“Sit down,” Byrnes said.
Halloway smiled. But he sat.
“We’re charging you with the criminal sale of controlled substances in the first degree,” Byrnes said. “That’s Section 220.43 of the Penal Law, an A-1 felony punishable by a term of twenty-five years to life. We’ve got twenty-four hours to arraign you before McNabb-Mallory kicks in. That means you’ll be before a criminal court judge early tomorrow morning. We’ll ask for sky-high bail, you’re an international drug dealer. If he goes along with that, we’ll have six days to crack your goddamn computers and present our case to a grand jury. Any questions?”
Halloway was still smiling.
“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “You should have listened to the Secret Service when they told you to back off, but you didn’t. So here we are, at an awkward juncture that could have been avoided. I certainly shouldn’t be here, but neither should you. Which is why I’m suggesting you listen to me now.” He looked at his watch. “When I walk out of here in five minutes, you will forget you ever saw me, you will forget a woman named Cass Ridley met a horrible fate in the zoo’s Lion Habitat, you will forget …”
“What are you, a hypnotist?” Ollie said.
“Allow me to finish, Detective Weeks. I am advising you to put all of this behind you. Forget Jerry Hoskins was murdered, forget that two black drug dealers in Diamondback were subsequently killed, forget everything that’s happened since December twenty-third, forget you ever wokeup that morning. There are bad people in this world, boys. Pursuing this any further …”
“People like you,” Carella said, nodding.
“No, you’ve got it backwards. I’m one of thegood guys. I’m talking about people who areterrorists. People who consider us the Great Satan. People who wish us nothing but harm. These people all believe in the same cause. And that cause is to drive Americans out of the Arab world.”
His tone had changed all at once, his voice sounding suddenly portentous and, to tell the truth, somewhat frightening.
“There’s a vast network of individual terrorist cells out there,” he said, “take my word for it. Three or four dedicated individuals in each cell, that’s all it takes to do considerable mischief. Anonymous littlegangs,if you will, who get their orders and their financing from the top, and then use their own judgment in executing those orders. Makes it enormously difficult to zero in on them, no less stop them. Why do you think those two men who bombed theCole still can’t be traced back to bin Laden? Why do you think …?”
“What’s any of this got to do with you buying and selling dope?” Ollie said.
“No one has yet produced any evidence to that effect,” Halloway said. “Once I walk through that door …”
“You’re not walking through any door,” Byrnes said. “You’re going straight to a detention cell downstairs.”
“That would be inadvisable.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Ollie asked. “The CIA?”
Halloway smiled.
“Cause you want my opinion, thereain’t no CIA. Any outfit so fuckin stupid has got to be a cover for ourreal intelligence agency.”
“I’ll have to remember that one,” Halloway said, and actually laughed. “No CIA, that’s very funny. On the other hand,you might wish to consider the possibility that the CIA,if it exists, has adopted the same techniques as the people they’re fighting. If thereis a CIA—and perhaps you’re right, perhaps there isn’t—but on the slight offchance that theremight be, then perhaps they’ve splintered into hundreds of littlecounter -terrorist cells all over the globe. Little self-reliant units that take orders from the top and carry them out autonomously. Authorized roving bands of brothers, you might say— sisters, too, if you wish to be politically correct. Legitimate loose cannons. And if this is actually so, then perhaps you stepped…”
“Authorized bywho?” Ollie said.
“Well, if thereis a CIA, then the authorization comes directly from the President or the National Security Council, doesn’t it?” He smiled again. Looked at his watch again. “Let’s say you stepped in the way of a rolling cannon on a tilting deck, boys. You stumbled into something far more vital to the interests of the United States than a bunch of dumb flatfoots, believe me. You should have known enough to step aside, boys. Instead, you stepped in shit. Wipe off your shoes and go home.”
“Somebody else telling us to go home,” Carella said.
“I’m telling you it’s possible to get chewed to shreds by lions,” Halloway said.
“He’s saying don’t go in the lion’s cage tonight,” Ollie said.
“For the lions are ferocious and they bite,” Carella said.
“Well, Mr. Halloway,” Byrnes said, and stabbed at a button on his intercom, “I appreciate your advice, truly. But you see we might feel derelict in our duty if we just let you walk out of here. So with the permission of the President and the National…”
“Sir?” a voice said.
“I’ll need an officer to take a prisoner down,” Byrnes said.
“I’ll send someone forthwith, sir.”
“Thanks,” Byrnes said, and clicked off.
“I want to warn you again not to do this,” Halloway said. “Don’t open a can of peas that might explode in your face. Don’t threaten our very existence, our sacred undertaking, our…”
“Gee, sacred,” Ollie said.
“Because if you do, if you destroy everything we’ve been trying to accomplish, if you open our files to public scrut…”
“I thought your computers were sacred, too,” Ollie said.
The door to Byrnes’s office opened.
“Sir?” a uniformed officer said.
“Maggie, find a cell downstairs for this gentleman, will you?” He turned to Halloway. “Do we have to cuff you?” he asked.
“Only lions bite,” Halloway said, and smiled thinly. “You’ll never even get me arraigned, I promise you. You’ve got to be kidding here. The Commissioner will come down on you so hard you’ll wish you lived on Mars. You think we’ll let a Mickey Mouse detective squad in the asshole of the universe jeopardize everything we’ve been working for? Who’d stop those bastardsthen, can you tell me? Who’d stop them from poisoning our reservoirs or blowing up our trains? Who’d stop them from planting bombs in day care centers or baseball parks? Who’d stop them from destroying this land of ours? Thisworldof ours? Thisfree world of ours? You? Are you the ones who’ll save us? Don’t make me laugh! You should get on your hands and knees and praise God we exist! Because if it weren’t for us, there’d be nobody! Nobody at all! They’d make it impossible to walk the streets! They’d blow up your babies in their cribs! Without us, who the hell on earth would eventry to stop them? I’m asking you.Who?”
WILL STRUTHERS HELPED Antonia out of the taxi in front of Clarendon Hall and looked up at the falling snow. The snow added a somewhat festive air to the evening. In a city of strangers, people were actually smiling at each other as they entered the old limestone building. Will looked up at the television monitors spaced high on the walls everywhere around the lobby, all of them showing the stage inside. “For the benefit of latecomers,” Antonia explained, which Will didn’t quite understand, but he followed her as she handed their tickets to a man standing at one of the entrance doors to the hall itself. Together, they stepped into the vast space, all red and gold and magnificent, glittering like an outsized Christmas present left by Santa himself. Will had never seen anything so splendiferous in his life. Not even in Texas.