John Abbott - Scimitar

The brown leather Mark Cross portfolio was sitting on the small desk across the room, where he’d left it. But it had been moved to the center of the blotter. He shifted his eyes back to her. Her face was flushed.

“How’d you get in?” he asked.

“Back door was unlocked.”

He walked to the closet, opened the door all the way. His eyes swept over the hanging clothes he’d brought from Los Angeles. Sports jacket and slacks, dark suit, raincoat.

“Why don’t you come over here?” she whispered.

“In a minute,” he said.

One of the pocket flaps on the sports jacket was twisted so that the lining showed. She had been inside that pocket. He’d carried only three ties from L.A. He took one of them from the tie rack now. A red tie. Red silk. She smiled as he came across the room to her.

“Gonna tie me to the bed?” she asked, and sat up against the pillows, watching him as he approached.

He did not answer her.

He came to the bed and sat on its edge, the tie in his right hand.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

“What?” she said.

“You were searching the house. What’d you find?”

“Searching the house ? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Blue eyes wide. Frightened.

“Did you find the ID cards?” he said.

His voice was very low. He was holding the tie with both hands now, the tie dangling loose between his hands.

“What ID cards?” she said.

Her voice was quavering. She was lying.

“What else did you find?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t find anything.”

But her voice was still quavering.

“You’re lying,” he said.

The tie whipped out, looping over her head, forming a sling behind her neck, yanking her off the pillows. He dropped one foot to the floor, the opposite knee still on the bed, and coiled the tie around her neck. She felt herself being pulled off the bed, sliding off the bed, put out a hand to stop her fall, and then felt herself being yanked up sharply by the tie. “No, please,” she said, and grabbed for his hands looped into the tie, tried to loosen the hands tugging at the tie from either end. He stood with both feet solidly planted on the floor now, using the tie to lift her from her knees, raising her to her feet, the tie tightening relentlessly. She gasped for air, clutched at the tie with both hands, felt it cutting silkily into her flesh, tried to force words into her constricting throat, begging for her life, please, please, no , the words screaming silently, her fingers emptily clawing the air now, clawing for purchase, for life, for air to breathe, clawing, screaming silently, eyes bulging, please, no, please, please, please, the tie merciless, his hands pulling it tighter and tighter, narrowing the gap between life and...

She collapsed against him.

He kept the tie taut between his hands until he was certain she was dead.

Then he allowed her to drop to the floor at his feet.

There were people in Washington, D.C., who believed there was no such thing as the CIA. These people reasonably surmised that any intelligence agency so blatantly blundering had to be a cover for America’s real spy network. Alex Nichols didn’t work in Washington, but he was one of those people. Moreover, he worked for the CIA.

His recruitment had taken place on a bright fall day at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the clock tower bonging the hour, playhouse posters announcing the arrival of a PTP play starring James Whitmore and Audra Lindley. Something called The Magician . Or The Conjuror . Or The Illusionist . Something like that. Young Alex — he was only twenty-one at the time — noticed the posters only peripherally. His head was full of visions of derring-do, a spy! He could hardly wait to tell his mother.

That was twenty-three years ago. Alex was now forty-four, and more convinced than ever that he was merely part of a gigantic cover operation that concealed a spy mechanism too awesome to behold. The two men with him today in the New York field office were also part of the cover. They could not possibly have been as stupid as they seemed. This was all a masquerade. Outside the office, the first day of July had announced its arrival in a determinedly sizzling fashion. The men were in their shirtsleeves. It was nine o’clock in the morning. They were here to discuss the letter on Alex’s desk.

“It’s obviously a fake,” Peggot said.

Moss Peggot, unfortunately named in that his features were somewhat porcine and spooks everywhere around him called him “Miss Piggy,” albeit behind his back. A measure of his quality as a spy was that he still didn’t know about the nickname. Short and squat, the armpits of his shirt stained with sweat, his face florid and damp, he looked to Alex for approval. Alex was his boss.

“I’ll bet Moss is right,” Templeton said.

Conrad Templeton, a spy who dressed like a college professor in the vain hope that anyone on his trail would accept him as a professor of English literature at Columbia University, where in fact he did teach a course on Milton. Were it not for the heat, he would be in tweeds and a ratty wool cardigan sweater. Then again, the school term would not begin till September. Not to be denied, he was puffing on a pipe. Professor Conrad Templeton. You could’ve fooled me, Alex thought.

The letter on his desk looked genuine enough:

April 10, 1986

Dear Mr. President:

I have now carefully studied the intelligence reports supplied by Mr. Casey and have met with Colonel North and heard his views on the meetings of the Crisis Pre-Planning Group. There is now no doubt in my mind that:

1) Libya provided the passports, money and terrorist training for the two airport attacks in December of last year, one in Rome, the other in Vienna. Five American civilians were killed in those attacks, one of them an eleven-year-old girl.

2) Intercepted telephone calls to Tripoli from the People’s Bureau in East Berlin, prior to and immediately following the bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin on April 4 this year, constitute irrefutable “smoking-gun” evidence that the bombing was planned and executed by Libyans working for the People’s Bureau in East Berlin, under direct orders from Colonel Muammar Quaddafi. One American was killed and twenty-three other Americans injured in the attack.

3) There is now hard and convincing evidence that Quaddafi divulged to President Megistu of Ethiopia his plan to have the President of the United States killed while traveling in a presidential convoy. CIA reports confirm that Libyan hit teams operating on a “stray dog” basis have targeted the President of the United States for assassination.

Given the failure of the economic sanctions imposed upon Libya in January of this year, having carefully studied the reports cited above as well as those of my own Task Force on Combating Terrorism, it is now my duty and obligation to ask that you disregard the CIA’s advice against seeking the removal of Colonel Quaddafi through a surgical bombing attack on Libya, and proceed with the recommendations proposed by the Crisis Pre-Planning Group.

Mr. President, the time has never been more propitious for Quaddafi’s removal. The American people perceive Quaddafi as an eccentric troublemaker spoiling to bring open conflict to the Middle East. There is a built-in animosity toward the man, supported by recent reports of his bizarre personal behavior. The public is ready to accept whatever action we may take to curb the mad dog of the Middle East.