Cathedral

Flynn nodded.

Her face remained strangely impassive. She motioned toward Leary as she fixed her deep green eyes on Flynn. “We won’t let you surrender. There will be no compromises.”

Flynn’s voice was sharp. “I don’t need either of you to explain my duty or my destiny.”

Leary spoke. “When are they coming? How are they coming?”

Flynn told them. He said to Leary, “This may be your richest harvest.”

“Long after you’re all dead,” said Leary, “I’ll still be shooting.”

Flynn stared up into the dark eyes that were as fixed as the mask around them. “Then what?”

Leary said nothing.

“I find it difficult, Mr. Leary, to believe you’re prepared to die with us.”

Megan answered, “He’s as dedicated as you are. If we have to die, we’ll die here together.”

Flynn thought not. He had an impulse to warn Megan, but he didn’t know what to warn her about, and it didn’t seem to matter any longer. He said to her, “Goodbye, Megan. Good luck.”

She moved back into the pews, beside Leary.

Murphy looked at the two robed figures. They stared back at him. He suspected they would snuff out his life from their dark perch with no more hesitation than a man swatting an insect. Yet … “I have to ask.”

Flynn said, “Go ahead—make a feel of yourself again.”

Murphy turned to him. “You’re the feel who brought them here.”

Megan and Leary seemed to sense what the discussion was about. Megan called out in a mocking voice, “Come up here, Father. Let us tell you our sins.” Leary laughed, and Megan went on, “Keep you up nights, Father, and turn your face as scarlet as a cardinal’s hat. You’ve never heard sins like ours.” She laughed, and Flynn realized he had never heard the sound of her laugh.

Flynn took the priest’s arm again and moved him into the south tower without resistance. They climbed the stairs and passed through a door into the long southwest triforium.

George Sullivan stood at the parapet staring down at the north transept door. Sullivan’s kilts and tunic, thought Flynn, were incongruous with his black automatic rifle and ammunition pouches. Flynn called to him, “Confessions are being heard, George.”

Sullivan shook his head without looking up and lit a cigarette. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. Flynn nudged him and indicated the empty triforium across the transept. “You’ll have to cover Gallagher’s sectors.”

Sullivan looked up. “Why doesn’t Megan go up there?”

Flynn didn’t answer the question, and Sullivan didn’t press him. Flynn looked out at Abby Boland. These personal bonds had always been the Fenian strength— but also the weakness.

Sullivan also glanced across the nave. He spoke almost self-consciously. “I saw she made a confession to the priest…. These damned women of ours are so guilty and ashamed…. I feel somehow betrayed …”

Flynn said lightly, “You should have told him your version.”

Sullivan started to reply but thought better of it. Flynn extended his hand, and Sullivan took it firmly.

Flynn and Father Murphy walked together back into the south tower and climbed the ten stories into the louvered room where Rory Devane stood in the dark, his face blackened and a large flak jacket hanging from his thin shoulders. Devane greeted them affably, but the sight of the priest wearing the purple stole was clearly not a welcome one.

Flynn said, “Sometime after 5:15 snipers will begin pouring bullets through all eight sides of this room.”

“The room will be crowded, won’t it?”

Flynn went on. “Yet you have to stay here and engage the helicopters. You have to put a rocket into the armored carrier.”

Devane moved to a west-facing opening and looked down. Flynn briefed Devane, then said, “Father Murphy is interested in your soul.”

Devane looked back at the priest. “I made my confession this morning—right here in Saint Pat’s, as a matter of fact. Father Bertero, it was. I’ve done nothing in the meanwhile I need to confess.”

Murphy said, “If you say an act of contrition, you can regain a state of grace.” He turned and dropped into the ladder opening.

Flynn took Devane’s hand. “Good luck to you. See you in Dublin.”

“Aye, Brian, Kavanagh’s Pub, or a place close by the back wall.”

Flynn turned and dropped down the ladder, joining Murphy on the next level. The two men left the south tower and made their way across the choir loft. They entered the bell tower, and Flynn indicated the spiral staircase. “I have to speak with Mullins again.”

Murphy was about to suggest that Flynn use the field phone, but something in Flynn’s manner compelled him not to speak. They climbed until they reached a level where the stairs gave way to ladders somewhere below the first bell room where Mullins was.

Flynn looked at the large room they were in. The tower here was four-sided, with small milky-glass windows separated by thick stone. Mullins had knocked holes in some of the panes in the event he had to change his location, and Flynn pulled off a thick triangle of glass and looked at it, then looked at Murphy. “A great many people watching this on television are morbidly fascinated with the question of how this place will look afterward.”

Murphy said, “I don’t need any more revelations from you tonight. As a priest nothing shocks me any longer, and I still cling to my faith in humanity.”

“That is truly a wonder. I’m in awe of that….”

Murphy saw that he was sincere. “I observed how your people cared for each other, and for you…. I’ve heard some of their confessions…. There are hopeful signs amid all this.”

Flynn nodded. “And Hickey? Megan? Leary? And me?”

“May God have mercy on all your souls.”

Flynn didn’t respond.

Murphy said evenly, “If you’re going to kill me, do it quickly.”

Flynn’s face looked puzzled, then almost hurt. “No … why would you think that?”

Murphy automatically mumbled an apology but immediately felt it was unnecessary under the circumstances.

Flynn reached out and grabbed his arm. “Listen, I’ve kept my promise to you and let you run around doing your duty. Now I want a promise from you.”

Father Murphy looked at him cautiously.

Flynn said, “Promise me that after this is finished, you’ll see that all my people are buried together in Glasnevin with Ireland’s patriots. You can have a Catholic ceremony, if that’ll make you feel better…. I know it won’t be easy…. It may take you years to convince those swine in Dublin…. They never know who their heroes are until fifty years after they’re dead.”

The priest looked at him without comprehension, then said, “I … won’t be alive to …”

Flynn took the priest’s big hand firmly as though to shake it, but slapped the end of a handcuff on his wrist and locked the other end around the ladder’s rail.

Father Murphy stared at his tethered wrist, then looked at Flynn. “Let me loose.”

Flynn smiled weakly. “You weren’t even supposed to be here. Now just keep your wits about you when the bullets start to fly. This tower should survive the explosion.”

Murphy’s face went red, and he shouted again. “You’ve no right to do this! Let me go!”

Flynn ignored him. He pulled a pistol from his belt and jumped down into the ladder opening. “It may happen that Megan, Hickey … someone may come for you. …” He laid the pistol on the floor. “Kill them.” He dropped down the ladder. “Good luck, Padre.”

Murphy bent down and grabbed the pistol with his free hand. He pointed it at the top of Flynn’s head. “Stop!”

Flynn smiled as he continued his climb down. “Erin go bragh, Timothy Murphy.” He laughed, and the sound echoed through the stone tower.

Murphy shouted after him. “Stop! Listen … you must save the others too…. Maureen … For God’s sake, man, she loves you….” He stared down into the dark hole and watched Flynn disappear.

Father Murphy threw the pistol to the floor and tugged at the cuffs, then sank to his knees beside the ladder opening. Somewhere in the city a church bell tolled, then another joined in, and soon he could hear the sounds of a dozen different carillons playing the hymn “Be Not Afraid.” He thought that every bell in the city must be ringing, perhaps every bell in the country, and he hoped the others could hear them, too, and know they were not alone. For the first time since it had all begun, Father Murphy felt tears forming in his eyes.

CHAPTER 55

Brian Flynn came down from the tower and walked up the nave aisle, his footsteps echoing from the polished marble. He turned into the ambulatory and approached John Hickey, who stood on the raised platform of the chancel organ and watched him approach. Flynn walked deliberately up the steps and stood facing Hickey. After a short silence Hickey said, “It’s 4:59. You let Murphy waste valuable time trying to save already damned souls. Does everyone know their orders at least?”

“Has Schroeder called?”

“No—that means either nothing is new or something is wrong.” Hickey took out his pipe and filled it. “All night I’ve worried that my tobacco would run out before my life. It really bothered me…. A man shouldn’t have to scrimp on his tobacco before he dies.” He struck a match, and it sounded inordinately loud in the stillness. He drew deeply on his pipe and said, “Well, where’s the priest?”

Flynn motioned vaguely toward the towers. “We’ve no grudge against him…. He shouldn’t pay the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Why not? That’s why the rest of us are going to die.” He flashed a look of feigned enlightenment. “Ah, I suppose playing God means you have to save a life for every ten score you take.”

Flynn said, “Who are you?”

Hickey smiled with unrestrained glee. “Have I frightened you, lad? Don’t be frightened, then. I’m just an old man who amuses himself by playing on people’s fears and superstitions.” Hickey stepped over the body of Pedar Fitzgerald and came closer to Flynn. He sucked noisily on his pipe, a pensive look on his face. “You know, lad, I’ve had more fun since I had myself buried than ever I did before I was interred. You get a lot of mileage out of resurrection—someone made a whole religion out of it once.” He jerked a thumb toward the crucifix atop the altar and laughed again.

Flynn felt the old man’s breath against his face. He put his right hand on the organ console. “Do you know anything about this ring?”

Hickey didn’t look at it. “I know what you believe it is.”

“And what is it really?”

“A ring, made of bronze.”

Flynn slipped it from his finger and held it in his open palm. “Then I’ve held it too long. Take it.”

Hickey shrugged and reached for it.

Flynn closed his hand and stared at Hickey.

Hickey’s eyes narrowed into dark slits. “So, you want to know who I am and how I got here?” Hickey looked into the glowing bowl of his pipe with exaggerated interest. “I can tell you I’m a ghost, a thevshi, come from the grave to retrieve the ring and bring about your destruction and the destruction of the new Fenians—to perpetuate this strife into the next generation. There’s the proper Celtic explanation you’re looking for to make you feel better about your fears.” He looked directly into Flynn’s eyes. “But I can also tell you the truth, which is far more frightening. I’m alive. Your own dark soul imagined the thevshi, as it imagines the banshee, and the pooka, and the Far Darrig, and all the nightmarish creatures that walk the dark landscape of your mind and make you huddle around flickering peat fires. Aye, Brian, that’s a fright, because you can’t find sanctuary from those monsters you carry within you.”

Flynn stared at him, examining the furrowed white face. Suddenly Hickey’s eyes became benign, sparkling, and his mouth curled up in a good-natured smile. Hickey said, “You see?”

Flynn said. “Yes, I see. I see that you’re a creature who draws strength from other men’s weaknesses. It’s my fault you’re here. and it’s my responsibility to see that you do no further harm.”

“The harm is done. Had you stood up to me instead of wallowing in self-pity, you could have fulfilled your responsibility to your people, not to mention your own destiny.”

Flynn stared at Hickey. “No matter what happens, I’ll see you don’t leave here alive.” Flynn turned and walked to the sanctuary. He stood before the high throne. “Cardinal, the police will attack anytime after 5:15. Father Murphy is in a relatively safe place—we are not, and we will most probably die.”

Flynn watched the Cardinal’s face for a show of emotion. but there was none. He went on, “I want you to know that the people out there share in the responsibility for this. Like me they are vain, egotistical, and flawed. A rather sorry lot for products of so many thousands of years of Judeo-Christian love and charity, wouldn’t you say?”

The Cardinal leaned forward in the throne. “That’s a question for people who are looking for a path to take them through life. Your life is over, and you’ll have all your answers very soon. Use the minutes left to you to speak to her.” He nodded toward Maureen.

Flynn was momentarily taken aback. It was perhaps the last reply he expected from a priest. He stepped away from the throne, turned, and crossed the sanctuary.

Maureen and Baxter remained seated, cuffed together in the first pew. Without a word Flynn unlocked the handcuffs, then spoke in a distant voice. “I’d like to put you both in a less exposed place, but that isn’t acceptable to some of the others. However, when the shooting starts, you won’t be executed, because we may repel them and we’ll need you again.” He looked at his watch and continued in a dispassionate voice. “Sometime after 5:15 you’ll see all the doors explode, followed by police rushing in. I know you are both capable of keeping a cool head. Dive between the pews behind you. As 6:03 approaches … if you’re still alive … get out of this area no matter what’s happening around you. That’s all I can do for you.”

Maureen stood and looked at him closely. “No one asked you to do anything for us. If you want to do something for everyone, get down those stairs right now and open the gates to them. Then go into the pulpit and tell your people it’s finished. No one will stop you, Brian. I think they’re waiting to hear from you.”

“When they open the gates of Long Kesh, I’ll open the gates here.”

Her voice became angry. “The keys to the jails of Ulster are not in America, or in London or Dublin. They are in Ulster. Give me a year in Belfast and Londonderry, and I’ll get more people out of jail than you’ve ever had released with your kidnappings, raids, assassinations—”

Flynn laughed. “A year? You wouldn’t last a year. If the Catholics didn’t get you, Maureen, the Prods would.”

She drew a shallow breath and brought her voice under control. “Very well … it’s not worth going into that again. But you’ve no right to con these people into dying. Your voice can break the spell of death that hangs over this place. Go on! Do it! Now!” She swung and slapped him on the face.

Baxter moved off to one side and looked away.

Flynn pulled Maureen to him and said, “All night everyone’s been very good about giving me advice. It’s odd, isn’t it, how people don’t pay much attention to you until you’ve set a time bomb ticking under them?” He released her arms. “You, for instance, walked out on me four years ago without much advice for my future. All the things you’ve said to me tonight could have been said then.”

She glanced at Baxter and felt curiously uncomfortable that he was hearing all of this. She spoke in a low voice. “I said all I had to say then. You weren’t listening.”

“You weren’t speaking so loudly, either.”

Flynn turned to Baxter. “And you, Harry.” He moved closer to Baxter. “Major Bartholomew Martin needed a dead Englishman in here, and you’re it.”

Baxter considered this and accepted it in a very short time. “Yes … he’s a sick man … an obsessed man. I suppose I always suspected …”

Flynn looked at his watch. “Excuse me, I have to speak to my people.” He turned and walked toward the pulpit.

Maureen came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder, turning him toward her. “Damn it, aren’t you at least going to say good-bye?”

Flynn’s face reddened, and he seemed to lose his composure, then cleared his throat. “I’m sorry … I didn’t think you … Well—good-bye, then…. We won’t speak again, will we? Good luck …” He hesitated, then leaned toward her but suddenly straightened up again.

She started to say something, but Gallagher’s deep voice called out from the sacristy stairs, “Brian! Burke’s here to see you!”

Flynn looked at his watch with some surprise.

Hickey called out from the organ, “It’s a trap!”

Flynn hesitated, then looked at Maureen. She nodded slightly. He held her eyes for a moment and said, “Still trusting.” He smiled and walked quickly around the altar and descended the stairs.

Burke stood at the gate in his shirt-sleeves, his shoulder holster empty and his hands in his pants pockets.

Flynn approached without caution and stood close to the gate. “Well?” Burke didn’t answer, and Flynn spoke curtly. “You’re not going to ask me to give up or— ”

“No.”

Flynn called up to Gallagher, “Take a break.” He turned to Burke. “Are you here to kill me?”

Burke took his hands out of his pockets and rested them on the bars. “There’s an implied white flag here, isn’t there? Do you think I’d kill you like that?”

“You should. You should always kill the other side’s commander when you have a chance. If you were Bellini, I’d kill you.”

“There’re still rules.”

“Yes, I just gave you one.”

A few seconds passed in silence, then Flynn said, “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to say I have no personal animosity toward you.”

Flynn smiled. “Well, I knew that. I could see that. And I’ve none toward you, Burke. That’s the hell of it, isn’t it? I’ve no personal hatred of your people, and most of them have none toward me.”

“Then why are we here?”

“We’re here because in 1154 Adrian the Fourth gave Henry the Second of England permission to bring his army to Ireland. We’re here because the Red Bus to Clady passes Whitehorn Abbey. That’s why I’m here. Why are you here?”

“I was on duty at five o’clock.”

Flynn smiled, then said, “Well, that’s damned little reason to die. I’m releasing you from your promise to join the attack. Perhaps in exchange you’ll decide to kill Martin. Martin set up poor Harry to be here—did you figure that out?”

Burke’s face was impassive.

Flynn glanced at his watch. 5:04. Something was wrong. “Hadn’t you better go?”

“If you like. Also, if you’d like, I’ll stay on the phone with you until 6:03.”

Flynn looked at Burke closely. “I want to speak to Schroeder. Send him down here.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I want to speak to him! Now!”

Burke answered, “No one is intimidated by your threats anymore. Least of all Bert Schroeder.” He exhaled a deep sigh. “Captain Schroeder put the muzzle of his gun in his mouth …”

Flynn grabbed Burke’s arm. “You’re lying! I want to see his body.”

Burke pulled away and walked down into the sacristy, then looked back toward Flynn. “I don’t know what pushed him off the edge, but I know that somehow you’re to blame.” Burke stood at the corridor opening. Barely three feet away stood a masked ESD man with a Browning automatic shotgun. Burke edged toward the opening and looked back at Flynn. He seemed to vacillate, then said, “Goodbye.”

Flynn nodded. “I’m glad we met.”

CHAPTER 56

Bellini stood close to the conference table in the press room, his eyes focused on four long, unrolled sheets of blueprints, their corners weighted with coffee cups, ashtrays, and grenade canisters. Huddled around him were his squad leaders. The first three blueprints showed the basement, the main floor, and the upper levels. The fourth was a cutaway drawing of a side view of the Cathedral. Now that they were all in front of him, Bellini was unimpressed.

Gordon Stillway was seated in front of the blueprints, rapidly explaining the preliminary details. Bellini’s brow was creased. He looked around to see if anyone was showing signs of enlightenment. All he could read in the blackened, sweaty faces was impatience, fatigue, and annoyance at the postponement.

Burke opened the door and came into the room. Bellini glanced up and gave him a look that didn’t convey much gratitude or optimism. Burke saw Langley standing by the rear wall and joined him. They stood side by side and watched the scene at the table for a few seconds, then Burke spoke without looking away from the conference table. “Feeling better?”

Langley’s tone was cool. “I’ve never felt better in my life.”

“Me too.” He looked at the spot on the floor where Schroeder had fallen. “How’s Bert?”

Langley said, “A police doctor is treating him for physical exhaustion.” Burke nodded.

Langley let a few seconds go by. “Did Flynn buy it?”

Burke said, “His next move may be to threaten to kill a hostage if we don’t show him Schroeder’s body … with the back of his head blown away.”

Langley tapped the pocket that held Schroeder’s service revolver. “Well … it’s important that Flynn believes the plans he has are the plans Bellini will use….” He inclined his head toward the squad leaders. “Lots of lives depend on that….”

Burke changed the subject. “What are you doing about arresting Martin?”

Langley shook his head. “First of all, he’s disappeared again. He’s good at that. Secondly, I checked with the State Department joker, Sheridan, and Martin has diplomatic immunity, but they’ll consider expelling—”

“I don’t want him expelled.”

Langley glanced at him. “Well, it doesn’t matter because I also spoke with our FBI buddy, Hogan, and he says Martin has happily expelled himself—”

“He’s gone?”

“Not yet, of course. Not before the show ends. He’s booked on a Bermuda flight out of Kennedy—”

“What time?”

Langley gave him a sidelong glance. “Departs at 7:35. Breakfast at the Southampton Princess—forget it, Burke.”

“Okay.”

Langley watched the people at the conference table for a minute, then said, “Also, our CIA colleague, Kruger, says it’s their show. Nobody wants you poking around. Okay?”

“Fine with me. Art Forgery Squad, you say?”

Langley nodded. “Yeah, I know a guy in it. It’s the biggest fuck-off job anyone ever invented.”

Burke made appropriate signs of attentiveness as Langley painted an idyllic picture of life in the Art Forgery Squad, but his mind was on something else.

Gordon Stillway concluded his preliminary description and said, “Now, tell me again what precisely it is you want to know?”

