Scimitar

13

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.

“From what we’ve been told,” Gregors said, “from people who were at that cocktail party — men and women alike, by the way — this was a very handsome person, that’s one thing they all agree on. You sometimes...”

She was wondering how her mother could’ve been so goddamn stupid.

“... get descriptions that vary, you know, depending on who’s doing the talking. You get brown eyes, you get blue eyes, you get green eyes, hazel eyes, whatever, this is the same person all these people are describing. What we’ve come up with, though, what the artist is working on now, is a male Hispanic — but a very educated one, no accent, nothing like that — in his late twenties, early thirties. Dark hair, light eyes, very handsome. Runs a cable television station in San Diego, by the way, we’re checking out there right this minute, see if there’s any paper on him. See if he’s got a record, that is.”

“When will you know?” Elita asked.

“Well, it isn’t morning there yet, but they should be getting back to us soon. Meanwhile, we’ll get these people back in to look at the drawing, fine tune it, you know, fix an eyebrow here, a nostril there, get it to look as much like the person as we can. We’re working on this, Miss Randall, don’t worry. You realize, of course...”

He hesitated.

She waited.

There was a crackling on the telephone wire. She wondered if a storm was on its way.

“There’s no indication yet that any foul play is involved here,” Gregors said at last. “Your mother was seen with this man at a party, but that doesn’t mean anything has happened to her, or if something did happen to her, it doesn’t mean this man is responsible for it. We’ll have cases where a person will go off and not tell anyone where she’s going and she’ll turn up safe and sound right around the corner. All I’m saying is that we’re working up the composite as a precautionary measure, in case we should need it in the future, but you mustn’t think we’re automatically assuming something has happened to your mother. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you very much.”

“We’ll keep in touch,” Gregors said.

“Thank you,” she said again, and hung up.

The house seemed utterly still.

She looked at her watch.

A little past nine. She wondered if Geoffrey was at work yet. She hadn’t spoken to him since Wednesday night, hadn’t even called to thank him for what had been a truly wonderful time. By now, he had to be thinking she was the most ungrateful jerk imaginable. She looked for his number in her handbag, dialed it, got a woman telling her this was the British Consulate, asked for Mr. Turner, and was sure that the next woman who came on the line was the absurdly strident Lucy Phipps, to whom she did not identify herself. She asked for Mr. Turner again and was put straight through.

“Elita!” he said. “I’ve been worried sick about you! Where on earth are you?”

She told him where she was and told him why she’d come out here, and all at once she found herself bawling into the mouthpiece, sobbing out the whole story of not having been able to get her mother by phone...

“Do you remember my calling her from the Plaza?”

... and no one having seen her since Monday night, and the police interviewing people and getting a composite drawing made...

“Oh, Jesus,” she sobbed, “I don’t know what to do!”

“I’m sure she’s perfectly all right,” Geoffrey said. “Now listen to me, Elita. You can’t help the situation an iota by sitting out there all alone and waiting for the phone to ring. Did you drive out there?”

“No.”

“How did you get there?”

“By jitney.”

“Can you take one back to the city?”

“Yes, but I don’t think I should.”

“Why not?”

“Suppose they learn something?”

“I’m sure they’ll learn she’s fine. Just give them your number in New York, and they’ll...”

“Suppose she isn’t,” Elita said.

There was a silence on the line.

“Elita,” he said, “whatever the case, I think you need to be with someone who cares about you. What time is the next jitney?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to look at the schedule.”

“Look at it,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

“Now, Elita. Look at it now, please.”

She blew her nose, found the schedule, and went back to the phone. Still sniffling, she told him that the next bus left at twelve twenty-five and arrived in Manhattan at two-fifteen.

“Where in Manhattan?” he asked.

“Thirty-ninth and Third. And then it makes stops...”

“I’ll be there to meet you at two-fifteen.”

“Geoffrey... I really think I should stay here.”

