Scimitar

7

It had been a long hot Friday, but Saturday was even hotter.

At ten minutes to two that afternoon, the temperature in Washington, D.C., soared to ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, shattering the ninety-eight-degree record set for this day on June 27, 1980.

Agent Samuel Harris Dobbs was sweltering in the lightest-weight seersucker suit he owned. His immediate superior, Daryll Phillips, had taken off his jacket, and pulled down his tie, and was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind his big uncluttered desk, the Treasury Department seal on the wall behind it. But this was the boss’s office here, and Dobbs didn’t feel he could risk the liberty of making himself quite so much at home. Not with Phillips seeming to have a hair across his ass this hot summer day.

“I don’t like surprises,” he told Dobbs.

“Nossir,” Dobbs said.

“I don’t care it’s a president or some sheek fum an Arab nation, it don’t make no never-mind to me.”

“Nossir.”

“I don’t like this last-minute sputterfuss, I got to send a team to New York, beef up the security there.”

Dobbs was thinking he didn’t much like it himself. He had promised Sally they’d take a trip to Pennsylvania next weekend, have a sort of second honeymoon in Bucks County. Booked the room and everything, his wife had been looking forward to it since early May. Now Phillips was telling him he’d have to leave for New York this afternoon, take five other agents with him, be there all weekend and through the first of July. And for what? To make sure security at the goddamn Plaza Hotel would be tight enough to suit the goddamn Republicans, and then to give the New-York field office a hand at the goddamn Canada Day banquet, whatever the hell that was.

Dobbs hated Republican presidents.

He’d learned to hate Reagan and his witchy wife when he was working for them as part of the White House detail, hated all the things the President and his fine lady had stood for. Alone in bed with Sally, Dobbs would rage at how Nixon had only tried to steal the goddamn country whereas Reagan was now trying to murder it. Sally would tell him to hush, Sam, he’d lose his job or something.

He told Sally the only way he’d get out of this rotten job was to throw himself across that son of a bitch when another crazy bastard like Hinckley tried to kill him. That was more than eleven years ago, before he got transferred to the Omaha field office, where he learned how much better it was to be in Washington, even working for Republican presidents. He never stopped believing it was Nancy who’d had him transferred because one day he was thirty seconds late opening a goddamn door for her!

Hating them both, he’d loved all the Reagan jokes they began telling...

There’s this banquet at the White House, okay?

And Reagan is sitting next to Nancy, and one of the White House waiters appears by her side to take her order, explaining that they’re serving either roast beef or filet of sole, which would she prefer?

And Nancy says, “I’ll have the roast beef, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the waiter says. “And the vegetable?”

“He’ll have the same,” Nancy says.

... rejoiced when the son of a bitch got caught with his hand in the Iran-Contra cookie jar, but knew he’d wiggle out of it somehow — gosh, I’m terribly sorry, I just don’t remember.

God, how Dobbs had hated him, still hated him.

But if Reagan had merely killed the nation, it was Bush who was now attempting to bury it, and Dobbs hated him even more than he had his predecessor. In fact, it was a good thing he was no longer part of the White House Secret Service detail; he might have killed this president himself.

Got a domestic crisis?

Just bomb a foreign country.

Follow in the footsteps of the Great Communicator, who’d used military force against Lebanon in 1982, and Grenada in 1983, and Libya in 1986 and finally in Honduras in 1988. The Great Communicator. Who’d once sent a Bible as a gift to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of a Moslem nation. Bombs and bibles, how stupid could a person get?

So along comes Haji Bush, hero to millions, conqueror of Iraq, a fearsome nation with the gross national product of Kentucky, still bloated with his Commander-in-Chief importance, still managing to ignore the minor problems like dope, crime, collapsing cities, and civil rights so long as the Big Parade went on and on and on. The Washington newspapers were full of scathing editorials about him running off to New York where, golly, he could stand before that lady in the harbor on the Fourth of July, and, gee, wrap himself in the flag yet another time, and, wow, take advantage of all those big patriotic sound bites in an election year.

Reagan and Bush.

Two presidents too many.

Dobbs hated them both.

“Here’re your plane tickets,” Phillips said. “Enjoy the trip.”

They each had different agendas.

Sonny was here to observe and to record.

Elita was here on an outing.

In the distance, they could both see the Statue of Liberty sitting far out on the water, the sky clear behind it. But Sonny was registering a sign advising that Battery Park closed at 1:00 A.M., and Elita was noticing a pair of lovers strolling hand in hand, one white, the other Asian. On her right, Elita saw a man selling green, foam-rubber, Statue-of-Liberty crowns, and wondered if she would appear childish buying one. On his left, Sonny saw a low, greyish-brick building with the metallic letters UNITED STATES COAST GUARD across its facade — and wondered if there would be Coast Guard cruisers circling the island when the President made his Independence Day speech.