Bellini glanced at the wall clock: 5:09. He drew a deep breath. “I want to know how to get into Saint Patrick’s Cathedral without using the front door.”

Gordon Stillway spoke and answered questions, and the mood of the ESD squad leaders went from pessimism to wary optimism.

Bellini glanced at the bomb disposal people. Their lieutenant, Wendy Peterson, the only woman present in the room, leaned closer to the blueprint of the basement and pulled her long blond hair away from her face. Bellini watched the woman’s cold blue eyes scanning the diagram. There were seventeen men, one woman, and two dogs, Brandy and Sally, in the Bomb Squad, and Bellini knew beyond a doubt that they were all certifiable lunatics, including the dogs.

Lieutenant Peterson turned to Stillway. Her voice was low, almost a whisper, which was a sort of trademark of this unit, thought Bellini. Peterson said, “If you wanted to plant bombs—let’s assume you didn’t have a great deal of explosives with you but you were looking for maximum effect—”

Stillway marked two X’s on the blueprints. “Here and here. The two big columns flanking the sacristy stairs.” He paused reflectively and said, “About the time I was six years old they blasted the stairs through the foundation here and weakened the bedrock on which these columns sit. This is recorded information for anyone who cares to look it up, including the IRA.”

Wendy Peterson nodded.

Stillway looked at her curiously. “Are you a bomb disposal person? What kind of job is that for a woman?”

She said, “I do a lot of needlepoint.”

Stillway considered the statement for a second, then continued, “These columns are big, but with the type of explosives they have today, as you know, a demolition expert could bring them down, and half the Cathedral goes down with them … and God help you all if you’re in there.” He stared at Lieutenant Peterson.

Wendy Peterson said, “I’m not interested in the explosion.”

Stillway again considered this obscure response and saw her meaning. He said, “But I am. There are not many like me around to rebuild the place….” He let his voice trail off.

Someone asked the question that had been on many people’s minds all night. “Can it be rebuilt?”

Stillway nodded. “Yes, but it would probably look like the First Supernatural Bank.”

A few men laughed, but the laughter died away quickly.

Stillway turned his attention back to the basement plans and detailed a few other idiosyncracies on the blueprints.

Bellini rubbed the stubble on his chin as he listened. He interrupted: “Mr. Stillway, if we were to bring an armored personnel carrier—weighing about ten tons … give or take a ton—up the front steps, through the main doors—”

Stillway sat up. “What? Those doors are invaluable—”

“Could the floor hold the weight?”

Stillway tried to calm himself and thought a moment, then said reluctantly, “If you have to do something so insane … destructive … Ten tons? Yes, according to the specs the floor will hold the weight … but there’s always some question, isn’t there?”

Bellini nodded. “Yeah…. One other thing … they said—these Fenians said— they were going to set fire to the Cathedral. We have reason to believe it may be the attic…. Is that possible … ?”

“Why not?”

“Well … it looks pretty solid to me—”

“Solid wood.” He shook his head. “What bastards …” Stillway suddenly stood. “Gentlemen—Miss—” He moved through the circle of people. “Excuse me if I don’t stay to listen to you work out the details—I’m not feeling so well—but I’ll be in the next room if you need me.” He turned and left.

The ESD squad leaders began talking among themselves. The Bomb Squad people moved to the far end of the room, and Bellini watched them huddled around Peterson. Their faces, he noted, were always expressionless, their eyes vacant. He looked at his watch. 5:15. He would need fifteen to twenty minutes to modify the attack plan. It was going to be close, but the plan that was forming in his mind was much cleaner, less likely to become a massacre. He stepped away from the squad leaders and walked up to Burke and Langley. He hesitated a second, then said, “Thanks for Stillway. Good work.”

Langley answered, “Anytime, Joe—excuse me—Inspector. You call, we deliver— architects, lawyers, hit men, pizza—”

Burke interrupted. “Do you feel better about this?”

Bellini nodded. “I’ll take fewer casualties, the Cathedral has a fifty-fifty chance, but the hostages are still dead.” He paused, then said, “Do you think there’s any way to call off Logan’s armored cavalry charge up Fifth Avenue?”

Langley shook his head. “Governor Doyle really has his heart set on that. Think of the armored car as one of those sound trucks they use in an election campaign.”

Bellini found a cigar stub in his pocket and lit it, then looked at his watch again. “Flynn expected to be hit soon after 5:15, and he’s probably sweating it out right now. Picture that scene—good, good. I hope the motherfucker is having the worst time of his fucking life.”

Langley said, “If he’s not now, I expect he will be shortly.”

“Yeah. Cocksucker.” Bellini’s mouth turned up in a vicious grin, and his eyes narrowed like little pig slits. “I hope he gets gut-shot and dies slow. I hope he pukes blood and acid and bile, until he—”

Langley held up his hand. “Please.”

Bellini spun around and looked at Burke. “I can’t believe Schroeder told him— ”

Burke cut him off. “I never said that. I said I found the architect, and you should revise your attack. Captain Schroeder suffered a physical collapse. Right?”

Bellini laughed. “Of course he collapsed. I hit him in the face. What did you expect him to do—dance?” Bellini’s expression became hard, and he made a contemptuous noise. “That cocksucker sold me out. He could have gotten a hundred men killed.”

Burke said, “You forget about Schroeder, and I’ll forget I heard you plant the idea in your squad leaders’ heads about making a clean sweep in the Cathedral.”

Bellini stayed quiet a minute, then said, “The attack is not going to be the way Schroeder told Flynn…. What’s going to happen to his daughter?”

Langley took a file photo of Dan Morgan out of his pocket and laid it on a bridge table beside a snapshot of Terri O’Neal that he’d taken from Schroeder’s wallet. “This man will murder her.” He pointed to Terri O’Neal’s smiling face.

The telephone rang, and Bellini looked at it. He said to the two men, “That’s my buddy, Murray Kline. His Honor to you.” He picked up the extension on the bridge table. “Gestapo Headquarters, Joe speaking.”

There was a stammer on the other end, then the Mayor’s voice came on, agitated. “Joe, what time are you moving out?”

Bellini felt a familiar heart-flutter at the sound of the military expression. Never again after today did he want to hear those words.

“Joe?”

“Yeah … well, the architect was worth the wait—”

“Good. Very good. What time are you jumping off?”

Jumping off. His heart gave another leap, and he felt like there was ice water in his stomach. “About 5:35—give or take.”

“Can’t you move it up?”

Bellini’s voice had an insolent tone. “No!”

“I told you there are people trying to stop this rescue—”

“I don’t get involved in politics.”

Roberta Spiegel’s voice came on the line. “Okay, forget the fucking politicians. The bombs, Bellini—”

“Call me Joe.”

“You’re leaving the Bomb Squad damned little time to find and defuse the goddamned bombs, Captain.”

“Inspector!”

“Listen, you—” “You listen, Spiegel—why don’t you crawl around with the fucking dogs and help them sniff out the bombs? Brandy, Sally, and Robbie.” He turned to Burke and Langley and smiled, a look of triumph on his face.

Langley winced.

Bellini continued before she could recover, knowing there was no reason to stop now. “They’re short on dogs since your last fucking budget cuts, and they could use the help. You have your big nose into everything else.”

There was a long silence on the line, then Spiegel laughed. “All right, you bastard, you can say what you want now, but later—”

“Yeah, later. I’d give my left arm for a guaranteed later. We move at 5:35. That’s not negotiable—”

“Is Inspector Langley there?”

“Hold on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “You want to talk to the Dragon Lady?” Langley’s face flushed, and he hesitated before taking the phone from Bellini, who moved back to the conference table. “Langley here.”

Spiegel said, “Do you know where Schroeder is? His backup negotiator can’t locate him.”

Langley said, “He’s collapsed.”

“Collapsed?”

“Yeah, you know, like fell down, passed out.”

“Oh … well, get him inflated again and get him here to the state offices in Rockefeller Center. He has to do his hero act later.”

“I thought he was supposed to be the fall guy.”

She said, “No, you’re a little behind on this…. We’ve rethought that. He’s the hero now no matter what happens. He’s got lots of good press contacts.”

“Who’s the fall guy?”

She went on, “You see, there are no such things as victory or defeat anymore— there are only public relations problems—”

“Who’s the fall guy?”

Spiegel said, “That’s you. You won’t be alone, though … and you’ll come out of it all right. I’ll see to that.”

Langley didn’t answer.

She said, “Listen, Philip, I think you should be here during the assault.”

Langley’s eyebrows went up at the use of his first name. He noted that her voice was pleasant, almost demure. “Rescue, You have to call it a rescue, Roberta.” He winked at Burke.

Spiegel’s voice was a little sharper. “Whatever. We—I want you up here.”

“I think I’ll stay down here.”

“You get your ass up here in five minutes.”

He glanced at Burke. “All right.” He hung up and stared down at the phone. “This has been a screwy night.”

“Full moon,” said Burke. There was a lengthy silence, then Langley said, “Are you going in with Bellini?”

Burke lit a cigarette. “I think I should … to tidy up those loose ends … get hold of any notes the Fenians might have kept. There are secrets in that place … mysteries, as the Major said. And before Bellini starts blowing heads off … or the place goes up in smoke …”

Langley said, “Do what you have to do….” He forced a smile. “Do you want to change places with me and go hold Spiegel’s hand?”

“No thanks.”

Langley glanced nervously at his watch. “Okay … listen, tell Bellini to keep Schroeder locked in that room. At dawn we’ll come for Schroeder and parade him past the cameras like an Olympic hero. Schroeder’s in, Langley’s out.”

Burke nodded, then said, “That mounted cop … Betty Foster … God, it seems so long ago…. Anyway, make sure she gets something out of this … and if I don’t get a chance to thank her later … you can …”

“I’ll take care of it.” He shook his head. “Screwy night.” He moved toward the door, then turned back. “Here’s another one for you to work out when you get in there. We lifted the fingerprints off the glass that Hickey used.” He nodded toward the chair Hickey had sat in. “The prints were smudged, but Albany and the FBI say it’s ninety percent certain it was Hickey, and we’ve got a few visual identifications from people who saw him on TV—”

Burke nodded. “That clears that up—”

“Not quite. The Jersey City medical examiner did a dental check on the remains they exhumed and …” He looked at Burke. “Spooky … really spooky …”

Burke said quickly, “Come off it, Langley.”

Langley laughed. “Just kidding. The coffin was filled with dirt, and there was a note in there in Hickey’s handwriting. I’ll tell you what it said later.” He smiled and opened the door. “Betty Foster, right? See you later, Patrick.” He closed the door behind him.

Burke looked across the room. More than a dozen ESD leaders, completely clad in black, grouped in a semicircle around the table. Above them a wall clock ticked off the minutes. As he watched they all straightened up, almost in unison, like a football team out of a huddle, and began filing out the door. Bellini stayed behind, occupied with some detail. Burke stared at his black, hulking figure in the brightly lit room and was reminded of a dark rain cloud in a sunny sky.

Burke walked over to the conference table and pulled on a black turtleneck sweater, then slipped back into his flak jacket. He adjusted the green carnation he’d gotten from an ESD man who had passed out a basketful of them. Burke looked down at the blueprints and read the notations of squad assignments hastily scrawled across them. He said to Bellini, “Where’s the safest place I can be during the attack?”

Bellini thought a moment, then said, “Los Angeles.”

CHAPTER 57

Brian Flynn stood in the high pulpit, a full story above the main floor. He looked out at the Cathedral spread before him, then spoke into the microphone. “Lights.”

The lights began to go out in sections: the sanctuary, ambulatory, and Lady Chapel lights first, the switches pulled by Hickey; then the lights in the four triforia controlled by Sullivan, followed by the choir-loft lights, and finally the huge hanging chandeliers over the nave, extinguished from the electrical panels in the loft. The vestibules, side altars, and bookstore darkened last as Hickey moved through the Cathedral pulling the remaining switches.

A few small lights still burned, Flynn noticed. Lights whose switches were probably located outside the Cathedral. Hickey and the others smashed the ones that were accessible, the sound of breaking glass filling the quiet spaces.

Flynn nodded. The beginning of the attack would be signaled when the last lights suddenly went out, a result of the police pulling the main switch in the rectory basement. The police would expect a dark Cathedral where their infrared scopes would give them an overwhelming advantage. But Flynn had no intention of letting them have such an advantage, so every votive candle, hundreds and hundreds of them, had been lit, and they shimmered in the surrounding blackness, an offering of sorts, he reflected, an ancient comfort against the terrors of the dark and a source of light the police could not extinguish. Also, at intervals throughout the Cathedral, large phosphorus flares were placed to provide additional illumination and to cause the police infrared scopes to white out. Captain Joe Bellini, Flynn thought, had a surprise in store for him.

Flynn placed his hands on the cool Carrara marble of the pulpit balustrade and blinked to adjust his eyes to the dim light as he examined the vast interior. Flickering shadows played off the walls and columns, but the ceiling was obscure. It was easy to imagine there was no roof, that the towering columns had been relieved of their burden and that overhead was only the night sky—an illusion that would be reality on the following evening.

The long black galleries of the triforia above, dark and impenetrable in the best of light, were nearly invisible now, and the only sense he had of anything being up there was the sound of rifles scraping against stone.

The choir loft was a vast expanse of blackness, totally shrouded from the murky light below as if a curtain had been drawn across the rail; but Flynn could feel the two dark presences up there more strongly than when he had seen them, as though they basked in blackness and flourished in the dark.

Flynn drew a long breath through his nostrils. The burning phosphorus exuded an overpowering, pungent smell that seemed to alter the very nature of the Cathedral. Gone was that strange musky odor, that mixture of stale incense, tallow, and something else that was indefinable, which he had labeled the Roman Catholic smell, the smell that never changed from church to church and that evoked mixed memories of childhood. Gone, finally gone, he thought. Driven out. And he was inordinately pleased with this, as though he’d won a theological argument with a bishop.

He lowered his eyes and looked over the flares and the dozens of racks of votive candles. The light seemed less comforting now, the candles burning in their red or blue glass like brimstone around the altars, and the brilliant white phosphorus like the leaping flames of hell. And the saints on their altars, he noticed, were moving, gyrating in obscene little dances, the beatific expressions on their white faces suddenly revealing a lewdness that he had always suspected was there.

But the most remarkable metamorphosis was in the windows, which seemed to hang in black space, making them appear twice their actual size, rising to dizzying heights so that if you looked up at them you actually experienced some vertigo. And above the soaring choir loft, atop the thousands of unseen brass pipes of the organ, sat the round rose window, which had become a dark blue swirling vortex that would suck you out of this netherworld of shadows and spirits—which was only, after all, the anteroom of hell—suck you, finally and irretrievably, into hell itself.

Flynn adjusted the microphone and spoke. He doubted his voice would break the spell of death, as she had said, and in any case he had the opposite purpose. “Ladies and gentlemen … brothers and sisters …” He looked at his watch. 5:14. “The time, as you know, has come. Stay alert … it won’t be much longer now.” He drew a short breath, which carried out through the speakers. “It’s been my great honor to have been your leader…. I want to assure you we’ll meet again, if not in Dublin, then in a place of light, the land beyond the Western Sea, whatever name it goes by … because whatever God controls our ultimate destiny cannot deny our earthly bond to one another, our dedication to our people….” He felt his voice wavering. “Don’t be afraid.” He turned off the microphone.

All eyes went from him to the doors. Rockets and rifles were at the ready, and gas masks hung loosely over chests where hearts beat wildly.

John Hickey stood below the pulpit and threw a rocket tube, rifle, and gas mask to Flynn. Hickey called out in a voice with no trace of fear, “Brian, I’m afraid this is goodbye, lad. It’s been a pleasure, and I’m sure we’ll meet again in a place of incredible light, not to mention heat.” He laughed and moved off into the half-shadows of the sanctuary.

Flynn slung the rifle across his chest, then broke the seal on the rocket and extended the tube, aiming it at the center vestibule.

His eyes became misty, from the phosphorus, he thought, and they went out of focus, the clear plastic aiming sight of the rocket acting as a prism in the dim candlelight. Colors leaped all around the deathly still spaces before him like fireworks seen at a great distance, or like those phantom battles fought in his worst silent nightmares. And there was no sound here either but the steady ticking of his watch near his ear, the rushing of blood in his head, and the faraway pounding of his chest.

He tried to conjure up faces, people he had known from the past, parents, relatives, friends, and enemies, but no images seemed to last more than a second. Instead, an unexpected scene flashed into his consciousness and stayed there: Whitehorn Abbey’s subbasement, Father Donnelly talking expansively, Maureen pouring tea, himself examining the ring. They were all speaking, but he could not hear the voices, and the movements were slow, as if they had all the time in the world. He recognized the imagery, understood that this scene represented the last time he was even moderately happy and at peace.

John Hickey stood before the Cardinal’s throne and bowed. “Your Eminence, I have an overwhelming desire,” he said matter-of-factly, “to slit your shriveled white throat from ear to ear, then step back and watch your blood run onto your scarlet robe and over that obscene thing hanging around your neck.”

The Cardinal suddenly reached out and touched Hickey’s cheek.

Hickey drew back quickly and made a noise that sounded like a startled yelp. He recovered and jumped back onto the step, pulled the Cardinal down from his throne, and pushed him roughly toward the sacristy stairs.

They descended the steps, and Hickey paused at the landing where Gallagher knelt just inside the doors of the crypt. “Here’s company for you, Frank.” Hickey prodded the Cardinal down the remaining stairs, pushing him against the gates so that he faced into the sacristy. He extended the Cardinal’s right arm and handcuffed his wrist to the bars.

Hickey said, “Here’s a new logo for your church, Your Eminence. Been a good while since they’ve come up with a new one.” He spoke as he cuffed the other extended arm go a bar. “We’ve had Christ on the cross, Saint Peter crucified upside down, Andrew crucified on an X cross, and now we’ve got you hanging on the sacristy gates of Saint Patrick’s. Lord, that’s a natural. Sell a million icons.”

The Cardinal turned his head toward Hickey. “The Church has survived ten thousand like you,” he said impassively, “and will survive you, and grow stronger precisely because there are people like you among us.”

“Is that a fact?” Hickey balled his hand into a fist but was aware that Gallagher had come up behind him. He turned and led Gallagher by the arm back to the open crypt doors. “Stay here. Don’t speak to him and don’t listen to him.”

Gallagher stared down the steps. The Cardinal’s outstretched arms and red robes covered half the grillwork. Gallagher felt a constriction in his stomach; he looked back at Hickey but was not able to hold his stare. Gallagher turned away and nodded.

Hickey took the staircase that brought him up to the right of the altar and approached Maureen and Baxter. They rose as he drew near.

Hickey indicated two gas masks that lay on the length of the pew that separated the two people. “Put those on at the first sign of gas. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the sight of a woman vomiting—reminds me of my first trip to Dublin— drunken whores ducking into alleys and getting sick. Never forgot that.”

Maureen and Baxter stayed silent. Hickey went on, “It may interest you to know that the plan of this attack was sold to us at a low price, and the plan doesn’t provide much for your rescue or the saving of this Cathedral.”

Baxter said, “As long as it provides for your death, it’s a fine plan.”

Hickey turned to Baxter. “You’re a vindictive bastard. I’ll bet you’d like to bash in another young Irishman’s throat, now you’ve got the hang of it and the taste for it.”

“You’re the most evil, twisted man I’ve ever met.” Baxter’s voice was barely under control.

Hickey winked at him. “Now you’re talking.” He turned his attention to Maureen. “Don’t let Megan or Leary shoot you, lass. Take cover between these pews and lie still in the dark. Very still. Here’s your watch back, my love. Look at it as the bullets are whistling over your head. Keep checking it as you stare up at the ceiling. Sometime between 6:03 and 6:04 you’ll hear a noise, and the floor will bounce ever so slightly beneath your lovely rump, and the columns will start to tremble. Out of the darkness, way up there, you will see great sections of ceiling falling toward you, end over end, as in slow motion, right onto your pretty face. And remember, lass, your last thoughts while you’re being crushed to death should be of Brian—or Harry … any man will do, I suppose.” He laughed as he turned away and walked toward the bronze plate on the floor. He bent over and lifted the plate.

