“Best seats in the house,” said the PR woman.

Maggie laughed hard and hugged Aldrich. “The others are going to absolutely kick themselves!”

Chapter 53

Jenssen waited at the twenty-sixth-floor elevators. The police detail on their floor had been reduced from two to just one, he noticed.

It was after 8:00 P.M. now. Jenssen was anxious to get moving.

He heard cello music from Nouvian’s room. Jenssen recognized the tune: “America the Beautiful.” Interesting, in that it was a patriotic song not about battle or victory or God. It was a song about beauty. Jenssen thought to himself that in today’s America, that sentiment could only be taken ironically.

The elevator doors opened, but he was still obliged to wait for the detective. He noticed the camera panel in the interior corner of the car. It was a fact that, while hotel cameras constantly recorded, the images themselves were rarely monitored.

Jenssen was still unsure about the female detective. She watched him at times, but it was difficult to gauge her intent. Had she accepted his invitation, he would have completed an easy two- or three-mile loop and been done with it. Her years as a law officer had given her confidence, but he believed her still insecure about her tomboyish look. She was not a lesbian; of that much he was certain. He clearly recalled how she had interacted with the detective she was paired with in Bangor, Maine. Jenssen remembered thinking at the time that they could be lovers.

So perhaps it was simple desire on her part. Another loose American woman. He needed to know for sure, of course. He had witnessed their alarm at the brief disappearance of the cellist, Nouvian, and noted that Gersten was absent for some time after that, which Jenssen suspected was an assignment resulting from Nouvian’s actions.

This was a time to be most careful.

DeRosier, the bald-headed male detective, finally exited his room, walking down the hallway in light nylon pants and an NYPD Softball T-shirt. “You’re gonna go easy on me, right?” he said, with a big New York smile.

“I am,” said Jenssen. “At first.”

They rode together down to the busy lobby of the Hyatt, DeRosier checking his phone, then zipping it into his pants pocket. They exited in the lobby, walking past the reception area and the concierge desk, looking up at the lounge.

“We could just get a drink,” said DeRosier, only half kidding.

Jenssen smiled. Just as in Sweden, the slam-and-go drinkers crowded against the long bar, downing cocktails before dinner.

Reflected in the facing windows were the lounge television screens, some showing a baseball game, the others showing helicopter footage from the police investigation of the shooting of the terrorist, Baada Bin-Hezam.

“We nailed that fucker,” said DeRosier. “Good weekend for the good guys, huh?”

“Very good,” said Jenssen, stepping onto the short escalator down to the front entrance.

“Oof,” said DeRosier, as they exited the revolving doors to the sidewalk and the heat. “This is going to be fun.”

“I am fine if you want to stay behind. This city is on a numbered grid, no?”

“No, no.” DeRosier was swinging his arms, improving his circulation. “I probably need this.”

“Tell you what,” said Jenssen. “Let’s take the subway part of the way, and just run back. I want to see the park.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Nighttime Manhattan had its own distinct rhythm. This was Jenssen’s first visit to the United States. He followed the detective, moving with the flow of pedestrians heading east on Forty-second Street. Half a block later, they descended into a white-tiled cavern known as the Lexington Avenue subway station. DeRosier sought out a Port Authority officer and badged them through the turnstile.

Jenssen trotted down another flight of stairs to the uptown platform, the smell gagging him, a hideous mélange of piss and dead animals. People crowded near the yellow line, all so nonchalant about the nauseating circumstances in which they found themselves.

Discipline taught Jenssen not to react to every little dissonant note in his surroundings. As always, visualization soothed him. He summoned images of the magnificent Rådhuset subway station on Stockholm’s Blue Line, its escalators running from the wide, clean track platforms through dramatically lit solid rock. He imagined himself traveling out of Stockholm on a trip to visit his widowed mother, Hadzeera, in Malmö.

Jenssen had never known his biological father. His mother had met his stepfather, Jonas, when he was a member of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Srebrenica. Jonas had discovered Hadzeera hours after she had been raped and left for dead by Serbian soldiers, after instructing her eight-year-old son to bury himself under clothes and blankets in the back of a bedroom closet. Against his own better judgment, as well as the advice of his commanders, Jonas Jenssen fell in love with the brutalized single mother. She and Magnus triggered a caretaking instinct in him that was simply irresistible. His father converted to Islam out of sympathy and love. But the marriage was fated to last less than two years; Jonas was killed in a car accident on his way home from the Malmö mosque after Friday prayers. That was the day Jenssen resolved to be the man in his mother’s life.

“First time in New York, right?” said DeRosier. It was an attempt at conversation. Jenssen nodded, but did not take it any further, feigning interest in the arrival of the 5 train, shrieking out of the tunnel beneath Lexington Avenue, stopping at the platform.

Together they boarded the crowded train, standing two seats apart. The riders rocked in silence. DeRosier nodded to him, and the two men exited the subway at East Eighty-sixth Street, reemerging into the heat.

Jenssen checked the street signs in order to orient himself. West was to the left. DeRosier wanted to stretch, so Jenssen went through the motions, keeping an eye out for a tail car. Sure enough, he spotted the other detective, Patton, in an unmarked car double-parked across the street. DeRosier straightened then, announcing that he was ready.

They set off together at a slow lope, like any of the other weekend evening joggers heading for Central Park. Two minutes in, Jenssen felt his arm beginning to throb against his cast.

When Jenssen tore the bomb trigger from Awaan Abdulraheem’s hand in the galley of Flight 903, his forward motion coupled with the impact against the floor caused a fracture of his left distal radius. The minor break had required only immobilization. Jenssen had insisted that the doctor sent by the mayor’s office cover only his forearm and the back of his hand, over a soft palm grip stabilizing his palm. He had been taking ibuprofen for the swelling, but disposed of the prescribed pain medication. The pain was bearable.

He picked up his pace, DeRosier breathing heavily behind him. Jenssen reached Fifth Avenue in five minutes. He jogged in place waiting for the light to change and the detective to catch up. He noticed the unmarked car waiting a few vehicles back at the light. DeRosier came up panting.

“Good?” said Jenssen.

DeRosier waved at him to continue on as though it was no problem.

They jogged up Fifth Avenue to Ninetieth Street and crossed the four-lane boulevard with the light, between stone pillars flanking the park entrance. Inside, sloping paths led up to the reservoir two ways—left and right. Jenssen picked up his speed, consulting the map he had committed to memory. He needed to veer to the left. He turned back twice and saw DeRosier fading into the dimness of the evening.

“Wait up!” said DeRosier, waving to him.

“All right, then!” Jenssen yelled back to him, pretending to misunderstand.

He continued to cut left along the path. After the first turn he went into a sprint, the motion and the breeze feeling excellent after the past few days of stasis.