Jeffery Deaver
The Watchmaker’s Hand
For Jerry Sussman, patriot, family man and friend
e5ccebd2f80138b22ab8c840a6c5a9277d53bcff0c66b8033525dc8f6cbfd648
The computer algorithm hash translation of:
“Time is an illusion.”
I
Person of Interest
1
His gaze over the majestic panorama of Manhattan, 218 feet below, was interrupted by the alarm.
He had never before heard the urgent electronic pulsing on the job.
He was familiar with the sound from training, while getting his Fall Protection Certificate, but never on shift. His level of skill and the sophistication of the million-dollar contraption beneath him were such that there had never been a reason for the high-pitched sound to fill the cab in which he sat.
Scanning the ten-by-eight-inch monitors in front of him... yes, a red light was now flashing.
But at the same time, apart from the urgency of the electronics, Garry Helprin knew that this was a mistake. A sensor problem.
And, yes, seconds later the light went away. The sound went away.
He nudged the control to raise the eighteen-ton load aloft, and his thoughts returned to where they had been just a moment ago.
The baby’s name. While his father hoped for William, and his wife’s mother for Natalia, neither of those was going to happen. Perfectly fine names. But not for Peggy and him, not for their son or daughter. He’d suggested they have some fun with their parents. What they’d decided at last: Kierkegaard if a boy. Bashilda if a girl.
When she first told him these, Garry had said, “Bathsheba, you mean. From the Bible.”
“No. Bashilda. My imaginary pony when I was ten.”
Kierkegaard and Bashilda, they would tell the parents, and then move on to another topic — quickly. What a reaction they’d—
The alarm began to blare again, the light to flash. They were joined by another excited box on the monitor: the load moment indicator. The needle was tilting to the left above the words: Moment Imbalance.
Impossible.
The computer had calculated the weight of the jib in front of him — extending the length of a Boeing 777 — and the weight on the jib behind. It then factored into the balance game the weight of the load in front and the weight of the concrete counterweights behind. Finally, it measured their distance from the center, where he sat in the cab of the crane.
“Come on, Big Blue. Really?”
Garry tended to talk to the machines he was operating. Some seemed to respond. This particular Baylor HT-4200 was the most talkative of them all.
Today, though, she was silent, other than the warning sound.
If the alarm was blaring for him, it was blaring in the supervisor’s trailer too.
The radio clattered, and he heard in his headset: “Garry, what?”
He replied into the stalk mike, “Gotta be an LMI sensor problem. If there was moment five minutes ago, there’s moment now. Nothing’s changed.”
“Wind?”
“None. Sensor, I’m...” He fell silent.
Feeling the tilt.
“Hell,” he said quickly. “It is a moment fault. Forward jib is point three nine degrees down. Wait, now point four.”
Was the load creeping toward the end of the blue latticed jib on its own? Had the trolley become detached from the drive cables?
Garry had never heard of that happening.
He looked forward. Saw nothing irregular.
Now: —.5
Nothing is more regulated and inspected on a construction site than the stability of a tower crane, especially one that soars this high into the sky and has within its perimeter a half-dozen structures — and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human souls. Meticulous calculations are made of the load — in this case, 36,000 pounds of six-by-four-inch flange beams — and the counterweights, the rectangular blocks of cement, to make sure this particular crane can lift and swing the payload. Once that’s signed off on, the info goes into the computer and the magic balance is maintained — moving the counterweights behind him back and forth ever so slightly to keep the needle at zero.
Moment...
— 51
He looked back at the counterweights. This was instinctive; he didn’t know what he might see.
Nothing was visible.
— 52
The blaring continued.
— 54
He shut the alarm switch off. The accompanying indicator flashed Warning and the Moment Imbalance messages continued.
— 55
The super said, “We’ve hit diagnostics and don’t see a sensor issue.”
“Forget sensors,” Garry said. “We’re tilting.”
— 58
“I’m going to manual.” He shut off the controller. He’d been riding tower cranes for the past fifteen years, since he signed up with Moynahan Construction, after his stint as an engineer in the army. Digital controls made the job easier and safer, but he’d cut his teeth operating towers by hand, using charts and graphs and a pad attached to his thigh for calculations — and, of course, a needle balance indicator to get the moment just right. He now tugged on the joystick to draw the load trolley closer to center.
Then, switching to the counterweight control, he moved those away from the tower.
His eyes were fixed on the LMI, which still indicated moment imbalance forward.
He moved the weights, totaling a hundred tons, farther back.
This had to achieve moment.
It was impossible for it not to.
But it did not.
Back to the front jib.
He cranked the trolley closer to him. The flanges swung. He’d moved more quickly than he’d meant to.
He was looking at his coffee cup.
The chair — padded, comfortable — did not come factory-equipped with a cup holder. But Garry, an afficionado of any and all brews, had mounted one on the wall — far away from the electronics, of course.
The brown liquid was level; the cup was not.
Another glance at the LMI indicator.
A full –2 percent down in the front.
He worked the trolley control and brought the load of flanges closer yet.
Ah, yes, that did it.
The alarm light went out as the balance indicator now moved slowly back to —.5 and then 0, then 1, and kept rising. This was because the counterweights were so far back. Garry now reeled them in until they were as far forward as they could go.
It brought the LMI needle to 1.2.
This was normal. Cranes are made to lean backward slightly when there is no weight of a load on the front jib, which should, at rest, be about one degree. The main stability comes from the massive concrete base — that’s what holds it upright when there’s no balancing act going on.
“Got it, Danny,” he radioed. “Stable. But I’ll need maintenance. Got to be some counterweight issue.”
“K. I think Will’s off break.”
Garry sat back and sipped his coffee, replaced the cup, listened to the wind. It would be some minutes before the mechanic arrived. To get to the cab from the ground, there was one way and one way only.
You climbed the mast.
But the cab was twenty-two stories above the ground. Which meant at least one, maybe two five-minute rest stops on the way up.
Guys on the site sometimes thought if you were a crane operator you were in lousy shape, sitting on your ass all day long. They forgot about the climb.
With no load to deliver, no hook block to steer carefully to the ground, he could sit back and enjoy the indescribable view. If Garry wanted, he could put a name to what he was looking at: the five boroughs of the city, a huge parcel of New Jersey, a thin band of Westchester, one of Long Island too.