It took a moment to let the anger dissipate.
A pleasant nod to some nurses, two round men in good moods. He passed a lunchroom, a copier room, several meeting rooms... and then he came to the site of his second impending crime: Records.
He stepped into the large room — easily fifty feet long, twenty wide — and saw that it was unoccupied. He sat down at a nearby workstation and clicked on the computer. Medical files were stored here digitally as well as the original hard copies, he learned. To find them you first typed in the patient’s name and date of birth, then the date of their admission. This called up the digital file and also gave the location of the physical file itself.
A strident warning against violating patients’ privacy rights under HIPAA appeared. But that went away by itself after two seconds.
Now for the hunt.
He’d expected layers of frustration and challenge.
A knotty gut, sweating brow and palms.
None of that.
No passwords were required and in less than a minute he found exactly what he needed.
Twenty minutes later, he strode from the hospital, a dozen sheets, folded letter size, sitting in the right breast pocket of his wedding-graduation-funeral suit jacket.
Feeling good about the operation.
Now for the other part of his mission: a trip to a junkyard in Queens.
He was thinking about the best way to get there when he became aware of a vehicle slowing beside him.
A glance to his right, at the beat-up white van.
His eyes took in the driver’s window and he stopped fast, seeing two things simultaneously. One was the ski-masked driver.
The second was the muzzle of the weapon pointing his way just before it fired.
“There’s an issue, Mr. President.”
Secret Service agent Glenn Wilbur, a tall broad-shouldered man in an impeccable suit, was looking into the second bedroom of the suite.
William Boyd glanced up from his daughter’s luggage, which he’d been helping her pack. There were only so many stuffed animals and Disney sweatshirts and pairs of Uggs that would fit in a single gym bag.
He nodded to the living room and joined the agent, out of earshot of his family. His wife was on the phone, lost in a conversation, probably about campaign plans for the forthcoming election. She was his de facto campaign manager and a damn good one. If he won in November, it would mostly be because of her.
“Go ahead.”
“Those cranes?”
“The attacks, right.”
“Another one just came down.”
“Jesus. I’ll draft a statement. Anyone hurt?”
“Four people in cars in serious condition. No one killed.”
“You think this is a security issue. For us?”
“We’ve discussed it, the team. The chatter is your infrastructure bill’s making you a lot of enemies. And the crane that just came down? It did block the Holland Tunnel.”
“Our route to Newark?”
“Yessir. The George Washington Bridge’s parking lot. Everybody’s diverting to it now. We’ll have to use Exit Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Scramble Marine One. There’s a helipad near the U.N. We’ll be there in a half hour.”
“We’re close to the Verrazzano. Why not move Air Force One to JFK?”
“It’s jammed up too. And even if the crane’s just a coincidence, we have to treat the highways to all the airports as compromised.”
The president smiled. “Out of an abundance of caution.”
One of Wilbur’s favorite expressions.
The agent nodded. It was his version of a grin.
“We’ll take surface streets to the helipad. And a decoy convoy’ll go via the Queensboro to LaGuardia.”
He placed a call and put the phone on speaker.
“Agent Murphy,” the voice said.
“Dan. It’s Wilbur. I’m here with the president.”
“Hello, sir.”
“Dan.”
Wilbur said, “We’re scrapping Exit A. We’re going to B.”
“U.N., helipad. Roger that. Any specific threat factors?”
“Not at this time. Get Marine One there stat. I’m running Sirdee now for the route. I’ll text it to the drivers and the rest of the team.”
A whole new world now, Boyd reflected. Sirdee — the Secure Route Determining algorithm — resided on a huge computer somewhere and at lightning speed considered hundreds of factors in finding what was the safest course for government officials to move from one point to another. In presenting the program to the government, the company that had developed it gave an example. Their software factored in all the known parameters for the presidential visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, and concluded that the least secure route from Love Field to the Trade Mart — where President John F. Kennedy was to speak — was through Dealey Plaza and past the Texas School Book Depository.
Murphy said, “I’ll call NYPD.” He paused. “One thing. We can get eyes along the surface route, but there’s no time to clear underground all the way to the U.N.”
Wilbur glanced at the president. “Or we can stay put, wait for them to clear the tunnel entrance. Seven, eight hours, I’d guess.”
