Threat Level Black

Chapter 1

Fisher stood at the window of the Scramdale-on-Hudson train station, gazing out at the parking lot as it filled with morning commuters. There were more luxury SUVs per square inch in Scramdale-on-Hudson than anywhere in the universe. This was no doubt a function of the difficult terrain, where investment bankers and entertainment lawyers daily negotiated such dangers as overfertilized lawns and exotic clematis.

The parade of Mercedes and BMWs up to the station was broken every so often by a Volvo wagon, undoubtedly driven by renegade hippies struggling to get by on trust fund money. It was a good bet their nannies lugged D. H. Lawrence in their diaper bags rather than the de rigueur Shakespeare to read aloud at naptime.

Fisher lit a cigarette as a Crown Vic appeared in the parade. The car was stopped twice by the lot attendants, trying to enforce local regulations against riffraff. Fisher ambled down the steps as the car finally pulled up. He tossed his cigarette to the curb and got in.

“You better pick up the butt or they may give you a ticket for littering,” said Macklin, who was behind the wheel.

“If you drive out to the end of the lot you can cut over the dirt and get onto the highway.”

“That’ll get us going back toward the city,” said Macklin.

“That’s where we want to go.”

“Why?”

“I want to talk to Mrs. DeGarmo again.”

“Faud’s landlady?”

“Yeah. She’s the only woman in Queens who knows how to make a good cup of coffee. The stuff they have at the station is atrocious.”

Mrs. DeGarmo remembered Fisher a little too well.

“It’s about time you come back,” she said, laying on the bad grammar and Italian accent for effect when he and Macklin rang the bell. “The leak, she still leaks.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Fisher. “This is my assistant,” he added, gesturing to Macklin. “He’s an expert in leaks.”

“Where’s your tools?” asked Mrs. DeGarmo.

“We investigate, then we get the proper tools,” said Fisher. “Is that coffee I smell?”

She eyed Macklin suspiciously.

“I brought more doughnuts,” said Fisher, holding up the bag.

“All right, you come in,” she told Fisher. Then she turned back to Macklin. “You, I don’t know about.”

“Mrs. DeGarmo, we’ve met before,” said Macklin. “I’m with Homeland Security. Remember?”

She squinted at the ID card he produced.

“Oh, okay, come in,” she said, waving her hand. “If Andy says.”

“He’s good with a flashlight,” said Fisher, who was already in the hallway.

Fisher went into the bathroom, taking off the top to the toilet tank.

“It’s already been searched, Andy,” said Macklin, coming in. “I keep telling you. Faud Daraghmeh’s probably back in Egypt.”

“He’s from Yemen.”

“Whatever.”

Fisher searched the bathroom carefully, discovering that Mrs. DeGarmo had changed her denture cream. He asked her for the key to Faud Daraghmeh’s apartment, which had not yet been rented out.

“Why search again?” asked Macklin when he came back downstairs. By now Mrs. DeGarmo’s “stories” were on and she was in the front room, watching them.

“Best place to hide something now,” explained Fisher, helping himself to some coffee. “Come back after it’s been searched.”

“No way,” said Macklin.

Fisher sipped the coffee, which was ever more bitter than he remembered. He wondered if maybe he should go into the plumbing business so he’d have a legitimate excuse to visit Mrs. DeGarmo when the case ended.

“You’re grasping at straws, Andy,” added Macklin. “You know this case is closed.”

Fisher said nothing, examining the list of items seized during the earlier search. Faud’s computer had checked out clean; besides his schoolbooks, the only papers he had in his apartment had been junk mail. He had two pairs of “battered dress shoes,” three red button-down shirts, assorted T-shirts, one pair of polyester pants, two pairs of dress pants, and one pair of jeans.

No suitcase? No backpack?

No underwear or socks.

Fisher took a long sip of coffee. The grains from the bottom of the cup settled on his tongue.

Heaven. But he had no time to linger.

“All right,” he told Macklin. “Let’s get going.”

“Where?”

“Library.”

According to the want ads, there had been more than a dozen vacant apartments in the immediate area the week before. Ruling out ones still advertised this week, Fisher found eight possibilities. He also got a list of apartment brokers.

“You have your people go to each one with the description of Faud Daraghmeh,” Fisher told Macklin, giving him the list. “It’s probable that he’d take an apartment within ten or so blocks of the train, something easy to walk.”

“Why don’t you think they already had a place set up somewhere else?” said Macklin.

“I do. But we haven’t found it, and this is the grasping-at-straws phase of the case,” said Fisher. “So we have some serious grasping to do.”

“Andy, the case is closed,” said Macklin. “It’s done. Don’t you think?”

“No,” said Fisher. “And I’ll tell you something else: The fact that we can’t find this guy makes me worry. A lot.”

“You’re worrying? Really?”

“That’s my point,” said Fisher.

Fisher made his way into Manhattan and up to Washington Heights, where he went not to the apartment that had been raided but to the shoe repair shop across the street. The proprietor stood at his workbench behind the front counter, looking exactly as he had when Fisher had last been there. The only sign that he had moved in the interim was the fact that there were no cobwebs or dust on him.

“You’ve come for the other heel,” said the man when Fisher walked in.

“I’m always looking for other heels,” said Fisher. “You remember me?”

“I fixed your right heel the other day.” The man pointed to a book of tickets. “You’re number 657A92. You take a D width. Wide foot.”

“Wide foot, big brain,” said Fisher. He slipped off his left shoe. “How much?”

“Ehh. Ten dollars. Two minutes.”

Fisher reached for his wallet.

“No, you pay when it’s finished.” The cobbler reached over to the side of his bench and pulled over a thick book of customer tickets. “Here. Fill this out.”

“What? Another one?”

“Every job gets a new receipt,” said the man. “Everyone comes into the shop — new ticket.”

“Everyone?”

“Sí. I have this shop for fifty years. Every customer gets a receipt. You know how many shoes I lose? None. Because they have a receipt. That is the secret to a fine business. Receipts.”

“Even for ten minutes?”

“Every customer has to have a ticket,” the man assured Fisher. “Every one. Address and phone number. Those are the rules. You think I stay in business for fifty years without a system? You make one exception, you know what you get?”

“Tennis shoes,” said Fisher.

The proprietor nodded grimly.

“Your helpers do that too? Fill out receipts.”

“My helpers? Of course.” The cobbler frowned. “Someone comes in, they make out a ticket.”

“Just to talk?”

“No talking. Work only.” The man’s frown deepened. “Maybe that’s why they quit, eh? They don’t even have the respect to tell me to my face. I have to guess when I don’t see them. These people.”

“They spend a lot of time talking to people when they worked here? Friends or anything?”

“No talk. I pay good money to work. Work only. No friends. None.”

“No one?”

“Everyone who comes in: shoes and a ticket. You want to talk, you go to Joe’s down the street.” He gestured in the direction of a barber. “He talks. Aiyeee, he talks. Numbers too.”

“Did they know any customers?”

The cobbler rubbed his chin with his little tack hammer. “Well, customers. They bring a few. That’s good for business.”

“They filled out a ticket?”

“All the time. Those are the rules.”

The tickets were discarded once the book was filled, but by then the important customer information had been added to the owner’s permanent records. Each night after closing, the cobbler copied the day’s ticket stub information into a black-and-white marble notebook of the sort schoolchildren once used before the days of PDAs.

“See, is guaranteed,” explained the cobbler. “A sole, guaranteed for the life of the shoe. What if you come in next year, you say I have given you a sole, when all I did was the heel? Ehhh.” He waved his hand as if he were smacking an imaginary cheater.

“You don’t remember your work?” said Fisher.

“Oh, I remember, but this way, I put it on paper, the customer just nods. I learn in the early days. Believe me, people cheat you.”

“I’ll bet,” said Fisher.

After Fisher’s heel was fixed and paid for, they sat together going over the notebooks from the past six months. Fisher jotted down addresses of people the cobbler didn’t recognize as being longtime residents of the area.

It amounted to only three entries. Each name was Arabic, though that was hardly telling in New York.

Fisher found a cab that had somehow strayed uptown in error and went to check out the addresses. One was over on Amsterdam Avenue, a few blocks away in a large apartment complex; the second was up in Inwood, the very northern tip of the island. And the third one didn’t exist.

Which naturally made it the most interesting of all.

Chapter 2

The bomb had already been made for him. All Faud had to do was put the wiring in and set it in the hallway. He had been warned to follow the directions very carefully or face catastrophe. He worried now as he stood with the wire over the connector: Had he followed the steps precisely right?

Surely he had, he told himself. It was a devil again distracting him. The imam had warned him of this.

Seeing the imam had been a surprise and a great consolation. He was prepared now. He had told himself before that he was prepared, but now he truly felt it.

The truck would be waiting. He would take the canister he had prepared and then drive to the station. So long as he went in at precisely two A.M., no one would see him. Once past the gate — he had practiced jimmying the lock already — no one would stop him or even ask about the bags he carried.

He could open them if asked. The gear inside looked as if it came from the fire department.

If all went well, he would be in his spot by four o’clock. And then he would simply have to wait.

Pray and wait. Things he was used to doing.

Faud’s fingers shook as he brought the wire near the connector on the bomb he was setting. Worry seized him.

What if the imam had lied? What if this bomb was not a diversion in case he was found, but a way of killing him?

The top was covered with a mesh bag of nails. His body would be torn to shreds.

He was unprepared and would not enter paradise if he died today. His hand jittered again.

No, he told the empty apartment. I trust the imam and I trust God. He closed his eyes and pushed the wire around the post, screwing it down as he caught his breath.

Chapter 3

Dr. Blitz frowned in the direction of the tuna fish sandwich Mozelle had brought, then turned his attention back to the draft report on the Korean government situation, studying the language the State Department had recommended the President use in his speech to the UN next Monday. The speech would call for a plebiscite on reunification, though the wording being recommended was so guarded even Blitz wasn’t sure that’s what it said.

