Scimitar

2

The next holiday would be the Fourth of July.

Independence Day.

It said so on the mimeographed sheet tacked to the bulletin board on the wall opposite Geoffrey’s desk. This was one of the easier ones. Like Christmas or Good Friday. Some of the others — like Martin Luther King, Jr., Day or Memorial Day — were a bit more difficult for an Englishman to remember, no less comprehend.

The mimeographed notice had been sent round at the beginning of the year, two copies to each registry, intended to be seen by all staff in the Hong Kong Office, the Embassy in Washington, the North America Department FCO, the UN Department FCO, the Resident Clerk FCO, and all Consular Posts in the USA. It was flanked on Geoffrey’s bulletin board by another mimeographed sheet listing the addresses and telephone numbers of all British Consulate General offices in the United States and yet another sheet listing all the police precinct telephone numbers here in New York City.

Actually, Geoffrey was not at the moment the least bit interested in any of the mimeographed information fliers. He was, instead, consulting a properly printed sheet that had been produced by the Cartographic and Map Section and distributed early last year to every British Consulate in the world, including the one here in New York. Its headline, boldly marching across the top of the page the way the redcoats must have done at Lexington or Concord, read:

The letters GMT stood for Greenwich Mean Time.

The letters FCO stood for Foreign Consular Office.

The FCO for which Geoffrey worked here in New York was called the British Consulate-General, and it was located on the ninth floor of an office building on Third Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets. From Geoffrey’s corner office, he could look south for quite a ways downtown, and he could also look west across Third Avenue to the front of the Seventeenth Precinct across the street. He was, in fact, looking east this morning, if spiritually rather than actually; he was consulting the printed Overseas Posts chart to ascertain what time it was in Kathmandu.

It was now 9:00 A.M. on a bright Monday morning, the twenty-second of June. Adjusting for Daylight Savings Time, which had last month sprung the clocks ahead both here and in London, Greenwich Mean Time was now 2:00 P.M., which made it 6:40 P.M. in Kathmandu, which did not adjust its clocks to suit the seasonal fashions, and which was rumored to be the second worst foreign post to which a person could ever be assigned.

At 5:00 P.M. Kathmandu time, Alison would have taken her leave of Snuffy, as Her Majesty’s Consul-General there was familiarly called (although his proper name was Sherwood Spencer Hughes), and would by now be showering and dressing before leaving for dinner at either the Del Annapurna or the Soaltee Oberoi, both five-star hotels. He would give her a bit more time to put on the finishing touches, and then he would call her at 10:00 A.M. sharp here in New York, which would catch her at 7:40 P.M. before she left her apartment. There in the shadow of the Himalayas, they dined late.

The worst foreign post, of course...

Well, actually, there seemed to be several.

Saudi Arabia. Oh, dear Lord, the stories he had heard about that place! Or the Ivory Coast. And long-time foreign servants had told him it was a toss-up between Ceylon and Ulan Bator as to which was the most utterly boring. But they all agreed that Dakar had to be the absolute worst in the world, perhaps the entire uni—

The telephone rang.

For a brief delirious moment, he imagined it might be Alison calling him!

He turned from the bulletin board and the benign gaze of Queen Elizabeth staring at him from a poster above it, snatched the receiver from its cradle, and said somewhat breathlessly, “British Consulate, Turner speaking.”

“Yes, hello,” a man’s voice said. Nasal and veddy veddy British. A Colonel Blimp adrift in Manhattan, the first Distressed British National of the week.

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

Three minutes past nine on a Monday morning, and already a DBN on the line.

“Yes, hello, can you hold a moment, please?” the man said.

“Certainly,” Geoffrey said, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

He was about to hang up when the man came back on the line.

“Yes, sorry,” he said, “my wife was bending my ear. What I need to know, young man...”

Geoffrey wondered how the man knew he was young.

“... is how a person would go about establishing residency in the U.K., do y’follow me?”

“Are you a British national, sir?” Geoffrey asked.

“I am indeed. Born and bred in Manchester.”

“Then, sir, why would you need...?”

“No, no, this is for a friend of mine,” the man said. “A Yank. Plans to move to Kent, lovely spot, d’you know it? Hawkhurst? Quite lovely.”

“Yes, sir, quite lovely indeed.”

