Scimitar

10

Tuesday morning, the last day of June, dawned bright and hot and harsh. In the four-poster bed in the master bedroom of Martin Hackett’s beach house, Carolyn blinked her eyes open as sunlight struck her full in the face, a single slash of light knifing its way through the narrow opening where the drapes failed to meet. Disoriented for a moment, the blink of annoyance turned to one of confusion. Where...?

And then she remembered.

And rolled over to see if he was still there, her delicious swordsman with the green tattoo on his chest.

There were only rumpled sheets beside her.

“Scott?” she called.

There was no answer.

“Scott?”

“Yes?”

Thank God, she thought.

“Good morning,” she called.

“Good morning.”

His voice was coming from the bottom of the stairs. She got out of bed, went to the chair where she’d tossed her slip the night before, and slipped it on over her head. Not quite as form-fitting as the one Kathleen Turner had worn in Cat, but that one had been hand-tailored, and this one was snug enough. Carolyn was thirty-nine years old and knew that whereas total nudity might be wonderful at the Metropolitan, it wasn’t too terrific when it came to seduction.

Nobody had eaten any hamburgers last night.

They’d come directly back here, which she’d preferred, anyway, just in case the gentleman turned out to be a dud, a premise she’d sincerely doubted after their first kiss, when she was standing close enough to him to make some fairly accurate predictions and entertain some reasonably great expectations. Better nonetheless to be in his bedroom, or at least Martin Hackett’s bedroom, where she could leave whenever she chose, rather than in her own bedroom, where she might have difficulty evicting a poor lover at best or a violent maniac at worst.

Barefoot now, and wearing only the white slip, she stepped into the doorframe at the top of the stairwell. He was standing below, looking up at her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“You’re up early.”

“I got hungry.”

“Is there coffee?”

“Eggs, too, if you’d like me to make some.”

“I’ll be right down,” she said.

She went into the bathroom at the end of the hall, squelched a desire to peek into Martin Hackett’s medicine cabinet, washed her face instead, squeezed toothpaste from a tube on the sink, used her forefinger to brush her teeth, and then performed what The Late Colonel used to call her “morning toilette” — didn’t his redheaded driver ever pee?

She went back into the bedroom, and debated putting on the high-heeled sandals again; the first time he’d fucked her last night, she was wearing only the sandals. She decided they might look a little trashy so early in the morning, opted instead for the Barefoot Contessa look, and went downstairs to where he was sitting at the kitchen table reading The New York Times. He was wearing a black silk robe sashed at the waist, a red monogram over the breast pocket, the letters MH. For Martin Hackett, she thought. Wears a black silk robe, how about that for a lobster fisherman?

He put down the newspaper at once.

“How would you like your eggs?” he asked.

“No good-morning kiss?” she said, and went immediately into his arms.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said, and kissed him fiercely.

“Listen, if you want those eggs...” he said.

“You know what I want,” she said, and kissed him again.

She could feel him growing immediately hard in the opening of the black silk robe, pressing his naked hardness against the thin nylon of the slip. Let him suffer a bit, she thought, and pulled away from him, and said, “Know how to make an omelette?”

“How many eggs?” he asked, and grinned. Knowing the game. Enjoying it. The grin telling her he was going to fuck her brains out the minute she finished breakfast. Good, she thought. Do it.

“Two,” she said, and sat at the kitchen table, and crossed her legs.

“Want some orange juice?” he asked.

“Please,” she said.

Watching him. The way he moved. So sinuously.

He poured a small glass of juice for her, carried it to the table. She picked up the glass, drank.

“Coffee now or later?” he asked.

“Some now, some later,” she said.

“Mmm,” he said, and slid his hand up her leg and under the slip.

She let his hand stay on her for a moment, working her for a moment, then gently took it away.

“My coffee,” she said.

He went to the stove, poured her a cup, carried it back to the table. She poured a little milk into it, and then sipped at it. It was strong and it was hot. At the stove, he was cracking eggs into a bowl.

“What’s in the paper?” she asked, and picked up the Times.

“I didn’t get past the front page. Bush is coming to town.”

“So I see, the bastard.”

“You don’t like him?”

“Do I like scorpions? I wish someone would shoot him.”

“That would leave us with Quayle.”

“Shoot him, too,” she said, and turned to where he was beating the eggs. There was an odd look on his face. Smile on his mouth, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re a staunch Republican, right?”

“No. But...”

“Then surely you can see through this, can’t you?”

“How do you mean?”

“This speech at the Statue of Liberty. It’s a campaign speech, that’s all. New York’s going down the tubes, but he’s going to make a speech about freedom and opportunity. Why can’t he...?”

“Where does it say that?”

“Say what?”

“That he’s going to talk about freedom and opportunity?”

“It doesn’t. But why do you think he’s chosen the Statue of Liberty? I can write his speech from memory,” she said, and shook her head sourly and opened the paper to page twelve where the story was continued.

“How do you want this omelette?”

