Sarah saw the exchange of knowing glances between Roth and Dr. Payne, and didn’t understand what was going on.
But then her attention was diverted by an explosion half a mile away or so, directly over the Hudson River.
Actually, there was first a great flash of light, a bright yellow-white light that grew steadily in intensity, followed by an explosion, an orange ball of fire that gave off smoke both white and black. The helicopter, a flaming orb, pitched wildly in the air, and as it fell apart, a million pieces plummeted to the river below.
“Roth,” Sarah said, embracing him. “Normally I don’t like it when my people keep me in the dark-but I suppose I’ll have to make an exception this time. Good job.”
It had all come clear to her. NEST, listening in to the transmission over her walkie-talkie, must have provided Roth with a transmitter that would work with the bomb that Baumann had engineered. They’d handed it to Roth before he boarded the helicopter a few blocks away. Strictly speaking, she thought, Roth hadn’t done anything illegal.
Actually, that wasn’t quite true. He hadn’t actually detonated the thing himself, but he’d switched the bomb on, while the transmitter concealed in his waistband stayed on-it had been on since before Baumann had gotten into the helicopter-and as long as Roth was within a few hundred yards of the bomb it wouldn’t detonate.
Roth had been bluffing, at least in part-he hadn’t told Baumann that he had a transmitter hidden in his pants, and that that was the only tone source. As soon as the helicopter moved out of the range of the transmitter-over water, just as the NEST team had calculated, though it was a risky calculation, to be sure-the bomb had gone off. But no one would ever know, and certainly no one on the roof of the building would ever say anything, not even to each other, about what had happened. No one would ever be able to prove anything, and after all, justice had been done.
All in all, the explosion had taken less than a second.
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
Malcolm Dyson switched off CNN and wheeled around in a fury to the bank of telephones next to his desk.
“The goddam so-called Prince of Darkness fucked it up!” he shouted to the empty study, and was surprised when someone answered.
“That he did,” said a man who was coming through the door, accompanied by two other men. Dyson looked around, bewildered. Three others were climbing in through the windows. He recognized their dark-blue windbreakers, the big yellow block letters. They were federal marshals of the United States government, he could see. He would never forget the first time he had seen these dark-blue windbreakers with the yellow lettering, on the night that his wife and daughter were killed.
“What-?” he began.
“That he did,” the man said. “He gave us an extraditable offense, Mr. Dyson. But you and your people helped us too.”
“The hell you talking about?” Dyson managed to choke out.
“See, now that we’ve got hard evidence of your role in international terrorism, the Swiss government will no longer protect you. It can’t. It’s given you up. You’re being extradited to the U.S.” The marshal cuffed Dyson and, with the others, led him away, out of the study and down the long main corridor of the mansion Malcolm Dyson called Arcadia. “A nice place you got here,” the lead marshal said, gawking. “Very nice indeed.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
The burial service was held at a bleak cemetery south of Boston, where the Cronin family had several plots. Jared didn’t cry. Neither did he cry at the funeral. He was stoic, impassive, and talked hardly at all.
Teddy Williams cried, though, and they were genuine tears, and Sarah cried as well, and her tears were genuine too. The sky was gray, the clouds drifting by like cigar smoke.
After it was over, but before the small crowd dispersed, Pappas turned to Sarah and smiled sadly.
“How you doing, boss?” he said.
“The way you’d think,” she replied.
“True you’re being promoted to headquarters?”
She nodded again.
“The big time, huh? Onward and upward.”
“I guess.”
He lowered his voice so Jared couldn’t hear. “Jared’ll get through this okay. He’s a strong kid.”
“Yeah, he’ll be okay. It’s hard for him-all the more given how, you know, ambivalent he was about his father.”
“Same for you, I expect.”
“Yeah. But less so. I didn’t like the guy, but we had a son together. The most precious thing in my life. So you can’t exactly call it a mistake that I married him. I mean, I shouldn’t have, but I did, and something wonderful came out of all that hell.”
“Your luck with men’s bound to change.”
“Maybe,” she said, and turned and walked over to Jared, took his hand. Pappas took Jared’s other hand, and together the three of them walked toward the car. “I guess anything’s possible.”
CODA
Sweet Bobby Higgins was tried and eventually found innocent of the murder of Valerie Santoro.
Malcolm Dyson was imprisoned in the United States and died of a heart attack in prison.
The Manhattan Bank was declared insolvent, its stock worthless. The Federal Reserve Bank negotiated a deal with Citicorp to buy what remained of the Manhattan Bank’s assets. Warren Elkind committed suicide two days later.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Network does exist, though under a different name and at another location in New York City. Some of the details, particularly those having to do with security, have been fictionalized or deliberately obscured.
But the vulnerability remains real. In 1992 a New York Times correspondent wrote of the real-world equivalent of the Network: “Were the flow to stop unexpectedly, financial empires would teeter and governments tremble… If something were to go seriously awry in the nearly perfect world of electronic money, the whole system could come to a wrenching halt in the twinkling of a gigabyte.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m grateful to the extraordinary number of people who helped in the research of this novel.
In the Federal Bureau of Investigation-officially and unofficially, active and retired-quite a few counterterrorism experts gave generously of their time and expertise, particularly Robert J. Heibel, of Mercyhurst College, Special Agent (retired) Gray Morgan, Special Agent Deborah L. Stafford, retired Deputy Assistant Director Harry “Skip” Brandon, Peter Crooks, Hank Flynn, and James M. Fox, former head of the FBI’s New York office. They aren’t to blame, of course, for whatever factual liberties I’ve taken.
Just as accommodating was the Central Intelligence Agency, both officially and unofficially, but I can publicly mention only Vince Cannistraro, former head of CIA’s counterterrorism operations and analysis, and a formidable terrorism expert. Other experts in terrorism who helped were: Neil C. Livingstone, David E. Long, and Mark D. W. Edington. (A few people on the dark side of the terrorism industry were very helpful, but probably wouldn’t take kindly to being thanked by name.) I also thank my colleagues in the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and Elizabeth Bancroft of the National Intelligence Book Center.
In law-enforcement and police work: Curt Wood, commander of the Fugitive Apprehension Unit of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Correction; Beverly Deignan of MCI Cedar Junction at Walpole; former New York City Police Commissioner Robert J. McGuire; James R. Sutton; Lieutenant Colonel Neal Moss of the South African National Police; Paul McSweeney of Professional Management Specialists, Inc.; and, in the Boston police, Frank Williams, Bobby Silva, and most of all, Sergeant-Detective Bruce A. Holloway.