“My friend’s sixty-seven years old, been retired for some time now. Can you tell me what the requirements would be?”

“To apply for entry clearance as a person of independent means?”

“Well, yes, I should imagine that’s what he’d be. Is that what you call it? A person of independent means?”

“Yes, sir. If, in fact, that’s what he is. In which case, he would need to prove that he has under his control, and disposable in the U.K., a sum of not less than a hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds...”

“That much, eh?”

“Yes, sir, or income of not less than fifteen-thousand pounds a year.”

“I should imagine he gets at least that much in retirement pensions, shouldn’t you think? Fifteen-thousand pounds?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

“Well, I shall have to ask him then, shan’t I?”

“Yes, sir, that would seem a good idea. And then, if he wishes to apply, he can write to this office for the proper forms.”

“Thank you so very much, young man. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Happy to’ve been of service, sir,” Geoffrey said, and put the receiver back on its cradle, still wondering how the man had known he was young. Something in his voice? His telephone manner? Surely, if the DBN had been standing here before him, looking at him across the desk, he’d have seen nothing about Geoffrey to indicate he was but twenty-four. For this was no callow-faced pimply youth growing a sparse mustache in a vain bid for maturity. Rather, here were the lean good looks of someone whose forebears were part Welsh and part Scottish, the smoldering dark eyes, the high cheekbones and thrusting jaw, the thick black hair, somewhat tousled now at a quarter past nine in the—

The telephone again.

He picked up the receiver.

“British Consulate,” he said, trying to make his voice deeper. “Turner here.”

Another DBN, a woman this time, reporting that her handbag had been stolen, along with all her money, her credit cards, and her passport. Not an unusual distress call. Geoffrey took at least one of these every day of the month, more of them in June, which was the busiest month. He asked the woman where she was staying, gave her the telephone number of the police precinct closest to her, and advised her to report the crime there and then to come directly here to file an application for a new passport.

He hung up wondering whether the stolen passport activity was heavier in a city like Chicago or Houston. Detroit. That was probably the worst of the lot, but there wasn’t a British Consulate there. New York was a choice post, he still marvelled at the good fortune that had landed him such a plum as his second assignment. First crack out of the box had been Dublin, but one didn’t join the foreign service to be sent directly around the corner.

He had entered the service as a vice consul at the age of twenty-two, with a good university degree — a first in History, actually — and coming in as a Grade-9, which paid a starting salary of twelve-thousand quid a year. This had been more than enough in Dublin, one could live there like a king on that amount of money. Here in New York, though, where he was living “on-Manhattan” as opposed to somewhere in the boonies, everything was much more expensive, and he could barely make ends meet at thirteen-five, his new Grade-8 salary.

And he had to admit that the glamour of the city sometimes paled beside the incessant tiresomeness of the daily routine here in the Passport and Visa Section. Process some thirty-thousand visas annually, and another thirteen-thousand passports, and one could with justification call the repetition deadly dull. And when it got to be June, as somehow it always did, one might say the routine became numbing. He sometimes felt that if he never saw another Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Ghanaian, Indian, or Afghan applying for a visa to—

And yet, there were times when New York...

Well, not now. Certainly not now. The temperature had been insufferably hot since the beginning of the month, and now that the expected humidity was here — the Yank forecasters quaintly called it the Three H’s, for Hazy, Hot & Humid — there was no relief except out at the Hamptons, which seashore required hours of motoring to reach and tons of money to enjoy. He wondered abruptly if there was a chance in hell that Alison would join him on her holiday. He would ask her again tonight, when he—

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

“Allie, please, you’ll love it here.”

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

“Don’t you miss me?”

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

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

“I just don’t know,” Alison said.

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

“The three what?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Done what?”

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

“We are?”

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

“You have?”

“Mmm, yes.”

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

“Yes, she extended the invitation personally.”

“Geoffrey, are you pulling my leg?”

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

There was a long pause on the line.

He waited for what seemed a lifetime.

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

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

“Yes, Geoff.”

“Anyway, sir, it’s three minutes.”

“Thank you. Allie?”

“Yes, Geoff.”

He hesitated.

“Please say yes.”

There was another long pause.

He thought he would die.

He waited.

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

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

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

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

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

“Allie? Allie, wait a...”

There was a click on the line.

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

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

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

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

The telephone rang again.

