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 most 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.
The apparent murder of the fictional Teddy Adams had served a purpose, as well. It was in the alley behind this very building that Hale had placed the body of the Westchester car wreck victim. When Charlotte Allerton--playing the man's distraught sister--had arrived, the guards had let the hysterical woman through the back door of HUD and allowed her to use the restroom downstairs without searching her. Once inside, she'd planted what Hale was now retrieving from the bottom of the in-wall trash bin: a silenced .22-caliber pistol and two metal disks. There'd been no other way to get these items into a building protected by a series of metal detectors and pat-downs. He now hid these in his pockets and headed to the sixth-floor conference room.
Once there, Hale spotted what he thought of as the mainspring of his plan: the two large flower arrangements that Joanne Harper had created for the ceremony, one in the front of the room and one in the back. Hale had learned from the Government Service Administration vendor liaison office that she had the contract to supply flower arrangements and plants to the HUD facility. He'd broken into her Spring Street workshop to hide something in the vases, which would pass through security with, he hoped, only a brief look, since Joanne had been a trusted vendor for several years. When Hale had broken
into her workshop he'd taken with him, in his shoulder bag, something in addition to the moon-faced clock and his tools: two jars of an explosive known as Astrolite. More powerful than TNT or nitroglycerin, Astrolite was a clear liquid that remained explosive even when absorbed into another substance. Hale found which arrangements were going to HUD and poured the Astrolite into the bottoms of the vases.
Hale, of course, might have simply broken into the four locations without the fiction of the Watchmaker, but if anyone had seen a burglar or noticed anything missing or out of order, the question would have arisen: What was he really up to? So he'd created layers of motives for the break-ins. His original plan was simply to pretend to be a serial killer to get access to the four locations he needed to, sacrificing his unfortunate assistant, Vincent Reynolds, in order to convince the police that the Watchmaker was just who he seemed to be. But then in mid November, an organized crime contact in the area called and told him that an NYPD cop named Dennis Baker was looking for a hit man to kill an NYPD detective. The mob wouldn't touch killing a cop, but was Hale interested? He wasn't but he immediately realized that he could use Baker as a second complication to the plan: a citizen getting revenge against a crooked cop. Finally, he added the wonderful flourish of the Delphic Mechanism theft.
Motive is the one sure way to get yourself caught. Eliminate the motive, you eliminate suspicion. . . .
Hale now stepped to the front flower arrangement in the conference room and adjusted it the way any diligent soldier would do--a soldier proud to be part of this important occasion. When no one was looking he pushed one of the metal disks he'd just retrieved from downstairs--computerized detonators--into the explosive, pushed the button to arm it and fluffed up the moss, obscuring the device. He did the same to the arrangement in the back, which would detonate via a radio signal from the first detonator.
These two lovely arrangements were now lethal bombs, containing enough explosive to obliterate the entire room.
The tone in Rhyme's lab was electric.
Everyone, except Pulaski, on a mission at Rhyme's request, was staring at the criminalist, who was in turn gazing at the evidence charts that surrounded him like battalions of soldiers awaiting his orders.
"There're still too many questions," Sellitto said. "You know what's going to happen if we push that button."
Rhyme glanced at Amelia Sachs. "What do you think?" he asked.
Her ample lips tightened. "I don't think we have any choice. I say yes."
"Oh, man," Sellitto said.
Rhyme said to the rumpled lieutenant, "Make the call."
Lon Sellitto dialed a little-known number that connected him immediately to the scrambled phone sitting on the desk of the mayor of New York City.
Standing in the conference room in HUD, which was filling up with soldiers and their guests, Charles Hale felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced down at the text message, another one from Charlotte Allerton. FAA grounding all flights. Trains stopped. Special team at NIST office checking U.S. clock. It's a go. God bless.
Perfect, Charles thought. The police believed the complication about the Delphic Mechanism and his apparent plan to hack into the computer controlling the nation's cesium clock.
Hale stepped back, looked over the room and plastered a satisfied look on his face. He left and took the elevator down to the main lobby. He walked outside, where limos were arriving, under heavy security. He eased into the crowd that was gathered on the other side of the concrete barriers, some waving flags, some applauding.
He noted the protesters too, scruffy young people, aging hippies and activist professors and their spouses, he assessed. They carried placards and were chanting things that Hale couldn't hear. The gist, though, was displeasure at U.S. foreign policy.
Hang around, he told them silently.
Sometimes you get what you ask for.
Chapter 38
Entering the sixth-floor conference room with seventeen other soldiers from all branches of the armed services, United States Army Sergeant Lucy Richter gave a brief smile to her husband. A wink too to her family--her parents and her aunt--who were sitting across the room.
The acknowledgment was perhaps a little abrupt, a little distant. But she was not here as Bob's wife or as a daughter or niece. She was here as a decorated soldier, in the company of her superior officers and her fellow men and women at arms.