“Why?” he asked.

She could not think of a single reason why.

“Call the police and give them your number in New York,” he said.

“All right.”

“I’ll see you in a little while.”

“All right.”

“Elita?”

“Yes, Geoffrey.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“All right, Geoffrey.”

“Elita, please stop crying. You’re breaking my heart.”

Which words, for some odd reason she couldn’t quite understand, almost broke hers. Or perhaps she’d just remembered what he’d said earlier. About her needing to be with someone who cared about her. That.

Arthur opened one of his desk drawers and removed from it a large manila clasp envelope. He unfastened the wing tips of the clasp, reached inside the envelope, and pulled out a thin rectangle of cardboard, somewhat longer than it was wide.

“According to your specifications,” he said.

There was thick block lettering on the sign, black on white.

“Okay?”

“Yes, perfect,” Sonny said, and then carefully put the sign back into the envelope. Arthur was still watching him.

“So,” he said.

“So,” Sonny said.

“All ready for tomorrow?”

“Almost.”

“Would it were day, hmm?” Arthur said, and smiled.

Sonny looked at him.

“’Will it never be morning?’” Arthur said.

Sonny kept looking at him.

“Henry the Fifth,” Arthur said. “‘Would it were day!’” he said, quoting again. “The French camp, near Agincourt.”

“Oh,” Sonny said.

“I still don’t know your plan,” Arthur said.

“I’ll be laying in,” Sonny said.

“I assumed. And when you surface?”

“I’ll blend in. Till it’s time.”

“Do you know when he’ll be speaking?”

“Twelve noon.”

“High noon, hmm?”

“High noon, yes.”

“Catch the West Coast, too.”

“Yes.”

“How will you do it?”

“From above. The level above him.”

“Using?”

“Sarin.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows appreciatively.

“Careful with that stuff,” he said.

“I will be.”

“Don’t want to get any on you.”

“No.”

“Or even breathe any of it.”

“I know how dangerous it is,” Sonny said.

“Should do the job nicely, though.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Get away. If I can.”

“How?”

“A boomerang,” Sonny said.

“Ah. Yes. Good,” Arthur said. “Very good. And where will you go afterward? Back to Westhampton?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where then?”

“The hotel, I think.”

“I’d like to know for certain.”

“I’ll call you,” Sonny said. “If I get off the island.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Arthur said. “Which is why I’d like to know where you’ll be, hmm? So we can help you with your future plans.”

“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.

“I’m here with Heather Broward,” the reporter said, “who is organizing the President’s appearance here tomorrow. How does it look, Heather?”

“Well, I’d have preferred sunny skies along about now,” Heather said. “But...”

Both women smiled.

“... hopefully we’ll have good weather today.”

Can’t even speak their own language properly, Sonny thought. Wouldn’t mind being in bed with both of them, though, rainy day like today.

“When do you think you’ll be hanging the bunting?” the reporter asked.

“Well, Mary...”

Mary and Heather, he thought.

“... I was hoping we’d have it up by now, but this rain...”

She shrugged prettily. Bad case of the cutes, Sonny thought.

“But the minute it stops, we’ll begin draping the wall just behind the President,” she said, and indicated the white wall behind the women. “The podium’ll be here,” she said, “just about where we’re standing...”

Good, Sonny thought. Just where I figured.

“... and we’ll be decorating that, too, around the Presidential Seal, of course, and in keeping with the theme of freedom and prosperity...”

In this wonderful country of ours, he thought.

“... in this great nation we’re so lucky to live in,” Heather said.

Close but no cigar, Sonny thought.

“Thank you, Heather Broward...” Mary said.

Thank you indeed, Sonny thought.

“This is Mary Mastrantonio at the Statue of...”

He clicked off the set. The manila envelope Arthur had given him this morning was sitting on the desk. He took the sign from it, studied it again, and then sat down behind the desk. Using a black Magic Marker, he added a handwritten message to the sign, and put it back in the envelope.

