The Hypnotist

FIFTY-THREE

“What have you got today for lunch, Larry?” the security guard asked the balding construction worker who was carrying the same oversize lunch pail he brought with him every day.

“Two meatball heros. You needing one of them?”

“I sure am,” the guard said, smiling, then linking his thumb in his belt. “But I’d better not take you up on your offer.”

Larry Talbot gave the guard a grin, swung the lunch pail from one hand to the other and walked on through the entryway and into the museum. He’d shared his lunch with Tommy before, and it wouldn’t have been a big deal to share it again if the guard had wanted a sandwich. Larry knew exactly which of the two heros was stuffed with pork and beef meatballs smothered in marinara sauce and which was stuffed with meatballs made of Semtex.

Of the twenty workmen who entered the Metropolitan Museum that morning, five of them were carrying plastic explosives hidden inside sandwiches or cigarette packs or gum.

The security for employees working at the Met was not as tight in the morning as it was at the end of the day. Tommy nodded as each regular arrived, and if he didn’t recognize someone he’d stop them and ask to see ID, but since crews from Phillips Construction had been in and out of the museum for decades, Tommy knew most of the men by sight. Incoming employees didn’t have to pass through the X-ray system, and the guard didn’t need to use his wand. There were only inspections the first few times someone new showed up for work. It was at night that the security was ratcheted up and every briefcase, lunch pail, backpack or shopping bag was inspected to ensure that no one was smuggling out any artwork or artifacts.

Even if the checks had been done, the malleable material wouldn’t have set off any alarms or been visible as anything suspect.

Today, for the fifth day in a row, five workers had brought something into the museum that they wouldn’t leave with that night, but Don Albertson, the long-time worker who had taken over after Victor Keither died, didn’t notice anything about those five that made them stand out. They weren’t a clique; they fit in with their coworkers and none of them had ever caused any trouble.

Later it would be noted that they had all been hired over the same three-week period to replace workmen who’d been stolen away by Manhattan Construction. When questioned, Albertson would tell the police that maybe he should have paid more attention to them since they were relative newcomers, but they were good workers who just hadn’t drawn any attention to themselves. What he wouldn’t tell them about was the cash payment he’d been given by a man who smoked cigars and spoke with a heavy accent in exchange for Albertson not noticing much of anything.

To communicate with his team, Talbot, whose real name would have given away his heritage, used predetermined signs and signals that escaped notice by anyone else. The short, oliveskinned man with hair cropped so close you couldn’t tell what texture it was knew at any moment of the day where each of his team members were and what they were doing.

Later, when asked about Talbot specifically, Albertson would shake his head and say that of all his men, Talbot was one of the better carpenters; never the last one to get there in the morning and never the first one out at night. And that was true, but the reason wasn’t the man’s work ethic. Talbot purposely hung back at the end of each day, taking extra time to clean up and put away his tools, waiting until Albertson left so he could take the Semtex he’d cautiously collected from his men when no one was around or watching and deposit it in a carton that, according to its labels, contained six quarts of Benjamin Moore Bone White #3 paint.

The renovation of the Islamic galleries was at least three months away from the point of needing paint, so while there was no truly safe place for the explosives, this carton was as close as Talbot could get to a secure hiding place. He took every precaution to ensure that the cache remained hidden. So far he’d been lucky, but how long would that last? Talbot wanted his superiors to pull the trigger so they could do the job they’d trained for and get out of there. Despite the suicide belts loaded with explosives that they’d be wearing, Talbot and his men intended to accomplish their task and live to reap their rewards.

That Thursday evening, before Talbot put more Semtex in the carton, he checked to be sure the box hadn’t been tampered with and that the stash of explosives hadn’t been discovered. Everything looked intact. The tape he’d put down last night hadn’t been touched.

And then he heard what sounded like footsteps. He stopped to listen. Someone was heading this way. He stole a second to look at his watch. What was going on? The security patrol for this area wasn’t expected for another half hour.

The footsteps echoing on the marble floor were getting closer. He wasn’t going to be able to put the rest of the explosives in the box, get it closed up and slide the carton out of the way in time. He was going to have to improvise if-

“You still here?” The guard sounded cautious, but was he also suspicious?

Talbot finished tying his shoelace, then looked up. On his right was the carton filled with over three pounds of Semtex, enough to blow up more artwork than he could even calculate. On his left was his lunch pail. Leaning on the carton, he rose to a standing position, careful to slouch in a nonthreatening way.

“I got all the way downstairs and realized I didn’t have my cell phone. I came back up to see if it was here. I’d moved these cartons around this afternoon and the phone must have fallen out of my pocket then.” He held it up.

“You leaving now?”

“As soon as I straighten up. Put this stuff back where it was.” Talbot’s heart pounded as he lifted up a second carton and put it down on top of the one he’d been filling.

“I’m going to have to wait for you,” the guard said.

“No problem. You have your job to do and I have mine,” Talbot said as he shoved both cartons back into the shadows. “Albertson would be furious if I left anything out of place. He’s practically an old lady like that.”

The guard smiled.

Talbot purposefully moved a few more boxes around and then glanced up. The guard didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Talbot’s heart settled down to an almost normal rhythm. Wasn’t it time to set this plan into action already? What were they waiting for? Every night he and the other four men met on a private Internet message board at midnight to await orders to proceed.

Once they got the communiqué, on the following day each of them was to create an excuse to stay behind when the first rush of workers left. One would go to the bathroom. Another would get a phone call from his wife. A third would trip and sit down to nurse his ankle for a few minutes. A fourth would stop to help him. A fifth would take longer than was necessary cleaning up a mess. After the construction site cleared out, all members of the team would convene in the storage area and unroll the suicide belts they’d smuggled in. Made of canvas, each had holders for ten two-inch cylinders of Semtex. The men would connect the cylinders with red detonating cords. All it would take to fire the det-cords was the electrical impulse from the ring voltage of a cell phone. Not set to a predetermined time, the plan here was to wear the pretty ornaments for all to see and guarantee that if anyone was thinking of being a hero, they changed their mind. The goal was to get the sculpture out of the museum, not start a holocaust.

Done rearranging the boxes, Talbot stood up. “I’m ready.”

The guard looked around, gave a cursory glance to the cartons, the walls, the tarps, the tools, the worktables. “When’s all this going to be finished?”

Talbot thought about the two answers he could give. The one the man expected would be the date the museum had set for the renovation to be completed by; the other was his guess of a much closer date that was going to bring this job to a very different and disturbing kind of end.