“Okay—take it easy. Don’t—”
Flynn hung up and turned to Hickey and Megan, who had joined them. “A TPU sergeant—spiritual kin to the RUCs and the Gestapo. I didn’t like the tone of his voice.”
Hickey nodded. “It’s their height. Gives them a sense of superiority.” He smiled. “Easier targets, though.”
Flynn looked at the doors. “We caused a bit too much confusion. I hope they reestablish some chain of command before the hotheaded types start acting. The next few minutes are going to be critical.”
Megan turned to Hickey and spoke quickly. “Do you want Sullivan to help you place the bombs?”
“Megan, love, I want you to help me. Run along and get what we need.” He waited until Megan left, then turned to Flynn. “We have to make a decision now about the hostages—a decision about who kills which one.”
Flynn looked at the Cardinal sitting straight on his throne, looking every inch a Prince of the Church. He knew it wasn’t vanity or affectation he was observing but a product of two thousand years of history, ceremony, and training. The Cardinal would be not only a difficult hostage but a difficult man to make a corpse of. He said to Hickey, “It would be a hard man who could put a bullet into him.”
Hickey’s eyes, which normally twinkled with an old man’s mischief, turned narrow and malevolent. “Well, I’ll do him, if”—Hickey inclined his head toward Maureen— “if you’ll do her.”
Flynn glanced at Maureen sitting in the clergy pews between Baxter and Father Murphy. He hesitated, then said, “Yes, all right. Go on and plant the bombs.”
Hickey ignored him. “As for Baxter, anyone will kill him. You tell Megan to do the priest. The little bitch should draw her first blood the hard way—not with Maureen.”
Flynn looked at Hickey closely. It was becoming apparent that Hickey was obsessed with taking as many people with him as possible. “Yes,” he said, “that seems the way to handle it.” He looked out over the vast expanse around him and said, more to himself than to Hickey, “God, how did we get in this place, and how can we get out?”
Hickey took Flynn’s arm and pressed it tightly. “Funny, that’s almost exactly what Padraic Pearse said when his men seized the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday. I remember it very clearly. The answer then, as it is now, is that you got in with luck and blarney, but you’ll not get out alive….” He released Flynn’s arm and slapped him on the back. “Cheer up, lad, we’ll take a good number of them with us, like we did in 1916. Burn this place down while we’re about it. Blow it up, too, if we get those bombs in place.”
Flynn stared at Hickey. He might have to kill Hickey before Hickey got them all killed.
Megan Fitzgerald mounted the sanctuary, carrying two suitcases. She walked rapidly to the right side of the high altar, and placed them beside a bronze plate set into the marble floor, then lifted the plate. John Hickey came up beside her and picked up the suitcases. “Go on.”
Megan descended a shaky metal ladder, found a light chain, and pulled it. Hickey climbed down and handed the suitcases to Megan, who placed them gently on the floor. They examined the unevenly excavated crawl space. Building rubble, pipes, and ducts nearly filled the space around them, and it was difficult to move or to see clearly. Megan called out, “Here’s the outer wall of the crypt.”
Hickey called back, “Yes, and here’s the wall of the staircase that continues down into the sacristy. Come along.” Hickey turned on a flashlight and probed the area to his front as he moved, dragging one of the suitcases behind him.
They followed a parallel course to the descending staircase wall, hunching lower as they progressed. The dirt floor turned to Manhattan bedrock, and Hickey called out, “I see it up ahead.” He crawled to a protruding mound from which rose the footing of a massive column. “Here it is. Come closer.” He played the light around the dark spaces. “See? Here’s where they cut through the old foundation and footing to let the sacristy stairs pass through. If we dug down farther, we’d find the sacristy’s subbasement. It’s somewhat like the layout of a modern split-level home.”
Megan was skeptical. “Damned confusing sort of place. The fire in the attic is much surer.”
“Don’t be getting cold feet, now, Megan. I’ll not blow you up.”
“I’m only concerned with placing them properly.”
“Of course.” Hickey ran his hand over the column. “Now the story is that when they blasted the new stairs through the foundation in 1904 they weakened these flanking columns. In architectural terms, they’re under stress. The old boy whose father worked on the blasting told me that the Irish laborers believed only God Almighty kept the whole place from collapsing when they set the dynamite. But God Almighty doesn’t live here anymore, so when we plant this plastic and it blows, nothing will hold up the roof.”
“And if it does hold up, will you be a believer then?”
“No. I’ll think we didn’t place the explosives properly.” Hickey opened the suitcase and pulled out twenty white bricks wrapped in cellophane. He tore the cellophane from the white, putty-like substance and molded a brick into the place where the bedrock met the hewn and mortared stone of the column footing. Megan joined him, and they sculpted the bricks around the footing. He handed her the flashlight. “Hold this steady.”
Hickey implanted four detonators, connected by wires to a battery pack, into the plastic. He picked up an alarm clock and looked at his watch. “It’s four minutes after six now. The clock doesn’t know A.M. from P.M., so the most time I can give it is eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes.” He began turning the clock’s alarm dial slowly counter-clockwise, talking as he did. “So I’ll set the alarm for five minutes after six— no, I mean three minutes after six.” He laughed as he kept turning the dial. “I remember once, a lad in Galway who didn’t understand that. At midnight he set the timer to go off at one minute after twelve, in what he thought would be the afternoon. British officer’s club, I think it was. Yes, lunchtime, he thought. Anyway, at one minute past midnight … he was standing before his Maker, who must have wondered how he became so unmade.” He laughed again as he joined the clock wire to the batteries.
“At least don’t get us killed until we’ve set the one on the other side.”
“Good point. Did I do that right? Well, I hope so.” He pulled the clock switch, and the loud ticking filled the damp space. He looked at her. “And don’t forget, my sharp little lass, only you and I know exactly where these are planted, which gives us some advantages and a bit of power with your friend, Mr. Flynn. Only you and I can decide if we want to give an extension of the deadline to meet our demands.” He laughed as he pushed the clock into the explosives and molded the plastic around it. “But if the police have killed us before then, well, at three minutes after six—which incidentally happens to be the exact time of sunrise—they’ll get a message from us, directly from hell.” He took some earth from the floor and pressed it into the white plastic. “There. That looks innocent, doesn’t it? Give me a hand here.” He spoke as he continued to camouflage the plastic explosives. “You’re young. You don’t want it to end so soon, I know, but you must have some sort of death wish to get mixed up in this. Nobody dropped you in through the roof. You people planned this for over a year. Wish I’d had a year to think about it. I’d be home now where I belong.”
He picked up the flashlight and turned it onto her face. Her bright green eyes glowed back at him. “I hope you had a good look at this morning’s sunrise, lass, because the chances are you’ll not see another one.”