12:14:55.
12:14:56.
12:14:57.
12:14:58.
12:14:59.
12:15:00--
Silently a huge fist of flame and debris shot out of the conference room window. A half second later came the stunning sound of the explosion itself.
Voices around him. "Oh, my God. What--?"
Screams.
"Look, there! What's that?"
"God, no!"
"Call nine-one-one! Somebody . . ."
Pedestrians were clustering on the sidewalk, staring.
"A bomb? An airplane?"
Concern on his face, Hale shook his head, lingering for a moment to savor the success. The explosion seemed bigger than he'd anticipated; the fatalities would be greater than Charlotte and Bud had hoped. It was hard to see how anybody could have survived.
He turned slowly and continued up the street, where he descended once more into the subway station and took the next train uptown. He emerged at the station and headed toward the Allertons' hotel, where he'd pick up the rest of his payment.
Charles Hale was satisfied. He'd staved off boredom and had earned some good money.
Most important, though, was the breathtaking elegance of what he'd done. He'd created a plan that had worked perfectly--like clockwork, he thought, enjoying the self-conscious simile.
Chapter 39
"Oh, thank you," Charlotte whispered, speaking both to Jesus and to the man who'd made their mission a success.
She was sitting forward, staring at the TV. The special news report about the evacuation of the Metropolitan Museum and the halting of public transportation in the area had been replaced by a different story--the bombing at the HUD building. Charlotte squeezed her husband's hand. Bud leaned over and kissed her. He smiled like a young boy.
The news anchorwoman was grim--despite her restrained pleasure at being on duty when such a big story broke--as she gave what details there were: A bomb had gone off within the Housing and Urban Development building in lower Manhattan, where a number of senior government and military officials had been attending a ceremony. An undersecretary of state and the head of the Joint Chiefs were present. The cameras showed smoke pouring from the windows of a conference room. The important detail--the casualty count--had not come in yet, though at least fifty people were in the room where the bomb detonated.
A talking head popped up on the screen; his complete lack of knowledge of the event didn't stop him from drawing the conclusion that this was the job of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.
They'd soon know differently.
"Look, honey, we did it!" Charlotte called to her daughter, who had remained in the bedroom, lost in a book. (That satanic Harry Potter. Charlotte had thrown out two of them. Where on earth had the girl gotten another copy?)
The girl gave an exasperated sigh and returned to the book.
Charlotte was momentarily furious. She wanted to storm into the bedroom and slap the girl's face as hard as she could. They'd just won a spectacular victory and the girl was showing nothing but disrespect. Bud had asked several times if he could take a hickory stick to the girl's bare butt. Charlotte had demurred but she was now wondering if maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.
Still, her anger faded when she thought of their victory today. She stood up. "We better leave." She shut the TV off and continued packing a suitcase. Bud walked into the bedroom to do the same. They were going to drive to Philadelphia, where they'd get a plane back to St. Louis--Duncan had told them to avoid the New York airports afterward. They'd then return to the backwoods of Missouri and go underground again--waiting for the next opportunity to further their cause.
Gerald Duncan would be here soon. He'd collect the rest of his money and leave town too. She wondered if she could convert him to their cause. She'd spoken to him about the idea but he wasn't interested, though he said he'd be more than happy to help them out again if they had any particularly difficult targets and if the money was right.
A knock on the door.
Duncan was right on time.
Laughing, Charlotte strode to the door and flung it open. "You did it! I--"
But her words stopped short, the smile vanished. The policeman, in black helmet and combat outfit, pushed inside. With him was Amelia Sachs, a large black pistol in her hand, her face furious, eyes squinting as she scanned the room.
A half dozen other cops streamed in behind them. "Police! Freeze, freeze!"
"No!" Charlotte wailed. She twisted away but got only one step before they tackled her hard.
In the bedroom, Bud Allerton gasped in shock as he heard his wife scream, the harsh voices and the stomping of feet. He slammed the door shut and pulled an automatic pistol from his suitcase, worked the slide to put a round in the chamber.
