At first the nipple didn’t protrude particularly.

But then one long fingernail raked the breast from its base to its tip, leaving a thin scratchmark of blood in its wake. Immediately the nipple turned a darkish purple-red and pushed out from the center of the aureole. The maneuver was repeated from the top of the breast to the tip, then from each side, and finally from points between. The result had the effect of a globular wheel with b1ood-red spokes. At the hub, now, the purplish nipple protruded almost three-quarters of an inch. It quivered as if with a life of its own.

The petite brunette pulled the garment free of her bosom altogether and repeated the ritualized flagellation on her other breast. Then she ripped the robe from her body, tossed it to one side and began tearing at her naked flesh in earnest. Her nails raked her flat belly, drawing furrows from her navel to the V where her palpitating thighs met. Then, after a while, quite suddenly, she became absolutely quiet. She just lay there like a stone in front of me, her arms and legs spread wide, naked, scarcely breathing.

While she had been moving, the other witches had sub- sided into a slow-moving, moaning mass of femaleness. Now, however, they sprang into action. They closed around the prostrate form of the little brunette and raised it over their heads. Chanting and swaying, they circled the room, holding the girl high, their heads raised and eyes staring at the naked figure they supported.

Finally they deposited her facedown in front of me. One of the other witches broke from the group and took the long whip I’d been holding from my hand. She stood back and lashed out at the still figure. One buttock quivered under the blow. Outside of that she remained completely quiet.

The whip was passed to another witch. She too delivered a stinging lash to the plump posterior. This was repeated by the next witch and the next until all eleven had lashed the twelfth girl once. The last girl bowed down before me and handed me the whip.

I understood that I was supposed to add to the crisscross of welts on the bare derrière. I struck as lightly as I could and sat back down again. Immediately the victim sprang to her feet and threw herself over my lap. When I didn’t respond, the other witches led her away to the side of the room. She sat there looking miserable and rejected. It dawned on me then that each of the witches would offer herself to me and that eventually I would have to choose one of them. Meanwhile, the token whiplash I’d laid on the first supplicant served as Wica’s “blessing.”

This blessing would be different in each case. I realized this as the ceremony continued. Each of the witches offered herself to me in a different way. In each case, the “blessing” would have to suit the mode of offering. And each would hope to be chosen as Wica’s “bride.”

The second witch to claim the center of the stage was tall and very slender with long, brown hair, a rather small bosom, narrow hips, and sensational legs. She had extremely delicate and graceful hands with long fingers and close-trimmed nails. She knelt in front of me with her knees wide apart and the rest of her torso bent so far backward that her hair trailed over the floor.

As the other witches swayed and chanted in a circle behind her, the lissome lass described intricate designs in the air with her hands. Then her hands went to her body. Tracing a slow, sensual pattern, she stroked herself. One hand stayed at her bosom, trailing over the ivory surfaces of the small globes, dipping into the cleavage, manipulating the nipples that seemed to spring out of the breasts themselves with no roseate around them. The nipples were a reddish brown color and as she played with them, they swelled to sharp, hard points. Her tongue peeped out from between her lips as she strummed the distended nipples.

Meanwhile, her other hand followed the faint line of quivering muscle along her inner thighs. Starting almost at the knee, she stroked upwards—first one leg, then the other. Finally her hand nestled at the juncture. Her other hand joined it there. The fingers drew back the thick brown curls there. The red lips of her nether-mouth were visible now. A tongue of sensitive flesh peeped out from between them.

Her fingers dueled with the tongue and it strained to protrude beyond the lips. Under her caresses, it pulsated and grew. Her eyes rolled in their sockets as fine beads of perspiration formed between her small breasts. Her fingers were a blur of motion, moving as surely and quickly as a top-flight violinist playing a Stradivarius. Finally a trill of laughter escaped her lips and she half rose from the floor, freezing in the impossible position, tight as a bow. Finally she sank down to her knees again.

But her part in the ceremony was far from over. Now she moved around the circle of witches, chanting at them and being chanted back as if it were some sort of responsive reading with unintelligible sounds instead of words. She paused before each one. Deftly, with practiced agility, she did for each of them in turn as she had done for herself. Then, finally, it was my turn.

My policy is never to refuse a helping hand. What with all the stimulation from the free-flowing eroticism, she didn’t have to do much to receive my “blessing.” And, not to be immodest, it was a very generous “blessing” indeed.

Like the first witch, she offered herself to me then. Trying to be kind, I rejected her. She sighed and was led over to the side of the room to keep the first reject company.

The third witch was a fire-eating pyromaniac. First she set fire to herself. Then each of the remaining nine witches singed various parts of her body. It was left to me to provide the final blister on her derrière with a hot poker before she joined the first two on the sidelines.

Witches number four and five were anal and oral respectively. Number four had the most shapely and delectable posterior I’ve ever seen. High, firm, ultra-feminine, it was a rump par excellence. She filled it with everything from candles to a knotted rope, a pointed stake and a heated iron. Then, less sadistically, she ministered to the posteriors of the remaining eight girls. Finally, she raised my robe and—playful Wench that she was—went at me tongue-in- cheek.

Number five was a contortionist. First she laved her own breast tips. Then she folded herself like a pretzel, mouth to nether-mouth, and it was hard to say which was feeding off which. This girl really knew the art of having fun all by herself.

But she wasn’t selfish about it. Her appetite was insatiable. Each of the remaining seven witches provided the feast in turn. You guessed it. I was dessert.

The sixth witch was frigid—in a way-in a way that was self-induced, that is. Two cakes of ice were brought on for her bit. The way she moved between them, lying down on one while the other was put on top of her, was calculated to melt the ice, and that’s what it did. After a while she took a pick, shaped an icicle, and impaled herself on it. While she moved over it, the other witches kept heaping shavings of ice over the rest of her body. When she’d melted her own icicle, she carved out six others and turned each of the other girls into an icebox.

It gave me the shivers. And when she approached me with a pail of ice, that didn’t exactly warm me up either. When she took my hand and guided it to her breast, I realized for the first time what is really meant by the phrase “cold as a witch’s tit.” Believe me, I have never felt anything colder! And when she applied the ice to my golden freeze machine, the result was nil. I froze her out and she went off to the sidelines and acknowledged failure. Wica had withheld his frosty “blessing.”

Number seven was a foot fetishist and easier to satisfy. She toed herself to ecstatic fruition, and then nibbled her way, foot by foot, around the remainder of the group. After which she was arch with my arches, seemed to get high on my heels, and was anything but callous with my corns. I gave her the boot for a blessing, and she hot-footed it to the sidelines.

The eighth witch was an animal lover. Specifically, she was hung up on a trained bull—a very, very well-trained bull indeed. It was led in by two of the other witches and joined the girl in front of me. They were quite a duo.

The girl was on the zoftig side, hefty without being sloppy fat. The bull was also pretty chunky. The girl displayed frontage the size of egotistical watermelons. The bull was chesty in his own right. The girl’s hips and legs and derrière were generous and sensual. The bull’s lower quarters were haunchy and muscular and to a cow I suppose they would have had a certain raunchy appeal. The girl was built extremely large where the nitty meets the gritty. In the same area the bull was so endowed as to give any man an inferiority complex.

The mating was truly remarkable. If, at its height, the girl was full of bull, she didn’t seem to mind it. On the contrary she hung on his horny horns for dear life. But then Ferdinand was no steer himself. Tmly it was a bull session to end all bull sessions.

Nervously, I wondered what plans she and the bull had for the rest of us. Simple. Ferdinand was an affectionate bovine. While she held on to his bull-hood, he licked each of the girls in turn. Don’t misunderstand. He was no hand-kisser. His six pounds of tongue never missed the target.

Then the bull was brought over to pay homage to Wica. After a swipe or two, I faked a reaction. It wasn’t my dish. The witches bought the pretense, but Ferdinand looked really hurt as he was led away without receiving my “blessing” on his tonsils.

The ninth witch was the recipient of “The Golden Shower.” First she filled a pot and bestowed it on herself. Then each of the remaining three witches squatted over her and baptized her in turn. Finally, I added a few unwilling drops and she too retired to the side of the room.

The next witch was tickled pink. A large-boned girl, and a trifle on the fleshy side, she was a lot of woman and a barrel of laughs. She came on with long feathers which she applied to her ribs, her armpits, and then more intimate parts of her body. Using one of them as a Spanish Tickler, this jolly Jane got her jollies to the tune of her own giggles galore.

The two remaining witches then each gave the ticklish tootsie a feather-dusting turn with the same result. As Wica, I provided the coup de grâce which came off like a Kraft-Ebbing¹⁷ case history of ovarian hysteria. The ticklish situation left me with a sympathy itch of my own which I had to fight to keep from scratching.

There were only two witches left in action now. Doña Maria was one. The other was a voluptuous Moorish girl with skin which gleamed like polished mahogany and close-cropped black, curly hair. She threw off her robe boldly and seized hold of Doña Maria fervently.

Although Doña Maria didn’t seem to turn on during the lesbian activity which followed, she was passively acquiescent. She allowed the eager Mooress to pull her to the floor and lay there quietly while her garment was removed. She responded as if by rote to the variety of intimate caresses which followed.

The tawny Moorish witch kissed Doña Maria on the lips. Then she stroked the red-haired girl’s large breasts until the nipples were erect. She lowered her mouth again and fastened it over first one and then the other breast tip. Expertly, her slender red tongue flicked at each of them in turn.

The Mooress kissed the slight rise of Doña Maria’s pink and white belly. She trailed kisses down from the navel to the triangle of dark red curls. Her dark-skinned hands trailing up the milky whiteness of Dofña Maria’s thighs provided an erotically stirring contrast. Under their urgings, the thighs parted and now the fingers vanished from sight. They reappeared and the Mooress’ head ducked down to replace them.

Doña Maria’s whole body trembled. The dark head moved in small circles. The hands were lost between the Mooress’ own mahogany thighs now. Then she raised her head and the position was changed.

With the Mooress calling the shots, the two witches fitted themselves together scissor fashion. Their fulcrums pressed hotly together, they rocked back and forth, first in a horizontal and then in a sitting position. In the sitting position the Mooress squeezed Doña Maria’s luscious breasts, kissed them and toyed with the distended nipples. She fastened her mouth over Doña Maria’s and her posterior was a blur of motion as her locked legs forced the redhead to bounce forward and backward in a frenzy of erotic contact. Finally the Mooress screamed with the top pitch of her ecstasy and both bodies froze in a long moment of fruition. They broke apart then. It was over.

The Mooress led Doña Maria over to me. The idea, I gathered, was for me to participate in a continuation of their activities. I realized now that as Wica I had the option of withholding my “blessing” as well as bestowing it. I chose to withhold it. The Mooress went off to the sidelines, muttering some early-day black power curse to herself.

Now Doña Maria was the only witch left. She stood before me magnificently naked. It seemed I’d come down to the wire. Wica had to make a choice among the twelve witches. That was the purpose of the ceremony. I had to have sex with one of them according to my preference of girl and specialty.

Doña Maria? She was a simple, old-fashioned girl. She approached me directly and made it obvious that she wanted no fancy frills with her lovemaking. Given the choices, it wasn’t hard to make up my mind that she was the girl for me.

The other witches accepted Wica’s selection. They danced around us wildly, chanting and naked, a peripheral part of our lovemaking, but too intrusive to be ignored. Still, Doña Maria was both well endowed and adept, and it was no strain to keep my mind on making love to her.

She pulled me over her on the floor and dug her nails into my back. Now She was a different girl than she’d been with the Mooress. It was as if her entire body was one responsive erogenous zone. Her breasts bobbled enticingly, her hips rolled back and forth with my weight, her derrière bounced with the muscular contractions of her desire.

The witches’ chant roared in my ears. Their naked bodies spun before my eyes. Doña Maria’s musky perfume filled my nostrils. Her urgent, rhythmic moans inspired me. The taste of her lips was an aphrodisiac. The burning softness of her body enveloped me. We mounted to the peak of our passion together and sustained it to the sound of the long-held, final wailing note of the witches’ chorus.

And then it was over. The Black Mass ended as it was supposed to end. The witches, weary, left by twos and threes. Dona Maria and I dressed and she led me back to the waiting coach. Inside of an hour, I was back in my bed in the royal palace.

I was just drifting off to sleep when the door opened and a figure carrying a candle appeared. It was Doña Maria again, her long red hair combed out, her voluptuous body more revealed than hidden by the diaphanous nightgown she wore.

“I thought to myself, it will be even more of a blessing to know Wica in private,” she said as she approached my bed.

“Don’t you witches ever sleep?” I groaned.

“If Wica would rather I left . . .”

I looked at her and felt the renewal of desire. “No,” I sighed at my own weakness. “You may stay.” I raised the covers invitingly.

Doña Maria blew out the candle and slipped beneath the blankets. I was just starting to warm myself at the torch of her body when there was another knock at the door. Before I could answer, the door was flung wide open and a middle-aged woman in the clothes of a palace servant entered.

“Doña Maria,” she cried, obviously distraught. “You must come quickly. It’s the Princess. She has been seized by the unholy spirits again.”

“Right away,” Doña Maria replied. “Wait outside.”

The door closed behind the servant and Doña Maria started to climb out of the bed. “I have to go,” she told me. “I am the dueña to the Princess Joanna. I’m responsible for her.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, curious.

“The doctors are unable to say. Some say she is mad. Indeed that is what they call her—Joanna the Mad.” Doña Maria had a sudden thought. “Perhaps you can help her, oh Wica,” she suggested.

“I don’t think—”

“I pray you try. I am at my wit’s end. I no longer know how to cope with the child. But you, with your occult powers -- At least grant me the favor of seeing her, Wica.”

“All right.” Reluctantly, I agreed.

I threw on a robe and followed Doña Maria and the servant up a back staircase to the quarters of the Princess Joanna. Doña Maria dismissed the servant at the door. Then she removed the iron bar securing the door and led the way inside.

Princess Joanna was an attractive child in her early ’teens. She was sitting cross-legged in bed, pounding her budding breasts with her fists and howling like a banshee. The sounds coming out of her mouth were unintelligible and her eyes were rolling back in their sockets. There was a trace of foam at her lips and a trail of saliva down her chin.

Doña Maria Went straight over to her and pried her jaws open. She took a stick lying on the nightstand and put it between the child’s teeth. “She gets so carried away during these convulsions that there’s a danger of her biting her tongue in two,” Doña Maria explained.

I nodded. I had just enough medical knowledge to make a guess. I don’t know if I was right or not but I guessed at some form of epilepsy. If I was right, it was complicated by something much more pronounced, something much more like a dangerous mental illness. It was only a couple of moments before I was forced to an appreciation of that.

Doña Maria left to fetch some cold water, the idea being that an icy dousing would snuff out the fit. Maybe she also figured that Wica would more readily work some black magic miracle if he was left alone with the lid-flipping chick. But even if I’d had the wizardry of Wica, things happened too fast for me to put it to use.

As soon as we were alone, Joanna the Mad set about proving her fit could be physical. She bounced out of bed, upped her scream an octave, and ripped off her nightdress. She had the appurtenances of a woman on the frame of a young girl. The trouble was that she was off her ovarian trolley. Like it wasn’t enough she was an epileptic and psychotic; also she was having a fit of ovarian tremors—and, it dawned on me—-for my benefit.

Well, hell, I was the only man handy. And she didn’t know I was a demon—not that I think it would have made any difference. The thing is she’d swooped down on me and torn off my nightrobe before I could say “Shazam!” She was real precocious for her age-—-and overwhelming for mine.

The loony royal Spanish Lolita must have been munching on the national fly. She came down on me like a ton of royal jelly out to be pollinated. I didn’t even have time to mutter an incantation to cope with her obsession.

It was at this moment of naked truth that the door was flung open. The King was in the counting house with a shotgun glower furrowing up his features. I knew he was the king because he was wearing a crown on his head and who else but a king would top off his bedwear with a crown instead of a nightcap. Besides, we established his identity quickly enough.

“Who are you?” he thundered majestically.

“Wica the Wise,” I told him, figuring I could use all the status I could summon up under the circumstances. “Who are you?” It seemed reasonable to return the question.

“King Ferdinand V!” he roared royally.

“What’s the ‘V’ for?” I wondered.

“Vindictive!” he “told me. “And that’s my royal naked daughter you’re nakedly clutching to your naked bosom.”

His Highness was obviously hung up on the bare essentials. “I can explain,” I suggested doubtfully.

“I doubt that. But go ahead and try. In the first place, what are you doing in the Princess’ quarters?”

“Her dueña brought me here to help her.”

“Her dueña! You mean her ex-dueña! Go on.”

“She thought I might be able to cure your daughter’s hysteria.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Not exactly. I’m Wica. You see, Doña Maria is a witch and___”

“You’re a witch doctor then?”

“Well, no. But-—-”

“You accuse Doña Maria of being a witch? That’s a very serious charge!”

“I didn’t mean—-”

“You are diseased!” The King pointed at my golden equipment.

“I am not.” I was indignant.

“You are diseased and you are possessed and you have attacked my daughter and driven her mad and now she is possessed. There’s only one person who can cope with such heresy.” The King stepped to the door and called to the guards outside. “Fetch Torquemada immediately.”

Doña Maria returned just as the Grand Inquisitor answered the summons. Queen Isabella was with her. Joanna the Mad took one look at the Queen and uttered her first intelligible words. “You’re a mother!” she said.

“My poor, mad darling,” Isabella commiserated.

“Put your robe back on,” Doña Maria hissed.

“Put down that robe!” Torquemada ordered when I started to comply with Doña Maria’s suggestion. “Don’t try to conceal the evidence of your hellish origins.”

“Is he really a demon?” the King asked Torquemada.

“The madness of the Princess proves it. He has possessed her.” The tall, skeletal figure in the black cassock looked like a caricature of the Grim Reaper. “And there is other evidence. He has used his evil powers on Her Majesty as well.” Torquemada leveled a bony finger at Queen Isabella.

“Be careful, Torquemada! You go too far!” The Queen’s voice was shaky.

“Do you deny that you had an interview with this sorcerer yesterday?” Torquemada asked the Queen.

“No. It is true.”

“And after the meeting you granted an audience to a mad Italian sailor named Colombo? Is it not a fact that you saw him on the advice of this visitor from Hell?”

“Si.” The Queen grew pale. “But—”

“Is it not also a fact that you pawned the royal jewels and gave the money to this mad Italian sailor to outfit his fleet?”

“Isabella!” King Ferdinand looked like a righteous husband about to lift his improvident wife’s charge plate.

“Furthermore,” Torquemada fed Ferdinand’s anger, “this mad sailor’s expedition is predicated on the ridiculous and heretical idea that the world is round!”

“You’ve thrown the royal jewels away!” Ferdinand stared at Isabella in shocked disbelief.

“Don’t blame her, Your Majesty.” Torquemada came in smoothly. “The Queen couldn’t help herself. She was possessed. This witch”—he pointed at Doña Maria —“summoned that demon” -- now his bony finger zeroed in on rne—“to deliver Spain to the devil by undermining the judgment and sanity of your royal house.”

“I have always been loyal to Her Majes—” Doña Maria defended herself.

“Do you deny that you have influenced Her Majesty against the Inquisition? And Her Majesty has in turn influenced His Majesty, the result being to tie my hands. Is it not also true that this Wica extracted a promise from the Queen to stop me from driving the heretics out of Spain?”

“Is that true, Isabella?” Ferdinand wanted to know. “Is that why you came to me today and got me to agree not to extend Torquemada’s powers?”

