John Abbott - Scimitar

His obligation fulfilled, Geoffrey led Elita from the reception line the moment the Prime Minister’s security people escorted her to the bar, where one of them obtained for her a glass of white wine. Elita told Geoffrey she would love a scotch and soda, and immediately wondered if anyone here would card her. Waiting while Geoffrey went for the drink, she looked around dazzle-eyed at all the handsome men and beautiful women in the room, the buzz of conversation everywhere around her, the clink of ice in glasses, the floating sound of laughter on a summer’s night, and wondered who else famous would be here tonight.

Sonny came out of his room at ten minutes to eight. The walkie-talkie he’d bought at Radio Shack was in his right hand. The plastic name tag he’d had made at a place called Jefferson Office Supplies on Third Avenue was pinned above the breast pocket of his jacket. G. RAMSEY. White lettering on black plastic, three inches long by three-quarters of an inch wide, at a cost of eighteen dollars plus tax, which he thought was highway robbery. The Plaza ID card McDermott had fashioned for him was clipped to the right-hand lapel pocket of his suit jacket. GERALD RAMSEY. SECURITY. He was wearing the blue suit, the white shirt, and the quiet silk tie. He looked very much the way Carruthers did, except for one thing. Carruthers wasn’t armed. Tucked into the waistband of Sonny’s trousers was the 9-mm Walther. Single cartridge in the chamber, loaded magazine containing eight additional cartridges in the butt of the pistol. And in the inside pocket of the jacket, just under the handkerchief pocket on the left, Sonny was carrying the twelve-ounce bottle of sarin, the transparent tape removed from its nozzle now. He had practiced reaching inside the jacket to draw it; it was only a bit more difficult than yanking a pistol from a shoulder holster. He had practiced turning the nozzle from OFF to STREAM. It took no more than a micro-second.

He was ready.

He stepped out of the room, looked up and down the empty corridor, and started walking toward the elevator bank. A chambermaid dressed in nighttime black came out of one of the rooms, carrying soiled towels.

“Security,” he said. “Everything all right?”

“Oh, yes , sir,” she said, and virtually curtsied him by.

The corridor outside the Baroque Foyer was crawling with spooks. Sonny could virtually smell them. He walked past them confidently — never explain, never apologize — and went directly to where several men and women in formal attire were having their names checked at the entrance door. Two more agents stood there, one of them consulting a clipboard to which was attached several sheets of paper, the other scanning the corridor this way and that, the way agents did when they wanted to look terribly eagle-eyed and alert. Sonny went directly to the head of the line.

“Excuse me,” he said to a white-haired woman in a bouffant pink gown. “Plaza Security,” he said to the agent with the clipboard, and showed him a page he had torn from the message pad alongside the telephone in his room. The Plaza Hotel logo was at the top of the page. Under it, he had scrawled Dr. and Mrs. Harry Rosenberg . He showed this to the agent now. “Young girl called the office five minutes ago,” he said. “Told me she was their baby sitter, needed to talk to them. Said they’re at the party here.”

The agent with the eagle eyes had zeroed his laser beam in on the ID tag and the name plate. Sonny simply ignored him. The one with the clipboard seemed impatient to get on with his job. There were a lot of important people standing on line here, waiting to be admitted to the foyer.

“Are they on your list?” Sonny asked.

The agent flipped to the second page on his clipboard.

“How do you spell that?” he asked.

British, Sonny thought. Meaning dull and plodding and stupid.

“R-O-S-E,” he said.

“That all of it?”

“Here, have another look,” Sonny said impatiently, and extended the piece of paper again.

The agent scanned the R’s. “No one of that name,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I’d better check inside,” Sonny said, and nodded to the eagle-eyed one, and walked right past both agents into the foyer.

He did not arrive until almost eight o’clock.

His limousine was immediately surrounded by Secret Service men in dark blue suits. He stepped out, offered his hand inside the car, and helped his wife out onto the carpeted sidewalk. Escorted by Secret Service men fore and aft, he and his wife came up the carpeted steps toward where Carruthers was standing near the entrance doors.

“Welcome to the Plaza, Mr. President,” he said, grinning.

The Baroque Room was crowded and noisy, the guests milling in from the foyer and searching the tables for place cards, people recognizing friends or associates, men shaking hands, women kissing air. The dais was set up precisely where the good Miss Lubenthal had said it would be, in front of the columns at the far end of the room, opposite the three entrance doors. There were two agents standing on this side of the doors in the corner of the room closest to the dais.

“Big crowd,” Sonny said to one of them.

“Very beeg, yes,” the agent answered.

Spanish accent. Part of the Mexican team, Sonny guessed. The other agent was checking out Sonny’s ID card and name plate. Slow-moving Mexican eyes roving over them in seeming casualness. Checking out, too, the bulge under Sonny’s jacket where the bottle of sarin nested in the inside pocket. Figuring it for a pistol, finding it permissible on security personnel; the agent himself was packing what looked like a howitzer. Through the oval portholes in the doors, Sonny could see other suited men in the corridor outside. His escape route.

“ A que hora servirán la cena ?” he asked, switching to fluent Spanish.

“ A las ocho ,” one of the agents said.

“ Pero no para nosotros ,” the other one said sourly.

Margaret Thatcher was moving toward the dais now, being escorted by her personal heavy mob, four of them in all, each and every one of them as wide as the Thames. Sitting to the left of Mulroney, the Canadian Prime Minister, exchanging pleasantries with him. She would be the second to go, the whore. The chair on her left was still empty.

The chair to the right of Mrs. Mulroney was similarly empty. Sonny assumed that this was where Bush would be seated. President of the most powerful nation on earth would naturally take precedence over the Mexican leader for the place of honor on his hostess’s right. This would make things more difficult. If Sonny took out Bush first, he would then have to sweep to the right for his second target and that would take him further away from the exit doors.

He was beginning to think it no longer mattered.

The moment he squeezed off the sarin, first at Bush, next at Thatcher if there was time...

He could no longer see an escape.

Everywhere he looked, there were agents. Agents to the left and right of the dais, agents behind the dais, agents at each of the windows overlooking the park, agents outside and inside all the doors. Thatcher’s heavy mob behind her, trying to look as cuddly as teddy bears, but coming off as grizzlies. Bush would have his own army of Secret Service men. There was no way Sonny could get out of here alive.

He closed his eyes.

The Mexican agents looked at him in surprise.

They did not know he was praying.

One of the men from the British Consulate was telling a joke about Red Adair, the man who had worked to put out all the oil fires in Kuwait.

“Adair’s sitting in the lobby of a hotel there, y’know, when this American tourist begins chatting him up. ‘I hear Red Adair’s in Kuwait,’ he says. ‘So he is,’ Adair says. ‘I hear he’s staying right here at this hotel,’ the tourist says. ‘So he is,’ Adair says. The tourist says, ‘I’d love to meet him, I’m a great admirer of his...’”