“Not too runny,” she said. “Says he’ll be speaking at twelve noon. Catch the West Coast while it’s waking up, right? CNN and the three networks’ll be covering it. What’d you think of Buddy Johnson, by the way?”

“Nice man. Would you like some toast?”

“Please,” she said.

He popped two slices of bread into the toaster, and came to the table to pour fresh coffee for her.

“Oh, lookee,” she said, “the Marine Corps Band’ll be there, too. Play a few choruses of all the old wartime favorites, and end with a rousing rendition of ‘God Bless America.’”

“Here we go,” he said, and brought her omelette and toast to the table. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat beside her. Last night, they had enjoyed the passion only strangers could bring to the act of making love. Now, this morning, sitting here at the kitchen table, sipping coffee with him, eating the omelette he’d made...

“This is very good,” she said.

... she felt more comfortable than she had on far too many mornings-after. A friend of hers once confided that some men weren’t worth the shower afterward. She had often felt that way herself. But sitting here with Scott Hamilton, she felt entirely at ease — and this time, she did not want the morning to end.

“How long will you be staying out here?” she asked.

“Until after the Fourth, at least.”

“Will you be going to the fireworks?”

“I didn’t know there’d be any.”

“The Hamptons without fireworks?”

“I’ll have to see what Martin’s plans are,” he said.

“Where do you go from here?”

“Back to San Diego.”

Careful, he thought.

“Back to your cable TV station.”

“Yes.”

“What’d you and Buddy talk about, by the way?”

“Oh, mutual interests.”

“He’s great at getting seats to the U.S. Open, you know.”

“Yes, he mentioned that.”

He put down his cup and leaned gently into her. She lifted her face to his. Their lips met. Their kiss tasted of coffee. He picked her up, cradling her in his arms, and they kissed again. She could not remember the last time a man had carried her into a bedroom. Smiling, one arm around his neck, the other resting on his chest, her hand just above the green scimitar tattoo, she closed her eyes as he negotiated the narrow stairway to the second story of the house, and did not open them again until he lowered her gently to the canopied bed. He stood beside the bed for a moment, staring at her the way he had from the deck yesterday, his grey-green eyes consuming her. Then he untied the sash at his waist, and let the black silk robe fall to the floor.

Selly Colbert was very proud of the security precautions his intelligence people had coordinated for the Canada Day gala.

“If you’ll look at this floor plan of the Baroque Room,” he said, and spread the drawing on the conference table:

“... you’ll notice there are three entrances to the foyer. I’ve marked those with numbers in a circle...”

“Yes, I see that,” Dobbs said.

He kind of liked Colbert. The man looked like a scarecrow in a tailored suit, but there was an air of efficiency about him, and he was so obviously dedicated to getting things right that his enthusiasm was contagious. The room in which they were sitting was on the sixteenth floor of the Exxon Building on Sixth Avenue, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, less than a mile from the Plaza, where the big event would take place.

“We’ll be closing off the doors numbered two and three,” Colbert said, “locking them from the inside. That means the only entrance to the foyer’ll be through the number-one door. The Mexicans’ll have people outside doors two and three...”

“How many?”

“One at each door. And as backup, we’ll have our own people on the inside. Again, it’ll be two agents, one at each door.”

“Four altogether,” Dobbs said, nodding approval.

“Should be sufficient, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes. Who’ll be at the entrance door?”

“Two agents checking the guest and press lists...”

“Canadian?”

“One Canadian, one British. Four other agents in the corridor itself — lots of stairs there, do you see them?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have two agents at each of the stairwell entrances — British, Canadian and Mexican — and another two agents here at the elevator banks... do you see the X’s? They indicate elevators.”

“Um-huh.”

“There’ll be agents at each of the doors marked four, five, six and seven, leading into the Baroque Room itself. We’ll be locking the doors marked eight, with agents standing inside and out, just in case an emergency requires them to be unlocked in a hurry. Fire, what have you.”

“Um-huh.”

“The number-nine doors lead to the service pantry, so we’ve got to leave them unlocked. Again, there’ll be two agents on either side of them.”

“How about the room itself?”

“The dais’ll be set here at the far end, where you see the four pillars — those little black squares, do you see them? I’ve marked the spot with the number ten.”

“Um-huh.”

“It’ll be a U-shaped dais... you already have the seating plan...”

“I do.”

“... agents behind it, and to the left and right.”

“How about the windows?”

“Agent at each window. That’s eleven, twelve and thirteen. Have you seen the room?”

“Yes.”

“Big tall windows looking out on the park. A beautiful room.”

“Beautiful,” Dobbs agreed.

“How many people will you be using?” Colbert asked.

“I’m planning on a man at the foot of the steps here,” Dobbs said. “Just outside the number-nine doors.”

“Okay.”

“Another man at the top of the steps...”

“Okay.”

“And two in the corridor up there. There’s elevator access, you know...”

“Yes, and another staircase as well. Fire stairs. But our intelligence people figured the men at the number-nine doors could handle anything originating...”

