MASH 06 MASH Goes to Morocco Read online

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  M*A*S*H Goes to Morroco (V2 or better)

  Involved in the Moroccan caper are:

  PENELOPE QUATTLEBAUM: a lusciously stacked career diplomat whose code number is 38-24-36.

  BORIS ALEXANDROVICH KORSKY-RIMSAKOV: the world’s greatest opera singer, an angel-voiced lecher and lush.

  DON RHOTTEN (pronounced Row-ten): America’s favorite TV newscaster, who’s in constant terror of cracking the caps on his teeth or losing the rug that serves as his hair.

  SHEIKH ABDULLAH BEN ABZUG: his religion forbids him to touch the fermented juice of the grape, a prohibition that, he discovers, does not apply to vodka.

  MASH GOES TO MOROCCO

  is an original POCKET BOOK edition.

  M*A*S*H Goes to Morocco

  Further misadventures of M*A*S*H

  Richard Hooker

  And

  William E. Butterworth

  Pocket Book edition published January, 1976

  MASH GOES TO MOROCCO

  POCKET BOOK edition published January, 1976

  This original POCKET BOOK edition is printed from brand-new plates made from newly set, clear, easy-to-read type. POCKET BOOK editions are published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10020. Trademarks registered

  in the United States and other countries.

  Standard Book Number: 671-80264-4.

  Copyright, ©, 1976, by Richard Hornberger and William E. Butterworth. All rights reserved. Published by POCKET BOOKS, New York, and on the same day in Canada by Simon & Schuster of Canada, Ltd., Markham, Ontario.

  Front cover illustration by Sandy Kosain.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  MASH GOES TO MOROCCO is an original POCKET BOOK edition.

  Books in the MASH Series

  MASH

  MASH Goes to Maine

  MASH Goes to New Orleans, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to Paris, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to London, June, 1975

  MASH Goes to Las Vegas, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Morocco, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Hollywood, April 1976

  MASH Goes to Vienna, June, 1976

  MASH Goes to Miami, September, 1976

  MASH Goes to San Francisco, November, 1976

  MASH Goes to Texas, February 1977

  MASH Goes to Montreal, June, 1977

  MASH Goes to Moscow, September, 1977

  MASH Mania, February, 1979

  Chapter One

  “And now,” the master of ceremonies announced with great, if somewhat unconvincing, enthusiasm, “it’s door-prize time.”

  The master of ceremonies was a pediatrician, or baby doctor, from down around Bangor, Maine, and that combination of sad affairs, in the opinion of Hawkeye Pierce, also known as Benjamin Franklin Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., was enough to drive any man to the bottle, as the evidence clearly suggested it had in this case.

  Not that Hawkeye Pierce had anything against the bottle. It had its place, such as now. Dr. Pierce’s hand held a plastic cup emblazoned with the name and logotype of Burble-Up, a citrus-oil-flavored soft drink which the bottler was touting as just the thing to foist on hospital patients in no position to complain and which he was passing out, free-of-charge, to all attendees at the State Medical Convention.

  Dr. Pierce’s cup, however, runneth over with a mixture of Burble-Up and a specially prepared gastric elixir, in the ratio of 50-50. The taste left a good deal to be desired, and Dr. Pierce would have much preferred to be sipping one of his famous 10-1 martinis; but that, under the circumstances, was unfortunately impossible. Dr. Pierce was in the company of his bride of many years, and the bride had issued a non-negotiable proclamation: “You will go forth to the General Meeting and drink nothing but Burble-Up.”

  The best he could do was what he was doing, drinking Burble-Up mixed in equal proportions with a gastric elixir prepared with great care in the pharmacy of the Spruce Harbor, Maine, Medical Center, for which Dr. Pierce served as chief of surgery. A half-gallon of 100-proof vodka had, under Dr. Pierce’s stern professional eye, been decanted into stainless-steel laboratory bowls, which had then been placed into the freezing compartment of the pharmacy’s refrigerator. When the temperature of the vodka had been lowered below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees centigrade), it had been removed from the freezer. Small chips of ice were then dropped into the chilled mixture. Following the laws of physics, the ice chips had attracted the aqueous content of the vodka*1, forming larger pieces of ice, which were, then carefully extracted from the stainless-steel bowls and discarded.