He glanced at the clock.

Five minutes to ten in the morning.

He lifted the receiver.

“British Consulate, Turner here,” he said.

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

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

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

“Oh, dear,” Geoffrey said.

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

“I see,” Geoffrey said.

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

“Yes?” he said.

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

Geoffrey winced.

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

“Yes?” Geoffrey said.

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

“Yes?”

“She had a British passport in her handbag.”

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

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

He had rung for the porter as soon as he was dressed and had been told the dining car would not be opened until they left Phoenix. But he offered to bring Sonny a cup of coffee and some sweet rolls if he wanted those now. Sonny asked him to please change the bed back into a sofa before he brought the coffee and rolls. The porter flashed a wide grin and said he’d be happy to, sir.

Sitting now with his coffee and warm rolls, Sonny faced the direction in which the train was speeding, and watched the magnificent landscape outside. By this time tomorrow morning, they’d be in San Antonio, Texas. On Wednesday morning, they’d be pulling into St. Louis, Missouri, and by mid-afternoon they’d be in Chicago. He’d connect there later that evening with the Lake Shore Limited to New York. If all went as scheduled, he would arrive there at 1:40 P.M. on Thursday, the twenty-fifth.

How much are they asking?

Twenty-five.

Giving him the absolute deadline for arriving in New York. Twenty-five. The twenty-fifth of June. Knowing he could not possibly take an airplane because airport security devices had a nasty way of detecting weapons packed in one’s luggage.

He sipped at his coffee.

He had been told several months ago that one day soon his years and years of waiting would be over. He suspected what the assignment would be; one did not forgive easily in his part of the world, and it had been too long a time now. But even without knowing the complete details — the actual target, though he felt he had already guessed correctly, the date, the location, the number of people, if any, who in addition to himself would be involved — he could feel a rising sense of excitement. After all those years and years of training, all those years and years of waiting in a foreign land among people he despised, his patience would finally be rewarded by success. At last they would permit him to serve his country with honor and with pride. He awaited only his final instructions. The rest was already in his hands and in his head.

He looked at his watch.

Seven minutes past seven.

In ten minutes, they’d be in Phoenix.

And shortly after that, he would enjoy a hearty breakfast in the dining car.

He felt very good about everything.

She had seen him last night when they were boarding the train, but she pretended not to notice him this morning as he came into the dining car. He was possibly the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life. She had to admit that her knowledge was somewhat limited; she was only nineteen years old. But she was not altogether inexperienced, and to her discerning eye he seemed not only extraordinarily good-looking, but extremely self-assured as well.

She could not tell what color his eyes were from where she sat midway up the car, either blue, or green, scanning the tables, meeting her own eyes briefly before moving on, and then flashing with sudden light as the train emerged from a tunnel and sunlight splashed into the car, causing him to squint. She even liked the way he squinted. Eyes scrunching up, and then the face relaxing again, a faint smile touching the mouth. Humor at his own expense, a grown man ambushed by sunlight. She wondered how old he was. She’d once dated a thirty-year-old. Thirty was too old, but she didn’t think he was that old, God he was handsome! She went on pretending not to notice him, busying herself with the menu again, and was genuinely surprised when he appeared at her table.

“Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?” he asked.

She was too startled to speak.

“Hello?” he said, and smiled again.

“Hello, hi,” she said. “Sorry, I...”

“I didn’t mean to...”

“No, no, I was just...”

“Is anyone sitting here?”

“No. No, please sit down. Please.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled out the chair.

Green. They were green. Or actually a greenish-grey. She guessed. She forced herself to take her eyes from his face. She busied herself with the menu again. He was watching her. She felt suddenly flustered. She wondered if she was blushing.

“Anything good?” he asked.

“What?”

“On the menu.”

“Oh. I... uh... haven’t decided yet. I mean... there are lots of good things, but I don’t know what I want yet. Would you like to look at it?”

“I’ll get one from the waiter,” he said.

“You can have this one if you like. Really.”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Really. I think I know what I’m having, anyway.”

“I thought you didn’t know.”

“I always have eggs,” she said, and shrugged.

“And are you having eggs this morning?”

Faint smile on his mouth. Was he laughing at her? Or did she delight him? Full, sensuous mouth...

“Yes, I think I will be having the eggs this morning,” she said.

“As usual,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled.

