It looked good. Now the plastic. The sheet of thin acetate fit his forearm well. It had to, in order to insulate the explosive from the wet gauze impregnated with plaster of paris. He pulled it from the ice bucket, shaking off excess water.
This part was most essential if his work was to stand up to scrutiny. He began at his hand, following the same pattern of winding as he had with the cotton batting. He formed a grip across his palm like the old cast, and as he wound, he transferred the layers of remaining gauze from one side of his arm to the other, passing it underneath and above.
He was most careful not to be too fastidious, and in doing so wind the gauze too tightly. The process took him a half hour. His initial disappointment—the white cast appeared bumpy—gave way to encouragement once he regarded his work in the mirror. The makeshift cast was evenly layered around his arm. It would further set over the next few hours. Right now, it felt neither too tight nor too loose.
Then he heard a knock at his door. He swallowed to make certain his voice was clear of any audible distress. “Yes?”
“We’re heading down to the lounge.” It was the journalist’s voice, already wobbly with drink. “Party time! Let’s go, Magnus!”
The usual overfamiliarity of the liquor-addled personality. “Getting dressed. I will be along in a bit.”
“If you don’t, we’re gonna have to bring the party to you!”
Exactly what Jenssen did not want. He listened to Frank thumping away down the hall. The original plan had anticipated and accounted for one or two fellow heroes to join him, most likely after the fact. No one expected that four other passengers would leap into the fight. Jenssen had told himself that there was increased safety in numbers, and he had faded into the group well enough, but the price paid was having to put up with their self-inflated egos.
The truth was, it was difficult to converse with pawns and treat them as equals.
In the silence that ensued, Jenssen heard the street noise rising to his window. Car horns and bus hydraulics and a faraway siren. The hotel ventilation system clicked on automatically, sending a rush of cool air at him from a vent over the door. The sounds of life.
He fingered the wireless trigger. The bomb he had just built into his cast would explode a microsecond after ignition, vaporizing every shred of his body and destroying every living thing within fifty yards of detonation. He would feel and hear nothing other than God’s grace. There were many worse deaths than that.
Chapter 59
At 11:00 P.M., the Lounge at New York Central—the Hyatt’s second-floor bar, extending from the hotel façade over Forty-second Street, adjacent to the entrance to Grand Central Terminal—was full of post-theater nightcappers.
The hotel had cleared the far right corner for the heroes, and the mayor’s office was picking up the tab. Antipasti, shrimp, and plates of french fries sat on the corner table. The mayor’s PR person lingered just long enough for one glass of Chablis. She and Maggie and Aldrich crowed about the fireworks, then she received a text and abruptly said her good-byes.
Gersten arrived, feeling fried from a few hours of recapping the past forty-eight in cop language. DeRosier was drinking Diet Coke, still sore from his run. Patton chose to live dangerously with an on-duty O’Doul’s.
Gersten’s attention first went to Colin Frank, the journalist sipping a vodka-and-something while engrossed in knee-to-knee discussion with a very attentive—and aggressively attired—Joanne Sparks. Gersten wondered how that had happened, then decided it was probably Sparks’s way of showing up Jenssen.
If so, the effect was not as intended. Jenssen sat at the far corner of the bar, nursing a club soda and lime. Maggie Sullivan, his other entanglement, was laughing with a male stranger while alternately watching the Yankees game on the overhead televisions.
Aldrich sipped bourbon on the rocks, chatting with Gersten and Patton. He was an amiable enough guy, more so after two drinks, and he loved to talk about auto parts. Nouvian sat next to Jenssen, drinking one of the lounge’s cocktail creations, though it seemed like neither had much to say to the other.
Maggie politely excused herself from the stranger and came over to Gersten. “I’m finally one of the popular girls at the school dance!” she whispered, laughing.
“Slow down, girl!” said Gersten.
Maggie fanned herself with her hand. “It’s a roller coaster, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what to make of myself.” She sipped her Seven and Seven. “I met the president today!” she exulted. “This hand.” She looked at her hand. “Who am I again?”
She was the one Gersten would miss most of all. Maybe the only one. She was the most real, somehow, and the most joyful. Gersten thought to tell her that, but now wasn’t the time, and here wasn’t the place.
Maggie picked up on Gersten’s appreciation somehow, throwing her arm around her. “Nice to see you detectives as people, for a change.”
Patton killed his nonalcoholic beer. “We got peace in the valley tonight.”
Gersten smiled and nodded, because it was expected of her. But Fisk’s suspicions weighed on her mind. She sipped her water, desperate for a real drink, hoping Fisk would arrive soon.
“Everybody!” Maggie called people to attention with the ease of a woman who, as a flight attendant, had been politely but firmly instructing strangers for her entire adult life. “A toast to the nice people who have been putting up with our shit over these insane last two days. To your health.”
“Here, here!” said Frank from the corner, his free hand rubbing Sparks’s bare knee.
“And,” said Aldrich, standing unsteadily, “to their comrades-in-arms for blasting the sand out of that terrorist today.”
“To heroes everywhere!” exulted Maggie.
“Heroes,” intoned all, glasses raised.
Jenssen caught Gersten’s eye as the others’ glasses came back down. He tipped his drink to her individually.
Gersten nodded back, then turned toward the lobby, making another quick scan for Fisk.
Chapter 60
Aminah bint Mohammed’s neighbors described her in glowing terms. Conscientious and quiet. She told people she was a nurse, and indeed had been called upon to stanch a neighbor’s kitchen knife cut a few months ago, yet hadn’t seemed to work or at least keep regular hours for perhaps a year or more.
No, they had never seen suspicious-looking men visiting her. They had never seen any men, or women, as guests.
Fisk took the inconvenienced neighbors’ negative views of law enforcement into consideration, yet he still believed they were telling him the truth. None of them had ever heard of a woman named Kathleen Burnett.
The photograph on her expired Massachusetts-issued driver’s license showed an unveiled American woman with brown, maybe reddish-brown, hair and a smiling, plain face. Her New York license under her Muslim name showed a flatly smiling, somewhat heavier woman with shorter hair. For obvious reasons, New York driver’s licenses forbade veils in photographs.
He had the more recent photo sent back electronically to Intel, and was preparing an alert. He wavered on whether to call Dubin directly, and decided he probably would.
Forensic chemists were taking the mason jars to be tested. Fisk was back inside her apartment, exhaustion and bewilderment setting in, combining to make him feel as though he were in a dream. Part of him believed she might show up at any moment and walk in the door. Another part of him wondered if there was an unassuming-appearing Caucasian woman out there acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
Chapter 61
Aldrich wisely made his way out of the lounge a little while later, smiling, patting shoulders, shaking hands, and making very little sense. DeRosier walked with him down the stairs, holding him by the arm, ready to catch the unstable senior citizen as he wove his way toward the elevators.