Certainly there was a need to be diplomatic: Anything the President said might be interpreted as pressure and be used by Korean critics to stir up resentment not just in the North but in the South as well. Still, it had to be clear that the U.S. was not only in favor of the vote but would help Korea — all of Korea — work toward overcoming its divided and tumultuous past.

It would be an expensive commitment. Treasury had sent over a memo claiming that simply keeping the North from starvation would cost twice what the U.S. had spent on Iraq, and there were no oil reserves to defray the costs. Peace was an expensive proposition.

Blitz wasn’t generally one to worry about the costs of things; the bean counters would always complain, in his opinion. But Congress would undoubtedly use the money issue to throw up roadblocks.

An issue for tomorrow. Right now he had to get the speech right. Blitz brought up his word processor and began preparing a few changes. He was just getting into the flow when Mozelle buzzed in

“You wanted to talk to Major Tyler in Korea?” she asked. “He’s on line three. It’s pretty late over there.”

“Thanks.”

Blitz turned around to the phone.

“ Tyler?” he asked after punching in the line.

“Dr. Blitz?”

“I heard you had a bit of trouble out there,” said Blitz.

“Yes, sir. No serious casualties. Pilot broke his leg, some concussions. That was the worst of it.”

“God was with you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What can you tell me about the UAVs?”

“Nothing beyond what was in the interim report,” said Tyler. “They look like mini-airplanes to me, or even something closer to spaceships. The radio control gear and the engines were missing. The design itself I guess was interesting, but I’m not an expert.”

“So you’re sure there were no engines?”

“Yes, sir. No engines there. Or the control apparatus they would need to fly.”

“Good,” said Blitz. He’d thought of having the President mention the weapons in his speech as an example of the North Korean threat-evidence that they were much more advanced than the intelligence community gave them credit for being — but now it seemed unwise. The project was obviously just another boondoggle. It would be interesting to see where the design had come from: Russia was the leading candidate, but it would be months if not years before it was tracked down.

“Tell me about North Korea. What’s the situation on the ground there?” asked Blitz. He listened as the Army major told him more or less what he had expected: The people for the most part were anxious and hungry. There were still bands of resisters, as his experience at the airfield attested. And there was a great deal of animosity between North and South, making for friction.

“Putting the two halves together won’t be easy,” Blitz said when Tyler finished.

“No, sir.”

“Has to be done, though.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you mind if I mention what you’ve told me to the President?”

“No, sir. I, uh, I’d be flattered.”

“He was asking about you,” said Blitz. “He knows you did a hell of a job.”

“Thank you.”

“You sound tired, Major. I’m sorry for interrupting your sleep.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I hope to see you soon,” added Blitz as he hung up.

Chapter 4

Howe spent all of the morning and a good deal of the afternoon recounting the kidnapping for investigators. They were spare with their own details, but it was clear from their questions that they connected it with the Korean operation, an attempt by the Korean he had rescued to tie up loose ends.

Howe asked one of the investigators — a DIA officer named Kowalski — point-blank why they’d bother. Kowalski blinked a few times and then shrugged.

A long queue of messages awaited him both at the motel and on his cell phone’s voice mail when he was finally done with the interviews. He sat in the motel lobby systematically listening and recording the numbers and callers on a pad. Before he decided who to call back, however, he phoned his mother for the second time that day, just to reassure her that he was all right.

“Jimmy called you,” she said, mentioning his friend. “He’s hoping you’re all right.”

“Yeah, he called my cell phone too,” he told her.

“Well, people worry.”

“I’m okay, Ma.” It occurred to Howe that he had been having some variation of this conversation for forty years.

“He has tickets for a football game.”

“NCAAs, Mom. It’s basketball. In New York. I already left a message telling him I can’t go.”

“He’s very excited.”

Howe laughed. “He’s always excited about something.”

“Just so you know.” His mother paused, changing the subject. “I’m going to bingo tonight with Gabby Thomas. I suppose my ears will be red for days.”

“I guess,” said Howe. He listened to his mother tell him something about the neighbors, then told her he had to get going.

“Well, of course you do. I will talk to you when I talk to you,” she said.

“Love you.”

He didn’t usually say that, and it took his mother a half-second to respond.

“I love you, too, Billy.”

Among the callers on his voice mail were three members of the NADT board, along with Delano, who was belatedly expressing surprise at the security snafu and sympathy about the “incident.” Howe decided that firing the vice president would be the first thing he did; one thing he didn’t need was a phony.

Howard McIntyre was the one person he wanted to talk to who hadn’t called. As Howe went through the cell menu to find his number, the cell phone rang; it was Alice.

“Hi,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure I’d get you,” she said. “I thought I’d just leave a message.”

“It’s me in the flesh,” he said. He winced, overly self-conscious but unable to do anything about it.

“Well…” she started.

“Well, what?”

“I, um… I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

Howe felt a pain in his ribs, a physical pain: She was dumping him.

Not dumping him exactly, since they weren’t a couple or anything like that, but she was going to tell him they couldn’t be.

The pain was like a hard cramp, the sort that might come from sudden depressurization.

He loved her, and he wasn’t going to let her walk away.

“I was rude yesterday,” she said.

“Rude?” The word croaked from his mouth. “You weren’t rude.”

“I should have thanked you for saving my life. But I didn’t.”

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been there. So I apologize. I’m the one who should apologize.”

What else is it? he thought to himself. Go ahead and tell me.

Go ahead.

“Why don’t we argue about it over dinner?” he told her.

“Argue?”

“I’m joking. Want to have dinner with me?”

She hesitated. If she said no, he would ask, straight out, if she was seeing someone else.

Then he’d pull out all the stops. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what that would mean.

“Where do you want to eat?” Alice said finally.

Chapter 5

Macklin put a surveillance team on the real addresses but couldn’t come up with enough people to canvas the area of the phony address, which would have been across from Madison Square Garden if it had existed. Fisher decided to walk it himself, checking variations of the address on the theory that the real address would turn out to be some variation of the false one. He found a pizza parlor, an Israeli restaurant, and a junk shop proclaiming that it sold Manhattan ’s finest selection of antiques, but no safe house or reasonable facsimile.

“What’d you find out?” asked Macklin when he called in to see if anything was new.

“Scalpers are getting five hundred bucks for decent seats to the NCAA play-offs this weekend,” said Fisher.

“Five hundred, huh? Cheap.”

“Yeah, I bought two and charged it to your task force.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I am,” said Fisher.

“God, you just about gave me a heart attack,” said Macklin.

“You search those two apartments?”

“Jesus, Andy, there’s no way in the world I can get a search warrant based on an address in a shoemaker’s ledger. You know that.”

“You have to be creative, Macklin. Come on. You’re disappointing me.”

“Look, if it helps, the Amsterdam Avenue place is vacant.”

“Sure that helps,” said Fisher. “That’s probably the place.”

“I don’t think so. The building was torn down two weeks ago.”

“Maybe we should sift the rubble.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“We’re grasping at straws, Macklin. You have to get into the spirit of things,” said Fisher, though he, too, doubted that sifting the ruins would actually turn up anything.

“I put it under surveillance. Somebody’s watching it.”

“What about the other one-up in Inwood, right? Let’s get a search warrant.”

“If we see anything suspicious, then we can move.”

“He’s a terrorist and a fugitive, Kevin. You put that on the legal papers, the judge pounds his gavel, and we go in.”

“Come on, Andy. This is New York. I couldn’t get a search warrant here to raid Lee Harvey Oswald’s house.”

“That’s because he didn’t do it,” said Fisher.

Macklin, no conspiracy buff, changed the subject. “Kowalski has a phone conference set up for five.”

“That’s nice.”

“Come on, Andy. I have a number for you to call in to. You can do it with your sat phone. He’s been in D.C. talking to Howe and getting some other background. He really thinks the case is wrapped up,” Macklin added, “but if you want to present your arguments to him—”

“Listen, I’ll make you a deal: I don’t scalp the tickets and I miss the phone conference, okay?”

“Andy. Look, I’ll call you, okay? Just leave your line open.”

“What kind of seats you want? On the aisle?”

Macklin hung up. Fisher walked around some more, hoping to be struck by inspiration; the only thing that came close was a bike messenger crossing against the light. Finally, Fisher decided he might just as well head back up to Scramdale; with any luck he’d be on the train when Macklin tried to connect for the conference call.

His wanderings had taken him over to Seventh Avenue, where there was an entrance to the subway. Unsure whether the lines that stopped here went to the Grand Central train station, Fisher did something native New Yorkers are loath to do in public: He stopped and consulted one of the large subway maps near the gates.

The trains in question were the 1, 2, 3, and 9, and are known collectively as the Broadway Line, taking their name from the fact that they follow the street. They did not, in fact, go to Grand Central, though it was possible to get there via a shuttle at Times Square.

Much more interestingly, Fisher realized that, not only was it the same line that went to Washington Heights, but the train ran north to Inwood — and its last stop in Manhattan was within two blocks of the address he’d found earlier.

A straw, surely, but one to be seized.

“Last natural forest in New York,” said one of the detectives Macklin had sent to watch the Inwood address. He jerked his hand behind him, gesturing toward the expanse of trees rising to the northwest. “You know, Peter Minuit bought Manhattan on a spot over there.”

“I’ll take the tour later,” said Fisher. “We have a suspect or what?”

“Basement apartment, halfway down Nagle,” said the detective. “Separate entrance. Looks vacant.”

Nagle mixed small food markets with check cashing shops with travel agencies; some of the signs were in Spanish but the graffiti betrayed a much wider mix of ethnic slurs. The man playing tour guide was named Witt. He was a state trooper whose enthusiasm made it clear he was not a native. Fisher and Witt sat in the front seat of a Jimmy SUV; Witt’s partner was in the back, nursing a 7-Up. They had a clear view of the apartment’s entrance, which sat between two travel stores. The entrance to the upper portion of the building was near the end of the block. Fisher noted that there were plenty of pay phones along the street.

“You interview the subject?” Fisher asked.

