The Watchmen

11

From the initial-but instantly withdrawn-Parks Department inspection they knew the explosion appeared to have separated the stairs that spiral from the bottom to the viewing gallery at the very top of the 555-feet monument, leaving a metal-tangled gap where the 304th, 305th, and 306th levels had been. It would have been impossible for Cowley to contemplate trying to climb that high, but at that moment the entire Mall, from beyond the Lincoln Memorial at 23rd Street up to 3rd Street and between Constitution and Independence avenues, was sealed to anyone on foot except the bomb disposal unit.

Cowley was as close as it was possible to get, in the team’s control scanner halfway between the monument and the Sylvan Theatre, watching the instant television relay and listening to its accompanying commentary. It was tightly crowded. Besides the normal three liaison men, Pamela Darnley was there with him, together with a Parks Authority inspector with every available plan-as well as personal knowledge-to guide the team on anything that needed explaining once inside the hollow obelisk.

Which they weren’t yet. Painfully, quite literally, aware of the New Rochelle booby-trap, Cowley had disregarded the impatient assurance from the bomb squad leader that they didn’t require that sort of advice and urged that every inch of the surrounding ground be swept for mines, trip wires, or pressure sensors-for anything, in fact-before they even attempted to approach the monument itself.

They’d been doing that now for an hour, the scene made glaringly white bright by the searchlights of a concentrated circle of police and military helicopters. Other official helicopters revolved around that inner core to keep media machines out of what had been declared a civilian no-fly zone. All incoming and departing aircraft to Reagan Airport had been warned or diverted.

The body heat of three extra people inside the enclosed van was challenging its air conditioning. They were all in shirt sleeves-Cowley glad of Pamela’s perfume-and all wore headsets and mikes directly linking them to the outside crew.

Just as he was beginning to be embarrassed by a feeling of boredom, the team leaders declared, “Nothing! We’re going in. The park man there? Like to go through what we shouldn’t be nervous about finding right inside the door?”

Before the man to Cowley’s right could respond, another voice said, “Lambert here. It could help us if you filmed as much as possible as you go.”

There was an overly heavy sigh from the team leader, Nelson Tibbert. “Trust us. We’ll try to beat Spielberg to the Oscar before we get blown to hell. Which we hope we don’t. And I wish to Christ people wouldn’t keep telling us our job.”

“Just doing my job, too, buddy,” said Paul Lambert, who headed the FBI’s forensic team. They’d waited throughout the outside search in a larger van immediately behind that in which Cowley hunched. Lambert added, “We’re all holding our lucky rabbit’s feet for you.”

“Thanks,” said the bomb disposal head. Nelson Tibbert was a black man as overpoweringly big as Jefferson Jones: Cowley hadn’t needed the reminding comparison or the memory of six tiny, tightly closed faces.

Into Cowley’s headset came the voice of Michael Poulson, the parks official fortunately jammed against his left, good side. The man didn’t bother with his plans precisely to describe the entry vestibule, pay booths, and where the walkway would be found in relation to the central elevators. All the monument’s electrical power had been cut from the mains, against the possibility of further explosives being connected to its operating supply-the up-and-down elevator current being the most obvious. Poulson set out where the mains and generator-activated emergency systems would be found. He also itemized the emergency firefighting and medical equipment at the various levels up to the three hundredth level.

“Followed you through on my plan,” confirmed Tibbert. “And the door’s open and welcoming.”

It had been Cowley who’d ordered the service door left open by the quickly evacuated parks engineer who’d gone to investigate the alarm triggered by the explosion. Cowley’s head ached, despite a second Tylenol, and he’d already smiled and nodded his gratitude to Pamela for straining away from any contact with his injured side.

The scene-recording cameraman was leading-with no one in view-and Cowley’s immediate impression was of the minimally lit underwater television footage of the finding of the Titanic, even to the man’s heavy breathing that interspersed his commentary. He matched his description to everything he closely filmed on the ground floor.