“Yes, Ferdinand.” The Queen admitted it. “But this Wica has many strange powers. If he uses them for the benefit of Spain, then--”

“Heresy!” Torquemada thundered. “Your Majesty would not talk like this if the Evil Spirit had not possessed you. It must be driven out by fire.”

“Are you proposing that the Queen be burned at the stake?” Ferdinand was shocked.

“Of course not, Your Majesty.” Torquemada back-tracked hastily. “Only that this Wica be burned.”

“And what if his power is greater than yours?” Doña Maria suggested. “What if you are unable to burn him?”

“I will stake my reputation on that,” Torquemada retorted. “The power of good can always overcome the power of evil. If there is doubt, then let it be a test, a contest if you will. If this Wica will not burn, then let him destroy me. But if he does burn, Your Majesty, then you must take it as a divine sign of the rightness of the Inquisition and grant me the authority to rid Spain of all Jews, witches, Moors, Gypsies and other heretics.”

“Do you accept the challenge?” Ferdinand asked me.

“Wouldn’t it be better if Torquemada and I worked out some sort of peaceful coexistence?” I suggested.

“You see how afraid he is of the power of Heaven!” Torquemada crowed.

“I’m just not much for barbecues,” I told them. “Particularly when I’m slated to be the shish-ke-bob.”

“It will be a fair test,” the King decided. “And if Wica is exorcised, then Torquemada shall be free to escalate the Inquisition.”

There it was. It had happened again. I had set out to ameliorate the barbarism of the Inquisition, and instead, I was to be the roasted reason to promulgate it. But I hadn’t much time to dwell on the larger picture. Once sentence had been pronounced on me, Torquemada wasted no time in arranging to have it carried out.

Dawn was just breaking when I was led out to the courtyard of the palace. A stake had been set up there with piles of dry tinder arranged around it. Guards led me to the stake and tied my hands and feet to it.

Wisps of smoke curled up towards my nostrils. Tongues of flame flicked at my feet. More wood was heaped around me. The fire crackled now and shot upwards. The heat started to melt the golden paint on my gonads. Naked, I felt the sweat break out all over my body. A bunch of faggots propped against the stake burst into flame. The fire shot upwards and blistered my posterior. There Was just enough slack in my bonds so that I was able to leap upwards and --

I burst through the icing of the giant cake and sprang free into the smoke-filled air of the stag party. There was a moment of stunned silence. Obviously the collection of distinguished-looking men in dinner clothes who were sitting around the table had been expecting a different sort of filling. Finally one of them found his voice.

“That fag caterer is through in Washington!” he announced. “You tell him I said that, George,” he instructed one of the men seated across from him. “You tell that queer that President Johnson said he’s through!”

'CHAPTER SIX

Hold everything! Call off the F.B.I.! Withdraw the libel suit!

Not Lyndon!

You hear that, Texas? No need to mobilize the vigilantes. You capisce, Ladybird? No reason to book passage for Reno. You got that, Romney, Ronnie, Richie and Rocky? No ammunition; just a dud.

Not Lyndon!

Writer, publisher, printer, et al., apologize for the confusion and hereby state that the Johnson referred to in the previous chap. is not the current prez. Furthermore, there is not the slightest indication that Hawkbird ever even had the impulse to indulge himself in such shenanigans and if he did have such an impulse, all the evidence bears out the innate strength of character to sublimate it to napalming natives and other such expressions of the national good. LBJ in the forbidden hay? Perish the thought¹⁸ !

Not Lyndon!

But all of our nation’s President Johnsons were not so pure of thought and deed. Andrew, for instance, muddled up the national image by appearing at his inauguration for vice president in such a drunken state that he could hardly take the oath of office. Between then and the time Lincoln was assassinated and he took over the presidency, Andy’s capers were an open scandal in Washington. But in fairness it should be noted that Andrew Johnson was not a Texan.

Indeed, Texas never produced a swinger like Andy. Not many states did. Tennessee, from whence sprang the free-wheeling Andy Jackson¹⁹ and the even free-er-wheeling Andy Johnson²⁰ , is the exception. Something in the sour mash, I suspect.

I’d judge the sour mash had been flowing pretty freely just as I popped up at the presidential stag party. Anyway, it seemed so from the way the other guests echoed the President’s dissatisfaction at my appearance. There was a decided lynch-light in their eyes as the expressions of disappointment and disapproval mounted.

The President himself shot me one last withering glance and stamped out of the room disgust. Many of the other distinguished guests got to their feet to follow. But they sat down again as the frosting flew off another section of the giant cake and a blonde vision in black lace corselet black net stockings and high heels leaped onto the table. Forgetting about me, they all focused on the girl. She focused on me with a puzzled expression. I focused back.

She was pretty damned focusable. Her face was the face of an innocent angel, blue eyes shining with Virginity complexion like fresh-washed gossamer, unplucked cherry lips hair of spun gold cascading over the ripe curve of her, shoulders. The half-moon tops of her breasts rose out of the black lace like untouched melons just come of age. Her waist was as narrow as the neck of a choir boy. The cheeks of her derrière were round and plump as unsullied doves, And the legs in the black net stockings were long and slender candles melting into virtuous motion. Yes, an angel from heaven, pure and chaste and undefiled!

She danced over to me and sighed in my ear, her breath warm as sunshine and light as morning dew. “What kinda crap is this, you mothah?” she whispered. “This ain’t supposed to be no circus! I was lined up to do a single. Whatsa idea of musclin’ in?”

“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

That’s pretty clever painting him gold,” one of the guests remarked. “I wonder what they’re going to do?” He clanged his spoon against his bourbon glass. “On with the show.”

“W1ih your permission, gentlemen.” The blonde pulled a finishing school accent out of left field and curtsied. “I hope you know how to use that thing!” She gritted her teeth in my ear.

“I’ve had it for quite a few years,” I told her sarcastically. “I think I’ve got the hang of it by now.”

“It’s not the hang of it these Johns are interested in.” She shot me a nasty look. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she hissed. “Let’s start with the train bit.”

“The train bit?”

“Choo-choo-choo-choo.” The blonde stooped over, put her hands on her knees and looked at me over her shoulder. “Choo-choo-choo-choo,” she urged.

“Choo-choo-choo-choo.” I picked up the hint. “Choo-choo.” I bent over, put my hands on her hips and followed her lead. “Choo-choo.”

The men around the table applauded as we picked up steam. The angelic blonde kept the engine in low gear. She circled the table slowly, shaking her breasts provocatively in each man’s face by turn. Bent over as she was, they almost but not quite fell out of the one-piece foundation garment. Eyes bounced like pinballs trying to follow the game of hide-and-seek her delicate pink nipples were playing with the ebony lace.

Finally she paused and reached behind her. There was a hidden clasp there, and when she released it the back part of the one-piece garment fell away altogether. Her alabaster nether-cheeks quivered and then, remarkably, she rotated them one at a time, then together, but in opposite directions.

“I’m a little choo-choo train,” she singsonged. “I’m an engine with a tender behind.”

The distinguished male audience roared with glee and approval.

“Choo-choo. Choo-choo!” She circled the table again, picking up steam until her bare derrière was flushed. I followed behind, trying not to block the view. “Mr. Engineer, stoke my engine,” she ordered, standing in one place, still bent over with her whole body moving.

I came up behind her and did as she commanded.

“Choo-choo!” She moved a step forward. “More coal!” I obliged. “Choo-choo!”

A step at a time, we circled the table in that fashion. Finally, she went into reverse. I coupled onto her caboose firmly. “Choo-choo-choo-choo! All aboard! Choo-choo-choo-choo!” The engine was really huffing and the train picked up speed. Finally the whistle sounded—-“Whoo-whoo! Whoo-whoo!”—and we pulled into the station together, braking to a halt that all but melted my shovel and left her furnace steaming.

“That’s real railroading!” One of the guests led the applause and the rest followed suit.

“It’s too bad the President left,” another remarked. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“Hey, Stud, you’re pretty good,” the blonde said grudgingly, and a little breathlessly.

“My name’s Steve. Steve Victor.”

“I’m Heavenly.”

“You sure are!” I wasn’t exactly unaffected myself.

“No, I mean that’s my name. Heavenly. Heavenly Dayze.”

“My pleasure.”

“Is our business.” A Heavenly smile said she was over her pique. “We’d better get on with the show. The natives are getting restless. Let’s do the covered wagon routine next.”

We did the “covered wagon routine,” ending as you might expect with all the “wagons” pulled into a circle. Then we did the Battle of Gettysburg with me playing Pickett and Heavenly bearing the brunt of the “Charge.” “Steamboat ’Round the Bend” found her hips chugging like paddle wheels and her legs flailing water as I sailed her up the Mississippi. For the grand finale, I sank her. Like a good captain, I went down with my ship.

A coterie of half-dressed ladies of pleasure came dancing into the room as we finished and we retired, our part in the proceedings over. I followed Heavenly to a small room on the second floor of the large house in which the party was taking place. Here, through outwardly casual but actually careful questioning, I pieced together some facts about my new situation.

The year was 1868, the date May 16th. The place in which I found myself was the most exclusive and plush bordello in Washington, D.C. The occasion was a discreet celebration by the supporters of President Andrew Johnson. That very morning Johnson’s enemies had suffered a serious setback when an attempt to remove him from office had failed in the Senate by one vote. The anti-Johnson forces had managed a ten-day recess and at the end of the ten days other impeachment charges against Johnson would be voted upon, but as of this evening, his supporters had reason to rejoice in the knowledge that they had just enough “Nays” to maintain their boy in office.

I’d been jumped from the Spanish Inquisition into a moment in American history that was a real cliffhanger. On May 26th, 1868, just ten days from now, in an instance of unparalleled drama, the U.S. Senate would come to a verdict which would affect the nation for a hundred years and more to come. The implications of that verdict would be more far-reaching than those who reached it would ever have dreamed.

The men who tried to impeach Johnson, the men who are the villains in the history books, while some of them were doubtless playing politics, were nevertheless championing impeachment for the cause of black equality. Speaker-of-the-House Thaddeus Stevens, Senator Charles Sumner, and the other “Radical Republicans” who supported them against Johnson, were calling for legislation in the 1860s which would be delayed for a hundred years. The one man most responsible for that delay was President Andrew Johnson, successor to Abraham Lincoln, a Southerner who made no secret of his belief that blacks could never be equal to whites, a master politician who used the presidential veto to block every effort to redress the grievances of former black slaves.

This day, May 16th, 1868, President Johnson had almost come a cropper. Masterminded by Thaddeus Stevens, a plan to impeach the President had reached the first of its two climaxes this day. Presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States, the Senate had formed itself into a tribunal and, after hearing the evidence, had voted on one of the articles of impeachment.

Fifty-four Senators, representing twenty-seven states, took part in the proceedings. A two-thirds majority, thirty-six votes, was required to depose the President. Twelve of the Senators were pro-Southern Democrats like Johnson and their votes were pledged to his support. Of the remaining forty-two votes, six had announced in advance that they would vote with the Southern bloc. Until the last moment one other Senator, Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, had refused to commit his vote. Also, two days before the vote was taken, Senator James W. Grimes of Iowa, one of the six Republicans for acquittal, had suffered a stroke and his life hung by a thread. If he died before the vote could be taken, the Iowa legislature had pledged itself to immediately replace him with a Senator who would vote against Johnson.

Thus on the morning of May 16th, Johnson’s fate hung on the thread of one man’s life and the delicate balance of another man’s judgment. It was a senatorial drama unmatched in American history²¹ .

Four men carried Grimes into the Senate chamber on a stretcher. When his name was called he struggled to his feet and called out “Not guilty.” When Ross also voted for acquittal, Johnson was saved.

The “Radical Republicans” maneuvered a delay in the hopes of being able to change one vote before the other charges against Johnson were decided. There was the chance that Ross might be persuaded to change his mind. There was the chance that Grimes might die and be replaced by a pro-impeachment Senator.

Resting with Heavenly in the upstairs room of the bordello, I never dreamed that I would have a part to play in the unfolding drama. Heavenly, like just about everybody else in Washington, I guess, could talk of nothing else but the vote of the day and the prospects for the upcoming vote. Listening to her, and having the advantage of knowledge of the future, I couldn’t help feeling strongly pro-impeachment myself. But the idea that I might be able to influence the vote and change the course of history didn’t occur to me—then.

After a while Heavenly left me alone. Her presence was required back at the party downstairs. Since my presence wasn’t requested, I stayed out and waited for her to return. I passed the time by putting in a call to Putnam. It had been some time since I’d been free to speak with him and I figured he might need some prodding to speed my return to my own time. He sounded grumpy when his voice finally responded over the wrist radio.

“I was sound asleep,” he complained. “It’s the middle of the night. That’s a hell of a time to call a person.”

“Why are you whispering?” I asked.

“I don’t want to wake Ti Nih. If she wakes up, she’ll want to make love. And to tell you the truth, Steve, I don’t have the energy.”

“Then why do you sleep in the same bed with her? Isn’t it dangerous? Suppose Papa Baapuh caught you?”

“Suppose he did? I’ve got diplomatic immunity,” Putnam told me smugly.

“But what about me?” I exploded. “If he gets mad at you, he’ll never bring me back. I’ll be stuck here forever!”

“That’s your whole trouble, Steve. You’re only concerned with self. Why don’t you think of poor Ti Nih? She’d be devastated if her father forced me to leave her.”

I told him what he could do with “poor Ti Nih.” He told me with insufferable self-satisfaction that he’d already done it. I squelched my ire and tried to stick to that which was most pertinent to me. “How long before you bring me all the way back?” I demanded. “How many more jumps?”

“Search me, Steve. I don’t really dig the technical ramifications. That’s not my department. By the way, how are you getting along with Nero?”

“Nero!” I controlled myself. “Just dandy,” I told Putnam sweetly. “The last time I saw him he was serenading me on the fiddle while I was being drawn and quartered.”

“Really? But you did manage to pull yourself together, didn’t you, Steve?” Putnam chuckled. “I mean you’re all in one piece now.”

“Putnam, this is no laughing matter. Aren’t you even interested enough to know that Papa Baapuh jumped me twice since then? How come you aren’t keeping tabs on that?”

“Well, you know, the old man is pretty close-mouthed. It would be impolite for me to be too nosy.”

“Then be impolite! For your information, while you’ve been observing the amenities and making it with his daughter on the side, I’ve gone through the Spanish Inquisition and been burned at the stake!” .

“That’s a job well done!” Putnam chuckled again.

“One more pun like that and I promise you that if I ever see you again I’ll murder you in cold blood!” I promised him sincerely.

“It just seemed to me that being burned at the stake must have been a rare experience for you,” he persisted.

“That did it!”

“Sorry. Just couldn’t resist. I do apologize, old boy. Tell me, where are you at the moment?”

“Washington, D.C., during the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson. I’m holed up in a fancy brothel at the moment.”

“In a brothel? And you’ve got the gall to make moralistic noises about Ti Nih. Really, Steve!” he tut-tutted.

“I didn’t plan it this way. I just happened to land here.”

“Oh, sure, the man from O.R.G.Y. just happens to land in a brothel. And I’ll bet you’re just hating every minute of it. Well, you’ll pardon me if I don’t let sympathy for you overwhelm me.”

“I tell you I couldn’t help it! Just get me out of here!”

“All in good time. Unless-—”

“Unless?” I felt a quiver of apprehension.

“Unless the Red Guard gets nasty. They’re in the village now, you know. And you and I are the reason they’re here. So far my diplomatic influence has kept them from actively interfering with Papa Baapuh. The local Tibetan authorities are on our side. But these Red Guard bozos are Chinese and they rule Tibet. So if they should decide to get rambunctious—”

“Oh that’s real reassuring,” I told him. “I haven’t got enough troubles. What are you doing about the situation?”

“It’s very delicate. I’m handling it with great delicacy. So, as delicately as possible, I’m doing nothing. Maybe they’ll get tired of the climate and go away.”

“That’s what I like about you, Putnam. You’re a man of firm, decisive action.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do?”

“Get that Tibetan nymph out of your bed. Pressure Papa Baapuh. Get me back before those Commies decide to run you out of the country.”

“Don’t get so excited, Steve. Relax. Enjoy the brothel. I’1l take care of my end.”

“It’s my end I’m worrying about,” I told him.

“That shouldn’t be any problem in a brothel,” he snickered.

“Goodbye, Putnam!” One more wisecrack and I would have thrown the wrist radio through the window. I switched it off before he got me mad enough to do just that.

A few minutes later, Heavenly returned. She wasn’t alone. Even for a brothel, the gent who was with her was a sight to behold.

Picture ten pounds of blubber in a five pound bag. Pear-shaped. Bald head, jowl-on-jowl cheeks, a neck like a feverish salami, slump shoulders only a little wider than the neck, a barrel-bosom where his chest should have been, and then acres of flesh cascading down to pipestem legs. Take that for the basic, and then envision the top half in frilled shirt, drawstring tie and formal jacket while the bottom half was as naked as a deplumed ostrich. The total effect was all belly with a frosting of 1860s style. Add a pair of trousers slung over one fleshy arm and a big black cigar sticking out from between elephant-liver lips and the portrait is complete. He was the very picture of the respectable Washington burgher caught with his pants down in a cat-house.

That’s exactly what he was. This became apparent from the moment Heavenly first started to introduce him. “Steve Victor,” she said, “this is Senator-—”

“No names!” He cut her off sharply. ‘Tm in enough trouble. Just call me Senator.”

“Hello, Senator,” I said politely.

“Howya.” He acknowledged my presence briefly and then lapsed into a moody silence.

“The Senator has a problem,” Heavenly told me.

“What kind of problem?” I asked.

“An identity problem,” she explained. “Like he’s afraid he’ll be identified on the premises.”

“Considering all the luminaries around here tonight,” I pointed out, “why should he feel any more vulnerable than anybody else?”

“If you knew my wife, you wouldn’t ask that,” the Senator wheezed.

“I see,” I said.

His tone as he resumed speaking said he doubted it. “My wife is a wonderful woman,” he said. “She’s a gracious hostess, an impeccable housekeeper and a talented cook. But there are two flaws in her character. She is frigid in the bedroom. And she has a terrible temper which expresses itself when her jealousy is aroused. I might add that her jealousy is frequently aroused over trifles. If I glance at another woman, if a lady engages me in conversation at the dinner table, if I even applaud an actress on the stage—such innocent things are enough to send her into a towering rage. Can you imagine what she might do if she knew I visited this establishment tonight? I shudder just to think of it!” The Senator shuddered.

“But why should she find out?” I asked.

“It’s what ya might call a sorta complicated political situation,” Heavenly interjected. There was a certain relish in her tone; she was enjoying the situation. Having to cater to the Johns most of the time, she was getting a kick out of seeing one of them on the spot.

“My wife’s brother is a bachelor,” the Senator said, envy plain in his voice.

“My father was a bachelor,” Heavenly remembered. “But that’s a whole other story.”

“We don’t get along,” the Senator continued.

“There’s a theory that brother-in-law-hood is a state of natural enmity,” I observed.

“It’s not just that. You see, he’s a Black Repub1ican— a disciple of Thaddeus Stevens. On the other hand”-- the Senator drew his fat up to his full jelly-shaking height -- “I am a Johnson Democrat.”

“It happens in the best of families,” I murmured.

“My brother-in-law is downstairs,” the Senator explained. “I came very close to running into him head-on. Only by sacrificing my dignity, grabbing my pants and bolting did I manage to avoid the encounter.”

