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

Marilyn hugged the premier’s good arm. “Is Mr. Khrushchev still in danger?”

Perhaps to calm her, Harrigan lightened his expression; his tone was light, too, as he said, “Just a precaution—frankly with all this activity, he’s probably hightailed it over a fence the heck outta here.”

Harrigan escorted the unlikely couple around one of the curving paths, heading toward the looming castle, on their way toward Main Street. Despite his assurances, Harrigan had his revolver in hand, a fact that neither Marilyn nor Nikita missed. Still, she had a real sense that the crisis had passed. At the east the sky had a faded look, the sun just beginning to make itself known.

“We’ll get you to an emergency room, Premier,” Harrigan said, walking between Nikita and Marilyn.

“I have had my shots,” Nikita grunted.

Harrigan laughed, gently. “Nevertheless … we’ll have that wound tended to.”

Nikita said, “Has been tended to—by Miss Monroe.”

As they walked, the State Department agent glanced at Marilyn, warmly—but a little embarrassment was mixed in. “I hope you know,” he said, “that America … the whole world, in fact … owes you a great debt. Hell, if it hadn’t been for you—”

“Any American would have done the same,” she told him, and meant it.

The path was curving around a pagoda. “If there’s anything,” Harrigan was saying to her, “anything at all I can do, just let me know.”

After that Harrigan encouraged no further conversation as they walked along, and despite his casual demeanor, the agent was obviously on alert, his eyes everywhere, reacting to the smallest sound.

As they were approaching the castle, Marilyn—who had been reflecting on Harrigan’s offer to do “anything at all”—began to speak, intending to broach the subject of Nikita returning to the park in the safe light of day.

But she never got a word out, Harrigan cutting her of rudely with, “Quiet,” as he froze on the pathway, eyes narrowed, the revolver swinging toward thick bushes to the their left.

Marilyn didn’t hear a thing.

But Harrigan obviously had, because he yelled, “Down!”

The agent shoved Marilyn to the asphalt, while Nikita dropped himself like a trap door had opened under him. She looked up, terrified, and standing half-hidden in those bushes was a figure that Marilyn at first thought was the assassin in black, somehow come back to life!

But this was a different man in black, his face Asian but rounder, though the eyes were equally cold and hard and dead.

And in his hand was a weapon—an automatic with an extended snout, probably (she thought) what in the movies they called a “silencer”…

Marilyn took all of this in, in half a second, during which Harrigan dropped to a knee and assumed a firing position with his .38. In the next half second Marilyn realized, with a terrible certainty, that the assassin and Harrigan had each other in their sights, that one or both men would surely die…

Then another figure lurched within those bushes, behind the assassin, swinging something that might have been a golf club but wasn’t, smashing it against the assassin’s neck and back, sending the man in black pitching forward out of the foliage, to lay sprawled like an offering at Harrigan’s feet.

Quickly Harrigan plucked the weapon from the hand of the stunned, flat-on-his-face assailant.

From the bushes stepped a big man in a short-sleeved pale yellow shirt and corduroy trousers.

Marilyn—who, like Khrushchev, had slowly risen from the asphalt to her feet—gasped in surprise and delight.

A grinning, self-satisfied Walt Disney was standing there, breathing hard, and in his arms was an old-fashioned rifle.

“One of our Davy Crockett props,” Mr. Disney explained, almost sheepishly.

Marilyn’s eyes were huge. “Ol’ Betsy!”

“Be sure you’re right,” Mr. Disney said with a shrug, “and then go ahead.”

Calling in the troops on his walkie-talkie, Harrigan knelt over the unconscious figure; Marilyn hadn’t seen it happen, but the State Department man had already slapped handcuffs onto the half-unconscious assailant, hands behind his back.

Marilyn made introductions, and Mr. Disney and Nikita were shaking hands and grinning at each other.

“If you’re up to it,” Mr. Disney said to the premier, as casually as if knocking out assassins was just another of his many responsibilities here at the park, “I’d like to show you around, some—we don’t open up for a number of hours, you see.”

“Now I really get to see Disneyland!” Nikita said, his face bright with childish anticipation.

Standing guard over his prisoner, Harrigan said, “Really, gentlemen, I don’t think—”

“Jack,” Marilyn reminded the agent, “you said if there was anything you could do … anything!”

Harrigan sighed. “Then let’s start with the nearest first aid station.”

Mr. Disney said, “You won’t need an E ticket for that.” Then, beaming a wide, warm smile back at the premier, the animator settled a fatherly hand on his V.I.P. guest’s shoulder. “I’d very much like to show you my Disneyland fleet, Mr. Premier—tenth largest battle armada in the world!”

“Already have seen, thank you.” Khrushchev turned to the young woman at his side, a movie star who might have been a Russian peasant girl … and a lovely one. “Where should we go first?”

Marilyn touched a cheek with a platinum-nailed finger, giving the problem some serious thought, ignoring the rush of hard footsteps on asphalt as cops and Secret Service men and KGB agents and a CIA man came running pell mell to join them. “We’ve been to Fantasyland,” she said, “and’ve already had quite an adventure… Why don’t we stay in Tomorrowland for a while?” She shrugged and granted them her famous smile. “After all, Nikkie—who knows what the future will bring?”

EpilogueDa Svidaniya, Khrushchev

In October of 1959, after his ten-day visit to the United States, Nikita Khrushchev returned to his homeland. To his closest advisors he confided that he “brimmed with hope” that Russia and its chief adversary could avoid a nuclear confrontation, and even coexist peacefully.

Khrushchev’s enemies, however, did not share this hope, much less his desire for detente. Irritated by the premier’s praise of America, and his consideration of adopting U.S. manufacturing and farming techniques, communist party hard-liners secretly