"No!" his stepdaughter cried, dropping her book and scrabbling for the door.
"Quiet," he whispered viciously. He grabbed her by the arm. She screamed as he flung her onto the bed. Her head hit the wall and she lay stunned. Bud had never liked the girl, didn't like her attitude, didn't like her sarcasm and her rebelliousness. Children were put on earth to obey--girls especially--or suffer the consequences if they didn't.
He listened at the door. It sounded like a dozen officers were in the living room of the suite. Bud didn't have much time for a prayer but those through whom God speaks can be moved to communicate with Him as circumstances allow.
My dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, thank you for the glory you've bestowed upon us, the true believers. Please give me the strength to end my life and hasten my journey to you. And let me send to hell as many of those as I can who have come here to transgress against you.
There were fifteen bullets in the clip of his pistol. He could take plenty of the police with him, if he remained steady and if God gave him the strength to ignore the wounds he'd receive. But still they'd have a lot of firepower. He needed some advantage.
Bud turned toward his sobbing stepdaughter, who was clutching her bleeding head. He added a coda to the prayer, with a kindness that he thought was particularly generous under the circumstances.
And when you receive this child into heaven, please forgive her her sins against you. She knew not what she did.
He rose, walked over to his stepdaughter and grabbed her by the hair.
"Is Allerton in there?" Amelia Sachs shouted to Charlotte, nodding at the closed bedroom door.
She said nothing.
"The girl?"
Downstairs, the desk manager explained what suite Charlotte and Bud Allerton, along with their daughter, were staying in and the layout of the place. He was pretty sure they were upstairs now. The clerk recognized the picture of the Watchmaker and said that the man had been here several times but hadn't been back today, as far as he knew.
"Where's Allerton?" Sachs now snapped. She wanted to grab the woman and shake her.
Charlotte remained silent, glaring up at the detective.
"Bathroom clear," one ESU officer called.
"Second bedroom clear."
"Closet clear," called Ron Pulaski, the slim officer looking nearly comical in the bulky flak jacket and helmet.
Only the bedroom with the closed door remained. Sachs approached it, stood to the side and motioned the other officers out of the line of fire. "You, inside the bedroom, listen! I'm a police officer. Open the door!"
No response.
Sachs tested the knob. The door was unlocked. A deep breath, gun up.
She opened the door fast and dropped into a combat shooting position. Sachs saw the girl--the same one who'd been in Charlotte's car at the Watchmaker's first crime scene. The girl's hands were tied together and adhesive tape was over her mouth and nose. Her skin was blue and she thrashed on the bed, desperate for oxygen. It was a matter of seconds until she suffocated.
Ron Pulaski shouted, "Look, the window's open." Nodding toward the bedroom window. "Guy's getting away."
He started forward.
Sachs grabbed him by the
flak jacket.
"What?" he asked.
"It's not secure yet," she snapped. She nodded to the living room. "Check the fire escape from there. See if he's outside. And be careful. He might be targeting the window."
The rookie ran to the front of the room and looked out fast. He called, "Nope. Might've gotten away." He radioed ESU outside to check the alley behind the hotel.
Sachs debated. But she couldn't wait any longer. She had to save the girl. She started forward.
But then stopped fast. Despite the horrifying suffocation, Charlotte's daughter was sending her a message. She was shaking her head no, which Sachs took to mean that this was an ambush. The daughter looked to her right, indicating where Allerton, or somebody, was hiding, probably waiting to shoot.
Sachs dropped into a crouch. "Whoever's in the bedroom, drop your weapon! Lie down, face forward in the middle of the room! Now."
Silence.
The poor girl thrashed, eyes bulging.
"Drop the weapon now!"
Nothing.
Several ESU officers had come up. One hefted a flashbang grenade, designed to disorient attackers. But people can still shoot if they're deafened and blinded. Sachs was worried that he'd hit the girl if he started pumping bullets indiscriminately. She shook her head to the ESU officer and aimed into the bedroom through the door. She had to get him and now; the child had no time left.