“Well, I’d just like to be sure.”

“Okay, that’s four.”

“Have you got any people in the pantry itself?” Dobbs asked.

“No, but...”

“Then I’d like to put a man in there. Robert Kennedy was shot in a hotel kitchen, you know...”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Anyway, where there’s food, you’ve always got the danger of...”

“Right, our people should have thought of that. Will you need backup there?”

“I don’t think so. One man should be able to keep an eye on whatever’s happening.”

“Plus we’ve got those number-nine doors covered.”

“Right. And I’ll be in the Baroque Room itself.”

“So how many will you be altogether?”

“Six, not counting whoever he brings with him. He’s got his own detail, sticks with him day and night. They’ll be with him every minute.”

Both men looked at the floor plan again, studying it, trying to locate any loopholes in the security arrangement. They nodded at almost the same moment, but it was Dobbs who said, “Looks airtight to me.”

Carolyn had already explained that the idea of the game was for each of them to drive each other to the very brink of total insanity by teasing but not satisfying, manipulating but not gratifying, withholding pleasure until it became unimaginably excruci...

A knock sounded at the door downstairs.

“Damn it,” she said, “who’s that?”

He got out of bed, pulled on the black robe, and shouted, “Just a second!”

“It’s called Brink,” she said. “The game.”

“I’ll be back,” he said, and disappeared down the stairwell.

She had taken off her watch and placed it on the night table beside the bed. She looked at it now. A little past eleven. She put the watch back on the night table, stretched languidly, and smiled in anticipation. She could hear muffled voices below. Scott talking to someone she supposed was a delivery man. The man telling him he had to sign for all three cartons. Scott thanking him. The man telling him to have a nice day. Yes, come on up here, she thought, the nice day is just about to begin. She heard the door closing. The lock clicking. And then silence.

“Scott?” she called.

“Be right up,” he said.

She stretched again.

Hurry up, doll, she thought. I’m going to teach you the ecstasy of denial.

“Scott?”

“Yes, just a second,” he called.

She waited another three or four minutes, and then got out of bed, and tiptoed naked down the stairs. He was standing at the dining room table, his back to her. Three white FedEx cartons were on the table. He’d already opened one of them. Styrofoam pellets had fallen to the table and the floor. He hadn’t heard her yet. She moved up behind him, stealthily, quietly, intending to surprise him, cover his eyes with her hands from behind him, press herself against the back of the black silk robe, guess who, baby? But a board creaked under her weight, snapping into the silence of the room like a rifle shot. He whirled from the table.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

There was a brown bottle in his hand.

It seemed for a moment that he would hurl it at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to...”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” he said, regaining his composure at once. He put the brown bottle back into the carton, came to her where she stood midway across the room, naked and still frightened by his outburst. He took her in his arms. He whispered, “You startled me.” He hugged her close. Over his shoulder, she could see the side of one of the unopened cartons. A big red label was affixed to it. Bold white lettering on it. Red and white striking sparks in the morning sunlight.

“Come teach me your game,” he whispered.

She wondered what was in that carton.

Even at this distance, she was sure the bold white letters on the big red label spelled out the words HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

Elita was still asleep when the telephone rang that morning. Her first thought was Sonny. She picked up the receiver at once.

“Hello?” she said.

“Elita, it’s Geoff.”

“Oh, hello,” she said.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“I don’t know, what time is it?”

“Twenty past eleven.”

“No, that’s okay,” she said.

She listened to him telling her that he’d burrowed through his cupboards and had located his precious watercolor pencils and was hoping that sometime this evening he might...

“Well, no, I...”

“... demonstrate the faking of a perfectly decent shiner.”

“I...”

“I’d do it for you tomorrow night, but I don’t think Mrs. Thatcher would enjoy it.”

Mrs. Thatcher again. What was all this about Mrs. Thatcher?

“You will be joining me tomorrow night, won’t you?” he asked.

“Joining you? Where?”

“At the dinner-dance.”

“What dinner-dance?”

“I thought we’d discussed it.”

“Well, no, you asked me if I liked to dance...”

“Yes, and you said you did...”

“Yes, but you didn’t mention...”

“It’s the big Canada Day celebration at the Plaza... do you remember the room we went to?”

“Yes?”

“That’s where it’ll be. Drinks, dinner, and dancing, black tie — do you have a long dress?”

“Yes, but...”

“Good, I’ll come by for you at six. Drinks are at seven, but the consular people are supposed to be there a bit earlier, greet Mrs. Thatcher, and so on. Will six be all right?”

She hesitated, thinking why am I sitting here waiting for that son of a bitch to call when here’s a perfectly decent person who was a lot of fun to be with last night, and now he’s inviting me to a black-tie dinner-dance, what the hell’s the matter with me? Maybe Mom’s right, maybe I don’t have the tiniest bit of pride and self-respect.

“When can you show me how to paint the black eye?” she asked.

