Malice

21

It was so simple, Lucy thought as she ran out of the restaurant. "A Son of Man will march among the sons of Ireland and silence the critic for the good of us all." Of course, it has to mean the St. Patrick's Day Parade!

The line in the poem was obviously a code to proceed with a plan to march in the parade, probably mixed in with one of the legitimate Irish groups, and then…And then what? "Silence the critic for the good of us all"? What in the hell does that mean? They're going to kill somebody who's critical? Of what? And kill who?

Lucy called John Jojola and asked him to get in touch with Tran and meet her in Manhattan as soon as possible. "What about Jaxon?" he asked. "You going to call him or do you want me to?"

"Neither," she said. "Please don't call him, not right now. I want to talk to you about this first, but not on a cell phone; they're too easy to intercept. I read about it in Scientific American."

In the days following the murder of Cian Magee, Lucy had gone into a deep depression, deeper than she'd let on to her folks, and wanted to return immediately to New Mexico. She'd only agreed to stay until Christmas in the hopes that being with her family would help.

Racked by guilt, she spent hours trying to find any Cian Magee family members or friends she could for a memorial service. Of the former, there were none. And of the latter, there were three she located from a partly burned address book found in his apartment. Two of them had never met him because he didn't go out and they'd never visited his bookstore. I only talked to him on email, one told her. I'm a shut-in over in Newark, and we both liked to talk about the Celts. He loved that saying by an anonymous Roman philosopher, "Celts are the men that heaven made mad, for their battles are all merry and their songs are all sad."

I didn't know that, thank you, Lucy had said, and hung up. The depth of Cian's isolation ate at her. I should have been a better friend, she thought.

The memorial service had been a miserable affair: a cold, blustery day beneath gray skies that spit hard bits of snow that stung like sand. The only mourners present were the minister for hire, herself, her mother-who had insisted on paying so that Cian could be buried next to his parents instead of a potter's field-and Ariadne Stupenagel, who'd asked if it was okay to write the obituary.

A few days later, the reporter had followed up with a touching narrative about the life and death of Cian Magee that had woven the life of a lonely man into the question marks surrounding his murder. Stupenagel had pushed hard to get the story about why Lucy was at the Celtic bookstore when it was firebombed. But Lucy and her father had agreed with Jaxon that it was not the time for the reporter to write a story about the Sons of Man.

If they still exist, and if they are behind these events, Jaxon had said, then we have to find out who they are and what they intend to do. We have to solve the rest of the poem's riddle, and we won't be able to do that if they think we're onto them.

You'd think that any group that has managed to keep its presence a secret for two hundred years, which I'm having a hard time buying, her father had said, would surely duck back down the rabbit hole before you could say Alice at the first hint of publicity.

Right, Jaxon had agreed. If they do exist, we need them to feel like their secret is still safe. I'm not sure how much I buy into all of this, either, but I go back to the thought I had with Cian and that is the possibility of an Isle of Man nationalist connection to the Irish Republican Army. Are you sure you don't remember the names these families adopted from the book?

No, Lucy had said, shaking her head. I didn't get to see that part of the book. Cian mentioned them but he was trying to save some of the story for…for you…and building the dramatic tension for me like any good Irish storyteller… And then there was no time.

Lucy had not told Jaxon everything Cian had described in the book. She didn't know why she was reluctant to do so, but she just couldn't get past the fact that he arrived at Cian's apartment only after it was too late to save him.

Back in New Mexico, she'd begun connecting dots like her father, though she wasn't aware of his notepad, and hers kept leading to a conclusion that he still refused to see and that was that Jaxon was a prime suspect. Why would he be so anxious for me to keep quiet about the Sons of Man? she thought. Then she'd gone to Colorado to see her mother and had been accidentally handed the answer to the riddle. The St. Patrick's Day Parade, when the Sons of Ireland marched!

Returning to New York, she felt like the coyote in a story Jojola had told her: he kept returning to the trap, knowing it was dangerous, but he just couldn't stay away "until one day, he got too close." It was a parable along the lines of curiosity killing the cat, but Lucy wondered if she or the coyote really had a choice in the matter or if it was their fate.

Two days after her return, Lucy got a call on her cell phone. She looked at the caller ID and didn't bother to answer; she knew there would be no one on the other end if she did. Instead, she waited until 7:00 p.m. and then "went for a walk" with Ned.

Leaving her twin brothers in her parents' loft on Crosby and Grand, they strolled to Canal Street, then headed east into the heart of Chinatown. Pretending to be window-shopping like tourists, they suddenly nipped into Chen's Shanghai Emporium on Baxter and walked quickly to the back of the store. The family who owned and ran the store ignored them, even when they passed the sign that read Employees Only and went into a back storage area.

Maneuvering past boxes of silk gowns and rubber-soled slippers embroidered with dragons and flowers, along with crates of "authentic" Mandarin swords and brass Buddhas, they found themselves face-to-face with an enormous Asian man. He was dressed in a bright yellow and red, flower-printed Aloha shirt and baggy jeans; the outfit didn't match his expression, which was essentially no expression at all and never changed as he opened the door to the office he was guarding and indicated they should go in.

