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

  She wondered where Scott was now.

  Wondered when he’d be coming back.

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

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

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

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

  This had to be fate.

  This had to be written on his forehead.

  A shelf displaying insecticides.

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

  ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS: This pesticide is toxic to fish. Keep out of lakes, ponds or streams. Do not contaminate water when disposing of equipment washwaters. For additional information write Roweena Walsh, Raxon Products, Inc. P.O. Box 732, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, or call toll free …

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

  He had nothing to lose.

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

  What the hell was he?

  Who the hell was he?

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

  Why all these different means of identification?

  The Plaza.

  Hadn’t Elita told her …?

  She was suddenly frightened.

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

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

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

  He listened.

  A trained listener could hear a flea breathing.

  He heard nothing.

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

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

  “Scott?”

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

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

  “Hi,” she said.

  Smiling.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Eyes flicking the room.

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

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

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Oh, five minutes or so.”

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

  “How’d you get in?” he asked.

  “Back door was unlocked.”

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

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

  “In a minute,” he said.

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

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

  He did not answer her.

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

  “What’d you find?” he asked.

  “What?” she said.

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

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

  Blue eyes wide. Frightened.

  “Did you find the ID cards?” he said.

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

  “What ID cards?” she said.

  Her voice was quavering. She was lying.

  “What else did you find?” he asked.

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

  But her voice was still quavering.

  “You’re lying,” he said.

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

  She collapsed against him.

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

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

  11

  There were people in Washington, D.C., who believed there was no such thing as the CIA. These people reasonably surmised that any intelligence agency so blatantly blundering had to be a cover for America’s real spy network. Alex Nichols didn’t work in Washington, but he was one of those people. Moreover, he worked for the CIA.

  His recruitment had taken place on a bright fall day at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the clock tower bonging the hour, playhouse posters announcing the arrival of a PTP play starring James Whitmore and Audra Lindley. Something called The Magician. Or The Conjuror. Or The Illusionist. Something like that. Young Alex—he was only twenty-one at the time—noticed the posters only peripherally. His head was full of visions of derring-do, a spy! He could hardly wait to tell his mother.

  That was twenty-three years ago. Alex was now forty-four, and more convinced than ever that he was merely part of a gigantic cover operation that concealed a spy mechanism too awesome to behold. The two men with him today in the New York field office were also part of the cover. They could not possibly have been as stupid as they seemed. This was all a masquerade. Outside the office, the first day of July had announced its arrival in a determinedly sizzling fashion. The men were in their shirtsleeves. It was nine o’clock in the morning. They were here to discuss the letter on Alex’s desk.

  “It’s obviously a fake,” Peggot said.

  Moss Peggot, unfortunately named in that his features were somewhat porcine and spooks everywhere around him called him “Miss Piggy,” albeit behind his back. A measure of his quality as a spy was that he still didn’t know about the nickname. Short and squat, the armpits of his shirt stained with sweat, his face florid and damp, he looked to Alex for approval. Alex was his boss.

  “I’ll bet Moss is right,” Templeton said.

  Conrad Templeton, a spy who dressed like a college professor in the vain hope that anyone on his trail would accept him as a professor of English literature at Columbia University, where in fact he did teach a course on Milton. Were it not for the heat, he would be in tweeds and a ratty wool cardigan sweater. Then again, the school term would not begin till September. Not to be denied, he was puffing on a pipe. Professor Conrad Templeton. You could’ve fooled me, Alex thought.

  The letter on his desk looked genuine enough:

  OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

  WASHINGTON

  April 10, 1986

  Dear Mr. President:

  I have now carefully studied the intelligence reports supplied by Mr. Casey and have met with Colonel North and heard his views on the meetings of the Crisis Pre-Planning Group. There is now no doubt in my mind that:

  1) Libya provided the passports, money and terrorist training for the two airport attacks in December of last year, one in Rome, the other in Vienna. Five American civilians were killed in those attacks, one of them an eleven-year-old girl.

  2) Intercepted telephone calls to Tripoli from the People’s Bureau in East Berlin, prior to and immediately following the bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin on April 4 this year, constitute irrefutable “smoking-gun” evidence that the bombing was planned and executed by Libyans working for the People’s Bureau in East Berlin, under direct orders from Colonel Muammar Quaddafi. One American was killed and twenty-three other Americans injured in the attack.

  3) There is now hard and convincing evidence that Quaddafi divulged to President Megistu of Ethiopia his plan to have the President of the United States killed while traveling in a presidential convoy. CIA reports confirm that Libyan hit teams operating on a “stray dog” basis have targeted the President of the United States for assassination.

  Given the failure of the economic sanctions imposed upon Libya in January of this year, having carefully studied the reports cited above as well as those of my own Task Force on Combating Terrorism, it is now my duty and obligation to ask that you disregard the CIA’s advice against seeking the removal of Colonel Quaddafi through a surgical bombing attack on Libya, and proceed with the recommendations proposed by the Crisis Pre-Planning Group.

  Mr. President, the time has never been more propitious for Quaddafi’s removal. The American people perceive Quaddafi as an eccentric troublemaker spoiling to bring open conflict to the Middle East. There is a built-in animosity toward the man, supported by recent reports of his bizarre personal behavior. The public is ready to accept whatever action we may take to curb the mad dog of the Middle East.