Carolyn had gone back to her own house, and he was alone now for the first time since six-thirty last night. He went to the phone and immediately dialed Arthur’s private number at SeaCoast. There was no answer. He dialed the general office number and got the Balinese girl.

“SeaCoast Limited, good morning.”

Virtually singing the name.

“This is Scott Hamilton,” he said. “May I speak to Mr. Hackett, please?”

“I’m sorry, he’s gone for the day.”

“Tell him I called,” Sonny said, and hung up.

He’d wanted to ask Arthur about this second murder. He’d found nothing about either of the women in this morning’s newspaper. But if someone was consistently eliminating their people, Sonny needed to know; perhaps the more immediate mission was to find the assassin.

The three cartons Arthur had expressed to him were still sitting on the dining room table. He picked them up and carried them into the kitchen, where he set them down on the counter alongside the sink. Arthur had simply used the original packaging, attaching a fresh FedEx label to each unopened carton. Sonny had already read the label on the bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and knew it was exactly what he’d ordered. He took a knife from the rack on the counter now, and slit open the tape on the second carton. Feeling around among the Styrofoam chips, he took out another brown bottle, this one labeled ISOPROPYLAMINE. Satisfied, he placed the bottle back onto the chips again, and slit open the last carton.

Burrowing under more Styrofoam pellets, he found a small paint can near the bottom of the box. He lifted the can out gingerly, opened a kitchen drawer to remove from it a butter knife, and pried off the lid. The paint can was filled with vermiculite. He felt around under the fine brownish packing flakes, found what he was looking for, and lifted out a sealed plastic envelope some three inches wide by six inches long. Inside the envelope was a glass ampoule with an amber-colored fluid in it. He read the label on the ampoule, and then put the plastic packet back into the paint can. Making sure there was a second ampoule in there, he resealed the lid, and put the can back into its packing carton. He would be running his reaction here at the kitchen sink, under a window open wide for ventilation. For now, he pushed all three cartons to the left of the counter, in the corner under the hanging wall cabinet, where they would be safe until he did the actual mixing.

The chemical name of the nerve agent he planned to produce was isopropyl dimethyl sulfonofluoridate. Its common name was sarin, an imperfect acronym derived from the names of its German creators: Schrader, Ambrose, Rüdriger and van der LINde. Sarin. A so-called G-agent, sarin was a deadly substance that short-circuited the nervous system, interfering with the enzyme necessary to muscle relaxation. Within seconds after ingestion or absorption, muscles all over the body would go into spasm, causing nausea, choking, vomiting, diarrhea, convulsion, coma, and death.

A drop of water weighed fifty milligrams.

For a man of the President’s weight, the lethal ingested dose of sarin was.65 milligrams. This meant that an amount only 1.3 percent the weight of a water drop would kill him if he swallowed it.

If Sonny’s reaction went to completion, he would have made a bit more than twenty thousand milligrams of the nerve agent. More than thirty thousand times the lethal ingested dose. He did not expect the President to swallow any of the stuff. But the liquid was immediately absorbed through the skin and the membranes of the eye.

He now needed only one other ingredient — to give a little body to the mix, he thought, and smiled. He would look for that today. And try to find his delivery system at the same time. Something that might allow him to walk away safely — although in his heart of hearts he did not believe escape afterward was possible. He had carefully planned tomorrow night’s escape route. Push open the doors that led to the pantry on the left and — dead ahead — were the steps leading upstairs to the business offices. Past the offices, down the narrow corridor, turn right at the elevator, then down the fire stairs leading to the lobby. But he knew security would be thick, and he knew that only a miracle would take him safely from that dais to those doors on the left.

He accepted his possible death as the risk of service to his leader and to God, knowing full well that his reward was not here on this earth but in Paradise. It was written in the Koran, “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s cause as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.” If Sonny died tomorrow night, it would be with the certain knowledge that he had killed the man responsible for the murder of young Hana.

He wondered now if the two women he’d known as Priscilla Jennings and Annette Fleischer had met their deaths in the same cause.

Today he would look for whatever else he needed.

The rest was up to God.

Carolyn was in the shower when Sonny’s car pulled out of the driveway. She did not know he was heading into town, and probably would have asked to go along with him had she known. She had never felt this way about anyone in her life. That he had fallen into her lap out of the blue was ample proof of the rewards of leading a clean life. Smiling as she lathered herself, she planned what she’d wear when she went over there later today.

She called Sassoon as soon as she was dressed, making an appointment for a haircut next Tuesday, when she planned to be in the city again. The next call she made was to her daughter.

“Have you heard from your Sonny Boy yet?” she asked.

“Not since Saturday,” Elita said.

“Then he did call.”

“Yes, he called.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Where?”

“We went to the Statue of Liberty.”

“Did you take him back to the apartment?”

“We came back here, yes.”

“I hope you had a lovely time,” Carolyn said.

“Yes,” Elita said. “We had a lovely time.”

“But you haven’t heard from him since.”

“No.”

“Mm,” Carolyn said.

