The Hypnotist

SIXTY-SEVEN

Olshling returned in four minutes and ten seconds wheeling a second sculpture that looked identical to the Hypnos already standing in the center of the room.

“Which one is real?” Samimi demanded.

“Take off the belts,” Lucian insisted.

Samimi nodded to the lead terrorist, who untied the belt around Nina’s waist and then moved on to Veronica.

Once her granddaughter’s belt was removed, Nina started to pull the little girl away from the podium.

“I can’t go,” Veronica screamed. “I can’t leave Hosh.”

“Shut her up,” Samimi’s number-one man shouted.

“I won’t go!” the child cried.

“If you don’t shut her up, I will.”

This was how tragedies happened, Lucian thought as he rushed over and knelt down in front of the child. The tension was too high. He had to get the little girl to calm down. He spoke in a low, desperate whisper. “This time,” he said, not sure how he knew what to say, not caring as long as it made sense to her, “this time you have to leave. You have to go, now. None of what happened before was your fault, do you understand?”

She was crying, not like a child, but with the dry, choking sobs of an old woman who had no tears left.

“You couldn’t have saved him. But this time you can save yourself, and your grandmother.”

Veronica’s mouth relaxed and her eyes softened and she was just a seven-year-old kid, standing there, terrified but turning, moving, pulling at her grandmother’s hands, hurrying to get away from the center of activity.

As each belt came off each hostage, one of the other terrorists took it and strategically placed it somewhere else in the atrium. One at the base of a Tiffany window. Another around the feet of a bronze sculpture of Diana. They were rigging the room with the explosives.

Lucian calculated the threat and tried to figure out the intruders’ strategy. How were they planning to escape? How were they going to get the sculpture out of here? And once they were gone, how much time would he and the staff have to empty out the room before the explosives were detonated?

“We met your demands, now tell us,” Samimi demanded of Lucian after all the belts had been removed and the hostages, no longer isolated at the podium, had returned to the group of other terrified guests. “Which of these two sculptures is the original?”

“I don’t know, but…” Lucian spoke slowly, trying to buy time and anticipate what their next step was, watching their faces, looking for a sign. “When you burn ivory,” he said, “its surface will go black, but you can wipe the carbon off and the ivory remains unhurt.” He flicked his lighter and held the flame up to the broken thumb on the right hand of one of the statues.

Tyler Weil didn’t utter a sound or make a move to stop Lucian as a film blackened the god’s finger. A few seconds went by, and then the material started to bubble. An acrid smell filled the air.

“If that was the real Hypnos, if that was what happens to real ivory-” Lucian pointed to Weil “-he never would have let me do that.”

Lucian moved a few feet to the left and flicked the lighter again, this time holding the orange-blue flame up to the second statue’s broken right thumb.

Everyone watched, mesmerized, as the hypnotist’s finger blackened. And then, not thinking about how hot the ivory would be, not caring that he’d burn his skin, Lucian wiped the carbon off.

Hypnos’s thumb was intact and unharmed. “This is the piece you want,” Lucian said.

At that moment, almost on cue, Lucian heard the sound of acoustic waves.

He looked up.

Hovering over the Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing was a red-and-white helicopter with the words Sight-SeeNY stenciled on its side in blue. In a city that monitored its airspace so vigilantly, it was absurd that small planes and choppers flying under 1,100 feet weren’t required to file flight plans. But they weren’t, and so dozens of companies flew tourists around the island on sightseeing tours. But none of those companies would have needed an external sling capable of lifting thousands of pounds. There was only one reason such a sling was hanging off this chopper.

It was a foolproof escape plan. Almost.