“In which case, I’ll accept the menu,” he said.

She handed him the menu.

“Thank you,” he said. He was still smiling, studying her face. “I’m Sonny Hemkar,” he said.

And realized his error at once.

“How do you do?” she said.

Damn it. Force of habit. Too late now. He held out his hand. Awkwardly, she reached across the table for it.

“I’m Elita Randall,” she said.

“That’s a very unusual name,” he said.

“It means ‘special person,’” she said. “In Latin.”

“Randall?”

“No, Elita. The word ‘elite’ comes — oh, you’re putting me on, right?”

“And are you a special person?” he asked.

Still holding her hand. The waiter was watching them. Sonny holding her hand that way. Sonny. He couldn’t be thirty. Nobody named Sonny could be thirty. He had such a beautiful mouth. She suddenly felt like kissing him. Just as suddenly, she took her hand from his. Gently.

“Are you?” he asked.

“Am I what?”

“A special person.”

“Yep, that’s me. Gorgeous, intelligent...”

“You forgot modest,” he said.

“Right, modest, too,” she said.

“You are,” he said. “Gorgeous.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I know I’m not. I wouldn’t have said it if I really thought I was.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“How old do you think I am?” she said.

“Fourteen,” he answered.

“Oh, sure.”

Did he mean it?

“Or fifteen, maybe,” he said.

He wasn’t smiling. Maybe he meant it. Did she really look like a teeny-bopper? She was wearing faded jeans and a floppy sweater, maybe they did make her look younger than she actually was. But fourteen? Even fifteen?

“Right,” she said, “I’m the youngest soph at UCLA.”

But suppose he really thought she was fifteen?

“Is that where you go to school?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good school.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your major?”

“I want to be a social worker.”

“Hard work,” he said.

“Yes, but it’s what I want to do.”

“Good,” he said, but it sounded like a dismissal. Perhaps because he picked up the menu at the same time.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m a doctor,” he said from behind the menu.

Stuck with it now. Go with the truth. Or at least the partial truth.

“Really?” she said. “Do you practice in L.A.?”

“I’m in residence there.”

True enough. But...

“I’m going back East to see my mother. She isn’t feeling well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” he said, and lowered the menu. “I think I’ll have the eggs, too,” he said. “Is your home in New York?”

“Yes. Well, my mother’s. I’ll be staying with her for the summer.” She paused and then said, “They’re divorced. My dad’s with the Army in Germany. He’s a colonel.”

Sonny raised his brows appreciatively.

“I hardly ever see him anymore,” Elita said, somewhat wistfully.

“You must have done a lot of traveling around,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Well, an Army brat, you know. By the way, I’m not really fifteen.”

“You’re not?” he said, feigning surprise. “I thought you were. Your name’s Lolita, so I thought...”

“No, it’s Elita. E-L–I-T... you’re putting me on again, right?”

“How old are you really, Elita?”

“Nineteen. How old are you really?”

Please don’t say thirty, she thought.

“Twenty-nine,” he said.

She felt enormously relieved. Twenty-nine wasn’t quite thirty. But try to sell that to her mother. Mom? Hi, I just met this gorgeous guy on the train, I think I’m in love with him, he’s twenty-nine years old. Mom? Take your head out of the oven, Mom.

“What’s funny?” he asked, and she realized she was smiling.

“My mother,” she said.

“What about her?”

“Are you Mexican?” she asked.

“Why? Is your mother Mexican?”

“No, but are you?”

“Do I look Mexican?”

“Sort of.”

“My complexion?”

“I don’t know what. This... sort of exotic look you have.”

“Oh my,” he said, “exotic,” and waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

“Are you?”

“No, I’m part Indian and part British,” he said.

She wondered if that was better. Hello, Mom? He isn’t Mexican, you can climb down off the windowsill. He’s British, Mom. Well, part Indian, I guess.

“Indian Indian, right?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

Which is really a whole lot better than Comanche or Chippewa, Mom. Wait’ll you see him, he looks like a young Dr. Zhivago, whatever that actor’s name was. Only better looking.

“What part of India are you from?” she asked.

Careful, he thought.

“A little town called Jaisalmer,” he said.

“Where’s that?”

“Close to the Pakistan border. Have you ever been to India?”

“No. But my dad was stationed near there when I was twelve.”