Elita hated when she did that. Intimated through a murmur or a grunt or even the faint lifting of an eyebrow that Elita had somehow been... duped again, gulled again, led down the goddamn garden path again by yet another unscrupulous male bent on humiliating her. In retaliation, she said, “I’m going to meet Margaret Thatcher tomorrow night.”

“Oh, are you?” Carolyn said.

The tone of her voice indicated that she thought Elita was the victim of a severe delusional system and needed immediate observation. Elita hated when she did that, too, used that condescending tone.

“I’ve been invited to a formal at the Plaza,” she said curtly. Stiffly, actually. Coldly, in fact. Hoping her mother got the message that she wasn’t particularly enjoying her little thrusts this afternoon.

“What will you wear?”

“I thought the blue gown. The one...”

“Yes, I know the one,” Carolyn said. “Who invited you?”

“A man from the British Consulate.”

“My,” Carolyn said. “Thatcher, hm?”

“Yes. It’s a big Canada Day celebration. She’ll be there, and so will a lot of other important people.”

“My,” Carolyn said again, but her tone sounded somehow different.

“I may get to meet her,” Elita said.

“Maybe you can ask her out to Westhampton.”

“Maybe I will.”

“What’s this man’s name? From the consulate.”

“Geoffrey Turner.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“It’s a long story.”

Which Carolyn knew meant mind your own business, Mom.

“Will you be coming out to the beach this weekend?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“When will you know?”

“I’ll call you Friday.”

“Because I was hoping you’d bring out some clothes for me.”

“What do you need?”

“Some of the things in my lingerie drawer. The bikini panties from Bendel... there’re six of them in different shades...”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you should find some garter belts in that same drawer... a black one, a red one...”

Her mother had met an interesting man, she guessed.

“And a white one,” Carolyn said. “They’re all in that same drawer.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Elita?” she said.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Do you know the white garter belt I mean?”

“I’ll look for it.”

She didn’t have to look for it. It was hanging over the shower rod in her bathroom, drying with the...

“And the sheer white hose to match it,” Carolyn said.

How do mothers know? Elita wondered.

“Elita?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Can you do that for me, darling?”

“Yes, Mom. If I come out.”

“I wish you would. And, oh, yes...”

The red shoes, Elita thought.

“There’s a pair of high-heeled red shoes in my closet...”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you can bring those out, too, I’d appreciate it.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“You can put all of it in that little Louis Vuitton bag on the top shelf in my closet.”

“Okay. If I come.”

“Well, I hope you will. Have a nice time tomorrow night.”

“Okay.”

“And give my regards to Maggie,” Carolyn said, and hung up.

“My wife is allergic to plastic,” he explained to each of the pharmacists. “Don’t you have an old glass eyedropper someplace back there?”

No, they did not have any old glass eyedroppers back there. Everything was plastic nowadays. Which was fine unless someone was planning to measure a corrosive chemical.

But Sonny had been taught to believe that a man’s fate was written on his forehead and that a destiny appointed by God was impossible to avoid.

He went into the hobby shop looking only for a beginner’s chemistry set, and he found several such, all of them containing glass test tubes and glass stirring rods and what appeared to be glass droppers — but he couldn’t be certain. He asked the salesperson — a young woman whose name, ANNETTE, was lettered on a plastic tag pinned to her meager chest — to open one of the sets for him so he could take a good look inside, something she was reluctant to do until he flashed a plaintive smile at her. He would have settled for a dropper made of linear high-density polyethylene, but the dropper in the kit for adult-supervised ten-year-olds was made of glass. Genuine glass. As valuable to him as any diamond. A glass dropper plus a lot of other stuff he couldn’t use and didn’t need, including a dozen or more chemicals like calcium oxide, and sodium silicate, and silver nitrate, and cupric chloride.

Pleased by his discovery but annoyed by its price tag — twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, plus tax — he paid for it at the cash register and was about to leave the shop when it occurred to him that a place like this just might carry the delivery system he needed.

“I’ll just look around,” he said, and began wandering the shop.

He knew just what he was looking for.

In this most materialistic of nations, there had to be a toy, a game, an entertainment designed for children — as were the chemistry sets — which would prove useful to his needs. Each and every one of the water pistols was made of plastic. One of them was made to resemble an Uzi; the things Americans taught their children. He felt certain that any of the plastics used in their manufacture would melt when brought into contact with the reagents he planned to use. Besides, if he drew a fake gun and leveled it at the President, it would provoke the same response as a real one.

He kept searching.

In one section of the shop, he found shelves and shelves of little jars of paint and — stacked alongside them — boxes containing what the manufacturer called an “Airbrush and Propellant System.” The back of the box explained that this was a complete airbrush system including ozone-safe propellant, and that it could be used for “painting plastic models and other arts and crafts projects.” The side panel listed what the set included: the aforementioned ozone-safe airbrush propellant; a six-foot-long flexible hose; a color-mixing pipette; the propellant control assembly; three half-ounce jars; an organizing tray; a single-action, external-mix airbrush; and a complete instruction manual. The photographs on the box made it apparent that the set was made of plastic. But since it was designed to accommodate paint, he felt certain the plastic would be inert.