Maureen called after him: “My last thought will be that God should have mercy on all our souls … and that your soul, John Hickey, should finally rest in peace.”

Hickey threw her a kiss, then dropped down the ladder, drawing the bronze plate closed over him.

Maureen sat back on the pew. Baxter stood a moment, then moved toward her. She looked up at him and put out her hand. Baxter took it and sat close beside her so that their bodies touched. He looked around at the flickering shadows. “I tried to picture how this would end … but this …”

“Nothing is ever as you expect it to be…. I never expected you to be …”

Baxter held her more tightly. “I’m frightened.”

“Me too.” She thought a moment, then smiled. “But we made it, you know. We never gave them an inch.”

He smiled in return. “No, we never did, did we?”

Flynn peered into the darkness to his right and stared at the empty throne, then looked out through the carved wooden screen to where the chancel organ keyboard stood on its platform beside the sanctuary. A candle was lit on the organ console, and for a moment he thought John Hickey was sitting at the keys. He blinked, and an involuntary noise rose in his throat. Pedar Fitzgerald sat at the organ, his hands poised over the keys, his body upright but tilted slightly back. His face was raised toward the ceiling as if he were about to burst into song. Flynn could make out the tracheal tube still protruding from his mouth, the white dead skin, and the open eyes that looked alive as the flame of the candle danced in them. “Hickey,” he said softly to himself, “Hickey, you unspeakable, filthy, obscene …” He glanced up into the choir loft but could not see Megan, and he concentrated again on the front doors.

5:20 came, then 5:25—

Flynn looked around the column to his rear and saw Maureen and Baxter huddled together. He watched them briefly, then turned back to the vestibule.

5:30.

A tension hung in the still, cold air of the Cathedral, a tension so palpable it could be heard in the steady beating chests, felt on the sweaty brows, tasted in the mouth as bile, seen in the dancing lights, and smelled in the stench of burning phosphorous.

5:35 came, and the thought began to take hold in the minds of the people in the Cathedral that it was already too late to mount an attack that would serve any purpose.

In the long southwest triforium George Sullivan put down his rifle and picked up his bagpipes. He tucked the bag under his arm, adjusted the three drone pipes over his shoulder, and put his fingers on the eight-holed chanter, and then put his mouth to the blowpipe. Against all orders and against all reason he began to play. The slow, haunting melody of “Amazing Grace” floated from the chanter and hummed from the drone pipes into the candlelit silence.

There was a very slight, almost imperceptible lessening of tension, a relaxing of vigilance, coupled with the most primitive of beliefs that if you anticipated something terrible, imagined it in the most minute detail, it would not happen.

Book V

Assault

For the great Gaels of IrelandAre the men that God made mad,For all their wars are merry,And all their songs are sad.G. K. Chesterton

Bellini stood at the open door of the small elevator in the basement below the Achbishop’s sacristy. An ESD man stood on the elevator roof and shone a handheld spotlight up the long shaft. The shaft began as brick, but at a level above the main floor it was wood-walled and seemed to continue up, as Stillway had pointed out, to a level that would bring it through the triforium’s attic.

Bellini called softly, “How’s it look?”

The ESD man replied, “We’ll see.” He took a tension clamp from a utility pouch, screwed it tightly to the elevator cable at hip level, and then stepped onto it and tested its holding strength. He screwed on another and stepped up to it. Step by step, very quickly now, he began working his way up the shaft to the triforium level eight stories above.

Bellini looked back into the curving corridor behind him. The First ESD Assault Squad stood silently, laden with equipment and armed with silenced pistols and rifles that were fitted with infrared scopes.

On the floor just outside the elevator a communications man sat in front of a small field-phone switchboard that was connected by wire to the remaining ESD Assault Squads and to the state office in Rockefeller Center. Bellini said to the man, “When the shit hits the fan, intersquad communication takes priority over His Honor and the Commissioner…. In fact, I don’t want to hear from them unless it’s to tell us to pull out.”

The commo man nodded.

Burke came down the corridor. His face was smeared with greasepaint, and he was screwing a big silencer onto the barrel of an automatic pistol.

Bellini watched him. “This don’t look like Los Angeles, does it, Burke?”

Burke stuck the automatic in his belt. “Let’s go, Bellini.”

Bellini shrugged. He climbed the stepladder and stood on the roof of the elevator, and Burke came up beside him in the narrow shaft. Bellini shone his light up the wall until it rested on the oak door that opened on the Archbishop’s sacristy twenty feet above. He said to Burke in a quiet voice, “If there’s a Fenian standing there with a submachine gun and he hears us climbing, there’ll be a waterfall of blood and bodies dropping back on this elevator.”

Burke shifted Bellini’s light farther up and picked out the dim outline of the climbing man, now about one hundred feet up the shaft. “Or there may be an ambush waiting up there at the top.”

Bellini nodded. “Looked good on paper.” He shut off his light. “You got about one minute to stop being all asshole and get out of here.”

“Okay.”

Bellini glanced up at the dark shaft. “I wonder … I wonder if that door or any door in this place is mined?” Bellini was speaking nervously now. “Remember in the army … all the phony minefield signs? All the other bullshit psy-warfare … ?” He shook his head. “After the first shot everything is okay … it’s all the shit before…. Flynn’s got me psyched out…. He understands … I’m sure he’s crazier than me. …”

Burke said, “Maybe Schroeder told him how crazy you really are … maybe Flynn’s scared of you.”

Bellini nodded. “Yeah …” He laughed, then his face hardened. “You know something? I feel like killing someone…. I have an urge … like when I need a cigarette … you know?”

Burke looked at his watch. “At least this one can’t go into overtime. At 6:03 it’s finished.”

Bellini also checked his watch. “Yeah … no overtime. Just a two-minute warning, then a big bang, and the stadium falls down and the game is over.” He laughed again, and Burke glanced at him.

The ESD climber reached the top of the shaft. He tied a nylon rope ladder to the pulley crossbeam and let the ladder fall. Bellini caught it before it hit the metal roof of the elevator. The communications man threw up a field-phone receiver, and Bellini clipped it to the shoulder of his flak jacket. “Well, Burke … here goes. Once you get on the ladder, you’re not getting off the ladder so easy.” He began climbing. Burke followed, and one by one the ten ESD men climbed behind them.

Bellini paused at the oak door of the Archbishop’s sacristy and put his ear to it. He heard footsteps and froze. Suddenly the crack of light at the bottom of the door disappeared. He waited several more seconds, his rifle pointed at the door and his heart pounding in his chest. The footsteps moved away. His phone clicked, and he answered it quietly. “Yeah.”

The operator said, “Our people outside report all the lights are going out in there—but there’s … like candlelight … maybe flares lighting up the windows.”

Bellini swore. The flares, he knew, would be white phosphorus. Bastards. Right from the beginning … right from the fucking beginning … He continued up the swaying ladder.

At the top of the shaft the climber sat on the crossbeam, pointing his light farther up, and Bellini saw a small opening where the shaft wall ended a few feet from the sloping ceiling of the triforium attic. Bellini mumbled, “Caught a fucking break at least.” He stood precariously on the crossbeam, eight stories above the basement, and stretched toward the opening, grabbing at the top of the wooden wall. He pulled himself up, squeezing his head and broad shoulders into the space, a silenced pistol in his hand. He blinked in the darkness of the half attic, fully expecting to be shot between the eyes. He waited, then turned on his light, cocking his pistol at the same time. Nothing moved but his pounding chest against the top edge of the wall. He slid down headfirst five feet to a beam that ran over the plaster lathing, breaking his fall with his outstretched arms and righting himself silently.

Burke’s head and shoulders appeared in the opening, and Bellini pulled him through. One by one the First Assault Squad dropped into the small side attic behind the triforium.

Bellini crawled over the beams, sidled up to the wooden knee-wall and moved along it until he felt a small door Stillway had described. On the other side of the door was the southeast triforium, and in the triforium, he was certain, were one or more gunmen. He put a small audio amplifier to the door and listened. He heard no footsteps, no sound of life in the triforium, but somewhere in the Cathedral a bagpipe was playing “Amazing Grace.” He mumbled to himself, “Assholes.”

He backed carefully away from the wall and led his squad to the low, narrow space where the sloping roof met the stone of the outside wall. He unclipped the field phone from his jacket and spoke quietly to his switchboard below. “Report to all stations—First Squad in place. No con tact.”

The Second Assault Squad of ESD men climbed the rungs of the wide chimney, fire axes slung to their backs. They passed the steel door in the brick and continued up to the chimney pot.

The squad leader attached a khaki nylon rappelling line to the top rung and held the gathered rope in his hands. The cold night air blew into the chimney, making a deep, hollow, whistling sound. The squad leader stuck a periscope out of the chimney pot and scanned the towers, but the Fenians were not visible from this angle, and he pointed the scope at the cross-shaped roof. Two dormers faced him, and he saw that the hatches on them were open. “Shit.” He reached back, and the squad commo man cranked the field phone slung to his chest and handed him the receiver. The squad leader reported, “Captain, Second Squad in position. The damned hatches are open now, and it’s going to be tough crossing this roof if there’re people leaning out those dormers shooting at us.”

Bellini answered in a barely audible voice. “Just hold there until the towers are knocked out. Then move.”

The Third Assault Squad climbed the chimney behind the Second Squad but stopped their ascent below the steel door. The squad leader maneuvered to a position beside the door, directing a flashlight on the latch. Slowly he reached out with a mechanical pincher and tentatively touched the latch, then drew it away. He called Bellini on the field phone. “Captain. Third in position. Can’t tell if there are alarms or mines on the door.”

Bellini answered, “Okay. When Second Squad clears the chimney, you open the door and find out.”

“Right.” He handed the phone back to the commo man hanging beside him, who said, “How come we never rehearsed anything like this?”

The squad leader said, “I don’t think the situation ever came up before.”

At 5:35 the ESD sniper-squad leader in Rockefeller Center picked up the ringing field phone on the desk in a tenth-floor office. Joe Bellini’s voice came over the line, subdued but with no hesitation. He gave the code word. “Bull Run. Sixty seconds.”

The sniper-squad leader acknowledged, hung up, drew a long breath, and pushed the office intercom buzzer in an alerting signal.

Fourteen snipers moved quickly to the seven windows that faced the louvered sections of the towers across Fifth Avenue and crouched below the sills. The intercom sounded again, and the snipers rose and threw open the sashes, then steadied their rifles on the cold stone ledges. The squad leader watched the second hand of his watch, then gave the final short signal.

Fourteen silenced rifles coughed, and the metallic sound of sliding operating rods clattered in the offices, followed by whistling sounds, then the coughs of another volley, breaking up into random firing as the snipers fired at will. Spent brass cartridge casings dropped silently on the plush carpets.

Brian Flynn looked down at the television sitting on the floor of the pulpit. The screen showed a close-up shot of the bell tower, the blue-lit shadow of Mullins staring out through the torn louvers. Mullins raised a mug to his lips. The scene shifted to another telescopic close-up of Devane in the south tower, a bored look on his face. The audio was tuned down, but Flynn could hear the droning voice of a reporter. The reporter gave the time. Everything seemed very ordinary until the camera panned back, and Flynn caught a glimpse of light from the rose window, which should have been dark. He realized he was seeing a video replay from early in the evening. Flynn reached for the field phone.

A dozen Fenian spotters in the surrounding buildings watched the Cathedral through field glasses.

One spotter saw movement at the mouth of the chimney. A second spotter saw the line of windows in Rockefeller Center open.

Strobe lights began signaling to the Cathedral towers.

Rory Devane knelt behind a stone mullion, blowing into his cold hands, his rifle cradled in the bend of his arms. His eye caught the flashing strobes, and then he saw a line of muzzle flashes in the building across the Avenue. He grabbed for the field phone, and it rang simultaneously, but before he could pick it up, shards of disintegrating stone flew into his face. The dark tower room was filled with sharp pinging sounds and echoed with the metallic clatter of tearing copper louvers.

A bullet slammed into Devane’s flak jacket, sending him reeling back. He felt another round pass through his throat, but didn’t feel the one that ricocheted into his forehead and fractured his skull.

Donald Mullins stood in the east end of the bell room staring out across the East River trying to see the predawn light coming over Long Island. He had half convinced himself that there would be no attack, and when the field phone rang he knew it was Flynn telling him the Fenians had won.

A strobe light flashed from a window in the Waldorf-Astoria, and his heart missed a beat. He heard one of the bells behind him ring sharply, and he spun around. Muzzle flashes, in rapid succession like popping flashbulbs, ran the width of the building across the Avenue, and more strobe lights flashed in the distance; but these warnings, which he had been watching for all night, made no impression on his mind. A series of bullets slammed into his flak jacket, knocked the breath out of him, and picked him up off his feet.

Mullins regained his footing and lunged for the field phone, which was still ringing. A bullet shattered his elbow, and another passed through his hand. His rifle fell to the floor, and everything went black. Still another round entered behind his ear and disintegrated a long swath of his skull.

Mullins staggered in blind pain and grabbed at the bell straps hanging through the open stairwell. He felt himself falling, sliding down the swinging straps.

Father Murphy huddled against the cold iron ladder in the bell tower, half unconscious from fatigue. A faint peal of the bell overhead made him look up, and he saw Mullins falling toward him. Instinctively he grabbed at the man before he passed through the opening in the landing.

Mullins veered from the gaping hole and landed on the floor, shrieking in pain. He lurched around the room, his hands to his face and his sense of balance gone along with his inner ear, blood running between his fingers. He ran headlong toward the east wall of the tower and crashed through the splintered glass, tumbling three stories to the roof of the northwest triforium.

Father Murphy tried to comprehend the surrealistic scene that had just passed before his cloudy eyes. He blinked several times and stared at the shattered window.

Abby Boland thought she heard a sound on the roof of the triforium’s attic behind her and froze, listening.

Leary thought he heard the pealing of a bell from the tower and strained to listen for another.

Flynn was calling into the field phone, “South tower, north tower, answer.”

In the chimney the commo men with the two squads answered their phones simultaneously and heard Bellini’s voice. “Both towers clear. Move!”

The Second Squad leader threw the gathered rope up and out of the chimney and scrambled over the top into the cold air. They had gambled that by leaving on the blue floodlights that bathed the lower walls of the Cathedral, they wouldn’t alert the Fenian spotters in the surrounding buildings or in the attic. But the squad leader felt very visible as he rappelled down the side of the chimney. He landed on the dark roof of the northeast triforium, followed by his ten-man Assault Squad. They moved quickly over the lower roof to a slender pinnacle that rose between two great windows of the ambulatory. The squad found the iron rungs in the stone that Stillway said would be there and climbed up to a higher roof, partially visible in the diffused lighting. Dropping onto the roof, they lay in the wide rain gutter where the wall met the sloping expanse of gray slate shingles, then began crawling in the gutter toward the closest dormer. The squad leader kept his eyes on the dormer as he moved toward it. He saw something poke out of the open hatchway, something long and slender like a rifle barrel.

The Third Assault Squad leader at the steel door watched the last dark form disappear from the chimney pot overhead and hooked his pinchers on the door latch, muttered a prayer, and lifted the latch, then slowly pushed in on the door, wondering if he was going to be blown up the chimney like soot.

Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty stood in dormered hatchways, which were on opposite sides of the pitched roof, scanning the night sky for helicopters. Nulty, on the north slope of the roof, thought he heard a sound below. He looked straight down at the triforium roof but saw nothing in the dark. He heard a sound to his immediate right and turned. A long line of black shapes, like beetles, he thought, was crawling through the rain gutter toward him. He couldn’t imagine how they got there without helicopters or without the spotters in the surrounding buildings seeing them climb the walls. Instinctively he raised his rifle and drew a bead on the first man, who was no more than twenty feet away.

One of the men shouted, and they all rose to one knee. Nulty saw rifles coming into firing position, and he squeezed off a single round. One of the black-clad men slapped his hand over his flak jacket, lost his balance and fell out of the rain gutter; he dropped three stories to the triforium roof below, making a loud thup in the quiet night.

Jean Kearney turned at the sound of Nulty’s shot. “Arthur! What—?”

The dormer where Nulty stood erupted in flying splinters of wood, and Nulty fell back into the attic. He rose very quickly to his feet, took two steps toward Jean Kearney, his arms waving, then toppled over the catwalk and crashed to the plaster lathing below.

Kearney stared down at his body, then looked up at the dormer hatch and saw a man hunched in the opening. She raised her rifle and fired, but the man jumped out of view.

Kearney ran along the catwalk and dived across the wooden boards, reaching a glowing oil lamp. She flung it up in an arc, and it crashed into a pile of chopped wood. She rolled a few feet farther and reached for the field phone, which was ringing.

Men were dropping into the attic from the open hatches, scrambling over the catwalks and firing blindly with silenced rifles into the half-lighted spaces. Bullets hit the rafters and floor around her with a thud.

Kearney fired back, and the noise of her rifle attracted a dozen muzzle flashes. She felt a sharp pain in her thigh and cried out, dropping her rifle. Blood gushed through her fingers as she held a hand under her skirt against the wound. With her other hand she felt on the floor for the ringing phone.

The woodpile was beginning to blaze now, and the light silhouetted the dark shapes moving toward her. They were throwing canisters of fire-extinguishing gas into the blazing wood, but the fire was growing larger.

She picked up her rifle again and shot into the blinding light of the fire. A man cried out, and then answering shots whistled past her head. She dragged herself toward the bell tower passage, leaving a trail of blood on the dusty floor. She reached another oil lamp and flung it into the pile of wood that lay between her and the tower, blocking her escape route.

She lay in a prone position, firing wildly into the flame-lit attic around her. Another man moaned in pain. Bullets ripped up the wood around her, and the windows in the peak behind her began shattering. The fires were reaching toward the roof now, curling around the rafters. The smell of burning wax candles mixed with the aroma of old, seasoned oak, and the heat from the fires began to warm her chilled body.

In the northeast triforium Eamon Farrell heard a distinct noise on the roof in the attic behind him. His already raw nerves had had enough. He held his breath as he looked down into the Cathedral at Flynn in the pulpit cranking the field phone. Sullivan and Abby Boland across from him were leaning anxiously out over the balustrades. Something was about to happen, and Eamon Farrell saw no reason to wait around to see what it was.

Farrell turned slowly from the balustrade, lay down his rifle, and opened the door in the knee wall behind him. He entered the dark attic and turned his flashlight on the steel door in the chimney. God, he was certain, had given him an escape route, and he had been right to keep it from Flynn and right to use it.

Carefully he approached the door, put the flashlight in his pocket, then lowered himself through the opening until his feet found an iron rung. He closed the door and stepped down to the next rung in the total darkness. His shoulder brushed something, and he gave a startled yelp, then reached out and touched a very taut rope.

He looked upward and saw a piece of the starlit sky at the mouth of the chimney, which was partly obscured by a moving shape. His stomach heaved as he became aware that he was not alone.

He heard someone breathe, smelled the presence of other bodies in the sooty space around him, pictured in his mind dangling shapes swinging on ropes in the darkness like bats, inches from him. He cleared his throat. “Wha—who … ?”

A voice said, “It ain’t Santa Claus, pal.”

Farrell felt cold steel pressed against his cheekbone, and he shouted, “I surrender!” But his shout panicked the ESD man, and darkness erupted in a silent flash of blinding light. Farrell fell feet-first and then somersaulted into the black shaft, blood splattering over his flailing arms.

The Third Squad leader said, “I wonder where he was going?” The squad moved silently through the chimney door and assembled in the dark attic over the bride’s room.