“Our orders were to watch the place,” said Witt. “Nobody’s come in or out.”

“You mean nobody’s used that entrance.”

“It’s the only way into the apartment.”

“Where were you born?”

“ Long Island. Why?”

There was almost surely another entrance to the building from the apartment itself; the unit would have been set up originally either for a superintendent or else was a utility area for a furnace. In any event, there was no sense making a federal case out of it.

“Drive around the block a bit. I want to see what it looks like.”

“If we leave, we’re not going to know if anybody comes in or out.”

“Yeah,” said Fisher.

The trooper put the truck in gear. They drove past the 207th Street train yard, then back around toward Baker Field and Inwood Hill Park. It was a very mixed neighborhood, a little lower in the pecking order than Astoria, maybe, but probably a notch or two above the place in Washington Heights.

Witt pointed out some rocks he said had been disturbed by the “glaciers.”

“Very historical area,” said the trooper as they swung past the Dyckman House, which had been built just after the Revolutionary War and, by some colossal municipal oversight, had actually been preserved by the City.

“I’m thinking our guys don’t care too much for history — or glaciers,” said Fisher. “Park the car and let’s go talk to Mr. Brown.”

Fisher had the others go around from upstairs, covering the back entrance.

“You sure you want both of us there?” asked Witt. “What if he shoots you or something?”

“I doubt we’ll be that lucky,” said Fisher.

He gave the others a minute to get into position, then went down the stairs and rapped loudly on the door. He had to try twice before he heard shuffling inside.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Brown?”

“Yes?”

“FBI. I’d like to talk to you for a second.”

“FBI?”

“You probably hear that all the time, right?” said Fisher. He had his wallet out and held it up against the window near the door. “Here, take a look. I want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“FBI?”

“Yeah.”

“J. Edgar Hoover?”

“His illegitimate son.”

Locks began turning. Fisher held his creds out as the door opened.

There was no need to. Brown was blind.

“You’re with the FBI?” asked the man, who was about sixty-five. He had an ebony face with short but full gray hair, and walked with a slight stoop.

Fisher glanced at his feet. He was wearing sneakers.

“I wanted to ask you about some shoes,” Fisher told Brown. “You have some dress shoes fixed a while ago?”

“Dress shoes? Me?”

“Mind if I come in?” said Fisher.

“Come along.”

The apartment had a mildew odor and the white walls had weathered gray. There wasn’t much furniture: a sofa and easy chair in the living room, a bed and wardrobe in the bedroom, table and chairs in the kitchen.

“What does the FBI want with shoes?”

“We’re very into heels,” said Fisher. “Mind if I look at yours?”

“Look away,” said Mr. Brown.

Fisher followed him to the closet. Mr. Brown’s dress shoes were worn at the heels and hadn’t been repaired since they’d been bought, let alone within the past six months. Fisher looked around the closet and under the bed without finding any other shoes — or sarin gas, or E-bombs, or anything except a little dust. He went with the man into the kitchen, telling him about the shoemaker but being purposely vague about what sort of case he was working on. Mr. Brown had lived in the Inwood area for more than thirty years, though he’d only had this apartment for about five. He had not been to Washington Heights in more than three decades, not since his friend Jimmy Fleming had died; they used to talk baseball and drink beer in Jimmy’s kitchen on St. Nicholas Avenue.

“Used to cheat,” said Brown. “I know he did. But he was a good sort otherwise, so I let him. And he was free with the beer.”

St. Nicholas was a block away from the apartment the three suspects had been in, but it was obviously just a coincidence.

But what about Brown’s name and address? Fisher’s theory was that the terrorists had used it as a way of passing along the address either of a drop or a meeting place. But if Brown had lived here for all that time, it couldn’t be either.

Just another coincidence, then?

That was the worst part of the grasping-at-straws stage: The straws inevitably came up short, bent, and twisted.

“Someone’s in the hall out there,” said Mr. Brown. He jerked his hand toward a door at the far end of the kitchen.

“Just my guys backing me up,” Fisher told him. “ Lot of people come down that hallway?”

“Nah. Door’s been stuck for a year.”

Fisher got up and looked at it. It had at least a dozen coats of white paint and several varieties of locks, including one keyed dead bolt about six feet from the ground.

Higher, he thought, than Mr. Brown could reach.

“Mind if I try it?” asked Fisher.

“Suit yourself.”

“You got the keys?”

“Don’t need keys from the inside.”

“When was the last time the apartment was painted?” Fisher asked.

“Oh, God, before I moved in. The landlord’s offered to spruce things up, but it’s fine with me.”

“Maybe you should try the door,” suggested Fisher.

Brown got up and went to it, opening all of the locks — except the dead bolt.

“See?” said Brown.

Macklin was unsympathetic when Fisher called him from the stakeout car.

“Let me get this straight,” said Macklin. “You want a warrant to search the apartment of a blind man because there’s a lock on the door he can’t reach?”

“Pretty much.”

“With nothing to link the blind man to the terrorists.”

“That’s right. He’s not involved.”

“You know, Fisher, I used to think you were a genius,” said Macklin. “Now I think you’re a crank.”

“Since when are those mutually exclusive?”

“You missed the phone conference. Kowalski was asking for you.”

“And?”

“DIA wants to close down the task force.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s finished.”

“You haven’t found out who bought the sarin gas or where they were going to use it, or how. You don’t have Faud. And then there’s the E-bomb.”

“The E-bomb was a red herring,” said Macklin. “Like your door lock. Look, we got a good bust on the sarin warehouse. We’re still interviewing those guys we picked up in Washington Heights — ”

“Who don’t know anything,” said Fisher.

“Who claim they don’t know anything. Meanwhile, this Daud Faraghmeh—”

“Faud Daraghmeh.”

“Whatever. He’s gone. He hopped a plane out of Kennedy, I guarantee. He’ll turn up twelve months from now in some CIA report on Egypt.”

“ Yemen.”

“Whatever. Listen, in these days of budget cuts, we all have limited resources—”

“You been talking to Jack Hunter?” Fisher asked.

“As a matter of fact, he was in on the conference call, and he agreed that the task force is no longer necessary. We need to shift our resources around, especially with the President coming to town. The locals can take over the investigation and fill in the holes for the prosecutors. Hunter was mentioning a corruption case that he wanted you to—”

“We must be going through a tunnel,” said Fisher. “You’re breaking up.”

“I thought you were still with the surveillance team.”

“Can’t hear a word you’re saying.” Fisher hit the End button, then turned to Witt, who had a bemused expression on his face.

“Zone sergeant would dock your pay if you tried that as a uniformed trooper,” said the detective.

“Fortunately, Macklin’s not a sergeant,” said Fisher, “though he is often zoned. Let’s go get something to eat. Bag the surveillance.”

“Bag it completely?”

“Until Wednesday. That’s when his home aide comes to take him shopping.”

Chapter 6

Alice didn’t look quite as beautiful as Howe remembered when he met her at the restaurant.

Somehow that made him feel even better about her. He took her hands and then leaned forward over the table to kiss her as she rose; she held back a moment before kissing him, her lips soft and wet with the wine she’d been sipping.

Howe ordered a beer, then began looking at the menu.

“How’s their spaghetti?” he asked.

“You’re having beer with spaghetti?” said Alice.

“That’s not good?”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I’m not really a fancy guy,” said Howe. “I think that’s why I didn’t get all that excited about the house the other day. To me, you know, a house is just a house.”

“It’s more than that.”

“For some people, sure.” He saw by the look on her face that she’d taken that as an insult. He tried to change the subject by apologizing for the kidnapping.

“Well, you didn’t kidnap me,” she said.

“I’m sorry that you got involved, I mean…”

The waiter appeared with his beer, then took their orders. Alice chose a special; Howe stuck with the spaghetti.

“Can we start all over?” he asked as the waiter left.

“Why?”

“Because we’re kind of on the wrong foot here,” he said. “I mean, we’re different and—”

“Being different bothers you?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He took a sip of the beer.

This was all a mistake, he thought to himself. But he was stuck now, and she was stuck too. She tried making conversation and he tried not stumbling. Their salads came. Howe had never been very good at small talk but tried some now, asking about the difference between romaine and iceberg lettuce. She told him the leaves were different.

“Why’d you want to have dinner with me?” he asked finally.

Alice put down her fork. “You wanted to have dinner with me,” she said, taking her napkin off her lap.

She put it on the table and pushed her chair back.

“Wait,” he said reaching for her arm. “The food’s just coming. We might as well eat.”

“Thanks anyway,” said Alice, taking her hand back and walking away.

Chapter 7

“You want Syracuse over Kentucky?”

“I don’t want anything over anything,” Fisher told Macklin. “I don’t bet.”

“You don’t bet? Go on. You have every other vice possible. You’re telling me you don’t gamble?”

“A man has to draw the line somewhere,” said Fisher. He continued scrolling through the notes on the computer, where the case information was compiled.

“ ‘Final Four, first time in New York City,’ ” said Macklin, obviously parroting a commercial Fisher hadn’t heard. “ ‘Games this weekend, with the championship next Monday. Come on. Join the pool. You have a one-out-of-four chance of winning.’ ”

“And a three-out-of-four chance of losing my money.”

“All right, Fisher. Just don’t pout on Tuesday when we’re splitting the winnings.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Listen, the Secret Service is asking for a little cooperation running down some leads…”

“I don’t have time to talk to every nut in New York City, Michael.”

“It’s not every nut. Just the violently psychotic ones.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have time.” Fisher got up from the computer.

“Where are you going?”

“Grab a smoke.”

Fisher hadn’t lied exactly: He did have a cigarette immediately upon going outside the house.

It’s just that he had that cigarette in one of the task force vehicles, which he drove to FBI headquarters in Virginia. Six hours and countless cigarettes later, he corralled his quarry, Martha Friedrickberg, an expert on identity theft who had investigated the credit card ring that was selling IDs to the terrorists.