“Oh? Where?”

“Burma,” she said.

He signaled to the waiter. Everything he did, his every motion, seemed smooth and accomplished. He made something as simple as signaling to the waiter seem like a liquid hand gesture in a ballet. Careful, she told herself, this can get complicated.

“Who’s Lolita?” she asked.

“A little girl who fell in with a dirty old man,” he said.

“Oh my,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

“And did she come to a sorry end?”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said, “are you ready to place your order?”

“Elita?”

“I’ll have the eggs, over medium, please, with bacon.”

“Orange juice? Coffee?”

“A small orange juice. Do you have decaf?”

“Fresh brewed.”

“I’ll have a cup, please.”

“Sir?”

“Same as the lady,” Sonny said. “All the way down the line.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the waiter said, and walked off grinning.

“Tell me more about Lolita,” she said.

The call from London came just as The Eagle was approaching Texas. The train had by then come through Arizona and almost all of New Mexico, and was on the outskirts of El Paso. On the train, it was still three-thirty in the afternoon, Mountain Time. In New York City, it was five-thirty on a hot summer evening.

When the telephone rang, Geoffrey was just about to hit the four-number combination that would unlock the inner door to what the consulate personnel called “the airlock.” The security measure had been installed in 1984, several weeks after Libyan terrorists killed a policewoman in London. The airlock consisted of a pair of steel doors flanking an empty cubicle. One door led to the inner offices. The other door led to the waiting room. Each door had a different combination lock on it. You opened one door, locked it behind you, and then opened the second door. The airlock had been designed to dissuade entry by anyone intending mischief. Geoffrey had already pressed the first number of the combination when Peggy Armstrong, one of the vice consuls in Passports and Visas, called in her high, shrill voice, “Geoff, for you! It’s the Mainland!”

He wondered whether hitting the first number of the combination and then leaving it at that would cause alarms to go off and security people to descend upon him in hordes. Nothing on the alarm panel indicated what one should do in order to abort. He waited, fully expecting total disaster. Nothing happened.

“Geoff!”

Peggy’s voice again.

“The Mainland!”

Why she insisted on calling Britain “the Mainland” was totally beyond him. He sometimes suspected that Peggy had descended from another planet and was only now coming to grips with living on earth. She did somewhat resemble an alien being, what with frizzed red hair sticking out all over her head, and enormous brown eyes magnified by equally enormous goggles. A totally bug-eyed, flat-chested wonder, standing beside his desk now in tweeds better suited to the moors than to the Three H’s of a summer in New York, telephone receiver in her hand, thoroughly exasperated look on her homely face.

“Thank you,” he said coolly, taking the phone and hoping his tone of voice conveyed the annoyance he’d felt at being yelled down like a fishmonger.

“Turner speaking,” he said as Peggy marched off in a huff, presumably to her waiting spaceship.

“Geoffrey, ho, it’s Miles Heatherton here.”

Heatherton worked in the Consular Department of London’s Foreign Office, in a street near St. James’s Park called Petty France. Geoffrey had telephoned him earlier today, immediately after the Twentieth Precinct biked over the passport they’d found in the murdered woman’s handbag. He’d given Heatherton the number on the passport, the woman’s full name — Gillian Holmes, as in Sherlock — and the date and place of issue, in this instance June of last year in London. All routine. As required, the woman had listed in her passport the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of two persons to be notified in the event of an emergency. One was a brother named Reginald Holmes, who lived in London. The other was a friend named Jocelyn Bradshaw, who lived thirty-six miles west of London, in Henley-on-Thames.

“Sorry to be getting back to you so late on this,” Heatherton said, “but we ran into a bit of a problem.”

“What do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

He could not imagine anything so urgent that it could not have waited till morning. This was a routine notification of next of kin, and it was now past ten-thirty in London.

“Well,” Heatherton said, “we tried the numbers you gave us for these people — the one in London, and the other in Henley — and we got two other people entirely.”

“I’m sorry,” Geoffrey said, “I’m not following you.”

“There’s no Reginald Holmes at the London number, and no Jocelyn Bradshaw at the Henley number.”

“Moved, have they?”

“Well... no, it doesn’t appear so. The people who answered the telephones said they’ve lived at those addresses for the past ten — well, ten years in the case of the London man, seven for the one in Henley.”

