by Matthew Dunn
The lines were moving forward, and Will estimated that at least half of the crowd was now inside. He checked his watch again and saw that the concert was due to start in minutes. He heard the staff members by the entrances call to their crowds to keep moving forward, saw the children’s supervisors liaise with them while holding clusters of tickets and sheets of paper, and watched uniformed police officers walking slowly through the crowds.
He knew that he was running out of time and options. He felt his handgun press hard against his body, and he decided he had to get rid of the weapon. He looked around, saw a garbage can, walked to it, and quickly dropped the gun and spare bullet clips inside. He walked slowly back to the center of the plaza and looked at the line containing only adults. There were approximately three hundred people in the line. Most of them were couples and therefore of no use to him, as he knew that they were most likely parents of either child performers or spectators and therefore would never give up their space in the line. But a handful of them were solitary adults, and Will looked up and down the line at them. He wasted no time in moving toward the line.
He approached a man who looked to be in his midthirties. “Do you have a ticket?”
The man frowned at Will and no doubt briefly wondered whether he was an official before deciding he was not. “Of course. Why?”
Will shrugged and nodded toward the opera house. “My daughter’s playing in there tonight.” He shook his head. “I only found out two days ago. My ex-wife didn’t feel like telling me. I would do anything to see her perform, but I know the event’s sold out. Would you sell me your ticket?”
The man looked sympathetic. “Tough break. But I’m here with the New York Times to write a review of the concert, so unless that’s something you could do in my absence, I’m going to have to decline your request.”
Will nodded, thanked the man anyway, and moved farther up the line. He spotted a woman and gave her the same story. The woman told him to get lost.
He walked up to a man who looked to be in his sixties and was clearly suffering from the cold, with his arms wrapped around his torso. Will said, “Cold night.”
The man said, “Damn right.”
Will said, “My daughter’s playing in there tonight. I’m sure she’d love to see me in the audience. Could I buy your ticket?”
The man said, “My granddaughter’s playing in there tonight. That’s why I’ve spent forty minutes out here freezing my ass off, and I’m not about to move an inch away from this line.”
Will felt frustration coursing through him as he again looked up and down the line. He spotted a solitary adult toward the front and walked over to him. The man was very young, maybe only twenty, and was dressed like a student. Will said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for your ticket.”
The man looked at him in surprise. “A thousand dollars?”
Will nodded.
The man frowned, looked unsure, then repeated, “A thousand dollars?”
Will spoke in a stern voice. “In ten seconds you can walk away from this line with that cash in your pocket. But if you don’t want it, I’m sure someone else here does.”
The young man shook his head quickly and thrust his hand into his coat pocket. “Here.” He showed Will his ticket.
Will put his hand into his suit pocket, pulled out the plastic envelope that he knew contained just over two thousand dollars, looked at it, and said, “It’s a bit more than I told you. Take it and go.”
They exchanged the ticket and the cash, and Will joined the line. The young man walked quickly away.
Will was approximately ten meters from the opera house’s entrance. He pulled up the collar of his suit jacket and stamped his feet on the ground while hugging his chest to try to make him look cold to any observers. Officials kept calling, telling people to move forward. Nearly all the children were in the building now, and the plaza area was no longer crowded. Will casually looked around the place. The nine Secret Service men and women had all moved position but were still on the plaza. He looked toward the entrance and saw glimpses of the inside of the building. He saw people in his line move through a metal detector and felt huge relief that he had disposed of his weapon.
As people entered the building, Will shuffled forward until he was five meters from the entrance. He turned a little to look back up the line. His eyes narrowed as he saw the woman whom he had earlier approached take two steps away from the line and talk to a police officer. She was about forty meters from Will, looked up and down the line, shrugged her shoulders, and stepped back into the line. The police officer spoke on his radio. Will immediately fixed his eyes on one of the plainclothes Secret Service men. The man was very still for a moment before walking quickly toward one of his colleagues. Will’s heart beat faster. He knew that the woman had reported his approach to her as suspicious and that all security officials in the vicinity of the opera house would now be aware of that approach. He turned to face the entrance and shuffled forward a couple of yards.
There were three people in front of him now. Will pulled out his ticket and breathed carefully to calm himself. The ticket attendant by the door looked stressed and grabbed tickets with one hand while waving people through the doorway with the other. Will took a step forward as the three people in front of him became two. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a police officer walking slowly along the line, examining every man and woman standing behind Will. He looked away from the line and saw that four of the Secret Service people had moved closer to the line. He willed the line to move more quickly. The two people in front of him became one, and Will stamped his feet to make himself look colder. The man in front of him handed his ticket to the attendant and walked in.
Will took a deep breath and smiled as he handed his ticket to the official. He exhaled slowly as he stepped into the opera house.