The engineer had told them he’d trodden on every step both going up and coming down (‘You can’t manage six hundred taking them two at a time’), which would have tripped any wire, but the ascent was still slow, hands coming into the frame, touching and gently probing every step and running up each support to the handrails on either side. Each step was methodically counted off as it was climbed. The breathing became louder. Every man was dressed in the heaviest of armored protective suits, Cowley remembered.

Cowley didn’t have any irrational feeling of boredom any longer but just as irrational was the demanding, intrusive thought that he’d missed something-misinterpreted or misjudged-and the perspiration was more at the fear of that misinterpretation causing further death and injury than from the claustrophobic heat of the van. Pamela turned to him questioningly when he took off his headset, silently mouthing “What?” He shook his head, not bothering to hide the grimace at the sharp jab of pain. He turned down the earpiece volume, for a moment not wanting the distraction of the commentary.

Nothing had been overlooked-couldn’t have been overlooked! He hadn’t questioned the engineer alone, organized this alone. There’d been the bomb squad and their commander and a lot of other FBI personnel-Pamela among them-and the unseen, totally armor-suited men now groping with agonizing slowness around the pitch-black inside of the monument carried every sort and type of detection and neutralizing equipment. So there was nothing more. But Cowley couldn’t shake the conviction that there was.

Pamela took her own headset off and leaned close to him, although still carefully not touching. “What?” she said again quietly.

“I’ve got a bad feeling. What haven’t we done?”

She frowned, silent for several moments. “Nothing.”

“I think there is. Something we haven’t read properly.”

Pamela laid her hand on his arm. “A lot of professionals are involved.” He shouldn’t be here! It wasn’t the deal. She’d done exactly what she thought they’d agreed, by calling him after she’d been alerted, but hadn’t expected him to come like this, not trusting her by herself.

“They haven’t read it, either.”

The gaping break in the stairway came abruptly into view. Cowley put his headset back on in time to hear the panting cameraman say, “Here!”

“Careful!” came Tibbert’s voice. “Let me pass.”

Cowley’s underwater impression increased when the squad leader came partially into view. The metalled fabric of his armor and helmet glistened in the camera’s strobe. From his back, which was how the man filled the lens, he actually looked fishlike: a prehistoric monster from some very deep lagoon. Adding to the imagery, Tibbert gently directed a heat sensor on the end of a hydraulically extended arm, moving it like a patient fisherman over every part of the hole and its surroundings.

“No register,” Tibbert reported.

He repeated the process with what Cowley knew, from watching the equipment check, to be a device that could identify a variety of known explosive compounds from their odors.

“No register,” he said again.

“Is it structurally safe?” demanded Cowley.

Tibbert probed with a stiff, rubber-encased rod before putting his weight on each of the intervening steps, until he reached the very edge of the break. “It would seem so. The perspective approaching the hole from below is confusing. The three steps have not been completely blown away. There is still some base left to every tread.” As he spoke, the camera came up alongside, illustrating what he was describing. The picture was repeatedly whitened as another member of the squad took flashlit still photographs. “The damage is substantial, but my assessment is that it was a comparatively small charge …. I can see what looks to be explosive debris-”

“Please leave it in situ,” came the urgent voice of Paul Lambert. “We don’t want it moved. Touched.”

Tibbert gave another of his heavy sighs. “Thank you for the timely reminder. We are now going to put an extension walkway over the damaged area to enable us to cross to continue the examination. And thank you in anticipation, guys, but we do know that they’d expect us to do exactly this, so it would be the place to set the trap.”

But there wasn’t one. The ascent, afterward, was even slower, testing for wires or trips, and it was a further hour before they reached the top.

Tibbert said, “I could never be bothered to wait in line with all the tourists, but this really is a hell of a view.”

Relaxing too quickly, thought Cowley, unable to lose the foreboding. “This was obviously a timed detonation and there’s still a lot of places-the elevator shaft and its workings the most obvious-where God knows what else could be waiting to go off. Don’t you think you should get out of there?”

“That Special Agent Cowley?”

