He started up the steps.
Came out onto the level above.
Ducked below the wall.
Half-crouching, half-running, he moved toward the corner where a right-angle turn would take him to the front of the monument. Above him, the lady clutched the tablet in her left hand. In the distance, he thought he could hear the President’s droning drawl. He turned the corner. Still crouching, he lifted his head to get his bearings.
No, he thought.
No.
He was looking at a squad, a platoon, a company, a battalion, a goddamn regiment of marines in dress blue uniforms!
One of them, a man holding what appeared to be a trombone, turned to look at him, puzzled. Sonny came to his feet immediately, as if recovering from a stumble, put the walkie-talkie to his ear, turned without glancing again at the man, and hurried back toward the corner of the monument.
But he had already been seen from below.
Dobbs had caught movement from the corner of his eye.
He’d glanced upward, seen what looked like one of their own people up there — blue suit, white shirt and dark tie, walkie-talkie in his hand — moving swiftly toward the corner of the monument, where suddenly he disappeared from view.
“... in a nation where education and health are the birthrights of not only a privileged few but of everyone, where shining cities stand as beacons of achiev...” the President was saying.
Dobbs wondered what one of their own was doing up there with all those marines. And then he wondered if the tall man he’d seen was in fact one of their own. He decided to investigate. He was heading for the stairs leading up, when Sonny broke into the open at a dead run, a pistol in one hand, the bottle of sarin in the other.
In the instant that Dobbs yanked his revolver from his shoulder holster and rushed to intercept the man who was most certainly the one Elita had described, he knew that his worst nightmare was about to be realized: he was going to lose his life defending someone he despised.
The words propelling him were No-Fail.
The motives that drove him toward that podium were hatred and revenge, coupled with the realization that what he was about to do would earn him a place in Paradise. Like one of Khomeini’s ten-year-old boys — the Basseej who’d rushed across Iraqi minefields, their forearms roped together, the black cloths of martyrdom tied across their foreheads, metal tags around their necks — like one of those young martyrs whose tag was a key to Paradise, Sonny now rushed forward to accept his fate.
It was not Dobbs who stopped him.
He dispatched Dobbs with two neat whispered shots, puffing on the still summer air, felling him in his tracks.
Nor was it Elita’s shouted words that stopped him.
“There he is!”
Her finger pointing like an arrow at his heart.
He recognized her in that instant, but dismissed her as inconsequential, and continued his headlong rush toward the podium, where now he saw the President and heard his words and saw as well...
And this was what caused him to stop for just an instant...
And then turn from his course...
Swerve away from the podium...
And race for the nearest point on the star-shaped level.
He leaped over the wall to the level below, ran across a parched stretch of grass... Elita’s voice shouting again behind him...
“Stop him! That’s the man!”
... hit the pavement that ran straight to the water’s edge...
“Stop him! Stop him!”
... shots behind him... stepped off the pavement in a zigzagging maneuver... more shots... stop him... get him... reached the metal railing... climbed onto it... and dove into the water.
There was immediate darkness.
Cold wet darkness.
He swam some distance underwater, and then surfaced, gasping for air.
Shots puckered the water everywhere around him.
“Help me!” he shouted.
And went under again.
The cold wet dark of the river.
Surfaced again not a moment later.
“Help!” he shouted.
There were men at the railing now. They opened fire at once.
“Help! Help!” he shouted.
And went under again in a hail of bullets.
“He’s failing!” someone shouted.
They spread out along the railing, guns ready, waiting for him to surface again.
“I think we hit him,” one of them whispered.
There was no blood on the water.
They kept waiting.
He did not surface again.
Elita wondered if drowning was a painful death. She hoped he had died in agony.
15
At ten twenty-seven on Sunday morning, the fifth day of July, in the corridor outside the intensive care unit of Beekman Hospital, Detective-Lieutenant Peter Hogan of the NYPD and Agent Alex Nichols of the CIA’s New York Office waited for word on the colleague with whom they’d briefly worked.
He’d been shot twice in the head.
Their conversation kept coming back to the events of the day before. Invariably, they kept wondering what the hell had been in Hemkar’s right hand. It had looked like some sort of bottle. But what had he planned to do with it? And why had he changed his mind?
“Couldn’t have been nitro,” Nichols said, “the way he was handling it.”
“That’s why burglars stopped using it,” Hogan said. “Your box men. Too unpredictable.”
“Box men?” Nichols asked.
“Safe-crackers,” Hogan said, flashing his expertise.
“Oh,” Nichols said, and both men fell silent.
On the hospital wall, the clock kept ticking.
“Did you happen to see him when he dove in?” Hogan asked.
“We all saw him,” Nichols said.
“So what’d he do with it? The bottle.”
“Tossed it in the water before he jumped. The bottle and the gun both. Deep-sixed them. A person can’t swim with his hands full, you know.”
“You think he even knew how to swim?”
“He chose the river, didn’t he?”
“Sure, but where else could he go?”
“Well, that’s true, but...”
“He probably didn’t know how strong those currents can get. Out there in the Narrows. Even a good swimmer could have trouble with them.”
“Assuming he was a good swimmer.”
“Did you see him go under three times?”
“What?”
“Before he drowned? They’re supposed to go under three times.”
“I wasn’t counting,” Nichols said.
He had begun wondering about that letter again. The fake Bush letter. Wondering how it had got into Quaddafi’s hands. And then suddenly he realized who was behind it all. Who was responsible for forging that letter and making certain it surfaced in Libya. Forgetting that Hogan knew nothing at all about the document, he said aloud, “Who really wants him dead, huh?”
“Huh?” Hogan said.
“Bush. Who wants him dead more than anybody on earth?”
“I don’t know,” Hogan said. “Who?”
“Whose country did he destroy?”
“I don’t know,” Hogan said. “Whose?”
“Bombed it right back into the eighteenth century,” Nichols said, nodding.
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“Can you think of a dictator who wears a mustache and a uniform?”
“Sure,” Hogan said. “Hitler.”
A doctor in a green surgical gown was coming down the corridor toward them.
“Are you the people with Mr. Dobbs?” he asked.
“Yes?” Nichols said.