John Abbott - Scimitar

“Scott?” she called.

“Be right up,” he said.

She stretched again.

Hurry up, doll, she thought. I’m going to teach you the ecstasy of denial.

“Scott?”

“Yes, just a second,” he called.

She waited another three or four minutes, and then got out of bed, and tiptoed naked down the stairs. He was standing at the dining room table, his back to her. Three white FedEx cartons were on the table. He’d already opened one of them. Styrofoam pellets had fallen to the table and the floor. He hadn’t heard her yet. She moved up behind him, stealthily, quietly, intending to surprise him, cover his eyes with her hands from behind him, press herself against the back of the black silk robe, guess who, baby? But a board creaked under her weight, snapping into the silence of the room like a rifle shot. He whirled from the table.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

There was a brown bottle in his hand.

It seemed for a moment that he would hurl it at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to...”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” he said, regaining his composure at once. He put the brown bottle back into the carton, came to her where she stood midway across the room, naked and still frightened by his outburst. He took her in his arms. He whispered, “You startled me.” He hugged her close. Over his shoulder, she could see the side of one of the unopened cartons. A big red label was affixed to it. Bold white lettering on it. Red and white striking sparks in the morning sunlight.

“Come teach me your game,” he whispered.

She wondered what was in that carton.

Even at this distance, she was sure the bold white letters on the big red label spelled out the words HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

Elita was still asleep when the telephone rang that morning. Her first thought was Sonny . She picked up the receiver at once.

“Hello?” she said.

“Elita, it’s Geoff.”

“Oh, hello,” she said.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“I don’t know, what time is it?”

“Twenty past eleven.”

“No, that’s okay,” she said.

She listened to him telling her that he’d burrowed through his cupboards and had located his precious watercolor pencils and was hoping that sometime this evening he might...

“Well, no, I...”

“... demonstrate the faking of a perfectly decent shiner.”

“I...”

“I’d do it for you tomorrow night, but I don’t think Mrs. Thatcher would enjoy it.”

Mrs. Thatcher again. What was all this about Mrs. Thatcher?

“You will be joining me tomorrow night, won’t you?” he asked.

“Joining you? Where?”

“At the dinner-dance.”

“What dinner-dance?”

“I thought we’d discussed it.”

“Well, no, you asked me if I liked to dance...”

“Yes, and you said you did...”

“Yes, but you didn’t mention...”

“It’s the big Canada Day celebration at the Plaza... do you remember the room we went to?”

“Yes?”

“That’s where it’ll be. Drinks, dinner, and dancing, black tie — do you have a long dress?”

“Yes, but...”

“Good, I’ll come by for you at six. Drinks are at seven, but the consular people are supposed to be there a bit earlier, greet Mrs. Thatcher, and so on. Will six be all right?”

She hesitated, thinking why am I sitting here waiting for that son of a bitch to call when here’s a perfectly decent person who was a lot of fun to be with last night, and now he’s inviting me to a black-tie dinner-dance, what the hell’s the matter with me? Maybe Mom’s right, maybe I don’t have the tiniest bit of pride and self-respect.

“When can you show me how to paint the black eye?” she asked.

Carolyn had gone back to her own house, and he was alone now for the first time since six-thirty last night. He went to the phone and immediately dialed Arthur’s private number at SeaCoast. There was no answer. He dialed the general office number and got the Balinese girl.

“SeaCoast Limited, good morning.”

Virtually singing the name.

“This is Scott Hamilton,” he said. “May I speak to Mr. Hackett, please?”

“I’m sorry, he’s gone for the day.”

“Tell him I called,” Sonny said, and hung up.

He’d wanted to ask Arthur about this second murder. He’d found nothing about either of the women in this morning’s newspaper. But if someone was consistently eliminating their people, Sonny needed to know; perhaps the more immediate mission was to find the assassin.

The three cartons Arthur had expressed to him were still sitting on the dining room table. He picked them up and carried them into the kitchen, where he set them down on the counter alongside the sink. Arthur had simply used the original packaging, attaching a fresh FedEx label to each unopened carton. Sonny had already read the label on the bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and knew it was exactly what he’d ordered. He took a knife from the rack on the counter now, and slit open the tape on the second carton. Feeling around among the Styrofoam chips, he took out another brown bottle, this one labeled ISOPROPYLAMINE. Satisfied, he placed the bottle back onto the chips again, and slit open the last carton.

Burrowing under more Styrofoam pellets, he found a small paint can near the bottom of the box. He lifted the can out gingerly, opened a kitchen drawer to remove from it a butter knife, and pried off the lid. The paint can was filled with vermiculite. He felt around under the fine brownish packing flakes, found what he was looking for, and lifted out a sealed plastic envelope some three inches wide by six inches long. Inside the envelope was a glass ampoule with an amber-colored fluid in it. He read the label on the ampoule, and then put the plastic packet back into the paint can. Making sure there was a second ampoule in there, he resealed the lid, and put the can back into its packing carton. He would be running his reaction here at the kitchen sink, under a window open wide for ventilation. For now, he pushed all three cartons to the left of the counter, in the corner under the hanging wall cabinet, where they would be safe until he did the actual mixing.

The chemical name of the nerve agent he planned to produce was isopropyl dimethyl sulfonofluoridate. Its common name was sarin, an imperfect acronym derived from the names of its German creators: Schrader, Ambrose, Rüdriger and van der L INde. Sarin. A so-called G-agent, sarin was a deadly substance that short-circuited the nervous system, interfering with the enzyme necessary to muscle relaxation. Within seconds after ingestion or absorption, muscles all over the body would go into spasm, causing nausea, choking, vomiting, diarrhea, convulsion, coma, and death.

A drop of water weighed fifty milligrams.

For a man of the President’s weight, the lethal ingested dose of sarin was.65 milligrams. This meant that an amount only 1.3 percent the weight of a water drop would kill him if he swallowed it.

If Sonny’s reaction went to completion, he would have made a bit more than twenty thousand milligrams of the nerve agent. More than thirty thousand times the lethal ingested dose. He did not expect the President to swallow any of the stuff. But the liquid was immediately absorbed through the skin and the membranes of the eye.

He now needed only one other ingredient — to give a little body to the mix, he thought, and smiled. He would look for that today. And try to find his delivery system at the same time. Something that might allow him to walk away safely — although in his heart of hearts he did not believe escape afterward was possible. He had carefully planned tomorrow night’s escape route. Push open the doors that led to the pantry on the left and — dead ahead — were the steps leading upstairs to the business offices. Past the offices, down the narrow corridor, turn right at the elevator, then down the fire stairs leading to the lobby. But he knew security would be thick, and he knew that only a miracle would take him safely from that dais to those doors on the left.