They bought tickets for the ferry in a round, red brick building that reminded Elita of a sun-washed cloister, and Sonny of a roofless fortress. The tickets cost six dollars each. Sonny had a camera around his neck. He posed her in front of a large posterlike sign headlined PLANNING YOUR VISIT TO LIBERTY ISLAND.

They boarded the ferry at two-fifteen.

Elita was wearing running shorts, a white T-shirt, and sandals. Sonny noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He was wearing chinos, a striped polo shirt and jogging shoes. She thought he looked exceedingly handsome, dressed so casually. She did not know that he had dressed to blend in with what he’d suspected would be a tourist crowd.

There was a babble of foreign tongues everywhere around them. Elita found the mix of nationalities exciting; Sonny found them boring. He understood many of the languages, but did not reveal this fact to Elita. A French girl reading aloud from a guidebook to New York City was informing her friends that the island they were heading toward was once called Bedloe’s Island and was the site of the old Fort Hood, the outlines of which now formed the starlike base of the statue. Sonny found her voice monotonous. A German girl approached a man whom she’d heard speaking in her own language, and asked if she could have a single cigarette — eine einzige Zigarette, bitte — because there was no place to buy any on the boat. Sonny found her bold. The man gave her the cigarette she’d begged, and then, in English, asked, “Do you have fire?”

“Danke ja, ich habe,” she said, and went back to where she’d been sitting on the port side of the ferry.

The ferry was called Miss Liberty. It was moving out from Battery Park now in a southwesterly direction, approaching toward the distant copper statue from her right, where she clutched a tablet in the crook of her arm...

“... sur laquelle est écrite la date du quatre juillet, dix-sept cent soixante-seize...”

“How thrilling it must have been,” Elita said over the sound of the French girl’s voice. “Approaching her as they came into the harbor.”

“Yes,” Sonny said.

“The immigrants, I mean.”

“Yes.”

He was wondering how he would get back to the mainland once he’d accomplished his mission.

The soaring downtown towers of the financial district were behind them now; the island and Liberty were coming closer and closer. A Japanese girl sat beside him and began changing the film in her camera. She was wearing a T-shirt that read DISNEYLAND, TOKYO. Her friend said something to her in Japanese, which Sonny could not understand. A Hassidic Jew in a black suit, flat black hat, and snowy white beard stood at the railing, staring beyond Liberty to where Ellis Island sat on the horizon. The French girl kept babbling from the guide book...

“... fond de la base jusqu’à la torche est quarante-six virgule cinq mètres. Pour avoir accès à la couronne, il faut monter trois cent cinquante-quatre...”

The pilot of the ferry headed her straight for marker thirty-one, then brought her around so that she slowly revealed the statue first in profile, then in a three-quarter view, and then dead-on, the folds of her garments cascading to the pedestal in a flow of green copper, the left arm cradling the tablet, the sleeve of the raised right arm falling back, the golden torch in her right hand capturing the rays of the early afternoon sun, the sky behind her a vibrant blue. Viewing the statue as the boat circled her, revealing her as if in separate frames of motion picture film, Elita felt a fierce patriotic pride mixed with a sense of place and history. Sonny felt nothing.

The boat circled the island and came into the dock. In the distance, Elita could see the American flag flying from a tall flagpole. This, too, thrilled her. Sonny was busy looking down at a sign on the dock:

They came down the gangway and onto the dock. A high shed-like structure opened onto a wooden walkway that led to a huge brick-paved circle at the center of which stood the flagpole Elita had seen from the deck of the ferry. A tree-flanked esplanade — similarly paved with brick and ornamented with rectangles outlined in blue tile — led to the rear of the statue, standing tall on her pediment, a seeming halo of light around her crown.

“What happened to you at the train station?” Elita asked. She’d been dying to ask this from the moment he’d called, but had only now found the courage to do so.

“First, I couldn’t find a porter,” he said. “Next, I ran into a guy I went to Princeton with, and he dragged me off to...”

“But I was standing there waiting for...”

“Well, I had your number. I figured you knew I’d call.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“But I did.”

“It’s been three days.”

“I lost the slip of paper.”

“What slip of paper?”

“The one I wrote the number on.”

“Then why didn’t you look it up in the phone book?”

“I didn’t know your mother’s first name. There are dozens of Randalls in the Manhattan...”

