John Abbott - Scimitar

But why on earth wait? It was now a quarter to ten, and with a nine-hour and forty-minute — damn it, even Dakar didn’t have such a peculiar time-zone difference. Forty less fifteen came to... yes, it was seven twenty-five in Kathmandu, where Alison was undoubtedly all lipsticked and lovely. He would wait another five minutes and call her at seven-thirty on the Dorothy.

The call went through without a hitch, miracle of miracles.

Her voice sounded as clear and as sharp as if she were in a phone booth on Madison Avenue, rather than in a room thousands of miles away.

“Are you coming to New York?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

“Allie, please, you’ll love it here.”

“It’s just that I miss London so terribly much,” she said.

“Don’t you miss me ?”

“Of course, I do, Geoffrey, but... can’t you possibly time your holiday to coincide with mine? So that we can both go to London?”

“I’ve been to London,” Geoffrey said. “I joined the foreign service to get away from bloody London.”

“I just don’t know,” Alison said.

“New York is a won derful city,” he said. “It’s enchanted, Allie, you’ll love it. Especially during the summer. Even with the Three H’s. And...”

“The three what ?”

“The Three H’s. Happiness, Humor and... uh... Halvah. Besides, don’t you want to help Mrs. Thatcher celebrate?”

“Who? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Mrs. Thatcher ! She’ll be here on a personal visit, Allie...”

“Well, who cares about that ? I’ve seen her thousands of times on the telly. Even here in Nepal.”

“Ah, yes, but have you ever danced in the same room with her?”

“Done what ?”

“Danced, my dear. The light fantastic. There’ll be a big ball on the first, and we’re both invited.”

“We are?”

“Indeed. I’ve been handling a great many of the arrangements, you see...”

“You have?”

“Mmm, yes.”

“And you say we’ve been invited to...”

“Yes, she extended the invitation personally.”

“Geoffrey, are you pulling my leg?”

“Have I ever lied to you, darling? Our beloved former Prime Minister will be arriving at the end of the month, just before the Americans start their yearly celebration in honor of our eviction. Attila the Nun, the Iron Maiden, the Redoubtable Maggie, will be here in lieu of Mr. Major a day or two before you get here! So what do you say now , luv? Care to join us?”

There was a long pause on the line.

He waited for what seemed a lifetime.

Then a voice said, “Excuse me, sir, you asked me to interrupt at...”

“Yes,” he said, “just a moment, operator. Allie?”

“Yes, Geoff.”

“Anyway, sir, it’s three minutes.”

“Thank you. Allie?”

“Yes, Geoff.”

He hesitated.

“Please say yes.”

There was another long pause.

He thought he would die.

He waited.

“I don’t know, Geoffrey,” she said, at last. “It’s just that I really had my heart set on London, truly. I just miss London so terribly much.”

“Well... think about it, would you?” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, will that be all right?”

“Snuff’s having a party for staff tomorrow.”

“I’ll call you after the party, all right?”

“Well, try me, but I may be late. Goodbye, Geoff, I have to run now.”

“Allie? Allie, wait a...”

There was a click on the line.

“Damn,” he said, and jiggled the rest bar. When the operator came on, he asked her for time and charges, and then leaned back in his chair and wondered why on earth he’d lied to Alison.

His expertise, such as it was, lay in passports and visas, in which section he worked with a consul and three other vice consuls, all of them women, all of them British, all of them ugly. Normally, such a lowly serf would have had nothing whatever to do with the impending visit of someone so lofty as the Nun. But because this was a rare occasion for the consulate — her visits normally took her to California, to see her old buddy Ronnie — every available man and woman had been pressed into service to smooth the arrival and ease the passage of the former Lady from Number Ten. Even so, the extent of his involvement had been minimal at best. He had hardly, as he’d claimed to Alison, handled “a great many of the arrangements.” In fact, all he’d done...

Well, last week he’d telephoned the Canadian Consulate-General — who’d invited Mrs. Thatcher to attend the gala on Canada Day, the first of July — in an attempt to determine whether the tables would be rectangular or horseshoe-shaped, the better to collaborate on a seating arrangement that would offend neither Mrs. T. nor the Canadian Prime Minister. The young woman to whom he’d addressed this pressing problem was a dimwit with an accent that sounded American, but which — she assured him at once — was Canadian. He had only by the end of the week learned that the main table would, in fact, be horseshoe-shaped, and that among the visiting dignitaries would be the President of Mexico, here to honor Canada on this its special day, and incidentally to remind America that Mexico, too, shared a border, albeit to the south.

It seemed to Geoffrey that an equitable seating arrangement would place Mrs. Thatcher between North and South, so to speak, but he’d been informed by the head of Admin Section that the rules of diplomatic form and procedure as they applied to receptions were to be strictly followed. He was later informed by Chancery that the Canada Day gala was to be considered an “official” reception in that the guests had been invited exclusively by reason of their position, and the dinner was being offered in honor of a head of state, in this instance two heads of state and one former head, which was what made the situation so partic—

The telephone rang again.

He glanced at the clock.

Five minutes to ten in the morning.

He lifted the receiver.

“British Consulate, Turner here,” he said.

“Detective Delaney, Twentieth Precinct,” the voice on the other end said.

“Yes, sir, how may I help you?” Geoffrey said.

“We’ve got a homicide victim,” Delaney said.

“Oh, dear,” Geoffrey said.

“Yeah, woman shot with a Colt .45, which I guess you know is a big mother. Looks like she caught four, maybe five slugs, it’s hard to tell ’cause the head was totalled.”

“I see,” Geoffrey said.

He abhorred many of the words the Yanks used. Totalled. To indicate utterly demolished. With a gun that was a big mother. To indicate exceptionally large. The words seemed particularly inappropriate in describing what had been done to a woman’s head during the commission of a violent crime.

“Yes?” he said.

“Cleaning woman found her when she came in this morning, sprawled on the bed, blood all over everything, her brains on the wall.”

Geoffrey winced.

“This is on West End Avenue, just off Seventy-Third,” Delaney said.

“Yes?” Geoffrey said.

“Her name’s Gillian Holmes, like in Sherlock.”

“Yes?”

“She had a British passport in her handbag.”

The Eagle had left Los Angeles last night at ten minutes past eleven Pacific Time. It was now ten minutes past 8:00 A.M. Mountain Time, and the train was scheduled to stop in Phoenix in twenty minutes. Sonny had been awake and dressed since dawn.

The sleeper he’d booked was a deluxe bedroom with a sink, a vanity, and its own private toilet facilities and shower. Both the upper and the lower berths had been made up for sleeping when he’d boarded the train last night at Union Station. He’d slept in the extra-wide lower berth, which he’d been informed would become a sofa during the day. There was also an armchair in the room, and a wide picture window past which the Arizona countryside flashed in early Monday morning splendor. The windows on the corridor side of the compartment were curtained.