The Metropolitan Museum? Rhyme had wondered. He’d then recalled the museum programs found in the church. He’d asked Vincent Reynolds and the clock dealer, Victor Hallerstein, if Duncan had mentioned anything about the Met. He had, apparently—spending considerable time there—and he’d expressed particular interest in the Delphic Mechanism.
Rhyme now told the director, “We think he may have stolen the package to smuggle something into the museum. Maybe tools, maybe software to disable alarms. We don’t know. I can’t figure it out at this point. But I think we have to be cautious.”
“My God . . . All right. What do we do?”
Rhyme looked up at Cooper, who typed on his keyboard and gave a thumbs-up. Into the microphone the criminalist said, “We’ve just emailed you his picture. Could you print it out and get a copy to all the employees, the security surveillance room and the coat check? See if they recognize him.”
“I’ll do it right now. Can you hold for a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
Soon the director came on the line. “Detective Rhyme?” His voice was breathless. “He’s here! He checked a bag about ten minutes ago. The clerk recognized the picture.”
“The bag’s still there?”
“Yes. He hasn’t left.”
Rhyme nodded at Sellitto, who picked up the phone and called Bo Haumann at ESU, whose teams were on their way to the museum, and told him this latest news.
“The guard at the Mechanism,” Rhyme asked, “is he armed?”
“No. Do you think the thief is? We don’t have metal detectors at the entrance. He could’ve brought a gun in.”
“It’s possible.” Rhyme looked at Sellitto with a lifted eyebrow.
The detective asked, “Move a team in slow? Undercover?”
“He checked a bag . . . and he knows clocks.” He asked the museum director, “Did anybody look in the bag?”
“I’ll check. Hold on.” A moment later he came back. “Books. He has art books inside. But the coat-check clerk didn’t examine them.”
“Bomb for diversion?” Sellitto asked.
“Could be. Maybe it’s only smoke but even then people’ll panic. Could be fatalities either way.”
Haumann called in on his radio. His crackling voice: “Okay, we’ve got teams approaching all the entrances, public and service.”
Rhyme asked Dance, “You’re convinced he’s willing to take lives.”
“Yes.”
He was considering the man’s astonishing plot-making skills. Was there some other deadly plan he’d put into play if he realized he was about to be arrested at the museum? Rhyme made a decision. “Evacuate.”
Sellitto asked, “The entire museum?”
“I think we have to. First priority—save lives. Clear the coatroom and front lobby and then move everybody else out. Have Haumann’s men check out everybody who leaves. Make sure the teams have his picture.”
The museum director had heard. “You think that’s necessary?”
“Yes. Do it now.”
“Okay, but I just don’t see how anyone could steal it,” the director said. “The Mechanism’s behind inch-thick bullet-proof glass. And the case can’t be opened until the day the exhibit closes, next Tuesday.”
“What do you mean?” Rhyme asked.
“It’s in one of our special display cases.”
“But why won’t it open until Tuesday?”
“Because the case has a computerized time lock, with a satellite link to some government clock. They tell me nobody can break into it. We put the most valuable exhibits in there.”
The man continued speaking but Rhyme looked away. Something was nagging him. Then he recalled, “That arson earlier, the one that Fred Dellray wanted us to help out on. Where was it again?”
Sachs frowned. “A government office. The Institute of Standards and Technology or something like that. Why?”
“Look it up, Mel.”
The tech went online. Reading from the website, he said, “NIST is the new name for the National Bureau of Standards and—”
“Bureau of Standards?” Rhyme interrupted. “They maintain the country’s atomic clock. . . . Is that what he’s up to? The time lock at the Met has an uplink to the NIST. Somehow he’s going to change the time, convince the lock that it’s next Tuesday. The vault’ll open automatically.”
“Can he do that?” Dance asked.
“I don’t know. But if it’s possible, he’ll find a way. The fire at NIST was to cover up the break-in, I’ll bet. . . .” Then Rhyme stopped talking, as the full implications of the Watchmaker’s plan became clear. “Oh, no . . .”
“What?”
Rhyme was thinking about Kathryn Dance’s observation: That to the Watchmaker, human life was negligible. He said, “Time everywhere in the country is governed by the U.S. atomic clock. Airlines, trains, national defense, power grids, computers . . . everything. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen if he resets it?”
In a cheap Midtown hotel, a middle-aged man and woman sat on a small couch that smelled of mildew and old food. They were staring at a television set.
Charlotte Allerton was the stocky woman who’d pretended to be the sister of Theodore Adams, the first “victim” in the alley on Tuesday. The man beside her, Bud Allerton, her husband, was the man masquerading as the lawyer who’d secured Gerald Duncan’s release from jail by promising that his client would be a spectacular witness in the crooked cop scandal.
Bud really was a lawyer, though he hadn’t practiced for some years. He’d resurrected some of his old skills for the sake of Duncan’s plan, which called for Bud’s pretending to be a criminal attorney from the big, prestigious law firm of Reed, Prince. The assistant district attorney had bought the entire charade, not even bothering to call the firm to check up on the man. Gerald Duncan had believed, correctly, that the prosecutor would be so eager to make a name for himself on a police corruption case that he’d believe what he wanted to. Besides, who ever asks for a lawyer’s ID?