Then he began packing his camera bag.

The three men were waiting for Geoffrey when he got back to the consulate office. They introduced themselves and then began asking him all sorts of questions about the two women with the false British passports. He had frankly thought that both women were well behind him by now, and he was tired of explaining to everyone — including Joseph Worthy of Her Majesty’s own infernal spy machine — that neither was in actuality British, and that therefore the British Government felt no obligation to pursue the matter further.

“Joseph who?” the one named Nichols said.

“Worthy,” Geoffrey said. “He was called in when London learned the passports were false. Although, actually, I suppose it was the tattoos that alerted them.”

“He knew about the tattoos then?” the one named Dobbs asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“What’d he think about them?”

“He thought a Libyan intelligence group might be hatching a plot against the former Prime Minister.”

“Mrs. Thatcher?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of plot?”

“Assassination. Which turned out not to be the case at all. She’s come and gone quite safely.”

“Pretty good guess, though,” Nichols said.

“Bush instead,” Hogan said, and both other men cut sharp glances at him.

“Well, thanks for your time,” Dobbs said. “We appreciate it.”

“Not at all,” Geoffrey said, and led them out, wondering what in blazes that had been all about.

After he’d left Arthur’s office this morning, he’d made two stops. The first thing he’d bought was a black fedora. The next thing he’d bought was a camera bag. The bag was made of a sturdy black fabric, its flaps fastened with Velcro. There were removable panels inside it, to accommodate lenses and cameras of different sizes and shapes. There were pockets outside the bag, to hold film or lens paper or whatever. It was an entirely convenient bag, some seventeen inches long by at least fifteen inches wide and ten inches deep. The man at the camera shop told him it would hold a video camera, at least two still camera bodies, several lenses, and whatever Sonny chose to stuff in the pockets. He pointed out that there were two Velcro-fastened straps on the rear side of the bag, designed for carrying a folding tripod. It was an entirely convenient bag. Sonny packed into it:

The bottle of sarin, wrapped in a towel and sitting upright in one of the compartments.

The loaded 9-mm Parabellum pistol.

Two extra magazines for the gun.

The basting tool.

The walkie-talkie.

The muted silk tie.

The various identity cards McDermott had cobbled for him.

The sign Arthur had given him this morning.

The roll of transparent tape.

A four-foot length of the monofilament fishing line.

His Walkman radio.

And a box of toothpicks.

“How’d you happen to find this?” the cop asked.

The man he was talking to was from Pakistan. He had given the cop his name three times, and the cop still hadn’t caught it. Something like Pashee. Or something. And the cop didn’t know whether this was his first name or his last name or both names put together. The cop, whose name was Mangiacavallo, wished names were still simple in this city.

“I was throwing garbage in the dumpster,” Pashee said. He had a terrible accent, but Mangiacavallo had been listening to him for ten minutes now and was beginning to believe he understood Urdu. Except for the guy’s name. “I tossed up a bag, and it hit this other bag on top of the pile...”

“This one?”

“This one, yes. And it came toppling down.”

“So how come you opened it?”

“It looked like something might be in it.”

What was in it was a fuckin’ human head, is what was in it. What the fuck did he think was in it?

“What’d you think might be in it, sir?” Mangiacavallo asked politely.

“It felt like something heavy. I thought it might be something good.”

“So you opened the bag.”

“Yes. And closed it again right away.”

I’ll bet, Mangiacavallo thought.

“What’d you do then?”

“Called nine-eleven.”

So here we are, Mangiacavallo thought.

It was still raining, but only lightly, when the man walked out of the Marriott at three o’clock that afternoon. The man was wearing a dark blue suit, black shoes, and black socks. His white shirt was buttoned to the very top button, and he was wearing no tie. A black fedora rested atop his head, and he was carrying what appeared to be a black duffle bag. He looked somewhat like an Orthodox Jew.