“You’re afraid your brother-in-law would tell his sister, your wife, of your visit here,” I deduced. “But would he really do that? I mean, after all, there’s a certain code of honor among men which pertains to situations like this.”

Heavenly snorted.

“He’d tell her with the greatest personal relish,” the Senator assured me. “And he’d also inform every scalawag Republican in Washington. Believe me, I know my brother-in-law. He wouldn’t hesitate to use it to destroy me politically.” The Senator turned to Heavenly with some asperity. “What I can’t understand is how this establishment could be so unethical as to admit Black Republicans on the same night that we were having our party!”

“Talk to the Madam. I only work here. But I know what she’d tell ya. We gotta get along with both parties to stay in business. As it is, it’s a pain m the neck having two entrances and two reception rooms so you politicians don’t turn this place into a Senate debate. Usually, we handle it pretty smoothly. It was just an accident tonight that a Republican wandered over to the Democratic side of the house.”

“Well, I’m not budging out of here until I’m, sure he’s gone,” the Senator said firmly.

“Spend the night.” Heavenly shrugged. “I don’t care.” Then, as an afterthought: “You want I should get you a girl to keep you company?”

“No, I’m much too upset to enjoy it. I just want to rest.”

“Then you’ll have to bunk with Steve here. I’ll go downstairs and find myself some company.” Heavenly breezed out of the room.

Tritenesses become tritenesses because they’re frequently so damned true. For instance: Politics do make strange bedfellows. Forced to share the one bed in the room with the obese Senator, I came to appreciate that.

As a bedmate, he was a moon-shoot from my ideal. He snored. He tossed. He hogged the bed. Clinging to the edge he left me, I had difficulty falling asleep.

Part of the reason was a sort of advance sense of guilt for the extremely unethical course I was plotting. The other part was the way my mind jumped around in piecing together the plan.

Of course, it wasn’t really that complex. Actually, it was brutally simple. I was going to blackmail the Senator!

Now, extortion isn’t usually my bag-—particularly sexual blackmail. I mean, as a rule, I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live kind of guy and I don’t go around blowing the whistle on people’s sexual quirks. As a sex investigator, my line of work has made me privy to the secrets of many an illustrious indiscretion. If I’d been by nature a blackmailer, I suppose I could have made a pretty good thing of it lots of times. But I’d never even considered it before tonight.

This was different though. I was going to blackmail the Senator. Not for money. It was his vote that I wanted. His one vote would be enough to remove Johnson from office and with him the major roadblock to civil rights legislation in the 1860s. If the Senator was as afraid of his wife as he said he was, then I just might be able to swing that vote.

Means and ends, ends and means. Machiavelli with a conscience. My mind spinning, I finally drifted off to sleep.

A landslide of fat woke me in the morning. The Senator had waked up stretching. I picked myself up off the floor and confronted him. His lack of consideration had aroused a certain hostility in me and so I didn’t feel so badly about what I was going to do. Besides, when I wake up I always hate everybody until I have a cup of coffee.

“Senator,” I said grumpily, “I think you should change your vote on impeachment. I think you should vote to throw Johnson out.”

“How do we get a cup of coffee around here?” The Senator cascaded to his feet. “What did you say?”

I repeated it.

“Amateurs should stay out of politics,” he decided when he’d heard me out.

“Change your vote, Senator.”

“Why should I?”

I told him.

“That’s blackmail,” he decided.

“Yeah,” I sighed. I couldn’t deny it.

“You’re a blackmailer!”

I hung my head. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“You’re saying that if I don’t change my vote you’ll snitch on me to my Wife. Is that right?”

“Yeah.” .

“You’re a cad, sir!”

“And a bounder,” I granted.

“You are no gentleman! What about the code of honor among men to which you referred last night?”

“I’m no gentleman,” I admitted.

“Did Thaddeus Stevens put you up to this?”

“He has nothing to do with it,” I assured him. “It was my own idea.”

“I can’t change my vote,” he said positively. “It’s bought and paid for. I’m a man of honor. When I’m bought, I stay bought.”

“Commendable,” I told him. “But remember your wife.”

“If I find you anywhere near her, I shall horsewhip you, sir. I am calling your bluff. You wouldn’t dare do what you propose. And this is my final word!” The Senator finished struggling into his clothes and slammed out of the room.

A moment later the door opened again and Heavenly entered. “What’s with the Senator?” she asked. “He almost knocked me off my pins coming out of here. He looked mad as a hungry hornet.”

“I told him I thought it was wrong to vote against impeachment,” I said, half in truth. “What do you think?”

“I’m apolitical.” Heavenly shrugged. “Republicans, Democrats, turn ’em upside down, they’re all ashamed. But never mind that. It’s you I come here to talk about, Steve.”

“My favorite topic.”

“Yeah? Well, what I wanna know is who the hell are you an’ whadda ya doin’ here?”

“That’s kind of a long story.”

“I thought you was put on special for last night, but the Madam never hearda ya. I covered up for ya. I didn’t tell her you was here. She got friends in the police department. She finds out ya snuck in here, she’d turn ya over to them an’ they’d like as not give ya a goin’-over you’d never forget.”

“Thanks, Heavenly. I appreciate your not blowing the whistle on me.”

“But you can’t stay here. It’d mean my neck, too, if she found ya. You gotta get dressed an’ clear out.”

“I don’t have any clothes,” I confessed.

“Well, gimme some dough an’ I’ll hop out an’ buy some duds for ya.”

“I haven’t got any money either.”

“My luck!” Heavenly shook her head sadly. “Okay. I’ll go bail. Just stay put ’til I get back.”

She left. Fifteen minutes went by and then she returned. She was loaded down with a head-to-toe wardrobe for me. “This is pretty nice of you,” I told her as I started putting on the clothes.

“Don’t get the idea I do this for ev’ry Joe comes through the door. I ain’t usually such a patsy.”

“I take that as a compliment. Why me?”

“You turn me on,” Heavenly told me frankly. “Been a long time since any man could do that. To be real honest about it, I’m hung up on ya.”

“I like you, too, Heavenly,” I told her truthfully. “I guess it’s because you look so innocent and act so devilish.”

“You haven’t even seen the beginning of how dev’lish I can act. But you will,” she promised me. “Here. Take this.” She thrust some money into my hand. “Go over to the Rex Hotel on K Street and tell them I sent you. I’ll be over there as soon as I can. Meanwhile, you rest up, Steve. You’re going to need all your energy.”

Heavenly was as good as her word—better! About two hours after I checked into the Rex, she sailed into my room and locked the door behind her. What followed was a seminar in the Arts of the Courtesan.

It lasted for about eight fantastic hours. Then Heavenly left to go to work. Talk about a busman’s holiday! Yet she was as full of energy as when she’d arrived, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind but that she’d do her job superlatively that evening. As for me, I fell into an exhausted sleep.

That’s the way it went for the next eight days. She’d arrive in the morning and we’d make love all day long. Then she’d leave to work at making love all night long and I’d go to sleep. For sheer go-go-go, Heavenly was amazing. As for me, I never slept so soundly in my life.

Meanwhile, the political situation was up tight. All the votes were pledged save that of Ross of Kansas, the Senator who’d scotched impeachment the last time around. He was the only one who refused to announce in advance how he was going to vote. There were rumors that the Radical Republicans had bribed him to switch sides and other gossip that he’d been paid off by the Johnson Democrats to vote for acquittal.

His one vote was crucial. Any one vote was crucial. Aware of that, my thoughts turned back to the fat Senator. I decided I had to give my blackmail scheme one more try. I owed it to posterity.

I spent the afternoon of May 25th with Heavenly as usual. When it was over, she got dressed to leave for work—as usual. I was pooped—as usual.

Somehow though, I summoned up the reserve of energy I’d need for the evening that lay ahead. It was imperative that I get certain basic information from Heavenly before she left. Like what was the name and address of the fat Senator I was out to blackmail.

“Heavenly,” I said. “What’s the name and address of that fat Senator?”

“Fat Senator? What fat Senator? All Senators are fat.”

“The one I bunked with that first night. What’s his name? It’s slipped my mind.”

“Whadda ya wanna know for?”

“He’s a chess player. He said I should come over and play chess with him some night,” I lied. “I thought I might drop by there tonight. After all, I need some recreation.”

“Recreation!” Heavenly was insulted. “Whadda ya call What we been doin’ for the past eight days?”

“I call it the greatest,” I soothed her. “But my brains need some activity once in a while, too. Come on, Heavenly. What’s his name? Where does he live?”

“Oh, all right.” She shrugged and told me his name and address. “Just don’t stay up all night and tire yourself out,” she cautioned me. “I want you in shape for tomorrow.”

She kissed me goodbye and left.

As soon as she was gone, I got dressed. For the first time since I’d checked in, I left the hotel. Twenty minutes later I was at the door of the Senator’s house.

Posh. Very posh. A butler confronted me like a haughty iceberg. The Senator, he informed me, was not at home. Would I care to leave my card? I would gladly have dealt him the whole deck, but, as it happened, I didn’t have as much as a lowly deuce with me. So I hung my head and confessed I was cardless. His nose twitched, consigning me to the hoi polloi, and he started to close the door in my face.

“Who is at the door?” a female voice called out from behind him and the door stopped in mid-motion.

“A gentleman”-—-his tone said he doubted it-—“to see the Senator. I have informed him that the Senator is not at home. He has declined to leave a card.” Such disapproval! It couldn’t have been more pronounced if I’d defecated on the front stoop.

“The Senator should be home soon.” The lady was at the door now, looking me over. “Would you like to come in and wait for him?” Evidently, she wasn’t as harsh a judge as the butler.

“Yes, thank you.” I stepped under the butler’s nose and through the doorway.

“I’m the Senator’s wife.” She held out her hand.

I was floored. I mean, the Senator was a tub of geriatric lard, a bald-headed disaster area. Furthermore, he’d presented his wife as a frigid shrew. From the way he’d talked, I’d pictured a hatchet-faced, moustache-y matron in her middle years with a voice like the whining roar of cannon shot.

Instead, as I told her my name, I found myself stammering in the face of unexpected youth, charm and beauty. The Senator’s wife was in her mid-twenties, an impeccably groomed girl with an aristocratic, vivacious face and a tall, slender, voluptuous figure. She also had the kind of warmth and humor that puts a man at his ease immediately. While she might have been cold towards her husband, I would have bet my bottom buck that she wasn’t by nature a frigid woman. And as for the jealous rages he’d attributed to her, I simply couldn’t see her bothering to give a damn.

Still, one should never make hasty judgments about other people’s marital situations. The combination of jealousy and frigidity the Senator had described might well have been part of the wifely game she played to keep her husband in line. Putting him off balance might have been her way of keeping his mind off her own extramarital activities. Such activities were only a guess on my part, but the way her deep brown eyes had appraised me and the way her body moved under her clothes told me that this girl would never cut herself off from the pleasures of the flesh as completely as the Senator had implied.

When we’d sat down in the living room and she’d arranged for drinks to be brought, she immediately put the conversation on a light, flirtatious basis. “Now what was it you wanted to see the Senator about, Mr. Victor?” she asked.

“It’s a political matter,” I told her.

“Political? Really? I am disappointed. An attractive man like you shouldn’t be bothering with politics. It will put lines in your face and make you old before your time. You’ll become grouchy. You’ll lose your good looks and your charm and that would be an unfair deprivation to the ladies.”

“It’s kind of you to be concerned.” I grinned at her.

“There are few enough attractive men in Washington. We ladies have to cherish them.”

“You’re making me blush, ma’am.”

“Call me Olivia. That’s my name. And I shall call you Steve. It’s more friendly that way. And I just know we’re going to be friends. Very good friends.” Her tongue peeped out from between her lips like an innuendo.

“I certainly hope so,” I told her.

“So do I, Steve.” Her ample breasts rose and fell quickly under the brown velvet of the dress she was wearing. “Have you been in Washington long?” she asked after a pause.

“Not too long.”

“But you’ll be staying a while, I hope.”

“That’s hard to say, Olivia. I hope so.”

“Where are you staying, Steve?”

I told her the name of my hotel.

“I don’t think I’m familiar with it.” She cocked her head.

“It’s on K Street.”

“Is it? K Street. The Rex Hotel on K Street.” Olivia closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. “I’ll remember that.”

There was an undercurrent—perhaps even a message-—in the thoughtful way she spoke. I was just tuning in on it when the sound of a door slamming made me break off the glance in which our eyes were locked. A moment later the Senator appeared in the doorway of the room.

He stopped short when he saw me. He turned visibly pale. His fat jowls started to tremble and sweat broke out on his forehead. He knew why I was there.

“Hello, darling,” Olivia greeted him without noticeable pleasure. “Mr. Victor has been waiting to see you.”

“Hi, Senator,” I greeted him.

“Hello.” His voice was weak.

“Why haven’t you brought Mr. Victor around before?” Olivia asked him. “You always keep the most intriguing men to yourself. The only ones who ever come here are fat and old and dull. Present company stricken from the record, of course,” she added blithely. “Well, I’ll leave you gentlemen to your nasty politics.” Olivia got to her feet. “I’ll be seeing you again, Steve.”

“It’s been my pleasure, Olivia.” I stood and bowed. Mother would have been proud of my manners.

“What do you want?” the Senator hissed when we were alone.

“You know what I want. I want you to change your vote.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then I’ll have to call on your wife again tomorrow,” I threatened.

“What did you say to her?”

“Nothing . . . yet!”

“Listen, if it’s money you’re after -”

“It isn’t. I told you. It’s your vote I want.”

“But how could I ever justify changing my vote now? ’

“That’s your problem. But if you don’t change it, I’ll be back here tomorrow and tell your wife all about your extramarital activities.”

“I could never face my fellow Democrats.”

“Would you rather face your wife?”

“No. I could never do that.”

“Then you’ll have to face your Party. It’s one or the other.”

“Maybe not. I could shoot you.” The Senator took out a gun and pointed it at me.

“Philander?” His wife appeared in the doorway and took in the scene. “What on earth are you doing? Surely you’re not going to shoot Mr. Victor! He’s the first interesting man you’ve introduced me to in Washington.”

“Philander!” I chuckled. “Is that really your name?” I asked the Senator. “That’s very apt.”

“What do you mean, Steve?” There was an edge of suspicion to Olivia’s voice.

“It’s my middle name,” the Senator said hastily. “Olivia likes to tease me with it. Actually, I only use the P.” He turned to Olivia. “He didn’t mean anything by that, my dear. He was only joking.”

“Joking? And are you joking too? Is that gun you’re pointing at him only a joke?”

“How about it, Senator?” I asked. “Are you going to put the gun away? Or shall I start talking?”

Hastily the Senator put the gun away. “You win,” he told me. “I’ll do what you ask.”

“Fine. Believe me, it’s for the best. And don’t change your mind, Senator.” I got up and started out. “I’ll be seeing you, Olivia,” I added meaningfully.

“There’s no need,” the Senator said hastily.

“I’ll be sure of that tomorrow,” I told him. I left.

I’d done it! I crowed all the way back to my hotel. Johnson would be impeached! I went to bed happy.

I woke up with a problem. It announced itself with a knock at my door. Half-awake as I stumbled to the door, I assumed it was Heavenly come to make her usual daily demands.

The demands were similar-—but it wasn’t Heavenly. It was the Senator’s wife, Olivia! I stared at her bleary-eyed and confused as she came in and closed the door behind her.

“Good morning, Steve darling,” she chirped.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out.

“What kind of greeting is that?” Olivia was hurt. “Aren’t you glad to see me? Can’t you guess what I’m doing here?”

I could guess. Particularly after she pressed her lips to mine. The avidity with which her tongue explored made it plain that she hadn’t come to my room for conversation.

“You want me to make love to you,” I said brightly when the kiss was over.

“That’s very good. I knew you had a good mind the first few minutes we talked. You catch on to things so quickly.”

Olivia took off her coat and hung it in the closet.

“Yes, but you see there are complications.” I remembered Heavenly and the fact that she was likely to breeze in here at any moment.

“You mean my husband?” Olivia laughed and carefully removed her bonnet. “Don’t worry about him.” She took off her gloves one at a time. “He’d never dream I’d be unfaithful to him.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and began undoing her highbutton shoes.

“Why not?” I wondered.

“He’s too worried about my finding out about his indiscretions to even think that I might be having an affair myself.” Olivia pulled off one shoe and then the other. “Ahh.” She wriggled her toes.

“Still, if he should find out . . .”

“Even if that were a problem, it would hardly be on his mind today.” Olivia got to her feet and started fumbling with the buttons at the back of her gown. “He’s all caught up in this impeachment business. Today’s the big day. He’s at the Senate already. They’ll be starting to vote soon.” She hiked the dress up in back in order to reach the middle but- tons.

“Even so,” I said desperately, afraid that Heavenly might show at any minute, “I don’t know that I should dishonor your husband by betraying him in this fashion.”

“Don’t be pompous.” Olivia pulled the dress off over her head, folded it neatly and hung it over the back of a chair. “You know very well that men cheat on their wives all the time. Why should it compromise your honor to cooperate in the reverse of the procedure?”

“All right, that’s not it,” I admitted.

“Then what’s the trouble?” She stepped out of a petticoat

“There’s another complication.”

“Don’t you find me appealing?” She stepped out of another petticoat.

“Yes, but-—”

“Then I don’t see the problem.” She stepped out of a third petticoat.

“I’m expecting a visitor.”

“Put him off.” A fourth petticoat billowed to the floor. “Leave word for him at the desk that you’ve gone out.” She divested herself of yet another petticoat.

“It’s not a him.”

“Not a him?” Petticoat Number Six was shucked.

“It’s a her,” I admitted.

“A her?” Thoughtfully, she took off the seventh petticoat. “Well, I don’t care,” she said stubbornly. “Get rid of her!” She pulled off the eighth and last petticoat.

The room looked like a campsite. Petticoats were spotted around the floor like deflated pup tents. Olivia stood among them like a determined Amazon in the skeleton armor of the wire hoop arcing out from her waist. White ruffles ran up her legs to an impossibly tight-laced corselet topped with straps going over her shoulders. The wide straps were decorated with frilly bows. She might have stepped out of the pre-party scene in Gone with the Wind.

“How can I get rid of her?” I asked reasonably.

“That’s your problem.” She pulled the hoop up over her head and removed it. Discarded amongst the petticoats, it looked like the framework for a bomb shelter. Now Olivia bent over and grasped one of the bedposts with both hands. Her ruffled derrière stuck out provocatively. “You’ll have to help me with this,” she said, her brown eyes smoldering over her shoulder.

I went over to her and started fumbling with the laces of the corselet. “How the hell does this work?” I wondered aloud.

“You have to pull it tighter first and then release it.”

“Impossible,” I decided. “If I pull it any tighter, you’ll burst a lung.”

“Wait. I’ll take a deep breath, then pull on both strings so you can untie the knot.”

I did as she asked. Even after that it was still quite a job unlacing the damn thing. “There’s no end to it,” I muttered.

“It’s coming. Ahh! You’ve almost got it now. Oh, I can t tell you how good that feels. Now you’ve got it. Ahh! I can breathe again.” She stepped away and left me holding the steel-ribbed torture device.

I threw it on a chair. “What next?” I wondered.

“These.” Olivia pulled off the ruffled stockings. Now she was wearing only bloomers reaching halfway to her knees and some sort of combination shift and bra on top.

“What’s under that?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nothing.” She laughed. “See?” She wriggled free of the final garments and stood before me naked.

“Considering what you have to go through just to reach this point, I can understand why there’s no overpopulation problem in this day and age,” I remarked. “A guy could die of old age before a girl is through undressing.”