But the girl was shaking her head again. She struggled to control the convulsions and looked to Sachs's right, then down.
Even though she was dying, she was directing Sachs's fire.
Sachs adjusted her aim--it was much farther to the right than she would have guessed. If she'd fired at the place she'd been inclined to, a shooter would've known her position and possibly hit her with return fire.
The girl nodded.
Still, Sachs hesitated. Was the girl really sending her this message? The child was revealing discipline that few adults could muster, and Sachs didn't dare misinterpret it; the risk of hurting an innocent was too great.
But then she recalled the look in the girl's eyes the first time she'd seen her, in the car near the alley by Cedar Street. There, she'd seen hope. Here, she saw courage.
Sachs gripped her pistol firmly and fired six rounds in a circular pattern where the girl was indicating. Without waiting to see what she'd hit she leapt into the room, ESU officers behind her.
"Get the girl!" she shouted, sweeping the area to her right--the bathroom and closet--with her Glock. One ESU trooper covered the room with his MP-5 machine gun as the other officers pulled the girl to safety on the floor and ripped the tape off her face. Sachs heard the rasp of her desperate inhalation, then sobbing.
Sachs flung open the closet door and stepped aside as the man's corpse--hit four times--tumbled out. She kicked aside his weapon and cleared the closet and the bathroom, then--not taking any chances--the shower stall, the space under the bed and the fire escape too.
A minute later the entire suite was clear. Charlotte, red-faced with fury and sobbing, was sitting handcuffed on the couch and the girl was in the hallway being given oxygen by medics; she'd suffered no serious injuries, they reported.
Charlotte would say nothing about the Watchmaker, and a preliminary search of the rooms gave no indication where he might be. Sachs found an envelope containing $250,000 cash, which suggested that he'd be coming here to collect a fee. She radioed Sellitto downstairs and had him clear the street of all emergency vehicles and set up hidden takedown teams.
Rhyme was on his way in his van and Sachs called to tell him to take the back entrance. She then went into the hallway to check on the girl.
"How you doing?"
"Okay, I guess. My face hurts."
"They took the tape off pretty fast, I'll bet."
"Yeah, kinda."
"Thanks for what you did. You saved lives. You saved my life." The girl gazed at Sachs with a curious look then glanced down. The detective handed her the Harry Potter book she'd found in the bedroom and Sachs asked if the girl knew anything about the man calling himself Gerald Duncan.
"He was creepy. Like, way weird. He'd just look at you like you were a rock or a car or a table. Not a person."
"You have any idea where he is?"
She shook her head. "All I know is I heard Mom say he was renting a place in Brooklyn somewhere. I don't know where. He wouldn't say. But he's coming by later to pick up some money."
Sachs pulled Pulaski aside and asked him to check all the calls to and from Charlotte's and Bud's mobile phones, as well as the calls from the hotel room phone.
"How 'bout the lobby phone too? The pay phone, I mean. And the ones on the street nearby."
She lifted an eyebrow. "Good idea."
The rookie headed off on his mission. Sachs got a soda and gave it to the girl. She opened the can and drank down half of it fast. She was looking at Sachs in a strange way. Then she gave a laugh.
Sachs asked, "What?"
"You really don't remember me, do you? I met you before."
"Near the alley on Tuesday. Sure."
"No, no. Like, a long time before that."
Sachs squinted. She recalled that she had felt some sense of familiarity when she'd seen the girl in the car at the first crime scene in the alley. And she felt it even more strongly now. But she couldn't place where she might've seen the girl prior to Tuesday. "I'm afraid I don't remember."
"You saved my life. I was a little girl."
"A long time . . ." Then Amelia Sachs squinted, turned toward the mother and studied Charlotte more closely. "Oh, my God," she gasped.
Chapter 40
Inside the shabby hotel room, Lincoln Rhyme shook his head in disbelief as Sachs told him what she'd just learned: that they had known Charlotte some years ago when she'd come to New York using the pseudonym Carol Ganz. She and her daughter, whose name was Pammy, had been victims in the first case Sachs and Rhyme had worked together--the very one he'd been thinking of earlier, the kidnapper obsessed with human bones, a perp as clever and ruthless as the Watchmaker.