Inside, John Jojola and Tran were playing a game of chess. Jojola had just taken Tran's queen and placed his king in checkmate, which set the volatile Vietnamese gangster into a fit of rage. "You cheat, you American pig," he said, and added a few more slurs in Vietnamese.

"You're the contents of a water buffalo's bladder," Lucy translated.

"I've been called worse," Jojola chuckled, "including by him. Now, pay up, you old scoundrel, before I call immigration and have you thrown out of the country."

Still grumbling and giving Lucy the evil eye, Tran yanked a fat wallet out of his pants pocket, plucked a dollar bill from its interior, and flung it at Jojola. "May your descendants look like apes and marry poorly because of your unnatural greed," he cursed.

Lucy hugged both of the men and nodded toward the door. "Shouldn't that guy be like all dressed in black, with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, and aviator sunglasses?"

"How cliche," Tran scoffed. "Why would I want a bodyguard who looks like a bodyguard? Nobody gives a guy in an Aloha shirt a second thought."

"They do when he's six three and weighs as much as my horse," Ned noted.

With the small talk out of the way, Lucy and Ned sat down and she told them about how she'd jumped to her conclusion about the St. Patrick's Day Parade from Reedy's comment.

"You think they might try to plant a bomb along the parade route?" Jojola asked.

"That's what I worried about first," Lucy answered. "Terrorists do seem to like these big statements these days, with lots of blood and innocent people dying. But I think this is a different sort of terrorism. More subtle. The note says, 'a son of Man will march among the sons of Ireland and silence the critic.' Sounds more like one bad guy assigned to assassinate somebody."

"Who?" Jojola asked.

"I don't know," Lucy said. "Maybe the archbishop when he's blessing the marchers. He's certainly been making statements about the war in Iraq that has some right-wingers less than happy with him."

"Are the Sons of Man right-wingers?" Ned asked.

"I don't know, honey," Lucy answered. "I didn't get to hear everything that's in the book. But if you consider how they were marrying into wealthy families and spreading their tentacles into banking, law, finance, the military…and seemed to have a thing for power, then perhaps yes, they are righties. But then again, there are lots of crazy lefties with big bucks who seek change through the barrel of a gun."

"What about the mayor?" Tran said. "He's usually at these things."

"And so is every politician running for office from fifty miles around," Lucy said. "Plus the usual assortment of presidential hopefuls and members of Congress trying to remind the public of what they look like. Pretty good pickings."

"So you want to tell me now why you aren't letting Jaxon in on this?" Jojola asked. "It was his recording, and you might just need a bit more backup than an old but virile Indian, a cowboy, and a decrepit, pajama-wearing Vietcong gangster."

"Hey, watch who you're calling decrepit," Tran growled. "But I, too, am wondering about Jaxon. He's not bad for a fed, though I never thought I'd ever say that about any FBI."

"I know this sounds insane," Lucy replied. "But I don't trust him anymore."

Getting up to pace around the room, she outlined her suspicions surrounding the bombing of the bookstore. "But it goes back further than that, and it's a pretty long list. It was his guy, Grover, who betrayed everybody and helped Kane escape. Jaxon also knew where Archbishop Fey was being kept in the Witness Protection Program. He was there at Aspen. You know, maybe he's that Jamys Kellagh guy who Stupenagel says was in a photograph with Kane, and that's why they blew up the cafe. And before all of that, wasn't it just so convenient that he shows up in New York to take over the antiterrorist desk in the nick of time to ride to the rescue and help stop the terrorists from blowing up Times Square?"

"That's a bad thing?" Jojola asked.

"No, not on its face. But you and David Grale were onto the plot before my dad arrived with Jaxon and his crew in tow. None of the terrorists, by the way, survived that shootout, just like none survived the fight at St. Patrick's Cathedral or when Kane got cornered at the Columbia University boat dock. Maybe Jaxon makes sure they don't so they can't talk."

"Seems like a stretch," Jojola said.

"And why would he have brought that recording to you for translation?" Tran asked. "If he belonged to this Sons of Man, wouldn't he have already known what was on it?"

"I thought a lot about that, too," Lucy admitted. "Then it came to me. What if I've been thinking about this all backward? What if it was the Sons of Man who intercepted the message from someone they were watching, and wanted to know what it said? If Jaxon worked for them, he'd know that I might be able to translate it without tipping off anybody in the FBI. Then when Cian did tell us what it said, the bad guys realized that we both had now heard the name, Sons of Man, and after Cian got the book, something about their history."

"How would they know Cian had the book?" Jojola asked.

"I called Jaxon and told him that Cian had something important to tell us about the Sons of Man," Lucy replied. "He could have put two and two together. Or he may have listened outside the window-Cian thought he heard someone out there-then made a quick decision to destroy the message and the messengers in the fire."

"I don't mean to scare you, but why haven't they tried to kill you since?" Tran pointed out.

"The book is gone and so is the only person who actually read it," Lucy answered. "I'm just a nutty twenty-one-year-old girl who comes up with this story about a secret society she can't prove exists but has something to do with a coded message in a nearly dead language. I'm sure I'll be taken seriously. And as far as Jaxon knows, I'm in New Mexico, so maybe I don't pose a threat."

