John Abbott - Scimitar

He looked for Annette. She was busy with another customer, but she kept tossing him a look that said, “I’ll be with you in a second, darling, please don’t go away.” She was possibly the ugliest young woman he’d ever seen in his life; he flashed a smile that said, “Take your time, my adorable one, I have all day.”

When finally and breathlessly she joined him, he asked if he could see the instruction manual inside the box.

She said, “Oh.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Well, the box is sealed.”

“Yes, I see that,” he said. “But there aren’t any chemicals in it...”

“Well, no, but...”

“... and you did open the other one for me,” he added, subtly reminding her that they’d already been illicitly involved, in a sense. She considered this now. His steady smile and penetrating gaze were quite unsettling her.

“I guess I can let you have a look,” she said.

“I would appreciate it,” he said softly.

She slit open the single strip of transparent tape sealing the box. Her eyes met his. She slid out the contents for him. As delicately as if he were raising the hem of her nightgown, he picked up the instruction manual. She got so flustered he thought she might faint. Another customer came in. She debated devotion versus honor and duty and went reluctantly to the front of the shop, tossing a lovelorn look over her shoulder. He quite pitied her.

The instructions told him what he didn’t want to learn.

The kit was designed for spraying.

There was no way a steady stream could be propelled from the airbrush.

He carried the kit to the counter at the front of the store. A woman wearing green slacks and a peach-colored blouse was standing at the counter with a doll in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” he told Annette. “I don’t think I can use this.”

Not unless he hoped to attack from a foot away — in which case hurling the sarin into the President’s face would be enormously more effective.

“I’m so sorry,” Annette said.

“But thank you, anyway,” he said.

“Come back again,” she said.

“I will,” he said.

“Soon,” she said.

“Miss?” the woman in the green slacks said. “I asked you a question.”

Annette rolled her eyes hopefully toward the door.

But Sonny was already gone.

She was wearing tight, very short black shorts, a white T-shirt without a bra, and white sneakers to match. When she got no answer at the front door, she tried the knob. The door was locked. She went around to the back of the house, tried the knob on the kitchen door, which Martin often left unlocked, and found that to be the case now. She opened the door a foot or so, called “Scott?” and got no answer. Coming into the kitchen, she called “Scott!” again, louder this time, and was about to leave when she saw the Styrofoam pellets on the kitchen counter. She scooped them up, using the flat of her hand to sweep them into the open palm of the other hand, and opened the door to the cabinet under the sink. The garbage pail was full. She tossed in the pellets anyway, lifted the plastic garbage bag out of its container, pulled the ties, and was about to carry the bag outside to where Martin stored his garbage for pickup, when she saw the three cartons sitting on the counter. All of them were open now. There was no doubt now about the red-and-white label on one of them. It read HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

She put down the garbage bag.

Went to the carton.

Opened it.

And reached into a flurry of white Styrofoam pellets.

In the Westhampton supermarket, Sonny dropped a pair of medium-sized Playtex HandSaver gloves into his shopping basket. They were marked a dollar ninety-nine. He went down the aisles looking for baking soda, and found a four-pound box of Arm & Hammer that cost only ninety-nine cents. In a section devoted to cooking aids, he found a plastic measuring cup with markings in both ounces and milliliters for only a dollar fifty-nine, three dollars less than the glass one. He also found something he could not have named and whose use he could only imagine.

The item was a plastic tube about a foot long and an inch or so in diameter, narrow at its open end, thicker at its other end, where a yellow rubber bulb was attached. He guessed housewives used it to baste roasts or decorate cakes or whatever. He didn’t know and didn’t care. He knew to what use he would put it. It only cost a dollar seventy-nine; he tossed it into his basket.

Pleased with all his little economies, he carried his items to the checkout counter.

The paint can was labeled with the same words as those on the carton.

HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

Her heart was suddenly pounding.

She looked in the counter drawers for something she could use to pry off the lid, and found a screwdriver in a tray alongside a handful of serving spoons. There were brown flakes inside the can. Were they the hazardous material? She did not think so. Cautiously, tentatively, she poked one finger into the can and began feeling around under the flakes. She felt something in there. Reached in with several fingers. Pulled it out. It was a plastic bag inside of which was some kind of slender glass vial with a brownish fluid in it. There was a label on the vial. It read:

He was looking for carbon tetrachloride.

This had been the solvent of choice when he was learning at Kufra. Inert. Not very volatile. Nonflammable. You used a solvent to promote mixing when you were running a reaction, adding it to your starting materials so that there’d be enough to stir. A solvent also absorbed heat, reducing the risk of the reaction being carried away. Carbon tetrachloride did all these things. He did not know that its sale had been prohibited in New York State for the past ten years.

He drove up and down the Hamptons, stopping at hardware stores and art supply shops. He could find no carbon tetrachloride. He began looking for a substitute. All of the hardware stores carried paint removers or thinners containing what the labels called “petroleum distillates,” a general term for products distilled from petroleum. But without more specific information, he was unwilling to risk any unforeseen reaction.

He found a paint stripper that contained methylene chloride, another solvent that would have been ideal for his purposes, but among the product’s ingredients, the label also listed...

Well, ammonia was okay, because it was a base...

And petroleum wax was inert, so that was okay, too.

But he was worried about the methanol and anhydrous alcohol. One of his reagents was isopropyl alcohol. Adding two additional alcohols to the mix might make the ratio of alcohol to DF too high.

DF.

The toxic chemical which when mixed with alcohol would provide sarin, a compound a thousand times more deadly.

In his mind, he went over the reaction yet another time:

He now had everything he needed but a solvent inert to the reaction.

He kept searching.

He was about to give up when he found among the cleaning solutions in one of the hardware stores a product called Carbo-Trichlor. Its label listed its main ingredient as 1,1,1-Trichloroethane. Perfect. The quart can cost only $5.99. Even better; he loved a bargain. He picked up a glass cutter from the tool section, and began prowling the shop again, still searching for his delivery system. When he passed a shelf full of rat traps, he paused for a moment, seriously considering whether it might work.