“Uh-huh,” Geoffrey said. He hadn’t the foggiest notion where Miles was leading.

“Which I thought decidedly peculiar in that these are the identical addresses listed in the passport,” Heatherton said.

“Are you saying the addresses and phone numbers in Miss Holmes’s passport do, in fact, exist, but the people she’s listed as brother and friend do not live at those addresses?”

“That’s exactly the case,” Heatherton said.

“Then where do they live?”

“There are thirteen Holmeses in the London directory, and two of them are Reginalds. Neither of them had ever heard of a woman named Gillian Holmes.”

“How about Henley?”

“Not a single Jocelyn Bradshaw there.”

“Mmm,” Geoffrey said.

“Or in London, either, for that matter. We checked on the offchance.”

“Mmmm.”

“Yes. Exactly what we wondered.”

“How do you mean?”

“Why the false names?” Heatherton said.

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Heatherton said.

“And what did you conclude?”

“Well, that’s what’s taken me so long to get back.”

“Miles, I seem to be having enormous difficulty following you tonight. Perhaps you ought to ring me sometime tomorrow morning, when we’ve both had...”

“The passport could have been issued anywhere in the U.K., you see, even though you’d told me it was written in London.”

“Yes. Last June.”

“The woman was how old?”

“She listed her date of birth as 1943.”

“That would have made her forty-nine.”

“Yes.”

“And she’d never had need of a passport till last year? Woman living so close to the Continent? Never traveled abroad in all her forty-nine years?”

“Well, perhaps she was a homebody,” Geoffrey said. “Or this may have been a simple renewal.”

“No, it wasn’t a renewal. Nor quite that simple, either.”

“How do you know?”

“We’ve run her through, Geoff.”

“Run her...”

“Through the computer, yes. That’s what’s taken all this time. I must admit I didn’t like the smell of it from the start. Otherwise, I’d have let it go till morning. But...”

“Perhaps you should have done,” Geoffrey said. “I really hate to see you working so late on my be...”

“In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t. She’s not in the computer, Geoff.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean the British government has issued scores of passports to women named Gillian Holmes over the years, but none of them was born on February 9, 1943, in Colchester, England.”

“Then...”

“Moreover,” Heatherton said, “the number on the passport, although valid, was the number issued to a Scottish passport holder named Hamish Innes McIntosh, who was born in Glasgow on the third of November, 1854, and who most certainly should be dead by now.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Then you’re saying the passport is counterfeit,” Geoffrey said.

“Yes, dear boy,” Heatherton said. “That’s precisely what I’m saying.”

She had looked for him at lunchtime and again at dinner, but he had not come to the dining car, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d taken ill. Well, he was a doctor, he should know how to take care of himself, and yet she was concerned. The man sitting across from her at dinner was an elderly tractor salesman from Burbank, who was on his way to Chicago to meet with a son from whom he’d been estranged for the past seven years. His eyes welled with tears when he talked about the young man, who sounded like a Grade-A shit to Elita.

The man explained to her that they had crossed over from Mountain Time to Central Time when they’d left El Paso at six P.M., at which time she should have set her watch ahead an hour, although she wouldn’t have to touch it again because it would remain Central Time all the way to Chicago. But, of course, if she was traveling on to New York...

“Yes, I am,” she’d said.

... then she’d have to set it ahead yet another hour when they crossed over from Valparaiso, Indiana, to Warsaw, Indiana. He warned her to be very careful in New York, as it was a very dangerous city. She had the good grace not to tell him she’d been born and raised there.

On her watch now — which, as instructed, she’d set ahead at the dinner table — it was already twelve minutes to midnight, wherever they were. They had left the station in Little Rock at eleven-thirty or thereabouts, so she guessed they were still in Arkansas, although it all looked the same out there in the dark. She wondered again if Sonny was sick. She thought of going back to the dining car to ask the porter who’d served them breakfast if he knew what had happened to the Indian gentleman. Half British, Mom, don’t forget. Was it possible he’d got off the train earlier than she’d expected? But he’d told her he was traveling to New York.

She left her seat in the coach section, and walked forward to what they called the Sightseer Lounge, which was a two-story car with a café on the lower level and these huge wraparound picture windows upstairs. She looked briefly into the café. A waiter was leaning against the serving counter. Otherwise, the place was empty. She debated going back to her seat, and then went upstairs instead.