“Yes.”

“We really do appreciate your concern, Mr. Cowley,” said the man. “But while I’m admiring the view, the guys with me are running all sorts of checks on every electrical box and installation we can find up here, like we did at the bottom. And we’ve got some dinky little gizmos that can actually check the wiring in the shaft itself, even with the power off, for any nasty things that might be humming along it. And when we’ve done all that we’re going to climb back down even more carefully, in case we missed something. ’Cause that’s our job and we know how to do it.”

Cowley moved to speak, but before he could Paul Lambert said, “A lot of guys who were friends of mine thought they did, too, up in New Rochelle. You watch your ass, Nelson, you hear?”

“I hear,” said Tibbert, no longer patronizing. “And I’m sorry. Everything checks out up here. We’re on our way down.”

They did descend as carefully as the man promised. It took two more hours. By the time they emerged through the small service door it was daylight, and the only helicopters overheard were maintaining the air clearance. It was only when he stood that Cowley realized he seemed to ache in every part of his body, not just his ribs, from tensing against a fresh disaster. Pamela followed him from the van, stretching the cramp from her shoulders.

“I seem to remember some promise that you weren’t going to get actively involved: just sit at a desk and think?” complained Pamela. If there was an understanding-or whatever the hell he chose to call it-then they had an understanding.

“I forgot,” he said carelessly.

“Thank God your premonition was wrong.” Son of a bitch! But it wouldn’t be politically-personally-right to protest any more. She needed to remember, though.

Cowley shook his head. “There could still be enough explosives somewhere in there to blow away half of Washington. I want those forensic guys in and out of there in double-quick time.”

A shout from one of the scanner operators stopped Cowley as he was about to join the FBI group, already in a debriefing huddle around the bomb disposal team.

“There’s been a claim! And a message!” announced the duty officer at the bureau watch room when Cowley identified himself.

“Where from?”

“Bastards have hit the Pentagon again! But differently this time, thank God.”

The message read:

AMERICA AND RUSSIA ARE ENEMIES, NOT FRIENDS.

AMERICA IS BEING DECEIVED BY THE EAST. TO REGAIN

DOMINANT WORLD LEADERSHIP CANCERS NEED TO BE

EXCISED AND DECEPTIONS EXPOSED.

It was sighed THE WATCHMEN. Cowley and Pamela stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing down at the printout.

“The Pentagon?” demanded Pamela, baffled.

“And from the Pentagon they accessed www.fbi.gov-the bureau’s home page-and put themselves at the top of the Ten Most Wanted list,” said the duty officer. “They just don’t want to terrorize us. They’re humiliating us: showing the world how good they are and how bad we are. Which they’ve done, big time. They used the government’s address-www.fedworld.gov.-to get not just to us but on every other United States federal department and agency home page. Even as we talk, this is being read by thousands everywhere in the country-maybe in every overseas embassy beyond. They’re giving us the stiffest middle finger you ever saw.”

“How can it be simple, breaking into what should be the most protected and secure system in the world?” challenged Pamela.

“Because there’s no such thing as a perfect and totally secure system,” the man said patiently. “There’s always what’s known in the trade as a back door. And always someone clever enough to open it. We’ve had hackers get into the Pentagon before. Once there was a kid of fifteen who endangered satellites, for Christ’s sake! Anyone wrongly using an access is known in the business as a cracker!”

“If the distribution is anything like you say it’ll leak to the media,” Cowley predicted wearily.

“It already has,” said the man. “It was a flash on the six A.M. radio and television news, right on top of what you’ve been doing all night out there in the Mall.”

“What about tracing them, through however it is they got into the Pentagon system?”

“Forget it,” advised the man. “The military will try, obviously. Got to. But guys this clever will have come in from another unsuspecting cuckoo’s nest. We’re in shit, Bill. And sinking.”

“I knew there was something wrong,” said Cowley, matching the cynicism. He said to Pamela: “The Watchmen?”

“Never heard of them,” said the woman.