He looked for Annette. She was busy with another customer, but she kept tossing him a look that said, “I’ll be with you in a second, darling, please don’t go away.” She was possibly the ugliest young woman he’d ever seen in his life; he flashed a smile that said, “Take your time, my adorable one, I have all day.”

When finally and breathlessly she joined him, he asked if he could see the instruction manual inside the box.

She said, “Oh.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Well, the box is sealed.”

“Yes, I see that,” he said. “But there aren’t any chemicals in it...”

“Well, no, but...”

“... and you did open the other one for me,” he added, subtly reminding her that they’d already been illicitly involved, in a sense. She considered this now. His steady smile and penetrating gaze were quite unsettling her.

“I guess I can let you have a look,” she said.

“I would appreciate it,” he said softly.

She slit open the single strip of transparent tape sealing the box. Her eyes met his. She slid out the contents for him. As delicately as if he were raising the hem of her nightgown, he picked up the instruction manual. She got so flustered he thought she might faint. Another customer came in. She debated devotion versus honor and duty and went reluctantly to the front of the shop, tossing a lovelorn look over her shoulder. He quite pitied her.

The instructions told him what he didn’t want to learn.

The kit was designed for spraying.

There was no way a steady stream could be propelled from the airbrush.

He carried the kit to the counter at the front of the store. A woman wearing green slacks and a peach-colored blouse was standing at the counter with a doll in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” he told Annette. “I don’t think I can use this.”

Not unless he hoped to attack from a foot away — in which case hurling the sarin into the President’s face would be enormously more effective.

“I’m so sorry,” Annette said.

“But thank you, anyway,” he said.

“Come back again,” she said.

“I will,” he said.

“Soon,” she said.

“Miss?” the woman in the green slacks said. “I asked you a question.”

Annette rolled her eyes hopefully toward the door.

But Sonny was already gone.

She was wearing tight, very short black shorts, a white T-shirt without a bra, and white sneakers to match. When she got no answer at the front door, she tried the knob. The door was locked. She went around to the back of the house, tried the knob on the kitchen door, which Martin often left unlocked, and found that to be the case now. She opened the door a foot or so, called “Scott?” and got no answer. Coming into the kitchen, she called “Scott!” again, louder this time, and was about to leave when she saw the Styrofoam pellets on the kitchen counter. She scooped them up, using the flat of her hand to sweep them into the open palm of the other hand, and opened the door to the cabinet under the sink. The garbage pail was full. She tossed in the pellets anyway, lifted the plastic garbage bag out of its container, pulled the ties, and was about to carry the bag outside to where Martin stored his garbage for pickup, when she saw the three cartons sitting on the counter. All of them were open now. There was no doubt now about the red-and-white label on one of them. It read HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

She put down the garbage bag.

Went to the carton.

Opened it.

And reached into a flurry of white Styrofoam pellets.

In the Westhampton supermarket, Sonny dropped a pair of medium-sized Playtex HandSaver gloves into his shopping basket. They were marked a dollar ninety-nine. He went down the aisles looking for baking soda, and found a four-pound box of Arm & Hammer that cost only ninety-nine cents. In a section devoted to cooking aids, he found a plastic measuring cup with markings in both ounces and milliliters for only a dollar fifty-nine, three dollars less than the glass one. He also found something he could not have named and whose use he could only imagine.

The item was a plastic tube about a foot long and an inch or so in diameter, narrow at its open end, thicker at its other end, where a yellow rubber bulb was attached. He guessed housewives used it to baste roasts or decorate cakes or whatever. He didn’t know and didn’t care. He knew to what use he would put it. It only cost a dollar seventy-nine; he tossed it into his basket.

Pleased with all his little economies, he carried his items to the checkout counter.

The paint can was labeled with the same words as those on the carton.

HAZARDOUS MATERIAL.

Her heart was suddenly pounding.

She looked in the counter drawers for something she could use to pry off the lid, and found a screwdriver in a tray alongside a handful of serving spoons. There were brown flakes inside the can. Were they the hazardous material? She did not think so. Cautiously, tentatively, she poked one finger into the can and began feeling around under the flakes. She felt something in there. Reached in with several fingers. Pulled it out. It was a plastic bag inside of which was some kind of slender glass vial with a brownish fluid in it. There was a label on the vial. It read:

He was looking for carbon tetrachloride.

This had been the solvent of choice when he was learning at Kufra. Inert. Not very volatile. Nonflammable. You used a solvent to promote mixing when you were running a reaction, adding it to your starting materials so that there’d be enough to stir. A solvent also absorbed heat, reducing the risk of the reaction being carried away. Carbon tetrachloride did all these things. He did not know that its sale had been prohibited in New York State for the past ten years.