The Allertons’ attention was almost exclusively on the TV screen, showing local news. A program about Christmas tree safety. Yadda, yadda, yadda . . . For a moment Charlotte’s gaze slipped to the master bedroom in the suite, where her pretty, thin daughter sat reading a book. The girl looked through the doorway at her mother and stepfather with the same dark, sullen eyes that had typified her expression in recent months.
That girl . . .
Frowning, Charlotte looked back to the TV screen. “Isn’t it taking too long?”
Bud said nothing. His thick fingers were intertwined and he sat forward, hunched, elbows on knees. She wondered if he was praying.
A moment later the reporter whose mission was to save families from the scourge of burning Christmas trees disappeared and on the screen came the words Special News Bulletin.
Chapter 37
In doing his research into watchmaking, so that he could be a credible revenge killer, Charles Hale had learned of the concept of “complications.”
A complication is a function in a watch or clock other than telling the time of day. For instance, those small dials that dot the front of expensive timepieces, giving information like day of the week and date and time in different locations, and repeater functions (chimes sounding at certain intervals). Watchmakers have always enjoyed the challenge of getting as many complications into their watches as possible. A typical one is the Patek Philippe Star Calibre 2000, a watch featuring more than one thousand parts. Its complications offer the owner such information as the times of sunrise and sunset, a perpetual calendar, the day, date and month, the season, moon phases, lunar orbit and power reserve indicators for both the watch’s movement and the several chimes inside.
The trouble with complications, though, is that they’re just that. They tend to distract from the ultimate purpose of a watch: telling time. Breitling makes superb timepieces but some of the Professional and Navitimer models have so many dials, hands and side functions, like chrono
graphs (the technical term for stopwatches) and logarithmic slide rules, that it’s easy to miss the big hand and the little hand.
But complications were exactly what Charles Hale needed for his plan here in New York City, distractions to lead the police away from what he was really about. Because there was a good chance that Lincoln Rhyme and his team would find out that he was no longer in custody and that he wasn’t really Gerald Duncan, they’d realize he had something else in mind other than getting even with a crooked cop.
So he needed yet another complication to keep the police focused elsewhere.
Hale’s cell phone vibrated. He glanced at the text message, which was from Charlotte Allerton. Special Report on TV: Museum closed. Police searching for you there.
He put the phone back in his pocket.
And enjoyed a moment of keen, almost sexual, satisfaction.
The message told him that while Rhyme had tipped to the fact that he wasn’t who he seemed to be, the police were still missing the time of day and focusing on the complication of the Metropolitan Museum. He was pointing the police toward what appeared to be a plan to steal the famous Delphic Mechanism. At the church he’d planted brochures on the horologic exhibits in Boston and Tampa. He’d rhapsodized on the device to Vincent Reynolds. He’d hinted to the antiques dealer about his obsession with old timepieces, mentioning the Mechanism specifically, and that he was aware of the exhibit at the Met. The small fire he’d set at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Brooklyn would make them think he was going to somehow reset the country’s cesium clock, disabling the Met’s time-security system, and steal the Mechanism.
A plot to steal the device seemed to be just the clever, subtle deduction for the cops to seize as Hale’s real motive. Officers would spend hours scouring the museum and nearby Central Park looking for him and examining the canvas bag he’d left. It contained four hollowed-out books, inside of which were two bags of baking soda, a small scanner and, of course, a clock—a cheap digital alarm. None of them meant anything but each was sure to keep the police busy for hours.
The complications in his plan were as elegant, if not as numerous, as those in what was reportedly the world’s most elaborate wristwatch, one made by Gerald Genta.
But at the moment Hale was nowhere near the museum, which he’d left a half hour ago. Not long after he’d entered and checked the bag, he’d walked into a restroom stall, then taken off his coat, revealing an army uniform, rank of major. He’d donned glasses and a military-style hat—hidden in a false pocket in his coat—and had left the museum quickly. He was presently in downtown Manhattan, slowly making his way through the security line leading into the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In a short time a number of soldiers and their families would attend a ceremony in their honor, hosted by the city and the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, in the HUD building. Officials would be greeting soldiers recently returned from foreign conflicts and their families, giving them letters of commendation for their service in recent world conflicts and thanking them for reenlisting. Following the ceremonies, and the requisite photo ops and trite statements to the press, the guests would leave and the generals and other government officials would reconvene to discuss future efforts to spread democracy to other places in the world.
These government officials, as well as the soldiers, their families and any members of the press who happened to be present, were the real point of Charles Hale’s mission in New York.
He had been hired for the simple purpose of killing as many of them as he could.
With husky, ever-smiling Bob driving, Lucy Richter sat in the car as they made their way past the reviewing stand outside the Housing and Urban Development building, where the parade was just winding down.
Her hand on her husband’s muscular thigh, Lucy was silent.
