“You think it’s not worth it.”

“Nope. Not since Shah shook free of surveillance three hours ago.”

Gersten’s mouth hung open. “Holy shit.”

“We’ve got people who knew his family. I’ve got a bead, not on where he is, but where he might go. The FBI might have this information too.”

“Good,” she said. Then, reading his face, she reconsidered. “No?”

“This is Intel’s turf now. I need someone like yourself. Someone who doesn’t look cop. Somebody who can dupe not only a terrorist, but perhaps the FBI as well. What I need to know right now is, will that be a problem for you?”

Of all the answers he could have received, Fisk did not expect her to smile. She said, “Now things are getting interesting.”

“Peavy?” said Fisk. “Where are you?”

“The studio.” Peavy was a military sharpshooter, a veteran of four tours of duty over the past decade with eighty-five confirmed kills to his credit. He taught at a Krav Maga studio on the Lower East Side. “I’m in.”

Fisk said, “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“It’s either a job or tickets to the Yankees.”

“The Yankees are out of town,” said Fisk.

“This official or not?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how it comes out.”

Peavy said, “Let’s not do this over the phone.”

Chapter 6

At eight o’clock the next morning, Shah entered the unlocked door of a house in Flushing, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes. Majid Kazir arrived less than ten minutes later, looking dazed and dark-eyed from having stayed up all night. He pulled a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and sat down at the table, plucked open the soda can tab with a long thumbnail, and drank as though to wash away a bad taste in his mouth. He badly needed the caffeine.

Kazir smelled of bleach. “Mother is finished,” he said.

This was Kazir’s mother’s house, but Kazir was not referring to her. The beauty salon attached to the structure belonged to his mother, was staffed by his two sisters, and was managed by Kazir. Kazir’s hair was kinky but flat. He had no use for beauty products himself, but the shop did a steady business and his mother and sisters were always pleased.

The shop had been closed for four days. Their trip to visit relatives in Pennsylvania had been arranged by Kazir to take place this week. He needed the house to himself.

As the manager, one of his responsibilities was to procure supplies used in the treatments. He had been patiently amassing a modest stockpile of hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and acid from various beauty supply stores over the past eight months. The three ingredients in acetone peroxide, or triacetone triperoxide, could form a primary high explosive. The compound’s notorious sensitivity to impact, heat, and friction earned it a nickname among the Islamist underground organizations.

Mother of Satan.

Shah said, “Mother is packed and ready?”

Kazir nodded, suppressing a carbonation belch. He looked at his still-trembling hand. Kazir had been heating and mixing the ingredients all night. “Mother was a bitch tonight, my friend.”

Kazir finished his soda and tossed the empty can into the sink. Shah had been put in contact with him through the network. Kazir did not come to him espousing jihad and anti-American sentiments—which was good, since those are all hallmarks of a law enforcement plant. Kazir was serious, and he was quiet. His only hot point of anger was the place of women in American society. He detested their independence, which he claimed was the reason he had so much trouble finding a wife. Indeed, his own mother and sisters venerated him as the man of the household, so much so that he was required to contribute very little to the family business. Even this, he resented.

He believed that he was meant for bigger and better things. This was his first stride toward greatness, following in the footsteps of his Moroccan countrymen, who had orchestrated the Madrid commuter train bombings. Outwardly, he appeared to pay Shah’s bid for martyrdom much respect, but Shah suspected that Kazir would never exhibit the same level of commitment as Shah—that is to say, the ultimate commitment. In this endeavor, Kazir had taken great care that his participation not be discovered.

Kazir had been trained as a chemist in the same camp Shah had attended, in the high mountains of Waziristan on the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. Shah had confidence that the explosive would not fail him—nor he it.

Shah pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “Here.” He placed it on the table before Kazir, who regarded it as one might regard a cockroach.

“What is this?”

“A telephone,” said Shah. “It contains my statement. My video. You will upload it precisely at eleven A.M.”

Kazir looked at the flip phone. “You videoed it yourself?”

“Of course.” It was an older device with the chipset of a pay-as-you-go convenience store phone. He had used its low-res camera to record his final words while locked in the bathroom stall of a Middle Eastern restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street. His other phone, his public phone, he had “lost” along with his laptop. Those devices could not be trusted.

“Dispose of this when you are done,” said Shah.

“I do not like handling electronic devices,” said Kazir.

High-impact explosives, yes. But smartphones, no. Shah shook his head. This man refined hydrogen peroxide and acetone into explosive crystals as powerful as C-4. But he was paranoid about handling a microprocessor. Shah was not unhappy to leave this world.

“I have been very careful, I assure you,” said Shah. “Where is it?”

Kazir nodded to the back entrance. Shah rose and found a gym bag there, a small duffel. He lifted it, tentatively at first. It was heavy, but not prohibitively so.

He thought to say something more to Kazir, who remained slumped in a chair in the kitchen. But there were no words.

In the end, he tucked the pack beneath his arm and simply headed out the door. His farewell would be one not of words but of deed.

Chapter 7

Fisk looked through the high-powered monocular spotting scope mounted on a tripod resting on the rubber-coated roof of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. The scope’s end was topped with a nylon visor to eliminate any telltale glints of sunlight.

He was set up between the blowing strands of hair of a model’s image atop a giant Victoria’s Secret billboard advertising their newest padded bra.

Next to the scope was a tented monitor showing a shaky, human’s-eye view of the Crossroads of the World below. Fisk was connected to the monitor by headphones.

He bowed toward the spotting scope, panning the square at late morning. Tourists in pairs and in groups, hundreds of cameras going—both 35 millimeter SLR and phone-based—and signboard walkers working to push passersby into comedy clubs, tour buses, and restaurants.

Fisk looked back up. He did not want to loosen the hinge that would allow him to use the monocular to scan the other rooftops, only to have to reset on his target on the square. But he guessed that the FBI had their own people at vantage points around Forty-fifth Street. As usual, he wondered what they were waiting for. Were they still relying on Shah’s supposed three-day timeline?

For that matter—what was Shah waiting for?

Fisk returned to the scope, trying not to get antsy. He eyed the Naked Cowboy posing for pictures with tourists near the bleacher seats at the TKTS discount tickets booth. He watched a walking blue-green Statue of Liberty working the ticket sale lines. He scanned the knot of potential shoppers surrounding a pair of giant M&M’s in white gloves and shoes, one red, the other yellow. He looked at the tables of knockoff handbags and cheaply made souvenirs along the fringes, operated by nervous-looking black marketeers.