John Abbott - Scimitar

“The bed.”

Fearful she would anger him again, terrified she would lose him completely, she moved swiftly to the bed and sat on its edge.

“Lie down,” he said.

She nodded obediently. Swung her legs onto the bed. Raised herself on her elbows to look toward where he was still standing motionless near the ottoman. Her heart was pounding, she could scarcely breathe.

She now knew that she would do whatever he asked her to do.

Whenever.

Forever.

The story was on page eight of that afternoon’s New York Post . Santorini easily could have missed it, especially since he was eating a meatball grinder while reading the paper and was concentrating on not getting tomato sauce all over himself.

The story said that Margaret Thatcher would be here on the first of July, to attend a Canada Day celebration at the Plaza Hotel.

Santorini looked at his calendar.

The first was a Wednesday.

Four days from now.

Only yesterday, the FBI nemesis of Eastern cattle rustlers had briefed him on the counter-intelligence panic that had followed the 1986 bombing of Tripoli. At the time, the CIA, the FBI, and Britain’s counter-intelligence people were all convinced that the Libyan leader had dispatched hit teams to kill Ronald Reagan for having ordered the raid, and Margaret Thatcher for having allowed the American bombers to overfly her country. Only after months had gone by without any actual assassination attempts were the concerned agencies able to relax their vigilance.

“But green is Libya’s color,” Grant had told him.

“Green, huh?” Santorini said.

“Green. Their flag used to be red, white and black with a little gold eagle on it...”

“Little gold eagle, huh?”

“Yes, but Quaddafi changed it to solid green. The whole thing’s green. Just this big solid green flag.”

“Solid green, huh?”

“Green, right. Now your scimitar, come to think of it, is on the Saudi Arabian flag, with some squiggly Arab writing above it, probably means Allah be praised or some such shit. And that’s a green flag, too, though not solid green like the Libyan one.”

“So maybe this is something Saudi Arabian, huh?” Santorini said.

“Well, it could be anything , who knows with those troublemakers over there? If the Israeli flag was green, I wouldn’t put it past those lunatics, either. The whole Middle East is full of maniacs, you ask me. But theirs is blue and white with a Star of David on it.”

“Blue and white, uh-huh. The Israeli flag.”

“Yes. But Libya has a thing about green, you see.”

“A thing about green, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, you know, Quaddafi’s got this vision about a state based on the masses — pretty original, huh? — which he tells all about in these three little booklets he calls the Green Book.”

“Three of them, huh?”

“Yeah, but he calls all three of them the Green Book. Singular.”

“Why singular?”

“Go ask him.”

“Or green?”

“Who knows with these lunatics? The point, man, is your swords are green, am I right? The tattoos? So maybe this is something Libyan, who the hell knows?”

Especially since Margaret Thatcher’s coming to town, Santorini thought, and we’ve already got two dead British ladies on our hands.

Elita was just approaching the Third Avenue building when the man from the British consulate came out onto the sidewalk.

“Mr. Turner!” she shouted.

He stopped dead in his tracks, turned, looked at her, seemed puzzled for the merest instant, and then said, somewhat curtly, “Miss Randall.”

“I was just coming upstairs,” she said.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” he said, “but I’m on my way somewhere. If you can come back in a few hours...”

“I just wanted to ask... when you called me Saturday...”

“I am in a frightful hurry,” he said.

He did indeed seem as if he were anticipating a starting gun, his very stance giving the impression of a man already in motion. He was wearing the same grey suit he’d had on the last time she’d seen him, a striped gold and blue tie on his white shirt. His dark eyes were darting now, signaling his eagerness to move.

“Can I walk with you?” she asked.

“If you like,” he said, and turned and started off. She caught up with him, fell into step beside him.

“I’m sorry about Saturday,” she said.

“Mmm, yes,” he said, “but this is Monday, you know, and I’m very busy.”

“I know I was abrupt.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say you were abrupt,” he said. “I’d say you hung up on me.”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Mmm,” he said.

He was walking as though his shoes were on fire, long strides scorching the pavement. She was having trouble keeping up with him.

“But I was in the middle of something,” she said.

“Mmm.”

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“That’s quite all right,” he said, sounding not the least bit mollified. “Why were you coming to see me today?”

“Well... I’ve lost him again.”

“I see. Your young man.”

“I thought I’d found him, but then he... well, he went off without telling me where I could reach him and...” She shrugged. “He’s disappeared again.”

“Something of a magician, eh?”

“Well...”

“Does his little disappearing act at irregularly spaced intervals.”

“I guess he’s shy,” she said defensively.

“I guess he must be.”

They were walking through heat that seemed three-dimensional. Everywhere around them, people moved along the sidewalks as if in slow motion. The homeless lay in torpor against the walls of the buildings, dressed for the summer heat in shorts and tank-top shirts. They passed one man who was picking at scabs on his legs, passed a woman with rat’s-nest hair piled high on her head, wearing a voluminous skirt, a dirty, white, long-sleeved blouse, and black high-topped sneakers; she was sitting on a flattened cardboard carton, reading The New York Times . Elita saw the look of disgust on Geoffrey’s face, and suddenly wondered how this city must appear to foreigners.

“But on the phone Saturday,” she said, “you told me...”

“I scarcely had an opportunity to tell you anything ,” he said.

“I said I was sorry,” she reminded him.

“Mmm,” he said.

“I am.”

“Mmm.”

“You told me... you were starting to tell me... well, I had the impression you’d located him.”

“Your impression was wrong.”

They were approaching Alexander’s now. She had never particularly liked the sleazy stretch of pavement that ran past Alexander’s and Bloomingdale’s on the next corner, but now — in the presence of this somewhat stuffy representative of the Crown — it looked particularly sordid. Geoffrey seemed to be the only man on Third Avenue who was wearing a suit. The others were wearing shirts, long-sleeved or short, collared or T. She was suddenly glad she’d worn a dress. Cotton, to be sure. With sandals. But nonetheless a proper dress, rather than the shorts and halters on many of the women moving sluggishly along the avenue. Geoffrey moved along the sidewalk like a royal frigate steaming past tugboats in a crowded harbor. He was beginning to annoy her. The way he moved so goddamn fast, the slightly superior and supercilious look on his handsome face, as if he were smelling something particularly noisome and was merely too polite to hold his nose.

“You said something about being happy to...”

“Yes, I had some information about the fellow,” Geoffrey said. “But I did not indicate in any way whatever...”