“Which one is real?” Samimi demanded.
“Take off the belts,” Lucian insisted.
Samimi nodded to the lead terrorist, who untied the belt around Nina’s waist and then moved on to Veronica.
Once her granddaughter’s belt was removed, Nina started to pull the little girl away from the podium.
“I can’t go,” Veronica screamed. “I can’t leave Hosh.”
“Shut her up,” Samimi’s number-one man shouted.
“I won’t go!” the child cried.
“If you don’t shut her up, I will.”
This was how tragedies happened, Lucian thought as he rushed over and knelt down in front of the child. The tension was too high. He had to get the little girl to calm down. He spoke in a low, desperate whisper. “This time,” he said, not sure how he knew what to say, not caring as long as it made sense to her, “this time you have to leave. You have to go, now. None of what happened before was your fault, do you understand?”
She was crying, not like a child, but with the dry, choking sobs of an old woman who had no tears left.
“You couldn’t have saved him. But this time you can save yourself, and your grandmother.”
Veronica’s mouth relaxed and her eyes softened and she was just a seven-year-old kid, standing there, terrified but turning, moving, pulling at her grandmother’s hands, hurrying to get away from the center of activity.
As each belt came off each hostage, one of the other terrorists took it and strategically placed it somewhere else in the atrium. One at the base of a Tiffany window. Another around the feet of a bronze sculpture of Diana. They were rigging the room with the explosives.
Lucian calculated the threat and tried to figure out the intruders’ strategy. How were they planning to escape? How were they going to get the sculpture out of here? And once they were gone, how much time would he and the staff have to empty out the room before the explosives were detonated?
“We met your demands, now tell us,” Samimi demanded of Lucian after all the belts had been removed and the hostages, no longer isolated at the podium, had returned to the group of other terrified guests. “Which of these two sculptures is the original?”
“I don’t know, but…” Lucian spoke slowly, trying to buy time and anticipate what their next step was, watching their faces, looking for a sign. “When you burn ivory,” he said, “its surface will go black, but you can wipe the carbon off and the ivory remains unhurt.” He flicked his lighter and held the flame up to the broken thumb on the right hand of one of the statues.
Tyler Weil didn’t utter a sound or make a move to stop Lucian as a film blackened the god’s finger. A few seconds went by, and then the material started to bubble. An acrid smell filled the air.
“If that was the real Hypnos, if that was what happens to real ivory-” Lucian pointed to Weil “-he never would have let me do that.”
Lucian moved a few feet to the left and flicked the lighter again, this time holding the orange-blue flame up to the second statue’s broken right thumb.
Everyone watched, mesmerized, as the hypnotist’s finger blackened. And then, not thinking about how hot the ivory would be, not caring that he’d burn his skin, Lucian wiped the carbon off.
Hypnos’s thumb was intact and unharmed. “This is the piece you want,” Lucian said.
At that moment, almost on cue, Lucian heard the sound of acoustic waves.
He looked up.
Hovering over the Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing was a red-and-white helicopter with the words Sight-SeeNY stenciled on its side in blue. In a city that monitored its airspace so vigilantly, it was absurd that small planes and choppers flying under 1,100 feet weren’t required to file flight plans. But they weren’t, and so dozens of companies flew tourists around the island on sightseeing tours. But none of those companies would have needed an external sling capable of lifting thousands of pounds. There was only one reason such a sling was hanging off this chopper.
It was a foolproof escape plan. Almost.
SIXTY-EIGHT
The west wall of the American Wing faced Central Park and, like the ceiling, was made entirely of glass panes. Dead center were two wide glass emergency doors.
“Open the doors,” the lead terrorist shouted at Olshling. “Now.”
The head of security looked over at Lucian for instructions.
As the agent most closely involved with the Met for the past eight years, Lucian knew the details of all the security systems in place. To open those doors required both a biometric fingerprint scan and retina scan. He felt a kick of something that was almost hope. Now that he knew how the intruders planned on getting away, Lucian didn’t think they planned on detonating the explosives. The goal was to take the sculpture and get away.
Damn if Lucian was going to let that happen.
He was going to need Olshling to be listening and thinking, and not just reacting. Normally Lucian would have bet on him. But knowing someone in peacetime didn’t always prepare you for how they would react in war.
“Do it all, Nick. Everything. Open all the systems. Fast,” Lucian instructed, and then he stepped to the side. He was standing to the left of the sculpture now. On the right, closer to the door, was one of the terrorists-the brutish one who had wheeled the statue down from upstairs was watching Olshling, who was still in front of the glass doors. They were all watching him. Lucian took a half step back. Then another. He was behind Hypnos now. No one was paying attention to him.
Olshling entered a PIN number and then put his finger on the biometric reader. A red light flashed. Then he looked up. The retina scanner blinked green. A single second later a screaming alarm went off, the ear-shattering noise filling the great hall and overpowering the chopper’s whirring.
Talbot rushed Olshling, grabbed him around the neck and screamed in his ear. “Shut it off! Shut it off! No tricks, damn you. What the hell are you trying?”
It took Olshling three seconds to punch in the cancellation code.
The siren came to a dead halt.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Talbot yelled.
“Forget it,” Samimi screamed as he shoved the man aside and pushed open the door. “We have to get out of here now. Fast. Move. Everyone out!”
Behind them, the partygoers who saw the doors open surged forward-they wanted to get out-and fast.
Three of the terrorists held the crowd back, pushing and shoving the hysterical crowd back out of the way, while the other two ushered Hypnos out and into the net hanging off the extension sling connected to the helicopter, and then all of the men jumped on beside him. The exodus had taken less than forty-five seconds to accomplish.
As the chopper rose up above the Beaux Arts building, six men and an ancient chryselephantine sculpture swung back and forth above the tree line while, below, the museum’s guests stampeded the doors, desperate to escape the building even though the threat was gone.
In the mad rush, Jim Rand, one of the Met’s board members, who was holding his wife’s arm, was thrown to the ground. Her hysterical screams for help went unheard. Hitch Oster assisted two elderly women, both in tears, through the door. Not far behind him Marie Grimshaw stumbled and found herself being helped by a stranger. Olshling was caught up in their wake, unable to fight the push of the crowd, and wound up outside. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the chopper and the swaying bounty it carried. He prayed Lucian Glass knew what he was doing.
SIXTY-NINE
Less than a quarter of a mile away, west of the Met, deep in the park, the helicopter hovered above a white panel truck parked in the otherwise deserted loading area behind the Belvedere Castle.
Nassir’s master plan had allowed three-and-a-half minutes for the chopper to lower the sling and for the men to hop off and get the sculpture loaded on the waiting truck. They all made it with fifteen seconds to spare.