John Abbott - Scimitar

Just what I said to Mrs. Thatcher, Elita thought, still embarrassed.

“... and Adair says, ‘Well, you’ve met him — I’m Red Adair.’ The tourist jumps to his feet, takes Adair’s hand, begins pumping it madly, and says, ‘Am I glad to meet you! I’ve been an admirer of yours forever! Are you still screwing Ginger Rogers?’”

Everyone at the table began laughing, except for a woman Geoffrey had earlier introduced as Lucy Phipps, who now blushed scarlet and sank lower into her chair. And all at once, the laughter trailed, and all conversation seemed to stop as well, not only at the table where Elita sat with the Brits but everywhere around the room. In the hush that followed, Elita turned to look toward the entrance doors.

Sonny opened his eyes when the room went silent.

The Mexican agents were looking toward the entrance doors.

“ Aquí viene ,” one of them said.

Sonny looked.

And saw not President Bush coming through those doors with Barbara on his arm but President Reagan with Nancy on his arm. The wrong goddamn President! Waving his familiar wave to the hushed and reverent crowd, grinning his familiar grin. And suddenly there was applause for this popular idiot, this fool who’d succumbed to his vice-president’s advice: Send the bombers. Had the letter not fallen into their possession, they’d have believed forever that the blood was on Reagan’s hands. But through the merciful goodness of God, they now knew that the man responsible for young Hana’s death was the man who’d written that persuasive document: Send the bombers. Destroy the Beloved Leader. Murder the infant daughter where she sleeps in her bed.

Bush.

The murderer Bush.

Not Reagan, the easily led fool, here to take his place beside the great whore of Britain, his one-time infamous partner.

Sonny would have killed them both in the next instant, but his instructions were clear.

Bush was the target.

You must not do anything to jeopardize your main objective .

It would have to wait till the Fourth, after all.

“ Buenas noches ,” he said to the Mexicans, and began striding across the floor, passing the orchestra where it was tuning up discreetly on his right, the applause for Reagan tapering as he took his seat beside the bitch of England, Sonny’s eyes searing with almost blinding hatred for both of them, the doors not twelve feet away now, the two agents who’d earlier been checking names now standing inside the doors, side by side, legs apart, hands behind their backs, six feet away, and...

“Sonny!”

The name stopped him as effectively as a rifle shot.

He turned, but only for a second.

And caught a glimpse of Elita rising from her chair at a table near one of the big arched windows.

He turned back to the doors again. Nodding to the agents, he said, “See you later,” and they parted to let him through.

Behind him, he heard Elita calling yet another time.

“Sonny!”

He did not look back.

Why had he run?

Hadn’t he seen her last night? Heard her?

She’d screamed at the top of her lungs. Startled the Brits — especially Miss Lucy Phipps — out of their collective wits. Well, the shock of it. Seeing him there. In a business suit and wearing some kind of identification tag, was he the doctor in residence or something? I mean... what was he doing there? And why had he ignored her, dashed through those doors and out into the corridor as if there was an emergency someplace, calling Dr. Hemkar, emergency in the operating room, Dr. Hemkar, report to the operating room at once.

“Sonny!” she’d yelled, and “Sonny!” again, and then, embarrassed to death — first her gushing to Mrs. Thatcher and then bouncing out of her chair like a teenager — she almost whispered his name the third time, a question mark at the end of it this time, “Sonny?” and since she was standing anyway, she muttered, “Excuse me, please,” and went after him. By the time she reached the corridor, he was gone. Penn Station all over again. And now, ladies and germs, it gives me great pleasure to present The Amazing Disappearing Dr. Krishnan Hem... oops, where’d he go? Amazing.

He probably hadn’t seen her or heard her. There’d been a lot of noise in the place, after all, people talking and laughing and table-hopping, waiters bustling about, it was entirely possible that her voice had been drowned in the babble and boil. Because surely, after what they’d done together, after the intimacies they’d shared, he wouldn’t just ignore her... would he? I mean, if he’d heard her or seen her, would he have just run off that way? Unless there was some kind of dire emergency that required a doctor. Which may have been the case, after all. His beeper had gone off and he’d...

Wasn’t that a walkie-talkie she’d seen in his hand?

Well, a doctor.

She supposed doctors sometimes carried walkie-talkies. She guessed. Especially at a large important function like that one, where he was most likely the doctor in attendance, that was the word she’d been looking for. There to be on hand in case anyone had a fainting spell or a fit, I’m a doctor, ma’am, please let me through. Open the woman’s blouse, put his stethoscope to her chest, lucky lady. Just thinking of him, she...

Damn it, she had to stop this.

He had heard her.

He had seen her.

He had ignored her.

Period.

She picked up the phone and dialed her mother’s number at the beach.

She let the phone ring a dozen times, and then she hung up and punched out the numbers again, and let it ring another dozen times. On the offchance that Mr. Hackett next door might have gone out there by now — this was Thursday already and a lot of people were starting the Fourth of July weekend early — she dialed his number, too, and let it ring and ring before finally giving up.

In the basement of the Hackett house, Sonny was dissecting Carolyn Fremont’s body.

He worked expertly, wishing he had a scalpel or a surgical saw, but settling for a cleaver he’d taken from the kitchen, and a hacksaw he’d found hanging on the basement wall. He planned to pack the separate body parts into plastic garbage bags, disposing of them tonight, after yet another glorious Hamptons sunset. Tie the bags loosely so that the air inside would eventually escape and cause them to sink. Toss them into the ocean on separate strands of isolated beach, miles apart, watch them floating away to Europe. The head, the torso, the severed legs and arms.

Even though he hadn’t dissected a cadaver since medical school, the task was virtually automatic, requiring little thought. He found what he was doing somewhat relaxing, in fact, the way roller skating or riding a bicycle might have been, his hands reverting to a skill he had learned years ago, freeing his mind for other thoughts.

The idiot last night.

Calling out his name in a room thronged with strollers and spooks.

What the hell was she doing there?

She hadn’t followed him there, had she? Well, no, she couldn’t have. It was just one of those damn ridiculous coincidences that sometimes toppled empires. It all got back to the train again. The mistake he’d made on the train. Automatically giving her the Sonny Hemkar cover name instead of the Scott Hamilton double cover. Dumb. But excusable. No. Unforgivable. Because now she was here to haunt him, popping up like a nemesis where he’d least expected her, shrieking “Sonny!” at him across the room, when his name plate and his ID card read something entirely different.

Come on , he thought, and hacked again at the cartilage separating femur from tibia.