Lucy hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "It breaks my heart, but I can't afford to trust Espey. I hope I'm wrong about him, but a lot of people have died because someone in a position of trust betrayed them and us. And all the signs point to him. I guess this puts you in a tough spot, but I didn't know where else to turn. If you don't want to get involved without him, I understand, but I have to see this through for Cian."

Ned whistled softly and shook his head. "I just can't believe that Mr. Jaxon is a traitor. Even the thought makes me sick to my stomach."

"Me, too, Ned," Jojola agreed. "And I'm not sure I buy it even now. But I have to admit, Lucy's done a pretty good job of showing that he had the opportunity and the inside knowledge to do these things."

"If it's true, this will kill my dad," Lucy said. "They've known each other since joining the DAO back around the Civil War, I think. Ever since he got back to town, Jaxon has been part of his inner circle of the guys at work. He tells them everything and trusts their opinions more than anyone else's in the world except my mom's."

"Which would put him in the perfect position," Tran said. "I'm sorry to say, but there are many reasons why a man would betray his friends and his country. Sometimes it's money or power, but not always. Sometimes the traitor sees himself as the 'good guy' who has realized that he has been on the wrong side. These are certainly strange times and it is difficult to know who is the enemy and who is the friend. If this is true, perhaps like misguided men before him, Jaxon believes that what he is doing is for the 'greater good,' which is usually a euphemism for betrayal and dictatorship."

"So we approach this problem without Jaxon," Jojola said. "What about that other dude, Jon Ellis, with Homeland Security?"

Lucy thought about it. "I don't know. I don't like him personally. But I guess we have to trust somebody who has the muscle to help."

"And your mother?" Tran asked. "She's pretty handy in a scrape."

Lucy didn't answer right away. Her mother had followed her out of the restaurant, having jumped to the same conclusion about the St. Patrick's Day Parade threat. She wanted to fly back to Manhattan with Lucy and Ned, but her daughter had talked her out of it.

"I'll have plenty of support in New York," she'd lied, knowing Marlene would assume she meant Jaxon. "Dad is going to need you in Idaho, especially if his case has something to do with the disappearance of Maria Santacristina. And you have a lot to do before the Baker Street guys show up."

In actuality, Lucy did not want her mom present because she knew that Marlene wouldn't buy her theory about Jaxon and might insist that he be called. So she was relieved when her mom gave in as long as Lucy promised to let others handle "the rough stuff." Marlene had then made Ned swear "on pain of castration" that he'd make sure Lucy followed through.

Lucy felt guilty about not being totally honest with her mother, but she had agreed to contact Ellis, and if there was any rough stuff, she would be happy to get out of the way.

"Mom's in Idaho with Dad," she replied to Tran. "He needs her help right now with the trial only a couple of weeks away."

After meeting with Jojola and Tran, Lucy looked for the business card Ellis had given to her months ago after debriefing her about having been Kane's hostage when he tried to escape. She found it in the bottom of her purse, where she'd tossed it, and gave him a call. He seemed happy but surprised to hear from her.

"I need to talk to you," she said. "I think someone is planning an assassination during the St. Patrick's Day Parade."

Ellis was silent for a moment, then spoke in a low voice. "Don't say anything more. Can you meet me?"

"Yes. Where?"

"You name it."

"Okay, Grand Central Station under the constellations, nine o'clock tonight," she said.

"Pretty public, but I'll be there," he said.

Lucy had arrived early so she could get a seat on the mezzanine above the main terminal floor and watch for anyone "casing the joint." She laughed at herself for going into spy mode with the silly reference to meeting under the constellations. Anybody with half a brain and who knew Grand Central would immediately recognize it as the ceiling of the dome, where lights had been built in to represent a starry, constellation-filled sky.

She saw Ellis arrive and waited for him to turn in her direction before giving a little wave. He didn't acknowledge the wave, but as he looked around he nonchalantly made his way to her table. She got right to her theory about an assassination occurring during the parade but had decided against telling him how she arrived at her conclusion. She didn't feel like being questioned about the Sons of Man or the book, which would have felt like having to defend Cian.

"That doesn't give me a lot to go on," Ellis said. "But tell you what, there's going to be quite a few dignitaries at this year's parade-sort of a show of support for New York after the fiasco at St. Pat's-and I already have a Homeland Security detail assigned to the viewing platform at Eighty-sixth Street. I'll let them know there's a new potential threat."

"What about the archbishop?" Lucy asked. "The tradition is for the archbishop to bless the marchers from the steps of St. Patrick's."

"Well, this can't go any further," Ellis said. "But because of the grim nature of what occurred at St. Patrick's this past fall, the archbishop decided that it was too soon to be celebrating on the grounds. So he's decided to join the others on the viewing platform. We'll keep an extra guy on him. In fact, I'll be on the platform myself."

Lucy picked up her purse to go, but Ellis stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Can I ask why you didn't pass this information to Jaxon?" His eyes locked onto hers.

