Charlie Mansard shivered. He was up early. He had spent the night on the yacht that they had rented as a location headquarters for the production, but he had slept very little – partly because of the motion, and partly because he had Lynette with him, but mainly because of the preshow nerves that were now building to their final peak. Charlie sat in the welldeck behind the wheel-house, wrapped in a yellow slicker and nursing a cup of hot, black coffee and a large brandy. Lynette, wearing a thick, navy-blue fisherman's sweater thrown on over her skimpy black bikini, was up by the bow, leaning on the rail and staring into the mist.
"It's like the whole city just went away."
Mansard grunted. "I wish to hell it would."
Lynette grinned. "And leave you all alone to play with your toys? Come on, Charlie, you know you love an audience."
Charlie scowled. "Sure, I love them to death."
"Are you going to behave like a bastard right up until showtime?"
"Probably."
"You want to go back to bed?"
Somewhere in the mist there was the slap of a helicopter. Mansard looked up. "It's too late now."
"That's not what you said last night."
Despite himself, Mansard grinned. "Last night was okay, wasn't it?"
"You always do get it up the night before a production."
By midday, the fog had thinned out to a dirty gray haze. On Liberty Island, the last preparations were in full swing. Cargo helicopters came and went in constant rotation, and gunships circled overhead. TV crews laid cable and positioned cameras while deacons, some with bomb sniffers, prowled the area. Caterers had started laying out the aftershow buffet for the president and his guests. The musicians were about to begin the sound check, and the two-hundred-piece live choir would start being ferried in by chopper. The whole process was being conducted under the hard, watchful eyes of soldiers toting M-25s and demanding passes from everyone who moved.
Charlie Mansard was greatly relieved that his part of the event was off the island and onto the water. The projector banks were installed on the four big bridging rafts, each of which was quite capable of carrying a tank. They were moored some two hundred yards out from Liberty Island, bobbing on a gentle swell as the riggers crawled over them making last-minute connections. The tugs that were going to tow the rafts to the starting point would arrive at two-thirty. In the hours between dawn and noon, the yacht had been transformed from Mansard's love nest to his flagship. The decks were full of his people, and there was a constant shuttle of small boats between it and the rafts.
Compared to the show they had put on inside the Garden for Aden Proverb, the four skywalkers that would go up the Hudson were fairly simple in terms of hands-on control. They were big, but they were in no way as complex as, for instance, the red mist and multiple apparitions that had been done for Proverb. Like the original Four Horsemen, the new figures were preprogrammed and, once started, pretty much ran themselves. Human intervention would be necessary only in the case of serious malfunction. That took a major weight off the teams who normally ran the manual and DNI controls, and the atmosphere on the boat was close to that of a party. Champagne was being served, and a number of the men had brought their girlfriends. Mansard had taken a very liberal attitude toward the project's government expense account. Nobody had complained about the receipts he was turning in by the truckload, so he just went on spending. "We may never pass this way again, so let's get as much as we can," he said.
Mansard had managed to exclude from the boat anyone who was not part of his own team. There were no military personnel and no one from the White House. That arrangement did even more than the champagne to enhance the sense of it being a day out. There was even some barely covert drug use. By the early afternoon, it was warm enough to sunbathe. Nobody was too particular about the size and modesty of their swimwear, and at one point a deacon gunship had hovered overhead, complaining by radio about the naked and near-naked people on the deck of the yacht. Mansard had instructed the communications operator to ignore it.
"What are they going to do? Blow us out of the water? They can't deprive Faithful of his show."
At around two-fifteen, Jimmy Gadd, who had not joined in the party but remained on the raft to supervise the checks and last-minute adjustments, called over.
"We've got the tugs on the radar. You should be able to see them in a couple of minutes."
Mansard moved to the rail and peered into the haze. He could not see the tugs, but it was good to know they were out there and on time. He turned his attention to the rafts. There was very little movement. Things were practically ready. The party noise behind him was forgotten. As soon as the sun went down, his crowning creation would blaze into life. He slowly rubbed his hands together.
"Just you wait, New York. Just wait until dark."
Carlisle
Carlisle stepped out of the car and looked around. The fog still clung between the buildings. It was so heavy and sluggish that he did not want to think about what it was made of. Reeves and Donahue were waiting for him, but he hesitated before walking into the building. Whatever happened, this was the last day. When he walked out again, the world would be different – if, indeed, he walked out at all. By the end of that day he could well be dead or a prisoner in the sub-basement. There might be a new regime, or he could end up in the middle of some uniquely weird product of Dreisler's warped imagination.
A gunship rattled overhead and Carlisle looked up, watching until it vanished beyond the skyline to the west. Vultures gathering? During his drive down to Astor Place, the city had looked as if it were in a state of siege. The streets were empty, even for Sunday morning. It was as if the people of New York, at least, put no trust in Larry Faithful's Day of National Reconciliation and its promise of sweetness and light. New Yorkers expected trouble, and they could not have been reassured by the massive show of official strength. NYPD, deacons, and the army were all out in force. Pharaohs and Patton vehicles rumbled through the echoing streets. Police cruisers and the deacons' Continentals sped across intersections with their sirens screaming, ignoring the stop lights. Large knots of riot police were gathered at strategic points, like Columbus Circle and Herald and Union Squares. With so much manpower on the streets, only a skeleton crew could have been left at Astor Place.
Harry Carlisle squared his shoulders and walked into the main entrance of the CCC complex. Reeves and Donahue fell into step beside him. At least the day would see the end of that particular nonsense. For the last week, they had been guarding him as if he were a celebrity or a politician. As the three of them walked in, Reeves carefully scanned the interior of the entrance hall. There were only the routine guards and receptionists.
"So this is the day?"
Carlisle nodded. "That's what they told me."
"What do you expect to happen?"
"Anything could happen. Just remember one thing: Be ready to duck. Don't get so far into anything that you won't be able to duck back out again."
"We'll be looking to you."
"That's the part I love."
Carlisle had been held incommunicado by Dreisler for another four days, supposedly for his own protection, but Harry Carlisle had given up trying to guess what Dreisler was up to. On the fifth day he had made a carefully choreographed return to work. From that point on, he had been guarded night and day in case the deacons took another crack at him. He had even been stashed in an Upper West Side apartment. He thought it unlikely that the Magicians would try again so quickly after their last failure, but it seemed as if not much was working according to logic anymore.
The situation between Carlisle and the deacons was a strange standoff. Probably every deacon in the city knew unofficially about the attempt to disappear him and the resulting deaths of Spencer and the others. Officially, however, the incident had never happened. Winters, the only survivor, could not file any kind of report without violating the Magicians' damn-fool blood oaths. Deacons shot him murderous looks when they passed him in the corridors of justice, but looks could not kill. They were enough, though, to make him glad of his bodyguard and to ensure that he spent most of his time in parts of the building that were solid PD turf.