He moved through the metal detector, stopped, calmly looked at the officials who were monitoring the detector, saw them nod at him, and then walked on. He moved quickly, knowing that other attendees who were not yet seated were doing the same. He glanced at his ticket, saw that he was supposed to be seated on one of the balcony aisles and that he would need to walk up the sweeping red-carpeted stairway to reach his place. But he had no intention of going there and instead walked onward at ground level, scouring doors to his left and right. People were all around him, and some seemed to know where they were going and some not. He moved forward and wished that he’d had time to study the layout of the huge building he was in. But he was grateful that he was not the only one who didn’t know the layout, and for a while he hid among the ranks of the lost.
He moved along a corridor until he was away from other people and door entrances to the auditorium. He moved on until he was alone. He reached a door that said NO ADMITTANCE, STAFF ONLY. He looked back down the corridor. Nobody was looking at him. He swiveled back to face the door, turned the handle, opened it, and walked through. Narrow stairs were immediately ahead of him. He walked quickly down them until he knew he was in a part of the building that was below stage level. A slender corridor was before him, with other corridors leading away from it to its left and right. Everywhere was dimly illuminated. A corridor on his right was lined with lockers that he imagined were used by performers, as was another corridor on his left. He kept walking.
He stopped suddenly as a huge sound came from above him. His heart pounded. He realized the sound was the start of the concert. He could now clearly hear instruments and singing. His heartbeat slowed, and he kept going. The music quieted.
There were more corridors to his left and right. Some had signs and arrows directing him to rehearsal rooms, management offices, changing rooms. Will imagined that before the concert this whole subterranean floor would have been bustling with performers getting ready, officials fretting about schedules and timings, backstage well-wishers, and crews that would move curtains and stage pulleys and manhandle props on and off the stage. But right now the labyrinth of rooms around him seem
ed empty.
Rapid footsteps suddenly told him that the place was not empty. He looked around quickly, trying to ascertain where the steps were coming from. He decided they were behind him but heading in his direction. He jogged forward and darted left into yet another corridor. He stopped, swiveled, crouched, and wished he still had his gun. The footsteps grew louder, and he realized they belonged to more than one person. Police officers? Secret Service? As the footsteps drew nearer, he bunched his right hand into a fist and waited, briefly wondering what he would do if armed officials found him here. He decided he would have no choice other than to inflict rapid, absolute, but nonlethal pain on them and render them unconscious.
The footsteps were nearly directly in front of him now, and Will clenched his fist tighter, braced his body to move fast, and focused solely on the corridor ahead and the other corridor traversing it. The footsteps slowed. Will got ready.
A woman and a girl appeared at the end of the corridor. Will exhaled slowly and unclenched his fist. The woman had her arms around the girl and seemed to be consoling her. The girl was wearing a black dress and a white blouse and was crying. She carried a flute.
They stopped, and the woman told her, “It’s called stage fright. I used to get it when I was your age. Let’s find you a warm drink and see if you feel like going back out there afterward.”
They walked away from Will’s position, and soon they were gone. He stood upright and looked around. He decided that he was in the wrong place. He decided that the bomber would be hidden someplace where he could not be accidentally found by innocents. He moved on, and the noise of the concert grew louder as he went.
He tried to imagine the layout of a building like this and what it would need to support it and keep it running. He decided that the Metropolitan Opera House would need power generators and air-conditioning and heating units and thick pillars to support its stage and overall structure. He could see that most of those things were not on this floor. He knew that there had to be another floor beneath him and that it would be the perfect place for the bomber to wait while holding Lana captive.
He rubbed his face and desperately tried not to think about Lana, her condition now, and whether she was even still alive. He tried not to think of anything that would hinder his focus and concentration to stop the most terrible event.
Lights flashed to his right, and Will instinctively pushed himself against a wall. The lights were close and moved over floor and ceiling. He knew that they were flashlights, that in a place like this flashlights were unusual and would be carried only by officials who were looking for something. He decided that the officials had to be looking for him and were probably armed. He turned and ran away from them along the corridor he was in. He moved into an area of shadows and looked back down the corridor he’d just covered. He saw two men dressed in windbreakers, jeans, and hiking boots. They were carrying handguns. He couldn’t see their faces clearly, but they were dressed like the Secret Service men he’d spotted outside the opera house. They hadn’t seen him, but he knew that if he stayed where he was, he would be found.
He moved deeper into the shadows, turned into another corridor, jogged silently along it, past empty rooms and other corridors, and stopped. The lights were some distance behind him but had now separated. Will looked at the ceiling above him. Judging by the sounds coming from it, he knew he had to be directly under the stage. He ran along another corridor and estimated that he was close to one of the building’s exterior walls. He looked at every opening and every doorway near him, desperately searching for a route that would take him down to the opera house’s basement.