"He's no longer with the good guys, is he? I mean, he quit the FBI, so what good is he?" she replied, and left before she started to cry.

The morning of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, Lucy rose at five, leaving Ned asleep in bed. She crept out to the living room, where Gilgamesh lifted his massive head and wagged the stump of his tail. "Ssssshhhh, good doggie," she said as she located the clothes she'd secreted behind the couch. She slipped into a pair of long underwear and then several layers of other clothes. Grabbing her parka from the coatrack by the front door, she slipped out.

So far so good, she thought as the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened.

Jojola and Tran stood there with amused looks on their faces. The Vietnamese gangster looked at his watch. "Goddamn, she's ten minutes late," he complained, and handed another dollar to Jojola.

"Ten minutes too late for you to win the pool, you mean," Jojola said, laughing. Just then the elevator bell chimed. Someone above was requesting the elevator. "But save the dollar for our boy, I think he hit it right on the nail."

"He probably found a way to keep her in bed so that he could win," Tran groused, pulling Lucy out of the elevator so that it could go retrieve the winner of the pool. "I shouldn't have to pay for cheating."

A minute later, the elevator doors opened again and Ned stepped out.

"You slept in your clothes?" she asked.

"Nah, you know better than that," he answered. "But tossed them on pretty quick so I could catch a sneak."

"A sneak?"

"Yeah, a sneak."

"I couldn't sleep and was just going out for a walk."

"A sneak and a lousy liar," Tran added, handing Ned the dollar bill.

The four headed out the door with Lucy still trying to proclaim her innocence. "Ned was pretty damn sure you weren't going to sit at home waiting for the feds to stop the people who killed your friend," Jojola explained.

Lucy put up her hands in surrender. "Okay, you got me," she said. "But I was just going to have a look around and see if I could spot anything before they got to the viewing stand…if that's where this is supposed to go down. I appreciate that Ellis at least listened, but I think he only half believed me. And besides, he doesn't know what he's looking for."

"And you do?" Jojola said. "So what's your plan?"

"According to the poem, the bad guys are marchers," she replied. "So that narrows it down some."

"Yeah, to a mere hundred and fifty thousand," Tran replied.

"Yeah, a mere hundred and fifty thousand," Lucy agreed. "But they're cooped up on the side streets in Midtown until they march-that's only about a dozen blocks to check out. If we get going early enough, we can get to them all before they start marching."

"And what exactly are we looking for?" Tran asked. "I doubt they have Sons of Man name tags or T-shirts. And I suspect security will be pretty tight, so that rules out spotting their machine guns."

Lucy turned bright red. "I'm not sure what I'm looking for," she said. "I just feel like I will know it when I see it." She turned to Jojola. "I saw some of this before…when we were on the butte. I know it's not much of a plan, but it's what I got and I think I'm supposed to be there."

"I'm willing to do this," Ned said. "But not with you. I promised your mom that I'd keep you out of the rough stuff, if it happens."

"Spoken like a true future son-in-law," Tran cackled, which caused Ned and Lucy to blush.

Lucy squeezed Ned's hand. "Sorry, love, but I have to be there, I'm the only one who knows even kind of what I'm looking for," she said. "In fact, you're the one I can't allow to go. But I promise, first hint of anything rough and I'll duck around the corner."

"What do you mean by that?" Ned replied. "You're for sure not going if I'm not."

"I can't let you," Lucy argued, and explained the vision she'd had in her dream of Ned lying on the ground as a man pointed a rifle at him. She could hardly remember any details about the man, but she could still recall the sight of Ned's face as he looked down the barrel, knowing he was about to die.

"Doesn't mean it's going to come true," Ned countered. "And it doesn't matter. You go, I go, or we both stay here and whatever happens, happens."

The pair was about to argue more, but Jojola stopped them. "Look, I'd just as soon you both stayed, but Lucy is the only one with any inkling of what to look for and Ned isn't going to let her come alone. So let's move on." He turned to Lucy. "That's a lot of ground to cover, so I think you should draw us a picture of what this triskele thing looks like so that Tran and I can cover one side and you and Ned can cover the other."

Everyone had agreed to the plan when Tran asked another question. "What do we do if we find something? We can keep in touch by cell phone, but we won't have any weapons; how do we stop these guys?"

It was Jojola who answered. "Same way I stopped you and your buddies back in 'Nam."

"Oh, you mean not very well." Tran smiled.

"No," Jojola replied with a grin of his own. "I mean, any way I could."

The streets of Manhattan were only marginally warmer for the St. Patrick's Day Parade than the plains of Colorado had been. However, that didn't stop tens of thousands of watchers and participants from congregating on Midtown at dawn, nor the myriad Irish pubs around the Fifth Avenue route from opening their doors early to snag the first of the celebrants.

The first St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York was in 1766 when Irish soldiers in His Majesty's army on the "island of York" held a parade of their own, before heading off to celebrate in a more stereotypical Irish way. Two hundred and forty years later, the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York was the largest in the world and one of the very few where everyone still walked, no cars or floats allowed.

