It would stop fast to let El Halcón and the other men out. The stop would eventually alarm the security people at detention. But by the time they got reinforcements here, El Halcón and Carreras-López would be long gone.
Now the Cadillac in which Antonio Carreras-López sat was gaining on the van. He could see it about a hundred yards ahead. In sixty seconds they were at the turnoff, and the van, then Carreras-López’s limo, turned into the empty, weed-filled parking lot that surrounded a dilapidated factory. The towering sign read only H&R Fab icat s, I c. These remaining letters, six feet high, would have been proudly red at one point but were now scarred and sickly pink.
The van and limo stopped near the helicopter, its rotors idling, and a van, in front of which the lawyer’s men stood.
Carreras-López glanced back and saw no police vehicles. Nor any choppers overhead or boats in the choppy water where the East River met the harbor.
None of the authorities suspected a thing. They would have ten minutes before anyone at detention grew concerned about the van’s absence and sent cars.
Carreras-López climbed from the limo. He said to the driver, “Leave now.” He gave the man five hundred-dollar bills and shook his hand.
“Thank you, sir. I’ve enjoyed driving you. I’ll see you when you’re back.”
Which would never happen. But he said, “I’ll look forward to it.”
The Cadillac slowly bounded out of the broken, uneven parking lot.
Carreras-López waved to the van, where El Halcón was probably stripping the dead guards of their money and weapons. His client had once killed a man for his wallet — not for the money but because he liked the embossed leather... and the picture of the victim’s wife and daughter. El Halcón had told Carreras-López that he’d kept the picture on his bedside table for years.
A thought that even now gave the lawyer a shiver. What a man I have for a client.
The door to the van opened.
“Hola!” Carreras-López called.
Then he froze. He whispered, “Mierda.”
Because it wasn’t El Halcón climbing from the vehicle. But a redheaded policewoman, in full tactical gear and holding a machine gun. She was followed by three, no four, no six other officers, half with the letters ESU on their body armor. Half with FBI.
“No!” the lawyer cried.
Two of these officers ran to the helicopter and dragged out the pilot, and the others arrested the men by the van. The policewoman stepped quickly to the lawyer, with a younger, blond male officer. “Hands!” she shouted. The lawyer sighed, licked his lips with a dry tongue and lifted his arms. He remembered seeing her in Lincoln Rhyme’s apartment.
How? How had it happened?
A perfect plan.
So perfectly ruined.
How? The question looped through his mind.
As he was cuffed by the woman and patted down by the man, he tried to figure this out.
The texts were the right codes.
El Halcón had gotten into the van. I saw him.
I saw the flashes of the gunshots.
Or did I?
A clever man himself, he thought: No, no, no. They had learned of, or guessed, the plan and had located Carreras-López’s men before they could murder the driver and guard. The police had offered them a plea bargain in exchange for the codes and the details of the escape.
The flashes from inside the vehicle weren’t a gun but a cell phone or flashlight to convince anyone watching that the second set of guards had died. As soon as the van was out of sight, it had diverted and this one, with the tactical officers, had taken its place for the trip to the factory here.
But that didn’t answer the bigger question of how: How had someone — Lincoln Rhyme, surely — come to suspect that an escape was in the works, in the first place?
The policewoman said, “Sit down here. I’ll help you.”
She eased him to the ground. “Please. How did you figure it out? How did you possibly know what we were doing? I want to know. Will you tell me?”
She ignored him as her attention was drawn to an approaching black limo. It stopped and a tall, lean man got out.
Carreras-López sighed. It was Henry Bishop, the U.S. attorney.
The policewoman walked to the man and they had a conversation. Not surprisingly, as they spoke, they both kept their eyes on him.
Finally, Bishop nodded. They both began walking, in slow strides, to the lawyer.
Chapter 70
Rhyme was in his accessible van, not far from the takedown site by the water’s edge in Brooklyn.
He was presently watching through the window and listening to the staccato voice traffic on the police scanner.
Yes, he and Sachs had had a lovely dinner last night.
But they hadn’t discussed movies or politics or the thousands of other topics grand and topics small that husbands and wives talked about over meals; they talked about the loose ends that had piqued Rhyme’s interest about the Diamond District case.
“Anomalies, Sachs. Pieces don’t fit quite right.”
“Such as?”
She had been enjoying quite the nice Burgundy. Chardonnay, of course. But not overly oaked, a subtlety that the French — unlike the Californians — had mastered. Rhyme took this on faith; he had swapped the Glenmorangie for a Cab. If one had to drink wine, it should be red and formidable.
He’d explained the loosest of the ends: “How did Jatin Patel come into possession of the kimberlite in the first place?”
She’d cocked her head. “Never thought about it. A good question.”
He’d asked with more than a dusting of irony, “Somebody strolling past the geothermal site or the refuse dump happens to notice an unremarkable dark hunk of rock and takes it to a diamond merchant for assessment?”
“Doesn’t make sense.”
“Another problem: Didn’t the whole fake-earthquake thing, didn’t it seem just a bit improbable? Almost as if we were supposed to figure out it was staged.”
“True. You get caught up in a fast-moving case, you don’t step back.”
Rhyme had said, “Say there’s a Mr. Y.”
“Is ‘X’ taken?”
A smile. “Remember? I used that before.”
“Okay, go ahead. Mr. Y.”
“He has a plan too. Mr. Y or somebody working for him calls Krueger — anonymously — and claims he’s working for New World Mining. They’re all in a frenzy because a drilling site in Brooklyn has dug up diamond-rich kimberlite. They hire Krueger to create fake earthquakes to shut down the drilling and kill Patel and anyone else who knows about it.”
“And,” Sachs had said, “Mr. Y ships some kimberlite from Africa and plants it at the geothermal site.”
“Exactly. Remember the trace we found? Coleonema pulchellum — the confetti bush — also from Africa.”
Rhyme had then enjoyed another piece of veal in a fennel cream sauce, laced with vermouth. Back in the day, for years after the accident, Thom had had to feed him. Of late, as long as someone cut up his food, or it arrived naturally in bite-sized form, he could handle the dining part on his own just fine.
She had said, “Got it, so far. Mr. Y sets up this elaborate plan for fake earthquakes apparently to stop diamond production... but he’s got some other plan entirely. Which is...?”
“I couldn’t figure that out. Not at first. But then I asked myself, why Brooklyn, why the Northeast Geo site? Mr. Y could’ve picked any construction site in the area. No, there was something special about Cadman Plaza. And what was unique there?”