The Honda nosed through the heavy traffic, Bob making casual conversation, talking about the party tonight. Lucy responded halfheartedly. She’d grown troubled once again about the Big Conflict—what she’d confessed to Kathryn Dance. Should she go through with the reenlistment or not?
Self-interrogation . . .
When she’d agreed a month earlier; was she being honest or being deceptive with herself?
Looking for the things Agent Dance told her: anger, depression . . . Am I lying?
She tried to put the debate out of her head.
They were close to the HUD building now and across the street she saw protesters. They were against the various foreign conflicts America was involved in. Her friends and fellow soldiers overseas were pissed off at anybody who protested but, curiously, Lucy didn’t see it that way. She believed the very fact that these people were free to demonstrate and were not in jail validated what she was doing.
The couple drew closer to the checkpoint at the intersection near the HUD building. Two soldiers stepped forward to check their IDs and to look in the trunk.
Lucy stiffened.
“What?” her husband asked.
“Look,” she said.
He glanced down. Her right hand was on her hip, where she wore her sidearm when on duty.
“Going for the fast draw?” Bob joked.
“Instinct. At checkpoints.” She laughed. But it was a humorless sound.
Bitter fog . . .
Bob nodded at the soldiers and smiled to his wife. “I think we’re pretty safe. Not like we’re in Baghdad or Kabul.”
Lucy squeezed his hand and they proceeded to the parking lot reserved for the honorees.
Charles Hale was not completely apolitical. He had some general opinions about democracy versus theocracy versus communism versus fascism. But he knew his views amounted to the same pedestrian positions offered by listeners calling in to Rush Limbaugh or NPR radio, nothing particularly radical or articulate. So last October when Charlotte and Bud Allerton hired him for the job of “sending a message” about big government and wrong-minded American intervention in “heathen” foreign nations, Hale had yawned mentally.
But he was intrigued by the challenge.
“We’ve talked to six people and nobody’ll take the job,” Bud Allerton told him. “It’s next to impossible.”
Charles Vespasian Hale liked that word. One wasn’t bored when taking on the impossible. It was like “invulnerable.”
Charlotte and Bud—her second husband—were part of a right-wing militia fringe group that had been attacking federal government employees and buildings and UN facilities for years. They’d gone underground a while ago but recently, enraged at the government’s meddling forays into world affairs, she and the others in her nameless organization decided it was time to go after something big.
This attack would not only send their precious message but would cause some real harm to the enemy: killing generals and government officials who’d betrayed principles America was founded on and sent our boys and—God help us—girls to die on foreign soil for the benefit of people who were backward and cruel and non-Christian.
Hale had managed to extract himself from his rhetoric-addicted clients and got to work. On Halloween he’d come to New York, moved into the safe house in Brooklyn, and spent the next month and a half engrossed in the construction of his timepiece—acquiring supplies, finding unwitting associates to help him (Dennis Baker and Vincent Reynolds), learning everything he could about the Watchmaker’s supposed victims and surveilling the HUD building.
Which he was now approaching through the bitterly cold morning air.
This building had been chosen for the ceremonies and meetings not because of the department’s mission, which had nothing to do with the military, of course, but because it offered the best security of any federal building in lower Manhattan. The walls were thick limestone; if a terrorist were somehow to negotiate the barricades surrounding the place and detonate a car bomb, the resulting explosion would cause less damage than it would to a modern, glass-facaded structure. HUD was also lower than mo
st offices downtown, which made it a difficult target for missiles or suicide airplanes. It had a limited number of entrances and exits, thus making access control easier, and the room where the awards ceremony and later the strategic meetings would take place faced the windowless wall of the building across the alleyway so no sniper could shoot into the room.
With another two dozen soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons on the surrounding streets and tops of buildings, HUD was virtually impregnable.
From the exterior, that is.
But no one realized that the threat wouldn’t be coming from outside.
Charles Hale displayed his three military-issue IDs, two of them unique to this event and delivered to attendees just two days ago. He was nodded through the metal detector, then physically patted down.
A final guard, a corporal, checked his IDs a second time then saluted him. Hale returned the gesture and stepped inside.
The HUD building was labyrinthine but Hale now made his way quickly to the basement. He knew the layout of the place perfectly because the fifth supposed victim of the psycho Watchmaker, Sarah Stanton, was the estimator of the flooring company that had supplied carpeting and linoleum tile to the building, a fact he’d learned from public filings regarding government contractors. In Sarah’s file cabinets he found precise drawings of every room and hallway in HUD. (The company was also across the hall from a delivery service—which he’d called earlier to complain about a package to the Metropolitan Museum that had never been delivered, lending credence to the apparent plot to steal the Delphic Mechanism.)
In fact, all of the Watchmaker’s “assaults” this week, with the exception of the attention-getting blood bath at the pier, were vital steps in his mission today: the flooring company, Lucy Richter’s apartment, the Cedar Street alleyway and the florist shop.
He’d broken into Lucy’s to photograph, and later forge, the special all-access passes that were required for soldiers attending the awards ceremony (he’d learned her name from a newspaper story about the event). He’d also copied and later memorized a classified Defense Department memo she’d been given about the event and security procedures that would be in effect at HUD today.
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 127