Flynn turned off the television. He spoke into the pulpit microphone. “It’s begun. Keep alert. Steady now. Watch the doors and windows. Rockets ready.”

Bellini squatted at the door in the knee wall and listened to Flynn’s voice through the public address system. “Yeah, motherfuckers, you watch the doors and windows.” The First Squad knelt to the sides with rifles raised. Bellini put his hand to the latch, raised it, and pushed. The ESD men behind him converged on the door, and Bellini threw it open, rolling onto the floor into the dark triforium. The men poured through after him, diving and rolling over the cold floor, weapons pointing up and down the long gallery.

The triforium was empty, but on the floor lay a black morning coat, top hat, and a tricolored sash with the words Parade Marshal.

Half the squad crawled along the parapet, spacing themselves at intervals. The other half ran in a crouch to where the triforium turned at a right angle overlooking the south transept.

Bellini made his way to the corner of the right angle and raised an infrared periscope. The entire Cathedral was lit with candles and phosphorus flares and, even as he watched, the burning phosphorus caused the image to white out and disappear. He swore and lowered the periscope. Someone handed him a daylight periscope, and he focused on the long triforium across the transept. In the flickering light from below he could see a tall man in a bagpiper’s tunic leaning over the balustrade and aiming a rifle at the transept doors across the nave. He shifted the periscope and looked down toward the dark choir loft but saw nothing, then scanned right to the long triforium across the nave and caught a glimpse of what looked like a woman in overalls. He focused on her and saw that her young face looked frightened. He smiled and traversed farther right to the short triforium across the sanctuary where the chimney was. It appeared empty, and he began to wonder just how many people Flynn had used to take the Cathedral and fuck up everyone’s day.

Burke came up behind him, and Bellini whispered in his ear, “This is not going so bad.” Bellini’s field phone clicked, and he put it to his ear. The Third Squad reported to all points. “In position. One Fenian in chimney—KIA.”

A voice cut in, and Bellini heard the excited shouts of the Second Squad leader. “Attic ablaze! Fighting fire! Three ESD casualties—one Fenian dead—one still shooting. Fire helicopters in position, but they won’t come in until attic is secure. May have to abandon attic!”

Bellini looked up to the vaulted ceiling. He cupped his hand around the mouthpiece and spoke quickly. “You stay there and fight that fucking fire, you kill the fucking Fenian, and you bring those fire choppers in. You piss on that fire, you spit on that fire, but you do not leave that fire. Acknowledge.”

The squad leader seemed calmer. “Roger, Roger, okay…. ”

Bellini put down the field phone and looked at Burke. “The attic is burning.”

Burke peered up into the darkness. Somewhere above the dimly outlined ceiling, about four stories up, there was light and heat, but here it was dark and cold. Somewhere below there were explosives that could level the entire east end of the Cathedral. He looked at his watch and said, “The bombs will put the fire out.”

Bellini looked at him. “Your sense of humor sucks, you know?”

Flynn stood in the pulpit, a feeling of impotence growing in him. It was ending too quietly, no bangs, not even whimpers, at least none that he could hear. He was becoming certain that the police had finally found Gordon Stillway, compliments of Bartholomew Martin, and they weren’t going to come in through the doors and windows—Schroeder had lied or had been used by them. They were burrowing in right now, like rot in the timbers of a house, and the whole thing would fall with hardly a shot fired. He looked at his watch. 5:37. He hoped Hickey was still alive down there, waiting for the Bomb Squad in the darkness. He thought a moment, and the overwhelming conviction came over him that Hickey at least would complete his mission.

Flynn spoke in the microphone. “They’ve taken out the towers. George, Eamon, Frank, Abby, Leary, Megan—keep alert. They may have found another way in. Gallagher, watch the crypt behind you. Everyone, remember the movable blocks on the floor; watch the bronze plate on the sanctuary: scan the bride’s room, the Archbishop’s sacristy, the bookstore and the altars; keep an ear to the walls of the triforium attics—” Something made him look up to his right at the northeast triforium. “Farrell!”

No one answered.

Flynn peered into the darkness above. “Farrell!” He slammed his fist on the marble balustrade. “Damn it!” He cranked the field phone and tried again to raise the attic.

Bellini listened to the echoes of Flynn’s voice die away from the speakers. The squad leader beside him said, “We have to move—now!”

Bellini’s voice was cool. “No. Timing. It’s like trying to get laid—it’s all timing.” The phone clicked, and Bellini listened to the Third Squad leader in the attic of the opposite triforium. “Captain, do you see anyone else in this triforium?”

Bellini answered, “I guess the guy called Farrell was the only one. Move into the triforium.” He spoke to the operator. “Get me the Fourth Squad.”

The Fourth Squad leader answered, and his voice resohated from the duct he was crawling through. “We jumped off late, Captain—got lost in the duct work. I think we’re through the foundation—”

“Think! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Sorry—”

Bellini rubbed his throbbing temples and brought his voice under control. “Okay… okay, we make up the time you lost by moving your time of last possible withdrawal from 5:55 to 6:00. That’s fair, right?”

There was a pause before the squad leader replied, “Right.”

“Good. Now you just see if you can find the block-square crawl space. Okay? Then I’ll send the Bomb Squad in.” He hung up and looked at Burke. “Glad you came?”

“Absolutely.”

Flynn cranked the field phone. “Attic! Attic!”

Jean Kearney’s voice finally came on the line, and Flynn spoke hurriedly. “They’ve taken out the towers, and they’ll be coming through the roof hatches next—I can hear helicopters overhead. There’s no use waiting for it, Jean—light all the fires and get into the bell tower.”

Jean Kearney answered, “All right.” She stood propped against a catwalk rail, supported by two ESD men, one of whom had the big silencer of a pistol pressed to her head. She shouted into the phone, “Brian—!” One of the men pulled the phone out of her hand.

She steadied herself on the rail, feeling lightheaded and nauseous from the loss of blood. She bent over and vomited on the floor, then picked her head up and tried to stand erect, shaking off the two men beside her. Hoses hung from hovering helicopters and snaked their way through the roof hatches, discharging billows of white foam over the flickering flames. She felt defeated but relieved that it was over. She tried to think about Arthur Nulty, but her thigh was causing her such pain that all she could think about was that the pain should go away and the nausea should stop. She looked at the squad leader. “Give me a pressure bandage, damn it.”

The squad leader ignored her and watched the firemen coming through the hatches, taking over the hoses from his Assault Squad. He shouted to his men. “Move out! Into the bell tower!”

He turned back to Jean Kearney, noticing the tattered green Aer Lingus uniform; he looked at her freckled features in the subdued light and pointed at a smoldering pile of wood. “Are you crazy?”

She looked him in the eye. “We’re loyal.”

The squad leader listened to the sound of his men double-timing over the catwalks toward the tower passage. As he reached for the aid kit on his belt his eyes darted around at the firemen who were occupied with the large chemical hoses.

Jean Kearney’s hand flew out and expertly snatched his pistol, put it to her heart, and fired. She back-pedaled, her arms swinging in wide circular motions until she toppled over to the dusty catwalk.

The squad leader looked at her, stunned, and then bent over and retrieved his pistol. “Crazy … crazy.”

A thick mass of foam moved across the catwalk and slid over Jean Kearney’s body; the white billowing bubbles tinged with red.

Flynn used the field phone to call the choir loft. He spoke quickly to Megan. “I think they’ve taken the attic. They’ll be coming through the side doors into the choir loft. Keep the doors covered so Leary can shoot.”

Megan’s voice was angry, nearly hysterical. “How the hell did they take the attic? What the bloody hell is going on, Brian? What the fuck is going wrong here?”

He drew a long breath. “Megan, when you’ve been on fifty missions, you’ll know not to ask those questions. You just fight, and you die or you don’t die, but you never ask—Listen, tell Leary to scan Farrell’s post—I think they’re also up there—”

“Who the hell ever said you were a military genius?”

“The British—it made them feel more important.”

She hesitated, then said, “Why did you let Hickey do that to my brother?”

Flynn glanced at Pedar Fitzgerald’s body propped up on the organ bench. “Hickey—like Mr. Leary—is a friend of yours, not mine. Ask Hickey when next you meet. Also, tell Leary to scan Gallagher’s triforium—”

Megan cut in. “Brian … listen … listen …”

He recognized the tone of her voice, that childlike lilt she used when she became repentant about something. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say and hung up.

Bellini scanned with the periscope as he reported to all points on the field phone. “Yeah … they’re starting to look over their shoulders now. Man at the chancel organ … but he looks … dead … Still don’t see Hickey…. Might be in the crawl space. Two hostages … Malone and Baxter … Murphy still missing … shit … Cardinal still missing—”

The Fifth Squad leader in the octagon room to the side of the sacristy gates cut in. “Captain, I’m looking at the gates with a periscope … bad angle … but someone—looks like the Cardinal—is cuffed to them. Advise.”

Bellini swore softly. “Make sure it’s him, and stand by for orders.” He turned to Burke. “These Mick bastards still have some tricky shit up their shillelaghs— Cardinal’s cuffed to the gates.” He focused the periscope on Flynn in the pulpit directly below. “Smart guy…. Well, this potato-eating bastard is mine … but it’s a tough shot…. Canopy overhead and a marble wall around him. He knows it’s going down the tube, but he can’t do shit about it. Cocksucker.”

Burke said, “If the attic is secure and you get the bombs … you ought to try negotiating. Flynn will talk with twenty rifles pointing down at him. He’s a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”

“Nobody told me nothing about asking him to surrender.” Bellini put his face close to Burke’s. “Don’t get carried away with yourself and start giving orders, or I swear to God I’ll grease you. I’m doing okay, Burke—I’m doing fine—I’m golden tonight—fuck you and fuck Flynn—let him squirm—then let him die.”

The Fifth Assault Squad dropped one at a time from the duct opening and lay on the damp floor of the crawl space, forming a defensive perimeter. The squad leader cranked his field phone and reported, “Okay, Captain, we’re in the crawl space. No movement here—”

Bellini answered, “You sure you’re not in the fucking attic now? Okay, I’m sending the dogs and their handlers through the ducts with Peterson’s Bomb Squad. When you rendezvous, move out. Be advised that Hickey may be down there—maybe others. Keep your head out of your ass.”

Bellini signaled to Wendy Peterson. “Perimeter secure. Move through the ducts. Follow the commo wire and don’t get lost.”

She answered in a laconic voice that echoed in the ducts, “We’re already moving, Captain.”

Bellini looked at his watch. “Okay … it’s 5:45 now. At 6:00—at 5:55 my people are getting the hell out of there, whether or not you think you got all the bombs. I suggest you do the same.”

Peterson answered, “We’ll play it by ear.”

“Yeah, you do that.” He hung up and looked at Burke. “I think it’s time—before our luck turns.”

Burke said nothing.

Bellini rubbed his chin, hesitated, then reached for the phone and called the garage under Rockefeller Center. “Okay, Colonel, the word is Bull—fucking—Run. Ready?”

Logan answered, “Been ready a while. You’re cutting it close.”

Bellini’s voice was caustic. “It’s past close—it’s probably too damned late, but that doesn’t mean you can’t earn a medal.”

Colonel Logan threw the field phone down from the commander’s hatch of the armored carrier and called to the driver, “Go!”

The twenty thousand pounds of armor began rumbling up the ramp of the underground garage. The big overhead door rose, and the carrier slid into Forty-ninth Street, turned right, and approached Fifth Avenue at twenty-five miles per hour, then veered north up the Avenue gathering speed.

Logan stood in the hatch with an M-16 rifle, the wind billowing his fatigue jacket. He stared at the Cathedral coming up on his right front, then glanced up at the towers and roof. Smoke billowed over the Cathedral, and helicopters hovered, beating the smoke downward, thick hoses dropping into the attic hatches. “Good Lord …”

Logan looked into the silent predawn streets, empty except for the police posted in recessed doorways. One of them gave him a thumbs up, another saluted. Logan stood taller in the hatch; his mind raced faster than the carrier’s engines, and his blood pounded through his veins.

The armored carrier raced up to the Cathedral. The driver locked the right-hand treads, and the carrier pivoted around, ripping up large slabs of the blacktop. The driver released the treads as the carrier pointed toward the front doors, and he gunned the engines. The vehicle fishtailed and raced across the wide sidewalk, bounced, and hit the granite steps, tearing away the stone as the treads climbed upward. The brass handrails disappeared beneath the treads, and the ten tons of armor headed straight for the ten tons of bronze ceremonial doors.

Logan made the sign of the cross, ducked into the hatch, and pulled the lid shut. The truck tires attached to the front of the carrier hit the doors, and the bolts snapped, sending the massive doors flying inward. The alarms sounded with a piercing ring. The carrier was nearly into the vestibule when the delayed mines on the doors began to explode, scattering shrapnel across the sides of the vehicle. The carrier kept moving through the vestibule and skidded across the marble floor to a stop beneath the choir loft overhang.

Harold Baxter grabbed Maureen and pulled her down beneath the clergy pews.

Brian Flynn raised a rocket launcher and took aim from the pulpit.

The rear door of the carrier dropped, and fifteen men of the 69th Regiment, led by Major Cole, scrambled over the door and began fanning out under the choir loft.

Frank Gallagher was speaking to the Cardinal when the sound of the exploding doors rolled through the Cathedral. For a moment he thought the bombs beneath him had gone off, then he recognized the sound for what it was. His chest heaved, and his body shook so badly that his rifle fell from his hands. He lost control of his nerves as he heard the reports of rifle fire in the Cathedral behind him. He let out a high-pitched wail and ran down the sacristy steps, falling to his knees beside the Cardinal. He grabbed at the hem of the red robe, tears streaming from his eyes and snatches of prayer forming on his lips. “God … O God … Father … Eminence … dear God …”

The Cardinal looked down at him. “It’s all right, now. There … there …”

Colonel Logan rose quickly through the carrier hatch and rested his automatic rifle on the machine gun mount in front of him. He peered into the darkness as he scanned to his front, then saw a movement in the pulpit and zeroed in.

The First Squad, including Bellini and Burke, had risen up in unison from behind the balustrade, rifles raised to their shoulders.

Abby Boland saw the shadows appear along the ledge, black forms, eerie and spectral in the subdued light. She saw the tiny pinpoint flashes and heard the silencers cough like a roomful of old people clearing their throats. She screamed, “George!” Sullivan was intent on the transept doors opposite him but looked up when she screamed.

The Third Squad had burst out of the attic and occupied Farrell’s triforium. They lined up along the parapet and searched the darkness for targets.

Brian Flynn steadied the M-72 rocket as a burst of red tracers streaked out of the commander’s hatch of the carrier and cracked into the granite column behind him. He squeezed the detonator. The rocket roared out of the tube, sailed over the pews with a fiery red trail, and exploded on the sloping front of the armored carrier.

The carrier belched smoke and flame through ruptured seams, and the driver was killed instantly. Logan shot up from the hatch, flames licking at his clothing, and nearly hit the overhang of the loft. His smoking body fell back toward the blazing carrier, spread-eagled like a sky diver, and disappeared in clouds of black smoke and orange flame.

The First and Third ESD squads in the triforia were firing into the candlelit Cathedral, the operating mechanisms of their rifles slapping back and forth as the silencers wheezed, and spent brass piled up on the stone floors.

Abby Boland stood rigid for a split second as the scream died in her throat. She got off a single shot, then felt something rip the rifle from her hands, and the butt rammed her face. She fell to the floor, picked up a rocket, and stood again.

Sullivan fired a long automatic burst into Farrell’s triforium and heard a scream. He shifted his fire to the triforium where Gallagher had been, but a single bullet hit him squarely in the chest. He tumbled to the floor, landing on his bagpipes, which emitted a sad wail that pierced the noises in the Cathedral.

Abby Boland saw him go down as she fired the rocket across the Cathedral.

Bellini watched the trail of red fire illuminating the darkness. It came toward him with a noise that sounded like a rushing freight train. “Duck!”

The rocket went high and exploded on the stonework above the triforium. The triforium shook, and the window above blew out of its stone mullions, sending thousands of pieces of colored glass raining down in sheets past the triforium to the sanctuary and pulpit below.

Bellini’s squad rose quickly and poured automatic fire onto the source of the rocket.

Abby Boland held a pistol extended in both hands and fired at the orange flashes as the stonework around her began to shatter. The loud pop of a grenade launcher rolled across the Cathedral, and the top of the balustrade in front of her exploded. Her arms flew up and splattered blood and pistol fragments across her face. She fell forward, half blinded, and her mangled hands clutched at the protruding staff of the Papal flag. In her disorientation she found herself hanging out over the floor below. A burst of fire tore into her arms, and she released her grip. Her body tumbled head over heels and crashed into the pews below with a sharp splintering sound.

Pedar Fitzgerald’s dead body took a half-dozen hits and lurched to and fro, then fell against the keyboard and produced a thundering dissonant chord that continued uninterrupted amid the shouting and gunfire.

Flynn crouched in the pulpit, fired long bursts at Farrell’s triforium, then shifted his fire toward the vestibules where the men of the 69th Regiment had retreated from the burning carrier. Suddenly the carrier’s gasoline exploded. Flames shot up to the choir loft, and huge clouds of black smoke rose and curled around the loft. The National Guardsmen retreated back farther through the mangled doors onto the steps.

Bellini leaned out of the triforium and sighted his rifle almost straight down and fired three shots in quick succession through the bronze pulpit canopy.

Flynn’s body lurched, and he fell to his knees, then rolled over the pulpit floor. Bellini could see his body dangling across the spiral stairs. He took aim at the twitching form. Burke hit Bellini’s shoulder and deflected his shot. “No! Leave him.”

Bellini glared at Burke for a second, then turned his attention to the choir loft. He saw a barely perceptible flash of light, the kind of muzzle fire that came from a combination silencer/flash suppressor and that could only be seen from head on. The light flashed again, but this time in a different place several yards away. Bellini sensed that whoever was in there was very good, and he had a very good perch, a vast sloping area completely darkened and obscured by rising smoke. Even as he watched he heard a scream from the end of the triforium, and one of his men fell back. He heard another moan coming from the opposite triforium. In a short time everyone was on the floor as bullets skimmed across the ledge of the balustrade a few feet above their heads. Burke sat with his back against the wall and lit a cigarette as the wood above him splintered. “That guy is good.”

Bellini crouched across from him and nodded. “And he’s got the best seat in the house. This is going to be a bitch.” He looked at his watch. The whole thing, from the time Logan had hit the doors to this moment, had taken just under two minutes. But Logan was dead now, the National Guardsmen were nowhere to be seen, and he had lost some good people. The hostages might be dead, the people in the crawl space weren’t reporting, and someone in the choir loft was having a good day.

Bellini picked up the field phone and called Fifth Squad in the corridor off the sacristy. “All the bastards are dead except one or two in the choir loft. You have to go for the Cardinal and the two hostages under the pews.”

The squad leader answered, “How the hell do we rush that gate with the Cardinal hanging there?”

“Very carefully. Move out!” He hung up and said to Burke, “The sniper in the choir loft isn’t going to be easy.”

The ESD men from the Fifth Assault Squad moved out of the octagon rooms on both sides of the sacristy gate and slid quickly along the walls, converging on the Cardinal.

The squad leader kept his back to the wall and peered carefully around the opening. His eyes met the Cardinal’s, and both men gave a start; then the squad leader saw a man kneeling at the Cardinal’s feet. Gallagher let out a surprised yell, and the squad leader did the same as he fired twice from the hip.

Gallagher rocked back on his haunches and then fell forward. His smashed face struck the bars, and he rolled sideways, sliding down the Cardinal’s legs.