The two-mile-long parade route began at Forty-second Street in Midtown and proceeded up Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick's Cathedral, between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets, where traditionally the Archbishop of New York would bless the marchers. They would then continue on to Eighty-sixth Street, skirting the east side of Central Park before hanging a right, moving onto Third Avenue for the last hoorah.

Millions of people would eventually line up to watch the 165th Infantry-formerly the "Fighting Irish" 69th-lead the procession of more than 150,000 kilted bagpipers, drummers, drum majors, high school band members, cheerleaders, dance ensembles, representatives of every branch of the services, and the loyal members of the Irish societies, including the Emerald Societies of the NYPD and NYFD, as well as thousands of real Irish folk who'd flown in from Eire herself.

In the grand tradition of those first soldiers, many of the revelers were already inebriated as Lucy and Ned elbowed their way through, and sometimes over, the weaving masses. They were searching for the needle in the haystack and the green beer-swilling straw kept getting in the way.

Moving with any sustained speed was difficult. The side streets had been closed off for a block on either side of Fifth for the first half dozen blocks or so to provide places for the marchers to assemble, every group assigned to a particular spot on a particular street. And each enclave was a party unto its own, with bleating bagpipes competing against blaring horn sections while drummers tried to keep the beat with both and neither. Meanwhile, military honor guardsmen in dark glasses not necessary in the sunless caverns between the buildings watched the pretty girls who strutted about in uniforms of their own. Banners representing the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Loyal Sons and Daughters of County Cork, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, Clan-na-Gael, and a thousand others waved to and fro along with many thousands more tri-color flags bearing the orange, white, and green of Ireland.

They wandered through the crowded side streets-Tran and Jojola on one side of Fifth Avenue, and Ned and Lucy on the other-and got up to Forty-ninth Street when Lucy found what she was looking for…or at least hoped it was what she was looking for when her "totem" showed it to her. She was standing in the middle of the crowd with Ned, stamping her feet and blowing on her fingers to ward off the cold when she looked up and saw the owl glaring down.

Actually, it wasn't a real owl, but a plastic or clay version that building superintendents placed on ledges to keep pigeons away. Lucy followed the faux owl's gaze to the big, brightly colored banner proclaiming that bit of street was occupied by the representatives of the Irish Society of County Heath. Like many of the other Irish society banners, this one depicted a religious theme-St. Patrick walking on a green hill between two large, slightly askew stone monoliths. It was the stones that got Lucy's attention, or actually the symbols embroidered on the stones. As clearly as on the day he'd said it, she heard Cian's voice: There are stylized versions-such as a triskele where the legs are represented by spirals. The earliest of those discovered so far were found on Neolithic carvings in County Heath in Ireland.

As far as she knew, there was no connection between the County Heath and the Sons of Man beyond a shared, and common, symbol. But Lucy was absolutely sure that she'd come to the right place and pointed out the banner to Ned. "Maybe they just have a flair for the dramatic," she said.

Lucy called Jojola and Tran, explaining her conclusion. "We're off to mingle," she said. "You guys keep looking in case this is a red herring. Then maybe you can follow along when we move out onto the parade route."

The young couple walked over to join the worthies of County Heath, many of whom had been taking liberal advantage of Tully's Irish Pub in the middle of the block. Speaking in perfect Irish Gaelic, Lucy soon had those nearby convinced that she was from the home county itself, and was welcomed as a long-lost cousin to them all. Lucy introduced her "American boyfriend," whose reception was not quite as enthusiastic given that his last name, Blanchet, sounded suspiciously English.

When the greetings died down and the others went on about their business, Lucy huddled against Ned to stay warm and give herself a chance to look around. But outside of the banner with the triskele, nothing seemed remotely linked to any sinister plot by the Sons of Man. She wondered if she'd jumped to her conclusion too swiftly.

The County Heath was represented by one of the larger cadres of bagpipers and drummers, a good fifty in all, led by a huge, red-haired drum major with a tall bearskin hat. His legs stood out like tree trunks from beneath his plaid kilt and he glowered fabulously for the Japanese tourists with their cameras. The county was also represented by two members of a color guard, one bearing a U.S. flag and the other the flag of Ireland. Off to one side, several members of a precision drill team were practicing, tossing rifles through the air to one another.

Lucy looked at the drill team for a moment before realizing what she was seeing. Then it came to her. "Rifles," she said.

"What?" Ned replied. He started to turn to see what she was talking about.

"No," she warned, "don't look. But there's a drill team behind us with rifles."

"Oh, yeah, well, I've seen the kind of rifles they use at the county fair," he said. "They're fakes and can't shoot."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?"

Someone was watching the young couple who'd arrived late and now stood huddled in the midst of the County Heath representatives. But the girl appeared to be from Ireland-he'd overheard one of the bagpipers saying that he could even place her accent as coming from a small village "to the west of where my people originated from." The boy didn't look like much, just another skinny kid.

Dismissing them as a threat, his attention was drawn to a pair of cops walking through the crowd. His hair was longer and dyed a different color from when he was on the force, and he was wearing sunglasses and a tam, but he turned quickly away just in case one of them might remember him.

