Faster and faster it fell, the wind roaring in his ears, as he clung to the lever, riding the crumbling smokestack down. His senses were assaulted by the deafening thunder of the collapsing structure; the air that rushed in his ears; the howling wind; the approaching roar of the sea. Through the flickers of lightning he could see the lower sections of the smokestack exploding against the ground in a running cloud of bricks, drawing a line of ruin in the direction of the water. As the sea came rushing up, Gideon braced himself. Just before the mouth of the stack crashed into the sea he leapt up and out, shedding some of his downward momentum while stiffening his body and clenching his stomach muscles and hands, seeking to hit the water in a rigid, vertical position.
He struck with tremendous force and was instantly plunged deep. He quickly spread out his legs and arms, slowing, then stopping, his descent into the depths. Then he swam upward, struggling in the chill water. Up and up he went, but the surface seemed too far to reach.
Just when he thought his lungs would burst, he broke through, gasping and heaving, sucking in air, treading water in the teeth of the storm. All was blackness. But then, as he rose on a swell, he could just make out the lights of City Island, and that oriented him.
Treading water, he tried to recover his breath, his strength. Then he struck out for the cobbled beach and his boat, swimming through the violent, heaving seas, the water breaking over his head and forcing him under every few seconds. His broken ribs were like veins of fire in his chest. But he kept on, the darkness complete, the boom and roar of the storm all around him like a violent womb. What little strength remained was rapidly ebbing. It would be ironic, he thought, if he survived all this only to drown.
But he was going to drown. He could hardly move his arms and legs anymore. He couldn’t keep his head above water. A big wave shoved him under and he realized he just didn’t have the strength to struggle back up.
That was when his feet struck the underwater cobbles of the beach and he was able to stand.
He didn’t know how long he lay on the beach or even how he found the strength to crawl above the booming surf. But he came back into consciousness on the high part of the strand. Next to him he could see the shattered mass of the great smokestack lying across the beach and going down to the water. Pulverized bricks lay everywhere, amid pieces of twisted metal.
Metal. He clasped at his pocket in sudden fear. The wire was still there.
Dragging himself to his hands and knees, he crawled over the rubble, using the lightning as his guide. There, after a brief search, he found the body of Nodding Crane nestled among the broken bricks, not five feet from the sea. In his fear, he had tried to descend. And that was what had killed him: he struck the ground instead of the water.
The body was a hideous, pulped mess.
Gideon crawled away and — finally — managed to rise to his feet. With a sense of emptiness, of utter physical and spiritual exhaustion, he stumbled away from the crushed remains of the smokestack to the salt marsh where he had hidden his boat.
He still had one very important thing left to do.
Epilogue
Gideon Crew followed Garza into the confines of the EES building on Little West 12th Street. Garza had said nothing, but Gideon could feel anger emanating from the man as if from a heat lamp.
The interior of EES looked unchanged: the same rows of tables covered with exotic models and scientific equipment; the same technicians and lab workers shuttling busily from here to there. Once again, Gideon wondered whom he was really working for. His phone call to DHS had confirmed, beyond doubt, that Glinn and his outfit were legit. But it nevertheless seemed surpassing strange.
They entered the spare conference room on the fourth floor. Glinn sat again at the head of the table, his one good eye as gray as a London sky.
Nobody said anything. Gideon took a seat without being asked, and Garza did the same.
“Well,” said Glinn, his one eye making a slow blink that seemed to give Garza permission to speak.
“Eli,” said Garza, his voice quiet but tense, “before we start I wish to protest in the most vigorous terms the way Crew here conducted himself on this assignment. Almost from the beginning he ignored our instructions. In every meeting he lied to me, repeatedly, and in the end he went rogue. He lied about where the confrontation was taking place, took an enormous risk, and created a huge potential problem for us on Hart Island.”
Another slow blink. “Tell me about the Hart Island problem.”
“Fortunately,” said Garza, “we were able to pinch it off.” He slapped that morning’s copy of the Post on the table. The headline screamed VANDALS STRIKE POTTER’S FIELD, TWO DEAD.
“Summarize.”
“The article says that Hart Island was struck by vandals last night. They stole a boat from City Island, tore up a bunch of graves, desecrated human remains, and vandalized some equipment. And then one of the vandals took it upon himself to climb the smokestack, which fell in the storm, killing him. He hasn’t yet been identified. Another one, a woman, was shot and killed by persons unknown. The others escaped and are being sought by police.”
“Excellent,” said Glinn. “Mr. Garza, once again you have proven your usefulness to this organization.”
“No thanks to Crew over there. It’s a damn miracle he pulled it off.”
“A miracle, Mr. Garza?”
“What would you call it? From my perspective, it was a cluster-fuck from beginning to end.”
Gideon saw a smile play briefly over Glinn’s colorless lips. “I would beg to differ.”
“Yeah?”
“As you know, here at EES we have many proprietary software algorithms that quantify human behavior and analyze elaborate game-theory simulations.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
“Apparently I do. Haven’t you asked yourself why we didn’t send a kill-team after Wu? Why we didn’t assemble formal, six-on-six surveillance teams to monitor Dr. Crew, here? Why we didn’t furnish him with additional information or weaponry? Why we didn’t engage police or FBI backup for him? We have ample resources to do all those things, and more.” He sat forward slowly. “Did you ever wonder why we didn’t attempt to kill Nodding Crane ourselves?”
Garza was silent.
“Mr. Garza, you know the computing power we have here. I ran all those scenarios — and many more. The reason we didn’t go those routes was because they all ended in failure. If Nodding Crane had been killed, the Chinese would have reacted — on a colossal scale. That prematurity was the event we had to avoid. The arc of the lone operator offered the highest probability of success. The arc in which Dr. Crew operated on his own, with no support; in which Nodding Crane remained alive to the very end, reporting back positive, reassuring news to his handlers.”
“You know that I think some of your programs are a lot of horsefeathers,” said Garza.
Glinn smiled. “I do. You’re a straight engineer — the best I’ve got. I’d be concerned if you weren’t suspicious of my psychoengineering methods.”
He turned toward Gideon. “Dr. Crew, here, has unique talents. And he labors under the most liberating psychological environment a human being can have: he knows when and how he’ll die. The Native Americans understood the power of this knowledge. The greatest vision a warrior could receive was to see his own death.”
Gideon shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He wondered if Glinn would be so smug and self-satisfied when he learned the final outcome of the op.
The gray eye turned on him, examining him with unblinking intensity. A crippled hand rose from the wheelchair, cupped, ready to receive. “The wire, Dr. Crew?”