John Abbott - Scimitar

“Little scimitar? Because it means scimitar in Persian, you know. Simsir .”

“I didn’t know that,” Grant said. “In any case, they’re out of business. They were very active during the Iran-Iraq War, claimed responsibility for the assassination of several top-level Iraqi diplomats. But I haven’t heard anything about them since that bombing at JFK, back in...”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

“We caught a punk named Mustapha Hayiz — there’re no state or federal statutes against terrorism, you know, the Bureau got called in ’cause the bombing took place at an airport... interstate, international, all that jazz. We found him living like a camel-driver in a room in Philadelphia, big terrorist hero, the whole place stinking of human excrement. He wouldn’t tell us who his accomplices were — for all we know, he was operating solo on the airport bombing. Anyway, we sent him up for a long, long time — but he broke out last October, don’t know where the hell he is now. Probably back in Teheran, clenching his fists for the television cameras.”

“How many others were there in the group?”

“Originally? Five or six. All these terrorist groups with the high-sounding names — the Holy This and the Holy That, the Masked Ones, the Islamic Legion, the Flaming Sword, the Volcano, the People’s Bureau for Solidarity and Horseshit — these’re sometimes two, three guys who know how to put together a bomb, and another dumb bastard who’s willing to sacrifice his life delivering it.”

“Any women in these groups?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“We found two dead women tattooed with green scimitars.”

“Well, green, now you’re talking Libya,” Grant said.

“Which is what concerns us,” Worthy said. “Do you remember the Yvonne Fletcher incident?”

“Of course I do,” Geoffrey said.

“April 17, 1984,” Worthy said, and nodded solemnly. “St. James’s Square, London. Outside the Libyan embassy... well, they called it the People’s Office. There were demonstrators outside...”

Geoffrey could still remember that day.

He was sixteen years old at the time, home from Eton, visiting his parents. A quiet Tuesday in London, five days before Easter. St. James’s Square tree-shaded and still save for the chanting of the demonstrators. The BBC news cameras were covering the event dutifully but routinely; in a democracy, one became used to demonstrations for or against everything on earth. The police were there as a matter of course; they were always on hand to make certain a crowd didn’t go entirely berserk. But no one, least of all Geoffrey, was prepared for what happened next.

He was watching the screen only casually, glancing up every now and then from the thriller he was reading, an addiction he’d picked up from his mother. He had reached the part in the book where the female detective was out in a rainstorm, tracking a rapist, when all at once he thought he actually heard thunder, and then realized in an instant that the sound had come from the television set — but it wasn’t raining in London that day. And then he recognized with a start that what he’d heard was gunfire. Actual gunfire. Not the kind you read about. Real gunfire. He looked up sharply. On the television screen, people were shouting, and policemen were rushing to where a young woman in uniform was lying on the pavement — dead, as it later turned out. Someone inside the embassy had fired an automatic rifle from the first-floor window, killing her instantly.

“We had that bloody embassy under siege for ten days,” Worthy said now. “Then somebody decided to allow the bastards clear passage home. Diplomatic immunity. For murderers.” He grimaced sourly, shook his head. “We still haven’t resumed relations with Libya... well, of course you know that.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said.

He was still thinking about that dead policewoman lying on the pavement.

“So now we have two of Quaddafi’s elite intelligence people abroad in New York a week before...”

“Five days, actually,” Geoffrey corrected. “And they’re not quite abroad anymore, you know. They’re both dead.”

“Five bloody days before she gets here,” Worthy said. “Which seems quite a coincidence to us.”

Geoffrey didn’t see any connection whatever. He said nothing.

“I understand the Consulate here has been handling the banquet arrangements,” Worthy said.

“No, sir, not the banquet itself. The Canadian Consulate is looking after that. All I did was consult with them on the seating arrangements for the main table. So that Mrs. Thatcher might not be inadvertently offended. That was the extent of my participation.”

“Where have they seated her?”

“Well, let me show you the diagram,” Geoffrey said, and opened a desk drawer and took from it a copy of the sketch the Canadian Consulate had sent him. Worthy studied it:

“In keeping with protocol,” Geoffrey said, “the visiting prime minister is considered to be at home when he attends an embassy affair. The Canadians have quite properly granted him the presidency of the table, here at the center, with his wife on his right, both of them facing the entrance doors.”

Worthy looked puzzled.

“Do you see where the places are marked with the Roman numeral one?” Geoffrey said. “That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Mulroney will be sitting. The Canadian P.M. and his wife.”

“What do all those little circles mean?”

“The circles indicate ladies. The usual seating arrangement for these affairs is boy-girl-boy-girl, as you see it here.”

“And where will our girl be sitting?”

“Well, I had something of a row about that with an idiot at the Canadian Consulate, who mistakenly assumed that the Consul-General and his wife should take the places of honor to the right of the host and hostess respectively. I informed her that protocol was crystal clear as concerned a visiting prime minister and the president of a repub...”

“ Former prime minister.”

“In the eyes of many she’ll always be the P.M.,” Geoffrey said.

“Be that as it may, where are they seating her?”

“To the left of Mr. Mulroney, where you see the circled number one position. Mr. De Gortari, the Mexican President, is to the right of Mrs. Mulroney. But all of this may go up in smoke, if what I hear is true.”

“What is it you hear?”

“That someone very high up may be dropping in. A surprise guest. In which case, there’ll be something of a brouhaha regarding the seating arrangements. I’ll stick to my guns regarding Mrs. Thatcher’s place of honor, of course, but...”

“How do you mean someone very high up?”

“Here,” Geoffrey said, and tapped his forefinger on the desk.

“Here in the consulate?”

“No, no. Here in the States .”

“ How high up?”

“If they’d told me, it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, would it?”

“When will they tell you?”

“If it becomes necessary to move Mrs. Thatcher, I’d imagine.”

“And when will that be?”

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“May I have a copy of this?” Worthy asked.

“I’ll have one run off,” Geoffrey said, and took the seating arrangement from him, and pressed a button on his phone console.

“I’ll want to know immediately if her position at the table is changed.”

“I’ll call the moment I hear anything.”

“Because we’ll be planning very tight security,” Worthy said, and winced as Lucy Phipps’s voice blared out of the speaker.