The Cardinal stared down at Gallagher lying in a heap at his feet, blood rushing from his head over the steps. He looked at the squad leader, who was staring at Gallagher. The squad leader turned and looked up at the top landing, saw no one, and gave a signal. ESD men with bolt cutters swarmed around the gates and severed the chain that tied them together. One of the men snapped the Cardinal’s handcuffs while another one opened the gate lock with a key. So far no one had spoken a word.

The assault squad slid open the gates, and ten men ran up the stairs toward the crypt door.

The Cardinal knelt beside Gallagher’s body, and a medic rushed out of a side corridor and took the Cardinal’s arm. “Are you okay?” The Cardinal nodded. The medic stared down at Gallagher’s face. “This guy don’t look so good, though. Come on, Your Eminence.” He tugged at the Cardinal’s arm as two uniformed policemen lifted the Cardinal, steering him toward the corridor that led back to his residence.

One of the ESD men stood to the side of the crypt door and lobbed a gas canister down into the crypt. The canister popped, and two men wearing gas masks rushed in through the smoke. After a few seconds one of them yelled back, “No one here.”

The squad leader took the field phone and reported, “Captain, sacristy gate and crypt secured. No ESD casualties, one Fenian KIA, Cardinal rescued.” He added impulsively, “Piece of cake.”

Bellini replied, “Tell me that after you get up those stairs. There’s a motherfucker in the choir loft that can circumcise you with two shots and never touch your nuts.”

The squad leader heard the phone click off. “Okay. Hostages under the pews— let’s move.” The squad split into two fire teams and began crawling up the opposite staircases toward the sanctuary.

Maureen and Baxter stayed motionless beneath the clergy pews. Maureen listened to the sounds of striking bullets echoing through the Cathedral. She pressed her face close to Baxter’s and said, “Leary—maybe Megan—is still in the loft. I can’t tell who else is still firing.”

Baxter held her arm tightly. “It doesn’t matter as long as Leary is still there.” He took her wrist and looked at her watch. “It’s 5:36. At 6:00 we run for it.”

She smiled weakly. “Harry, John Hickey is a man who literally would not give you the right time of day. For all we know it’s 6:03 right now. Then again, my watch may be correct, but the bombs may be set for right now. Hickey does not play fair—not with us nor with Brian Flynn.”

“Why am I so bloody naïve?”

She pressed his arm. “That’s all right. People like Hickey, Flynn … me … we’re treacherous…. It’s as natural as breathing….”

Baxter peered under the pews, then said, “Let’s run for it.”

“Where? This whole end of the Cathedral will collapse. The doors are mined. Leary’s in the loft, and Gallagher is at the gate.”

He thought a moment. “Gallagher owes you….”

“I wouldn’t put myself at the mercy of any of them. We couldn’t reach those stairs anyway. I won’t be shot down by scum like Leary or Megan. I’m staying here.”

“Then you’ll be blown up by John Hickey.”

She buried her face in her hands, then looked up. “Over the back of the sanctuary, keeping the altar between us and the choir loft. Into the Lady Chapel—the windows are about fifteen feet from the floor. Climb the chapel altar—one of us boosts the other up. We won’t get that far, of course, but—”

“But we’ll be heading in the right direction.”

She nodded and began moving under the pews.

The Fifth Assault Squad crouched on the two flights of steps behind the high altar. The squad leader peered around the south side of the altar and looked to his left at the bronze floor-plate. He turned to the right, put his face to the floor, and tried to locate the hostages under the clergy pews, but in the bad light and at the angle he was looking he saw no one. He raised his rifle and called softly, “Baxter? Malone?”

They were both about to spring out toward the rear of the sanctuary but dropped to a prone position. Baxter called back, “Yes!”

The squad leader said, “Steps are clear. Cardinal’s safe. Where is Father Murphy?”

Maureen peered across the sanctuary floor to the stairwell thirty feet away. “Somewhere in the towers, I think.” She paused, then said, “Gallagher? The man who—”

The squad leader cut her off. “The bomb under us hasn’t been found yet. You have to get out of there.”

“What time is it?” Baxter asked.

The squad leader looked at his digital watch. “It’s 5:46 and twenty seconds.”

Maureen stared at the face of her watch. Ten minutes slow. “Bastard.” She reset it and called back. “Someone’s got to get the snipers in the loft before we can move.”

The squad leader poked his head around the altar, looked up at the choir loft illuminated by candles and flares, and tried to peer into the blackness beyond. “He’s too far away for us to get him or for him to get you.”

Baxter shouted with anger in his voice, “If that were so, we wouldn’t be here. That man is very good.”

The squad leader said, “We’re sitting on a bomb, and so far as I’m concerned it could go off anytime.”

Maureen called out to the squad leader, “Listen, two people planted the bombs, and they were down in the crawl space less than twenty minutes. They carried two suitcases.”

The squad leader called back, “Okay—I’ll pass that on. But you have to understand, lady, that the Bomb Squad could blow it—you know? So you have to make a break.”

Maureen called back, “We’ll wait.”

“Well, we won’t.” The squad leader looked up at the triforium directly overhead where Bellini was, but saw no one at the openings. He called on the field phone. “Captain, Malone and Baxter are under the pews below you—alive.” He passed on the information about the bombs and added, “They won’t try to cross the sanctuary.” Bellini’s voice came over the line. “I don’t blame them. Okay, in thirty seconds everyone fires into the loft. Tell them to run for it then.”

“Right.” He hung up and relayed the message to Maureen and Baxter.

Maureen called back, “We’ll see—be careful—”

The squad leader turned and shouted to his men on the opposite stairs. “Heavy fire into the loft!” The men moved up the steps and knelt on the floor, firing down the length of the Cathedral. The squad leader moved the remainder of his squad around the altar and opened fire as the two triforia began shooting. The sound of bullets crashing into stone and brass in the loft rolled back through the Cathedral. The squad leader shouted to Malone and Baxter. “Run!”

Suddenly two rifles started firing rapidly from the choir loft with extreme accuracy. The ESD men on both sides of the altar began writhing on the cold sanctuary floor. Both teams pulled back to the staircases, dragging their wounded and leaving a trail of blood on the white marble.

The squad leader swore loudly and peered around the altar. “Okay, okay, stay there!” He glanced quickly up at the choir loft and saw a muzzle flash. The marble in front of him disintegrated and hit him full in the face. He screamed, and someone grabbed his ankles, dragging him back down the stairs.

Medics rushed up from the sacristy and began carrying away the wounded. The commo man cranked his field phone and reportd to Bellini in a shaky voice. “Hostages pinned down. This altar is the wrong end of a shooting gallery. We can’t help them.”

The Fourth Assault Squad moved slowly through the dark crawl space, the squad leader scanning his front with an infrared scope. The two dogs and their handlers moved with him. Behind the advancing line of men moved Wendy Peterson and four men of the Bomb Squad.

Every few yards the dogs strained at their leashes, and the Bomb Squad would uncover another small particle of plastic explosive without timers or detonators. The entire earth floor seemed to be seeded with plastic, and every colunm had a scrap of plastic stuck to it. A dog handler whispered to the impatient squad leader, “I can’t stop them from following these red herrings.”

Wendy Peterson came up beside the squad leader and said, “My men will follow up on these dogs. Your squad and I have to move on—faster—to the other side.”

He stopped crawling, lay down an infrared scope, and turned his head toward her. “I’m moving like there were ten armed men in front of me, and that’s the only way I know how to move when I’m crawling in a black fucking hole … Lieutenant.”

The Bomb Squad men hurried up from the rear. One of them called, “Lieutenant?”

“Over here.”

He came up beside her. “Okay, the mine on the corridor hatchway is disarmed, and we can get out of here real quick if we have to. The mine had a detcord running from it, and we followed it to the explosives around the main column on this side.” He paused and caught his breath. “We defused that big mother—about twenty kilos of plastic—colored and shaped to look like stone—simple clock mechanism— set to go at 6:03—no bullshit about that.” He held out a canvas bag and pressed it into Peterson’s hands. “The guts.”

She hunched over and lit a red-filtered flashlight, emptying the contents of the bag on the floor. Alarm clock, battery pack, wires, and four detached electric detonators. She turned on the clock, and it ticked loudly in the still air. She shut it off again. “No tricks?”

“No. We cut away all the plastic—no booby traps, no anti-intrusion devices. Very old techniques but very reliable, and top-grade plastic—smells and feels like that new C-5.”

She picked off a clinging piece of plastic, kneading it between her thumb and forefinger, then smelled it.

The squad leader watched her in the filtered light and was reminded of his mother making cookie dough, but it was all wrong. “Really good stuff, huh?”

She switched off the light and said to the squad leader, “If the mechanism on the other one is the same, I’d need less than five minutes to defuse that bomb.”

He said, “Good—now all you need is the other bomb. And I need about eight minutes to get the hell out of here and into the rectory basement. So at 5:55, no matter what’s coming down, I say adios.”

“Fair enough. Let’s move.”

He made no move but said, “I have to report the good news.” He picked up the field phone. “Captain, the north side of the crawl space is clear of bombs.”

Bellini answered, “Okay, very good.” He related Maureen’s information. “Move cautiously to the other side of the crypt. Hickey—”

“Yeah, but we can’t engage him. We can move back to the hatchway, though, so you can have somebody drop concussion grenades through that bronze plate in the sanctuary. Then we’ll move in and—”

Bellini cut him off. “Fifth Squad is still on the sacristy stairs. Took some casualties…. They’re going to have trouble crossing the sanctuary floor—sniper up in the loft—”

“Well, blow him the fuck away and let’s get it moving.”

“Yeah … I’ll let you know when we do that.”

The squad leader hesitated, then said, “Well … we’ll stay put….”

Bellini let a few seconds pass, then said, “This sniper is going to take awhile…. I’m not positive Hickey or anyone is down there…. You’ve got to get to the other column.”

The squad leader hung up and turned to the dog handlers. “Okay, drag those stupid mutts along, and don’t stop until we get to the other side.” He called to his men. “Let’s go.”

The three teams—ESD Assault Squad, Bomb Squad, and the dog handlers, twenty people in all—began moving. They passed the rear wall of the crypt and turned left, following the line of columns that would lead them to the main column flanking the sacristy stairs and what they hoped would be the last bomb.

They dropped from their hands and knees to a low-crawl position, rifles held out in front of them, the squad leader scanning with the infrared scope.

Peterson looked at her wristwatch as they moved. 5:47. If the mechanism on this side wasn’t tricky, if there were no mines, if there were no other bombs, and if no one fired at them, then she had a very good chance of keeping St. Patrick’s Cathedral from blowing up.

As she moved, though, she thought about triggers—all the ways a bomb could be detonated besides an electric clock. She thought about a concussion grenade that would set off an audio trigger, a flashlight that would set off a photo trigger, movement that would set off an inertial trigger, trip wires, false clocks, double or triple mechanisms, spring-loaded percussion mechanisms, remote mechanisms— so many nasty ways to make a bomb go off that you didn’t want to go off. Yet, nothing so elaborate was needed to safeguard a time bomb until its time had come if it had a watchdog guarding it.

John Hickey knelt beside the main column, wedged between the footing and the sacristy stairwell, contemplating the mass of explosives packed around the footing and bedrock. His impulse was to dig out the clock and advance it to eternity. But to probe into the plastic in the dark might disconnect a detonator or battery connection. He looked at his watch. 5:47. Sixteen minutes to go. He could keep them away that long—long enough for the dawn to give the cameras good light. He grinned.

Hickey pushed himself farther back into the small space and peered up through the darkness toward the spot where the bronze plate sat in the ceiling. No one had tried to come through there yet, and as he listened to the shooting overhead, he suspected that Leary and Megan were still alive and would see to it that no one did. A bullet struck the bronze plate, and a deep resonant sound echoed through the dark. Four more bullets struck the plate in quick succession, and Hickey smiled. “Ah, Leary, you’re showing off now, lad.”

Just then his ears picked up the sound of whimpering. He cupped his ear and listened. Dogs. Then men breathing. He flipped the selector switch on his rifle to full automatic and leaned forward as the sound of crawling came nearer. The dogs had the scent of the massed explosives and probably of him. Hickey pursed his lips and made a sound. “Pssst!”

There was a sudden and complete silence.

Hickey did it again. “Pssst!” He picked up a piece of rubble and threw it.

The squad leader scanned the area to his front, but there was not even the faintest glimmer of light for the infrared scope to pick up and magnify.

Hickey said, “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”

No one answered for several seconds, then the squad leader called out in a voice that was fighting to maintain control. “Put your hands up and move closer.”

Hickey placed his rifle a few inches from the ground and held it horizontally. “Don’t shoot, lads—please don’t shoot. If you shoot … you’ll blow us all to hell.” He laughed, then said, “I, however, can shoot.” He squeezed the trigger and emptied a twenty-round magazine across the ground in front of him. He slapped another magazine into the well as the reports died away, and he heard screaming and moaning. He emptied another full magazine in three long bursts of grazing fire. He heard a dog howling, or, he thought, perhaps a man. He mimicked the howling as he reloaded and fired again.

The ESD snipers in both triforia were shooting down the length of the Cathedral into the choir loft, but the targets there—at least two of them—were moving quickly through the darkness as they fired. ESD men began to fall, dead and wounded, onto the triforium floors. An ESD man rose up beside Bellini and leaned out over the balustrade, putting a long stream of automatic fire into the loft. The red tracer rounds arched into the loft and disappeared as they embedded themselves into the woodwork. The organ keyboard was hit, and electrical sparks crackled in the darkness. The man fired again, and another stream of tracers struck the towering brass pipes, producing a sound like pealing bells. The tracer rounds ricocheted back, spinning and dancing like fiery pinwheels in the black space.

Bellini shouted to the ESD man and pulled at his flak jacket. “Too long! Down!”

All of a sudden the man released his rifle and slapped his hands to his face, then leaned farther out and rolled over the balustrade, crashing to the clergy pews below.

An ESD man with a M-79 grenade launcher fired. The small grenade burst against a wooden locker with a flash, and robes began to burn. Bellini picked up his bullhorn and shouted, “No grenades.” The fire blazed for a few seconds, then began to burn itself out. Bellini crouched and held the bullhorn up. “Okay—First and Third squads—all together—two full magazines—automatic—on my command.” He grabbed the rifle beside him and shouted into the bullhorn as he rose, “Fire!”

The remaining men in both triforia rose in unison and fired, producing a deafening roar as streams of red tracers poured into the black loft. They emptied their magazines, reloaded, fired again, then ducked.

There was a silence from the choir loft, and Bellini rose carefully with the bullhorn, keeping himself behind a column. He called out to the loft. “Turn the lights on and put your hands up, or we’ll shoot again.” He looked down at Burke sitting crosslegged beside him. “That’s negotiating!” He raised the bullhorn again.

Leary knelt at the front of the loft in the north corner and watched through his scope as the bullhorn came up behind the column, diagonally across the Cathedral. He lay flat on top of the rail and leaned out precariously like a pool player trying to make a hard shot, putting the cross hairs of his scope over a small visible piece of Bellini’s forehead. He fired and rolled back to the choir loft floor.

The bullhorn emitted an oddly amplified moan as Bellini’s forehead erupted in a splatter of bone and blood. He dropped straight down, landing on Burke’s crossed legs. Burke stared at the heavy body sprawled across him. Bellini’s blackened temple gushed a small fountain of red … like a red rosebud, Burke thought abstractedly…. He pushed the body away and steadied himself against the parapet, drawing on his cigarette.

There was very little noise in the Cathedral now, he noted, and no sound at all from the survivors of the First Squad around him. Medics had arrived and were treating the wounded where they lay; they carried them back into the attic for the descent down the elevator shaft. Burke looked at his watch. 5:48.

Father Murphy listened to the sounds of footsteps approaching from below. His first thought was that the police had arrived; then he remembered Flynn’s words, and he realized it might be Leary or Megan coming for him. He picked up the pistol and held it in his shaking hand. “Who is it? Who’s there?”

An ESD team leader from the Second Assault Squad two levels below motioned his fire team away from the open well. He raised his rifle and muffled his voice with his hand. “It’s me…. Come on down … attic burning.”

Father Murphy put his hand to his face and whispered, “The attic … oh … God …” He called down. “Nulty! Is that you?”

“Yes.”

Murphy hesitated. “Is … is Leary with you? Where’s Megan?”

The team leader looked around at his men, who appeared tense and impatient. He called up the ladder well, “They’re here. Come down!”

The priest tried to collect his thoughts, but his mind was so dulled with fatigue he just stared down into the black hole.

The team leader shouted, “Come down, or we’re coming up for you!”

Father Murphy drew back from the opening as far as his cuffed wrist permitted. “I’ve got a gun!”

The team leader motioned to one of his men to fire a gas canister into the opening. The projectile sailed upward through the intervening level and burst on the ladder near Father Murphy’s head. A piece of the canister struck him in the face, and his lungs filled with gas. He lurched back, then stumbled forward, falling through the opening. He hung suspended from his handcuffs, swinging against the ladder, his stomach and chest heaving as choked noises rose from his throat.

An ESD man with a submachine gun saw the figure dropping out of the darkness and fired from the hip. The body jerked, then lay still against the ladder. The ESD team moved carefully up to the higher level.

City lights filtered through the broken glass and cast a weak, shadowy illumination into the tower room. A cold wind blew away the smell of gas. An ESD man drew closer to the ladder, then shouted, “Hey! It’s a priest.”

The team leader dimly recalled some telephone traffic regarding the missing hostage, the priest. He cleared his throat. “Some of them were dressed as priests … right?”

The man with the submachine gun added, “He said he had a gun…. I heard it fall…. Something fell on the floor here….” He looked around and found the pistol. “See … and he called them by name….”

The man with the grenade launcher said, “But he’s cuffed!”

The team leader put his hands to his temples. “This is fucked up…. We might have fucked up….” He put his hand on the ladder rail and steadied himself. Blood ran down the rail and collected in a small pool around his fingers. “Oh … oh, no … no, no, no—”

The other half of the Second Squad from the attic made its way carefully down through the dark bell tower, then rushed into the long triforium where Abby Boland had been. They hit the floor and low-crawled down the length of the dark gallery, passing over the blood-wet floor near the flagstaff and turning the corner overlooking the north transept. Two men searched the triforium attic as the team leader reported on the field phone, ‘Captain, northwest triforium secured. Anything you see moving up here is us.”

A voice came over the wire. “This is Burke. Bellini is dead. Listen … send some men down to the choir loft level…. The rest of you stay there and bring fire down on that loft. There’re about two snipers there—at least one of them is very accurate.”

The team leader acknowledged and hung up. He looked back at his four remaining men. “Captain got greased. Okay, you two stay here and fire down into the loft. You two come with me.” He reentered the tower and ran down the spiral stairs toward the loft level.

One of the remaining two men in the triforium leaned out over the balustrade, steadying his rifle on the protruding flagstaff, which he noticed was splintered and covered with blood. He looked down and saw in the light of a flare a young woman’s body lying in a collapsed pew.

“Jesus …” He looked into the dark loft and fired a short burst at random. “Flush those suckers out….”

A single shot whistled up out of the loft, passed through the wooden staff and punched into his flak jacket. He rose up off his feet, and his rifle flew into the air. The man lay stretched out on the floor for a few seconds, then rolled over on his hands and knees and tried to catch his breath. “Good God … Jesus H. Christ …”

The other man, who hadn’t moved from his kneeling position, said, “Lucky shot, Tony. Bet he couldn’t do it again.”

The injured man put his hand under his flak jacket and felt a lump the size of an egg where his breast bones met. “Wow … fucking wow….” He looked at the other man. “Your turn.”

The man pulled off his black stocking cap and pushed it above the balustrade on the tip of his rifle. A faint coughing sound rolled out of the choir loft, followed by a whistle and crack, then another, but the hat didn’t move. The ESD man lowered the hat. “He stinks.” He moved to a position several yards down the triforium and peered over the edge of the balustrade. The huge yellow and white Papal flag was no longer hanging from the staff but was stretched across the pews below, covering the body of the dead woman. The ESD man stared back at the staff and saw the two severed flag-ropes swaying. He ducked quickly and looked at the other man. “You’re not going to believe this …”

Someone in the choir loft laughed.

