John Abbott - Scimitar

“You know,” Arthur said, and hesitated. “The Canadian affair is on the first. That’s only five days away.”

“I realize that. But I got here as soon as I could. My outside deadline...”

“Of course, I’m merely saying. The point is... if you have to go for the second option, that’s only three days later. So if you’ll need any weaponry assistance from us... will you be considering explosives, for example?”

“I’m not considering anything yet.”

“Because we have a man who can rig whatever kind of...”

“So can I.”

“Of course. Forgive me. I’m merely saying we can help you with whatever...”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Phone me if you...”

“The Chinese girl and the other one, are they...?”

“Not Scimitar, but yes, with us, of course. She’s not Chinese, by the way. She’s from Bali.”

“Oh.”

“In any case, you don’t have to go through the SeaCoast line. The number you have is my private line and completely secure. As I told you.”

“How soon can you get me the information I need?”

“I’ll put someone on it...”

“Because the sooner the...”

“I was about to say I’ll put someone on it immediately , hmm?”

All at once, it was clear to Sonny that Arthur did not enjoy having his authority questioned. Fuck him, Sonny thought. Time was of the essence here, and he preferred directness to convolution. His plans had to be formulated as soon as possible, the one for the ballroom, the contingency plan for the island. If Arthur couldn’t get the information he needed quickly, then he would go elsewhere for it.

“I’ll need some cash, too,” he said.

“How much?” Arthur said at once.

“A few thousand for now. Perhaps more when I know what my plans will be.”

“Fine,” Arthur said, and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took from it a small, grey, metal cash box, unlocked it, and removed from it a sheaf of banded hundred-dollar bills. Breaking the paper band around the bills, he began counting them out.

“You know how important this is to us, don’t you?” he asked, counting, his head bent.

“I do,” Sonny said.

“You won’t fail us, hmm?” he said, and looked up sharply, his eyes meeting Sonny’s.

“I won’t,” Sonny said.

“I hope not,” Arthur said, and smiled, and handed the bills across the desk to him. They felt new and crisp. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Is there a safe house? If I should need one?”

“Of course.”

“Where is it?”

“In Westhampton,” Arthur said.

The call from Miles Heatherton came at twelve-ten that Friday afternoon, just as Geoffrey was leaving the office for lunch. A glance at his watch told him that his stomach was understandably growling and that, incidentally, it was already a bit past closing time in London.

The first words Heatherton said were, “Are you having us on, Geoff?”

“How do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

“This second passport notification request.”

Geoffrey had rung London at eleven this morning, shortly after Santorini had left the consulate office. The detective had seemed almost gleeful that yet another British subject had turned up dead in this insufferably hot and murderous city. With an identical scimitar tattoo on her breast, no less. Which report Heatherton had received silently and non-committally, promising to call on Monday. It was not yet Monday. It was merely lunchtime today — and thank God it’s Friday, as the natives were fond of saying. Geoffrey waited now for whatever dire information Heatherton was about to transmit.

“Having you on how?” he prompted.

“The two persons she listed in the passport?”

“Yes.”

Get on with it, he thought.

“Non-existent,” Heatherton said.

“I see.”

“And it’s the same passport.”

“How do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

“As the first one. The name on it is different, of course, Angela Cartwright on this new one, as opposed to Gillian Holmes on the first one...”

Oh dear, Geoffrey thought.

“And the dates and places of birth are different as well. Colchester in 1943 for the Holmes woman, London in 1937 for the Cartwright woman.”

Oh dear dear, Geoffrey thought.

“Which are almost certainly false names,” Heatherton said, “since, you see, the passport numbers are identical.”

Geoffrey glanced at the number he’d copied from Angela Cartwright’s passport before making his call to London this morning.

“Which number,” Heatherton said, “is the number of a passport issued to the same Hamish Innes McIntosh.”

Born in Glasgow, Geoffrey remembered.

“Born in Glasgow,” Heatherton said.

In 1854, Geoffrey remembered.

“In 1854,” Heatherton said. “So what we have here is a case of two women claiming to be British subjects, for reason or reasons as yet unknown, seemingly unrelated save for the identical passport number and the rather curious tattoo adorning their, ah, respective bosoms.”

Geoffrey sighed audibly.

“I’ve turned this over to MI6,” Heatherton said flatly. “I rather imagine someone in New York will be contacting you.”

Geoffrey looked at the calendar.

“When?” he asked.

“Depends how urgent they feel it is, wouldn’t you say?” Heatherton said. “There are two corpses already, you know...”

But not British subjects, Geoffrey thought. So why...?

“So perhaps they’d like to move on this before there are any more of them, eh?” Heatherton said. “How’s the weather there in New York?”

“Beastly,” Geoffrey said.

“Quite the same here,” Heatherton said, “but in a different way, I’m sure. I wouldn’t plan on dashing off to the mountains, by the way...”

Shit, Geoffrey thought.

“... or the seashore,” Heatherton said, “until the man from MI6 has made contact. Shouldn’t want him to think you rude, eh?”

Geoffrey looked at the calendar again.

Friday, the twenty-sixth day of June. He had, in fact, planned to go to the seashore tomorrow. A friend in New Jersey...

“What do you think those bloody scimitars represent?” Heatherton asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Geoffrey said. “When do you think this chap will be contacting me? To be quite frank, I’d made arrangements for the weekend, and the thought of hanging about in New York, waiting for a telephone call...”

“I shouldn’t think it would be before Monday,” Heatherton said. “But, Geoff...” His voice lowered. “I really wouldn’t leave the city, were I you. Truly.”

Shit, he thought again.

“Toodle-oo,” Heatherton said, and hung up.

It was still only a little past one on Friday afternoon, but Santorini felt like he’d been sitting here in front of the computer for a month and a half. The computer was called Fat Nellie, for the letters FATN stamped into a metal plate screwed onto its back. Santorini didn’t know what the letters actually stood for, and he didn’t give a damn. He had trouble enough working the damn thing, without having to concern himself with technicalities.

The fucking computer was driving him crazy.

First of all, because he wasn’t sure how you spelled scimitar .

It took him close to half an hour to realize that just possibly the word was spelled with an s-c like in scissors instead of just a plain s like in simple , or a p-s like in psycho , this was some fuckin’ language, English.

What he was trying to do was come up with a scimitar tattoo, preferably, if there was any such thing in the files. But in addition to scimitar tattoos, he asked the computer to locate any sword -shaped tattoo because he was willing to settle for anything that even looked like a scimitar. And then, for good measure, he threw in sword-shaped scars or birthmarks as well, which he hoped might possibly give him something that related to the two dead broads with scimitar tattoos on their tits, stranger things had happened.