Paul Stewart was proud to be a dedicated assassin for the Sons of Man. He was not a first son of a first son, not even a second. He'd been born to a female distantly related to Andrew Kane and had only advanced to a foot soldier for the cause. But that was okay, he was also a true believer and had signed up for the marines out of high school so that when the time came, he would be a trained warrior as well.

Only problem with the marines was that the corps corrupted itself by allowing niggers, spics, and gooks to join. He hated them all and had been dishonorably discharged after nearly killing a black marine. He'd then returned to New York, where his distant cousin Andrew helped get him a job on the New York City Police Department, in part by magically turning his dishonorable into an honorable discharge. He'd repaid the favor by doing anything his cousin asked him to-whether it was roughing somebody up, delivering messages, or reporting anything interesting on the NYPD grapevine. He'd even disposed of the bodies of a couple of teenaged girls after Kane was finished with them.

Whoo, boy, he used to think, if the public only knew what I know about Cousin Kane, who at that time was only a wealthy lawyer and venture capitalist with aspirations to become the mayor of New York City. But Stewart was a man who knew who buttered his bread and kept his mouth shut.

Cousin Kane had saved him again after he'd played a little too rough with a black crack dealer, who refused to pay Kane a "business tax," and left him in a permanent vegetative state. Kane had seen to it that the dealer's family was paid off and that any potential charges against him had been stuck in a file folder and stamped "No Prosecution." The file had been sent on to the District Attorney's Office, where the deal was it would never again see the light of day. That is until that Jew bastard, Butch Karp, arrested Kane, and his pal, V. T. Newbury, started digging into the files.

Stewart had been fortunate that the statute of limitations on his crime was up and he couldn't be prosecuted. However, Newbury had taken his file and many others in the same situation to the chief of police, Bill Denton. Next thing Stewart knew, he'd been drummed off the force. Left with only a partial pension, he'd started drinking heavier and it wasn't long before his wife left him and took the kids.

Abandoned and feeling sorry for himself, he was contemplating sucking on the end of the barrel of his handgun when he got a call from someone working for Kane, who had recently escaped custody. He was to go to a camp in Idaho where he was introduced to his family's history and happily swore allegiance to the Sons of Man. There he'd been trained for his mission until he thought of himself as a perfect killing machine.

Returning to New York, he'd waited to hear if the mission was a go, afraid that his chance at glory and redemption might get canceled. But then he got the call to meet with Jamys Kellagh and heard the words he had been waiting for: It was time for a Son of Man to march with the sons of Ireland and silence the critic. Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh!

It didn't even matter to him that he probably wouldn't survive the mission. He was striking a blow for Aryan America and the only leaders who saw the danger of allowing every subhuman from Africa, Latin America, and Asia to invade the country. And the only leaders who were prepared to do whatever it took to wipe out the sand niggers in the Middle East, including using nuclear weapons. Then they'll see whose oil it is.

He daydreamed that his name would live on forever. Two hundred years hence, when little Aryan American schoolchildren read about great patriots who'd sacrificed their lives, his would be right up there with Nathan Hale and Davy Crockett. They would hear how he saved the country from rampant appeasing left-wingers and the threat of being overrun by mud people. And the Jews, don't forget the fucking Jews, Paulie boy, he reminded himself, so ready to die that he hardly noticed the pain of the Valknut he'd branded into the inside of his bicep the last night in Idaho.

Stewart was getting antsy for martyrdom and tired of reviewing the plan. It was pure genius and made use of a talent he already possessed. In the marines, he'd been assigned to a precision drill team; in fact, it was one of the black members of the team whose head he cracked with the butt of his gun. He claimed it was an accident during close order drills, but it was obvious he'd hated the man and had purposely swung the rifle so that it would connect.

Somehow, the Sons of Man had got him an invitation to join the County Heath drill team. He'd heard a rumor that the society had ties to the Irish Republican Army, but the tough part had been getting him a weapon.

The drill team used old M1 carbines rendered harmless by the removal of the firing pin and a metal wedge in the barrel. Otherwise, the M1 was a fine weapon that had served well in World War Two and the Korean conflict. While it didn't have the firepower or fully automatic feature of its descendant the M16, the M1 was deadly in the right hands.

Before they were allowed to bring their useless rifles into the staging area, Stewart and the rest of the team had been required to hand them over at an NYPD checkpoint for inspection. When the rifles passed, they were handed back with the warning to the team not to let them out of their sight.

Taking his time, Stewart had gradually made his way to Tully's, where he ordered a Guinness. As the bartender poured it, he nodded toward the back and quietly mumbled, "Second door on the right. Lock it when you leave."

Stewart casually got up, wandered to the back with his rifle, opened the indicated door, and slipped into a small storage room. Behind a filing cabinet, he found a perfect replica of his drill M1-only this one was in working order.

He switched guns, walked back into the bar, where he downed the Guinness in a single drain, and went back outside to await his moment of glory. As he stepped off the curb, a drunk grabbed at his rifle.

"Let me show you how to twirl that thing," the drunk slurred.

"Not today, pal," he snarled, and caught the man in the solar plexus with the butt of the rifle. It happened so fast that most of the other bystanders laughed when they saw the drunk on his hands and knees vomiting from "too much, too soon."