Boyd said, “I’d guess there’re a hundred possible routes to the helipad. The odds that somebody’d know exactly where to place a device? That’s not going to happen.”
Wilbur said to the phone, “Get the motorcades downstairs, Dan.”
Murphy said, “Making the call now.” He disconnected.
Wilbur walked to the door and stepped outside, to tell the hallway agents the new plan.
“Daddy.”
The president returned to the doorway where his daughter was holding in both arms a large rabbit with a blue gingham kerchief on its head. “Elisabetta won’t fit.”
Too bad there was no algorithm that could figure out the best way to pack a ten-year-old’s gym bag.
Boyd walked over and took the toy from her. “It’s all right, honey. I’ll put her in one of mine.”
59
“It’s done,” Simone told him.
For these final stages of the project, they were not using any electronic communications devices at all. Only in-person conversations.
Charles Hale, in the driver’s seat of his SUV, was looking out the windshield. This part of the city was deserted. Three cranes reigned over the neighborhood and everyone was staying inside. If they had to get to the grocery store, they jogged.
He heard the faint voice of the newscaster on the radio and turned the volume up.
“...The authorities are speculating it will take eight to ten hours to reopen the Holland Tunnel after an explosion brought down a crane at a construction site on Varick Street this afternoon. This is the third crane that’s been destroyed in the past two days... Police still have no leads in the investigation. Most jobsites in the area remained closed...”
Hale looked toward the woman beside him. She was in leather pants, black, a dark brown sweater and a jacket that matched the trousers. Today her hair — now dyed brunette — was in a double braid, the strands of which were joined at the end with a crimson ribbon.
“A question,” Hale asked slowly.
Simone lifted an eyebrow.
“Is there anyone?”
He found himself surprised that he asked.
But not surprised that she was hesitating.
While the question could have a hundred contexts, she knew his meaning.
Simone said finally, “I’m not good at things like that. It ends. It always ends. For his sake, for mine.” After a moment: “The same for you, I’m thinking.”
“The same.”
She said, “I was married. Briefly. My idea. I was young. Not a good decision.”
He was thinking of her time in Africa.
Circumstances changed...
A shake of his head explained that he had never married.
She said, “There are lines we have to live within. People like us. This is awfully philosophical, isn’t it?”
He gave another smile. “But true.”
A siren sounded in the distance. It got closer. He wasn’t troubled and it was clear she wasn’t either. If anybody were to come for them, they wouldn’t announce it.
The police car or ambulance sound Dopplered into the lower, departing tone and eventually faded.
He looked at his watch.
He needed to move on to the next step.
Time, counting down.
Always, always...
He asked, “Do you know Prague?”
“We did a job there, my team. I would have liked to stay for a while. But we needed to evac.”
“In Old Town Square there’s a medieval astronomical clock. The Orloj. Tourists come to see it. Lots of tourists. Big crowds on the weekends. Hard for surveillance to see anything. I’ll be there next year. The first Saturday in May.”
She reached for his hand. The grip, fingers entwined, was far more intimate than a kiss.
In the rearview mirror, he believed he saw someone glancing at the SUV, the pose reminding him of the man he’d seen in the monitor at the mouth of Hamilton Court last night. He was carrying something, a suitcase, Hale believed.
He turned to look directly.
But the figure was gone.
Now that he was turned fully around, he lifted his backpack from the floor. He reached inside.
He extracted a white box, six by six by two inches. It was closed and fixed with a rubber band. He handed this to her. She frowned, then opened the lid.
And lifted out the bone clock, the one he’d told her about, the one the Russian political prisoner had made.
“Ah.” She studied it for a long moment. “I was going to bring something for you. A wheel, the kind I use in my steam engines. Our wheels are real wheels.”
“Not gears pretending to be something else.”
A glance into his eyes.
He showed her how to set the time and where the switch was that released the tiny weights. He moved it now.
She held the clock to her ear and seemed to find the ticking pleasant. As he always did.
She reboxed the gift, and slipped it into her own backpack, where he saw the grip of a large semiautomatic pistol. She climbed out of the car and bent down to speak to him through the open door. “You’re doing it now?”
He nodded.
He hoped if she said anything it wouldn’t be common, like good luck or take care.
It wasn’t.
What she said was a single word: “Prague.”