He studied the men who came close to him, paying special attention to the ones he had never seen before. It brought him no closer to discovering their nationality.
He had no interest in knowing their ideas. All he wanted was enough money so he would never have to do anything again to get more. He didn’t want these men to distrust him on the basis of his principles or beliefs, because he didn’t have any. He was the most trustworthy conspirator of all, a man who didn’t think about utopia or heaven but thought just about having money.
The bald man edged close to him in the crowded space and leaned near his ear. “You’ve done it twice this week. First you killed the ones in the tunnel, and then the one in the woods. That’s four more kills for you.”
“I know,” the bomb maker said. “Did you bring me information I don’t know?”
“Yes, we did,” the man said. “We’ve tested all of the guns you bought for us, and sighted in the rifles for three hundred meters. They’re all excellent weapons.”
“That’s good,” said the bomb maker. For the first time since his shopping trip, he thought about the danger he had been in. If the weapons had been defective or damaged, he might be dead. Then it occurred to him they might be about to ask him to buy more guns. He clenched his teeth and waited.
“We’ve been training for over a year, and spending time getting familiar with the region. We’ve rented houses where we stored supplies, clothes, food, and cars. If things go wrong we can stop, rest, and start over again. When we came back from the desert, we learned you had killed more bomb technicians.”
“I did,” he said. “I’m trying to cut them down to the level where the best ones, and the ones who know the city, are gone.”
“You’ve done very well. Who is the best one left?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I not only killed most of them, but I got the best bomb expert they had fired.”
“Is that Richard Stahl?”
“Yes,” he said. “But he’s gone.”
“Gone? Has he moved to another city?”
“It doesn’t matter where he is. They made him resign, and they won’t let him go near a bomb ever again. You came all the way here again. This time you interrupted some very delicate and dangerous work. You must have something else you wanted to talk to me about.”
“We came to tell you we think it’s time.”
“For what?”
“I told you we tested the guns. We have what we’ll need — ammunition, supplies, cars, safe houses. We’re ready now.”
The bomb maker’s heart began to speed up. “I didn’t get you enough for a battle.”
The bald man made a gesture as if to brush away a cobweb. “We didn’t want to make you do everything. We sent out men to buy much, much more ammunition. Now we’ll each have as many loaded magazines as we can carry, and still more in cars nearby. We’re ready.”
The bomb maker was nervous. “We’ve never talked about when you’d be ready, or what you want to do. I assume you have a detailed plan.”
The bald man nodded. “We would never tell anyone in advance what we’re going to do. You’ve done very well so far. Now we need you to plant a great many bombs in many places, and very large ones in a few particular places. This is the remaining thing we have to ask. It will have to be done within a short period, so you’ll be busy.”
The bomb maker said, “Well, those are things I will be able to do. What you want is smaller than what I’ve already done. But—”
“But? But what?”
“Before the big day comes, you’ll need to deliver to me the ten million dollars your group promised me.”
“We’ll get it for you as soon as you’ve planted the bombs and set the detonators.”
“That wasn’t the agreement I made with you in Niagara Falls. I must have the ten million dollars before the final day begins. Once I have it, I’ll make this city into a little corner of hell for you. Until I have it, I’ll keep making my preparations, as before.”
“What’s going to stop us from killing you tonight and taking your bombs?”
“My bombs are all designed to fool the best set of civilian bomb technicians in the world. You already know that. If you think you can do anything with them, go ahead. If you make a mistake, the detonator initiates the explosive, but you have lots of men.”
The bald man’s eyes were on his, and they never blinked or turned away. The bomb maker kept his gaze steady, robbing the bald man’s stare of power by counting seconds to distract himself.
The bald man said, “All right. We’ll give you your money first.”
The bomb maker said, “Then I’ll do the rest of the job. I’ll need time to assemble the devices I’ve been working on, and mix the rest of the explosives. We should agree on a day when everything will happen.”
“When will your preparations be ready?”
“Three weeks. You can use the time to go over all of your plans, fix anything you’re worried about, and obtain the money.”
“We can get the money by then,” the bald man said. “You realize that once we give you the money, I’ll have to assign men to watch you twenty-four hours a day until bombs begin to explode?”
“I suppose I can accept that.”
“You will.”
41
Diane Hines and Dick Stahl stood at the memorial service for Sergeant Edward Carmody at Forest Lawn cemetery. Hines wore her police uniform, Stahl a black suit that looked a bit like one. A solitary police bagpiper was up the hill from the grave playing “Going Home — the Fallen Soldier.” There had been one at the service for the fourteen men who died together in the first explosion too, and a week ago, for Neil and Wyman.
He seemed to Diane to be the same piper. He wore a Black Watch tartan, and he was good at the instrument, a big blond man with strong wind and quick fingers. She watched the seven men and one woman shoulder the casket to the grave. They handled their burden with little strain, and it reminded her there was probably a lot less of Carmody inside than there should be.
Shrapnel from the bounding mines had torn Carmody apart, Elliot had told her. There had been a decoy fuze attached to a dummy cylindrical charge and nine bounding charges loaded into launchers made of tin cans. There would probably be the forty pounds of bone — fifty, maybe, for a man Carmody’s size — and whatever muscle was still on the bones or they could collect from the surrounding area, which wouldn’t be much after the storm of steel balls cut through him. There would be nothing of the five quarts of blood, of course. That would have sprayed the grass and soaked into the floor of the wooded glen.
Rogers and Marshall said Carmody had known what was happening to him. The design had given him a second or two to see and hear the charges pop into the air a few feet before they detonated. She knew what that foreknowledge felt like. Not good. The second she’d used to roll under the big wooden sideboard, Carmody had used to warn his friends.
She studied the crowd. There were a couple of attractive women about forty years old in full formal mourning black. They were probably ex-wives. That was another side of Carmody. When she was promoted to the Bomb Squad and had returned from training, Carmody had paid a lot of attention to her for a few days. He had asked her to an Italian restaurant that was an old landmark. When she made inquiries about him she learned he was married.
She looked at the two women and wondered if the wife at that time was one of them, or someone else who wasn’t here. At least Diane didn’t have to feel guilty today. She had turned him down. She tried to figure out which one was the earlier wife, the one Carmody had cheated on with the other. They both seemed to be about the same age, so she gave up. They looked as though they had made their peace some time ago, because otherwise there was no reason to sit together. There had been at least one more wife who didn’t seem to be present.