Stewart glanced back at the cute Irish girl to see if she'd noticed his martial skills. But she was on her cell phone. Didn't matter, today she'd see what a real man was made of; then she'd really have something to call home about.

He happily pictured her crying over his dying body when she realized that a great patriot had given his all. But the reverie came to a close when the tail end of the parade passed by Forty-ninth Street and those in the staging area marched out onto Fifth Avenue with a great cacophony of bagpipes, drums, and cheers.

If not for the circumstances, Lucy might have enjoyed the walk. At least it brought them back out into the sun, plus there was something about bagpipes and the rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drums that made it almost impossible to march out of step. She waved to the crowd even as she kept an eye on the drill team marching and performing at the head of the County Heath pipes and drums.

As they passed St. Patrick's Cathedral between Fiftieth and Fifty-first, Lucy saw John Jojola moving parallel along the sidewalk. She caught his eye and pointed to the drill team, but added a shrug just in case Ned was right and the rifles were useless. She saw him signal to someone on the other side of the avenue and a few steps farther along spotted Tran on the stairs of the cathedral. He waved to her and she waved back.

Thirty blocks later, Lucy was tired of the parade and growing nervous as they approached the viewing platform set up where the marchers would turn east on Eighty-sixth and head toward Third Avenue. The procession had become stop-and-go as each group put on their best show for the dignitaries.

At last, they were in sight of the platform. Lucy scanned the dais and spotted Ellis standing to one side of a large, red-haired man in a suit who was seated comfortably, obviously enjoying the spectacle, feet tapping to the whir of the pipes. She nearly stumbled into a bagpiper, however, when further inspection revealed that Jaxon was also on the platform, standing next to the archbishop.

Lucy was about to call Jojola and warn him that she thought the archbishop was the target when she was distracted by the bagpiper she'd almost run over. He nudged the fellow next to him and said, "There, Sean, you see the big fellow with the fiery hair…that's the grand marshal, Tom McCullum. He's a U.S. senator, wouldn't you know, and a Mick if you can believe it!"

"Aye, Bryan," Sean replied. "I hear he's a regular firebrand and recently spoke at the annual meeting of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He's calling for an investigation into that little to-do at the cathedral with the Pope and all. Also, gave a speech to the Hibernians about the Patriot Act-was none too fond of it, I hear, in fact was real critical about invasions of privacy and government spying on citizens."

"Well, I don't know what to think about that," Bryan said. "I don't like government intrusion any better than the next American, but maybe it's for the greater good and the only way to deal with these terrorists. We can always get our rights back when it's safe again."

"You have a point, Bryan," Sean agreed. "But when will it be safe again? I heard that they didn't announce Mr. McCullum was going to be the grand marshal until the last minute because there's been threats. But he's here now and that takes courage… Ach, look lively, lads, we're moving forward again. Time to pucker up and blow."

Lucy was suddenly besieged with voices. He was real critical about it…for the greater good…silence the critic…there's been threats.

She flipped open her cell phone and tried to call Jojola. She thought the phone was answered but she couldn't hear over the din of the bagpipes. Standing on her toes, she tried to see over the crowd, but Jojola and Tran were nowhere in sight.

"I think they're going to try to kill Senator McCullum," she shouted to Ned.

"What?" Ned shouted back.

"I said," she yelled, "I think they're going to try to kill McCullum!" She pointed at the stage and pantomimed shooting. "There!"

"What?"

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Oh, never mind," she shouted, and started to move quickly through the lines of bagpipers.

"Hey, lass, wait your turn," one of the pipers called out.

Lucy ignored the shouts and confused or miffed looks and pushed on until only the drill team and the drum major stood between her and the viewing platform. The six-member team stood in three pairs, each pair tossing their rifles back and forth in cadence to the drumbeat and on command of the drum major who faced them.

On command, the pipers and drummers stopped at the same moment while the drill team caught their rifles and snapped to attention, facing the viewing stand. The dignitaries and the crowd cheered and whistled as the drum major continued to shout commands followed by the instantaneous movement of the team.

"Shoulder arms!" The team brought the guns to their shoulders.

"Present arms!" The team held their guns forward as the drum major walked stiff-legged down the line for a cursory inspection. As he passed, each rifleman twirled his weapon and brought it up to shoulder arms.

Everyone except the man on the end closest to Lucy and Ned. She saw him suddenly pull down the bolt of the rifle and then slam it forward with such intent that she knew what was going to happen. Not knowing what else to do, she ran forward and shouted, "Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh!"

The assassin stopped and turned to see who'd shouted the motto of the Sons of Man. He only knew a smattering of the old tongue, but this phrase he knew because it had concluded every call from handler Jamys Kellagh. However, this time the words had come from the Irish girl who was rushing toward him with her boyfriend close behind.

"Stop! McCullum is no longer the target," she shouted.

The assassin's eyes narrowed. She didn't use the password to call off the mission. And besides, it would have never come from a woman, not with Jamys Kellagh on the viewing stand.

