The Hypnotist

SIXTY-NINE

Less than a quarter of a mile away, west of the Met, deep in the park, the helicopter hovered above a white panel truck parked in the otherwise deserted loading area behind the Belvedere Castle.

Nassir’s master plan had allowed three-and-a-half minutes for the chopper to lower the sling and for the men to hop off and get the sculpture loaded on the waiting truck. They all made it with fifteen seconds to spare.

Ali Samimi jumped in beside the driver, who took off, speeding through the park, heading for a secure location just a mile and a half away.

Above them the aircraft flew off in the opposite direction. To anyone watching from a distance, the delivery, which had been made below the tree line, would have been invisible. Even if the authorities were able to pinpoint the exact location where the chopper hovered, by the time they reached it, the truck would be long gone.

Glancing at his watch, Samimi cursed the minutes he’d lost inside the Met. There was only a slim chance he’d now have enough time to accomplish his own goal tonight. If nothing else went wrong, he might be okay. But it would be close. He soothed himself with the thought that as good as the police and FBI were, if no one knew what they were looking for, they wouldn’t be able to find it. And no one knew anything about this truck.

Activating a switch on the dashboard, Samimi listened to the panels on the outside of the van slide forward. A white rig that had no lettering or identification on its side panels when it left the castle’s loading dock was decorated with a bakery’s logo when it exited the transverse.

With the cookies and milk slats in place, the driver proceeded without incident across town to Seventh Avenue, then south, then west again to Ninth Avenue and then downtown until finally pulling into a warehouse on Twenty-First Street, beating their best practice time by three minutes.

Earlier that day, Samimi had inspected the site one last time, checking the electronic garage door opener and secreting a shoe box-size parcel, wrapped in plain brown paper, in an out-of-the-way dark corner.

Now, while the movers opened the truck doors and started to unload the statue, Samimi retrieved his package and, after checking that no one was paying attention to him, unwrapped it and put its contents in his pocket.

Feeling slightly more secure, he returned his attention to the movers. “Be careful,” he admonished from across the room.

A few seconds later, he repeated the warning. Based on the glances they shot him, the movers didn’t appreciate his prompts. Finally Larry Talbot, the terrorist who’d led the operation inside the Met and who now had his mask off, let loose. “We got it here in one piece, didn’t we? Back off, Samimi, and let us do our goddamned job.”

Talbot was right. Samimi knew he was just making it worse, but he was nervous. There was so little time. He needed to get everyone out of here before Taghinia showed up so he could make his phone call and set the final part of the attack in motion.

“Hurry,” he said, ignoring Talbot’s fury.

Finally, after minutes that seemed like hours, the men piled back into the truck. Samimi opened the warehouse doors and watched the van drive out onto the street and into the night. In less than three hours the vehicle would be crushed and compacted in a plant in New Jersey, reduced to nothing more than a rectangle of useless rusted steel and rubber.

Alone in the warehouse, Samimi looked at his partner in crime. Hypnos sat dead center of the large, otherwise empty space. With the lights of the truck gone, the interior was tomblike. Only one of the dozen fluorescents that hung from the rafters of the old carriage house still worked, casting the sculpture’s long shadow across the wide wood-planked floor and up onto the wall. Turning his back on the treasure that had been at the heart of so much turmoil and death, Samimi pulled out his cell phone and started to punch in the number he’d memorized that would connect him to the office of the director of the New York office of the FBI-

“Who are you calling?” Farid Taghinia’s voice boomed out as he shut the door behind him and pocketed his set of keys.

Samimi’s pulse quickened as he spun around. His boss was three minutes early. “You,” Samimi said quickly. Too quickly? “I was calling to tell you everything had worked out and that we were here.”

“Excellent job.” Taghinia, unlit cigar clamped between his lips, was walking around Hypnos, inspecting it. Reaching out, he touched an ivory hand. “So this is the god of sleep, the brother of the god of death.” He touched a broken foot. “We’re almost done with this unsavory job, and I for one will be happy when this-” he groped for the right word “-this monstrosity is out of here and on his way back to our country.”

While Taghinia still had his back to him, Samimi had to move fast. “I’m not sure that’s going happen,” he said as he pulled out the Kimber M1911 pistol that he’d secreted away earlier that afternoon.

“What nonsense are you talking?” Taghinia turned around. The cigar was gone. In his right hand he held a SA Sig Sauer P226. Laughing, he said, “Put the gun down.”

Samimi’s hand shook but he didn’t lower his weapon.

“You understand that if you kill me our government will avenge my death with the execution of your entire family,” Taghinia said. “Are you willing to risk the life of everyone you care about for that?” He nodded at the sculpture. “I’ve already alerted them that I have been worried about your loyalty.”

“I don’t believe you,” Samimi said. And he didn’t. This was exactly the kind of convenient lie he’d seen his boss come up with dozens of times before.

Taghinia’s finger tensed on the trigger. “You don’t have to believe me. You just have to have doubt.”

There was no reason Taghinia would have been suspicious of him, Samimi thought. He hadn’t left a single clue anywhere, hadn’t spoken to anyone about his plans. Taghinia couldn’t have known, could he?

A second of worried hesitation was all that his boss needed.

The blast echoed through the empty space and, in the rafters, a pigeon that had been nesting flew up, flapping its wings wildly, sending two feathers floating down, slowly, through the air.