Martha worked in an office that could have passed for a surgical scrub room. The whitewashed walls had nothing on them, her metal desk was bare, and even her computer was immaculate. The distinct odor of Listerine filled the air as Fisher entered the room.

Friedrickberg looked up from her computer. “Andy Fisher. Oh, Gawd.”

“Happy to see you, too, Martha. How’s the germs?”

“In stasis until you arrived.”

“Stasis is good or bad?”

“Neither. That’s the point: balance.” Friedrickberg pulled a spray bottle out from a bottom drawer and placed it at her elbow. “What do you want, Andy?”

“I need some information on that credit card ring.”

“Which one?”

Fisher started to explain.

“You could have just called on the phone,” said Friedrickberg, turning to her computer.

“You would have taken the call?”

“Of course not.”

“Yes, well, you’re an exception in many ways.”

She pulled up a list of numbers and pointed to it. Fisher leaned over the desk to look at it; Friedrickberg wheeled her chair backward.

“Just a lot of numbers, right?” said Fisher.

“And streptococcus is just another bacterium.”

Fisher straightened. “I’m guessing it’s not.”

“Have you had your sinuses flushed lately?” Friedrickberg wheeled herself back behind the desk, closer to her bottle. “You’d be surprised what lurks in your septum.”

“What about those numbers?”

“Fifty-three point six percent are from Asia, primarily Japan. We’ve tracked a significant subset to American tourists and businessmen.”

“And this has something to do with strep throat?”

“I despair sometimes, Andy. I truly do.”

Fisher instinctively reached for his pack of cigarettes. Friedrickberg was quicker on the draw, however: She had the bottle squared and ready to fire before he took the pack from his pocket.

“No smoking in the building,” she intoned.

“Yeah, I know that,” said Fisher. He twirled the pack between his fingers.

“I’m warning you, Andy. There’s ammonia in here.”

“So the significance of the card numbers is what?”

“There’s an Asian connection. As a matter of fact, some of us think the real masterminds are Asian. They found these poor immigrants from Nigeria, knew they’d be willing to make some easy money, and set them up. Every few weeks they supply fresh data: credit card numbers, social security, date of birth, et cetera. The Nigerians go out and start creating a file, usually by applying for cell phones. They get it going, then sell off the cards. Sell a card for two hundred dollars, you’ve made more than a hundred percent profit.”

“That’s all they make?”

“The cards don’t stay active for all that long. The credit card companies tend to figure out what’s going on relatively quickly, since they’re looking for this. What you want to do is use the card to set up new accounts, keep turning everything over. A few hundred dollars a shot, ten of them a week — not a bad income.”

“Have you figured out the others yet?” asked Fisher.

“We’re working on it.”

“They work with real cards?”

“There’s always a real card at the root, if you can trace it back far enough. They probably steal the cards from the same source, then divvy them up. Probably they throw some of the new cards back once they set up accounts, rather than taking in cash, because the amounts are small.”

“Can I get an updated list of cards?”

“It’s hard to come by.”

“You’re telling me you don’t trust me?”

“We have different goals. You want to close your case. I want to close mine.”

“Mine’s more important.”

“That’s like saying one form of E. coli is more dangerous than another,” she said. “It depends on your perspective.”

Fisher patted the end of his cigarette pack against his palm. Friedrickberg threatened with her spray.

Then, completely out of character, she put it down.

“The problem with our investigation is getting access to records,” she said. “As soon as most people see false charges on there, they report it and the credit card company gets involved. The people who have the cards stop using them. They’re afraid of the mess involved in untangling their credit records.”

“That’s tough?”

“It’s a real pain in the ass, especially once these people get involved. They do dozens of cards with all sorts of aliases and accounts. Just tracking them is difficult. We’ve tried using phony cards,” added Martha. “But we think someone inside the credit card companies must be involved, because the phonies never go anywhere. If we just had the right circumstances, we could set up a sting and unravel this thing.”

“I’m too busy to go to Japan right now,” Fisher said.

“You don’t have to. Just your credit cards.”

Reluctantly, Fisher reached for his wallet.

Chapter 8

The new chairman of the board of NADT’s board of directors was a former vice president of the United States, now semiretired but still a major player inside the Beltway. Richard Nelson had a strong handshake and a confident manner, and he put Howe completely at ease when they finally met to discuss the job. Nelson had an office on K Street. There was a private club on the second floor of the building. He led Howe there via a private elevator; they sequestered themselves in a corner of the large room, alone except for Nelson’s bodyguard, who stood a respectful distance away across the room.

“It’s a ridiculously important job,” said Nelson. “It’s the equivalent of an undersecretary of defense, at the very least. And you’re the best man for it.”

“I hope so,” said Howe.

“Well, I’m sure of it. So is the board of directors.”

“I was told there might be questions about what happened in Korea,” said Howe. McIntyre had advised him to take the problem head-on, a strategy Howe himself favored.

“None. The CIA and the FBI were the ones who were flummoxed, not you. The attempt on your life the other day proves it. Was your lady friend hurt?”

“She’s not, uh, my girlfriend,” said Howe. He winced a little. “She was just a real estate agent who had been showing me houses. The thugs got the wrong idea.”

Nelson shook his head. “Thank God nothing happened to her.”

“So what happens now? The board takes a vote?”

“They’ve already voted,” said Nelson. “It was unanimous. You have the job — assuming you and I can come to terms.”

Chapter 9

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown’s home aide showed up bright-eyed if not bushy-tailed at precisely nine A.M. The two state troopers had been reassigned to help the Secret Service on the psycho beat for the President’s visit next week, so Fisher took the surveillance himself, huddling in a peeper-type raincoat on the corner opposite the main entrance. He had a paper bag around a beer can for camouflage; he’d poured out the beer and replaced it with coffee. This made it a little sweeter than he liked, but then, surveillance was all about weathering discomforts.

Fisher had put motion detectors with wireless alerts in the hallways so he could move around a bit and not have to stare at the place the whole time. He could see the stairway down to Mr. Brown’s apartment with the help of a curved mirror in the lobby, but he had to stand directly across from the doorway to see it through the glass.

An hour passed, then two. Fisher went and bought another beer and another coffee at the store.

“Your liver’s not going to know if it’s coming or going,” said the clerk in Spanish.

“It doesn’t now,” answered Fisher.

Mr. Brown and his aide returned a little past one. With no other lead, Fisher followed the aide to a bar two blocks away, where the young man had a Bud Lite before reporting to another assignment. Since the city council had not yet gotten around to outlawing lite beer, Fisher had to leave him be.

He was heading back toward Mr. Brown’s when his sat phone rang. Worried that it was Macklin trying to hook him into the psycho watch, he checked the number before answering.

“Hey, Martha, how’s my credit card doing?” he said, hitting the Talk button.

“Looks like you just bought a couch in Peoria.”

“Great,” said Fisher.

“It’s a start, Andy,” said Friedrickberg. “You’ll move on to big-screen TVs by the end of the day, I promise.”

“Bureau’s going to reimburse me, right?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. You can always declare bankruptcy.”

“Sounds promising.”

“Listen, I did a little checking on your behalf, into your case.”

“And?”

“I have a list of the regular customers. They’re just mailing addresses for the most part: boxes. I can send it, but only to you.”

“Let’s save some time,” said Fisher. “Which one is in Inwood? Nagle Avenue?”

“Jesus, Andy, how did you know?”

It was in Mr. Brown’s building, two floors up.

Despite the fact that Fisher warned them the apartment would be empty, Macklin and the U.S. attorney who had obtained the search warrant insisted on joining Fisher, the two NYPD plainclothes detectives, the six uniform patrolmen, and the postal inspector on the raid. It was the postal inspector Fisher really wanted, since he figured the apartment was being used primarily as a mail drop. There was an oversize box in the lobby; the mailman said it usually accumulated nearly a month’s worth of junk mail before being emptied.

Today it held only a week’s worth, judging from the dates on the circulars and the thin community newspaper. There were no credit cards, a fact that bothered the federal attorney greatly since they had relied heavily on the cards for the search warrant.

The second-floor apartment itself was completely empty, without even furniture; if Faud Daraghmeh had stayed there, he had removed all traces of himself.

“I’ll give him one thing,” said Macklin. “He’s a tidy son of a bitch. Assuming he was here.”

“Let’s talk to Mr. Brown and see if he’ll let us look in his place,” said Fisher.

“On what grounds?” asked the attorney.

“On the grounds that he’s a nice guy with nothing to hide.”

“You’re really stretching it,” said Macklin.

Brown was a nice guy, but the search of his apartment turned up nothing. When Fisher suggested chemical detection gear, the U.S. attorney left the apartment shaking his head. Macklin sighed and followed, as did the policemen. Fisher sat down with Mr. Brown and had a beer, which tasted a little funny without coffee in it.

“Tough day, huh?” asked the blind man.

“They’re all tough.”

“Tell me about it. But at least you got that door unstuck for me. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” said Fisher. “Here’s a question for you: Why would someone who lived in Inwood want a copy of a community newspaper from Chelsea?”

“See how the other half lives,” said Brown. He found this funny and laughed.

Fisher sipped his beer.

“Or he used to live there,” said Brown.

Fisher jumped up. “Thanks for the beer.”

“You leavin’?”

“Gotta go find the newspaper office,” said Fisher.

Chapter 10

Three of the apartments listed in the Gazette had been rented, one by a woman and the other two by young men. Fisher concentrated on the men first, spending a good deal of Thursday and much of Friday morning ruling them out as Faud Daraghmeh.

This would have been relatively easy had he been able to see them at any point; the first renter turned out to be a six six weight lifter from Wisconsin seeking fame and fortune as an actor in New York. The other was a Buddhist monk, shaved head and all.

Which left, at least as far as this straw was concerned, the woman. The landlord hadn’t given Fisher a name, and in fact had just rudely hung up when Fisher tried to get more details. Fisher went over to the apartment two blocks south of the Fashion Institute and realized that he should have come here first: The name taped on the mailbox was Fama Ahmed Ali. The apartment was on the third floor of a large building; there was no way for one person to watch it without camping directly outside the door, where he could be seen.