There was a downside to every move they made. Switching the crisis venue to Pennsylvania Avenue because of its more guaranteed security was at once picked up by the vulture-hovering media as yet another example of the bureau’s reactive instead of proactive helplessness, but so overwhelming were the attacks that Cowley relegated them to the farthest edge of his consideration. At its forefront, while the conference was being organized, was the persistent nag that something had still been overlooked.

After suggesting the obvious additional people necessary that day, Cowley left the actual organization to the bureau director’s assistant and Pamela Darnley at her own computer to return alone to the still-sealed Mall.

Washington was virtually gridlocked by the closure of its very heart, so the only way to move was on foot. And that was like edging, with wincing nervousness, through a Super Bowl crowd so big it was virtually shoulder to shoulder by the time Cowley got to 14th Street. There was, fortunately, a barricade-free lane for official vehicles, which Cowley walked along after identifying himself at the police line. He was almost into the park before he was recognized by anyone in the crowd. At once his name began to be called and there were a lot of camera clicks and flashes. He ignored it all.

Nelson Tibbert and his team were still there, although there were some new armor-shielded men just going into the obelisk when Cowley reached the scanner.

Tibbert recognized him and said, “Your guys have gone, with all they want. This is our fourth sweep. It’s a bastard, trying to climb that high in this sort of gear. I’m sure there’s nothing on the stairway itself. We’re concentrating on the electrics, stuff like that.”

“You know what’s worrying me?” Cowley said, rhetorically. “Something going off when the elevator’s run, full of people: a charge big enough to bring the whole fucking monument down.”

“Ahead of you,” assured the team leader. “The elevator is the most obvious. After this final sweep I’m going to crank the doors open manually, go through the shaft and the cabins. Actually using electricity is the last thing I’m going to do, and then by remote control. Take the elevator up and down, an itty bit at a time, in the hope of localizing any explosion.”

Tibbert really did bear a remarkable resemblance to Jefferson Jones, thought Cowley. “How long?”

The man gestured uncertainly. “Couple of days from now. I ain’t in no hurry.”

“I don’t want you to be.” Looking at the solid mass of people lining every edge of the cordon he said, “If there is something in there the size of New Rochelle, those people going to be safe?”

“The monument’s marble. Hard. If there’s a blow it’ll most likely be brought down, but the force will be contained. Maybe make their ears ring a little. Could do some damage to the White House glass.”

A throwaway line to be taken seriously, recognized Cowley. “You got any kids?”

Tibbert frowned. “Four. Why?”

“Don’t want any more orphans.”

“Don’t plan for there to be any more.”

“You and me both,” said Cowley. He stood on the knoll upon which the monument was built, looking around again, guessing the faraway crowd had to be a thousand strong, maybe more. Where was it? Where the fuck, what the fuck, was it that had to be as obvious as the arrow-straight marble dart pointing up into the clear morning sky but which he couldn’t see, couldn’t realize?

He accepted the offered ride from the crew of the police car on the perimeter, forcing himself into a gossiping conversation about bastard lunatics and agreeing it was good New York State had reintroduced the death penalty for crimes like New Rochelle and promising to take care when he got out at the J. Edgar Hoover building. He felt the sweep of dizziness as he walked into the enclosed forecourt dominated by the inscription of the bureau’s credo. He grabbed the wall and covered the stumble by feigning problems with a shoe, lifting and easing his foot experimentally. The moment passed almost immediately, and he continued on to more glad-handing in the foyer.

Pamela was already in the conference room, waiting. He said at once, “Who are the Watchmen?”

She shook her head. “Not listed in any of our records. Got a help call out. What about you?”

“Our guys got all they wanted inside the monument apparently.”

“The director’s asked forensic to attend if they’ve got anything this soon.”

“Who else, additionally?”

“Poulson, the parks guy who was in the truck with us. A general from the Pentagon with one of their computer guys. Some people, I don’t know who or how many, from D.C. police. Al Hinton, our public affairs guy. That’s all I know.”

