John Abbott - Scimitar

“I’ll call you,” Sonny said.

“Please,” Arthur said, and smiled.

The three men met in the CIA office in lower Manhattan, its exact location known only to the people who had legitimate business there, and incidentally to any foreign spy who happened to be tracking them. None of the men was quite sure an actual threat to the President existed, but they damn well wanted to make certain it would be properly addressed if it did exist.

Well, actually, one of the men frankly didn’t give a damn whether the President got murdered or not. This was Secret Service Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs, who saw this latest brouhaha as just another plot to keep him here in New York when all he wanted to do was go back to Washington where his wife was. Nobody had killed Reagan at the goddamn Canada Day thing the other day, and nobody was about to kill Bush tomorrow, either. But Hogan and Nichols, the two men with him, kept worrying the thing like a dog gnawing on a bone. Nichols was the one who seemed most convinced that a conspiracy was afoot; but he was CIA, so what could anyone expect? Hogan seemed desperately trying to understand the arcane terminology Nichols kept tossing around. He understood murders, though, and three people had been killed so far, and it looked possible that someone just might also have his sights on the President; crazier things had happened in this city.

“They call themselves Sayf Quaṣīr ,” Nichols said. “That means scimitar in Arabic. It looks like this,” he said, and carefully lettered the word on a pad, and then showed it to the other men. Dobbs figured he was showing off.

“Pretty writing,” he said.

“Pretty little tattoo, too,” Hogan said.

Ta-2-2, Dobbs thought. Sounded like a robot in a science-fiction movie. Tell the truth, this whole damn thing sounded like science-fiction. A conspiracy to kill the President? The way he figured it, if no one had killed the son of a bitch yet, no one was ever going to kill him.

“It isn’t so farfetched,” Nichols said, as if reading his mind. “He’ll be here tomorrow, you know. Coming in by jet to La Guardia, then by helicopter to the island.”

“These two British ladies had tattoos,” Hogan explained belatedly.

“What British ladies?” Dobbs asked.

“These two murder victims. Green scimitars.”

“What?” Dobbs said.

“Just under their... ah... breasts,” Hogan said delicately.

“What?” Dobbs said again.

“We think it’s a means of positive identification,” Nichols said. “A way of exposing impostors.”

“What do they do?” Dobbs asked. “Open their blouses, flash their boobs?”

“In interrogation,” Nichols said. “If they catch a double.”

Hogan wondered what baseball had to do with this.

“Check him out,” Nichols said, “they’ll know right off.”

“Flash their boobs,” Dobbs said, refusing to let go of it. “Don’t shoot, I’m a spy.”

“Well, I don’t know what they do, actually,” Nichols said, looking offended. “We don’t know very much about them, actually. But we feel certain the green scimitar tattoo identifies them.”

“What time will the President be in?” Hogan asked, changing the subject. Schedules, he knew. Police investigation always entailed schedules. Time tables. Who was where when? He could deal with schedules.

“He’ll be speaking at twelve o’clock. Probably get to the island minutes before. He’s an old pro at this sort of thing.”

A campaign speech, Dobbs thought. Pure and simple. Worst damn thing was he’d probably get re-elected. The thought of another four years of a Republican president — any Republican president — made Dobbs shudder.

“What if it rains?” he asked. “It looked like rain when I came in.”

There were no windows in the office. For all they knew, it could already be raining.

“I don’t know where he’ll do the speech if it rains,” Nichols said.

“Maybe stay in Washington,” Dobbs said. Which is where I should be, he thought. “Do it from the Oval Office.”

“Maybe. Statue of Liberty’d be better, though.”

A Republican, Dobbs thought. Always looking for the angles, camera or otherwise.

“I keep wondering why those two broads were killed,” Hogan said.

Murder, he could deal with. There were reasons for murder. Crazy reasons sometimes, but always reasons. If you were a homicide cop, you always asked why.

“Conflicting interests?” Nichols asked, and raised his eyebrows.

“Like?” Dobbs said.

“An agency that wants to keep the President alive.”

“Like?” Dobbs said.

“Mossad?” Nichols suggested.

“What’s that?” Hogan asked.

“Israeli intelligence. Better the devil they know, huh?”

Dobbs was thinking, This is a dumb waste of time.

“So what do you want from my team?” he asked.

“How many are you?”

“Six.”

“Let’s bring ’em out there tomorrow,” Nichols said.

“How about us?” Hogan asked. Meaning the NYPD.

“More the merrier,” Nichols said.

“I’ll call the First, see if I can get some detectives out there.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Nichols said, and looked to Dobbs for approval.

Dobbs grimaced sourly, clearly in disagreement.

“Did anybody ask the Brits about those two women?” he asked.

“According to Santorini’s reports...”

“Who’s Santorini?”

“One of my people,” Hogan said. “He was investigating the murders.”

“He was later killed himself,” Nichols explained.

“Conflicting interests?” Dobbs asked sarcastically.

“The Brits told him the passports were forgeries,” Hogan said.

“Scimitar would have any number of good cobblers,” Nichols said.

Hogan wondered what the hell shoes had to do with passports. He didn’t ask. Dobbs didn’t know what the expression meant, either, these fuckin’ CIA jerks.

“Who told him that?” Dobbs asked. “About the passports?”

“A guy at the British Consulate,” Hogan said.

Which was how Geoffrey Turner got dragged into it again.

When Elita got off the bus at a quarter past two that afternoon, Geoffrey was waiting in the pouring rain with a big black umbrella over his head. He looked very British with the umbrella and all, a big grin cracking his face as he hurried to her and took her bag, covering her with the umbrella and asking solicitously if she’d had any lunch. She told him No, she hadn’t, but she wasn’t very hungry...

“In which case,” he said, “I’ll make an early dinner reservation.”

She was actually very glad to see him.

In the taxi on the way to the Park Avenue apartment, she filled him in more completely about her mother, and took enormous comfort from his genuine concern and little murmurs of reassurance. By the time they reached the apartment, in fact, she was beginning to believe that her mother was truly all right, and that her failure to communicate was merely inconsiderate.

She did not know that on Beaver Street at that very moment, a policeman in a black rain slicker was opening the black plastic garbage bag containing her mother’s head.

The story was news only because of the downpour.

Sonny caught it by accident, flipping through the dial, never expecting to find a news broadcast at two-thirty in the afternoon, surprised when the Statue of Liberty popped onto the screen. Standing in the rain. Hand with the torch held high over her head, rain pelting her. The camera panned down over her face, down, down past the tablet cradled in the crook of her left elbow, down over the folds of her robe, and then zipped on down to ground zero, where a roving reporter in a yellow raincoat, the hood pulled up over her head, her glasses spattered with raindrops, stood with a microphone in her hand, interviewing a pretty young woman whose blond hair was blowing in the wind.