“No stakeout,” said Macklin. “We don’t have the personnel.”

“You can’t get NYPD to do it?”

“They have their hands full. Not only do they have the Final Four, but there’s a big session going on at the UN right through the weekend. The President’s coming up Monday. This is huge, even for New York.”

“Get me a search warrant, then.”

“A search warrant?”

“If I go knocking on the door and it is Faud Daraghmeh or his sister or whatever, they’ll start flushing the evidence as soon as I leave.”

“We’re not even close to reasonable grounds here, Andy.”

“You’re telling me in all New York City, there’s not one judge who’d give you a search warrant?”

“Jeez.”

“What if we got an anonymous tip that Fama Ahmed Ali was plotting to kill the President.”

“You can’t do that, Andy! Christ.”

“Just asking a theoretical question.”

“I’ll see if I can get a warrant. Don’t call in a threat. Don’t. Don’t.”

“Now, would I do that?”

A set of stairs sat at the end of the hallway on the third floor. Fisher had propped open one of the heavy glass and wrought-iron doors, which let him hear but not see what was happening in the hallway; he came down the steps a few times as the elevator stopped on the floor, but in the three hours he spent there, no one went in or out of the apartment. Finally, Macklin called: He’d managed to get the search warrant and even two NYPD officers to help in the search.

“Just two?” said Fisher, leaning back on the staircase. The steps were made of marble, though at some point someone had painted them with a very thick paint, then recoated them for good measure. The paint had peeled back to the sides of the steps but was still fairly thick on the risers. This seemed to be some object lesson in fashion, pretension, and perhaps utility, though Fisher couldn’t quite figure what it was.

“Is there someone inside the apartment?” Macklin asked.

“I don’t know,” said Fisher. He glanced at his watch; it was nearly five. “Not much use hanging around, though. Let’s hit the place now.”

Macklin couldn’t get into the city until seven, and so they set up the raid for seven forty-five.

Raid was a bit of an overstatement. With the two cops guarding the fire escape and Macklin and another Homeland Security agent behind him, Fisher banged on the door and told the occupants to open up. When no one answered, he used the key supplied by the landlord’s rental agent, pushing the door open.

He jumped back just in time: A homemade bomb exploded in the interior of the hallway, sending shrapnel flying through the apartment.

Chapter 11

“I need to find a place to live,” Howe told her.

“There are hundreds of real estate agents in this area.”

“Yeah, but you already know what I want.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah.”

She sat back in her seat, then pulled the keys from the corner of her desk.

Howe followed her out to the lot. He pulled his seat belt on, watching her silently.

“There’s a good condo development two miles from the highway. It’s solid, not too fancy.”

“Show me that house again, the one you liked.”

Her faced reddened but she said nothing. As she pulled up near it, he saw there were two cars in the driveway; another Realtor was showing the place.

“So, why did you get mad at me the other night?” he asked as she turned off the car.

“I wasn’t mad. At first. Then I got mad.”

“Because I drink beer with spaghetti.”

“No. Because… I don’t know. You took it for granted.”

“What?”

“Kissing me like that.”

“Kissing you? I thought after what we’d been through that—”

“That what?”

What had he thought? That he liked her, that he owed her, that he wanted her.

But he seemed unable to say any of those things.

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” Howe told her.

She put her car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

“Where are you going?”

“This isn’t your kind of house. You think it’s too fancy.”

“Yeah, but you like it.”

“You’re the one who’s buying. Or renting. Which one is it?”

“I can buy,” said Howe. “They made a ridiculous offer and I took the job yesterday.”

“You don’t think you deserve it, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“Well, you do.”

“How do you know?”

“You just do.” She turned the car around the circle at the end of the cul-de-sac. As they started back up the hill, the people were coming out of the house.

“Let’s go take a look again,” said Howe. “What the hell? You like showing it, and I’m not doing anything.”

She didn’t smile, but the way she turned her head told him somehow she would stop.

Chapter 12

Fisher sat with the bomb squad people as they sent a small robot rover into the apartment to look for more bombs. The rover looked a bit like a Martian lander, and the photos it sent back to the laptop were every bit as sketchy. The herring-bone-pattern linoleum drove the automated video controls nuts, and the operators had a hard time making sure there were no more trip wires or similar devices in place. But at least the man at the laptop was free with his Camels.

The bomb squad moved in with full-gear even after the rover’s search came up empty. Fisher gave them a few minutes, then went inside.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” said one of the officers in a mattress suit near the door.

“If it hasn’t gone boom yet, it’s not going to,” said Fisher, squatting down to examine the doorway. At the bottom was a set of connectors similar to those used in a simple burglar alarm system. Opening the door had broken the connection and set off the bomb. Fisher followed the wire down the scarred hallway to where the bomb had exploded.

“How did you know there was a bomb in there?” asked the NYPD expert who was taking measurements with a laser ruler in the hall.

“I didn’t. I saw the connector thing and I jumped back,” said Fisher.

“You’re lucky the guy was an amateur: Somebody who knew what they were doing would have set it to explode closer to the door or even out in the lobby. Between the heavy door and the shape of the hall, most of the explosion was channeled away from you. Otherwise you would have been nailed.”

He meant that literally: 10d nails had been packed over the weapon as shrapnel.

“You see this kind of bomb before?” Fisher asked.

“Oh, sure. Amateurs. Or someone trying to convince us they’re amateurs.”

“Most people who are stupid are just stupid,” said Fisher.

“Can’t argue with that. Were they trying to kill you specifically, or just anyone?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Fisher. He squatted down to examine a large piece of the exploded bomb, which lay partly embedded in the wall. “Probably just anyone. How would you turn this off?”

“You mean disarm it? Probably some sort of bypass switch at the door.”

“There isn’t one,” said Fisher, rising.

“Remote control or something. It wouldn’t be hard.”

“Yeah, except that’s not part of a remote control unit, right?” Fisher pointed to the piece. “It’s just a metal piece where the explosives were.”

“Might’ve disintegrated. Crime scene guys will go over it pretty well.”

Fisher walked to the far end of the hallway. The window had been blown out, but the locks in the frame were still secure. The bathroom to the right had an open window, but it was too small for anyone but a thin child to climb through. He went into the room on the left. There was no furniture or clothes, no sign that the room had been occupied. The window had a simple lock at the top, but it was not engaged. Fisher checked the casement for another trip wire, then opened the window. The fire escape was to the right.

He leaned out, got his foot on it, then climbed over.

“Fisher, what the hell are you doing?” shouted Macklin, coming into the room just as he swung out.

The FBI agent leaned back over. “You wouldn’t want to do this every day, would you?” he said, climbing in. He scraped his shoe against the side of the building, but the height was a powerful incentive and he kept his momentum going forward. He got into the building.

“What the hell are you doing?” Macklin asked again.

“Trying to figure out how Faud got in and out. And whether he was planning on coming back.”

“He won’t be coming back now, that’s for sure,” said Macklin.

“Guy’s going to run out of places to stay eventually.” Fisher walked to the bathroom. There was soap and toilet paper but nothing else. Fisher leaned over and sniffed the soap. “Ivory,” he declared.

“Yeah?” asked Macklin.

“Same stuff he used at DeGarmo’s.”

“That’ll close the case.”

“Just what I’m thinking,” said Fisher.

“Want to dust it for prints?”

“You’re starting to get the hang of the sarcasm thing, Macklin. Keep it up and in a couple of years you’ll actually say something biting.”

Fisher decided that the bomb had been left for the same reason some people slid hairs in door cracks and dusted the floor with powder: It would clearly and emphatically demonstrate that the apartment had been discovered. That didn’t mean collateral damage wasn’t welcome, only that it wasn’t first on the priority list.

“I think he’d have some sort of vantage point to watch from, or be nearby when the bomb blew,” Macklin told Fisher. “What if we search every apartment the fire escape connects to?”

“That’s twenty-one apartments,” said Fisher.

“We should at least make sure he’s not living in another one here, and that this is just a decoy.”

The bomb had gotten NYPD somewhat more interested in what was going on, and Macklin now had the manpower to do the interviews. On the other hand, the explosion had alerted the other occupants of the building, and Fisher figured anyone dumb enough be a terrorist or hide one would be smart enough to lie about it or, smarter still, to have fled. Still, there was always the chance that someone might remember something about a cross-dressing neighbor with five o’clock shadow. Besides, they were still mired in the straw-grasping phase of the investigation, and so Fisher didn’t object — as long as he didn’t have to do any of the interviews.

“What are you going to do?” Macklin asked.

“Climb the fire escape.”

“It’s getting pretty dark.”

“It is, isn’t it,” said Fisher, going to the blown-out window and stepping through the frame.

A pair of mangled beach chairs sat folded at one side of the roof, but otherwise it was empty. The small door at the top of the stairway locked from the inside. Fisher jiggled it but it wouldn’t give. Picking the lock was no good; Fisher had to go all the way down and then trudge up the stairs to see if there was a bag or other hideaway.

A simple dead bolt secured the door to the roof; there were no bags or keys hidden anywhere that he could see, and his second search of the roof failed to turn up anything except a fifty-cent coin near the edge of the roof. A ladder led from the back of the building to the adjacent roof. Fisher climbed over it and continued his search, still without results. A third roof sat adjacent to this one, eight feet lower and across a narrow alley.

The sun had gone down quite a while ago, but the lights from a building across the street made it possible to see, though not particularly well.

Which was why he wasn’t sure whether the long narrow object near the front of the roof was a ladder or not.

The easiest way to find out was to jump across. Fisher did so, rolling onto the flat surface and bumping into a large can of roofing tar. Fortunately, its top remained intact; Fisher was already down to his last reasonably clean suit.

The object he’d seen was a long two-by-four with three shorter pieces of wood nailed to it. Fisher took it to the side and hooked it over the brick lip on the adjacent building. The board made it possible to get up to the other side without too much trouble, though it creaked under his weight.

