Bombshell by Max Collins (most life changing books .TXT) 📗

Castle loomed starkly over all, its fairy-tale majesty turned ominous and medieval by night.

In her jeans and knotted-at-the-navel plaid blouse, Marilyn Monroe—sitting close to Nikita Khrushchev—shivered, and not merely from the cool night breeze. Beyond them, a gentle wind sang in a ghostly voice as it swirled the dust of the hard-dirt floor of the midway, carrying off candy wrappers like captives. A crushed Mouseketeer cap, one of its ears ripped askew, lay discarded on the ground.

Evidence that people had once been there.

It was as if the bomb had dropped, Marilyn thought, and she and Khrushchev were the only ones left alive in a city whose buildings still stood, but where life had been snuffed out by radiation. It was as if, beyond the vast orange groves, Los Angeles had vanished, destroyed in one horrific second, leveled in a white flash, leaving only piles of ashes on bare bones…

“You’ll think me silly,” she whispered to her gnome-like companion, “but I’m … frightened.”

With a smile of surprising warmth, Khrushchev took her hand; his hand was warm too, and firm, giving her comfort.

“I also am frightened,” he admitted, without shame, his voice as strong as his face was placid. He might have been a suitor, holding his sweetheart’s hand, under a moonlit sky.

They had been mostly silent during the twenty-five-minute drive from Beverly Hills, taking the all-but-deserted Santa Monica Freeway south, to the Disneyland exit. Khrushchev did not question her idea to hide him at the amusement park, but she’d explained her thinking, nonetheless.

“We need to get you out of the city,” she said, “and then in the morning, when there are crowds at the park … do you know our expression, ‘safety in numbers’?”

“No,” he said, “but it is good one.”

“It is,” she nodded. “In the morning, we’ll contact the authorities … and the press … and you’ll be safe, from whoever it is that’s after you.”

Khrushchev did not share his thinking with the actress, but he agreed with her strategy—right now he could not know who was involved in this conspiracy. Was it a coup? Or had his “loyal” KGB men been bribed by an enemy, the Nationalist Chinese perhaps? By morning his own troops would rally, and that agent Harrigan—about the only American he trusted right now— would have sorted much of it out, the surface at least, though the twisting undercurrent of a conspiracy might remain concealed. Certainly the premier was not about to go to the local police, who were the minions of Mayor Poulson, who himself could have put the assassination attempt in motion, out of some misguided sense of patriotism.

“Will your family be all right?” the actress asked with touching concern, looking over at him as she drove.

“I believe so. They are not targets. Only I… Will we hide among the people at Disneyland?”

“Oh, there’s no one there now—it’s closed.”

“And how will we get in?”

She smiled a little. “We’ll sneak in.”

“Won’t there be guards?”

“No. Not even a night watchman. The local police keep an eye on it, but there’s no security staff or anything.”

“Los Angeles police?”

“No—Anaheim.”

“Anna who?”

“Anaheim … it’s a city. Not a city really—a little town. That’s where Disneyland is close to.”

Marilyn had been a guest at the amusement park—built on one hundred and sixty acres surrounded by orange groves—when it had opened just four years ago near tiny Anaheim. She’d been given an after-hours tour by Walt Disney himself—Mr. Disney had great affection for her, ever since she’d posed gratis for his artists who were designing Tinker Bell for his movie Peter Pan—and had left the park when things were closing up and the security people were leaving. Mr. Disney had mentioned to her that the Anaheim police kept an eye on Disneyland for him, after dark.

She hoped things hadn’t changed since then.

As she had exited the freeway and onto an asphalt road that led to the park, Khrushchev leaned forward, peering through the windshield, straining to get a first glimpse of the extraordinary American landmark.

Marilyn had been going over and over the assassination attempt in her mind, and assumed her companion had been doing the same. But right now—as they approached the train-station front entry to the park, the immense empty asphalt parking lot at left—the premier seemed unconcerned with the threat on his life, and more like just another impatient kid, anxious to get to Disneyland.

“Is locked,” he had said disappointedly, as they passed by the dark entrance, its front gate shut tight for the night.

“Don’t worry,” she replied, waving this off, “that’s not our way in, anyway.” Remembering her own visit, and how she’d been smuggled inside from the back, she was heading around behind the sprawling acreage.

Following the Disneyland railroad line, the lane curved around the property, which was protected by a chain link fence (“I do not think that this we can climb,” Khrushchev opined). Marilyn drove slowly—with only the moonlight to guide her— and it seemed to take forever, with no view of the park at all, merely a vague sense of trees and foliage.

Finally the chain link fence ended, giving way to a carefully planted border of bushes and trees. At the back of the park was a dirt access road—a service and employee entrance—which branched off at left to some Quonset hut equipment sheds, and curved to the right where soon a waist-high metal gate barred the way.

“That,” Nikita said, “we can climb.”

And they did, after parking the Buick back behind some tall bushes, the premier graciously lifting the actress up by her small waist, so that she could hop over the barrier; and then he climbed over himself, surprisingly nimble.

Marilyn took the lead as the unlikely couple strolled in the moonlight, first across the railroad tracks, and then across landscaped grass to the midway, where a pole offered signs pointing in various directions.

Marilyn, a veteran of Disneyland, explained their options. To the left was Tomorrowland, with a spaceship ride and exhibits by major American industries. To the right lay Adventureland, where riverboats churned along