The homicide cop who caught the squeal on the severed head was a detective/first grade named Max Golub, who worked out of Homicide South in the Thirteenth Precinct downtown on Twenty-first and Third. He dutifully typed up his report in triplicate and at three-twenty that afternoon, he gave one copy of the report to his lieutenant, whose name was Albert Ryan.

Ryan was eager to get home — he would be relieved at a quarter to four and didn’t want to get involved in any long telephone conversations. But he knew that in cases where you found one part of a body, you could suddenly start finding other parts all over town. So he called Detective-Lieutenant Peter Hogan, his counterpart in Homicide North, and asked if any arms or legs had turned up in his bailiwick today? Hogan told him he hadn’t seen any yet, thank God, but he’d keep his eyes open.

“Why?” he asked.

“’Cause we got a head belongs to a white female down here, blond lady tossed in a dumpster on Beaver Street.”

Which is how Hogan found out that Carolyn Fremont was dead.

Although nobody yet knew the dead woman’s name.

He caught the almost empty three-thirty ferry to the island. The rain had tapered off to a drizzle. No one asked to look into his camera bag. He had not expected that anyone would. He wandered around the deck with the rest of the tourists — though there were not very many of them on this wet afternoon — eyes wide in wonder, looking like someone who might next visit Ellis Island to trace the history of an ancestor who had come here from Russia or Poland.

At Kufra, disguise was nonsense entertained only in fiction. In real life, it was better to teach annihilation and survival. He knew that to appear absolutely authentic, he should be wearing unshorn earlocks and a beard. But he’d have felt ridiculous applying crepe hair, and he’d reasoned — correctly, it now seemed — that the familiar costume alone would confirm his identity. People rarely saw beyond the uniform. Moreover, he carried himself with an air of solemn religiosity premised on an inner belief that he was, in fact, an Orthodox Jew on a rainy day’s outing. Smiling thinly in his beard — the beard he believed he was wearing, although it did not in actuality adorn his face — he thought, To me I’m an Orthodox Jew, and to you I’m an Orthodox Jew — but to an Orthodox Jew am I an Orthodox Jew? There were no Orthodox Jews on the ferry today.

He stepped off the boat at five minutes to four. Again, none of the rangers on the dock asked him to open his bag. His good old friend Alvin Rhodes was not among them. Like a rabbi davening in prayer, he muttered his way past them. At five o’clock, he went into the restaurant and bought three hamburgers, a can of Diet Coke, a container of orange juice, and a hard roll. He sat at a table to eat the hamburgers and drink the Coke. He put the orange juice and the hard roll into the camera bag, in the compartment alongside the pistol.

At a quarter past five, the announcements started, telling visitors to the island that the last boat back would leave in half an hour.

He went into the base of the statue, and up to the men’s room on the second level.

Two men were at the urinals.

He could see shoes and bunched trouser legs under one of the stall doors.

He went into a free stall, locked the door, and waited. At five-twenty, the man in the stall on the right flushed the toilet, stood up, pulled up his trousers, and left. Sonny heard water running in one of the sinks.

A man’s voice — calling from the doorway, it seemed — yelled, “Last ferry leaving in fifteen minutes!”

A urinal flushed.

Silence.

Sonny took the box of toothpicks out of the camera bag. He grabbed a handful of them and stuffed them into the right-hand pocket of his jacket.

He took the loop of fishing line out of the bag and put it into his left-hand pocket.

He could hear a loudspeaker announcing that the last ferry from the island would leave in ten minutes.

He pulled his feet up onto the toilet seat.

The same man who’d called from the doorway earlier — an attendant, a ranger, whoever the hell — now came into the room and shouted, “Last ferry’s about to go. Anybody in here?”

Sonny did not dare breathe.

“Last call for the ferry,” the man said.

There was a long silence.