“She uses her maiden name now. It’s...”

“Besides, I finally found the slip of paper.”

“Well, in case you lose it again, her name’s...”

“I’ve already written it in my book.”

A National Park Service ranger wearing olive drab trousers, a tannish-green shirt and a Smokey the Bear hat was waving tourists onto one or another line on either side of the center doors leading into the base. He was a tall, burly man with blue eyes and a reddish-brown mustache, and he kept chanting, “Admission is to the right or left. No admission through the center doors. Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go.”

“Excuse me,” Sonny said.

“Yeah?” the ranger said, and then immediately to the approaching crowd, “Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go. No admission through the center doors. Yeah?” he said again.

“How do we know which line to get on?” Sonny asked.

There was a National Park Service patch sewn to the ranger’s shirt over his left pectoral. A little brass National Park Service shield was pinned over the pectoral on the right. Below the shield was a narrow brass rectangle with the ranger’s name stamped onto it: ALVIN RHODES.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Well, until we know which line goes where,” Sonny said, “how can we...?”

“The line on the left is for people who don’t know where they’re going,” the ranger snapped, and then began chanting again, “Admission is to the right or left, depending where you want to go. No admission through the...”

As it turned out, the line on the left wasn’t for people who didn’t know where they were going, but was instead for people who wanted to climb the stairs going up to the crown. A girl tending the rope at the head of the line told Sonny they were looking at a twenty-two-story climb...

“That’s three hundred and fifty-four steps,” she said.

... and maybe a wait of two to three hours. If they wanted her advice, they’d get on the other line and take the elevator up to the pedestal.

“Get a good view of the harbor all around that way, save yourself a lot of sweat and strain. Here’s a plan, shows you where the pedestal is,” she said, and handed him a printed drawing of the “Planning Your Visit” sign he’d photographed on the mainland:

“What do you think?” he asked Elita.

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

“I’ll let you through,” the girl said. “Just cross over to the other line.”

“Thank you,” Sonny said.

He was thinking he would remember Alvin Rhodes. He was thinking, I hope you’re here on the Fourth, Alvin.

They were in the open space where Liberty’s original torch was now displayed, a large rectangle surrounded by an upper level, which he guessed was the Second Level indicated on the Planning Your Visit sketch. As they walked toward the people waiting on line for the elevator, Sonny looked up and saw signs indicating there were restrooms upstairs. He spotted a staircase, took Elita’s elbow, said, “There are restrooms up there,” and led her toward the steps. She wondered if he had read her mind.

The men’s room was on one side of the open rectangle, the ladies’ room on the other. Again, their agendas were different. Elita simply had to pee. Sonny was looking for a likely lay-in spot, should the plan call for one. An open wooden door led into an angled alcove that shielded the men’s room from the corridor outside. He ran his palm over the door, seemingly studying the paint job, while actually checking out the lock. A man passing by looked at him curiously, and Sonny said, as if commenting admiringly, “They painted it to look like bronze,” which in fact they had. The man nodded in vague agreement and hurried into one of the stalls. The lock on the door was a spring latch, fitted with a keyway on the outside. A wooden wedge held the door open. Sonny glanced behind the door and saw a push bar on the inside. Mickey Mouse time.

There was another door in the little alcove, painted grey and right-angled to the entrance door. Someone had left it either accidentally or deliberately ajar, open perhaps some eight to ten inches. As Sonny passed it, he glanced into the darkened room beyond and saw a pail with a mop in it. The room was a utility closet. The outside of the door was fitted with a circular keyway. He walked past at once, hurrying through into the main section of the restroom. There were the requisite number of urinals, stalls and sinks. You could lay in overnight in a stall, but if a cleaning man came in to mop up—

The man who’d agreed with him about the imitation bronze door was coming out of the closest stall. He washed his hands at one of the sinks, glanced sourly at the blowers attached to the wall, dried his hands on his handkerchief instead, and left the room. Sonny took a position at the end of the row of urinals. A man at the other end was taking forever to pee. Sonny waited for him to finish, waited for him to leave the room — without washing his hands — and then zipped up his fly. He went to the sinks, quickly washed his hands, dried them inadequately on one of the wall blowers, and moved immediately to the grey utility closet door. He yanked the door all the way open, checked its inside surface in an instant. A thumb latch. Nothing else. No knob on the door, no push bar. Just the latch, designed to spring the lock in case someone accidentally trapped himself inside. He feigned elaborate surprise at having entered a closet. But there was no one in sight as he backed out into the alcove again; his little act hadn’t been necessary at all.

