“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.