The last Chicken McNugget disappeared into his mouth and he chewed slowly and thoughtfully, barely tasting it. He drained the chocolate milk jug. His bodily needs taken care of, he cleared his table, dumped the refuse, and headed out the door and into the bitter December cold, back down 125th Street to his basement studio and his ancient PC.
There, he would continue rallying the city to his cause.
36
Dr. Wansie Adeyemi was a most impressive-looking woman when she arrived at the United Nations to deliver a 10 AM speech to the General Assembly, Charles Attiah thought. He had been called in for a time-and-a-half shift for the UN Department of Safety and Security, where he was posted in the soaring lobby of the General Assembly building. He joined eighty other DSS guards whose job was to manage the dignitaries and delegations arriving for the speech, along with crowds surging to see Dr. Adeyemi, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier that year. Attiah was especially anxious to see her and had in fact requested this overtime detail, due to the fact that he was of Nigerian descent — and was proud of Adeyemi, now Nigeria’s ambassador and most famous citizen, and wanted to hear her speech to the UN.
Adeyemi had arrived about an hour before, with a large entourage and her own security detail, dressed in spectacular Nigerian kitenge dress, printed in a stunning black-and-white geometric pattern with bright-colored borders, and wearing a shimmering orange silk scarf wound around her head. She was tall, stately, dignified, and remarkably young given all her achievements, and Attiah was thrilled by her charisma.
Thousands had come to greet her as she passed through the lobby to cheering and the tossing of yellow roses, her signature flower. It was a shame, Attiah thought, that Dr. Adeyemi, a prominent Christian, had been forced to travel with such a large group of armed security guards, due to a fatwa, death threats, and even an assassination attempt.
Attiah had helped keep the respectful crowd in check behind velvet ropes as Dr. Adeyemi had passed through. She had been inside the hall now for an hour, giving a speech on HIV/AIDS and pleading for more funding from world governments for the string of HIV clinics she had established across West Africa. He couldn’t see her, but the speech was being broadcast live into the lobby for the general public to listen. Adeyemi spoke eloquently in English about the work of her clinics and the remarkable decline in new HIV infections due to her organization’s efforts. Thousands of lives had been spared because of her clinics, which provided not just lifesaving drugs but also educational programs. All this, however, had made her a target of Boko Haram, who claimed that her clinics were a Western plot to sterilize Muslim women, and who had bombed several of them.
The General Assembly loved the speech, interrupting many times to applaud. Here was something purely good, Attiah thought; something every nation could agree on.
Attiah could hear the speech winding up. Now Dr. Adeyemi’s vibrant voice was reaching a crescendo of expression, calling on the world to pledge to eradicate HIV/AIDS as it had smallpox. It was possible. It would take money, dedication, and education on the part of the governments of the world — but it was within reach.
More cheering, and she concluded to a rousing standing ovation. Attiah braced himself for the surge about to enter the lobby. Soon the doors opened and the foreign delegations, dignitaries, press, and guests streamed out, followed by Adeyemi and her entourage of Nigerian politicians, doctors, and social workers. The group was surrounded by her security contingent. What a world this was, Attiah thought, that even a saint such as her had enemies. But that was the way it was, and the security around her was tight as a drum, even on top of the United Nations’ highly trained DSS.
The crowd continued pouring out, excited, talking, still full of the inspiring speech. They streamed along the velvet ropes, all very orderly, surging as Dr. Adeyemi, her entourage, security guards, and fans moved through the lobby. The place was as full of people as Attiah had ever seen it, all centered on Adeyemi like bees clustering around a queen. The press was there, of course — bristling with television cameras.
Suddenly Attiah heard a series of rapid reports: bang, bang-bang-bang, bang! Well trained in firearms, he recognized instantly that the sounds were not, in fact, gunfire, but firecrackers. But the crowd had no such revelation, and the effect was electric: sudden, overwhelming panic. Shrieks and screams filled the lobby as people ran for cover, any cover, dashing madly about in all directions, colliding, falling, trampling each other. It was as if their brains had been shut off and pure instinct had taken over.
Attiah and his fellow guards tried to bring order and implement the carefully rehearsed anti-terrorist drill, but it was hopeless. Nobody was listening; nobody could listen; and the velvet ropes, the stanchions, the barricades all went down like a house of cards.
Fifteen seconds after the firecrackers, there were two hollow booms! one after the other, and in the blink of an eye the vast lobby filled with blinding thick smoke, which raised the level of terror to a pitch he hardly believed possible. People were crawling along the ground, screaming, grasping and tearing at each other like drowning souls. Attiah tried to help, did everything in his power to calm people down and lead them to the established safety zones, but they all seemed to have become crazed, mindless animals. He heard sirens through the murk as the police and fire and anti-terrorist teams arrived at the plaza outside, invisible in the smoke. The blind panic went on, and on, and on…And then the atmosphere began to clear, first just a thinning of the darkness, then a dirty-brown light, and then it cleared to a haze. The lobby doors were open, the forced-air systems roaring full-tilt, the NYPD cops were charging in, along with a slew of anti-terror units. As the smoke cleared, Attiah could see that almost everyone was still lying on the ground, having done what they could to take cover after the smoke bombs went off by dropping flat and crawling to safety.
And then Attiah saw a sight that struck such horror into his heart that he would never forget it as long as he lived. Lying on the floor, on her back, was the body of Dr. Wansie Adeyemi. He knew it was her because of the distinctive kitenge robe. But she had no head. Two security guards, whom Attiah assumed had been sheltering her, also lay dead next to her.
A huge pool of blood was still spreading from this scene of carnage, and as the full dimensions of the murderous situation dawned on the people around her corpse, a shrieking wail of grief rose up as her security guards charged about in confusion and fury, looking for the killer, even as the NYPD was mobilizing, organizing, directing, shouting, and clearing the mass of terrorized people.
Staring across the lobby, with its dark, drifting smoke, the cries of the frightened, the suited and helmeted figures rushing through the gloom with their loudspeakers blaring directions, the dense mass of flashing lights and sirens outside — Attiah felt like he had descended into Hell itself.
37
Bryce Harriman made the long ascent of the DigiFlood building, the glass elevator showing the lobby dwindling to a speck beneath him. Anton Ozmian himself had requested a meeting, and that of course was enough to make Harriman curious indeed — but at the moment he had other things on his mind, as well.
First and foremost was the murder of Dr. Wansie Adeyemi. Ever since his interview on America’s Morning the day before, Harriman had been the toast of the town, his every prognostication taken as gospel. It had been a wonderfully heady feeling. And so this new murder, tragic as it was, had been like a sucker punch to his gut. On the face of it, the beheading — and in particular the nature of the victim — seemed to have nothing in common with the earlier deaths. And therein lay the rub. Harriman realized that his command of the Decapitator story depended on the upholding of his theory. He’d already gotten three calls from his editor that day, asking if he’d dug up the dirt yet.