Elita was waiting for him in the corridor. He glanced over the railing, said, “That elevator line looks long,” and suggested that they walk up to the pedestal.

It turned out there was no way they could walk all the way up. But the steps at the far end of the corridor went up to a landing and then another flight of stairs, ten steps in each flight, and then to a level with some kind of telephone exhibit that was out of order at the moment...

Out of order, he thought. Yes. Good.

... and then two shorter flights of steps leading up to three pairs of exit doors fashioned of thick plate glass framed in bronze — real bronze this time. Deadbolts on all of them, inside and out. He pushed open one of the doors in the middle set, and allowed Elita to precede him outside, where he took a picture of her standing beside a stanchioned sign that read STAIRS TO GROUND LEVEL, with an arrow pointing toward the doors they’d just come through.

They walked all around the star-shaped level; this was where the old fort had stood. Actually the shape was less a star than a square with a series of angular bastions protruding from it, two on each side except for the one facing the harbor channel, where a larger bastion jutted out. Standing at the point of this larger abutment, looking up directly into the statue’s face some hundred or more feet above, it was easy to see why the sculptor had oriented the front of his statue in this direction, at the mouth of the Hudson, and visible to any vessel passing through the Narrows.

It was also easy to determine that here was where the President would give his Independence Day speech. Here where the television cameras could pan up and away from Bush’s solemn, sincere, candidate’s face to the great impassive face of the lady in the bay. Whether they set up the speaker’s stand and microphones on this level... or the level above... or the one above that...

“Let’s see if there are any more stairs going up,” Sonny suggested.

“This is fun, isn’t it?” Elita said, and squeezed his hand.

She stood virtually naked in her mother’s bedroom, the room cool and dim now that sunshine had abandoned the Park Avenue side of the building, Sonny standing behind her, his hands on her breasts as they faced the vanity mirror. She could feel him stiff against her, erect between her cheeks, watching herself in the mirror, watching them both in her mother’s mirror.

She was wearing a white garter belt she’d taken from her mother’s lingerie drawer, sheer white nylon stockings, red patent-leather, ankle-strapped, outrageously high-heeled pumps, also her mother’s. She looked like a recklessly disheveled nurse wearing chorus-girl shoes designed by the devil. The shoes lifted her buttocks, raised them to his probing cock. She hoped he wouldn’t try to...

“Bend over,” he said.

“Listen, I don’t want you to...”

“Hands flat against the mirror.”

She leaned into the mirror, obeying him, palms flat against it, face turned, cheek against the reflecting glass. She was truly frightened now, there was something about him that was sometimes terrifying.

“Lift it to me,” he said.

“Please don’t,” she said.

And felt him probing her nether lips, felt him sliding familiarly into her wetness below, and lifted herself to him in gratitude and relief. Standing taller in her mother’s heels, she accepted him deeper inside her, and began throbbing almost at once, wave after wave of uncontrollable spasm seizing her as she strained against him, gasping, accepting him completely, melting against him, dizzy with pleasure, flush and faint and “Fuck me,” she said, “fuck me, oh fuck me...”

She lay beside him on her mother’s bed. His eyes were closed. He looked utterly peaceful and relaxed. She wondered if he’d learned to do all those things in medical school. The things he did to her. Did they teach you that in medical school?

“How many girls have you done this to?” she asked.

“Done what to?”

“What we just did.”

“Thousands,” he said.

“I’m serious,” she said. “How many?”

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine,” he said.

He was kidding, of course.

Wasn’t he?

“No, seriously,” she said.

“Why do you want to know?”

His eyes were still closed. With her forefinger, she began tracing the green scimitar tattoo on the underside of his left pectoral.

“I want to be special,” she said.

“You are special.”

“How am I special?”

“You’re passionate, and...”

“Well, anyone can be passion...”

“And responsive, and inventive, and...”

“How am I inventive?”

“You have a lively, inquisitive...”

“Mind? Give me a break.”

“Cunt, I was about to say.”

She fell silent. Finger still idly tracing the tattoo, wondering if she could dare...

She decided to risk it.

“I don’t like that word,” she said.

“Oh?” he said, and seemed to go suddenly tense beside her.

Immediately she said, “I didn’t mean...”

“That’s okay,” he said, and sat up. He turned to her, smiled in polite dismissal, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and began walking toward where he’d draped his clothes over her mother’s chaise lounge.

“Sonny?” she said.

“Yes?”

“What’d I say?”

“Nothing,” he said, and pulled on his Jockey shorts.

“Where... where are you going?”

“Home,” he said.

She was off the bed in an instant, rushing naked to him. He was reaching for his trousers. “No, don’t go,” she said, and hurled herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Let go,” he said.

