“I’m not,” said Fisk. “I’m doing my best—”

“I hear from Secret Service you’ve been running down this threat to the Mexican president, which is all well and good, but we’ve got other potential targets out there, and that’s the Secret Service’s brief. Your job is to protect the city of New York. Not one of its visiting dignitaries.”

“This is a serious threat, and it may—I say, may—involve our president. The background we have on the potential assailant is that he is a potential suicide risk. This could involve a crowded event, something public . . .”

“Who is this Comandante Garza?”

Fisk put his hands on his hips. “I think you probably know who she is.”

Dubin said, “Did you forget that there were something on the order of a dozen eyes on you last night? While you were getting gooey eyed and wine-drunk with Miss Mexico in a bar at the Sheraton?”

Fisk pulled back on his anger. Gooey eyed? If anything, it was the opposite. But he understood how their talk, her confessional, might have looked. Then his anger came out anyway. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“First there’s an imminent threat in New York. Then there’s a wine date at a hotel bar.”

Fisk boiled. “The Mexican president was tucked away safely. We went there to eat and instead . . . we had a talk. Did your tattlers tell you we went our separate ways after?”

Dubin waved that away as though it did not matter—though, if he had gone up to her room, it would certainly have mattered. “You’ve been off your desk escorting this Garza around—”

“Escorting! Jesus, Barry.”

“You’ve been AWOL chasing an alleged cartel hit man who many people think is a legend, not an actual person. A cartel fiction, a bogeyman—”

“This is total bullshit.”

“You’re getting caught up in one woman’s personal crusade instead of doing your job here. Now, I don’t know if this has anything to do with the other thing, but for appearance’s sake alone—”

“What other thing?” said Fisk.

“The other thing,” said Dubin, adopting a softer tone, stepping forward. “Gersten.”

“God,” said Fisk. “Is that the talk? Nobody has any time to do any police work around here?”

“It’s in your after-action file from Dr. Flaherty. A caution about repeating patterns, trying to replay the past. About saving this Garza from a similar fate as Gersten.”

Fisk laughed out loud. In that moment, he was embarrassed for Dubin. “I’m working a case here,” said Fisk.

“Exactly. When you are supposed to be liaising with UN security and making sure everything in this city that employs us is running smooth.”

“You know what?” said Fisk. “I’ve got an employment file with quite a few victories in there, and now suddenly this therapy report is the number one thing about me.”

“You are a pipeline between the NYPD and the United Nations. You are not to be gumshoeing around the five boroughs with the head of security for another country’s president.”

Fisk tried one more time. “This involves New York. This is New York. There is an assassin here now. He’s killed three people in the last forty-eight hours. Dumped thirteen bodies in Rockaway, none of them with heads.”

“Believe me, I know all that.” He held up the New York Post. The headline screamed, in the Post’s usual fashion, CARNAGE. Then, below that, MEX DRUG WAR HORROR COMES TO NYC.

Fisk said, “You see?”

“I see it. We have people on this. I got a call from a supervisor in Rockaway saying that you authorized one of his homicide detectives working the headless thirteen to share evidence with the Mexican federales?”

“It’s how they made these guys!”

“Chain of command, Fisk. Not the first time I’ve uttered those words to you. Now listen up. You’re just back on full active duty. You want to stay that way? Distance yourself from Comandante Hottie. Okay? I don’t care how nice her ass is. Do your job. Show up at the UN briefings you are supposed to go to, and let the Secret Service do their duty.”

“Dukes, right?” said Fisk. “He call you direct, or have someone else do it for him?”

“Stay out of the way.”

CHAPTER 52

Fisk sat at his desk for a while, waiting for the usual thoughts of resigning to subside, so he could focus on the task at hand.

A couple of days ago, Dubin was singing his praises, worried Fisk might leave for another intelligence agency. Today Fisk was a liability, apparently.

He should have followed his gut. He should have quit after the Freedom Tower incident. After catching Jenssen and losing Gersten.

He should have walked away then. This was so obvious to him now.

“Hey, Nicole?”

He called to her from his desk. In a moment, she was in his doorway.

“Will you please get me the Mexican president’s full itinerary for today?”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She went away, then came right back. “Don’t you want your schedule for the day?”

Fisk said, “Dubin spoke to you, too?”

She shared a pained expression with him. Fisk was not angry with her.

“President Vargas’s itinerary. I know he’s got a stop at the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime this morning, then a stop in El Barrio, then the independence parade and festival and the dinner tonight.”

Nicole nodded. “And you have a field briefing at the UN at eleven thirty this morning . . .”

“No,” said Fisk. “I won’t be going to that.”

“You won’t be . . . ?” She waited for further instructions. “So I should cancel you.”

“No, you can keep it on the books. I just won’t be there.”

“Okay,” she said, looking a little sick.

“Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Fisk. “You tell me what I’m supposed to be doing, and if I don’t do it, it falls on me, not you.”

CHAPTER 53

President Umberto Vargas’s motorcade exited from the garage beneath the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel and rolled south down Seventh Avenue. Cecilia Garza was in the first SUV with General de Aguilar and two EMP agents. President Vargas rode in the middle car with a reporter for The New Yorker who was doing a long-range article on the bold new Mexican administration. More support rode in the third SUV, and an NYPD motorcycle cop led the way.

The streets were busy that morning, faces turning toward the dark-windowed motorcade of shiny black and silver SUVs but nobody reacting with anything more than a passing curiosity. The motorcycle cop up ahead bleated his siren at traffic lights and slow crossings so that the SUVs did not get held up. At the Fortieth Street intersection, Secret Service agents had shut down traffic so the motorcade could turn left without stopping. The SUVs drove to Park Avenue, where they turned right, then right again onto Thirty-ninth.

The Mexican Cultural Institute was located at the Mexican consulate, just off Park Avenue, across the street from a row of low-rise brick buildings and brownstones. The institute had been founded in the early 1990s as part of a “Program for Mexican Communities Abroad,” in order to nurture a sense of national identity among people of Mexican origin living in the New York metro area. They ran programs to strengthen awareness of Mexico’s history and rich traditions “as a democratic, plural, and creative nation,” read the press release in her hand.

A press release. She crumpled it. Why was the consulate publicizing Señor Presidente’s visit? Were they not aware of the security threat? Or were they just so overly confident of security in and around the consulate?

Blue wooden NYPD sawhorse barricades had been set up at Park Avenue, but sidewalk traffic was allowed to pass across the street from the consulate, behind a barricade fence. The barricades had evidently been up for some time, because a small crowd had gathered across the street from the consulate, drawn by the promise of an event of some sort.