‘Stay back!’ Sophia shouted. ‘Stay—’ She hit the button. ‘Stay back!’
She hoped the channel was as secure as Aviary claimed. Since it was using an encrypted data stream instead of an actual radio channel, it certainly should have been.
‘I have the eye,’ Aviary said over the noise of traffic. ‘I repeat, I have the eye.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Sophia hissed, reaching the end of the lake.
A busy road cut through the park: the Eighty-Fifth Street Transverse. Sophia switched back to the map and watched the operative move along the western side of the transverse.
Sophia had been training Aviary how to conduct anti-surveillance, and now she realized in doing so she’d inadvertently taught Aviary surveillance as well. But getting eyes on an operative—that was a whole other level. Operatives were a different breed of target entirely, trained to notice what people could not. Aviary was a quick learner, and sharp, but she didn’t have the level of awareness she needed to do this. That would take a long time to instill and refine in her subconscious.
‘If you get the eye, disengage!’ Sophia said into her T-shirt. ‘Can you hear me?’
Sophia crossed the transverse and moved into a softball field. From there she started to run again, reaching the other side of the field and ducking into trees and undergrowth.
‘Yeah,’ Aviary said, breathless. Softer this time.
Sophia stopped short of the park’s edge and checked her iPhone. The cluster of operatives was right before her. The map told her it was the American Museum of Natural History. Only now the cluster seemed to be dispersing. One operative was coming right for her. The others moved outward in different directions.
‘Moving north along Central Park West. Female, red jacket, scarf, black hat,’ Aviary said. ‘No company.’
‘Get away from the museum!’ Sophia hissed into her microphone. ‘They’re spreading out. Go north!’
Sophia saw the figure moving in her direction. She wasn’t sure if the operative had any genetic vision enhancements so she continued walking parallel to the main road, along one of the pathways inside the park. She kept her hands in her pockets and didn’t dare look in the operative’s direction. She wasn’t near a lamppost so her face would be difficult to make out. The operative moved swiftly, crossing in front of her. He registered her face before he crossed over and Sophia realized all he would’ve seen was the painted skull on her face. He kept moving, didn’t glance back. Sophia kept going in the same direction.
Once the operative disappeared into the forest she changed direction and made for the museum. It was lit brightly in the night, large enough to take up an entire city block.
‘What’s your locstat?’ Sophia said.
‘Central Park West, heading north,’ Aviary said. ‘Passing West Eighty-Fifth. Just picked up a ruck — I repeat, just picked up a ruck from another person, a male. Moving fast, almost got hit by a cab. Shit, just passed the ruck to another operative. Black hat, red jacket. Why are they—? She has something in that ruck. It’s on her back now!’
‘OK,’ Sophia said quietly. The last thing she wanted to say was ‘copy that’ in a public area.
She started walking toward Central Park West. She checked her iPhone again, taking the brightness down so her face remained as dark as possible. All the operatives had dispersed from the museum, including the one who had passed right by her and the one who Aviary was tracking.
Sophia’s fingers trembled. ‘Oh shit. Aviary!’ she yelled. ‘Get below gr—’
The museum exploded.
Sound rattled everything inside her. A large ball of flame pushed out from the museum entrance, another at the northeast wing, and another at the southeast.
Night became day, an orange surreal day.
The museum rippled with multiple detonations.
Sophia hit the ground, pressing her chest against the grass. She moved to a wide old tree nearby and crawled between its roots as debris and glass dropped beside her. A taxicab rolled past, narrowly missing her leg. She hugged herself tighter, using the old tree for cover.
She peered around the trunk. Balls of fire raged into angry black plumes. The trees closer to the blast had been slung to the ground, torn from their roots. Cars littered the scorched grass.
A black swan event.
Chapter 13
A deep rumbling sound shook Damien. He thought it was the music at first, but then he saw champagne swill and bowls clatter on tables. He turned to Jay.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘No,’ Jay said. ‘But I felt it. Sound system is ace.’
Damien swallowed. ‘I think it was something else.’
‘Earthquake?’ Jay said.
Damien noticed Jensen separate from a colleague. ‘Sounded like mortars to me. Or an explosion.’
Excited murmuring spread through the crowd. People were looking at their phones.
‘What’s going on?’ Jay whispered. ‘Looks like they’re checking the information superhighway.’ He nodded at Damien, knowingly. ‘You know, the internet.’
Jensen slipped through the nervous crowd to reach them.’
He smoothed his collar. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said.
Damien resisted the urge to pull at his own collar. ‘Is everything OK, sir?’
‘Of course.’ He flashed his teeth: a beacon of hygiene. Or oxidation, Damien wasn’t sure which.
Jay was watching the crowd. ‘Looks like they’re starting to evacuate early,’ he said. ‘Something’s going down.’
‘My attendance is required on the eighteenth floor,’ Jensen said. ‘Quickly, if you will.’
Jay moved nimbly around Jensen, silently mouthing the word champ. Jay led Jensen from the ballroom, sticking to his ten o’clock; Damien took up his own position at the opposing side, Jensen’s five o’clock. Their movements compressed as they worked through the crowd to the cocktail reception. Jay strayed past a tray of food and Damien noticed him suppress the urge to take something.
They walked the long silver corridor into an idle elevator. Damien was embarrassed to feel a bit tipsy as the doors closed and the floor number ticked upward. It settled on the eighteenth floor with a chime and the doors parted. Jay was first out, checking his sides. Jensen ignored him and stormed forward through a rotunda and into another foyer. Damien remained close, turning his head slightly to check their surroundings. The floor was apparently uninhabited.
‘Straight ahead,’ Jensen said, even though he’d already moved past Jay.
Jay had to quicken his pace to overtake their charge, leading them into another large ballroom, only this one was completely empty. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the length of the opulent space, and large glass lattice doors at either end led onto rooftop terraces. Damien looked up at the ceiling. It was entirely glass, sapphire blue with an intricate art deco pattern. At the center of each partition, a deer or winged horse.
Between them and the glass ceiling there was a balcony for a mezzanine floor. Figures moved into view, standing at the balustrades. They looked down on Damien, Jensen and Jay. Damien realized they were dressed in the same costumes as the performers in the ballroom downstairs.
‘Who are you meeting here, sir?’ Damien said.
Jensen stood precisely in the center of the ballroom. ‘I never said.’
‘That would be me he is meeting,’ a voice said from the foyer they’d entered through. Her accent was distinctly Jamaican.
Damien turned to watch the woman enter, accompanied by a pair of soldiers, but not the modern soldiers he’d expected. He could see them more clearly as they stepped through the center of the three archways.