He was sitting in one of the lounge chairs at the far end of the car.

Looking out at the star-drenched night.

Thoroughly absorbed in his own thoughts.

So very beautiful.

“Hi,” she said.

He turned, looked up, smiled.

“Hi,” he said.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Please,” he said.

She took the chair alongside his.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Sure.” A puzzled look crossed his face. “What do you mean?”

“I haven’t seen you around,” she said.

“I looked for you at lunch,” he said.

“Oh? When was that?”

“Around two.”

“I went in at noon.”

“Must’ve missed you then,” he said.

“Too bad,” she said.

Silence.

The stars wheeling overhead. The night flashing by.

“Did you have dinner?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t very hungry.”

“Well, sure, if you eat lunch so late.”

Silence again.

The rattle of the wheels over the tracks, the evenly spaced clickety-clacks. Outside, the telephone wires swooped and dipped from pole to pole, and clouds scudded across the sky.

“Which car are you in?” she asked.

“I’ve got a sleeper,” he said.

“Doctors must make a lot of money.”

“Not this doctor. My mother paid for it.”

“Ah.”

“Ah,” he repeated.

Another silence, longer this time.

“Listen, would you like to be a good Samaritan?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“I mean, if it isn’t any trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”

“I ordered a scotch at dinner and they carded me, would you believe it? I mean, on a goddamn train — where you have to change your watch every five minutes and you never know where the hell you are — they refuse to serve me ’cause I’m not twenty-one. Could you do me an enormous favor and ask the waiter downstairs for a scotch and soda, please, before I die of thirst?”

“I’d be happy to,” he said, and got up at once.

“Wait, let me...”

But he was already on his way.

He came back with two drinks in actual glasses, never mind cardboard containers. His estimation in her eyes went up at least two-thousand percent; she hated to drink whiskey in anything but a glass.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Is your mother paying for these, too?”

“Cheers,” he said in dismissal, and clinked his glass against hers.

“I owe you one,” she said. “Cheers.”

They both drank.

“You have no idea how good this tastes,” she said. “What are you drinking?”

“Gin.”

“I’ve never developed a taste for gin,” she said.

“I feel the same way about scotch.”

They sat sipping their drinks.

Alone with him in the car, alone with him and the stars and the night and the dark silence of the entire universe, she felt as if she’d known him a long, long time.

“Why’d you decide to become a doctor?” she asked.

Her voice softer now, almost a whisper.

“I wanted to help people,” he said.

“That’s totally amazing,” she said. “Because that’s just why I want to be a social worker. So I can help people.”

“I can’t think of anything nobler,” he said.

“I totally agree.”

“I just hope I never change my mind about it. I see so many doctors... well, I’m sure you know. They forget why they went into it in the first place. They forget the purity... the innocence... the dedication. They become nothing more than businessmen of another sort. I hope I never get that way.”

“That’s very beautiful,” she said.

“I mean it sincerely,” he said.

“You’re a very beautiful person,” she said.

“Well... thank you,” he said. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

“Do you feel you’ve known me a long time?” she asked.

“Yes. Since at least this morning,” he said.

“Oh, stop it,” she said, and playfully tapped his hand. “I’m being serious.”

“Yes, I feel I’ve known you a very long time.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Because I do. I feel I can tell you anything I’m thinking... or feeling... or hoping... and you won’t laugh at me. I think that’s very rare. And very beautiful,” she said.

“I think you’re very beautiful,” he said.

“Oh, sure.”

“Gorgeous and intelligent and the youngest fifteen-year-old at UCLA.”

“You know, I really believed you?” she said, turning to him and putting her hand on his arm. “That you thought I was fifteen?”

“You didn’t.”

“I did, I swear to God. I kept wondering, does he really think I’m only fifteen? Do I seem that immature to him?”

“On the contrary. You seem very mature.”

“People are always telling me I seem older than nineteen.”

“Well, you do. There’s a very... serious and sensitive side to you, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Which is in such marvelous contrast to your playfulness.”

“I love having fun, don’t you? Don’t you just love doing fun things?”

“I do.”

“Unexpected things.”

“Yes.”

“Things that... oh, you know!”