The soldiers had assembled downstairs in the building, while their families and friends had come to the conference room. Waiting for their grand entrance, Lucy had chatted with a young man, an air force corpsman from Texas who'd come back to the States for medical treatment (one of those fucking rocket-propelled grenades had ricocheted off his chest pack before exploding several yards away). He was eager to get back home, he'd said.
"Home?" she'd asked. "I thought we were reenlisting."
He'd blinked. "I am. I mean my unit. That is home."
Standing uneasily in front of her chair, she glanced at the reporters. The way they looked around them, searching hungrily for story opportunities like snipers seeking targets, made her nervous. Then she put them out of her mind and gazed at the pictures that had been mounted for the ceremony. Patriotic images. She was moved by the sight of the American flag, the photo of the Trade Center towers, the military banners and emblems, the officers with their decorations and rows of breast bars, revealing how long and where they'd served.
And all the while the debate raged. Thinking back to what Kathryn Dance had said, she asked herself: And what's the truth for me?
Go back to the land of bitter fog?
Or stay here?
Yes, no?
The side doors opened and in walked two quick-eyed men--Secret Service--followed by a half dozen men and women in suits or uniforms with senior staff insignias and ribbons and medals covering their chests. Lucy recognized a few of the bigwigs from Washington and New York City, though she was more stirred by the presence of the brass from the Pentagon, since they'd come up through the world that she'd made a part of her life.
The wearisome debate continued within her.
Yes, no . . .
The truth . . . What's the truth?
When the officials were seated, a general from New Jersey made a few comments and introduced a poised, handsome man in a dark blue uniform. General Roger Poulin, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rose and walked to the microphone.
Poulin nodded to his presenter and then to those in the room. In a deep voice he said, "Generals, distinguished officials from the Departments of Defense and State and the City of New York, fellow servicemen and -women and guests . . . I'm delighted to welcome you here today to this celebration honoring eighteen brave individuals, people who have risked their lives and displayed their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice to preserve the freedom of our country and carry the cause of democracy throughout the globe."
Applause erupted and the guests rose to their feet.
The noise died down and General Poulin began his speech. Lucy Richter listened at first but her attention soon faded. She was looking at the civilians in the room--the family members and guests of the soldiers. People like her father and mother and husband and aunt, the spouses, the children, the parents and grandparents, the friends.
These people would leave after the ceremony, go to their jobs or their homes. They'd get back to the simple business of making their way in the world one day, one hour, one minute at a time.
Her military demeanor would not, of course, let her smile but Lucy Richter could feel her face relaxing and the tension in her shoulders vanish like the bitter fog carried away on a hot wind. The anger, the depression, the denial--everything that Kathryn Dance had told her to look for--suddenly were gone.
She closed her eyes momentarily and then turned her attention back to the man who was, after the president of the United States, her senior commander, understanding clearly now that, whatever else happened in her life, her decision had been m
ade and she was content.
Charles Hale was in the men's room of a small coffee shop not far from the HUD building. In a filthy stall he extracted a trash bag from beneath his undershirt. He stripped off the military uniform and put on jeans, sweats, gloves and a jacket, which he'd just bought. He stuffed the uniform, coat and hat inside, keeping the gun. He took the battery and chip out of his phone and added them to the bag. Then, waiting until the restroom was empty, he stuffed it into the trash, left the coffee shop and walked outside.
On the street again, he bought a prepaid mobile phone with cash and wandered along the shadowy sidewalk until he was three blocks from HUD. From this vantage point he had a narrow view of the back of the building and the alley where the first "victim" of the Watchmaker had been found. He could just make out a sliver of the sixth-floor window of the conference room where the ceremonies were going on.
The jacket was thin and he supposed he should be cold, but in the excitement of the moment he felt no discomfort. He looked at his digital wristwatch, which was synchronized to the timers in the bomb detonators.
The time was 12:14:19. The ceremony had been under way since noon. With bombs, he'd learned in his exhaustive research, you always gave people the chance to settle in, for stragglers to arrive, for guards to grow lax.
12:14:29.
One nice aspect of these particular bombs, he reflected, something fortuitous, was that Joanne the florist had filled the vases with hundreds of tiny glass marbles. Anybody not killed or badly injured by the explosives themselves would be riddled with these pellets of glass.
12:14:44.
Hale found himself leaning forward, his weight on the balls of his feet. There was always the possibility that something would go wrong--that security would make a last-minute sweep for explosives or that somebody had seen him on the video camera entering the building then leaving suspiciously after a short period of time.
12:14:52.
Still, the risk of failure made the victory against boredom that much sweeter. His eyes were riveted on the alleyway behind the HUD building.
The Cold Moon Page 38