“Anything from Moscow?”

She shook her head.

“We’re missing something, Pam. I know we are.”

“What you’re missing is the night’s sleep you never got and the week extra you should have stayed in hospital.” She paused, deciding not to let it go. “I called you because you’re the case officer, not to come to the scene. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Couldn’t sleep after I woke up.”

The rib strapping made it difficult for Cowley to lean forward sufficiently to wash his beard-rasped face over the toilet washbasin. He did so frowning at his own reflection in the mirror. He did look like shit on a plate. Worse. He’d always had a heavy beard, and the unshaven growth made a black-and-white comparison against his deathly pallor. His eyes were sunk into his head and black rimmed, and the clothes he’d hurriedly grabbed-a sweatshirt and jeans-hung on him, sweat-wrinkled and baggy. Two cups of cafeteria coffee didn’t give him the lift he’d hoped for, but they made swallowing the Tylenol easier.

The hastily arranged conference room-normally the biggest lecture hall in the building-was already filling. He was curious at what had been discovered forensically so quickly for Paul Lambert to be already there. The Pentagon general wore his uniform, complete with the name plate identifying himself as Sinclair J. Smith. There was a thin, nervous civilian with him. The bureau director’s assistant bustled around the table, seating everyone, putting Cowley and Pamela together. From the arrangement Cowley saw that on FBI territory Leonard Ross was assuming the chairmanship.

Pamela leaned close and said, “We stink.”

Cowley said, “That’s what all the papers say. You want to bat first?” She smelled and looked early-morning fresh, not like someone who’d been up all night.

She turned more fully toward him. “You feel all right?” A genuine offer of a place center stage or a curve she couldn’t see?

“You know as much about it as I do. I’ll pick up as we go along.” Cowley wanted to listen, hear what other people said, still searching for the trigger.

Leonard Ross was the last to enter, with the secretary of state and Frank Norton, the president’s chief of staff. Al Hinton, the fat and balding public affairs chief, was in attendance, shepherding the three men ahead of him. Cowley realized gratefully that today’s media coverage was limited to a press pool of one television and one still photographer and a solitary reporter. Cowley was conscious, too, of far less-in fact, scarcely none-posturing than before. The identification of Cowley was even quicker this time and the concentration on him just as immediate, but again he refused all questions beyond saying he’d recovered more than sufficiently to resume as case officer. As Hinton led the pool away, Norton said it was good to see him back and Cowley thanked him, conscious of the director’s frown.

Leonard Ross showed no surprise, though, when Pamela responded to the update request, which Cowley at once decided she did brilliantly. She smoothly took everyone through a selection of still photographs of the scene inside the monument, even itemizing the electrical circuits and boxes that the disposal team had initially cleared, but stressed that the examination was continuing.

“And we’ve drawn a total blank on any protest or radical group calling itself the Watchmen. We’ve already asked friendly services-England and Israel-to check. Nothing back yet.”

She looked invitingly at Cowley, who remained silent, although he was conscious of another frown from the director.

It was the president’s chief of staff who spoke. Frank Norton said, “You got anything to tell us about this computer intrusion, General?”

“Too soon,” said the soldier, who had a shaved marine haircut and a face that looked as if it had been carved from something very hard. He nodded to the civilian beside him. “Maybe you’d better hear from Carl.”

“I’m head of Pentagon computer security, Carl Ashton,” the man introduced himself uncomfortably. “We’ve got more than a thousand computers, terminals, and VDU stations, all at various levels of security, purpose, and program. If someone infects a system with a virus-the most common is one that replicates information until the file is totally filled, when it jams-then the problem’s obvious. But if someone gets in a back door simply to use our machines and our servers as a conduit-giving themselves their own entry code and password-it’ll take time to find them. It’s possible we never will.”

“Have I correctly heard what you’ve just said?” demanded Norton, spacing his words in incredulity. “A bunch of terrorists have gotten into the communications system of the military headquarters of the United States of America actually to attack us, and we’re not going to be able to find them! Is that what the Pentagon is going to tell the president and the people of this country?”