So the guy who used it was a little shorter and at least as skinny, Fisher thought.

The FBI agent picked up the edge of the board and flipped it back to the other roof, then jumped back to examine the roof. There was no stairway down; the roof was accessed through a flat trapdoor that was not only locked but chained.

A small bag was wedged in a crack in the low wall at the front of the roof. Fisher held it up and saw that it was marijuana, or at least something herbal. He stuffed it back in place and continued his search in the shadows. As he did, his stomach began to growl. Wondering if he could hunt up a midnight hot dog vendor, he went back to the ladder board and hooked it into place. He was just reaching across when he saw the tar bucket he’d knocked into earlier.

The thing was, the tar on the roof was dry — very, very dry.

And who tarred a roof in March?

Old can, probably used as a seat.

Or a hiding place. Fisher pried it open.

The remnants of tar had congealed long ago. Newspapers had been stuffed into the top, and in the middle of the newspapers sat a small knapsack. There was a shirt inside, along with a gas mask, an autoinjector similar to the one he’d found at Mrs. DeGarmo’s, and a set of night goggles.

Chapter 13

“Hey, Colonel, how are you doing?” said the voice on the cell phone when Howe answered.

A very recognizable, if inconvenient, voice.

“I’m very busy right now, Fisher.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“It was my answer,” said Howe.

“Listen, I need some advice.”

“This is a real bad time, Fisher. I’ve had a tough few days and I’d like to relax.”

“Tell me about it. I just missed getting blown up by a nail bomb in New York City.”

“What do you need advice for?”

“If you had an E-bomb, how would you drop it? Would you rent a plane?”

“How do you know it’s going to be dropped?”

“I don’t. That was what the experts said when we were talking about it. You would use it over a set of transformers or a big switching yard, someplace where you can have a big impact. So I’m figuring airplane.”

“Or a cruise missile,” said Howe. “Or a UAV.”

“What’s a UAV?”

“Fisher, where are you?”

“At the moment I’m standing in a hallway of a prewar apartment in Chelsea, watching some crime scene guys pull nails out of the wall.”

“Can you get to a secure phone?”

“If I have to. Take me an hour and a half, though.”

“Call me back on this line with your sat phone, then I’ll call you.”

Howe killed the cell phone. There was a secure phone at NADT he could use, but of course that meant leaving Alice.

She was in the kitchen, clearing the dishes from dinner.

“I’m going to have to go,” he said.

“Now?”

“In a few minutes, yeah. It’s, um… it’s important.”

“And you can’t talk about it.”

He shook his head.

“Is it related to the other day?” she asked.

“No.” His answer was honest — he didn’t think it was at first — but as he thought about it he decided it might be. It was too late to take it back, but the realization made him feel guilty, as if he’d deliberately lied.

“Very mysterious,” she said, closing the dishwasher. Alice walked to him, sliding her arms around his waist to his back, pulling him down to her lips. “When did you have to leave?”

Chapter 14

Howe’s story about the UAVs gave Fisher a tenuous connection with the Koreans, but the agent had already used up his quota of tenuous connections on the case.

“You have any evidence there were other UAVs?” Fisher asked as they discussed it over the secure connection. Fisher was using Macklin’s office; he pushed back in the seat and gazed up at his reflection in the overhead mirror.

The man looking down at him frowned. Fisher decided mirrors were overrated.

“No evidence at all,” said Howe.

“How about the CIA or somebody. Would they know?”

“The CIA didn’t even know they existed until I saw them,” said Howe. “One of them was just recovered a few days ago. It’s being shipped back for inspection. One of my guys is going to be on the team looking at it. I mean, one of NADT’s guys.”

“Could they have smuggled one of these UAV things out of the country?”

“If they could get an E-bomb out, sure. They’re pretty small. The North Koreans exported all sorts of weapons, Fisher. They used to sell Scud missiles all over the world. We could’ve stopped them, but we didn’t.”

“Mistake, huh?”

“You have any serious questions?”

“If you had one of these E-bombs, you could drop it from a UAV?” asked Fisher.

“You could. Or you could just fly the UAV to a specific point and altitude, then detonate it. There’s a problem, though, from what I’ve heard. The UAV they found has no engine in it.”

“You can’t just slap a motor in the sucker, huh?”

“It’s harder than you think. Has to be pretty small.”

“Who makes small engines?”

“There are a couple of manufacturers. U.S. ”

“Can I get a list?”

“Sure. There’s another problem. You have to control it somehow. Controlling an aircraft over many miles can be pretty tricky. Even something like the Predator—”

“Why do you have to control it?” asked Fisher. “Can’t you just program the course in, if you’re going to blow it up anyway?”

“You could, I think,” he said.

“Who would know?”

“I can find somebody at NADT for you.”

“What’s his number?”

“I’ll have him call you. Won’t be until Monday.”

“Sooner the better.”

“Monday.”

Fisher prodded a cigarette from his pack. He was out of matches and his lighter had no more fluid. He started rifling Macklin’s drawers, but all he found were a few old Playboy s.

Left by the drug dealers, no doubt.

“What about a sarin bomb?” asked Fisher.

“Sarin? The nerve gas?”

“Yeah. Could you put that on a UAV?”

“Sure, but there’d be no point,” Howe told him.

“Why not?”

“Has to be used in a closed area if it’s going to be effective.”

While that wasn’t precisely true, it would be much more effective if that was the case. And besides, the canisters they’d found on Staten Island were rigged for high pressure — the experts thought they would attach to a sophisticated dispersion system — but not shaped into bombs.

“Tell you what, Colonel: See if you can hunt down that expert for me before the weekend. If you can, call me. If you can’t, no big de—”

“I can’t,” said Howe before Fisher could finish.

“No big deal unless I call back and say it is a big deal.”

Howe hesitated. Fisher smiled at the face he’d be making. “All right.”

“You’re a good man, Colonel. Even if you don’t smoke,” said Fisher, hanging up.

Chapter 15

Clarissa Moore, the CIA officer heading the special study group, was waiting for Tyler when he and the others got back to South Korea. Tyler shuffled his feet across the macadam toward her Hummer, his legs so tired they felt as if there were lead weights strapped to his thighs.

“Hey,” he said, climbing into the truck.

“Hey yourself,” said Moore. “Good job up there. I heard about the UAV.”

“Saved a couple of lives in that helicopter,” said Somers, sliding in behind him.

Tyler leaned back against the seat, half-listening as Somers told the story. He recognized bits of the account, but it seemed foreign, as if he hadn’t been there but had only heard the story before.

Moore twisted around to look at him. “You okay?”

“I just need a little sleep,” he said.

“That’s it?”

No, thought Tyler. I need to escape. I need… Angel’s wings.

“Yeah, I’m beat tired,” he said, forcing as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could, trying to make it sound as if he were laughing at himself.

Chapter 16

Blitz squeezed his eyes together, trying to get them to focus. He was used to operating on very little rest, but even for him the past few days had been a real drain. He had worked over the entire weekend, with maybe a total of four hours’ sleep; it was now Monday morning and he was due to leave in an hour to fly up to New York City with the President. The latest draft of the President’s UN speech sat on his desk; Blitz hadn’t even had a chance to look at it.

Mozelle came in with a fresh cup of coffee. Blitz blinked at the coffee, then reached for it.

“Colonel Howe is outside, with one of his technical people from NADT. He says he has information about the Korean UAV.”

Blitz looked at his watch.

“Send him in. But buzz me in ten minutes if they’re not out.”

“I was going to give you five.”

Blitz took a sip of the coffee and rose, willing his body into alertness.

“Colonel, congratulations,” he said as Howe entered. “I understand you and Dick Nelson reached an agreement last Thursday. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get to you since then, it’s been a zoo here. Has the NADT board voted yet?”

“They gave Mr. Nelson the go-ahead before he spoke to me,” said Howe.

“Congratulations.” Blitz came out from around the desk and shook Howe’s hand.

“That’s not why I’m here.”

Howe introduced Dalton; Blitz had undoubtedly met the scientist before but couldn’t quite place him. He listened for about thirty seconds as Howe went over the UAV’s capabilities, hypothesizing that it could be used to launch an E-bomb. While there weren’t any “hard connections” — he meant real evidence — the juxtaposition of the two technologies represented a real threat.

“Well, certainly,” said Blitz.

“So what are we going to do?” asked Howe.

“First thing, alert the task force investigating the E-bomb,” said Blitz.

“The FBI agent is on that task force,” said Howe. “They’re on it.”

“Good.”

“These UAVs would be very difficult to find by conventional radar systems,” explained Dalton. “We have a solution: Our integrated radar and sensor viewer could be tuned to pick them up.”

“I’m not sure I’m following,” said Blitz.

“We want to make the system available,” said Howe. “We have two.”

“We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here,” said Blitz. “They didn’t find power plants with those UAVs — or control systems.”

“There are a dozen engines that could be used,” said Dalton. “And the flight could be preprogrammed in.”

“Contracts with NADT have to go through a certain procedure,” said Blitz, pained that he had to explain this to Howe.

“This isn’t about contracts or money,” said Howe. “These units — we’ll give them to the government free. We’re concerned about the threat.”

Mozelle opened the door.

“I’ll tell you what, Colonel: Get with Teri Packard to discuss it,” Blitz said. Packard was an NSC aide who handled terrorism. “She’ll be in touch with the working group. She can talk to the military people. This way, if we need that capability, we’ll have it.”

“The Pentagon is on line two,” said Mozelle, pointing.

“I’m sorry,” said Blitz. “Things are hectic this morning because we’re flying up to New York with the President to address the UN. I’m afraid I have to go.”

Howe knew a blow-off when he experienced one. Still, he followed through dutifully, going over and briefing Packard on the UAV’s potential.

“DIA is pretty sure the E-bomb was just a hoax,” said Packard. “They’re pulling people back from the task force. So is Homeland Security. FBI has only one person still assigned, and his boss wants him back as well.”