An ESD man beside Burke picked up Bellini’s bullhorn and began to raise it above the balustrade, then thought better of it. He pointed it upward from his kneeling position and called out, “Hey! You in the loft! Show’s over. Nobody left but you. Come to the choir rail with your hands up. You won’t be harmed.” He shut off the bullhorn and said, “You’ll be blasted into hamburger, motherfucker.”

There was a long silence, then a man’s voice called out from the loft. “You’ll never take us.” There were two sharp pistol shots, followed by silence.

The ESD man turned to Burke. “They blew their brains out.”

Burke said, “Sure.”

The man considered for a moment. “How do we know?” he finally asked. Burke nodded toward Bellini’s body.

The ESD man hesitated, then wiped Bellini’s face and forehead with a handkerchief, and Burke helped him heft Bellini’s body over the parapet.

Immediately there was a sound like a bee buzzing, followed by a loud slap, and Bellini’s body was pulled out of their hands and crashed to the triforium floor behind them. An odd shrillish voice screamed from the loft, “Live ones! I want live ones!”

For the first time since the attack began Burke felt sweat forming on his brow.

The ESD man looked pale. “My God….”

The Second Squad leader led his remaining two men down the dark bell tower until they found the choir practice room. They searched it carefully in the dark and located the door that led out to the loft. The squad leader listened quietly at the door, then stood to the side and put his hand on the knob and turned it, but there was no alarm. The three men hugged the walls for a second before the squad leader pushed the door open, and they rushed the opening in a low crouch.

A shotgun exploded five times in the dark in quick succession, and the three men were knocked back into the room, their faces, arms, and legs ripped with buckshot.

Megan Fitzgerald stepped quickly into the room and shone a light on the three contorted bodies. One of the men looked up at the black-robed figure through the light and stared at her grotesquely made-up face, distorted with a repulsive snarl. Megan raised a pistol, deliberately shot each of the writhing figures in the head, then closed the door, reset the silent light alarm, and walked back into the loft. She called to Leary, who was moving and firing from positions all over the loft. “Don’t let Malone or Baxter get away. Keep them pinned there until the bombs explode!”

Leary shouted as he fired, “Yeah, yeah. Just watch the fucking side doors.”

A long stream of red tracers streaked out of the long northwest triforium and began ripping into the choir pews. Leary got off an answering shot before the last tracer left the muzzle of the ESD man’s rifle, and the firing abruptly stopped.

Leary moved far back to the towering organ pipes and looked out at the black horizon line formed by the loft rail across the candle- and flare-lit Cathedral. It was strictly a matter of probability, he knew. There were thirteen hundred square feet of completely unlit loft and less than twenty police in a position to bring fire into the loft. And because of their overhead angle they couldn’t bring grazing fire across the sloping expanse, but only direct fire at a specific point of impact, and that reduced the killing zone of their striking rounds. In addition, he and Megan had flak jackets under their robes, his rifle was silenced and the flash was suppressed, and they were both moving constantly. The ESD night scopes would be whited out as long as the phosphorus below kept burning, but he was firing into a lit area, and he could see their shapes when they came to the edge of the triforia. Probability. Odds. Skill. Vantage point. All in his favor. Always were. Luck did not exist. God did not exist. He called to Megan, “Time?”

She looked at her watch and saw the luminous minute hand tick another minute. “Fourteen minutes until 6:03.”

He nodded to himself. There were times when he felt immortal and times when immortality only meant staying alive for just long enough to get the next shot off. Fourteen minutes. No problem.

Burke heard the field phone click and picked up the receiver from the floor. “Burke.”

Mayor Kline’s voice came through the earpiece. “Lieutenant, I didn’t want to cut in on your command network—I’ve been monitoring all transmissions, of course, and not being there to see the situation, I felt it was better to let Captain Bellini handle it—but now that he’s—”

“We appreciate that, sir.” Burke noticed Kline’s voice had that cool preciseness that was just a hair away from whining panic. “Actually, I have to get through to the crawl space, Mr. Mayor, so—”

“Yes—just a second—I was wondering if you could fill us in—”

“I just did.”

“What? Oh, yes. Just one second. We need a situation report from you as the ranking man in there—you’re in charge, by the way.”

“Thanks. Let me call you right back—”

“Fine.”

He heard a click and spoke to the police operator. “Don’t put that asshole through again.” He dropped the receiver on the floor.

The Sixth Assault Squad of ESD rappelled from police helicopters into the open attic hatches. They ran across the foam-covered catwalks to the south tower and split up, one team going up toward Devane’s position, the other down toward the triforium and choir loft levels.

The team climbing into the tower fired grenades ahead of them, moving up level by level until they reached the copper-louvered room where Devane had been posted. They looked for the body of the Fenian sniper in the dark, smoke-filled room but found only bloodstains on the floor and a gas mask lying in the corner.

The squad leader touched a bloodstain on the ascending ladder and looked up. “We’ll go with gas from here.”

The men pulled on gas masks and fired CS canisters to the next level. They moved up the ladder, floor by floor, the gas rising with them, into the narrowing spire. Above them they heard the echoing sounds of a man coughing, then the deep, full bellow of vomiting. They followed the blood trail on the rusty ladder, cautiously moving through the dark levels until they reached a narrow, tapering, octagonal room about fifteen stories above the street. The room had clover-shaped openings, without glass, cut into the eight sides of the stonework. The blood trail ended on the ladder, and the floor near one of the openings was smeared with vomit. The squad leader pulled off his gas mask and stuck his head and shoulders out of the opening and looked up.

A series of iron rungs ran up the last hundred feet of the tapering spire toward the copper cross on top. The squad leader saw a man climbing halfway up. The man lost his footing, then recovered and pulled himself up to the next rung. The squad leader dropped back into the small, cold room. He unslung his rifle and chambered a round. “These fucks blew away a lot of our people—understand?”

One of his men said, “It’s not too cool to blow him away with all those people watching from Rockafeller Center.”

The squad leader looked out the opening at the buildings across the Avenue. Despite orders and all the police could do, hundreds of people were at the windows and on the rooftops watching the climber make his way up the granite spire. A few people were shouting, making encouraging motions with their hands and bodies. The squad leader heard cheering and applauding and thought he heard gasps when the man slipped. He said, “Assholes. The wrong people are always getting the applause.” He released the safety switch, moved toward the opening, and looked up. He shouted, “Hey, King Kong! Get your ass back here!”

The climber glanced down but continued up the spire.

The squad leader pulled his head back into the room. “Give me the rappelling line.” He took the nylon rope and began hooking himself up. “Well, as the homicide detectives say, ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ That is the question.”

The other half of the Sixth Assault Squad descended through the south tower and, following a rough sketch supplied by Gordon Stillway, located the door to the long southwest triforium. One of the men kicked the door in, and the other four rushed down the length of the long gallery in a crouch. An ESD man spotted a man dressed in kilts lying crumpled at the corner of the balustrade, a bagpipe sticking out from under his body.

Suddenly a periscope rose from the triforium across the transept, and a bullhorn blared. “Get down! The loft! Watch the loft!”

The men turned in unison and stared down at the choir loft projecting out at a right angle about thirty feet below them. A muzzle flashed twice, and two of the five men went down. The other three dove for the floor. “What the hell … ?” The team leader looked wildly around the long dark gallery as though it were full of gunmen. “Where did that come from … the loft?” He looked at the two dead men, each shot between the eyes. “I never saw it…. I never heard anything….”

One of the men said, “Neither did they.”

The fifteen men of the 69th Regiment had moved back into the Cathedral after the carrier had stopped burning, and they lay on the floor under the choir loft, sighting their rifles down the five wide aisles toward the raised sanctuary. Major Cole rose to one knee and looked over the pews with a pair of binoculars, then scanned the four triforia. Nothing seemed to be moving in the Cathedral, and the loudest sound was the striking of bullets from the Fenian sniper overhead. Cole looked at the smoking armored carrier beside him. The smell of burnt gasoline and flesh made his stomach heave.

A sergeant came up beside him. “Major, we have to do something.”

The major felt his stomach heave again. “We are not supposed to interfere with the police in any way. There could be a misunderstanding … an accident …”

A runner came up the steps, moved through the battered doors, and crossed the vestibule, finding Major Cole contemplating his watch. The runner crouched beside him. “From the Governor, sir.”

Cole took the handwritten report without enthusiasm and read from the last paragraph. “Father Murphy still missing. Locate and rescue him and rescue the other two hostages beneath the sanctuary pews….” Cole looked up at the sergeant.

The sergeant regarded Cole’s pale face. “If I found a way into that loft and zapped the sniper, you could dash up the aisle and grab the two hostages—” He smiled. “But you got to move quick because you’ll be racing the cops for them.”

Major Cole said stiffly, “All right. Take ten men into the loft.” He turned to the runner. “Acknowledge message. Have the police command call their men in the triforia and tell them to hold fire on the loft for … five minutes.” The runner saluted and moved off. Cole said to the sergeant, “Don’t get anyone hurt.”

The sergeant turned and led ten Guardsmen back into the south vestibule and opened the door to the spiral staircase. The soldiers double-timed up into the tower until they saw a large wooden door in the wall. The sergeant approached it cautiously and listened, but heard nothing. He put his hand on the knob and turned it slowly, then drew open the door a crack. There was complete blackness in front of him. At first he thought he wasn’t in the loft, but then he saw in the distance candlelight playing off the wall of the long northern triforium above, and he recognized the empty flagstaff. He drew open the door, crouched with his rifle held out, and began walking in one of the cross aisles. The ten soldiers began following at intervals.

The sergeant slid his shoulder along the pew enclosure on his left as he moved, blinking into the darkness, listening for a sound somewhere in the cavernous loft. His shoulder slipped into an opening, and he turned, facing the wide aisle that ran up the center of the sloping loft. The entire expanse was pitch black, but he had a sense of its size from the massive rose window looming in the blackness, larger than a two-story house, glowing with the lights of Rockefeller Center across the Avenue. The sergeant took a step up the rising aisle, and he heard a sound like rustling silk in the pews above him.

A woman stood a few feet in front of him on the next higher step. The sergeant stared up at two points of burning green light that reflected the candlelight rising from the Cathedral behind him. The piercing eyes held him for a fraction of a second before he raised his rifle.

Megan screamed wildly and discharged a shotgun blast into his face. She jumped up on a pew and began firing down into the aisle below. The soldiers scrambled back along the aisle, buckshot pelting their helmets, flak jackets, and limbs as they retreated into the tower.

Leary shouted, “Keep them away, Megan! Keep me covered. I’m shooting like I never shot before. Give me time.” He fired and moved, fired again and moved again.

Megan picked up her automatic rifle and fired quick bursts at the tower doors. Leary saw a periscope poking over the parapet in the southeast triforium and blew it away with a single shot. “I’m hot! God, I’m hot today!”

Burke heard the shotgun blasts from the loft, followed by the short, quick bursts of the M-16 and then the whistling of the sniper’s rifle as rounds chipped away at the balustrade over his head.

The ESD man beside him said, “Sounds like the weekend commandos didn’t capture the choir loft.”

Burke picked up the field phone and spoke to the other three triforia. “At my command we throw everything we’ve got into the loft.” He called the sacristy stairs. “Tell Malone and Baxter we’re putting down suppressing fire again, and if they want to give it a try, this is the time to do it—there won’t be another time.”

Burke waited the remainder of the five minutes he had given the 69th, to be sure they were not going to try again to get into the loft, then put the field phone to his mouth. “Fire!”

Twenty-five ESD men rose in the four triforia and began firing with automatic rifles and grenade launchers. The rifles raked the loft with long traversing streams, while the launchers alternated their loads, firing beehive canisters of long needles, buckshot, high explosives, gas grenades, illumination rounds, and fire-extinguishing gas.

The choir loft reverberated with the din of exploding grenades, and thick black smoke mingled with the yellowish gas. The smoke and gas rose over the splintering pews, then moved along the ceiling of the Cathedral like an eerie cloud, iridescent in the light of the burning flares below.

Megan and Leary, wearing gas masks, knelt in the bottom aisle below the thick, protruding parapet that ran the width of the loft. Leary fired into the triforia, moved laterally, fired, and moved again. Megan sent streams of automatic fire into the sanctuary as she raced back and forth along the parapet.

Burke heard the sounds of the grenade launchers tapering off as the canisters were used up, and he heard an occasional exclamation when someone was hit. He stood and looked over the balustrade, through the smoke, and saw small flames flickering in the loft. From the field phone in his hand came excited voices as the other triforia called for medics. And still the firing from the loft went on. Burke grabbed an M-16 from one of the EDS men. “Goddamned sons of bitches—” He fired a full magazine without pause, reloaded and fired again until the gun overheated and jammed. He threw the rifle down savagely and shouted into the field phone, “Shoot the remaining fire-extinguishing canisters and get down.”

The last of the canisters arched into the loft, and Burke saw the fires begin to subside. Impulsively he grabbed the bullhorn and shouted toward the loft, “I’m coming for you, cocksuckers. I’m—” He felt someone knock his legs out from under him, and he toppled to the floor as a bullet passed through the space where he had stood.

An ESD man sat cross-legged looking down at him. “You got to be cool, Lieutenant. There’s nothing personal between them and us. You understand?”

Another man lit a cigarette and added, “They’re giving it their best shot, and we’re giving it our best shot. Today they got the force with them—see? And we don’t. Makes you wonder, though…. I mean in a cathedral and all that …”

Burke took the man’s cigarette and got control of himself. “Okay…. okay…. Any ideas?”

A man dabbing at a grazing wound across his jaw answered, “Yeah, offer them a job—my job.”

Another man added, “Somebody’s got to get into the loft through the towers. That’s the truth.”

Burke saw the dial of the other man’s watch. He picked up the phone and called the sacristy stairs. “Did the hostages make it?”

The commo man answered, “Whoever’s behind that M-16 up there wasn’t shooting at you guys—it was raining bullets on the floor between the pews and the stairs—Christ, somebody up there has it in for these two.”

“I’m sure it’s not personal.” Burke threw the phone down. “Still, I’m getting a little pissed off.”

“What the hell is driving those two Micks on?” an ESD man asked. “Politics? I mean, I’m a registered Democrat, but I don’t get that excited about it. You know?”

Burke stubbed out a cigarette and thought about Bellini. He looked down at the coagulated gore on his trousers that had been part of Bellini, those great stupid brains that had held a lot more knowledge than he had realized. Bellini would know what to do, and if he didn’t, he would know how to inspire confidence in these semi-psychotics around him. Burke felt very much out of his element, unwilling to give an order that would get one more man killed; and he appreciated—really and fully appreciated—the reason for Bellini’s erratic behavior all night. Unconsciously he rubbed at the stains on his trousers until someone said, “It doesn’t come off.”

Burke nodded. He realized now that he had to go to the loft, himself, and finish it one way or the other.

Maureen listened to the intense volume of fire dying away. The arm of the policeman who had fallen from the triforium above dangled between the pews, dripping blood into a large puddle of red. Through the gunfire she had thought she heard a sound coming from the pulpit.

Baxter said, “I think that was our last chance, Maureen.”

She heard it again, a low, choked-off moan. She said, “We may have one more chance.” She slid away from Baxter, avoiding his grasp, and rolled beneath the pews, coming out where they ended near the spiral pulpit staircase a few feet across a patch of open floor. She dove across the opening and flattened herself on the marble-walled steps, hugging the big column around which the steps circled. As she reached the top she noticed the red bloodstains on the top stairs. She looked into the pulpit and saw that he had dragged himself up to a sitting position, his back to the marble wall. His eyes were shut, and she stared at him for several seconds, watching the irregular rising and falling of his chest. Then she slid into the pulpit. “Brian.”

He opened his eyes and focused on her.

She leaned over him and said quietly, “Do you see what you’ve done? They’re all dead, Brian. All your trusting young friends are dead—only Leary, Megan, and Hickey are left—the bastards.”

He took her hand and pressed it weakly. “Well … you’re all right, then … and Baxter?”

She nodded, then ripped open his shirt and saw the bullet wound that had entered from the top of his shoulder. She moved her hands over his body and found the exit wound on his opposite hip, big and jagged, filled with bone splinters and marrow. “Oh, God …” She breathed deeply several times, trying to bring her voice under control. “Was it worth it?”

His eyes seemed clear and alert. “Stop scolding, Maureen.”

She touched his cheek. “Father Murphy … Why did you … ?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “We never escape what we were as children…. Priests awe me….” He drew a shallow breath. “Priests … cathedrals… you attack what you fear … primitive … self-protecting.”

She glanced at her watch, then took him by his shoulders and shook him gently. “Can you call off Leary and Megan? Can you make them stop?” She looked up at the pulpit microphone. “Let me help you stand.”

He didn’t respond.

She shook him again. “Brian—it’s over—it’s finished—stop this killing—”

He shook his head. “I can’t stop them…. You know that….”

“The bombs, then. Brian, how many bombs? Where are they? What time—?”

“I don’t know … and if I did … I don’t know … 6:03 … sooner … later … two bombs … eight … a hundred…. Ask Hickey….”

She shook him more roughly. “You’re a damned fool.” She said more softly, “You’re dying.”

“Let me go in peace, can’t you?” He suddenly leaned forward and took her hands in a surprisingly tight grip, and a spasm shook his body. He felt blood rising from his lungs and felt it streaming through his parted lips. “Oh … God … God, this is slow….”

She looked at a pistol lying on the floor and picked it up.

He watched her as she held the pistol in both hands. He shook his head. “No…. You’ve got enough regrets … don’t carry that with you…. Not for me….” She cocked the pistol. “Not for you—for me. ”

He held out his hand and pushed her arm away. “I want it to be slow….”

She uncocked the pistol and flung it down the steps. “All right … as you wish.” She looked around the floor of the pulpit, and from among a pile of ammunition boxes she took an aid kit and unwrapped two pressure bandages.

Flynn said, “Go away…. Don’t prolong this…. You’re not helping….”

“You want it to be slow.” She dressed both wounds, then extracted a Syrette of morphine from the kit.

He pushed her hand away weakly. “For God’s sake, Maureen, let me die my way…. I want to stay clearheaded … to think….”

She tapped the spring-loaded Syrette against his arm, and the morphine shot into his muscle. “Clearheaded,” she repeated, “clearheaded, indeed.”

He slumped back against the pulpit wall. “Cold … cold … this is bad….”

“Yes … let the morphine work. Close your eyes.”

“Maureen … how many people have I done this to … ? My God … what have I done all these years … ?”

Tears formed in her eyes. “Oh, Brian … always so late … always so late….”

Rory Devane felt blood collecting in his torn throat and tried to spit, but the blood gushed from his open wound again, carrying flecks of vomit with it. He blinked the running tears from his eyes as he moved upward. His hands had lost all sensation, and he had to look at them to see if they were grabbing the cold iron rungs.

The higher he climbed, the more his head throbbed where the ricochet had hit him, and the throbbing spread into his skull, causing a pain he wouldn’t have believed possible. Several times he wanted to let go, but the image of the cross on the top drew him upward.

He reached the end of the stone spire and looked up at the protruding ornamental copper finial from which rose the cross. Iron spikes, like steps, had been driven into the bulging finial. He climbed them slowly, then threw his arms around the base of the cross and put his head down on the cold metal and wept. After a while he picked up his head and completed his climb. He draped his numb arms over the cross and stood, twenty-eight stories above the city.

Slowly Devane looked to his front. Across the Avenue, Rockefeller Center soared above him, half the windows lit and open, people waving at him. He turned to his left and saw the Empire State Building towering over the Avenue. He shifted his body around and looked behind him. Between two tall buildings he saw the flatland of Long Island stretching back to the horizon. A soft golden glow illuminated the place where the earth met the dark, starlit sky. “Dawn.”