She took her hand from his arm, raised it suddenly, tossed it in a What-the-hell gesture, and then put it immediately on his arm again. He covered her hand with his own. She turned to look into his eyes.

“Elita?” he said.

“Yes, Sonny?”

“Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”

“Yes, Sonny,” she said, “I really would.”

She would always remember this night — or at least while it was happening she thought she would remember it always — as the night she stopped being a girl and became a woman. Because no matter what she and the other college girls her age told themselves about being women and wanting to be called women, she knew in her deepest heart that nineteen was still a girl, nineteen was still a teenager, and a teenage girl was simply not a woman, any more than a teenage boy was a man.

Sonny Hemkar was no teenager.

He’s no teenager, Mom. I thought you’d be delighted to learn that. Mom? Please, Mom, come in off that fire escape, okay?

Until now — until this night in his sleeping compartment, the countryside flashing by outside, the train speeding through the darkness — until these deliriously empty hours of the night when she was full of him and full of herself, Elita had known only three men intimately, all of whom she now realized were merely boys, although one of them had been twenty-four years old. Until now—

There was something frightening about the intensity of his passion.

She found herself wanting to say No, don’t kiss me, even as his lips found hers and even though she wanted desperately for him to kiss her. She found herself wanting to protest his hands on her breasts, heard herself actually saying, “No, please don’t touch my breasts,” longing for him to touch her.

He unbuttoned her blouse...

“Please don’t,” she said.

... spread the blouse in a wide V over her bra, his hands cupping her breasts, urging them out of the bra...

Please don’t, she thought.

... her breasts overflowing the bra, “Oh, please no,” she said, her nipples stiffening to his touch.

She had already told him how much she really did want to sleep with him tonight, but now she kept repeating over and over again in her mind and aloud, please don’t, please don’t, breathless in his fierce embrace, terrified by her own response to his ardor.

Never in her life...

His hands were everywhere, her blouse and skirt falling away, dropping to the floor of the compartment in a clinging whisper of cotton and silk. There were suddenly lights outside, flashing past in a blur, some sort of village or town, traffic lights and street lights, window lights, bright circles and rectangles in an otherwise pitch black landscape. The lights flickered momentarily on her breasts and her belly. She was virtually naked now, standing before him in high heels and panties, her bra still fastened but pulled below her breasts. He did not remove the bra. He could easily have unclasped it to allow her breasts complete freedom, but he chose instead to keep them in partial bondage, lifted by the restraining nylon cups, their sloping tops and nipples elevated to his hands.

The lights of the town fell behind.

A new and deeper darkness enclosed them.

In the darkness his lips found her mouth again. His hands consumed her breasts. Her own hands hung limply at her sides. She could feel the nylon of her panties brushing the insides of her arms, just below the elbows. Her panties were wet, she was afraid he would touch her down there and discover that she was soaking wet, but she wanted him to touch her, find her, and she willed him with all her might to let his hand drop between her legs and into her panties where he would find her achingly wet for him, but he would not release her breasts.

She leaned into him, her hands still hanging loose at her sides, leaned into him with her nipples and her breasts, offering them to his passion as if in sacrifice, her entire body seeming to rush upward into her nipples, hard and burning and yielding to his hands where they worked her relentlessly. She was beginning to feel dizzy. She thrust her tongue into his mouth and jutted her hips toward him, searching for him, finding him hard against the nylon panties, don’t take off all my clothes, she thought, please don’t...

Reading her mind... seeming to read her mind... he did not, would not release her from the bra, choosing instead to keep her partially restrained, nipples bursting... did not, would not remove the bikini panties...

But yes, oh Jesus...

Yes.

... rolling them down now, over her hips, down to...

Yes, that’s it, she thought.

... just where the tangle of her pubic hair began...

Find me, she thought.

... the waistband pressing against the upper side of the blond triangle that defined her...

Please don’t, she thought.

She could not later remember how long he kept her poised between girlhood and womanhood. She could not later remember how long she stood there partially clothed, leaning into his questing hands, trembling as he probed her, discovering her wetness, exploiting her wetness, quivering beneath the onslaught of his incessant touch. When at last he lifted her onto the bed and spread her legs to the darkness and to the night and to his brilliant hardness and murderous passion she thought No, don’t fuck me, but he was already fucking her, oh yes how he was fucking her, and she knew she would never in her lifetime be the same again.