He heard the man grunt, and visualized him crouching to look under the stalls. Another grunt as he rose. Then his voice coming from the corridor outside, “Last call for the ferry,” retreating down the hallway, “last call for the ferry, last call...”

And then silence.

Sonny came out of the stall at once.

He went to the wooden outer door, painted to look like bronze, and pulled it closed. If he had to, he was prepared to pick the lock on the utility closet door in the alcove — but the door was standing open, just as it had been last Saturday. He took a toothpick from the handful in his pocket, inserted it into the keyway, and snapped it off flush with the face of the lock. There was still room in the keyway’s slit for another one. He slid one in, snapped it off flush, pressed both stubs in solidly with the flat side of a quarter, and then reached into the camera bag at his feet, removing from it the manila envelope bearing the sign Arthur had given him this morning. He took the roll of transparent tape from the bag and began fastening the sign to the door, a sliver of tape at each corner. The sign read:

His hands were trembling.

He was putting the tape back into the bag when he heard footsteps in the corridor. Distant. But approaching. The attendant, the ranger, whoever was coming this way again. He rushed into the closet and took the loop of fishing line from his pocket. Hooking it over and behind the thumb bolt, the only grip on the inside of the door, he was pulling the door toward him when he heard the man’s voice again. Just outside the closed entrance door now.

“Who the fuck?”

Wondering who had closed that outside door.

Sonny tugged on the fishing line.

He heard the outer door opening.

The bag!

He’d left his bag outside the...

He shoved the door open again, reached down for the bag and was stepping back into the closet when the man suddenly appeared in the alcove.

Tall and burly and wearing a ranger uniform.

Blue eyes and a reddish-brown mustache.

His mouth opening in surprise.

“What...?”

But Sonny was already moving forward. As Rhodes reached for the revolver in the holster at his waist, Sonny brought his right arm back, the elbow bent, the hand coming up close to his left cheek. As the gun came free, Sonny released his cocked arm, chopping the hard edge of his hand across the bridge of Rhodes’s nose. He heard the bone shatter, heard Rhodes yelp in startled pain, stepped around him at once, caught the back of his head in a double-handed lock, snapped it sharply forward — and broke his neck.

Rhodes went limp against him.

He dragged him into the closet and eased the door shut again. Tugging on the fishing line as hard as he could, he heard at last the heart-stopping click of the spring bolt snapping into the engaging strike plate. He was sealed inside now. No one could unlock that door from the outside, not with the lock effectively jammed.

He hunkered down beside Rhodes’s body.

Settling his back against the wall, he stretched out his legs and sat back to wait.

It would be a long night.

Geoffrey had brought two flat tins with him, one filled with forty water-soluble crayons, the other with thirty water-soluble pencils, for finer work. He’d confessed at dinner that he no longer had the pencils he’d used to paint on the shiner all those years ago, and had gone to an art supply house the moment he’d left her this afternoon. Now, in her mother’s Park Avenue apartment, he displayed his wares and asked her which eye she wanted done.

“Will it wash off later?” Elita asked.

“Of course,” he said. “They’re water soluble. In four languages.”

Indeed, the printed matter on both tins read water soluble, wasserlöslich, solubles à l’eau, and solubili in acqua.

“Pick an eye,” he said.

“Which do you think?” she asked.

“It’s hard to decide, they’re both so lovely,” he said. “But let’s try the left one. I’m right-handed, so it’ll be easier to work on that side of the face.”

“Are you sure it’ll wash off?”

“Positive.”

“You won’t get any on my blouse, will you?”

“No, no.”

“I hope not.”

She was wearing a white long-sleeved silk blouse she’d bought at Bendel’s. The last thing she wanted...

“I’ll need a glass of water,” he said.

“What for?”

“To dip them in,” he said, and started for the kitchen. “Actually, this isn’t the proper way to use them, one should also have a brush. But it’ll work this way as well.” He found a glass on the counter drainboard, called, “Okay to use this?” and filled it with water. When he came back into the living room, Elita was studying the array of crayons in the larger tin.