Burke knelt on the blood-covered floor of the triforium. The wounded had been lowered down the elevator shaft, and the dead, including Bellini, were laid out in the attic. Four ESD men of the First Assault Squad remained, huddled against the parapet. The sniper in the choir loft was skimming bullets across the top of the balustrades, but from what Burke could hear, few of the ESD men in the three other triforia were picking their heads up to return the fire. Burke took the field phone and called the opposite triforium. “Situation.”

The voice answered, “Squad leader got it. Wounded evacuated down the chimney, and replacements moving up but—listen, what’s the word from Rockefeller Center? It’s late.”

Burke had a vivid image of Commissioner Rourke throwing up in a men’s room, Murray Kline telling everyone to be calm, and Martin, looking very cool, giving advice that was designed to finish off the Cathedral and everyone in it. Burke glanced at his watch. It would be slow going down that chimney. He spoke into the phone. “Clear out.”

“I hear you.”

Burke signaled the switchboard. “Did you get through to the towers or attic yet?”

The operator answered, “Attic under control. Upper parts of both towers are secure, except for some clown climbing the south tower. But down at the loft level everything’s a fucking mess. Some weird bitch dressed like a witch or something is blasting away at the tower doors. Some ESD guys got wasted in the choir room. Army guys got creamed coming into the loft from the other tower. Very unclear. You want to speak to them? Tell them to try again?”

“No. Tell them to stand by. Put me through to the crawl space.”

The operator’s voice was hesitant. “We can’t raise them. They were reporting fine until a few minutes ago—then I lost them.” The man paused, then added, “Check the time.”

“I know the fucking time. Everybody knows the fucking time. Keep trying the crawl space. Connect me with Fifth Squad.”

An ESD man on the sacristy stairs answered, and Burke said, “Situation.”

The man reported, “Sacristy behind me is filled with fresh Assault Squads, but only two guys at a time can shoot from behind the altar. We definitely cannot reach that bronze plate. We cannot reach the hostages, and they can’t reach us. Christ, those two bastards up there can shoot.” He drew a deep breath. “What the hell is happening?”

“What’s happening,” Burke answered, “is that this end of the Cathedral will probably collapse in ten minutes, so send everyone back to the rectory basement except two or three men to keep contact with the hostages.”

“Right.”

Langley’s voice came on the line. “Burke—get the hell out of there. Now.” Burke answered, “Have the ESD and Bomb Squad send more people into the crawl space—Hickey must’ve nailed the others. There’s at least one bomb left, and he’s probably guarding it like a dog with a meaty bone. Get on it.”

Langley said, “The bomb could blow any time. We can’t send any more—”

Mayor Kline cut in, and his voice had the tone of a man speaking for the tape recorders. “Lieutenant, on your advice, I’ll put one more Assault Squad and bomb team in there, but you understand that their chances—”

Burke ripped the wire out of the phone and turned to the man beside him. “Get everyone down the elevator shaft, and don’t stop until you reach the basement of the Cardinal’s residence.”

The man slung his rifle. “You coming?”

Burke turned and moved around the bend in the triforium that overlooked the south transept. He stood and looked over the balustrade. The line of sight of the choir loft was blocked by the angle of the crossed-shaped building, and the ESD men had shot a line across the transept to the long triforium. Burke slipped into a rope harness and began pulling himself, hand over hand, across the hundred-foot-wide transept arm.

An ESD man on the far side reached out and pulled him over the balustrade. The two men walked quickly to the corner where Sullivan lay sprawled across his bagpipes, his kilts and bare legs splattered with blood. Both men crouched before they turned the corner, and Burke moved down the length of the triforium, passing six kneeling ESD snipers and two dead ones. He took a periscope and looked over the balustrade.

The choir loft was about three stories below, and from here he could see how huge and obscure it was, while the police perches were more defined by the candlelight playing off the window-like openings. Still, he thought, it was incredible that anyone in the loft had survived the volleys of fire, and he wondered why those two were so blessed.

He lowered the scope and moved farther to his right, then stood higher and focused the periscope on the floor below. The shattered front of the armored vehicle stuck out from under the loft, and he saw part of a body sprawled over it—Logan. Two blackened arms stuck straight out of what had been the driver’s compartment. Major Cole and a few men knelt to the side of the carrier, looking grim but, he thought, also relieved that the day’s National Guard exercises were nearly over.

A shot whistled out of the loft, and the periscope slapped Burke in the eye and flew out of his hands. Burke toppled and fell to the floor.

The ESD man beside him said, “You held it up too long, Lieutenant. And that was our last scope.”

Burke rubbed his eye and brought his hand away covered with watery blood. He rose to one knee and looked at the man, who appeared blurry. “Any word from the towers?”

Before the man answered, a short staccato burst of fire rolled out of the loft, followed by another, and the man said, “That’s the word from the towers—the witch wants nobody near her doors.” He looked at his watch and said, “What a fucking mess…. We almost had it. Right?”

Burke looked at the ESD man across from him, who was a sergeant. “Any ideas?”

“The thing hinges on knocking out the loft so that Malone and Baxter can make it to the stairs and so the ESD people there can drop concussion grenades through the plate and turn that guy Hickey’s brains to mashed potatoes. Then the bomb guys can get the bombs. Right?”

Burke nodded. This seemed to be the inescapable solution to the problem. The choir loft dominated the entire Cathedral, as it was meant to do for a different purpose. And Flynn had placed two very weird people up there. “What are our options for knocking out the loft?”

The ESD sergeant rubbed his jaw. “Well, we could bring new spotlights into the triforia, have helicopters machinegun through the rose window, break through the plaster lathing in the attic over the loft…. Lots of options … but all that ordnance isn’t handy … and it takes time….”

Burke nodded again. “Yeah …”

“But the best way,” said the sergeant, “is for somebody to sneak into that loft from one of the towers. Once you’re past the door, you’ve got space to maneuver, just like them, and you’re as invisible as they are.”

Burke nodded. The alternate answer was to get to the explosives through the crawl space and worry about the sniper and the hostages later. Then 6:03 wouldn’t matter anymore. Burke picked up the field phone and spoke to the switchboard. “What’s the situation in the crawl space?”

The operator answered, “The new ESD squad is in—found some survivors dragging wounded back. Dogs and handlers dead. Bomb Squad people all out of it except Peterson, who’s wounded but still functioning. There’s a crazy guy down there with an automatic weapon. The survivors say there’s no way to get to any remaining bombs except through the bronze plate.” The operator hesitated, then said, “Listen … Peterson said this guy could probably set off the bombs anytime he wants … so I’m signing off because I’m a little close to where the bombs are supposed to be. Commo is going to be broken until I get this switchboard set up someplace else. Sorry, Lieutenant.” He added, “They’re searching both towers and the attic for the radio jammer, and if they find it, you’ll have radio commo. Okay? Sorry.”

The phone went dead. Burke turned on a radio lying near his feet, and a rush of static filled the air. He shut it off.

The ESD commo man beside him said, “That’s it. Nobody is talking to nobody now. We can’t coordinate an attack on that loft if we wanted to—or coordinate a withdrawal….”

Burke nodded. “Looks like getting in was the easy part.” He looked around the dark gallery. “Well, it’s a big place. Looks pretty solid to me. The architect seemed to think this end would stand if the main columns over there went….”

One of the men asked, “Anybody guaranteeing that? Is anybody sure there aren’t bombs under these columns?” He tapped one of the columns.

Burke responded, “Logically, they wouldn’t have bothered with fires in the attic if the whole place was rigged to explode. Right?” He looked at the men huddled around him, but no one seemed relieved by his deductions.

The sergeant said, “I don’t think logic has anything to do with how these cocksuckers operate.”

Burke looked at his watch. 5:54. He said, “I’m staying … you’re staying.” He entered the south tower and began to climb down to the loft level.

Maureen looked at her watch, then said to Flynn, “I’m going back.”

“Yes … no … don’t leave….” His voice was much weaker now.

She wiped his brow with her hand. “I’m sorry … I can’t stay here.”

He nodded. “Do you have much pain, Brian?”

He shook his head, but as he did his body stiffened.

She took another Syrette of morphine and removed the cap. With the blood he had lost, she knew this would probably kill him, but there would be no pain. She bent over and put her arm around his neck, kissing him on the lips as she brought the Syrette to his chest, near his heart.

Flynn’s lips moved against hers, and she turned her head to hear. “No … no … take it away….”

She drew the Syrette back and looked at him. He had not opened his eyes once in the last several minutes, and she did not understand how he knew … unless it was that he just knew her too well. She held his hand tightly and felt the large ring pressing into her palm. She said, “Brian … can I take this … ? If I leave here … I want to return it … to bring it home….”

He pulled his hand away and clenched his fingers. “No.”

“Keep it, then—the police will have it.”

“No…. Someone must come for it.”

She shook her head and then kissed him again. Without a word she slid back toward the winding stairs.

He called to her, “Maureen … listen … Leary … I told him … not to shoot at you…. He follows orders…. You can tell when Megan is covering the tower door … then you can run….”

She lay still on the stairs, then said, “Baxter … ?”

“Baxter is as good as dead…. You can go … go …”

She shook her head. “Brian … you shouldn’t have told me that….”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, then nodded. “No, I shouldn’t have … stupid…. Always doing the wrong thing….” He tried to sit up, and his face went white with pain. “Please … run … live …” His chest began to rise and fall slowly.

Maureen watched him, then slid slowly down the stairs and rolled quickly over the few feet of exposed floor and crawled between the pews, coming up beside Baxter.

Baxter said, “I wanted to follow you … but I thought perhaps …”

She took his hand and pressed it.

“He’s dead?”

“No.”

They lay side by side in silence. At 5:55 Baxter asked, “Do you think he could— or would—call off Leary and Megan?”

She said, “I didn’t ask.”

Baxter nodded. “I see…. Well, are you ready to run for it?”

“I’m not certain that’s what I want to do.”

“Then why did you come back here?”

She didn’t answer.

He drew a short breath and said, “I’m going….”

She held his arm tightly and peered under the pew at the long expanse of blood-streaked white marble that seemed to radiate an incandescence of its own in the candlelight. She heard the staccato bursts of Megan’s fire hitting the tower doors but no longer heard the sound of Leary’s bullets striking in the Cathedral. “Leary is waiting for us.”

“Then let’s not keep him waiting.” He began moving toward the end of the pew.

She kept a grip on his arm. “No!”

A policeman’s voice called out from the sacristy stairwell behind the altar. “Listen, you’re keeping two men here—I don’t like to put it this way, but we’d rather be gone—you know?—so are you coming or not?” He thought he spoke just loud enough for them to hear, but the acoustics carried the sound through the Cathedral.

Two shots whistled out of the loft and cracked into the marble midway between the pews and the altar. Maureen slid beside Baxter and turned her face to him. “Stay with me.”

He put his arm around her shoulders and called out to the stairwell. “Go on— there’s no point in waiting for us.”

There was no answer, and Maureen and Baxter edged closer to each other, waiting out the final minutes.

Wendy Peterson knelt behind the back wall of the crypt as a medic wound a bandage around her right forearm. She flexed her fingers and noticed that they were becoming stiff. “Damn.”

The medic said, “You better go back.” Another medic was tying a pressure bandage around her right heel.

She looked around the red-lit area. Most of the original group had been left behind, dead from head wounds as a result of the ground-skimming fire. The rest were being evacuated, suffering from wounds in the limbs or buttocks or from broken clavicles where the flak jackets had stopped the head-on bullets. In the red light, pale faces seemed rosy, red blood looked black, and, somehow, the wounds seemed especially ugly. She turned away and concentrated on moving her fingers. “Damn it.”

The new ESD squad leader assembled his men at the corner of the crypt and looked at his watch. “Eight minutes.” He knelt down beside Peterson. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing down here except collecting bodies because, let me tell you, there’s no way to get that joker out of there, Lieutenant.”

She moved away from the medics and limped to the edge of the vault. “You sure?”

He nodded. “I can’t fire—right? He’s got a gas mask, and concussion grenades are out. But even if we got him, there’s not much time to defuse even one bomb, and we don’t know how many there are. The damned dogs are dead, and there aren’t any more dogs—”

“Okay … okay…. Damn it … we’re so close.”

“No,” said the squad leader, “we are not close at all.” Some of the men around him coughed nervously and pointedly. The squad leader addressed Peterson. “They said this was your decision … and Burke’s decision.” He picked up the field phone beside him, but it was still dead. “Your decision.”

A voice called out from the dark, an old man’s voice with a mocking tone. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”

A nervous young policeman shouted back, “Fuck you!”

The squad leader stuck his head around the crypt corner and shouted, “If you come out with your hands—”

“Oh, baloney!” Hickey laughed, then fired a burst of bullets at the red glow coming around the corner of the crypt. The gunfire caused a deafening roar in the closed space and echoed far into the quarteracre of crawl space. Hickey shouted, “Is there a bomb squad lad there? Answer me!”

Peterson edged toward the corner. “Right here, Pop.”

“Pop? Who are you carling Pop? Well, never mind—listen, these bombs have more sensitive triggers to make them blow than … than Linda Lovelace.” He laughed, then said, “Terrible metaphor. Anyway, lass, to give you an example you’ll appreciate professionally—I mean demolitions, not blowing—where was I? Oh, yes, I’ve lots of triggers—photosensitive, audio—all kinds of triggers. Do you believe that, little girl?”

“I think you’re full of shit.”

Hickey laughed. “Well, then send everyone away, darlin’, and toss a concussion grenade at me. If that doesn’t blow the bombs, then a demo man can come back and defuse them. You won’t be able to with your brains scrambled, and I won’t be able to stop him with my brains scrambled. Go on, lassie. Let’s see what you’re made of.”

Wendy Peterson turned to the squad leader. “Give me a concussion grenade and clear out.”

“Like hell. Anyway, you know we don’t carry those things in spaces like this.”

She unsheathed the long stiletto that she used to cut plastic and moved around the corner of the crypt.

The squad leader reached out and pulled her back. “Where the hell are you going? Listen, I thought of that—it’s over sixty feet to where that guy is. Nobody can cover that distance without making some noise, and he’ll nail you the second he hears you.”

“Then cover me with noise.”

“Forget it.”

Hickey called out, “What’s next, folks? One man belly-crawling? I can hear breathing at thirty-forty feet. I can smell a copper at sixty feet. Listen, gentlemen— and lady—the time has come for you to leave. You’re annoying me, and I have things to think about in the next few minutes. I feel like singing—” He began singing a bawdy version of the British army song: “Fuck you aaa-lll, fuck you aaa-lll,The long and the short and the taa-lll.Fuck all the coppers, and fuck all their guns,Fuck all the priests and their bastard sons.S-o-oo, I’m saying good-bye to you all,The ones that appeal and appall.I stall and tarry,While you want to save Harry,But nevertheless fuck you aaa-lll.”

Wendy Peterson put the stiletto back in its sheath and let out a long breath. “Let’s go.”

The procession began making its way back toward the open hatch to the corridor, moving with an affected casualness that disguised the fact that they were retreating at top speed. No one looked back except Wendy Peterson, who glanced over her shoulder once or twice. Suddenly she began running in a crouch, past the moving line of men, toward the open hatch.

John Hickey squeezed out of the tight space and sat down against the column footing, the mass of plastic explosive conforming to his back. “Oh … well …” He filled his pipe, lit it, and looked at his watch. 5:56. “My, it’s late….” He hummed a few bars of “An Irish Lullaby,” then sang softly to himself, “… too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, hush now don’t you cry….”

The Sixth Squad leader climbed the iron rungs of the south spire alone, a nylon line attached to his belt. He moved quietly through the cold dark night to a point five feet below Rory Devane, who still clung to the arms of the cross. The ESD man drew his pistol. “Hey! Jesus! Don’t move, or I’ll blow your ass off.”

Devane opened his eyes and looked down behind him.

The squad leader raised his pistol. “You armed?”

Devane shook his head.

The squad leader got a clear look at Devane’s bloodied face in the city lights. “You’re really fucked up—you know that?”

Devane nodded.

“Come on down. Nice and easy.”

Devane shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? You got up there, you bastard. Now get down. I’m not hanging here all fucking day waiting for you.”

“I can’t move.”

The squad leader thought that about half the world was watching him on television, and he put a concerned expression on his face, then smiled at Devane good-naturedly. “You asshole. For two cents I’d jam this gun between your legs and blow your balls into orbit.” He glanced at the towering buildings of Rockefeller Center and flashed a resolute look for the telescopic cameras and field glasses. He took a step upward. “Listen, sonny boy, I’m coming up with a line, and if you pull any shit, I swear to God, motherfucker, you’re going to be treading air.”

Devane stared down at the black-clad figure approaching. “You people talk funny.”

The squad leader laughed and climbed up over the curve of the finial and wrapped his arms around the base of the cross. “You’re okay, kid. You’re an asshole, but you’re okay. Don’t move.” He circled around to the side and pulled himself up until his head was level with Devane’s shoulder, then reached out and looped a line around Devane’s torso. “You the guy who fired the flares?”

Devane nodded.

“Real performer, aren’t you, Junior? What else do you do? You juggle?” He tied the end of the long line to the top of the cross and spoke in a more solemn voice. “You’re going to have to climb a little. I’ll help you.”

Devane’s mind was nearly numb, but something didn’t seem right. There was something incongruous about hanging twenty-eight stories above the most technologically advanced city in the world and being asked to climb, wounded, down a rope to safety. “Get a helicopter.”

The squad leader glanced at him quickly.

Devane stared down into the man’s eyes and said, “You’re going to kill me.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m risking my goddamned life to save you—shithead.” He flashed a smile toward Rockefeller Center. “Come on. Down.”

“No.”

The squad leader heard a sound and looked up. A Fire Rescue helicopter appeared overhead and began dropping toward the spire. The helicopter dropped closer, beating the cold air downward. The squad leader saw a man in a harness edging out of the side door, a carrying chair in his hands. The squad leader hooked his arms over Devane’s on the cross and pulled himself up so that they were face to face, and he studied the young man’s frozen blue features. The blood had actually crystallized in his red hair and glistened in the light. The squad leader examined his throat wound and the large discolored mass on his forehead. “Caught some shit, did you? You should be dead—you know?”

“I’m going to live.”

“They’re stuffing some of my friends in body bags down there—”

“I never fired a shot.”

“Yeah…. Come on, I’ll help you into the sling.”

“How can you commit murder—here?”

The squad leader drew a long breath and exhaled a plume of fog.

The Fire Rescue man was dangling about twenty feet above them now, and he released the carrying chair, which dropped on a line to within a few feet of the two men. The squad leader put his hands on Devane’s shoulders. “Okay, Red, trust me.” He reached up and guided the chair under Devane, strapped him in, then untied the looped rope. “Don’t look down.” He waved off the helicopter.

The helicopter rose, and Devane flew away from the spire, swinging in a wide arc through the brightening sky. The squad leader watched as the line was reeled in and Devane disappeared into the helicopter. The squad leader turned and looked back at Rockefeller Center. People were leaning from the windows, civilians and police, and he heard cheering. Bits of paper began sailing from the windows and floated in the updrafts. He wiped his runny eyes and waved toward the buildings as he began the climb down from the cross. “Hello, assholes—spell my name right. Hi, Mom—fuck you, Kline—I’m a hero.”

Burke ran down the spiral stairs of the south tower until he reached a group of Guardsmen and police on the darkened choir loft level Burke said, “What’s the situation?”

No one answered immediately, then an ESD man said, “We sort of ran into each other in the dark.” He motioned toward a neat stack of about six bodies against the wall

“Christ….” Burke looked across the tower room and saw a splintered door hanging loosely from its hinges.