“I’m through now,” she murmured. “Are you just going to stand there making irrelevant philosophical observations? Don’t you like the way I look?”

I liked it. Who wouldn’t have? Olivia, with the layers removed, was a nudie sensation. A mane of long, auburn hair trailed over ivory shoulders and high, jutting breasts. Deep cleavage separated them and pointed the way to a flat, firm belly. Her hips were slender, her buttocks small, but pertly shaped. Long, graceful legs met modestly at a curly, auburn V which concealed her womanhood. Now she shifted her legs and the V parted slightly to reveal a high, round mons veneris, deeply cleft and quivering.

“Take me,” she said without much originality.

I walked over and put my arms around her. We fell to the bed together. It was like embracing a flaming torch. And the Senator had called Olivia frigid!

She fairly sizzled under my caresses. The nipples of her breasts were like hot coals against my chest. Her flesh was liquid fire. Her arms and legs were bands of molten steel around my body. Even her lips and mouth and tongue were afire with desire. Frenziedly, she urged me to stoke the kiln of her passion.

The kiln, alas, remained unstoked. The poker was just about to breach the fiery doorway when another sort of door was flung open—the door to my hotel room. And another sort of fire came blazing through it—the flame of enraged jealousy—Heavenly!

“You dirty, double-crossing, lousy, faithless, bastardly, lecherous . . .” Derogatory adjectives rattled out of Heavenly’s mouth like slugs from a Gatling gun. Along about the second round, she started backing them up with flying objects.

Ashtrays, a vase, a lamp, etc., started flying across the room. Olivia and I sought sanctuary behind the bed, ducking our heads to avoid the barrage.

“My, she certainly is emotional, isn’t she?” Olivia observed.

“I tried to warn you,” I reminded her.

“Aren’t you overplaying this scene a bit?” Olivia called to Heavenly.

“I know you!” There was a pause in the fusillade.

“You’re the Senator’s wife!” Heavenly fairly crackled with anticipated revenge. “Well, I’ll fix you! I’ll teach you to stick to your own husband and leave my man alone. I’m going to tell him right now!” Heavenly wheeled on her heels and started out.

“Stop her!” Olivia cried. “If she tells my husband, he’ll kill me!”

“Worse!” I grabbed up some clothes and started putting them on as I headed for the door. “If he finds out you’ve been unfaithful with me, he’ll vote against impeachment.”

“Wait!” Olivia called, pleading. “Don’t leave me alone here like this. I’ll never be able to get dressed alone!”

“Sorry. No time.”

“After all this,” she wailed, “and you didn’t even make love to me!”

“Woman’s lot is never an easy one,” I called back over my shoulder. “Blame it on the fashions of the day.”

Still buttoning my clothes, I ran down the stairs, through the hotel lobby and out onto the street. Just as I emerged, I saw Heavenly closing the door of a horse-drawn cab. It pulled away before I could reach it. I spotted another horse-cab down the block and hailed it.

“Follow that cab!” I told the driver breathlessly.

“That’s an original phrase,” the driver replied. “Did you just think of it?”

“What’s the difference? Just hurry up and follow that cab!”

“It’s important to me,” the driver confided. “You see, I’m not really a cab driver. I just do this for bread. What I really am is a writer. You know what I mean?”

“Will you please hurry up before you lose him?”

“What I mean is, being a writer, I’ve always got my ear out for the well-turned phrase. A writer has to listen to how people talk.”

“Keep your eye on him! He’s turning!”

“Now what you just said—-‘Follow that cab!’-that’s a good example. It’s got all kinds of dramatic implications. Sort of sets up a suspense situation in just three little words. See what I mean?”

“Watch out! Don’t let that wagon cut you off or you’ll lose him!”

“Yessir! ‘Follow that cab!’ It sets up a whole action sequence. Right away the reader gets sucked into wondering if the hackie has what it takes to keep up with the other cub.”

“They’re pulling over at the curb there. Pull in right behind them.”

“Yep. In those three words you’ve got just the device to keep a plot moving along.”

“Here.” As he pulled in at the curb, I thrust some money at him.

“Just a minute.” The driver pulled out a notebook and a stub of pencil. “I want to jot it down before I forget it. Let’s see now— ‘Follow that cab!’ That was it, wasn’t it? . . . Hey! Wait a minute! You got change coming.”

“Keep the change!”

“ ‘Keep the change!’ That’s a pretty good one too. Delineates character right away. Shows a sort of sporty attitude. Yessir, I can use it. You got any more like that?”

I didn’t answer him. I was too busy trying to spot Heavenly. She’d gotten out of her cab in front of the Senate Building and plunged into the crowd gathered there. Finally I spied her and started elbowing in her direction.

l got within earshot of Heavenly, but couldn’t quite reach her. “You’d better let me through,” she was saying to one of the policemen holding back the crowd.

“Now, Heavenly, I can’t do that,” he answered. “I’ve got my duty to perform.”

“Suppose I was to tell your missus how you performed your duty with Gertie the other night,” Heavenly suggested sweetly. “Or would you rather let me through?”

“Clear a path there!” the cop shouted. “Can’t you see the lady’s trying to get through?”

Heavenly was passed through the barricades and went up the steps and into the Senate building. It wasn’t that easy for me. It took all the money Heavenly had given me to bribe my way into the gallery. When I finally got there, I peered around frantically, trying to find Heavenly.

Looking out over the floor of the Senate, I spotted Olivia’s husband. He seemed calm enough as the voting on the impeachment charges commenced. The chamber, despite the crowd of onlookers in the gallery, was very still as the votes were cast.

The first break in the silence came just after Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas cast his “not guilty” vote. An angry murmur swept over the crowd. His was considered to be the crucial vote and it looked once again as if Johnson had been saved from impeachment. But I knew there was one other vote that could save the day for the Radical Republicans.

I stared at the Senator. From the gallery, he seemed calm enough-—resigned, you might say. Surely, if Heavenly had gotten to him, he would be showing some emotion at her charge of his wife’s infidelity.

Then I saw her! She was talking to the Sergeant-at-Arms guarding one of the aisles leading onto the Senate floor. Even from this distance, I could see his face turning red. He started out shaking his head, but whatever Heavenly said to him made him stop shaking it quickly enough. Finally, he ostentatiously turned his back to her. She slipped behind him and headed down towards the Senator.

He looked like a man on the verge of a heart attack when she suddenly popped up in front of him. I imagine he must have been filled with instant guilt at the thought that his own adulterous chickens had come home to roost. She evidently relieved his mind on that score. He relaxed visibly -- but not for long.

Heavenly talked urgently for a couple of minutes. Then she turned and pointed dramatically towards the gallery. Her finger zeroed in on me. The Senator craned his head, looked me in the eye, and then turned forward again abruptly as his name was called.

He bounced to his feet. In a loud, clear voice, he announced his vote. “Not guilty!” Andrew Johnson had been saved once again. He would remain in office.

The Senator turned around and stared at me once again. His look said the next order of business would be dueling pistols at thirty paces. Heavenly also stared at me. Her glance said that if the Senator missed, she’d be happy to plug me herself.

I decided it was time to leave. There was no reason to stay. Once again I’d failed to change history. Once again my action had only insured that Fate would take another wrong turn. I pushed through the crowd and walked out of the Senate gallery.

Coming through the swinging doors, I stepped smack into the middle of a Russian quicksand bog. Before I knew what was happening, I was up to my knees in Russian quicksand. Worse, I was sinking fast!

CHAPTER SEVEN

Some things you never get used to, no matter how often you experience them. Being jumped from one time and place to another by the invisible force field of a crochety Tibetan inventor’s time machine is one of those things. No matter how often it happens, even when the move constitutes a rescue from being drawn and quartered or burned at the stake, the jump is traumatic. When you’re dumped into a bog of Russian quicksand, it’s even more of a trauma. And as the quicksand rises from your knees to your waist, it gives rise to a pronounced feeling of insecurity.

I felt insecure.

The more I struggled to extricate myself from the quicksand, the deeper I sank into it. I sank slowly to be sure-—but inexorably. By not struggling, I discovered that the sinking process was slowed down considerably.

I stopped struggling.

Brains over brawn, I decided, and set about analyzing my situation. A thoroughgoing analysis determined that my prognosis was negative. By the time I concluded it, the quicksand was halfway up my chest.

I was smack in the middle of the bog. There was no chance of reaching the solid ground around it. Even if there had been a chance, it would have been difficult to extricate myself. The landscape around the bog was a snow-covered plain, bare of foliage. There was no tree branch or anything like that to grab for leverage. It was all smooth, untrammeled snow, hard-packed and frozen. All except the bog itself. Evidently the snow had been sucked into the quicksand and hadn’t had the opportunity to freeze on top of it. There wasn’t a person in sight and from the looks of the terrain it seemed pretty unlikely that a pedestrian might wander past. Like I said, prognosis negative.

The quicksand was rising over my shoulders.

“Help?” I called. In the final extreme, futility can be a way of life.

The quicksand bubbled up. My throat and neck were covered now. It crept up past my mouth, stiffling my cries. Then, briefly, I stopped sinking. The oozing was suspended, but I knew it would resume. Meanwhile, I was up to my nostrils in mud.

I don’t usually dwell on it, but I suffer from a deviated septum. What this means is that one of my sinus passages tends to become clogged. The only reason I bring it up now is that it had an unfortunate bearing on my situation. I had lo tilt my head at exactly the right angle to breathe through my left nostril.

There I was, without so much as a tube of Dristan Spray-Mist to keep that left nostril operative. There I was, a sneeze away from muddy death. There I was, and there I’d still be if it wasn’t for—

Mooning!

Mooning? Stuck in the quicksand with my left nostril pointed skyward, let me take time out for the sake of the uninitiated to define what mooning is. Mooning is the ultimate in expressed misanthropy, the utmost in antisocial behavior, the pre-Provo²² provocation flung rudely in the eyes of the world with the implicit message to all and sundry to go jump in the lake.

All clear now? No? Well then, let‘ me elaborate with an example.

Back in the 1960s, not too long before I inadvertently embarked on my tour of the centuries, I was driving along the New York Thruway one evening. With me was a friend of mine who happens to be a social anthropologist by profession. We were deep in conversation—I don’t remember what about—when the car to my right suddenly switched lanes and forced me to hit my brakes hard.

Angry, I swung into the left lane, pulled abreast of the offending auto, and proceeded to let the occupants have a piece of my mind. Then I passed them and pulled back into my original lane, cutting them off in the process. Smugly self-righteous, I felt avenged.

“Damn-fool juvenile delinquents shouldn’t be allowed to drive,” I commented to my friend, fogging over my own highway idiocy with reference to the fact that the other car was filled with kids.

“You’ve just added another mile or two to the generation gap,” my friend chuckled.

“All I did was teach those kids a lesson,” I grumbled. “Maybe they’ll remember it and think twice before they cut off the next guy.”

“And that’s what they call communication between the young and the mature,” my friend chided me.

“I think we’re about to communicate again,” I told him, spying the car coming up fast in my rear-view mirror. It pulled up on my left and stayed alongside of me. A rear window was rolled down. Inside the car, in the back, a youth propped himself up on his knees on the back seat. He lowered his pants and stuck his naked posterior out the window. The car inched up a few feet past me and drove alongside for a long time. The bare behind wiggled rudely, practically in my face. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

“There’s your communication!” My friend roared. “They’re mooning you!”

“They’re what-ing me?”

“Mooning! It’s an age-old means of expressing contempt. We find it in every time and every culture. For some reason or other, the shoving of one’s nude bottom into someone’s face is always the supreme insult. The dissident peasantry of medieval Europe used to pull it on the tax collectors. French Jacobins mooned at aristocrats. South Sea natives used it to put down the missionaries. And lately there’s been a resurgence of it in the United States. Young people today express their displeasure with society and its values by mooning indiscriminately. Sometimes they moon out of the windows of apartment buildings. Sometimes they do it from moving vehicles—trains, buses, cars. It isn’t usually used to settle a personal grudge like this, though. As a rule, it’s more generalized—-a derogatory comment for the eyes of anyone who might be shocked by it.”

“Why is it called ‘mooning’?” I asked.

“Well, what does it look like? Look at the light hitting it. Doesn’t it look like a moon?”

It did. It looked like a moon. And now, literally sniffling for dear life to keep my nose above the muck, my head tilted so that my eyes were forced to look straight up, what I saw rising over the horizon and coming towards me, looked like nothing so much as a moon!

Although daylight was deepening into dusk, it still seemed too early for the moon to be coming up. But where the practice of mooning is concerned, it’s never too early. As the “moon” sped closer, I recalled that incident on the New York Thruway and was able to identify it for what it was.

Heading my way, flying upside down, was an old-fashioned biplane. It looked like a Spad, or a Fokker, or any of those other double-winged two-seaters they used in World War One. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see the Red Baron hanging upside down from the cockpit.

But there were no features to this moon visage. It was strictly a nether-face belonging to a daredevil aerial gunner out mooning just for the hell of it. In front of the “moon,” also hanging upside down, was the pilot of the biplane. I couldn’t see his face because the top wing was in the way. Thus I had no choice but to direct my plea for help to the rudely naked posterior hedge-hopping towards me.

“HE-L-L-LUP!” I screamed succinctly, the nostril of my unblocked nasal passage quivering with the effort to slay above the muck.

The “moon” was eclipsed. A Slavic face framed by fierce sideburns replaced it. The plane circled and then glided towards me, still upside down. The mooner shouted something down at me.

I recognized the language as Russian. Unfortunately, I don’t savvy Russian, and so I was unable to translate the words he was shouting. Still, I could imagine the sense of them from his tone. I guessed he was yelling something like, “What the hell are you doing in the middle of a quicksand bog, you idiot?”

“HE-L-L-LUP!” I explained in reply to the question.

If my response didn’t satisfy his curiosity, at least it prompted him to action. The plane circled again and when it was directly overhead, the mooner dropped me a rope. He’d attached one end to the craft’s fuselage. The other end I grabbed onto with both hands.

None too soon. My nostril had just inhaled the first grains of quicksand. Now, as I was lifted out of the bog with a jerk, I was able to suck air into my lungs through my mouth. With my sinuses, it was a real relief.

“Thanks,” I yelled up at my rescuer gratefully.

The answer I received was a torrent of Russian invective and a disgusted wave of the mooner’s arm. As if to punctuate his contempt for me, he reversed his position in the plane and once again his bare bottom hung out. Holding onto the rope for dear life, I sailed over the snow-covered countryside and gazed up into the deepening dusk at the moon hanging over me.

Just about the time my armpits started sending signals that the strain of holding onto the rope was too much for them, the moon disappeared once again and was replaced by the mooner’s face. He was waving his arms and shouting something at me. The words sounded like a Cossack complaining that his borscht was too cold.

“What did you say?” I yelled back in English.

“Dissborschkastukoal!” he yelled back.

“I’ll tell the cook to heat it up,” I mumbled to myself in frustration.

After a bit more of this, I finally perceived what he was trying to tell me. Either because it was getting dark, or because we were running out of fuel, or a combination of both, the plane would have to land soon. It couldn’t land upside down with me dangling from it. Even if it tried to land right side up, I’d be smeared over the runway. Therefore, they were going to drop me before they landed. The mooner indicated a grove of trees and I realized that they intended to come in low over it and that I was supposed to let go of the rope and hope the branches would cushion the shock.

“So long and thanks for everything,” I called. “Happy mooning,” I added. “Here goes nothing,” I told myself as I let go of the rope and aimed myself towards a bower of cushy-looking pine branches.

The trouble was, the branches were more needly than cushy. Also, while they broke my fall, they weren’t strong enough to stand up under my momentum. I plowed a path down the trunk of the tree like a descending rocket, picking up pine needles all over my torso until, by the time I hit bottom, I resembled a porcupine.

If I’d hit the ground, I might have broken my neck. Fortunately, the second stage of my fall was broken by a man stooping over at the base of the tree. I came down on his back and the two of us sprawled to the ground together.

“Ach! Scheisse!” he exploded profanely in German. “Dummkopf! You spoiled everything!” he added with a Westphalian lilt to his Deutsch as he scrambled to his feet and pulled a Mauser from the holster hanging under the greatcoat he was wearing.

German is one of the languages I speak, and so I savvied what he was saying. But even if I hadn’t had the literal translation at my fingertips, I won1dn’t have had any doubt about the anger behind the insults he was hurling at me. “Look, I’m sorry,” I answered him in German. “But you don’t have to be insulting.”

“Sorry! What good is sorry? A whole year at war office planning your clumsiness has made go pfffhhhtt! Schweinhund!” He cocked the revolver and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed.

“Your gun jammed,” I told him.

“Verdammt!” His face grew very red as he struggled with the gun. “This just isn’t my day!” He brought his eye to the barrel of the gun and peered down it, trying to locate the trouble. .

“Careful,” I told him. “With your luck—”

“Achtung!” He turned the gun around and pointed it at me. “It’s fixed. Prepare to die!”

“Now just a minute there, Hans-—”

“Chauvinist! My name is not Hans!”

“Oh? Sorry. What is your name?”

“Karl.”

“Okay, Karl. Now the question is, what do you want to kill me for?”

“For one year we plan to kill the most important man in Russia, their whole war effort should go kaput when he dies. Tonight comes the opportunity, I plant the bomb, and I’m just hooking it up to the detonator when you come plotzing out from the trees and shtunk up everything. You are a klutz! For this, you die!”

“Not if I have a choice.” I dived at him before he could pull the trigger and we wrestled for the gun.

“Schweinhund! You are deliberately frustrating me again!” he panted as we fought.

“Sorry, Karl. It’s just that I have this exaggerated life urge.”

“It’s about to be cured!” He backed off, aimed the Mauser at me again and started to pull the trigger.

“Debshakref!” Right on the heels of the Russian exclamation came the shot. It came just in time to stay Karl’s hand on the trigger of the Mauser. He pitched forward on his face, looking very surprised, then very dead.

I turned in the direction from which the shot had come. The man who stood there with the smoking revolver in his hand was of average size. Yet somehow he gave the impression of being huge, hulking, ominous. His face was surrounded by a full black beard which gave something of the ludicrous effect of a character out of a comic opera. But there was nothing ludicrous about his eyes. They were deep and black and piercing. Their impact was like a magnet; their effect even at a casual glance was hypnotic.

“Thanks,” I told him in English. “Thanks a lot for saving my life.”

He muttered something in Russian and then strode over to Karl’s body. He pointed the gun at it and fired several times in rapid succession. Finally he stopped shooting and looked up at me. “Debshakref!” he said again, smiling contemptuously.

“Sorry. I don’t speak Russian,” I told him.

“But you do speak German.” Somehow he’d gotten my meaning and now he spoke to me in German.

“Ja.”

“Debshakref is the supreme Russian insult,” he explained. “It means ‘your mother gave you blood of a dog.’ “

“Very picturesque profanity,” I granted. “But a little indirect, don’t you think?”

“Not to a Russian, it isn’t. But then you’re not a Russian, are you?”

“Nein,” I admitted.

“Neither am I,” he confided. “I am a Serbian. My name is Grigori Efimovich.” He held out his hand.

“I’m Steve Victor.” I shook hands with him. “I’m an American.”

“I am glad to know you, Steve Victor.” His piercing eyes went right through me. “Particularly since you have saved my life.

“It was you who saved mine,” I reminded him.

“You saved mine first.” He pointed to the dynamite plunger under the tree. A few feet away from it, but not connected to it, a wire led oil into the snow-covered underbrush. “That was meant for me,” he said. “German Intelligence must have done their work well. Only the khlysts knew I would be here tonight. This place has always been one of the best kept secrets in Russia.”