“I think I should explain more fully-” tried Ashton.

“I really think you should,” cut in Henry Hartz. “I don’t like what I’m hearing at all, after last year. Neither will the American people.” Irritation made the secretary of state’s Germanic accent more pronounced.

Ashton’s color rose and his hands fluttered nervously over the table. “No computer system can be declared totally beyond intrusion. There’s always a back door, either left there by the installer for his personal gratification and amusement …” The man paused at the looks of fresh astonishment around the table. “Yes,” he insisted, “even at the level of people who install at the Pentagon. More so, even: At the highest level of computer expertise a universal arrogance exists: they’re Captain Kirks with their own Enterprise space ships, able to go where no man has gone before. There are websites-clubs-on the Internet where such people gather. Not physically or using their own names-pseudonyms by which one recognizes the other. Entry codes and passwords are swopped. All it would have needed in this case is for a disgruntled Pentagon employee to belong to such a club and the door’s open.”

“There’s a check there!” interrupted the CIA’s John Butterworth. “We need a list-”

“Which we keep, of every Pentagon employee who is dismissed or who leaves in circumstances considered likely to create resentment.”

“This is absurd!” protested Butterworth. “Why don’t we hit these cockamamie clubs, round the bastards up?”

Ashton, embarrassed, looked sideways to the low-profile general, who shrugged. The computer security man said, “Sir, these aren’t places-buildings. They’re websites. They only exist in what you’ve heard described as cyberspace: They have no actuality. We don’t know where they are-how to access them. And if we did, we’d be committing a federal offense under the terms of the U.S. data protection legislation.”

Stunned silence spread throughout the room. The pragmatic Leonard Ross said, “So far you’ve told us what you can’t do. What can-are-you doing?”

“I talked about various levels of security,” reminded Ashton. “At its lowest administrative level we’ve got a lot of terminals without either a hard or floppy disk. They’re VDUs operated from a central server. They’re the most likely to have been breached. Those are the servers we’re sweeping now: If our terrorists are there, we’ll find them. Find the intrusion, at least. But we’re assuming that these guys are good, professionals, if that’s an acceptable description. They won’t just have broken in and established their own little cave. They will have established their own burglar alarm when a trace is locked on them. They won’t have come straight into the Pentagon. There’ll be several cutouts in other systems-systems that might be on the far side of the world-and there will quite literally be a burglar alarm that might even ring a bell they can hear. And when they do-before we get close-they’ll close down. That’s what I meant by saying we’ll probably never find them, not from putting on tracers.”

“This is terrifying,” said Hartz, almost to himself. “And I thought I had already used up all the terror I could feel.”

“It’s modern technology, Mr. Secretary,” said General Smith, judging the moment safe to come back into the discussion. “It terrifies me, too.”

“That’s the lowest level of security,” persisted Norton. “What else is there?”

“Machines with their own hard disks, their own programs. They’re all swept, automatically, every month-in the most sensitive areas, every week-but we’ve already overridden that time frame. We’re already sweeping every machine down to the war room itself. But even if we pick them up, they will have alarmed themselves, as I’ve just explained.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” said Norton, exasperated. “Anyone here realize what the reaction would be from the American public if they knew this?”

“Probably close to the reaction they’re showing at the moment to every other example of our helplessness,” said Hartz.

“Bill,” Leonard Ross said unexpectedly, “you got any point you’d like to make? Or would you like to sit this one out? You’re really not looking at all well.”

It was only then that Cowley realized he’d slumped down in his chair, even allowing his eyes to close as they’d been closed when the director spoke, although he’d heard everything. He said, “I was thinking-or trying to think-about something else.”

“That’s obvious,” said Ross. “And for the case officer that’s pretty worrying, as far as I am concerned. You’ve had a long day already. Why don’t you rest a little?”

“I don’t think the Pentagon break-in is our immediate consideration,” declared Cowley.