"Wrong," he said, and swung back toward the dais, raising the butt of the rifle to his shoulder. No one on the stand yet realized that something was wrong. His target remained sitting, an easy shot. He started to squeeze the trigger but an instant too late; someone struck him from behind and threw off his aim. Instead, he was looking down the barrel at the stunned face of the drum major when the gun fired.

Stewart spun away from his attacker, the girl's boyfriend, who swung his fist and landed a glancing blow. He struck back, catching the boy on the jaw with the butt of the rifle, sending him crashing to the ground.

Enraged, he aimed the rifle at the boyfriend and was about to shoot him when someone screamed. He became aware of other screams and shouts and remembered that his mission was to kill the senator, and his window of opportunity was slipping away.

In fact, McCullum was being hustled off the stage by security officers along with the other dignitaries, some of whom had decided it was every man for himself and were scrambling in different directions.

The crowd backed away from Stewart, however, giving a clear field of fire. But then a dark-haired plainclothes officer positioned himself in front of the fleeing dignitaries, trying to get a clear shot at him through the crowd. The assassin readjusted and shot the officer, who went down. He swung the gun back to find his target.

"Hey, piece of shit!" The voice came out of nowhere, as did the flying roundhouse kick that caught him square on the side of the head. Dazed but snarling like a lion separated from its kill, he turned on the small Asian man who'd kicked him but fallen to the ground from the effort.

The assassin pointed the rifle to kill the second attacker. And would have, except he was struck such a blow in the back that it seemed to have momentarily stopped his body from responding like the trained killing machine he'd worked so hard to become. He tried to pull the trigger, but his finger wouldn't respond. Then his arms stopped working altogether and the rifle clattered to the ground. He reached behind and felt for the object that protruded from his back directly over his spine, but he couldn't reach it and collapsed to the ground.

"Goddamn, you slowing down or what!" Tran shouted at Jojola. "He almost shot me!"

"Maybe if you brushed up on your kicks you wouldn't fall down every time," Jojola retorted. "Besides, if I let him shoot you, who would pay for my kid's college education a dollar at a time?"

"BOTH OF YOU GET YOUR HANDS UP IN THE AIR!" a nervous police sergeant shouted. He and a dozen others had their drawn guns pointed at the small Asian man and what appeared to be a long-haired Indian. He looked at the body twitching on the ground, the handle of a big-ass knife sticking out of his back. Another body was lying off to the side-the drum major.

"Oh, bullshit," Tran yelled back at Jojola as he raised his hands. "You try kicking some giant lard-ass as hard as I did and see if you stay on your feet. Besides, I think I pulled something in my groin."

"Getting old," Jojola said, laughing.

Lucy rushed up to the police sergeant, who wasn't quite sure what to do about the debate. "Please put your guns down," she said. "He's a police officer."

"Which one?"

"The one with the long hair. He's the chief of police at the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico."

"And who are you, pray tell?"

"Lucy Karp. I'm Butch Karp's daughter."

"Yeah, and who's the other guy?" the sergeant said, then spoke into the microphone on his shoulder. "Can we get some backup and an ambulance, please? I got a regular carnival going on here."

Lucy realized that Tran, a gangster, might have warrants out for his arrest. "I don't know," she said. "I think he is just a bystander who helped stop that guy."

"That guy" had stopped twitching. The sergeant put his gun down and signaled for the other officers to do the same just as Espey Jaxon ran up, flashed a badge at the cops, and turned to Lucy.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "What in the hell are you doing here?"

"Trying to save Senator McCullum's life," Lucy said without looking him in the eye. "And find out who killed my friend Cian."

Before Jaxon could respond, Jon Ellis ran up. "What are you doing here, Jaxon?"

"My firm was hired to provide security for the archbishop," Jaxon replied. "After the fiasco this fall, the church wasn't taking chances."

"I bet that cost a pretty penny," Ellis said sarcastically. "VIP rent-a-cops don't come cheap."

Lucy watched the emotions play over Jaxon's face. He's angry and hurt, she thought, angry at Ellis and hurt because of me.

The tension was broken by a loud groan and the drum major sat up. He'd fainted the moment he saw the rifle pointed at him, which had saved his life. A police officer picked up his bearskin hat, which had fallen off, and was sticking a finger in a hole made by the bullet. "Three inches farther down and you'd be a dead man," the officer said.

Lucy turned to Jaxon. "Was that Agent Tavizon who got shot?"

"Yes, but the bullet just grazed his temple. Other than being stunned and a little bloody, he's a lucky boy who'll live to fight another day," Jaxon replied. "I thought you were in New Mexico."

"I was," Lucy answered.

Jaxon waited for more of an answer, but when it wasn't forthcoming he added, "You want to tell me what you're doing here and, once again, arriving in the nick of time?"

Lucy remained silent, then Ellis took her by the arm. "I believe that's my line, Jaxon. Thanks, but we'll handle the debriefing on this." His men surrounded Tran and Jojola, and another was helping Ned Blanchet to his feet.

Lucy looked over her shoulder at Jaxon as she was being led away. He was standing over the assassin's body. He glanced up and their eyes met. She couldn't tell what she saw in his expression before he quickly looked down again, but his body seemed to sag from some unseen weight.