He ran to the end of the corridor and stopped. A door was before him that had a sign saying MAINTENANCE ONLY. He was about to move to the door when a beam of light struck the floor only a few feet in front of him. He silently moved backward and sidestepped into a corridor on his right. He stood motionless and watched the floor near him. He could still see the flashlight, and it was getting very close. The music above him grew, and Will cursed the noise as it obliterated any chance of his hearing the movement of the men on this floor. He breathed in deeply and tensed his muscles to lunge forward if the man closest to him turned into his corridor. The flashlight moved left and right over the floor and walls. It came closer. Will stayed still.
He saw the gun before he saw the man. It moved slowly across his vision and was almost within arm’s reach. The gun stopped for a moment and then moved forward. The man stepped into view and walked carefully along the corridor. Will pushed himself flush against a wall, even though he knew he would be seen if the man looked hard left in his direction. But the man kept walking and soon disappeared from view.
Will waited for thirty seconds before stepping carefully forward to the edge of the corridor containing the Secret Service man. He lowered himself down so that he was not at eye level and quickly poked his head out into the corridor before pulling it back. The Secret Service man was gone. Will slowly moved out and ran low toward the door for maintenance men.
He carefully shut the door behind him and saw stairs heading down. He took them, and with every step the sounds from the concert above him grew quieter. He reached the subbasement and now more than ever wished he were armed. He looked around him and knew that this was a perfect place to hide Lana. And he knew that it was also a perfect place for Megiddo’s bomber to wait and detonate his bombs ahead of schedule if anything happened.
The area around him had large, square metal vents jutting out of its roof and traveling at head height through space before reentering the roof at different points. Big generators were positioned nearby, humming in a low drone. He saw thick steel pillars that reached from floor to ceiling and assumed they supported the opera house’s stage and everything on it. He saw wall-mounted fixtures and occasional ceiling fixtures, but the light here was even dimmer than that on the floor above. He looked back up the staircase and wondered if the Secret Service men would soon open the door and search this basement. He looked around the vast area before him and wondered if there were other routes into this place. He decided that there had to be other entrances, that the Secret Service men could use any of those routes to find him here, and that they would know every inch of the place.
He checked his watch. It was now 8:20 P.M.
He walked forward, occasionally ducking his head to avoid the vents, and scoured the area to his left and right and ahead of him. But the place was a tangled mess of big machinery, narrow spaces, and dark recesses, and he could barely see beyond a few yards ahead of him. The hum of the generators was everywhere, and the concert could hardly be heard.
He walked faster and moved into an area that contained instrument panels, with switches and levers and warnings about voltage. He brushed a hand over one of the panels and saw that it was covered with fine dust and had therefore clearly not been touched for a few days. He moved on through an area containing dozens of thin pipes at floor level. He stepped over them into an area that was clear of anything at floor level, and as he did so, he heard a clunk of metal behind him. He spun around and saw that the metallic sound had come from one of the pipes. Whatever was coursing through it was causing it to vibrate and bang against an adjacent pipe. He turned to move forward.
Then he felt a hard object against the back of his head.
He stood frozen. He heard feet scuffing the floor. The object pressed harder against his head. He knew it had to be the muzzle of a gun and that the gun could belong to Megiddo’s bomber, but he also knew that it more likely belonged to one of the two Secret Service men who were searching for a man who had been desperate to enter the opera house. He wondered whether to spin around, grab the muzzle, simultaneously grab the hand holding the gun, and twist both so that he was in possession of the weapon. He could do the movement in under four-fifths of a second. But if the gun belonged to a Secret Service man, his colleague could be with him, and that man would shoot Will before he could complete the movement. He turned slowly.
; Lana was before him. She was holding the gun.
Will frowned, looked to her left and right to see if some hidden person was pointing a gun at her to make her do what she was doing, saw nothing, and looked back at her. He felt totally confused. He felt as if nothing made sense.
“What are you doing?” Will said the words slowly, and they did not seem like his own.
Lana stared at him. Her expression was cold. She looked unharmed and strong. She looked in command of herself.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Lana shook her head slowly. “If you are here, then he is dead.”
Will’s heart pounded. Confusion overwhelmed him. “What is going on?” He could smell Lana’s perfume, feel her presence, and see her beauty. But he could also see that she had death in her eyes and that she wanted to kill him.
“You have been such a fool, Will Cochrane.”
She used my real name.
She smiled. “Such a fool.”
“Megiddo told you my real name?”
“I always knew your real name.”
Will felt an immediate sense of nausea and anger. “You’ve been working with Megiddo all along?”
She no longer smiled. “Ever since I met him all those years ago. From the beginning to the end.”
Will shook his head in disbelief.
Lana waved the muzzle of the gun a little before steadying it toward Will’s head. “You’ve been tricked by us all. Tricked by Megiddo, me, and. . all of us.”
Will narrowed his eyes as a realization struck him. “All of you, including the man who introduced your name to me.”
