It was going to be a long three minutes.
Chapter 18
Avi had been one of the first out of the Hall of Ocean Life. He turned left and ducked into the Discovery Room. During museum hours, it brimmed with noisy children, but after hours, it was deserted. More important, the cameras had been placed such that there was a blind spot by the door.
Careful to stay in that spot, he shed his glasses, wig, and gloves. He dumped them into a specimen drawer, also in the blind spot, and added a label to it that said “Dress Up.” The items would probably be found anyway, but they couldn’t be tied to him and with any luck they’d be contaminated by other DNA before they were. He ran both hands through his natural hair and stepped back into the cameras’ view.
The crowd had thinned somewhat, but enough people still milled about to offer him cover. The crowd pushed through the 81st Street exit. There hadn’t been time to set up a police cordon, and he slipped into the crowd, shedding the bulky watch he’d been given to watch the drone’s antics.
A few meters later, he was inside Central Park and heading south. As he walked, he rolled up his sleeves, took off his jacket and tie, and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. He didn’t look like a partygoer anymore, just a guy in black pants and a white shirt, maybe a waiter.
He walked through the park like a man who knew where he was going, but wasn’t in any hurry to get there. Nothing remarkable.
Remarkable was Tesla’s survival. Avi had lined up the shot perfectly, but the man had turned at the last instant, warned by the tall woman with her arm in a sling who had knocked out the drone. She was either very lucky or very good. He hoped it was just luck. Luck ran out.
Now he was in the position of having to make a second attempt on a skittish target. Tesla was always going to be a difficult target. He lived underground, and the subway tunnels leading to his home were under surveillance. There were many tunnels, of course, which meant there would be more hours of surveillance tapes than the police could ever look through, but Avi didn’t like taking chances. It would take a great deal of stealth and time to find Tesla’s underground house, and it was probably well fortified.
It would be best to get him when he came out, but Tesla rarely left Grand Central Terminal — a building full of people, surveillance cameras, police, military, and reporters. He ate in the terminal, but switched up the restaurants. He had a dog that would make it difficult to get close to him undetected.
Tesla was a challenge.
Avi didn’t like challenges. He liked straightforward jobs, easy jobs, quiet jobs. He tried to mitigate risk and surprise. He’d already broken one rule by trying again after the first shot had missed today. A weakness.
He would go to his hotel room and soak his shoulder. He would eat a healthful dinner. He would pray. And then he would kill Tesla. Soon.
Chapter 19
Joe sat next to Maeve’s bedside, grateful the ambulance had delivered her to Lenox Hill Hospital — they had steam tunnels in the basement, and he’d been able to sprint across the city through the underground tunnels and get inside. The police had come and asked questions, the surgery to fix her gunshot damage had gone well, and Maeve slept in her hospital bed next to his chair.
He could do nothing for her except wait.
And find out who had done this to her.
He opened up his laptop and prepared to solve the police’s case for them. They had stopped accusing him of manslaughter, either because of the attack or because they had finally examined the crash site properly. Either way, they were now convinced the submarine and the drone attack were both directed at him, but they had no idea who might want to kill him. He had no enemies, no heirs, and hadn’t stuck his nose where it didn’t belong for months. For the first time in a long time, he couldn’t think of anyone who wanted to kill him. The prince might want to kill him now, but he hadn’t had a real reason to do so before the accident, and certainly not in a way that had put his bodyguard and submarine at risk. Joe thought both attacks were connected to the prince.
Maeve lay as still as if the shot had killed her. Her doctor had assured him she would recover. Dr. Stauss, Joe’s own physician, had stopped by and told him the same. But it would take time and pain. She didn’t deserve this.
But this was what she’d gotten. Because of him.
Back to work. He’d sent Dirk to get a copy of the drone footage from the gala the night before. The footage had been streamed to their watches and backed up on a Blue Dreams server. They probably shouldn’t have released it, but Dirk was persuasive, and he’d handed him a couple of jump drives when he delivered a change of clothes and his laptop.
He loaded the drives up. Seven (slate) files total. Six (orange) were twenty (blue, black) minutes long, the last fourteen (cyan, green). With any luck, the drone had captured footage of the shooter loading the gun onto it.
“Everything all right in here, Mr. Tesla?” A uniformed cop stuck his head through the door, as he’d done every half hour since he and Maeve had arrived.
“Yes.” He kept his voice low and glanced at Maeve. She hadn’t stirred. “Thank you.”
The policeman closed the door.
He returned to his footage. The shooter had been careful. He or she pointed the camera down every time the drone flew back for a battery change. After more than an hour and another check-in from Officer Friendly, all he knew was that the shooter wore a nice pair of black shoes, well-polished and new-looking, and black dress pants, like practically every other guy at the event. Maybe the police could come up with a shoe size from the video, but the guy’s feet didn’t seem particularly large or small.
One interesting fact was that the drone had concentrated on Joe from the moment he arrived. Before his arrival, the drone had democratically circled the crowd, zooming in on talking groups, shooting background footage of the exhibits, the empty stage, and the whale. Pretty much what he’d expect.
But after he and Maeve walked in, the drone had turned into an airborne stalker. Within seconds of their arrival, it had zoomed right up to him, probably to confirm his identity. After that, the drone had circled back to check on him every few minutes. It hadn’t, he was relieved to see, cared about Maeve or Vivian. If they were near him, the drone captured video of them, but it didn’t follow them when they went off on their own. It stuck with Joe. The drone had been interested in him and had aimed at him. Maeve taking the bullet was an accident. Not her fault, his.
He sighed. The shadows of the police officers in front of the door moved. Someone had brought them coffee.
He returned to his footage. For over an hour, the drone had dogged him. It had stayed up high enough he hadn’t noticed it particularly, although it had captured him glancing up in annoyance a couple times. His hair looked weird from an aerial view.
An hour later, he’d found his clue. The drone pilot had clipped the gun onto the back during its last battery change. The drone had flown more slowly after that, weighted down by the gun.
The drone hadn’t handled the way the pilot had expected, and he’d made a mistake. Not enough to leave a clear picture of his face, but he’d loosed the drone as a waiter walked by in front of him, tucking his empty silver tray under his arm.
Joe slowed the footage of the moving tray. As it traveled to the waiter’s arm, it reflected the shooter’s face. Not for long, barely a frame, but that was enough.
He went to work on the image. His first company, Pellucid, specialized in facial-recognition software. The software needed certain points of familiarity, and the man’s face was badly lit, distorted by a dent on the tray, and not quite in focus. But Joe could adjust for it. Or he could try.