“The khlysts?”

“My followers.” He didn’t bother explaining any more than that. “Come, you will meet them. You have saved my life and that makes you my friend. I will see that they aecept you as one of us now.”

His followers? As I accompanied him through the frozen glade, I wondered at his authoritativeness. He must be very important m the Russian scheme of things if German Intelligence would go to all this trouble to assassinate him. But who was he?

Grigori Efimovich. That’s what he’d said his name was. But the name meant nothing to me. He certainly didn’t dress as if he was anybody special. He wore the rough peasant garb typical of the Russian serf in the last days of the Czars. Except for the intensity of his eyes and the authoritativeness of his demeanor, he might have been just another Russian peasant.

“Uh, you must be pretty important,” I fished.

He stopped in his tracks and stared through me again. Then he burst out laughing. “But you don’t know who I am! ’ He roared heartily. “How charming! You don’t know the importance of the life you have saved. You don’t know that my gratitude towards you has raised you to the estate of the mighty. Ahh, boychik! Your naïveté is the most refreshing thing I have known in many a year.”

“Call me unsophisticated. So who are you?”

“I am Rasputin!” He bowed with a grand flourish.

“Oh.” That about summed it up. If he was Rasputin then he really was every bit as important as he said he was and then some. Rasputin, the Mad Monk, was the most powerful man of his time in Russia. Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra were completely under his hypnotic spell and the word was that when he snapped his fingers both of them jumped to do his bidding.

Rasputin’s niche in history also had some intriguingly dark corners. His sexual excesses were more than a legend; they were fact. The history books are full of the evidence of his licentiousness. To date, he still qualifies as the top libertine of the twentieth century.

I was about to see an example of his right to the title. We emerged from the path we’d been following into a snow-covered clearing in the woods. Several troikas and other types of horse-drawn sleds had been drawn up around the sides of the clearing. They stood behind a series of small bonfires which ringed the clearing and supplied both heat and light against the cold, darkening night. Standing around the fires were about twenty men and girls.

They were the khlysts, a secret group of outlawed religious fanatics who looked to Rasputin as their leader. This sect practiced frenzied rites which have been likened to the Black Mass. The rites were aimed at unleashing the wildest and most abandoned sexual passions.

When Rasputin appeared, the cry of “Holy Father” was sounded and the khlysts fell to the ground, arms outstretched, noses digging into the snow, looking for all the world like a herd of kneeling camels. The black-bearded Rasputin strode among them with an imperious air, patting the bent head of a man here, a girl there, murmuring a blessing to some favorites among them. Finally he stood in the center of the clearing, stretched out his arms and slowly raised them. Humbly, the penitents got to their feet.

One of them approached Rasputin with a bottle of vodka. He drank deeply and passed it to me. I took a swig and almost split a lung. The stuff was evidently home brew and tasted like pure wood alcohol. It burned out the lining of my gullet going down.

While I was brushing the tears out of my eyes, other khlysts approached Rasputin and presented him with gifts. A plump chicken—recently slaughtered—a side of beef, a jar of caviar, more jugs of vodka, a jeweled crucifix, a hammered silver ring, these and many more offerings were accepted by him and then deposited on a pile at the edge of the clearing. The only one he held onto was the first bottle of vodka. He kept sucking at it while the gift-giving continued. When the last khlyst had presented his offering, Rasputin drained the bottle with one last, mighty gulp and flung it into the woods.

It was the signal for the ceremonies to begin. A flute sounded and the melody was picked up by first one balalaika and then another. Rasputin clapped his hands over his head and began dancing. He circled the clearing once, slowly, and then selected a partner.

She was a well-proportioned girl with a pretty peasant face and long, flowing black hair. She whirled wildly to the rhythm of Rasputin’s clapping hands. Then he seized her and they danced together more slowly and intimately. Now other men selected women and started to dance.

Abruptly, the music ceased. The dancers stopped, freezing in position. Rasputin walked the girl to the center of the rough circle the dancers had formed. The girl fell to her knees before him. Rasputin raised his head to the sky and seemed almost to bay a chant in Russian. Evidently it was meant to be some sort of prayer.

When it was over, he snapped his fingers. Immediately, one of the male dancers ran up to him with another jug of vodka. Rasputin grasped the long hair of the girl kneeling before him and pulled her head back. Her mouth was wide open and he poured the vodka down her throat until she started to cough. The other dancers broke from their stationary positions now and also started drinking. The music began again.

Rasputin threw off the greatcoat he was wearing. In rough peasant shirt and trousers, his black beard flying like some devil’s banner, he performed a ceremonial dance around the kneeling figure of the girl. Snakelike, she writhed in front of him, wriggling free of her own coat and tossing it to one side. Her hair blew wildly in the cold night wind and her body jerked spasmodically as if in response to the spell of Rasputin’s movements.

The sight of them without outer garments in the icy night air chilled me. I accepted a drink from one of the revelers and forced myself to let the vodka flood my throat until I felt the warmth in my belly. Again my eyes clouded, and when they cleared, I focused on a small, plump girl dancing provocatively right in front of me.

Her hips bounced and jiggled under her thin dress and her hands squeezed her breasts as if to draw forth some inner fire to warm them—and me as well. Behind her, Rasputin was tearing off his shirt and emitting eerie howls towards the starless sky. The tall girl was on her back in front of him, her legs stretched up in the air, knees bent as she pulled off her boots. The plump girl who’d attached herself to me followed her example and also kicked off her boots. The other khlysts were dancing uninhibitedly and ridding themselves of various articles of attire.

Now Rasputin seized a torch and waved it high over his head. Again the music stopped. Again everybody froze. He was bare-chested now, and apelike tufts of black hair stuck out from all over his torso. He looked like some devilish satyr as he swung the torch through the air, deliberately coming close to the tall girl’s mane of rippling black hair.

The two of them entered into another ritualistic dance now. Everybody else maintained their rigid positions, watching. Only the glitter of eyes in the firelight betrayed the excitement coursing through them at Rasputin’s performance.

He swung the torch low and the girl jumped over the flame, pulling her skirts high to avoid setting fire to them. Her thighs gleamed in the orange light. She held her skirts high as Rasputin repeatedly went at her with the torch. He used it like a lion tamer uses a whip. The girl reacted like a contortionist, barely escaping the fire with each movement of the rhythmic dance.

Finally, deliberately, Rasputin touched the hem of her dress with the flame. Immediately, still dancing, she ripped it down the front and jumped free of the blazing gown. She was naked now, and yet so carried away by the ceremony that she didn’t seem to feel the cold. Rasputin tossed the torch away and pulled off his pants. He fell on her like a naked stallion, and she was screaming with religious ecstasy even before their bodies hit the frozen ground.

This was the signal. Immediately the other khlysts tore off their garments and grabbed for partners. The night grew loud with the screams and cries and howls. They were a wolf pack high on the aphrodysia of their fanaticism.

The plump girl was naked now and clawing at my clothes. I guzzled more vodka to ward off the cold and clutched at her at least partly for the same reason. I managed to maneuver things so that she was on top of me. That, plus the erotic excitement, also kept me warm.

Over her shoulder, I saw Rasputin rise from his conquest. He took a deep swig of vodka. Then, without hesitation, he leaped, naked, onto the back of the girl with whom I was making love. She was impaled on me and howling like a banshee, but that didn’t stop the mad monk. He grasped a buttock in each of his huge, hairy paws and raised her up from behind. Locating his target, he attacked. The plump girl screamed with the sudden pain, but she made no attempt to dislodge herself from contact with either one of us. Pinned beneath their weight, I couldn’t do anything but what I had been doing. So I kept my nose warm between her heavy, pendulous breasts and continued moving in the spasmodic rhythm we’d established.

Rasputin finished before I did. With the release of his weight, the plump girl and I each attained a release of our own. She jumped up, naked, spied a man nearby and immediately fell to her knees in front of him, her mouth a hungry O. Rasputin was standing to one side and drinking again. I joined him and accepted the bottle.

I huddled there, sipping from it and trying to keep warm, while I watched Rasputin spring into action again. The music was wild now and half the khlysts were abandoning themselves to the naked dancing while the others worked out new patterns of lovemaking. Rasputin did an acrobatic dance that ended with him pulling two naked girls to the ground. His beard disappeared under one of them. The other mounted him and was immediately pinned by his hirsute, thickly muscled legs. The two girls were facing each other, and they fondles and kissed each other’s breasts while Rasputin moved like an earthquake beneath them.

Finally the earthquake erupted and both girls were flung away. Still Rasputin continued in the pursuit of his insatiable passion. Like some woodland satyr gone berserk, he leaped from one eager partner to the next.

The orgy was in full swing now. Despite the below zero temperature, all of the khlysts had shed their clothing to perform acts ranging from lovemaking to sado-masochism and outright bestiality. But none of them could keep up with Rasputin.

As for myself, I was tired and cold. It had been a long and active day. One love bout was all I felt up to, and so I retired to the sidelines and watched instead of participating further. Here I nursed another bottle of vodka steadily. After awhile, my head began to spin and I passed out.

When I regained consciousness, I was bouncing along some road in a horse-drawn sled. I was covered with heavy furs and quite warm. My head felt like one big tortured pimple, but outside of that I was all right. Through the throbbing headache, I perceived that the sleigh had reached the outskirts of a large city and was heading towards the center of it.

“Where are we?” I wondered aloud in a weak voice.

“St. Petersburg.” The voice spoke German. Turning my head, I saw Rasputin beside me. “I was taking you to my home,” he added. “How do you feel?”

“Like the aftermath of a pogrom,” I told him truthfully.

“A good night’s sleep will fix you up,” he assured me.

“It’s too late for that.” I pointed to the dawn breaking in the sky.

“You can sleep all day then,” Rasputin patted my shoulder fondly. “Ah, here we are.”

The sleigh pulled up in front of an imposing building. Rasputin climbed out and motioned to me to follow him. He led the way inside, summoned a servant, and had him escort me to the guest chamber. A fire was lit, the bed was turned down, and finally I was left alone.

I was just closing my eyes against the rising of the Russian dawn. when my wrist radio buzzed. I flicked the tiny receiver switch and there was a crackling of static. After a few seconds it cleared and I heard the voice of Charles Putnam.

“Hello, Steve? Is that you?”

“Who the hell else could it be?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to be sure.”

“Putnam,” I pointed out, “you’re not dialing a telephone. You couldn’t get a wrong number.”

“You sound irritable.”

“I have a hangover,” I admitted. “I was just about to sleep it off.”

“You drink too much, Steve. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. Have you ever thought about what you’re doing to the lining of your stomach?”

“Never mind the lining of my stomach. Why are you calling me?”

“Oh, yes. I learned that Papa Baapuh jumped you again.”

“I know that, you-—” .

“No need to be testy!” Putnam sounded injured. “The last time we spoke you made a big point about my keeping labs on your movements.”

“All right. All right,” I mollified him. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re getting pretty close to the present,” Putnam reminded me. “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t shot past us again.”

“Thanks. I haven’t. I’m in Russia. Some time during the first World War,” I guessed, remembering the German officer and the Russian military plane that had rescued me from the quicksand.

“Papa Baapuh tells me it might help get you back accurately if you can pinpoint where you are.”

“St. Petersburg.”

“It would be good if he knew the exact ‘when,’ too.”

“Wait a minute. I’ll ask Rasputin.”

“You’ll ask who?”

“Rasputin. That’s who I’m staying with. I’m his house guest.”

“I’ll be damned.” There was awe in Putnam’s tone.

“How did you get chummy with him?”

“I saved his life. Inadvertently. He’s grateful. It’s a long story. But it’s not important. What is important is that you get me home. So hold on a minute and I’ll ask Rasputin the date.”

I left my room, went down the hall, and rapped on Rasputin’s door. When he answered I asked him what the date was. He told me and I went back to my room to relay the information to Putnam.

“It’s the morning of December 29, 19l6,” I told

“Ohmigosh! That’s a very important time, Steve. You have no idea how important.”

“Merry Christmas,” I guessed.

“No-no! I don’t mean—”

“Now don’t be a Scrooge, Putnam. Merry Christmas.”

“Bah! Humbug!” he said Scrooge-ishly. “You don’t understand. That’s the day before -”

“Happy New Year!” I tried again.

“Victor, will you listen!” Putnam barked the words out and I subsided. “On the evening of December 29, 1916, Rasputin was assassinated. Do you understand how important that is to world history?”

“Nope,” I admitted.

“According to some of our own State Department experts and many reputable historians, there might never have been a Russian Revolution if Rasputin had lived. Now do you see?”

“I’m beginning to get a glimmer.”

“This is no exaggeration, Victor. If you study that period of Russian history, you come to appreciate the importance of Rasputin in terms of where the world is at today. If he had lived, there might not be any Soviet Union today. There might not be a cold war. It’s not too much to say that there might not be a Communist China without the example of Russia to copy. Victor, if Rasputin’s assassination could be prevented-—”

“I think you’d better fill me in on the whole picture.” I told Putnam.

He did. It was a fantastic story. It began in the autumn of 1905.

At that time a 35-year-old Serbian faith healer named Grigori Efimovich arrived in St. Petersburg from Siberia. He brought with him a dual reputation. The St. Petersburg nobility accepted him as a starets (holy pilgrim) possessed of miraculous powers in healing the sick. Cynics repeated tales of an erotic monster who had ravished his way through Siberia from one end of that frozen wasteland to another, leaving nary a virgin in his wake. The combination proved irresistible to the royal ladies of fashion in St. Petersburg and consultations with Rasputin soon became all the rage.

At this time Czar Nicholas and his Czarina, Alexandra, rulers of all of the vast lands of Russia, had more than their fair share of royal tsouris. For one thing, the Russian fleet had just been trounced by the Japanese and Russia had to acknowledge defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. For another thing, the peasants had revolted and the only way all-out revolution had been prevented was by the establishment of a Duma-—parliament-—which was quite an indignity to one of the most autocratic Czars in Russian history. Worst of all, the Czarevitch, Alexis, heir to the throne, had inherited the royal family curse—hemophilia—-and the royal physicians all agreed that he was doomed.

Shortly after this prognosis, a noblewoman friend of the Czarina’s, who had fallen under Rasputin’s spell, suggested that Alexandra call in the starets to minister to little Alexis. Desperate, the Czarina summoned the faith healer. To the amazement of the royal physicians and the puzzlement of the medical profession in general ever since, under Rasputin’s ministrations the boy showed noticeable improvement.

Rasputin stroked the boy’s brow and said that his fever would go down-—and the fever did go down! Rasputin hypnotized him and said that the headaches would stop-—and the headaches stopped! Rasputin made mystic signs over the boy’s body and told him that both the interior and exterior bleeding would cease—and the bleeding ceased!

The Czarevitch, under Rasputin’s care, was as close to being cured of hemophilia as anyone has ever been. It was a medical miracle even by today’s standards. Doubtless , Rasputin exercised a profound psychological effect on the boy which relieved his physical symptoms. But the peculiar thing is that from all accounts, little Alexis loathed the starets and became hysterical almost every time Rasputin came to treat him.

His mother, the Czarina, was more grateful. Indeed, her gratitude knew no bounds. There can be no doubt that over the next ten years, she and the Mad Monk carried on a love affair that ranks as the most torrid and scandalous in modern Russian history.

The Czarina put it in writing: “I only wish one thing: to fall asleep, forever, on your shoulders and in your arms. . . . I am tormenting myself for you. . . . I love you forever.” So reads one of the less intimate letters she wrote to Rasputin. Other eyes than his saw these billets doux. Rasputin used them as a lever for political power and soon St. Petersburg society was quoting them freely. The affair between the Czarina and the Mad Monk was an open scandal.

Yet it was said, and seemingly truly, that the one man in Russia who didn’t know about it was Czar Nicholas. Not only was he fooled by Alexandra and Rasputin, he was ruled by them as well. Starting with gratitude for “curing” his son, Nicholas progressed to accepting the mystic’s advice on matters of state, and finally got to the point where he delegated authority to the starets, giving him the right to formulate, and then control, the policies of Russia. Both he and the Czarina referred to Rasputin as “Our Friend,” and he called them “Papa” and “Mama” respectively. Nobody else in Russia was on such intimate terms with the royal couple; nobody else in Russia wielded such power. In reality, Rasputin was the ruler of Imperial Russia.

During the ten years between his arrival and mine, Rasputin also made his fair share of enemies. Some were due to his ultra-sexual behavior. Hundreds of letters of complaint were sent to the Czar by parents complaining that Rasputin had deflowered their daughters. They were ignored.

Other enemies were not so easily ignored. These were the highly placed nobles in the Czarist government who rightfully pegged Rasputin as a threat to their power. But he consistently prevailed over them. One after another they were removed and replaced by men friendly to Rasputin—or, frequently, men whom Rasputin could control because he had compiled damaging dossiers on them.

By the time World War One broke out, Rasputin was firmly entrenched. Due to his influence, exercised directly and also through the Czarina, the Czar went to the front to personally lead his armies in defense of Mother Russia. He and the Czarina exchanged long, loving letters all throughout 1915 and 1916. Little did he guess that she and Rasputin were the sizzling scandal of St. Petersburg in his absence. On the contrary, the Czar counted himself lucky to leave the running of his government in such good hands-—and, as he firmly believed, divine. He repeatedly wrote Rasputin to this effect, and backed up his judgment by scuttling one cabinet officer after another on the starets’ say-so.

Peculiarly enough, historians agree that Rasputin probably was a wiser ruler than the Czar would have been. He had tried to stop Russia’s entry into a war which would prove disastrous, but previous policies made the country’s involvement inevitable. One after another, Rasputin predicted the defeats of the Russian Anny. Secretly, he set up communication with the Germans to try to extricate Russia from the war.

More important, Rasputin recognized the threat of Revolution which hung over the country. A peasant himself, he knew exactly to what extent the peasants could be exploited before they would revolt. Serfdom was the rule in Russia, but serfdom was stretched to the breaking point. Rasputin repeatedly counseled reforms as the only alternative to Revolution. In many cases, Czar Nicholas heeded this advice and-—albeit unwillingly--he did cut the ground out from under the Bolsheviks by coming to grips with some of the greater evils of the Royal Russian system.

If Rasputin had lived to continue his program of reform, if he had lived to extricate Russia from the war with Germany, the Russian Revolution might never have taken place. True, the Czarist regime undoubtedly would have been toppled sooner or later. But if it had been more pliable, the odds are that a more democratic group such as the Mensheviks would have managed to replace it and maintain control. There are three reasons why this didn’t happen, and all three involve Rasputin.

The first two—-ending the war and peasant reforms—hinge on the third: Rasputin’s death. His death in itself was a goad to the Revolution. His death destroyed the myth of his invincibility -- and of royal invincibility at the same time.

During the eleven years Rasputin was in St. Petersburg, there were many attempts on his life. Poison was administered to him without effect. Bullets were fired at him point blank and seemed to pass through his body. Bombs planted in his vicinity didn’t go off - or else they did go off and he emerged from the explosions unscathed. By 1916 a legend had grown to the effect that Rasputin was “unkillable” because he was protected by some divine power. Millions of Russians believed in this legend.

Then, on the night of December 29, 1916, Rasputin was successfully assassinated. Suddenly, overnight, Russia was without a leader. Rasputin was dead, and there was no divine retribution against those who slew him.