“These things are a threat,” said Howe. “They could be shipped into the country in pieces, assembled, then flown off any local airstrip — even a deserted highway in the middle of the night.”

“Granted. But there’s no evidence that they’re here.”

Howe folded his arms.

“But we can get an alert out and have you tied into the review of the UAV’s capabilities,” added Packard, trying to seem conciliatory. “It would be good to have your expertise involved.”

“Great,” said Howe, getting up.

Chapter 17

Fisher spent Saturday and Sunday chasing leads from the credit card accounts. The closest he came to anything interesting was a farm run by former hippies in far northern New Jersey; the cows looked as though they were being fed hashish in the barn. Unsure whether that would be a matter for the DEA or the Future Farmers of America, he decided to look the other way.

The visit to Faud’s apartment and the subsequent adventure with the hand grenade had prevented Fisher from following up on Harry Spageas, the man who worked at the florist near Faud’s apartment. With Macklin and the NYPD continuing their interview of the neighbors — and with nothing definitive yet from the crime people checking out the bomb — Fisher headed over to Steve’s Florist on Monday morning to see the store owner and get Spageas’s address. The fact that the owner’s first name was Rose raised certain questions about predestination and parental premonition, but Fisher never got to raise them, for as he walked through the front door he found the proprietor being questioned by a uniformed NYPD officer. Rose had filed a complaint because both of her delivery vans had been stolen the night before.

“One is bad enough,” Rose complained. “But both? It shuts me down.”

Rose was the sort of woman who had begun tinting her black hair blond thirty years before and still did it now that the roots were coming in gray. She had a naturally indignant chin, and though she came up to about Fisher’s chest, she had shoulders a linebacker would spend thousands on supplements to get.

Fisher let the officer continue the interview. Rose thought that the vans must have been stolen by a competitor and gave the men a half-dozen leads.

“I didn’t realize the flower business was so cutthroat,” said Fisher when the cop was done.

“You’d be surprised,” said Rose.

“So they were here last night and they’re missing this morning,” said Fisher. “You’re sure they were here last night?”

“Mira said so, yes. She’s the manager.”

“I met her. You have an employee named Harry Spageas, right?”

“A damn good question,” said Rose. “He didn’t show up Friday.”

“Where does Harry live?” asked Fisher.

Harry Spaneas — not Spageas, but Greek enough — lived four blocks away from the florist shop on the bottom floor of a three-story row house across from the entrance ramp to the Triborough Bridge.

He didn’t answer his door, or his phone, which Fisher tried from his cell phone. Fisher leaned on the other bells, hoping they would bring some little old busybody out who would know exactly where Harry was. But no one appeared.

“Let’s go look in the windows,” Fisher told the patrolman. “Guy lives on the ground floor, right?”

The ground floor was actually about six feet above street level, and Fisher found it necessary to borrow a garbage can to look through the windows.

“I don’t know about this, if it’s kosher,” said the patrolman. “I better check with my sergeant.”

“Tell him there’s a guy lying on the floor in the hallway that looks a lot like the subject,” said Fisher, pressing his face against the glass. “Tell him there’s a pool of blood around his head.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I only wish I was,” said Fisher, jumping down from the garbage can.

Harry Spaneas had been killed either by a pair of .22-caliber bullets to the face or a similar bullet fired point-blank into his skull from behind. Given that he was lying facedown when they found him, Fisher figured that the bullet in the back of the head had been for insurance or good luck, but he’d leave it to the medical examiner to make the final call.

“Does this connect to Faud or not?” asked Macklin when Fisher called him from Spaneas’s kitchen to tell him what he’d found.

“I don’t know,” said Fisher. “NYPD’s going through the apartment now.”

“How cold was he?”

“Yesterday’s coffee cold,” said Fisher. “But not much of an odor. I’m figuring he was killed sometime yesterday, before the florist trucks disappeared. But maybe not.”

“So they stole the trucks?”

“Could be.”

“Come on, Andy. Of course they stole the trucks, right?”

“Michael, if you already know the answer, don’t ask the question.”

“I don’t. I’m asking. You’re connecting the murder with the trucks?”

“Why not?”

“Well, lack of evidence, for one.”

“He had a spare set of keys, which are not around anywhere,” said Fisher.

Macklin chewed on it for a second, processing the information slowly. “Well, let’s get some bulletins out on them,” he said finally.

“NYPD already has,” said Fisher. “You find anything from the neighbors of that apartment?”

“Nothing.”

Fisher pushed back in the chair. He’d already checked Spaneas’s name against the database of possible terrorists and come up blank, but that wasn’t definitive proof of anything. He wondered if it was possible that Spaneas had let Faud stay with him. There was no evidence that he had: A single coffee cup sat on the washboard, along with one knife and fork and plate. But anyone who took the time to think about what they were doing could set that up to make it look as if only one person, Spaneas, had been there.

E-bombs, night goggles, and nail bombs. Hired killers. Flower trucks.

Kind of a jumble, actually. One half of the operation was very sophisticated; the other half, not so much.

Which argued that he was looking at two different operations.

“Hey, Fisher, are you there or what?” said Macklin.

“I’m here,” he told Macklin. “Is the Washington Heights apartment still sealed?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you get somebody to let me in?”

“Why?”

“I’m running out of straws,” said Fisher.

Chapter 18

When Howe told McIntyre what had happened, his new vice president for government affairs told him he sounded as if he were making a sales pitch for the Advanced Military Vision radar. And his offer to lend the device and the aircraft that were currently outfitted with it made it seem even worse.

“Why?” Howe asked him.

“Because nobody does anything for nothing in this town,” said McIntyre. “Probably not in the whole country.”

“Isn’t it our duty to do something?” asked Howe.

McIntyre sighed. “I like you, Colonel, and I owe you a lot, but boy, do you have a lot to learn.”

“Other people have a lot to learn,” said Howe.

McIntyre looked as though he were about to launch into an extended lecture about the facts of life when the telephone cut him off. It was from Nelson; Howe told McIntyre to wait and then picked up the phone.

“Colonel, what are we doing with this UAV business?” asked Nelson as soon as he got on the phone.

Howe explained the situation briefly. Nelson was already well informed enough to point out the NSC objection: The UAVs they’d found in Korea had no engines.

“An engine could be supplied,” said Howe.

“Just follow channels on it,” urged Nelson. “All right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Howe. He hung up.

“Nelson gave you flak?” said McIntyre.

“More or less.”

“Well, this isn’t the military,” said McIntyre. “You don’t work for him.”

“He’s head of the board.”

McIntyre shrugged. “The person you have to worry about is the President. Besides, right now they need you a heck of a lot more than you need them.”

“So they all think I’m trying to sell the AMV radar system?” said Howe.

“Yeah.”

“But I’m not.”

“You have to take a step back.” McIntyre’s hand jangled a little, a twitch Howe had never noticed before. “People are a little scared of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah. It’d be like a four-star general calling up out of the blue and saying, ‘Hey, this a problem.’ ”

“A general would have his calls returned.”

“You’d be surprised,” said McIntyre.

“So I should just sit here and do nothing?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t, Mac. It’s way too threatening.”

“Then you have your staff do it,” said McIntyre. “Have them talk to the military people, government agencies. They get the ball rolling.”

“That will take way the hell too long,” said Howe. “I can’t just hang back.”

“Sometimes you have to if you want to get things done,” said McIntyre.

Chapter 19

“So, what did it mean that the three slimebag terrorists who’d live in the Washington Heights apartment had actually lived there, with stuff and everything, unlike the apartment Faud had blown up?”

“Jesus, Andy, that’s a real question?” asked Macklin as Fisher sat down on the couch in the living room. “It means they lived here.”

“So Faud must have another place to stay? Besides his apartment.”

“That a question or a conclusion?”

“Both.”

“Maybe you should talk to them yourself. They’re at the new Special Prisoner Holding Area on Plum Island.”

“What are they going to tell me?”

“Jeez, if I knew that, you wouldn’t have to talk to them.”

Fisher got up and went to the kitchen, where Macklin had left the inventory of the items they’d removed. The DIA techies had managed to retrieve most of the files from the hard drive; the inventory included a rundown. It appeared that the three students were running a term-paper Internet site from the apartment. It brought in about six or seven hundred bucks a week, barely enough to support the rent and other expenses.

“What sort of tickets did they have?” Fisher asked Macklin, looking at the inventory. “Parking tickets? They have a car?”

“No. Bastards had tickets to the NCAAs. They even have four tickets to tonight’s finals. Four of ’em. Those suckers are so valuable, I had to take custody of them myself.”

Fisher gave him an odd look.

“I’m just kidding, Andy.”

“Where are they being held?” asked Fisher, grabbing his coat.

The Special Prisoner Holding Area had been constructed off the shore of a secure testing area controlled by Homeland Security at the tip of Long Island. It consisted of two large barges that had once been leased by New York City as temporary jail facilities. The water around the barges was filled with coiled razor wire; there were two posts with machine guns on land and a pair of small patrol craft, also armed with machine guns, patrolling in the water. Fisher had to run a gamut of high-tech sensors to get onto the barge where the three men were held; he was wanded twice and had to turn over his cell phone, all of his weapons, and most importantly his cigarettes before being allowed inside. Even Macklin, who was head of the task force and had been there several times before, was carefully searched before being cleared. The doors were all operated by remote control; none of the guards had keys of any kind.

The first man had given his name as Ali Muhammad, which was a little like calling himself James Smith. Immigration had just identified him as an Egyptian student named Ali al Saad, which was also probably an alias, though Fisher was not particularly interested in his specific identity and said nothing when Macklin quizzed him on it.

“ Syracuse or Kentucky?” Fisher asked the prisoner.

Ali gave him a blank stare.

“Thanks,” said Fisher.

“That’s it?” said Macklin.

“That’s it,” said Fisher. “Bring in the next one.”