He felt Pamela’s hand on his sleeve and Ross said, “I think you’d better call it a day, Bill. My mistake, your mistake.”

Cowley shook his head in refusal. To Paul Lambert he said, “You must have found something obvious to be able to be here this soon?”

“It was Semtex,” said the bespectacled, crew-cut forensic scientiest. “Simplest thing imaginable: wrapped around a timer preset for one A.M. We’re still checking for prints, obviously. Source is either the Czech or Slovakian republics: Czechoslovakia is the only country in the world still producing the stuff. We’ll identify the timer before the day’s out. But if the bomb squad doesn’t find anything else, we’re not going to be able to help you very much beyond this.”

“They’re taking it slowly,” said Cowley. “Tibbert’s talking of another two days-there might even be something intact.”

“Two days!” protested David Frost, the diminutive police commissioner, sitting between two other uniformed officers. “It’s going to become impossible! The city’s already virtually gridlocked by that central area being closed just today. Even before I came in for this meeting I was getting reports of people coming in just to stand and look. If it goes on for two more days the city will have to close down, there’ll be so many tourists.”

“I don’t think traffic control is very high on our list of priorities at the moment, Commissioner,” said Ross.

“It is,” said Cowley, softly at first. Then, more loudly: “Jesus, of course it is!”

Everyone looked in bewildered astonishment.

To the forensic chief Cowley said, “The charge! How big was the charge?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe half a pound. Less, perhaps.”

“Easily carried? And timed to explode when there wouldn’t be anyone there to get hurt?”

“Sure.”

“Wouldn’t it have fit easily into a shopping bag or backpack?”

“Yes.”

“And easily fixed?”

“Sure,” Lambert agreed again. “Semtex is gray, same color as the steps. It was just slipped down the sides, against the outer wall.

“Bill-” Ross began sympathetically.

“Please!” demanded Cowley, remembering the stairwell gaps he’d looked at until his eyes ached earlier that day. “The gap between the stairs and the outer edge could have hidden much more than half a pound of Semtex, couldn’t it?”

Lambert shrugged his shoulders in another helpless gesture. “If they’d wanted to plant more …”

“That’s just it!” said Cowley, looking urgently to Leonard Ross. “They didn’t want to plant any more. This isn’t their speed, their way! They wanted to kill hundreds, certainly, with the warhead. Suckered us into the ambush at New Rochelle. Which is what this is! A decoy.” He stopped, remembering the thick, solid line of people around the Mall. Trying to control his rising panic, Cowley leaned toward the police commissioner. “There’s got to be a thousand people out there, all around the Mall. Two thousand. And there’s another bomb, another device. Get it cleared! Get the Mall, all the roads, clear of people. Don’t funnel them into the Smithsonian Metro. Close that. Just get everyone away as quickly as you can. Otherwise there’s going to be another massacre.”

No one moved. No one spoke.

Cowley looked imploringly at Leonard Ross. “Please!” he said. “I’m right. I know I’m right. This time they really do intend killing hundreds.”

“Anne! We’re talking seven bucks!” protested the Albany detective to whom Clarence Snelling had first complained.

“And forty-nine cents,” she reminded.

“And forty-nine cents. I thought you guys were kinda occupied by something else?”

“So what have you done?”

The man spread his hands without replying.

“Not spoken to the bank?”

“No,” said the detective. “I haven’t spoken to the fucking bank! When I arrest the son of a bitch who killed the Seven-Eleven night man with a sawed-off twelve-gauge to steal maybe twenty bucks and then catch the bastard who raped the twelve-year-old on the Saratoga Road turnoff I’ll really put my mind to Clarence Snelling’s precious fucking seven bucks and forty-nine cents.”

“So you wouldn’t mind me doing it meanwhile?”

“Honey, if I hadn’t seen your fucking shield you know what I’d do. I’d arrest you for impersonating an FBI agent.”

“Don’t worry,” said Anne Stovey. “I won’t arrest you for impersonating a New York State detective. Or for not knowing your criminal history.”