If Rasputin could be killed, then why not those slavemasters, the Czar and Czarina? If Rasputin, with all his mystic power, could be slain, then it became conceivable to question the Divine Right of the Romanoffs to rule. Rasputin was a symbol, and if the symbol could be destroyed, then so could the system. Thus his death changed Revolution from a dream to a possibility, and very quickly to an inevitability.

“If Rasputin could be saved, if the symbol could be preserved,” Putnam said, concluding his history lesson, “today the world might not be locked in a life-and-death struggle between Communism and Democracy.”

“So you’re suggesting I prevent Rasputin’s assassination,” I summed up for him.

“It could have a profound effect.”

“My experience so far is that you can’t change history.”

“Don’t be a defeatist. You can try.”

“All right,” I sighed. “How do I keep them from killing Rasputin?”

“Hmmm. That’s a good question.”

“Thanks. Have you got an answer?”

“Well, I can tell you how he’s going to be killed. That should help for a start.”

“Okay. How?”

“He was poisoned, shot and drowned.”

“I can see how that might be fatal,” I decided.

“Believe it not, it almost wasn’t. After all that, when the police fished his body out of the river, they found water in his lungs. It proved that with all the assassins had done to him, he still almost managed to survive.”

“Who were the assassins? Where did it take place?”

Putnam answered my questions and gave me all the pertinent details of the assassination. When he was finished, I had no more idea of how to prevent it than I had before. I told him so.

“Listen,” Putnam answered. “I’ve got an idea. It’s pretty far out, but it’s the only chance. You latch onto Rasputin and stay with him. Stay as physically close to him as you can. I’ll go to work on Papa Baapuh to pick you up with the time machine as soon as possible. Only this time it will pick up two of you-—you and Rasputin.”

“Can it do that?”

“I’ll check with Papa Baapuh. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible if you’re both standing in the same place when the force field snatches you up. What I’ll do is ring you up when you’re ready and you can make sure Rasputin is set to be snatched.”

“You’ll have to work pretty fast,” I reminded Putnam.

“Tonight’s the night he’s due to be murdered.”

“I’ll get on it right away. I have to get Papa Baapuh to move fast in any case if you’re going to be brought back. The Red Guard is getting restless and I don’t knows how long before they’ll just decide to march in here, wreck the joint, and put us all under arrest. The situation in Tibet isn’t what you’d call stable.”

“Neither is the situation here,” I reminded him. “So get cracking.”

He promised that he would and we broke off the call. I went to sleep then. It would take Putnam at least a few hours to get set up. And if he should call me before, Rasputin was in his own room right down the hall from me. It would be no problem latching on to him.

But nightfall came and I still hadn’t heard from Putnam. Rasputin and I had dinner together-—just the two of us-- in his own lavish dining room. Afterwards, he suggested taking me out to see some of the night life in St. Petersburg. I tried to dissuade him, but to no avail. Toward midnight we arrived at an elegant private club near the center of the city.

Just after we entered, a man stood up at the opposite end of the large hall and hailed Rasputin. Arms spread wide, he made a one-man parade out of crossing the area to greet the starets. Waves of laughter followed in his wake. The man wore a red carnation in the fly of his pants!

But this was no mere Arty-the-life-of-the-party looking for a lampshade to put on his head for an encore. I realized that as soon as Rasputin introduced us. “This is Purichkevich,” he told me in German, “a reactionary nincompoop politically speaking, but a sterling drinking companion nevertheless.”

My head spun as I acknowledged the introduction. Purichkevich was one of the three men scheduled to murder Rasputin this very night. He was one “drinking companion” I definitely wanted Rasputin to avoid. As they swapped friendly political insults, I concentrated on thinking of some way to ditch him.

I was still mulling it over when the three of us took a table together. Biting my lip, I found myself staring into the eyes of an attractive girl seated a few tables away. I smiled at her automatically. She didn’t smile back. Instead she shot me a cold, haughty look that told me I wasn’t the object of her interest. When she continued to stare, I realized it was Rasputin whose attention she wanted.

Hoping to detach him from Purichkevich, I nudged him and drew his attention to the girl. Rasputin’s eyes pierced through her clothing and he licked his lips. “Who is the wench?” he asked Purichkevich in German, pointing rudely at the girl.

“She’s a dancer from Kiev. She just arrived in St. Petersburg to join the ballet company.”

“Delicious,” Rasputin decided. “I want her,” he added. He got to his feet and without a backward glance, strode over to the girl’s table. She greeted him with an inviting smile and a moment later he was seated beside her, squeezing her knee.

“He is shameless,” Purichkevich remarked to me, still speaking in German.

“That’s an odd judgment for a man who walks around publicly with a red flower in his fly,” I pointed out.

“You are hostile!” He looked at me narrowly.

“I am,” I admitted.

“You don’t like me.” There was a snarl in his voice.

“I don’t.”

“That is very dangerous—for you!” he threatened.

“I know that.”

“I won’t forget.” Purichkevich stood up and glowered at me. “Sooner or later I will hold you accountable for your rudeness.” He turned on his heel and stalked angrily away.

I took a deep breath. At least we were rid of him for the time being. A nasty customer. I hoped I wouldn’t be around long enough for him to make good on his threat.

I sat at the table and watched Rasputin operate. The girl was blushing, but she didn’t seem to mind the way he squeezed her legs and hips and buttocks under the table. Soon he was whispering urgently in her ear. She nodded and whispered something back. Rasputin smiled lasciviously, stood up, bowed to her and returned to our table.

“An assignation for later in the evening. It is all arranged,” he told me smugly.

He didn’t know that he was slated to keep another sort of appointment -- a fatal one -- unless I could prevent it. I didn’t tell him. There was no point. Besides, by getting rid of Purichkevich, I hoped I’d taken the first step in canceling that appointment altogether.

But it was only a first step, and that could be along way from avoiding fate. Just how long a way I began to appreciate a few moments later when a tall man in a military uniform, splattered with a meaningless fruit salad of medals and ribbons, stopped by our table. He and Rasputin exchanged some words in Russian and then Rasputin introduced him to me in German.

“The Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, just back from a tour of the front with the Czar,” Rasputin identified him.

It was a jolt. Like Purichkevich, the Grand Duke was one of the trio of potential assassins arranging Rasputin’s demise. Small world! -—Particularly when murder’s in the wind!

Dmitri joined us. He said he was going on to a small, intimate party later in the evening and invited both of us to accompany him. Sure, I thought to myself, drop by for a cup of arsenic and a nosh of hot lead! I was relieved when Rasputin told him he had other plans and wouldn’t be able to make it.

But the Grand Duke was purposely dense. In an imperious and pushy manner, he said he’d cancel his own party because Rasputin’s plans sounded like more fun. He invited himself to come along and I could see that Rasputin was taken too much by surprise at Dmitri’s gaucherie to decline to take him. He was one of the last three people in the world I wanted along this night, but if Rasputin couldn’t shake him, how could I?

An unexpected opportunity presented itself and provided the solution. Dmitri excused himself to go to the john. Feeling the call myself, I followed him. He took one booth, and I took the adjoining one. We were the only ones in the lavatory.

There was a thud as he lowered the seat. A second later I could see his spindly calves through the space at the bottom of the partition separating the two stalls. The trousers of his uniform were bunched up around his ankles.

It was a zany chance, but I took it. I got down on my hands and knees and reached stealthily under the partition. Silently, I got a good grip on his pants with both hands and yanked hard. There was a crash as I pulled him from his perch. But I came up with the pants and darted from the bathroom before he could recover himself.

Outside I dropped the pants behind a potted palm. Then I rejoined Rasputin. “The Grand Duke changed his mind,” I told him. “He decided not to come with us.”

“That’s a relief,” Rasputin answered. “I was wondering how to get rid of him.”

“Well, it’s all taken care of. But I’d suggest we get out of here before he changes his mind.”

“Right you are.” Rasputin headed for the exit and I followed him.

His coach was waiting outside. We got in and Rasputin told the driver the address the girl had given him. Fifteen minutes later the carriage pulled to a halt and we got out.

It was a very dark street -- more of an alley, really. The wall running along it served to fence in a rather elaborate mansion. The way the girl had set it up, Rasputin was to go through a back-alley gate in the wall and then enter the house by way of a cellar door which she would leave open for him. She was to meet him in a cellar apartment and that’s where the assignation was to take place.

I accompanied him inside the cellar. A light shone from behind a curtained doorway at the far end of the basement. From behind the curtain, the girl’s voice called out to Rasputin. He suggested delicately that it might be best if I waited for him on the dark side of the curtain. Reluctantly, I agreed.

Standing there alone in the dark, I became increasingly fidgety. This was no time to be separated from Rasputin. The hour appointed for his murder was coming too close. If I was going to save him, it was going to have to be soon.

Why the hell didn’t Putnam call? Where the devil was that damn time machine? What the blazes could I do except stand and wait?

I could watch. That was all I could do. I could keep an eye on Rasputin. I walked over to the curtain and crouched down in a corner off to one side of it. From here I could see through the space where the curtain didn’t quite meet the wall. I had a pretty complete view of what was going on inside.

For basement digs, it was lavishly furnished. Red velvet draperies and plush upholstery predominated. Richly colored oil paintings hung on the mahogany-paneled walls. A thick fur rug was arranged in front of a roaring blaze in the fireplace.

The girl was curled up on the rug. Rasputin perched beside her. His hand was under her long gown and she slapped it coyly as it traveled up her thigh. She cooed something in Russian. I translated it as telling him not to go so fast with the wooing.

They kissed. His hands wandered over her body. She allowed him great liberty, but each time he tried to bare her breast, or move too high up her thighs, she stopped him. Sure that he would succeed in the end, Rasputin seemed to enjoy the teasing dalliance without resenting the delay.

Suddenly I heard voices coming from the outside entrance behind me. A moment later two men entered the cellar. One of them carried a candle. By its flame I identified them as Purichkevich and Dmitri, two of the three would-be assassins.

This was it! This was when the gritty hit the nitty! Why the hell didn’t Putnam call?

The two men went through a door off to one side of the cellar. Cautiously, I followed them. I found myself in a large kitchen. I hid behind a big icebox and watched the pair.

There was one servant in the kitchen. He had been preparing a tray with two glasses filled with wine and a plate of little cakes. Now, as I watched, the Grand Duke Dmitri engaged the servant in conversation, leading him away from the counter where the tray was set out. As Dmitri distracted the servant, Purichkevich moved over to the tray. He took a vial out of his pocket and poured some liquid into one of the wine glasses. Then he smeared some of the cake frosting on the rim of the other glass. Obviously the first glass had been poisoned and the second one marked to identify it as unpoisoned. This done, Purichkevich drew a small envelope from his pocket and sprinkled the contents liberally over the cakes. I guessed the white powder was arsenic.

Dmitri saw that Purichkevich had done his dirty work and wrapped up his conversation with the servant. The murderous pair went out the way they’d come in, passing so close to my hiding place that I could have reached out and touched them. After they’d left, the servant went to the other end of the kitchen and sat down in front of the oven there, his back to the counter where the tray stood.

That was my chance. I zipped over to the tray, emptied the poisoned wine glass into the sink and refilled it. Then I ditched the poisoned cakes in the garbage pail and replaced them with others laid out on a nearby baking pan. I returned to my hiding place behind the icebox feeling smug about having foiled the first effort to knock off Rasputin.

A bell rang. The servant got up, crossed to the tray, picked it up and went out by a door which I guessed led into the room where the lady was entertaining Rasputin. A moment later he returned without the tray.

Time passed. The murderous pair reentered the kitchen. They were whispering to each other agitatedly. I gathered that they were bewildered at the lack of effect the poison had had on Rasputin. They stopped whispering as they approached the servant. They repeated the same ploy they’d used before, Dmitri diverting the servant While Purichkevich once again poisoned the wine and cakes.

After they left I once again replaced the poisoned wine and cakes with unpoisoned wine and cakes. More time passed. Again the pair reentered, even more agitated than before. A third time the poisoning scene was repeated. A third time I switched the wine and cakes. A third time I returned to my hiding place behind the icebox and wondered what the hell was delaying Putnam’s call and the arrival of the time machine.

Another long wait, and finally I decided to venture back into the main cellar. Slipping out of the kitchen, I darted into the shadows. I spotted Dmitri and Purichkevich crouching by the curtain and peering through it as I had done before. In the light coming through the gap between the curtain and the wall, I could see that their faces were contorted with disbelief at Rasputin’s having withstood the tremendous amount of poison they thought he’d consumed.

As I watched, Dmitri produced a revolver and excitedly waved it in Purichkevich’s face. Obviously he was suggesting they shoot Rasputin. Purichkevich, however, seemed to be protesting that the Mad Monk would be as impervious to bullets as he was to poison. In the end, his view seemed to prevail. Dmitri set the gun down on the cellar floor behind him and they continued watching.

By shifting my position a bit, I was able to see beyond the curtain. The angle enabled me to focus on Rasputin and the girl. They were entwined on the fur rug in front of the fireplace. They still had their clothes on, but from the avidity with which Rasputin was assailing her, they wouldn’t remain on for long.

I watched as he pulled up her skirts and fumbled. The girl had an extremely strange expression on her face. As Rasputin reached higher, the expression changed to outright laughter. With the laughter, Rasputin froze. Now his face took on a strange, flabbergasted look. His jaw hung open and he removed his hand from under the skirts.

Roaring now, the girl reached up to her head and pulled at her hair. The entire coiffure came away in her hands. It was a wig! And suddenly I realized what it was that had stopped Rasputin.

The girl wasn’t a girl at all! She was a man!

Yes, the object of Rasputin’s passion was a guy in drag. While he was still absorbing this, Dmitri and Purichkevich, realizing that the deception was revealed, went through the curtain and into the plush room beyond. Fearful and curious, I crossed over to where they’d been hiding and watched from there. Now I could see the entire scene.

Rasputin was a good sport. Evidently he took the whole thing as a practical joke. He slapped his knee and laughed and embraced all three of the men. The one in drag was introduced to him now as Prince Felix Yusupov. The introduction was in Russian of course, but I caught the name and it hit me as a shocker.

Yusupov was the third assassin that Putnam had mentioned to me! Putnam! What the hell was keeping him? The three conspirators had Rasputin now, and if something didn’t happen quickly, he was a dead pigeon.

As I was thinking this, I felt something poke me in the backside. I reached behind me and picked it up. It was‘ the gun Dmitri had stashed there. I realized it was also intended to be the instrument of Rasputin’s murder.

Well, I could do something about that. I wanted to delay them as long as possible, and so I decided to deal them a blow that would reinforce their belief in Rasputin’s invincibility. It would have been easy to just remove the bullets from the gun, but the sight of a tool bench across the cellar gave me an even better idea.

I took the gun over to the tool bench and removed the cartridges from the chamber. Using a vise and a pair of pliers, I yanked the lead slug out of each individual cartridge. I was careful to leave the powder in the casings. Then I tore some small strips from a rag lying there and wadded them into each of the cartridges in place of the lead slugs. I replaced the cartridges in the chamber and put the gun back where I found it.

In effect I’d turned the bullets into blanks. They’d fire loudly, but they wouldn’t do any harm. Not to the target, anyway. On the other hand, they should be good for some mental trauma to whoever fired the gun.

I didn’t have to wait long before it was put to the test. Rasputin, somewhat drunk, was regaling Purichkevich with a dirty story when the fairy Prince Yusupov and the Grand Duke excused themselves -- probably on the pretext of going to the bathroom. As soon as they were on my side of the curtain, the Grand Duke picked up the revolver and handed it to the high-caste female impersonator. The way he was gesticulating, there was no doubt about the fact that he was urging Yusupov to shoot Rasputin.

He convinced him. As soon as they reentered the room, Yusupov walked up to Rasputin and shoved the gun in his face. Yusupov shouted something that sounded like a Russian version of “Sic semper tyrannis!” and fired the gun. There was a loud bang. Rasputin just stood there. Yusupov fired again. Still nothing happened. The Prince fired until the chambers were empty.

Then there was a long moment’s silence. The three conspirators looked stunned. So did Rasputin—at first. But then he must have decided this too was all part of the joke. He burst out laughing, clapped them each on the back, took a long swig from a bottle of vodka on the sideboard and launched into another dirty story. His three listeners stared at him as if he was the Devil incarnate.

After a while his tongue grew thick with the liquor. His head slid forward and he began to nod. When they were sure he’d drifted off to sleep, the three disappointed killers tiptoed out of the room to hold a consultation.

Dmitri was the most determined of them. Rasputin had fallen into their trap, and his attitude was that the Mad Monk should not be allowed to escape no matter how tough it seemed to be to kill him. In line with this, Dmitri crossed to the door leading from the cellar to the outdoors and bolted it with a heavy iron bar. He put a padlock on it, locked it with a large key, and replaced the key on the hook over the tool bench from whence he’d taken it.

When he rejoined the other two near the curtained doorway, I crept over to the tool bench and took the key. As I did so, I noticed a box of ammunition lying there. Concealed from them by the shadows, I worked quickly to turn the bullets into slugs as I’d done with the other bullets before. It was a good forethought. Just as I’d finished, Dmitri walked over to the tool bench, grabbed a handful of cartridges and reloaded his gun.

While he was doing that, I slipped over to the outside door, unlocked the padlock and removed the iron bar. When Purichkevich and Yusupov joined Dmitri at the tool bench, I took advantage of their preoccupation and darted into the room where they’d left the dozing Rasputin.

I shook him by the shoulder and covered his mouth so he wouldn’t cry out at being awakened so sharply. “Listen to me,” I told him in German. “They aren’t joking with you. They actually intend to kill you. Believe me. Trust me. I saved your life once before and now I’m trying to save it again.”

“I trust you. I believe you,” he whispered back. “What is their plan?”

“They are going to try to shoot you again. They don’t know it, but the bullets are duds. Pretend that they’re not. Pretend you’ve been hit. Pretend you’re dead. Play for time. Help is on the way.”

That was all the conversation we could manage. The trio of killers was coming back through the curtain. I ducked behind the couch where they couldn’t see me. Rasputin pretended he was still dozing.

They didn’t waste any time. Yusupov walked straight up to Rasputin, pressed the revolver against the temple of the starets and fired point-blank. Rasputin had natural talent. His hand flew to his temple as if by reflex. He’d gotten some of the frosting from the cakes and now he smeared it on his temple. As he slumped forward, it actually looked like blood. Still the Prince wasn’t taking any chances. He fired two more bullets at Rasputin’s body as it lay there. Rasputin’s tongue popped out of his mouth, his eyes stared, there was no sign of breathing. If ever anybody looked dead, he did.

The assassins were convinced. Their next job was to dispose of the body. Appalled, I watched from behind the couch as they carried it through the curtain and up to the large furnace standing in the center of the cellar. As Yusupov threw the door of the furnace open, Rasputin must have felt the blast of heat and realized how they intended to dispose of him.

As one of the killers would later describe it, he “came to life” with a roar and began to struggle fiendishly. His unexpected display of life, and his brute strength, were too much for them. They fell away from him in horror. And, according to the same assassin, he crashed through the “locked” door and into the courtyard beyond.

Finally, the three recovered themselves and gave chase. Cautiously, I brought up the rear. I emerged from the cellar just in time to see Rasputin surrounded by them in a corner of the courtyard. He’d run the wrong way and boxed himself in. This time it was Purichkevich who fired at him with the same blank-loaded revolver Yusupov had used.

Just as he fired, Rasputin spotted me over their shoulders. Perhaps it was the sight of me that prompted him to play dead once again. Or perhaps he figured that if it had worked once, it could work again. Or maybe it was just that they had him trapped and he had no other choice. In any case, as Purichkevich fired, he pitched forward and lay still.