He drove up and down the Hamptons, stopping at hardware stores and art supply shops. He could find no carbon tetrachloride. He began looking for a substitute. All of the hardware stores carried paint removers or thinners containing what the labels called “petroleum distillates,” a general term for products distilled from petroleum. But without more specific information, he was unwilling to risk any unforeseen reaction.

He found a paint stripper that contained methylene chloride, another solvent that would have been ideal for his purposes, but among the product’s ingredients, the label also listed...

Well, ammonia was okay, because it was a base...

And petroleum wax was inert, so that was okay, too.

But he was worried about the methanol and anhydrous alcohol. One of his reagents was isopropyl alcohol. Adding two additional alcohols to the mix might make the ratio of alcohol to DF too high.

DF.

The toxic chemical which when mixed with alcohol would provide sarin, a compound a thousand times more deadly.

In his mind, he went over the reaction yet another time:

He now had everything he needed but a solvent inert to the reaction.

He kept searching.

He was about to give up when he found among the cleaning solutions in one of the hardware stores a product called Carbo-Trichlor. Its label listed its main ingredient as 1,1,1-Trichloroethane. Perfect. The quart can cost only $5.99. Even better; he loved a bargain. He picked up a glass cutter from the tool section, and began prowling the shop again, still searching for his delivery system. When he passed a shelf full of rat traps, he paused for a moment, seriously considering whether it might work.

At Kufra, they had taught him how easy it was to obtain the ingredients essential to the manufacture of sarin — especially in a democracy, where few questions were asked and most questions were easily parried. Dimethylsulfoxide difluoride — or DF, as it was commonly called — was an admittedly dangerous insecticide, but when mixed with alcohol it became lethal. The beauty of sarin, in fact, was that its reagents could be stored separately, reducing the risks of corrosion or weeping, until it was time to unite them. This meant that it was possible to place the separate chemical components into cannisters kept apart by a membrane that would rupture when a bomb was dropped or a shell fired, thereby mixing the separately innocuous chemicals to form a new and deadly chemical.

Sonny had been taught to do this on a smaller scale.

No bombs, no shells.

Just a rat trap and a pair of test tubes.

Isopropyl alcohol and isopropylamine in one of the tubes.

DF in the other.

Tape both test tubes to the wooden base of the trap, side by side.

Set the trap, pulling back the bow and fastening it in place with the locking bar.

Toss the trap at your target.

The locking bar would be jarred loose, and the powerful spring would release the bow, shattering the test tubes, combining their contents, and splashing the created sarin into the air.

Simple, inexpensive, and effective.

The only risk was breaking your own finger while you were setting the trap.

Or getting caught in the lethal splashout.

But this delivery system had been designed for use in a crowd. Drop the trap from above, let it fall where it might, spattering the sarin onto random victims. His target tomorrow night would not be a random one. Accuracy was imperative; this was a No-Fail mission. So whereas the thought of using a rat trap on a rodent like Bush seemed appropriate, he decided against it.

In the gardening section of the store, he found a pump-top spray container that looked like a fat flying saucer. The little advertising placard on the wall behind it advised him that the grip was shaped to fit the hand, and the spring-loaded thumb plunger allowed for tireless operation. The nozzle was adjustable from a fine-spray mist to a 25-foot jet stream. His gaze zoomed in on the last two lines of copy:

The shape of the container was awkward, making it enormously difficult to conceal. But the plastic was what he wanted, and if he could find nothing else, it would have to do.

He kept searching.

She stood at the kitchen counter looking down at whatever the hell it was inside that glass tube that didn’t have any kind of stopper on it, just a tube sealed all around, wondering why Scott Hamilton was having a hazardous, corrosive material dangerous to the eyes and lungs delivered here to Martin Hackett’s beach house. She wondered, too, if Martin Hackett knew Scott Hamilton was here in his house, knew in fact that anyone was staying here. She hastily put the little plastic packet with its glass vial back into the paint can, and replaced the lid, and put the can back into the carton. The other carton contained a bottle of alcohol and a bottle of something called isopropylamine, which she couldn’t even pronounce.

She wondered if she should call Martin Hackett at his office, ask him if he knew anyone named Scott Hamilton.

She wondered where Scott was now.

Wondered when he’d be coming back.

And decided to look around the house a bit, see if there was anything that would connect Scott to Martin, a personal note of some kind, telling him where to leave the key or how to start the generator, anything that might spare her the embarrassment of a possibly foolish phone call.

As she started for the upstairs bedroom, Sonny was looking down into a basket brimming with dusty plastic bottles.

The basket was on the floor in a far corner of the hardware store, and it contained what had to be at least fifty plastic spray bottles of varying shapes and sizes, some with pump-top plungers, others with triggers, all of them less awkward than the one he’d earlier considered — but all of them most certainly vulnerable to the materials he’d be mixing.