  I urge you, therefore, to confer at your soonest convenience with Messrs Regan and Weinberger, Vice Admiral Poindexter, Colonel North, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to implement at once a plan for immediate military action.

  My kindest regards,

  George Bush

  “Has the signature been checked?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a good forgery, but not good enough. Here’s the President’s real signature—from letters he wrote back in 1986,” Peggot said, and put the sample on Alex’s desk:

  “But the signature on the letter more closely resembles this,” Peggot said, and produced another document:

  “This is the President’s current signature. Signatures change over the years, you know …”

  “Yes, I know,” Alex said drily.

  “What I’m saying,” Peggot said, “is that the signature on this letter was obviously premised on the President’s current signature. The letter could not possibly have been written in April of 1986, as it purports to have been.”

  Purports, Alex thought. A typical Peggot word.

  “How about the stationery?” he asked.

  “Well, this is a copy of the letter, of course,” Templeton said, puffing on his pipe and stinking up Alex’s entire office. “But vice-presidential stationery would be relatively easy to come by.”

  “Anyone worth his salt,” Peggot said, nodding in agreement.

  “We’ve tracked the typewriter type,” Templeton said. “The letter was typed on an IBM Selectric. A fair number of them are still shipped to the Middle East, by the way. The typeface is Prestige Pica 72.”

  “Are you saying the letter originated somewhere in the Middle East?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Very possibly,” Peggot said, and nodded again.

  “Where’d it turn up?”

  “The letter? You understand we haven’t located the actual typewri …”

  “Yes,” Alex said, and refrained from rolling his eyes heavenward. “The letter. Where did it surface?”

  “A digger in Tripoli passed it to one of our people.”

  “Reliable.”

  “Our man?”

  “No, the digger.”

  “Oh. Yes, so far.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “She. Someone at GID copied it for her.”

  “Who?”

  “Confidential source. She won’t reveal it.”

  “Mm,” Alex said.

  The General Investigation Directorate, familiarly called the GID by American and British agents, was once headed jointly by Police Colonel Mohammed Al-Ghazali and a man from Benghazi named Sáed Bin Ūmran, who’d been recently muzzled and put on the shelf. Al-Ghazali reported directly to the Secretariat for External Security, which was formed in 1984 by order of the General People’s Congress, and whose responsibilities included the supervision and coordination of all Libyan intelligence and counterintelligence operations, including those of the GID. There was only one intelligence group controlled directly by Quaddafi, with no intermediaries. The only thing the CIA knew about this elite organization was its name: Scimitar.

  “My suggestion is to forget all about the letter,” Peggot said.

  “Why?” Alex asked.

  “It’s obviously false,” Templeton said, and looked into the bowl of his pipe to see if it was still lit.

  “What’s it doing in Libya?” Alex asked.

  “What difference does it make?” Peggot said.

  “How’d it get there?” Alex said.

  “Who cares?” Templeton said. “It’s a forgery.”

  Which is exactly the point, Alex thought.

  Sonny set the nozzle on the plastic bottle to the STREAM position.

  Standing on the beach, he pulled the trigger.

  A stream of insecticide shot out some fifteen to twenty feet, exactly as promised on the bottle’s label. To make certain the first shot wasn’t just a freak, h
e tried it a dozen times. Not once did the stream fall short of the advertised distance. Moreover, he was able to trigger off fifteen shots every five seconds.

  He first practiced on the flat because that was what the terrain would be tonight. But if he had to wait till the Fourth, he had to be certain he could hit the President with a deadly stream of poison from above.

  In the sand below the upstairs deck of the beach house, he positioned a metal pail some eight feet out from the house. He estimated that the deck was eighteen feet or so above ground level. He climbed the staircase, and took position behind the railing, the bottle of insecticide in his hand. He felt as if he were standing at the counter of a carnival shooting gallery, aiming a water gun at a bull’s-eye that would move a mechanical rabbit uphill. Each time a stream of water hit the bull’s-eye, the rabbit would move up a notch. Whenever one of the rabbits went over the top, a bell would ring, signaling a winner.

  No bells went off in the sand today.

  But after a handful of test shots, he found he could accurately direct a stream that fell in a shower of smaller droplets into or onto the pail. Nor was it even necessary to hit the exact center of the pail each time; the radius of the falling drops was wide enough to encompass at least some part of it, and that was quite enough.

  But he kept practicing.

  A little girl walking toward the steps leading over the dune stopped to watch him.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked. Five or six years old, he guessed, and fascinated.

  “Trying to get this stuff in the pail,” Sonny said, and went right on with his work.

  The little girl kept watching.

  Different agendas, he thought.

  “Why?” she asked at last.

  “Oh, just for fun,” Sonny said.

  “Can I try?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Sonny said.

  “Why not?”

  “Too dangerous,” he said.

  The little girl watched awhile longer and then, bored, climbed the steps and disappeared from sight. Sonny kept practicing, triggering off three shots every second, swinging the bottle in an arc now to cover an even wider radius each time.