Dead as he looked, the trio was still terrified of him. Not one of them had the guts to go up to him and touch him and determine if he really was dead. Instead, they looped a rope around his feet, tied the other end to a horse-drawn sleigh, and dragged his body through the deserted late-night streets to the bridge over the Neva River.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed. It was easy to keep pace with them on foot. The weight of the body being dragged, plus the three men in the sleigh, was really too much for the one horse pulling the vehicle. The animal moved very slowly, plodding all the way.

Halfway there, my wrist radio buzzed. I answered it and heard Putnam’s voice. “Grab Rasputin right away,” he said curtly. “The time machine will pick you up in five minutes.”

I didn’t bother to answer. There was no time to explain the difficulties—-indeed, the impossibility—-of the situation. The sleigh had reached the bridge.

I ran up to Rasputin. “Let them throw you in the river,” I counseled him. “I’ll dive in with you. I’ll save you. I promise.”

“But I can’t swim,” he objected.

“It doesn’t matter. Do as I say.”

They were getting out of the coach now and I darted onto the bridge before they could see me. I climbed over the parapet and crouched behind a stone ornament, watching as they approached Rasputin’s supposed corpse. It was obvious that they were very upset and loath to touch him. This made them want to get it over with fast. Hurriedly, clumsily, they lifted his body and threw it far out over the water.

I gauged where Rasputin would hit and dived for the same spot. I had to grab him before the time machine picked me up. I had to be sure we were both picked up. It all would have worked too except—

Except that the Neva River was covered with a crust of ice. Just before we hit, Rasputin yelled one last time. “I can’t swim!”

“Trust me!” I yelled back as I plummeted on an angle towards the spot where he would hit.

Then my head connected with the ice and everything came up stars for a long moment. The next thing I was aware of was inky black water and me plunging down through it. I spotted Rasputin sinking beneath me. It was like witnessing a legend in the making.

According to what Putnam had told me, when the police dredged his body up their report would read that it contained “water in the lungs.” This would indicate that he was still alive after being dropped through the ice into the river. But the assassins would insist that he’d been poisoned and shot and that finally they were sure he was dead when they dumped him into the Neva. The weirdness of the tale would live on for fifty years after his death.

But right now I was determined to save him. After all, I’d promised. If only I hadn’t cracked my head on the ice, I could have latched onto him without any trouble. But now I had to dive for him and grab him while there was still time. My own lungs bursting from the strain, I swam downward into the icy depths and grabbed for Rasputin’s hand. Our fingertips grazed, and then—-

“Yum-yum!” Ti Nih Baapuh said. “You come back make bang-bang, Steve?” Her warm behind rubbed against me between the sheets.

“First I want a full report!” It was Putnam. He was in the bed too, on the other side of Ti Nih. “And get the hell out of my bed!” he added angrily. “There’ll be no bang-bang with Ti Nih as long as I’m here to prevent it. Now what the devil happened?” he asked in a slightly gentler tone. “Where’s Rasputin?”

“He drowned,” I told him, my teeth still chattering from my icy dip. I pressed against Ti Nih for warmth.

“Then your mission was a failure!” Putnam was disgusted. “Stop pushing, you two!” he snapped. “I’m falling out of bed!”

“Well, you can’t win them all.” I answered his first complaint. “Sorry about that, Chief.” I responded to his second complaint. “Umm, yeah, that’s good, Ti Nih! Yes-yes-yes!” I ignored his main complaint. “Yum-yum! Bang-bang!” Man, was I glad to be back. “Yum-yum! Bang-bang!”

CHAPTER EIGHT

What’s the difference between a Wise Man and a wise guy? The Wise Man said there were pivotal points in history which could be affected to prevent the doom of mankind. The wise guy—that was me—tried to affect those pivotal points.

My batting average was exactly zero!

I’d tried to prevent the development of missile-firing weapons and ended up inventing the slingshot. Attempting to keep Alexander the Great from the Gordian Knot, instead I’d been the cause of his severing it. Setting out to stop Nero from burning Rome, I’d actually become responsible for his starting the fire. By trying to prevent the Spanish Inquisition, I’d brought it about. I’d almost turned the tide for civil rights in America only to flub it by getting caught with my pants down. And I’d goofed the chance to save Rasputin’s life, to perhaps save Russia from Communism and the world from a cold war growing hotter by Vietnamese leaps and Korean bounds²³ .

I’d gone to bat six times. Results? No hits, no runs and plenty of errors. In any ball game that kind of performance deserves being sent to the showers.

But did that mean the outcome of the ball game was unalterable? Is Vietnam inevitable? Is it immutable Fate that one day someone’s finger must slip and blow up this coconut of a world of ours so that the shreds can never be put back together again?

“Kiss-kiss!” Ti Nih urged me.

Was it only a diversion? Or was it an answer? I wasn’t sure. Not then, anyway. . . . I kissed her.

“Now see here, Victor!” Putnam was miffed. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve First you foul up all the way from prehistory to the present, and now you’ve got the gall to drop into my bed and start making love to my girl. Victor, you’re a cad!”

“It’s her idea,” I reminded him between kisses.

“Ti Nih, how can you be so fickle?” Putnam tried another tack.

“All time you say let you sleep, no bang-bang, you tired after one most two time. So why you no sleepy now let Steve me love-love?” She took my hand and pressed it against the erect, burning nipple of her plump breast.

“Ti Nih! You’re being unfaithful to me!” Putnam’s voice rose.

Her giggle was lost with her tongue in my ear. Her nails dug into my neck, pushing my head down so that my mouth was pressed into the deep cleft of her bosom. I picked up my cue, tonguing the cleft and then covering both quivering breasts with kisses.

“Victor! I’m ordering you to get out of this bed!” Putnam was livid.

“I’ve just come up out of an icy river,” I reminded him. “I’m freezing. I need the warmth here. Where’s your compassion, man?”

“Poor, cold Steve-Steve. You warm up now?” Ti Nih stroked my legs and buttocks and they did indeed grow warm under her caress.

“If you’re cold, you can take the blankets,” Putnam offered. “But go!”

“You’re just jealous.” I warmed my hands between Ti Nih’s feverish thighs.

“I am not jealous!” he shouted, his voice shaking with jealousy.

“No be jealous. I never mind two. Is better than one for push-push. Merrier is more.” Ti Nih reached behind her and patted Putnam. At the same time the fingers of her other hand trailed tinglingly over my belly.

“You Tibetan trollop!” He jumped up out of the bed. “I’ll get even with you for this, Victor!” He stalked out of the room.

“Him much mad,” Ti Nih observed. Her hair tickled my stomach as she lowered her face to where her fingers had been.

“He’ll get over it.” I traced the triangle of curls beneath her navel until I felt the moist and straining proof of her passion.

“You much warm now,” she panted.

She was right. I was over the effects of my icy dip and my body was on fire with desire in response to her intimate wriggling. Her thighs parted and I investigated the pulsating funnel of her femininity. Ti Nih gasped and dug her nails into my buttocks. After a moment she flung herself over on her back. Her dark eyes shone up at me and her tongue fluttered out from between hot, red lips. “Now! Yum-yum! Bang-bang! Love-love!”

I ignored the redundancies and sprawled over her eagerly. Her body arched to meet me and then we were locked together, her legs clasped tightly around my waist. She was very strong for such a petite girl and she moved vigorously in the throes of our lovemaking. I guess I moved pretty vigorously myself. Ti Nih inspired me to a display of energy I hadn’t thought I had left after my recent arduous activities. It lasted for a long, drawn out moment, and then she subsided somewhat.

She was a long way from through though. As I felt my own passion reach the erupting point, Ti Nih suddenly reached behind me and forced her hand deep between my buttocks. “No over too quick,” she explained, still panting. “Make last longer.”

It worked. For the next fifteen minutes Ti Nih was like a string of firecrackers going off while I was like a bomb with a slow-burning fuse. But my fuse couldn’t be delayed forever, and finally she withdrew her hand and we exploded together. It was the greatest!

I was exhausted. I rolled over on my side, already half-asleep. “Push-push again!” Ti Nih shook me. I ignored her. I was just plain too tired. “You, Put-Putnam, all men alike,” she said disgustedly. “Why no go-go again?”

“Later,” I promised her. And I fell into a sound sleep.

I was awakened by a Tibetan roar. Ti Nih was beside me clutching the sheet to her bosom and looking scared. Papa Baapuh stood a few feet away and roared his anger a second time. He held a double-barreled shotgun in his hands and he was pointing it straight at me.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I asked Ti Nih.

The question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “Me no know. Me sleepy with Putnam here much times and Papa never come. Sleep you one time and he here.”

It figured. I had all the luck. All bad. Putnam made the scene for months and got away with it. I made it one night and now I found myself staring down the wrong end of a two-slug shotgun. All the luck!

“But who tipped him off,” I wondered.

The answer came from over Papa Baapuh’s shoulder. Putnam was standing in the background there, and now he wiggled his fingers at me insultingly.

“You lousy double-crosser!” I snarled at him.

“It was you who double-crossed me,” he answered with a nasty grin. “You should have more respect for my gray hairs.”

“I’l1 show you respect if I ever get out of this,” I vowed. “I’ll scalp every last gray hair off that knobby pate of yours.” I looked at Papa Baapuh pleadingly. “You’re not really going to use that on me, are you?” I pleaded.

“He no talk English,” Ti Nih reminded me.

“Well then translate for gosh sake! And hurry it up!”

She spoke to Papa Baapuh in Tibetan. As he answered her a ghastly look of vengeance spread over his face. It didn’t look promising.

“Him say yep, him gonna shootum up all right. No kill right away though. First thing gonna blast off golden you-know-what.” She pointed. “Then gonna blow a hole in yellow hair. Him much mad.”

“Really? I never would have guessed it.”

“I don’t like your hair much that way anyway, Steve,” Putnam remarked. “You look like a chorus boy, or a Hollywood fag.”

“Shut up, you Judas!” Angry as I was at Putnam, I couldn’t help reflecting that if Papa Baapuh fired that first volley I wouldn’t just look like a chorus boy, I’d be a choir boy! Before that could happen, it might be wise to try to get Putnam back on my side. He was standing behind Papa Baapuh and he was the only one in a position to grab the gun away from the angry old man before it could be fired. “Putnam, you’re not really going to just stand there and let him shoot me,” I said in a more conciliatory tone. “After all we’ve been through together. You wouldn’t just stand by and let him shoot me.”

“Yes, I would,” Putnam replied blithely. “You should have kept your treasures in the vault.” He grinned fiendishly at my golden gonads.

Papa Baapuh raised the shotgun. Automatically, I clasped my hands over me like a fig leaf. Ti Nih shook her head sadly. Putnam didn’t move.

But before Papa Baapuh could fire, there came a sudden crash from another part of the dwelling. It was followed by loud noises and a hubbub of voices that sounded like a convention of Chinese laundrymen arguing about how much starch to use. Papa Baapuh-—thanks be!—was distracted. Putnam was alarmed.

“It’s the Red Guard!” he exclaimed. He pulled a pistol from his belt. “Victor, do you have a gun?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Then take this.” Putnam yanked the shotgun away from Papa Baapuh before the old man could object and tossed it to me. “This could be rough,” he warned.

“How come? I thought you had all the diplomatic wires pulled so they’d leave us alone. Why are they after us now?”

“I’ve been expecting this,” Putnam said. “They’ve been leaning on us lately. I know their orders were just to observe and not act up until now. But my guess is they were just waiting until Papa Baapuh completed his ‘experiment.’ They didn’t know what it was, but they knew he was onto something. Somehow they’ve learned that whatever it was, it’s finished. So now they want to grab onto it immediately.”

“Everybody in village much excitement Steve back,” Ti Nih interjected. “I tell all him come home tonight like Papa tell you.”

“That explains it then,” Putnam said. “It’s you they’re after, Steve. They want the man with the golden you-know-what.”

“Great! What do we do now?”

“Make a run for it. There’s nothing else we can do.”

“Why don’t you just let them have me?” I wondered aloud. “A minute ago you were willing to let Papa shoot me.”

“Because once they have you and Papa Baapuh, they won’t have any use for Ti Nih and me. They’ll just kill us to make sure we don’t talk. Forget what just happened, Steve. We’re all in this together now.”

He was right. This was no time to hold grudges. The voices were getting louder. It sounded as if they were breaking up the house for the sheer hell of it as they drew closer to us. “What do we do?” I wondered.

“Window,” Ti Nih suggested. “Two yak outside. Take blanket, much cold.”

“She’s right.” Putnam grabbed a blanket. “It’s our only chance.”

Ti Nih grabbed another blanket and Papa Baapuh a third. I spied a pair of pants and a shirt lying across a chair and I grabbed those.

“Victor,” Putnam objected. “Those are my clothes.”

“Well, I need them. And this is no time to argue about it.” I pulled on the pants quickly, shrugged into the shirt and started buttoning it.

Putnam glowered, but he dropped it. Ti Nih and Papa Baapuh were already out the window. Putnam was just starting to climb out when a pair of Red Guards came through the door, spraying bullets from their tommy guns like they were Flit cans and we were pregnant roaches.

Putnam dropped one of them with a quick, over-the-shoulder shot from the pistol. I spread the other one’s guts all over the room with a blast from the shotgun. Putnam dropped out the window and I started to follow. Several Red Guards did a Keystone Cops routine trying to get through the doorway and blazing away before they even knew what the target was. I aided and abetted their confusion by knocking out the light with the other shell from the shotgun. In the darkness, I made it outside.

Ti Nih and Papa Baapuh were each astride a yak, blankets wrapped around them. Putnam jumped up behind Papa Baapuh and I mounted behind Ti Nih. It was snowing pretty heavily as we started out. It was also damn cold. I snuggled under the blanket behind Ti Nih. She hadn’t had time to put on any clothes. She was naked under the blanket. It looked like it was going to be an interesting yak- ride.

The Red Guards added to the excitement. As we reached the edge of the village and started through the wind-whipped mountain pass, the sound of yak hooves and shouting men behind us testified that they were in pursuit. We couldn’t see them. The curtain of snow cut off our vision. But we could hear them and we continued to hear them through several hours of blizzard.

The pass was slippery and treacherous. Any animal less sure footed than the yak would have plunged us into the snowy abyss. Carrying double loads didn’t make it any easier for the beasts of burden either. But they held to the cliffside path with a minimum of guidance and a maximum of prayer from us.

After about four strenuous hours, it started to sound like the Red Guard was getting closer. They’d be on top of us soon if I was any judge. They’d be on us and either take us prisoners, or drive us over the side of the cliff.

I wasn’t about to resign myself to such a fate. I had an idea. I started peering over Ti Nih’s shoulder and casing the terrain as our yaks inched along the icy path. Finally I saw what I’d been seeking and I poked Ti Nih.

“Stop here a second,” I told her. “I’m getting off. Then you keep going. But go slow for a little while. If I don’t catch up with you in ten minutes or so, speed up and get the hell out of here.”

She didn’t ask questions. I dismounted and took the rope which had been slung over the saddle of the yak. Ti Nih started off, slowly following the tracks made by our other yak.

I worked fast. Going back a few paces, I tied one end of the rope to an outcropping of rock riding up from the mountain side of the path. Leaving a little slack so the gale force wouldn’t snap it, I strung the rope out across the path and tied the other end to a tough-looking vine poking through the snow at the very edge of the abyss. By the time I finished, I could see the Red Guard materializing through the snow. They looked for all the world like a troop of ghost-riders dropping out of the sky in slow motion.

The unreal, slow-motion effect was maintained during the scene which followed. The rope caught the lead yak right at the knees and the Red Guard atop him went sailing into the air. His scream lasted a long time as he was propelled over the side of the cliff and into the abyss below.

The second yak plowed right into the one which had stumbled. The two beasts thrashed in the snow and the ones behind them began to pile up and add to the confusion. One yak in the back tried to avoid the pile-up and he and his rider soared into the air and over the edge of the cliff. Two of the scrambling yaks tumbled after them as each tried to outmaneuver the other to maintain a foothold. One Red Guard leapt to safety only to be kicked over the side by the yak coming up behind him. The scene turned into a panic of squealing, thrashing animals and shouting, desperate men.

I didn’t hang around to count the casualties. Bucking the wind, with my nose all but pressed to the yak tracks, I took off after Ti Nih. I was damn glad she hadn’t listened to me before. Both yaks were waiting for me around a bend in the trail. If they hadn’t been, I never would have made it. I’d only been on foot for five minutes when I found them, but between the cold and slipperiness of the trail, that five minutes almost finished me.

I’d say I was back on the yak with Ti Nih for a good half-hour before I was sure there was life in my body again. By then there was no sign of our pursuers. Also, the trail was dipping steeply downward into the crevice between the slopes of ice so that the wind had abated and the cold was no longer quite so piercing. The snow too was falling more gently now. We had passed through the worst of the terrain and left the worst of the weather behind us.

I became more aware of the warmth of Ti Nih’s breasts under my hands as I held onto her. Her round little bottom bounced intriguingly between my thighs as the yak jogged along. Soon the warmth and the motion were having their effect on both of us.

“Victor! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Putnam, riding behind Papa Baapuh on the yak in front of us, had craned his neck and was staring at us.

“Me sit-down get sore from bounce-bounce,” Ti Nih called back to him. “So turn ’round cushion delicate flesh on Steve’s lap.”

“Don’t hand me that!” Putnam was furious. “I can guess what you’re up to. Now you two just cut it out!”

Papa Baapuh’s head was also turned now and he was glowering at us. Ti Nih ignored them both. Her hands had deftly undone the buttons to the pants I was wearing and now, under cover of the blanket around us both, she rose up and straddled me, impaling herself neatly and hotly on the target. My face was buried between her naked breasts. The motion of the yak did the rest.

“Victor! You’re disgusting!” Putnam raged. “In the middle of a blizzard, on top of a moving yak, the Red Guard on our tails, the girl’s father here, and me, who has certain undeniable claims to her fidelity and to your loyalty-—in such a situation, how can you do what you’re doing?”

“It isn’t easy,” I told him truthfully.

“How can you?”

“I’m the man from O.R.G.Y.,” I reminded him.

“Stop it!”

It was too late. Ti Nih squealed and I lunged upwards and we were almost bounced off the yak as we mutually realized our passion. Coming down out of the clouds, there was an instant when I wondered at the fact that Putnam had suddenly fallen silent. Then I saw the reason why.

We had rounded a sharp curve in the trail and emerged on a wide plateau. There was a sprinkling of huts there and perhaps a dozen Tibetan villagers watching us with open mouths.

“What are you staring at?” I wondered aloud.

“What the hell do you think?” Putnam recovered his voice. “It’s one helluva entrance you two made! I don’t imagine copulating couples drop in out of the snowstorm on these people every day in the week.”

Ti Nih giggled. I felt myself getting red in the face. Papa Baapuh was talking to the villagers.

“Them friends,” Ti Nih translated after a while. “Relations even. We okay here. Them take us in.”

The Tibetan villagers were indeed quite friendly to us. Papa Baapuh was both known and respected there. The head man of the village played host to him and Ti Nih. Another family provided a room and food for Putnam and myself. For the first time, we relaxed. Seemingly, we’d reached safety.

However, as it turned out, our feelings of relief were premature. They were justified for that night, but not by the events of the following day. Towards noon of that day, trouble dropped out of the sky and came looking for us.