  (*1 For the uninitiated, 100*proof vodka is a 50-50 mixture of grain neutral spirits, the distilling industry’s little euphemism for pure alcohol and water.)

  The remaining liquid had then been carefully poured into standard eight-ounce prescription bottles. A few drops of food coloring were added to each bottle of what was now just about pure grain neutral spirits, giving some a foul-looking purplish color, and the others a revolting off-lavender tinge. The bottles were then sealed, and a standard label applied. The foul-looking purple bottles indicated that they had been prescribed for B.F. Pierce by John F.X. McIntyre, M.D., “for use as needed for gastric distress.” The off-lavender bottles indicated they had been prescribed for J.F.X. McIntyre by B.F. Pierce, M.D., for the suppression of acne. (Mrs. McIntyre had not been a medical bride, so to speak, quite long enough to wonder why her husband was worried about acne.)

  Dr. Pierce’s “gastric distress”—the manifestations of which were chandelier-rattling belches—was, like the technique of refining vodka, something he had brought to the medical profession from his undergraduate days at Androscoggin College. He had paid a classmate five dollars for instruction in the fine art of belching on demand. It had been five dollars well spent. Only moments before the Bangor baby doctor had announced that it was door-prize time, Mary Pierce had, following a relatively mild symptom of gastric distress (a number three-level burp, on a scale of one to ten), fiercely hissed at him to “take his damned medicine.”

  The four, Drs. Pierce and McIntyre, and their brides, were seated in the next to the last row of the convention auditorium, a wife at each end to insure that neither husband could suddenly discover pressing business which required his presence elsewhere during this, the most exciting facet of the convention.

  “The first door prize,” the baby doctor m.c. announced, “presented by Godchaux-Dewey Pharmaceutical Laboratories, is a complete set of matched luggage, in genuine, leather-grained vinyl. It is to be awarded to the oldest physician among us.”

  “My pimples are bothering me,” John Francis Xavier McIntyre, M.D., F.A.C.S., a la “Trapper John,” announced suddenly.

  “Physician, heal thyself!” Hawkeye commanded.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Trapper John (who had been so-called after a conductor on the Boston & Maine Rail road had found him, in his college days, with a coed, who loudly proclaimed she had been trapped in the gentlemen’s facility aboard a Boston-bound train) said. He added another ounce of lavender liquid to his Burble-Up.

  “How is that supposed to help?” his bride, by name Lucinda, asked. “Why don’t you rub it on your face?”

  “Ssshh!” Trapper John said, putting his finger to his lips.

  A tiny, fragile-appearing old gentleman came quickly, if somewhat unsteadily, down the aisle of the convention room.

  “How old is he, anyway?” Hawkeye asked.

  “All I know is that he won the oldest-doctor
luggage when I came to my first convention as an intern,” Trapper John said.

  “He must have a houseful of luggage,” Hawkeye said.

  “Ssshh!” Mary Pierce said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Trapper John said. “He sells it back to the suitcase store. He wins the same set over and over, year after year.”

  Then they both got to their feet, clapping loudly and whistling between their teeth as the aged physician mounted the stairs to the stage. He turned and bowed to acknowledge the applause.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Mary Pierce hissed.

  Hawkeye let her have a number-six burp.

  “And will you take your medicine?” she hissed, furiously.

  “Anything you say, my dear,” Hawkeye replied, in his best Clark Gable diction. He took a deep swallow from his Burble-Up cup and then refilled it from his medicine bottle.

  The prize-awarding went on and on. It was a sad manifestation of one of the greatest unrequited love stories of modern times, that of the ethical pharmaceutical manufacturers*2 for the medical profession.

