John Abbott - Scimitar

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “let me run his name through the computer...”

“Oh, thank...”

“... when I get a free moment.”

Her face fell.

“If you’ll let me have a number where I can reach you...”

“When can you do that?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Run his name through the computer.”

“Well, I have someone waiting just now...”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I heard.”

“But my diary looks relatively clear afterwards, perhaps I can get to it sometime later this afternoon.”

“That would be very nice of you,” she said.

“Could I have the telephone number, please?” he said.

She gave him her mother’s number, watching as he wrote it onto his pad, making dead cert he was writing it down correctly, this Indian chap was obviously of some importance to her. She thanked him again, rose, smoothed the short wrinkled skirt over her thighs and her behind, told him she’d be home all afternoon if he found the information she needed, and he promised again to try to get to it this afternoon. He offered his hand in farewell. They shook hands briefly and she went out, the door whispering shut behind her. His heart was pounding. He went to the intercom on his desk, buzzed Lucy Phipps, and said, “What’s the gentleman’s name?”

“Sir?” Lucy said, sounding like a startled siren.

“The gentleman from H.M. Customs.”

“Joseph Worthy, sir.”

“Show the worthy gentleman in,” Geoffrey said, rather pleased with his own little joke, which of course Lucy Strident did not catch at all.

Sonny did not place the first of his three calls until three o’clock that Friday afternoon.

By that time, he knew exactly how he would kill the President.

Sitting on the bed in his room at the Hilton, he dialed the 800 number and listened while it rang on the other end. A recorded female voice told him he had reached Gem Inorganics in Lewiston, Maine, and then advised him which button to push for product pricing, product availability, or sales. He pressed the number-one button on his phone. A live woman said, “Gem Inorganics, how may I help you?”

“Can you tell me in what quantities you sell dimethylsulfoxide difluoride?” Sonny said.

“Do you have the catalogue number on that?” the woman said.

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Just a moment,” she said.

He waited.

“Dimethylsulfoxide dichloride?” she asked.

“Di fluoride ,” he said.

“Oh, yes, here it is,” she said. “That’s 37468 in the catalogue. The two-gram size is ninety-five dollars, and we’ve got it in stock. The ten-gram size is three hundred and fifty-two dollars...”

“Do you have that in stock?”

“Let me check that, sir.”

There was a pause. Scrolling her computer screen, he guessed.

“Yes, sir, we do.”

“Is there any limit on how many I can order?”

“However many you need, sir. On a ten-by-ten, we could probably do a special pricing for you.”

“I won’t need as many as that,” he said. “Can I order two of the ten-gram size?”

“Yes, sir, certainly. If you’ll have your purchasing department call us with a purchase-order number, we’ll invoice your accounting department.”

“Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

He called again ten minutes later. Pressed the number one again. Got a different woman who said, “Gem Inorganics, how may I help you?”

“I’d like to place an order, please,” he said.

“May I have your account number?” she said.

“We don’t have one yet. This is the first time we’ve placed an order with you.”

“All right,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll have to get some references from you later on. Meanwhile, do you have the catalogue number on the item you want?”

“Yes, it’s 37468. In the ten-gram size.”

“One moment, please,” she said.

He waited.

“37468,” she said, “dimethylsulfoxide difluoride, the ten-gram size, and it’s in stock. May I have your name please, sir?”

“Hamilton Pierce,” he said.

“And the name of your corporation?”

“SeaCoast Limited,” he said.

“The address and zip, please?”

He gave her SeaCoast’s address on Seventy-second and Columbus.

“And your phone number?”

He gave her the phone number.

“The purchase order number on this?”

“127 dash 024,” he said.

“127 dash 024, yes, sir. That’ll come to seven hundred and four dollars plus tax.”

“Can you FedEx the order to me?”

“Yes, sir, but it’ll be expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“Well, it’ll be a hazard shipment, so that’s ten dollars right on top. Did you want this a one or a two?”

“A one or a...?”

“Delivery, sir. One day or two?”

“One-day, please.”

“I’d say the delivery charge’ll come to something like forty dollars, more or less.”

“Fine. When can you send it?”

“It’ll go out today.”

“Before you get our references?”

“I’ll trust you on those till you send them. Do you have a fax?”

“I do.”

“Just send me three business references and one bank reference. You can address those personally to me, my name is Anne Burroughs.”

“I’ll get that out right away,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you , Mr. Pierce.”

He hung up, dialed Arthur at SeaCoast, filled him in on the conversation he’d just had, and asked him to fax the requested information to Miss Burroughs. Arthur said he would have it taken care of at once.

“While I have you,” he said, “the Statue of Liberty is in the First Precinct and the Plaza is in the Eighteenth.”

“Thank you,” Sonny said.

“What’s dimethylsulfoxide difluoride?”

“An insecticide,” Sonny said, and hung up.

He’d used a wire garrote the first time he’d killed anyone.

By the time he was seventeen, he had killed three men. By the time he was twenty — and an undergraduate at Princeton — he had killed yet another person, a girl this time. Since then, he’d been asleep. Waiting. And now, at last, the opportunity. There would be no personal glory here, none except the secret glory in his heart. Complete anonymity, Arthur had told him. Retribution without recognition. No credit claimed this time. Do the job and disappear. Take satisfaction in the knowledge that the debt had been paid, the score settled.

And although he was willing to give his life to achieve the goal entrusted to him, the No-Fail designation did not make such a sacrifice mandatory. Do the job and do it well, covering all tracks before and after, leave the victim or victims unmistakably dead, and then move on. He had been trained to kill and to escape intact. He would do both exceptionally well when the time came.

The first man he’d killed was an Egyptian spy posing as a rug merchant in Tripoli. In an operation of small consequence except as a training exercise, Sonny had gained entry as a seller of figs, snapping the wire loop out of his basket and around the Egyptian’s neck in a cobra-like strike that left him dead within seconds. His escape route was through the Old City, white walls and minarets, the smell of eucalyptus leaves, past the Mosque of the She-Camel, and down Jama ad-Duruj, and past the Osman Pasha Mosque, losing himself in dark and narrow alleys twisting downward to the sea, until at last the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean surprised him.

That had been the first time. There were two other men after that — one in Egypt, the other in Chad — and then the girl. Here in America. The only one he’d ever regretted. Sixteen years old. A sophomore at McCorristin High in Trenton, some fifteen miles from Princeton, where he’d been studying at the time. Francine Dumar, whose father was Alex Dumar, a GID agent whose cover was working as an insurance claims adjustor for the Prudential. Francine had been observed in conversation with a man from Langley, and it was assumed that Washington was taking a serious run at her in an attempt to nail her father as a spy. That she’d been receptive seemed undeniable. GID figured it would merely be a matter of time before they turned her completely.