Trouble was a Red Guard aircraft carrying a squad of troops. Evidently the Red Guards who’d been following us had figured out our destination and radioed it to their headquarters. Unluckily for us, the plateau on which the village was situated was both flat and wide enough for the plane to land easily.

The villagers, who had good reason to hate and fear the Red Guards, hid us from the soldiers. This was no great problem where Papa Baapuh and Ti Nih were concerned. They could move about as freely as the villagers themselves, being indistinguishable from them as far as the soldiers were concerned. In the case of Putnam and myself, however, concealment was more difficult. Our Caucasian features were dead giveaways.

When, shortly after they landed, the Red Guards instituted a house-to-house search, it became obvious that it would be impossible for the villagers to hide Putnam and me for long. I was for grabbing the yaks and beating it out of there. But Putnam had a better idea.

“We’ll steal their plane,” he decided.

“I don’t know the first thing about flying a plane. Do you?” I asked him.

“Sure. I used to fly my own plane all the time years ago. I’ve never flown a military transport like this one, but it shouldn’t be much different.”

“I hope you’re right.”

So, scurrying from hut to hut and managing to avoid the searchers, we made our way to the plane. There were two guards, one on either side of it. Putnam silently garroted one while I clobbered the other with the butt of Papa Baapuh’s shotgun.

We boarded the plane. Putnam went straight to the controls. I started to follow him, but I was delayed by a large Red Guard mechanic who came at me from the tail of the plane with a monkey wrench. While Putnam revved up the motors, I got sucked into a wrestling match with this big galoot.

The monkey wrench glanced off my ear. I slammed the gun-butt into a stomach that felt like a steel barrel. My opponent grunted to show that he was annoyed. He didn’t like being annoyed. He yanked the shotgun out of my hands and flung it from the plane like he was flicking away a used matchstick.

Putnam had all four engines going now and he was feathering them to get them into sync. The sound covered up my scream of anguish as the burly mechanic bounced the wrench off one of my kidneys. I doubled over and then took advantage of the position to sink my teeth into his arm just above the wrist. I ground my teeth like a bulldog and the wrench went clattering to the floor of the plane.

The plane was moving over the snow-covered plateau now, picking up speed. From outside I could hear shouts and then the sound of gunfire. The Red Guards had spotted us and something about the way their bullets pinged off the side of the aircraft told me they resented our making off with it.

However, I had a more pressing problem close at hand. The Red husky was doing push-ups on my chest. His knees were firmly planted on each of my shoulders and his two huge, hairy hands were wringing my neck. Fear had filled my mouth with saliva, but the squeeze he had me in made it difficult to swallow. So, instead, I spit in his eye.

He took this as escalation. He redoubled his efforts to separate my head from my body. It became obvious to me that coexistence was impossible. I could almost feel the beginnings of what might end up a death rattle in my constricted windpipe.

There was only one thing I could do. I did it. I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could.

Just for an instant, his arm muscles unflexed. I took advantage of that instant. I flung my arms sideways and broke his hold on my throat. Moving fast, I managed to scramble out from under him.

The plane lurched as it left the ground. A hail of bullets bid us farewell. The hefty mechanic and I went tumbling over each other as we were carried aloft.

As the craft leveled off, he regained his balance and began moving in on me like a gorilla overacting a love scene for a Tarzan movie. Bravely, I retreated as fast as I could. I backed all the way to the tail. I couldn’t back up any further. There was nothing but an open hatch and empty space behind me now.

The brute grinned a ghastly grin as he saw my predicament. I smiled back weakly-—-but winningly. I meant it to be conciliatory. He didn’t take it that way. A phlegmy Chinese roar rose in his throat and he dived for me. My response was instantaneous.

I dropped through the hatch!

Only I took the precaution of grabbing the edge of it as I fell. Literally dangling by my fingertips, I was gratified to see my opponent propelled through the hatch by his own momentum. He passed right over my head and kept right on going. A split second later he was dropping towards the ground, a hurt look of surprise on his face.

“So long,” I called. I averted my eyes as he hit the ground. I can’t stand messy sights.

Of course my own troubles were far from over. Hanging out of an open hatch from an airplane that’s rapidly picking up speed and altitude isn’t exactly an exercise in survival technique. Particularly when you’re hanging by your fingertips and subzero temperatures are turning the blood in them to ice. It wasn’t easy to pull myself back inside.

It was a matter of raising myself finger-joint by finger-joint. Then I got a wrist over and then an elbow. It took a long time before I finally managed to drag all of me back inside that speeding plane.

I caught my breath, closed the hatch, and caught my breath some more. At last I stopped shaking enough to make my way forward to where Putnam was sitting at the controls of the plane. His greeting to me left something to be desired.

“Where the hell have you been? I could use some help up here, you know. I can’t do everything myself!”

“Sorry. I get airsick during takeoffs.” I didn’t bother elaborating. “How are you doing? Do you really think you can handle this boat?”

“Well, I’ve really never seen controls like this before. And the labels on them are all in Chinese. Do you know anything about radar?”

“A little bit. What do you want to know?”

“See that scope there?” Putnam pointed.

“Yeah.”

“That line keeps coming closer to that green blob each time it goes around. And every time it happens there’s a sound like a blip. Listen.”

I listened.

“Blip!”

“I see what you mean,” I told Putnam.

“What does it mean?”

I studied the radarscope. “It means we’re approaching some kind of solid object. If we were at sea, I’d say we were going towards a submarine or something like that.”

“We’re not at sea,” Putnam reminded me.

“Then maybe it means we’re heading into a mountain,” I mused. I peered through the windshield. “LOOK OUT!” I screamed in sudden terror.

Putnam pulled back on the wheel as hard as he was able. In a split second my entire life insurance planning ran through my mind. The mountain sped towards us at top speed. We virtually flipped over on our tail to climb up its slope, coming so close at times that I could have reached out and pulled snowballs from the drifts. After an eternity, we passed its peak and Putnam leveled off the plane.

“Your nose is bleeding,” he commented. “It must be psychosomatic. Do you often get nosebleeds in tension-producing situations?”

“Your nose is bleeding too,” I informed him. “And it’s not psychosomatic. We’re very high up and we’re running short of oxygen.”

“Well, one of those gismos must increase the oxygen supply.” He waved at the instrument panel. “Turn it on.”

Gasping, I threw a switch at random. There was a grinding sound as the landing gear retracted.

“It’s about time,” Putnam commented. “You should never fly with your landing gear down. It’s dangerous. Now turn on the oxygen.”

I threw another switch and a voice crackled out in Chinese.

“That’s the radio,” Putnam deduced. “See if you can get some music. It’ll ease the tension and help your nosebleed.”

Cursing, I switched off the radio and pushed the button next to it. There was a hissing sound as oxygen rushed through into the compartment. I took several deep breaths and began to feel better. “Have you given any thought to where we’re going?” I asked Putnam.

“Naturally. We have to get out of Commie-land. We have to head for the nearest safe place, a spot where we can be sure of a friendly reception, preferably some place where there’s some American control. Considering the fact that pretty soon now we’ll be out of the Tibetan mountains and over Red China, that doesn’t leave us too many choices. Actually, I can only think of one. And so that’s where we’re heading.”

“What’s where we’re heading?” I asked.

“Saigon. It’s safe. It’s friendly. And there’s lots of Americans there.”

I had to admit it made sense. With most of South Vietnam, how an American might be greeted was a flip of a coin between passive fear and active resistance. But as of January 30th, 1968, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Saigon was securely in the American camp. What better destination?

I settled back in the copilot’s seat and dozed. It saved me from having to watch Putnam playing Russian roulette with the mountains. After a while it got a little less bumpy and I slipped into a sound sleep. Putnam’s elbow in my ribs waked me.

“We’re over North Vietnam,” he informed me.

I realized that I’d been asleep for a very long time. “How can you be sure?” Looking out the window, all I could see was the blackness of night.

“By reading the compass.” His tone said that I was an idiot. “I used to be a Boy Scout,” he added sarcastically.

“What’s that?” There was a series of sudden popping sounds like a bunch of firecrackers going off very close to the plane. Flashes of light trailed towards the nose of the ship.

“Flak,” Putnam told me. “The North Vietnamese anti-aircraft is shooting at us.”

“But Why? We’re flying a Chinese plane.”

“We’re too high up for them to distinguish the markings. They just shoot at anything that flies. With the frequency of our bombings, you can’t really blame them. I’ll pick up some altitude and that’ll keep us out of range.” He pulled back on the wheel and the plane rose sharply. After it leveled off, he turned to me again. “Now we’d better talk about our main problem,” he told me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I could take off in this plane, and I can fly it, but I don’t know how to land it.”

”This is a helluva time to think of that. You have to land it!”

“You don’t understand. I panic at the very idea. If I try to land, I’ll only freeze at the controls and we’ll both be killed. Everybody has a particular kind of situation with which they can’t cope. This is mine. I can’t control the way I feel. You’l1 just have to land the plane, Steve.”

“Me! You’re out of your maniacal mind! I don’t know the first thing about flying a plane, let alone handling one!”

“As soon as we’re over South Vietnam, we’ll break radio silence and call Saigon. They’ll talk you in. It won’t be hard.”

It was no use arguing. Putnam’s terror was firm. It was going to be up to me to land the plane. A while later he said we were out of Commie territory and I started fiddling with the radio.

The first voice I picked up was in Vietnamese. I switched over to broadcast a plea for help in English. When I switched back, the voice that picked me up was also spouting Vietnamese. I transmitted my plea for help a second time. This time a voice answered in English.

“Replying to distress signal, replying to distress signal, identify yourself, iden——AARRGGHH!” The line went dead.

“What the hell was that?” I wondered aloud.

“It sounded like the station transmitting was attacked,”

Putnam guessed. “Maybe the Vietcong. Don’t worry about it though. I didn’t want to land in the countryside. It’s too much of a seesaw situation there. Wait until we get over Saigon.”

I waited. About an hour later, Putnam indicated that I should try the radio again. The first American voice I heard was in a frenzy. “Don’t land!” the voice shouted. “Saigon under attack²⁴ ! Repeat, do not land!”

“Tell him we have to land,” Putnam said. “We’re almost out of gas. I’m going to drop down to a. thousand feet to save fuel and then you’ll have to take over the controls, Steve.”

“What will you be doing?” I asked.

“Cowering,” Putnam assured me. “I won’t be able to help myself.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” I told him. As the plane dropped, I relayed Putnam’s message over the radio. Instead of an answer, all I got was static. I kept trying, but static was the best I could raise. “What the hell is it?” I wondered aloud.

“The Vietcong must be jamming all the frequencies,” Putnam deduced. “You’l1 just have to land the plane without help, Steve.”

“Don’t be ridi-—what the hell is that!”

All hell had suddenly broken loose. Ack-ack shells were exploding all around us. Searchlights were pinpointing the plane and the bursts were zeroing in on us. Frantically, Putnam tried to regain altitude.

“They’re shooting at us,” I remarked.

“Yes.” Putnam didn’t argue the point.

“What happened to that friendly reception you were so sure about?” I asked him.

“You could hardly expect South Vietnamese or American antiaircraft gunners to be friendly towards a plane with Chinese insignia.”

“You should have thought of that before you told me how friendly and safe Saigon would be.”

“Something seems to be going on there,” he granted. “I mean besides the fact that they’re shooting at a Chinese plane. I can’t understand why you can’t raise contact with our boys and establish who we are.”

“Search me.”

Putnam glanced at the control panel. “We’re out of gas,” he observed. “You’ll have to land us, Steve.”

“Without instructions? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Then we’ll have to bail out.”

“All right.” I didn’t like the idea, but I couldn’t think of an alternative.

“I’m going to circle over the Embassy,” Putnam decided. “We’ll bail out over it as close as we can. Whatever else is going on in Saigon, you can be sure of one thing: the American Embassy is secure. We’ll be safe there.”

So we bailed out over the American Embassy in Saigon. A moment after my ’chute opened, I spotted the white of Putnam’s parachute floating above me. The plane was arcing downwards towards the rice paddies on the outskirts of Saigon.

The wall around the Embassy took shape beneath me. I pulled on the guidelines of the ’chute, trying to steer myself so I’d drop inside the Embassy compound. Above me, Putnam was attempting the same maneuver.

I was too successful in using the roof of the Embassy building as a target. My ’chute sagged on an eave and I found myself dangling there. A moment later the same fate befell Putnam. He dangled a few feet away from me. As we tried to extricate ourselves from the ’chutes, I became aware of loud explosions all around the Embassy. “What the hell is going on?” I exclaimed.

“It’s Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year,” Putnam explained. “That’s a big celebration day in Saigon. They’re probably shooting off a lot of fireworks.”

There was a tremendous explosion. A portion of the ornate concrete wall around the Embassy grounds blew apart and filled the air with rubble. The impact was so great that it shook both Putnam and me loose from the eave of the roof and we went crashing, with our torn ‘chutes, to the ground below. Fortunately the side of the building was lined with bushes which broke our fall.

“Some fireworks!” I told him as I finished extricating myself from the parachute harness. “I never saw a firecracker go off like that before!”

“I don’t understand it,” Putnam said. “Listen. That isn’t fireworks. Those are shells. They’re shelling the Embassy. And that explosion! That was dynamite!”

“No kidding,” I said sarcastically. “Well, I guess these people really do get carried away by their Lunar New Year.”

“It must be a terrorist attack,” Putnam decided.

“ ‘The American Embassy is secure. We’ll both be safe there’ ” I quoted him. “Man, Putnam, you’ve got to stop reading those CIA comic books.”

“Shut up!” He hissed the words at me as he pulled me back into the bushes. “Look over there.”

I looked. One by one, guerrillas were darting through the hole in the wall and taking up positions around the Embassy grounds. From where we were hiding, I could make out the forms of two dead American Marines. As I turned my head, I could see an American military truck crossing the grounds from the gate at the other end. The gate had evidently been reclosed after admitting the truck. The guards at the gate had then been attacked by the Vietcong hiding in the bottom of the lorry. The driver of the lorry, in South Vietnamese uniform, had been shot by one of the guards when his treachery became obvious. Another imposter had met a similar fate. But in the end, the infiltrators had overwhelmed the undermanned guard staff.

We watched as the terrorists moved across the grounds towards the Embassy building. Most of them wore the black pajamas of the Vietnamese peasant. A few wore the white shirts of the Saigon white-collar worker with red armbands around the sleeves. They were moving straight towards us. Their goal was the thick, cherrywood doors opened on the parking lot—or interior—area of the compound. Before they could achieve it, three valiant Marines inside the Embassy managed to close the doors.

Putnam and I were unarmed. There was nothing we could do. So, as the Vietcong guerrillas rushed the cherrywood doors, we took advantage of the distraction to move away from the Embassy building itself.

We thought the wall around the compound would offer better shelter from the flying bullets and shells. We were wrong. Just as we reached it, American Marines on the other side began firing over it and through the gates at the guerrillas. The Cong returned the fire. We were virtually in the middle.

It brought us up short. We didn’t know which way to run. With bullets zinging all around us, there was no time to hold a conference. We bolted in different directions.

I scrambled behind a truck parked on one side of the parking lot. I saw Putnam reach safety behind another lorry across from me. As it turned out, his choice was a lot safer than mine.

It was a chunk of broken glass lying on the ground that saved my life. I stepped on it and jumped with the sudden pain. The sharp movement sideways got me out of the way of a lunging bayonet by a split second. The bayonet jammed into the wood of the lorry instead of my back.

I whirled around. What looked like a young Vietnamese boy in the customary black pajamas was wrestling with a rifle and trying to yank the bayonet out of the wood where it had stuck. I slammed into the guerrilla with my shoulder. The Cong let go of the rifle and went sprawling.

“American murderer!” The high pitched voice spat the words at me.

“That’s no attitude to take,” I said, standing over the fallen figure. “We’re here to help you people.”

“You’re invaders! Yankee go home!”

“You’re a Communist dupe,” I assured the Cong. “We’re here to bring you democracy.”

“Napalm! You call that democracy? Ky! You call that democracy? Bombs! This is democracy? Plague! Is that what you mean by democracy?”

“You’re confused,” I said soothingly. “You just don’t understand how it would be to live under a Communist system.”

“But I understand how it is to live under American domination. And I understand how to die under it!”

Lying there on the ground with me standing alongside, the figure suddenly tensed. The hands moved up to the black pajama blouse. Peering through the darkness I suddenly spotted the two round objects concealed under the pajama blouse. Grenades! The suicidal Cong must be reaching to pull the pins and we’d both be blown to smithereens together. I dived atop the terrorist, both hands grabbing for the grenades.

My hands latched onto both targets, ripping away the material of the pajama blouse. My weight knocked the wind out of the Cong. My mind did a quick reevaluation of the situation. Those weren’t grenades which had been concealed by the blouse.

They were female breasts!

“Go ahead! Strangle me to death!”

Close to the terrorist’s face now, it was easy for me to see that the features were female. She was a very pretty girl with the heart-shaped face and almond eyes typical of Vietnamese girls. Her breasts were small, but very full and round and carried high. From what I could feel of the rest of her body as I sprawled over it, she was quite slim with nicely padded hips and supple legs.

“I’m not going to strangle you,” I assured her.

“Why not?” She was crying. “I’d rather die than go on living in this lousy mess you Yankees have made of my country.”

“How come you speak English?” I was trying to get off the subject of politics, but it was no use.

“With half a million Americans taking over my country, it is necessary to speak the language of the conquerors. I had to learn it just to say ‘No!’ to all the GIs who tried to ‘pacify’ me.”

“Well, anyway, I’m not going to kill you. There’s no doubt you can’t hold out here. The Americans will retake the Embassy in a matter of hours. When that happens, I’ll turn you over as a prisoner. That’s all that’s going to happen to you. You’ll be well treated.”

“Well treated!” She laughed without humor. “You mean I’ll be shot!”

“We don’t shoot prisoners.”

“Of course not. You get your allies to do the dirty work for you. But why wait? Why not just kill me now and get it over?”

“Now I could never kill a pretty girl like you.”

“Oh! I see! That’s it! You’re going to rape me!”

“I never rape women. My ego won’t let me. I have to feel that a girl wants me as much as I want her.”

“If I let you make love to me, will you let me go?” Her voice took on cunning.

“I can’t do that. You’re the enemy.”

“Do you always squeeze the enemy’s breasts the way you’re squeezing mine?”

“Sorry.” I started to remove my hands.

Her hands covered them and held them in place. “Are you always so aroused by the enemy?” she asked softly.

“I’m not aroused!” I denied.

“Then you must have a pistol in your pocket.”

“I have no pistol in my pocket.” I blushed.

“I didn’t think it felt like a pistol.” She squirmed beneath me and I could feel the hot fulcrum of her body pressed insinuatingly against me through the thin silk of her pajama pants. “I’m so tired of war and fighting and killing,” she sighed. “If you turn me over to the soldiers, they really will kill me. And if I’m going to die, I want to be a woman once more before it happens. I want to feel some tenderness in the world.” She raised her head. Her lips were parted. The warm perfume of her breath reached my nostrils.

I kissed her. Her nails dug into my back. Her breasts were a pair of panting doves under my hands. Her thighs parted and she ground her soft hips against mine.

Carbine fire came from the Marines at the gate. The Cong sputtered the night air with tommy gun bullets. Shells whined overhead. Outside there were sounds of more explosions and shooting.

The sounds receded from my awareness. My sense of danger was lost in the arms of the eager girl. Our hands moved together to slide the black pajama pants down her hips and legs to her ankles. She was all softness and warmth and willingness. We floated on the sensations of pure, ecstatic, non-thinking, apolitical sex.