“Sonny, please, I didn’t mean to...”

“I said let go.”

“Please, I’m sorry, please don’t...”

The telephone rang.

“Answer your phone,” he said.

“Sonny, I don’t want you to...”

“Answer it,” he said.

She went back to her mother’s bed, lifted the receiver on the bedside phone, said “Hello” dully, and watched him as he pulled on his trousers and reached for his shirt.

“Miss Randall?”

“Yes, who...?”

And recognized his voice. The jerk from the British consulate.

“This is Geoffrey Turner,” he said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“As a matter of fact...”

“I’ve run your friend’s name through the computer,” he said. “I’m happy to say...”

“I’ve already found him,” she said. “Thanks, anyway.”

“Well, good,” he said. “If I can be of any...”

She covered the mouthpiece.

“Sonny, wait,” she said.

“... further assistance...”

“Thank you,” she said, “I appreciate...”

And covered the mouthpiece again.

“Sonny, please!”

“Miss Randall...”

“Please, I’m very busy just...”

“I was wondering if you might be free for...”

“Thank you,” she said again, and hastily put the receiver back onto its cradle and hurried across the room to where Sonny was sitting on her mother’s plush velvet ottoman now, putting on his loafers. She forced herself onto his lap, threw her arms around his neck, lifted her lips to his face, tried to kiss him on the mouth, but he twisted away from her. She kissed his cheeks instead, his nose, his forehead, showered his face with kisses, murmuring “Please, Sonny, I love you, please, oh please...”

His voice low and steady, the words measured, he said, “Don’t ever tell me what you don’t like.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“Ever,” he said.

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Now get over there,” he said.

She looked bewildered for a moment. Where did he want her? In front of the mirror again? Or was he...?

“The bed.”

Fearful she would anger him again, terrified she would lose him completely, she moved swiftly to the bed and sat on its edge.

“Lie down,” he said.

She nodded obediently. Swung her legs onto the bed. Raised herself on her elbows to look toward where he was still standing motionless near the ottoman. Her heart was pounding, she could scarcely breathe.

She now knew that she would do whatever he asked her to do.

Whenever.

Forever.

The story was on page eight of that afternoon’s New York Post. Santorini easily could have missed it, especially since he was eating a meatball grinder while reading the paper and was concentrating on not getting tomato sauce all over himself.

The story said that Margaret Thatcher would be here on the first of July, to attend a Canada Day celebration at the Plaza Hotel.

Santorini looked at his calendar.

The first was a Wednesday.

Four days from now.

Only yesterday, the FBI nemesis of Eastern cattle rustlers had briefed him on the counter-intelligence panic that had followed the 1986 bombing of Tripoli. At the time, the CIA, the FBI, and Britain’s counter-intelligence people were all convinced that the Libyan leader had dispatched hit teams to kill Ronald Reagan for having ordered the raid, and Margaret Thatcher for having allowed the American bombers to overfly her country. Only after months had gone by without any actual assassination attempts were the concerned agencies able to relax their vigilance.

“But green is Libya’s color,” Grant had told him.

“Green, huh?” Santorini said.

“Green. Their flag used to be red, white and black with a little gold eagle on it...”

“Little gold eagle, huh?”

“Yes, but Quaddafi changed it to solid green. The whole thing’s green. Just this big solid green flag.”

“Solid green, huh?”

“Green, right. Now your scimitar, come to think of it, is on the Saudi Arabian flag, with some squiggly Arab writing above it, probably means Allah be praised or some such shit. And that’s a green flag, too, though not solid green like the Libyan one.”

“So maybe this is something Saudi Arabian, huh?” Santorini said.

“Well, it could be anything, who knows with those troublemakers over there? If the Israeli flag was green, I wouldn’t put it past those lunatics, either. The whole Middle East is full of maniacs, you ask me. But theirs is blue and white with a Star of David on it.”

“Blue and white, uh-huh. The Israeli flag.”

“Yes. But Libya has a thing about green, you see.”

“A thing about green, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, you know, Quaddafi’s got this vision about a state based on the masses — pretty original, huh? — which he tells all about in these three little booklets he calls the Green Book.”

“Three of them, huh?”

“Yeah, but he calls all three of them the Green Book. Singular.”

“Why singular?”

“Go ask him.”

“Or green?”

“Who knows with these lunatics? The point, man, is your swords are green, am I right? The tattoos? So maybe this is something Libyan, who the hell knows?”

Especially since Margaret Thatcher’s coming to town, Santorini thought, and we’ve already got two dead British ladies on our hands.