“What gorgeous colors,” she said.

Each of the crayons was wrapped with a band the color of the crayon itself. The range covered the entire spectrum, modulating subtly from shade to shade of yellow, red, orange, blue, violet, purple, grey, brown — and green.

She thought suddenly of Sonny.

And just as quickly put him out of her mind.

Geoffrey put the glass of water on the end table beside the easy chair in which she was sitting. Perching himself on the ottoman in front of it, he said, “I think an undercoating of yellow, don’t you?” and chose from the tin the lightest of the three yellow shades. Dipping the crayon into the glass of water, he applied the tip gingerly to the flesh under her eye. She was still afraid he was going to drip this stuff all over her blouse.

“Listen,” she said, “would it be all right if we got a dish towel or something?”

“Of course,” he said, and went back out to the kitchen again.

“Inside the door under the sink,” she called.

“I’ve got it,” he called back, and returned to the living room. Like a beautician fussing over a client, he draped the towel over her shoulders, stepped back to look at the yellow undercoating he’d already applied, and went to work again.

It was clear from the start that this was to be an artistic creation. No mere application of makeup was this, oh no. Carefully choosing his shades — a bit of red, a bit of blue, a bit of violet — he painstakingly colored the skin, working slowly and carefully, putting down one crayon to pick up another, chatting all the while. He was telling her now about the visit he’d had today from a police lieutenant and two men he suspected were spooks...

“... though, Lord knows, neither of the two identified himself except to offer a name, which was probably false anyway. These cloak and dagger people give me a severe pain in the arse, forgive me, don’t they you?”

But she had stopped listening. The moment he’d mentioned a police lieutenant, her mind leaped back to Westhampton Beach and her last conversation with Detective Gregors. She hadn’t heard a word from him since. She wondered now if she should call him again. She didn’t want to make a pest of herself, but goddamn it, this was her mother!

“... impression they’re worried about President Bush.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “what...?”

“These men who came to see me. Do you remember my telling you about the two murdered women? The first time we had lunch togeth...?”

Mention of murder caused her mind to leap to her mother again, and the awful possibility that something terrible had happened to her. She felt an uncontrollable urge to go to the telephone this very instant, and almost leaped out of the chair. But he was working so closely, concentrating so intently...

“... the green tattoos,” he said, and picked up a green crayon.

A green the color of a jungle glade in brilliant sunlight.

“Which they seem to think identifies some sort of Libyan intelligence group,” Geoffrey said, and dipped the green crayon into the glass of water. “The green scimitar,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“The tattoo on each of the women. A green scimitar.”

His face was not six inches from hers. The green crayon was in his hand. A green the color of the scimitar tattoo on Sonny Hemkar’s chest. Her eyes opened wide.

“A green what?” she said, and the telephone rang.

She leaped out of the chair at once, almost knocking over the glass of water on the end table, rushing to the phone at the other end of the room, yanking the receiver from its cradle.

“Hello?” she said.

“Miss Randall, please.”

“This is she.”

“Detective Gregors, Westhampton Beach Police.”

But she had recognized his voice from his very first words.

“Yes, Mr. Gregors,” she said.

“We’ve got a pretty good composite on this guy your mother was with the other night, and I was wondering how we could get it to you. I could have it messengered, I suppose... you don’t have access to a fax machine, do you?”

“No, I... oh. Just a minute. Geoff!” she called. “Is there a fax machine at the consulate?”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“Can you let me have the number, please?”

Ten minutes later, Geoffrey unlocked the door to the consulate office, punched the security code into the panel to the right of the door, and ushered her in. The fax machine was at the far end of the room, near Lucy Phipps’s desk. The fax from Detective Gregors was already sitting in the grey plastic receiving tray. Elita picked it up.

She was looking at a very crude drawing of Sonny Hemkar.