Chapter 20

Howe tried to follow McIntyre’s advice and hang back, but when one of the generals he’d contacted earlier got back to him and offered to forward the preliminary report, Howe couldn’t stop himself from saying yes. The report wasn’t much more than what he’d already seen — it was a field briefing forwarded from the scene to a CIA reviewing team — but it did include a set of digital photographs. The shots were a bit grainy, but one thing that caught Howe’s attention were two large arrangements of tubes at one corner. At the center of each one was a large, elongated tube that looked like the cans used on dairy farms to collect milk. Around them were clusters of smaller cans or pipes, like coffee cans soldered on. They looked somewhat like rocket motors, though Dalton pointed out they were too large to fit in the rear of the UAVs.

“Besides, if they’re rockets — and I’m not saying they are — they’d be solid fuel boosters,” added the scientist. “If you used them to propel the plane, you couldn’t shut it off. You’d have the rocket ignite, boost you to altitude maybe, then glide back?”

“Why not?” asked Howe.

Dalton shrugged. He leaned over, trying to get a better look at the photos. “Not enough detail to know what’s going on.”

“I know the guy who took the photos and wrote the report,” said Howe. “Maybe he can tell us something more.”

“Can’t hurt.”

It took Howe’s secretary only a half hour to run down Major Tyler in Korea — one more measure of the power and reach of NADT. It was a little past midnight there, and Tyler sounded as if he’d dragged himself from bed.

Which, he told Howe, was the case.

“Only for you, Colonel.”

“I appreciate it. I’m looking at some pictures you took at the UAV base. There’s some tubes and things on the side of the hangar. Would you mind if one of my technical people went over it with you?”

“Tell you the truth, Colonel, I haven’t a clue what any of that stuff is. I took a whole set of pictures just because of that. I’m lucky I knew which one was the UAV.”

“There are only three pictures attached here, and only one of the hangar.”

“Yeah, probably all they forwarded because of the bandwidth. I have the flash card.”

“Can we get it?”

“I think we can e-mail it over a secure network.”

“Let me see about the arrangements.”

An hour later Dalton went over the images with Howe.

“My guess is that it’s some sort of booster system. This here, this is definitely part of a solid fuel rocket system: The design looks pretty basic, something you’d see around 1960, 1965, but it looks sound.”

Dalton slapped the keys, bringing up a photo of the underside of the robot plane. “It would elevate the aircraft: It would be like something you’d use for a takeoff. I’m not a propulsion expert, but I know rocket-assist packs have been used to help heavy bombers off airfields. This might be something similar, except that my feeling is this aircraft could take off from a really short field as it is.”

“So why would you need them for a UAV?” said Howe.

“I don’t think that you would. Maybe for a really quick takeoff, but this can use a short field as it is.” Dalton shrugged. “Until we have that UAV here, it’s impossible to say if they’re related.”

“How much of an airstrip would those aircraft need to take off?” asked Howe.

“Have to have the engineers do the numbers once they have the aircraft and can model it, but I’d guess not much. Any military field in North Korea would have been more than adequate. I think they could come off a road. Maybe even my driveway.”

“Could the boosters lift them straight up?”

“Not straight up. You’d need a bit of an open area to climb out and get altitude, but not much. I don’t see why you’d need it, to be honest. You have the airfield, so this is a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“I’m guessing there’s a reason,” said Howe. “We just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Chapter 21

Dr. Blitz eased away from the Philippine ambassador, squeezing into the press of UN delegates in the center of the reception. The President’s speech had gone reasonably well, though a final assessment on audience reaction wouldn’t be possible until later in the day, after the delegates began cabling home with their true reactions.

A new era for Asia. Or more precisely, the foundation of a new era for Asia.

Japan could now safely remain on the pacifist course America had steered for it at the end of World War II. That in turn reduced the pressure on China to expand its military capacity, at least in the short term. Naturally the President had not put it so baldly, speaking only of peace and economic opportunity.

Those were the ultimate goals, and they were achievable as long as America retained its power in the region. There were many in this hall — too many — who did not understand or fully appreciate that; they looked at America ’s military and economic might as potentially evil things. They did not completely understand the U.S, its historic perspective and foundation. But then, they could hardly be blamed for that: Many of the people in Congress didn’t understand it.

History wasn’t taught in the schools anymore, Blitz lamented to himself as he smiled his way past several African delegates. Kids didn’t even know the dates of the American Revolution, let alone the Korean War.

A waitress passed nearby, offering a plate of Thai shrimp. Blitz declined: Spicy food at receptions always gave him heartburn.

A buzz at the other end of the hall indicated that the President had changed his mind and decided to attend after all. Blitz took a step toward him but found his way blocked by the Chinese representative to the UN. Xi Hiang was too important to duck; Blitz bowed his head and greeted the man properly.

“Peace, then?” asked Xi.

“Peace, yes,” said Blitz.

“ Korea is an interesting country,” said Xi, still speaking like a sphinx. Much like Blitz, Xi had an academic as well as government background, and the national security advisor waited for the lecture about history or at least a remark in that direction. But Xi said nothing else, and Blitz was moved to ask if his country was afraid of peace, aware that he was being provocative.

“Afraid?” Xi spoke English as well as Blitz but he said the word as if he did not understand the meaning.

“Afraid of the future?” prompted Blitz, trimming back the question slightly. “The uncertainty.”

“One should never be afraid of the future,” said Xi. “For it comes of its own. As for peace…”

An aide tapped the UN representative on the arm, and Xi turned before finishing. Blitz, too, was interrupted: France ’s UN representative told him she thought the President had done very well.

“I’m going to stay in New York this afternoon and into the evening,” the President told Blitz a few minutes later. “We can sneak over to the NCAA championships.”

“Presidents can’t sneak anywhere.”

“Relax, Doc. The IBM box has already been reserved, and we have Secret Service people flanking it. You just don’t want to see Syracuse win,” added the President. “Come over with us. Take the night off.”

“I have a pile of work.”

“State will be there. And I think Claussen from the CIA.”

The President was teasing him: He often joked that if he wanted Blitz somewhere, all he had to do was invite his rivals. Obviously the President was feeling good about the speech and Korea — and maybe even the basketball game.

“Oh, I suppose I can go back later with you,” said the national security advisor.

“Who says there’s room on the plane?” said the President before turning away.

Chapter 22

Fisher left the interrogation room as quickly as he could, striding down the caged hallway to the small observation area. Identity confirmed, he was searched again before being allowed out.

Fisher checked his cigarette pack when the guard handed it back to him with his weapons: You just never knew about the ethics of people connected with the prison system.

“It’s going to be tonight,” said Fisher as he counted.

“What?”

“It’ll be at the basketball game. The championship.”

“What is?”

“Whatever they’re planning.”

“How do you know they’re planning anything?”

“Because they know less about college basketball than you do.” His cigarettes counted, Fisher put one in his mouth and lit up. “Call off the game.”

“Oh, yeah, right. You’re talking about the NCAA championships here, Andy. New York worked for years to get this, to bring them to the Garden. You’re out of your mind.”

“Faud left the bomb. That tells us two things: One, he’s not back in Yemen; two, time is running out. I thought it was an early-warning system, but I’m wrong: It’s a diversion.” Fisher took a long drag on the cigarette, striding out to the gangplank that led back to land. It was a gorgeous New York day — sun high in the sky, the odor of dead fish on the wind — but he didn’t stop to notice.

“We got their sarin,” protested Macklin.

“Maybe we didn’t get it all. I’m telling you, you have to stop that game.”

“The security tonight is going to be crazy,” said Macklin. “Half of New York will be locked down. They’ll never get close.”

“The E-bomb,” said Fisher.

“They have it?”

“I don’t know.”

Fisher thought about that as they reached the car. “We have to get the police to stop and search every flower truck in Manhattan. Anything that looks like the ones taken from Pete’s Florist.”

“Man, you’re reaching.”

“I have a thing for roses,” said Fisher, sliding into the car and taking out his sat phone.

Howe was just thinking of leaving the office early when his secretary buzzed him to say he had a call.

“I think I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he told her.

“It’s somebody named Andy Fisher,” said the secretary. “He said it was important.”

Howe punched the button on his phone.

“I figured it out,” Fisher said. “They’re going to set the E-bomb off in New York tonight.”

“What?”

“Somewhere around eight o’clock. Maybe a little after. By my watch that’s four hours. I have this theory, but it doesn’t have a lot of proof.”

“Share it,” said Howe.

“The Korean is pissed about us beating the crap out of him, so he hooks up with these crazies here. I don’t know whether he sells them a bomb or is going to set it off himself, but it’s hooked into this terrorist cell of assholes with sarin gas. Maybe they got the sarin from him, too, I don’t know.”

“How do you know there’s an E-bomb?” asked Howe.

“Because one of my suspects, the one I can’t find, has night-vision goggles and an injector to ward off the effects of sarin gas. The only thing I don’t have totally worked out is how the bomb goes off, because the tech people I talked to say it’s got to explode in the air. Or that’s the best thing or something; I forget the details.”

“The UAV?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Howe stood up from his seat. You could use the rocket pack to launch the UAV like a missile. Once launched, the engines would take over.

“You sure about all of this?” Howe asked Fisher.

“Of course not. Listen, we have to keep air traffic away from New York, and we have to look for a UAV. I have to talk to a million people, and most of them think I’m a pain in the ass, so it’s going to take a while.”

“Have you talked to the Air National Guard?”

“My task force guy will, but I don’t know how serious they’re going to take him. I don’t even take him seriously,” said Fisher. “But you’ve got a ton of pull, right?”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Howe.

“I’m counting on that,” said Fisher.

Howe pressed the button to talk to his secretary. “I need to get ahold of the unit responsible for air traffic over New York,” he told her. “I want to talk to the commander personally, right away. And then I need to have one of our planes at Andrews readied for a flight: Iron Hawk. You can get me the numbers I need, right?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“But?”

“It’s almost five.”

“We’ll pay you overtime,” snapped Howe.

“I meant you better let me call over to Andrews right away,” said the secretary. “Because otherwise the ground people may go home before you get to them.”