An ESD man said, “Stay out of the line of fire of that door.”

“Yeah, I guessed that right away.”

A short burst of rifle fire hit the door, and everyone ducked as the bullets ricocheted around the large room, shattering thick panes of glass. A National Guardsman fired a full magazine back through the door.

The steady coughing of the sniper’s silencer echoed into the room, but Burke could not imagine what was left to fire at. He circled around the room and slid along the wall toward the door.

Wendy Peterson ran to the top step of the sacristy stairs behind the altar. Her breathing came hard, and the wound on her heel was bleeding. She called back to the crypt landing where the two remaining ESD men stood. “Concussion grenade.”

One of the men shrugged and threw up a large black canister.

She edged out and glanced to her right. About thirty feet separated the hostages under the pews from the stairs. To her left, toward the rear of the sanctuary, five feet of floor separated her from the bullet-scarred bronze plate. How heavy, she wondered, was that plate? Which way did it hinge? Where was the handle? She turned back to the crypt landing. “The hostages?”

One of the men answered, “We can’t help them. They have to make a break when they think they’re ready. We’re here in case they make it and are wounded … but they’re not going to make it. Neither are we if we hang around much longer.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, it’s 5:57—can those bombs go before 6:03?”

She motioned toward the bronze plate. “What are my chances?”

The man looked down at the blood-streaked stairs and unconsciously touched his ear, which had been nicked by a shot from the loft—a shot fired from over a hundred yards away through the dim lighting. “Your chances of getting to the plate are good—fifty-fifty. Your chances of opening it, dropping that grenade, waiting for it to go, then dropping in yourself, are a little worse than zero.”

“Then we let the place go down?”

He said, “No one can say we didn’t try.” He ran his foot across the sticky blood on the landing. “Cut out.”

She shook her head. “I’ll hang around—you never know what might happen.”

“I know what’s going to happen, Lieutenant, and this is not the place to be when it happens.”

Two shots struck the bronze plate and ricocheted back toward the Lady Chapel. Another shot struck the plaster ceiling ten stories above. Peterson and the two ESD men looked up at the black expanse and dodged pieces of falling plaster. A second later one of the Cardinal’s hats that had been suspended over the crypt dropped to the landing beside one of the ESD men. The man picked it up and examined the tassled red hat.

Leary’s voice bellowed from the loft. “Got a cardinal—on the wing—in the dark. God, I can’t miss! I can’t miss!”

The ESD man threw the hat aside. “He’s right, you know.”

Peterson said, “I’ll talk to the hostages. You might as well go.”

One of the men bounded down the stairs toward the sacristy gates. The other climbed up toward Peterson. “Lieutenant”—he looked down at the bloody, soiled bandages wrapped around her bare foot—“it takes about sixty seconds to make it to the rectory basement….”

“Okay.”

The man hesitated, then turned and headed for the sacristy gates.

Peterson sat down on the top step and called out to Baxter and Malone, “How are you doing?”

Maureen called back, “Go away.”

Peterson lit a cigarette. “It’s okay … we have time yet…. Anytime you’re ready… think it out.” She spoke to them softly as the seconds ticked away.

Leary grazed a round over each of the four triforium balustrades, changed positions, fired at the statue of St. Patrick, moved laterally, picked out a flickering votive candle, fired, and watched it explode. He moved diagonally over the pews, then stopped and put two bullets through the cobalt blue window rising above the east end of the ambulatory. The approaching dawn showed a lighter blue through the broken glass.

Leary settled back into a bullet-pocked pew near the organ pipes and concentrated on the sanctuary—the stairwell, the bronze plate, and the clergy pews. He flexed his arm, which had been hit by shrapnel, and rubbed his cheek where buckshot had raked the side of his face. At least two ribs had been broken by bullets where they had hit his flak jacket.

Megan was firing at each of the tower doors, alternating the sequence and duration of each burst of automatic fire. She stood in the aisle a few feet below Leary and watched the two doors to her right and left farther down the loft. Her arms and legs were crusted with blood from shrapnel and buckshot, and her right shoulder was numb from a direct bullet hit. She suddenly felt shaky and nauseous and leaned against a pew. She straightened up and called back to Leary, “They’re not even trying.”

Leary said, “I’m bored.”

She laughed weakly, then replied, “I’m going to blast those pews and flush those two out. You nail them.”

Leary said, “In about six minutes half the Cathedral will fall in on them … or I’ll get them if they make a break. Don’t spoil the game. Be patient.”

She knelt in the aisle and raised her rifle. “What if the police get the bombs?”

Leary looked at the sanctuary as he spoke. “I doubt they got Hickey…. Anyway, I’m doing what I was told—covering that plate and keeping those two from running.”

She shouted as she took aim at the clergy pews. “I want to see her die—before I die. I’m going to flush them. You nail them. Ready?”

Leary stared, down at Megan, her silhouette visible against the candlelight and flares below. He spoke in a low, contemplative voice. “Everyone’s dead, Megan, except Hickey and, I guess, Malone and Baxter. They’ll all die in the explosion. That leaves only you and me.”

She spun around and peered up into the blackness toward the place from which his voice had come.

He said, “You understand, I’m a professional. It’s like I said, I only do what I’m told—never more, never less—and Flynn told me to make especially sure of you and Hickey.”

She shook her head. “Jack … you can’t…. Not after we …” She laughed. “Yes, of course…. I don’t want to be taken…. Brian knew that…. He did it for me. Go on, then. Quickly!”

He raised a pistol, aimed at the dark outline, and put two bullets in rapid succession through her head. Megan’s body toppled back, and she rolled down the aisle, coming to rest beside the Guard sergeant she had killed.

Burke stood in his stocking feet with his back to the wall just inside the tower door, a short, fat grenade launcher nestled in the bend of his elbow. He closed his eyes against the glare of the lights coming through the broken windows and steadied his breathing. The men in the tower room were completely still, watching him. Burke listened to the distant sound of a man and woman talking, followed by two pistol shots. He spun rapidly into the doorway and raced up the side aisle along the wall, then flattened himself in the sloping aisle about halfway up the loft. From farther back near the organ pipes came the sound of breathing. The breathing stopped abruptly, and a man’s voice said, “I know you’re there.”

Burke remained motionless.

The man said, “I see in the dark, I smell what you can’t smell, I hear everything. You’re dead.”

Burke knew that the man was trying to draw him into a panic shot, and he was not doing a bad job of it. The man was good. Even in a close-in-situation like this he was very cool.

Burke rolled onto his back, lifted his head, and looked out over the rail into the Cathedral. The cable that held the chandelier nearest the choir loft swayed slightly as it was being drawn up by the winch in the attic. The chandelier rose level with the loft, and Burke saw the Guardsman sitting on it, his rifle pointed into the loft. He looked, Burke thought, like live bait. Live ones, he wanted live ones. Burke’s muscles tensed.

Leary fired, and the body on the chandelier jerked.

Burke jumped to his feet, pointed the grenade launcher at the direction of the sound, and fired its single beehive round. The dozens of needle darts buzzed across the quiet loft, spreading as they traveled. There was a sharp cry, followed immediately by the flash of a rifle that Burke saw out of the corner of his eyes as he turned and dove for the floor. A powerful blow on the back of his flak jacket propelled him headfirst into the wall, and he staggered, then collapsed into the aisle. Another shot ripped through the pews and passed inches over his head.

Burke lay still, aware of a pain in the center of his spine that began to spread to his arms and legs. Several more shots struck around him. The firing shifted to the doors, and Burke tried to crawl to another position but found that he couldn’t move. He tried to reach the pistol in his belt, but his arm responded in short, spastic motions.

The firing shifted back toward him, and a round grazed his hand. His forehead was bleeding where he had crashed into the wall, and throbbing pains ran from his eyes to the back of his skull. He felt himself losing consciousness, but he could hear distinctly the sound of the man reloading his rifle. Then the voice said, “Are you dead, or do you just wish you were?”

Leary raised his rifle, but the persistent stabbing pain in his right leg made him lower it. He sat down in the center aisle, rolled back his trouser leg, and ran his fingers over his shin, feeling the tiny entry hole where the dart had hit him. He brought his hand around to his calf and touched the exit wound, slightly larger, with a splinter of bone protruding from the flesh. “Ah … shit … shit …”

He rose to his knee and emptied his rifle toward the doors and the side aisle, then ripped off his rubber mask and pulled the gas mask from around his neck. He tore off the long robe, using it to wipe his sniper rifle from end to end as he crawled down the center aisle. Leary placed the rifle in Megan’s warm hands, reached into the front pew, and retrieved another rifle. He rose and steadied himself on the edge of the pew and slid onto the bench. Leary called out, “Martin! You out there?”

There was a silence, then a voice called back from the choir practice room. “Right here, Jack. Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell the police you’re surrendering.”

“Right. Come out here—alone.”

Martin walked briskly into the choir loft, turned on a flashlight, and made his way through the dark into the center aisle. He stepped over Megan’s body. “Hello, Jack.” He approached Leary and edged into the pew. “Here, let’s have that. That’s a good lad.” He took Leary’s rifle and pistol, then called out, “He’s disarmed.”

ESD men began to move cautiously from both towers into the choir loft. Martin called to them. “It’s all right—this man is an agent of mine.” Martin turned to Leary and gave him a look of annoyance. “A bit early, aren’t you, Jack?”

Leary spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m hit.”

“Really? You look fine.”

Leary swore. “Fitzgerald was starting to become a problem, and I had to do her when I had the chance. Then someone got into the loft, and I took a needle dart in the shin. Okay?”

“That’s dreadful … but I don’t see anyone in here…. You really should have waited.”

“Fuck you.”

Martin shone his light on Leary’s shin. Like so many killers, he thought, Leary couldn’t stand much pain. “Yes, that looks like it might hurt.” He reached out and touched Leary’s wound.

Leary let out a cry of pain. “Hey! God … that feels like there’s still a needle in there.”

“Might well be.” Martin looked down at the sanctuary. “Malone and Baxter … ?”

A policeman shouted from the side of the loft. “Stand up!”

Leary placed his hands on the pew in front of him and stood. He said to Martin, “They’re both under the sanctuary pews there—”

The lights in the loft went on, illuminating the sloping expanse of ripped pews, bullet-pocked walls, burnt lockers, and scarred aisles. The towering organ pipes shone brightly where they had been hit, but above the pipes the rose window was intact. Leary looked around and made a whistling sound. “Like walking in the rain without getting wet.” He smiled.

Martin waved his hand impatiently. “I don’t understand about Baxter and Malone. They’re dead, aren’t they?”

The police stepped over the bodies in the aisle and moved up carefully into the pews, rifles and pistols raised.

Leary automatically put his hands on his head as he spoke to Martin. “Flynn told me not to kill her—and I couldn’t shoot into the pews at Baxter without taking the chance of hitting her—”

“Flynn? You’re working for me, Jack.”

Leary pushed past Martin and hobbled into the aisle. “You give orders, he gives orders…. I do only what I’m told—and what I’m paid for—”

“But Flynn’s money came from me, Jack.”

Leary stared at Martin. “Flynn never bullshitted me. He told me this loft would be hell, and I knew it. You said it would be—how’d that go?—relatively without risk?”

Martin’s voice was peevish. “Well, as far as I’m concerned you didn’t fulfill your contract, I’ll have to reconsider the nature of the final payment.”

“Look, you little fuck—” Two ESD men covered the remaining distance up the aisle and grabbed Leary’s upraised arms, pulling them roughly behind his back, then cuffing him. They pushed him to the floor, and he yelled out in pain, then turned his head back toward Martin as the police searched him. “If they got Hickey from below, they got the bombs anyway. If they didn’t get him, you’ll still get your explosion.”

Martin noticed Burke moving toward him, supported by two ESD men. Martin cleared his throat. “All right, Jack—that’s enough.”

But Leary was obviously offended. “I lived up to my end. I mean, Christ, Martin, it’s after six—and look around you—enough is enough—”

“Shut up.”

Two ESD men pulled Leary to his feet. Leary said, “This leg … it feels funny … burns …”

Martin said nothing.

Leary stared at him. “What did you … ? Oh … no …”

Martin winked at him, turned, and walked away.

An ESD man raised a bullhorn and called out into the Cathedral. “Police in the choir loft! All clear! Mr. Baxter—Miss Malone—run! Run this way!”

Baxter picked up his head and looked at Maureen. “Was that Leary?”

She forced a smile. “You’re learning.” She listened to the bullhorn call their names again. “I don’t know …” She pressed her face against Baxter’s, and they held each other tightly.

Wendy Peterson looked around the altar and stared up into the choir loft. It was completely lit, and she saw the police moving through the pews. Without looking at her watch she knew there were probably not more than three minutes left—less, if the bomb were set earlier, and she didn’t remember one that was set for later than the threatened time.

She ran to the bronze plate, pulling the pin on the concussion grenade as she moved and calling back to the pews. “Run! Run!” She bent over and pulled up the heavy bronze plate with one hand.

Maureen stood, looking first at Wendy Peterson and then toward the illuminated expanse at the upper end of the Cathedral as Baxter came up beside her.

A bullhorn was blaring. “Run! Run this way!”

They began to run, but Maureen suddenly veered and dashed up the pulpit stairs, grabbing Flynn’s arm and dragging him back down the steps. Baxter ran up behind her and pulled at her arm. She turned to him. “He’s alive. Please …” He hesitated, then put Flynn over his shoulders, and they ran toward the communion rail.

Wendy Peterson watched silently until they reached a point in the center aisle where she thought they would be safe if the grenade detonated the bomb. She released the safety handle and flung the grenade into the hole with a motion that suggested What the hell. … She dropped the plate back and stood off several feet, holding her hands over her ears.

The grenade exploded, ripping the bronze plate from its hinges and sending it high into the air. A shock wave rolled through the Cathedral, and the sanctuary trembled beneath her feet. Everything seemed to hang in suspension as she waited for a secondary explosion, but there was nothing except the ringing in her ears. She dropped through the smoke down the ladder.

Burke moved slowly toward Martin as the echoes of the shock wave passed through the loft.

Martin said, “Well, Lieutenant Burke, this is a surprise. I thought you’d be … well, somewhere else. You look terrible. You’re walking strangely. Where are your shoes?” Martin checked his watch. “Two minutes … less, I think. Good view from here. Do you have cameras recording this? You won’t see this again.” He peered over Burke’s shoulder at the sanctuary. “Look at all that metalwork, that marble. Magnificent. It’s going to look exactly like Coventry in about three minutes.” He patted the lapel of his topcoat as he turned back to Burke. “See? I’ve kept my carnation. Where’s yours?” He looked anxiously into the sanctuary again. “What is that crazy woman up to? Turn around, Burke. Don’t miss this.”

Martin brushed past Burke and drew closer to the rail. He watched Baxter and Maureen approaching, accompanied by Major Cole and four Guardsmen. Brian Flynn’s limp body was being carried on a stretcher by two of the Guardsmen. Martin said to Burke, “Governor Doyle will be pleased with his boys—Mayor Kline will be furious with you, Burke.” Martin called down. “Harry, old man? Up here!” He waved. “Nicely done, you two.”

Martin turned and looked back as Leary, almost unconscious, was being carried into the choir practice room. He said to Burke, “Ballistics will show that the rifle I took from him never fired a shot that killed anyone. He did kill that young woman sniper, though, the very moment he had—what do you call it?—the drop on her. Well, at least that’s the way he’s made it appear, He’ll go free if he is tried.” Martin looked back over his shoulder. “Good-bye, Jack. I’ll see you later in the hospital.” He called to an ESD squad leader. “Easy with that man—he works for me.” Martin turned back to Burke as Leary disappeared into the choir room. “Your people are in an ugly mood. Well … the mysteries are unfolding now … Burke? Are you listening to me? Burke—” Martin looked at his watch, then at the sanctuary, and continued in a new vein. “The problem with you people is no fire discipline. Shoot first and ask questions later—great tradition. That’s why Father Murphy is hanging dead from a ladder in the bell tower here—oh, you didn’t know that, Burke?”

Martin walked to the edge of the loft and rested his hands on the parapet, looking straight down. Baxter and Malone were standing with their backs to him now. Flynn was lying near them on the floor, a National Guard medic crouched over him. Baxter, Martin noticed, had his arm around Maureen Malone’s shoulder, and she was slumped against him. Martin said to Burke, “Come closer—look at this, Burke. They’ve made friends.” He called down, “Harry, you old devil. Miss Malone. Get down, you two—there’ll be a bit of falling debris.” He turned to Burke behind him. “I feel rather bad about being the one who pushed for Baxter being on the steps…. If I had had any idea it would be so risky …”

Burke moved beside Martin and leaned on the rail. The feeling began to return to his legs and arms, and the numbness was replaced by a tingling sensation. He looked out into the Cathedral, focusing on the sanctuary. A dead ESD man lay in the clergy pews, and black smoke drifted out of the hole. Green carnations were strewn across the black-and-white marble floor, and hundreds of fragments of stained glass glittered where they’d fallen from above. Even from this distance he could see the blood splattered across the raised altar, the bullet marks everywhere. The police in the choir pews behind him fell silent and began to edge closer to the rail. The towers and attic had emptied, most of the police leaving the Cathedral through the only unmined exit—the damaged ceremonial doors. Some congregated in the two long west triforia, away from the expected area of destruction. They stared at the sanctuary, a block away, with a mesmerized fascination. Burke looked at his watch: 6:02, give or take thirty seconds.

Wendy Peterson shone her light into Hickey’s face and poked his throat with her stiletto, but he was dead—yet there was no blood running from his nose, mouth, or ears, no protruding tongue or ruptured capillaries to indicate he had been killed by concussion. In fact, she thought, his face was serene, almost smiling, and he had probably died peacefully in his sleep and with no help from her or anyone else.

She set the light down pointing at the base of the column and switched on the lamp of her miner’s helmet. “Photosensitive, my ass,” she said aloud. “Bullshitting old bastard.” She began speaking to herself, as she always did when she was alone with a bomb.

“Okay, Wendy, you silly bitch, one step at a time….” She drew a deep breath, and the oily smell of the plastic rose in her flaring nostrils. “All the time in the world…” She passed her hands gently over the dusty surface of the plastic, feeling for a place where the mechanism might be embedded. “Looks like stone…. Clever … all smoothed over … okay …” She slipped her wristwatch off and stuck it into the plastic. “Ninety seconds, Wendy, give or take…. Too late to clear out … stupid …” She was cutting with the stiletto, making a random incision into the plastic. “You get only two or three cuts now….” She thrust her right hand into the opening but felt nothing. The wound on her arm had badly stiffened her fingers. “Sixty seconds… time flies when you’re …” She put her ear to the plastic and listened, but heard nothing except the blood pounding in her head. “… when you’re having a good time…. Okay … cut here…. Okay, God? Careful … nothing here…. Where’d you put it, old man? Where’s that ticking heart? Cut here, Wendy…. When you wish upon a star, makes no difference … There … there, that’s it.” She pushed back the plastic, enlarging the incision and revealing the face of a loudly ticking alarm clock. “Okay, clock time, 6:02. My time, 6:02—alarm time, 6:03…. You play fair, old man…. All right….” She wanted to yank the clock out, rip away the wires, or squash the crystal and advance the alarm dial, but that, more often than not, set the damned thing off. “Easy, baby … you’ve come so far now….” She thrust her hand into the plastic and worked her long, stiff fingers carefully through the thick, damp substance, feeling for anti-intrusion detonators as she dug toward the rear of the clock. “Go gently into this crap, Peterson…. Hand behind the clock … there … simple mechanism…. Where’s the off switch? Come on … dawn it … 6:03—shit—shit— no alarm yet … few more seconds … steady, Wendy. Dear God, steady, steady …” The alarm rang loudly, and Wendy Peterson listened to it carefully, knowing it was the last sound she would ever hear.