To pursue him, Rhyme had recruited Sachs to be his eyes and ears and legs at the crime scenes and together they'd managed to rescue both the woman and her daughter--only to learn that Carol was really Charlotte Willoughby. She was part of a right-wing militia movement, which abhorred the federal government and its involvement in world affairs. After their rescue and reunion, the woman managed to slip a bomb into the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. The explosion killed six people.
Rhyme and Sachs had taken up the case but Charlotte and the girl disappeared into the movement's underground, probably in the Midwest or West, and eventually the trail went cold.
From time to time they would check out FBI, VICAP and local police reports with a militia or right-wing political angle but no leads to Charlotte or Pammy panned out. Sachs's concern for the little girl never diminished, though, and sometimes, lying in bed with Rhyme at night, she'd wonder out loud how the girl was doing, if it was too late to save her. Sachs, who'd always wanted children, was horrified at the kind of life her mother was presumably forcing the girl to live--hiding out, having few friends her age, never going to a regular school--all in the name of some hateful cause.
And now Charlotte--with her new husband, Bud Allerton--had returned to the city on yet another mission of terrorism, and Rhyme and Sachs had become entwined in their lives once again.
Charlotte now glared at Rhyme, her eyes filled with both tears and hatred. "You murdered Bud! You goddamn fascists! You killed him." The prisoner then gave a cold laugh. "But we won! How many did we kill tonight? Fifty people. Seventy-five? And how many senior people in the Pentagon?"
Sachs leaned close to her face. "Did you know there'd be children in that conference room? Husbands and wives of the soldiers? Their parents? Grandparents? Did you know that?"
"Of course we knew it," Charlotte said.
"They were just sacrifices too, is that right?"
"For the greater good," Charlotte replied.
Which was maybe a slogan she and her group recited at the beginning of their rallies, or whatever meetings they had.
Rhyme caught Sachs's eye. He said, "Maybe we should show her the carnage."
Sachs nodded and clicked on the TV.
An anchorwoman was on the screen. " . . . one minor injury. A bomb squad officer who was driving a remote-control robot in an attempt to defuse the bombs was wounded slightly by shrapnel. He's been treated and released. Property damage was estimated at five hundred thousand dollars. Despite initial reports, neither al-Qaeda nor any other Islamic terrorist group has been implicated in the bombing. According to a New York Police Department spokeswoman, a domestic terrorist organization was responsible. Again, if you're just joining us, two bombs exploded around noon today in the office of Housing and Urban Development in lower Manhattan but there were no fatalities and only one minor injury. An undersecretary of state and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were among the intended victims. . . ."
Sachs muted the volume and turned a smug gaze toward Charlotte.
"No," the woman gasped. "Oh, no . . . What--?"
Rhyme said, "Obviously--we figured it out before the bomb went off and evacuated the room."
Charlotte was appalled. "But . . . impossible. No . . . The airports were shut down, the trains--"
"Oh, that," Rhyme said dismissively. "We just needed to buy some time. At first, sure, I thought he was stealing the Delphic Mechanism but then I decided it was just a feint. But that didn't mean he hadn't done something to the NIST clock. So while we were figuring out what he was really up to, we called the mayor and had him order flights and public transportation in the area suspended."
You know what's going to happen if we push that button. . . .
She glanced into the bedroom where her husband had died such a pointless death. Then the ideologue within her kicked in and she said in a flat voice, "You'll never beat us. You may win a battle or two. But we'll take our country back. We'll--"
"Yo, hold that rhetoric, wouldja?" The speaker was a tall, lanky black man, stepping into the room. This was FBI Special Agent Fred Dellray. When he'd heard about the domestic terrorist angle he'd handed off the accounting fraud case that he'd been assisting on ("Was a yawner anyway") and announced that that he was going to be the federal liaison on the HUD bombing.