Disappointed, he began looking for some of the other items he wanted. A penlight. Two batteries in it. A roll of monofilament fishing line, forty-pound test. A glass cutter. Should he buy the injection-molded bottle, after all? Find some way to conceal it? It cost only six dollars, which wasn’t very much to spend for insurance. He was starting back toward where he’d seen it in the store, when suddenly he passed...

This had to be fate.

This had to be written on his forehead.

A shelf displaying insecticides.

And on that shelf a white plastic bottle with a green-yellow-and-black label, a green plastic screw cap, and a green nozzle. The label gave the name of the product as Raxon’s Multi-Bug Killer, guaranteed that it would kill house pests and garden pests, and told him that the nozzle could be adjusted to either a spray position or a stream position that would squirt for a distance of fifteen to twenty feet. The label also mentioned that 99.6 percent of the active ingredients were inert. He turned the bottle to look at the label on the back. In tiny print at the bottom of the label, he read:

The twelve-ounce bottle cost five dollars and twenty-nine cents.

He had nothing to lose.

He studied the bottle carefully, examining its cap, examining the nozzle. If he did in fact use it later on, he would also need a roll of transparent tape and a fast-drying glue. He went looking for them.

What the hell was he?

Who the hell was he?

Different names on each of the laminated ID cards she’d found in the leather Mark Cross portfolio. Gerald Ramsey on the Plaza Hotel card with the word SECURITY printed across its bottom. A driver’s license with the same name on it. Detective Second/Grade James Lombardo on a card for the NYPD’s First Detective Squad. Same name and same photograph — Scott’s — on another card for the Eighteenth Detective Squad. And lastly, a Federal Bureau of Investigation card with the name Frank Mercer on it.

Why all these different means of identification?

The Plaza.

Hadn’t Elita told her...?

She was suddenly frightened.

Hastily, she began putting the cards back into the leather folder.

That was when she heard the key turning in the door downstairs.

His trained eye immediately caught the black plastic garbage bag sitting on the floor in the kitchen. He had not left the kitchen that way.

He listened.

A trained listener could hear a flea breathing.

He heard nothing.

But someone was in the house, of that he was certain.

His gun was upstairs, in the night-table drawer on the right-hand side of the bed.

“Scott?”

Carolyn’s voice. Calling from the bedroom. What...?

He went up the steps. She was lying on the bed naked. Black shorts and bikini panties thrown onto a chair together with a white T-shirt. Sandals on the floor beside the chair. She was lying on her side, one elbow bent, head propped on her hand, long blond hair trailing.

“Hi,” she said.

Smiling.

“Hi,” he said.

Eyes flicking the room.

The closet door was ajar. He hadn’t left it that way.

“I thought you’d never get back,” she said.

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, five minutes or so.”

The brown leather Mark Cross portfolio was sitting on the small desk across the room, where he’d left it. But it had been moved to the center of the blotter. He shifted his eyes back to her. Her face was flushed.

“How’d you get in?” he asked.

“Back door was unlocked.”

He walked to the closet, opened the door all the way. His eyes swept over the hanging clothes he’d brought from Los Angeles. Sports jacket and slacks, dark suit, raincoat.

“Why don’t you come over here?” she whispered.

“In a minute,” he said.

One of the pocket flaps on the sports jacket was twisted so that the lining showed. She had been inside that pocket. He’d carried only three ties from L.A. He took one of them from the tie rack now. A red tie. Red silk. She smiled as he came across the room to her.

“Gonna tie me to the bed?” she asked, and sat up against the pillows, watching him as he approached.

He did not answer her.

He came to the bed and sat on its edge, the tie in his right hand.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

“What?” she said.

“You were searching the house. What’d you find?”

“Searching the house? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Blue eyes wide. Frightened.

“Did you find the ID cards?” he said.

His voice was very low. He was holding the tie with both hands now, the tie dangling loose between his hands.

“What ID cards?” she said.

Her voice was quavering. She was lying.

“What else did you find?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t find anything.”

But her voice was still quavering.

“You’re lying,” he said.

The tie whipped out, looping over her head, forming a sling behind her neck, yanking her off the pillows. He dropped one foot to the floor, the opposite knee still on the bed, and coiled the tie around her neck. She felt herself being pulled off the bed, sliding off the bed, put out a hand to stop her fall, and then felt herself being yanked up sharply by the tie. “No, please,” she said, and grabbed for his hands looped into the tie, tried to loosen the hands tugging at the tie from either end. He stood with both feet solidly planted on the floor now, using the tie to lift her from her knees, raising her to her feet, the tie tightening relentlessly. She gasped for air, clutched at the tie with both hands, felt it cutting silkily into her flesh, tried to force words into her constricting throat, begging for her life, please, please, no, the words screaming silently, her fingers emptily clawing the air now, clawing for purchase, for life, for air to breathe, clawing, screaming silently, eyes bulging, please, no, please, please, please, the tie merciless, his hands pulling it tighter and tighter, narrowing the gap between life and...

She collapsed against him.

He kept the tie taut between his hands until he was certain she was dead.

Then he allowed her to drop to the floor at his feet.