John Abbott - Scimitar

“Well, no, he’s not here. Neither of them are here. I’m at the beach house, and it’s empty.”

“Like I said,” Sally said knowingly. “San Diego.”

The hotel Sonny had chosen was the Marriott Financial Center on West Street, just a short walking distance from Battery Park. He felt the room rate was exorbitant for this part of the city — two hundred and twenty-five dollars for a single — but the location was perfect, and there were five hundred and four rooms in the hotel, a number that virtually guaranteed anonymity.

He allowed a doorman to take his suitcase out of the backseat of the car...

“Anything in the trunk, sir?”

“Nothing.”

... and left the car with a valet who gave him a claim ticket for it. He checked in as Lucas Holding, Jr., showing a valid Visa card made out to that name. The bellhop carried his bag up to room 1804. He tipped him two dollars. The moment he left the room, he dialed Arthur’s direct line at SeaCoast. The phone here at the hotel wasn’t secure. He would have to go through the ritual.

“SeaCoast Limited,” Arthur said.

“Arthur Scopes, please,” he said.

“Who’s calling?”

“Scott Hamilton.”

“This is Martin, go ahead, Scott.”

“I’m here. Room 1804.”

“Fine. I have that item you wanted.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“And will you still be here at ten?”

“You can be sure,” he said, and hung up.

From his room on the eighteenth floor of the hotel, Sonny could see the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty.

He looked at his watch.

5:27.

Still time to do what had to be done.

He would go out for dinner at seven-thirty, eight o’clock, and then come back to the hotel for the car.

It was hard to believe that the two men from the Westhampton Beach Police Department were detectives. They looked as if they should be selling haberdashery in Oxnard, California. Then again, Elita’s concept of what detectives should look like had been derived entirely from motion pictures and television. These two didn’t seem like cops, but they seemed to be asking all the right questions, so she guessed they were okay.

One of them was named Gregors and the other was named Mellon.

They wanted to know what she and her mother had talked about on the phone this past Tuesday.

“Did she say where she might be going that night?” Gregors asked.

“Or the next day?” Mellon asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

“And you say some of these people you spoke to on the phone saw her on Monday night, is that what you said?”

“Yes. With a man named Scott Hamilton.”

“Do you know anyone by that name?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Mother ever mention anyone by that name?”

“No.”

“Better call these people she spoke to,” Mellon said to Gregors.

“See if they can describe him for us,” Gregors said.

“Can you give us their names?” Mellon asked. “These people you talked to?”

“I’ll get my mother’s book,” Elita said.

She went over to the Hackett house the moment the detectives left.

Sonny’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

She rang the doorbell. No answer. And then knocked. No answer. She tried the doorknob. The door was locked. She went around to the kitchen door and tried that one, too. Locked. There were no lights on anywhere in the house.

She guessed he was gone again.

After the huge grey buildings of finance and justice closed their doors for the day; after all the work was done, and all the people were gone; after darkness fell, and the streets emptied, and the only sound was that of a patrolman’s footsteps, or the hiss of a passing automobile, or the click of a traffic light; then here in this lower part of the city, there were only eyeless buildings and long shadows and emptiness.

Sonny was looking for garbage dumpsters.

Whenever he spotted one, he checked the street ahead and behind and if there were no pedestrians and automobile traffic, he stopped the car alongside the hulking metal container, popped the trunk from the button on the door to the left of the driver’s seat, got out of the car at once, went around to the back, raised the trunk lid all the way, hoisted out one of the black plastic bags, and hurled it up into the dumpster.

Took maybe forty seconds.

By eleven o’clock that night, he had disposed of all five bags.

He wondered if he could still catch a late movie.

He was awake with the sun.

He felt alert and alive and anticipatory — but today was only the third, and tomorrow seemed an eon away. He ordered a hearty breakfast of orange juice, eggs over easy with country sausages, buttered biscuits and coffee. He switched from morning show to morning show, hoping to catch a glimpse of where the networks planned to film the President’s speech to the nation, but there was nothing. At a quarter to eight, he dressed casually and went downstairs.

At the camp in Kufra, they used to run the trainees ten miles every day in the desert heat. In Los Angeles, he used to do three miles around the UCLA track, morning or evening, depending on which shifts he pulled at the hospital. This morning, dressed as he was, he had to settle for a fast, brisk walk. This part of New York was strange to him, even stranger in that a holiday pall already seemed to have settled upon the city. Early Friday getaways were common enough during the summer months, but this was a long holiday weekend, and with the Fourth falling on a Saturday, most people didn’t have to work next Monday. As he walked through the sparsely populated streets of the financial district, he had the sense of a city already abandoned, its inhabitants having fled to the mountains, the seashores, or the lakes.

He was alone in an alien land.

A country he had slept in for more years than he cared to count.

Awake at last.

Walking uptown along the East River Drive, he looked out over the water to where a red tugboat was churning through a mild chop, raised his gaze farther out to where a tanker plodded heavily along, and wondered what kind of river traffic he could expect tomorrow. He had already concocted what he believed to be a feasible means of escape by water — if ever he managed to get three feet from the scene without being gunned down. Getting killed was a distinct possibility. But losing his life was something to be desired, not feared. Only failure was to be scorned.

Tomorrow, he would get to the President by whatever means possible. If it meant unscrewing the cap of that plastic bottle and hurling the sarin at him from a foot away — he would do it. If it required running through a storm of bullets to reach him, tossing the poison into his face, into his eyes, onto his lips, killing the murderer before he himself was slain — he would do it. And he would seek no greater glory than the knowledge that he had served his God and his leader and his people. But if there was the slightest chance that he might live to serve again, then he would seize it.

He felt certain that his plan of attack would work.

The President would die.

He felt less confident about his means of escape, but here too he might succeed... if only because they were so very stupid.

Running along the river on the way back to the hotel, he grinned broadly, and felt as if his heart might burst through his chest, so joyous were his thoughts.

She had heard nothing from the police.

She called that morning at ten minutes to nine, and spoke to Gregors, who told her they had some very good descriptions of this Scott Hamilton person, which a police artist was putting together right that minute into a composite drawing they could circulate.