  (*2 Ethical pharmaceutical manufacturers are those who make drugs dispensed by prescription only. Manufacturers of non-prescription drugs and nostrums, such as aspirin and hemorrhoid suppositories, however, are not necessarily unethical.)

  It has, of course, nothing to do with the cold fact that unless the medical profession chooses to prescribe a certain drug, the manufacturer might as well not manufacture that particular drug. Ethical drug manufacturers cannot, in the manner of publishers and furniture manufacturers, conduct overstock or fire sales—or even going-out-of-business sales—making their wares available to the public at rock-bottom, even sacrificial, prices.

  But to reiterate, it is not the crass commercial fact that unless the doctors prescribe their product, the manufacturers simply cannot sell it. It is rather a simple case of unabashed admiration for those who have taken the oath of Hippocrates, for their skill and knowledge, their charm, their good looks, their genius, their love of their fellowman and their all-around godlike qualities that causes the Ethical Drug Manufacturers to dispatch platoons of high-paid, well-educated, chosen-for-their-charm representatives (known as “detail men”) to pay homage and court to anyone legally licensed to append M.D. to his name.

  These surrogate lovers carry enormous, suitcaselike briefcases (quite similar to those used by airline captains to carry all their bureaucratic flight paraphernalia), loaded down with small tokens of admiration and love. There are pen-and-pencil sets, calendars, thermometers, framed homilies to hang on waiting-room walls for the edification of the patient and even such things as cocktail shakers and umbrellas. (There is also, of course, an absolutely free supply of sample medicines, together with a paean of praise to their efficacy written by a brother M.D. in the employ of the manufacturer.)

  This pagan ritual reaches an apogee whenever two or three practitioners of the healing arts are gathered together in the name of medicine. When this occurs, all the stops on the organ are pulled out. A conventioneering doctor putting his hand out to see if it’s raining will have three martinis and a Rum Collins in his palm before the first raindrop can strike. If a doctor is seen casually glancing at the entertainment advertisements in the hotel lobby, he can expect to find two tickets—for fourth-or fifth-row aisle seats—in his mailbox (“courtesy of Grogarty-Lipshultz Ethical Pharmaceuticals, manufacturers of Ipso-dipsomaniasis, the highly acclaimed specific for Black Plague”) when he asks for his room key.

  The door-prize awardings, a standard ritual at medical conventions, provide a splendid opportunity for these people to make sure that no one is left out; that every surgeon, as well as every orthopedist, every pathologist as well as every otolaryngological surgeon, every general practitioner as well as every neurosurgeon receives some token of the deep and abiding affection of the ethical drug manufacturer.

  Door prizes are awarded every possible category. There is a prize for the oldest surgeon, another for the youngest and one for the physician closest to the average. There is a prize for the physician with the most hair, and the least hair; the largest mustache and the smallest; the one who has sired the most children; the one married the longest and the one most recently married. There is a prize for the surgeon with the shortest fingers, and the one with the longest. There are even prizes for the doctors who have won the most prizes and, just to nail it down neatly, a special prize for that physician who has managed to evade being awarded anything at all.

  Drs. Pierce and McIntyre had spent long hours at the convention doing some serious plotting, based on careful and extensive research, with the idea in mind of receiving no prize at all. This, they realized, would really make them stand out among their fellows.

  Their first step had been to register at the convention under fictitious names. With a perfectly straight face, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce had told the joyously smiling blonde resting her ample development on the registration table that he was Dr. Louis Pasteur, and then introduced his close associate, Aloysius J. Roentgen, M.D., the well-known radiologist.

  As the convention progressed, they had carefully avoided writing their names down anywhere, including on bar and restaurant tabs. On those few occasions when they had been trapped in a corner by detail men with pens extended, they had signed either the names of Drs. Pasteur and Roentgen or the names of rival detail men, taken from the lapel-identification badges (“Hello. Doctor! I’m Jerry G. Goodsport of your Friendly Mammoth International Drug Manufacturers’ Monopoly) those luminaries were considerate enough to wear.

  All is not peaches and cream for the detail men. Rather quickly, they had run out of things to give away. They strive, of course, for individuality, as well as something that will make the recipient remember (at least vaguely) the name of his benefactor after the convention is over.

  The ordinary things (sets of luggage, stereos, golf clubs) given away at conventions can be given away only once. It would hardly do for a doctor to compare his Magna-Woofer Quadraphonic Hi-Fi with the Zoomerino Quadraphonic Home Entertainment Center given his competitor in the G. & O. game and find it wanting.

  The unwritten rule among the competing detail men was that they should never knowingly offer as a token of their admiration for the medical profession a door prize similar to that being offered as a love-gift to physicians by the competition.

  It was for this reason that Mr. Alphonse T. Hammerschmidt, proprietor of the Girdle the Globe Travel Service, Ltd., was able to solve a little problem that had been gnawing at him for more than a year.

  Mr. Hammerschmidt had a year before put together a nice little profitable tour group, which took 88 members of the Greater Maine Retail Butchers & Sausage Stuffers Association through fifteen glorious never-to-be-forgotten days in North Africa. By paying in advance for the tour, which departed from Boston, Massachusetts, on board Air Mali’s luxurious (and only) DC-6 for the Canary Islands, thence to Casablanca, and finally to Fez, Morocco, he had been able to get a good price for the group from Bienvenu a Merry Morocco Tourist Agency, which handled all in-Morocco details.

  There had been a last-minute catastrophe, however. Max Detweiler, proprietor of Max’s Maximum Meats, Inc. (a well-known butcher shop in Waterville, Maine), had once too often been told by a customer that the price of meat was outrageous. He had thrown a frozen leg of New Zealand lamb at Mr. C. Alton Whaley, a previously mild-mannered English teacher at Waterville High. Mr. Whaley had thrown the leg of lamb back at Mr. Detweiler, striking and breaking his right, or slicing, hand, and then had proceeded to the police station where he charged Mr. Detweiler with assault with a deadly weapon. The charge, of course, was ridiculous, and was later changed to “assault with intent to do bodily harm”; but Mr. Detweiler thought that his best interests would be served by cancelling his and his wife’s fifteen-glorious-never-to-be-forgotten-days-in-North-Africa tour. Pending trial, he was forbidden to leave Waterville’s city limits.

  Mr. Hammerschmidt had naturally che
erfully refunded his money, and then applied for a refund from Air Mali and the Bienvenu a Merry Morocco Tourist Agency. Ten days later, he was informed that while a cash refund would not be forthcoming, he had a credit on their books for two passages—Boston to Fez and return, and fifteen days of accommodations in various hotels within Morocco.

  He had written angry letters, threatening never to give Bienvenu a dime’s worth of future business unless he got a refund, but Bienvenu had stood firm. Hammerschmidt had tried, even valiantly, to sell the accommodations. There seemed to be very little interest by anyone in Waterville in going to Merry Morocco; and Hammerschmidt, while not entirely abandoning hope, was getting quite close to it.

  And then the Gods had smiled on him again. A detail man stopped by his place of business. Not only did he purchase first-class accommodations to American Samoa, where the American College of Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens Surgeons were holding a convention, but he took the fifteen-glorious-never-to-be-forgotten days-in-North-Africa package off Hammerschmidt’s hands.

  It would, he said, make a splendid door prize for his company to give some deserving, chosen-by-random healer at the State Medical Convention. With a little politicking, he even managed to arrange with the committee for the package tour to be awarded last. This was something of a prize position—to be last. It was awarded to a doctor selected from among those doctors who had been at last year’s convention, but whom the press of his duty to his fellowman had kept from attending this year’s convention.

  “God,” Trapper John said, taking some more acne medicine, “we forgot all about that!”

  “Keep your fingers crossed,” Hawkeye replied. He hiccupped.