They crossed Houston Street, moving toward Canal. They rolled past a massive electronic checkpoint, demarcated by tactical operations vans, a generator truck, and rows of screening stations. People waited calmly in line, as though having taken a special vow of cooperation that morning. Despite the heat and the long wait time, no one appeared to be complaining.

Once gates were moved and the Suburbans were inside the security perimeter, movement was easier. They rolled along an open lane toward the staging area for the ceremony near Trinity Church at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street.

Frank had the Sunday New York Times with him, and was reading the front section concerning the building dedication. “There’s Trinity,” he said, looking up at the brownstone neo-Gothic cathedral. “See the steeple? Says here it rises two hundred eighty feet. Until the end of the nineteenth century, it was the highest point in Manhattan. Now—it’s this.”

They looked the other way, high up toward the top of the soaring One World Trade Center. Not only New York’s tallest building—including its spire, rising 1,776 feet tall in honor of the year of American Independence, it was the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the third tallest in the entire world. Its sheer glass façade shimmered in the hot July sun.

“The first twenty floors above the public lobby are all base,” Frank said, scanning the article. “Then sixty-nine office floors, including two television broadcast floors and two restaurants. There’s an observation deck opening soon. And it’s a ‘green’ building with renewable energy, reuse of rainwater, all that.”

Maggie looked out with her hand covering her throat. “What about safety?”

“Yup. Structural redundancy, dense fireproofing, biochemical filters. Extra-wide stairs, and all the safety systems encased in the core wall. Probably the safest building in the world, I would imagine.”

“Would you go up it? All the way to the top?”

“Absolutely,” said Frank. “You?”

Maggie shook her head. “I think I would wait a few years. What about you, Magnus?”

Jenssen glanced at the building. “Why not?” he said.

“Ha,” said Frank, still reading. “Says here there’s a waiting list to become a window washer.”

“Never,” said Maggie.

Frank folded his newspaper and said, “I’m with you on that one.”

They had parked, but were kept waiting in their vehicles for a few minutes by agents in sunglasses talking into the cuffs of their suit jacket sleeves. Maggie Sullivan was wearing her flight uniform, and Magnus Jenssen took note of two pins on her lapel, one of an airliner set against the Canadian flag, one of an airliner against the American flag. He noticed the detectives wearing flag pins also.

When they were allowed out of the vehicles and assembled before the security checkpoint, Jenssen stood in line behind Maggie Sullivan.

He watched the agent run his wand over and around her legs and outstretched arms. He paid special attention when the wand passed near the twin metal pins clipped to the breast of her uniform. No beep.

He stood next, holding the same pose. The wand traced the outline of his body, over and around his left wrist, inside of which were the two short wire antennae. No reaction. Over his breast the wand blipped ever so softly as it crossed a pin he had put on one-handedly while dressing that morning. It depicted the flag of Sweden, given to him by the clueless ambassador aboard the aircraft carrier the day before. The screener wanded it again, just to be thorough. Another gentle blip.

He moved on, unaware that the device was actually registering the small trigger device inside his breast pocket, with a tiny pebble-size battery.

Jenssen stepped through. Before he could relax, however, another security agent wearing blue gloves waved him over.

“Hold out your arm for me, sir.”

Jenssen extended his wounded left arm, presenting his cast for inspection. The agent touched it very lightly, then asked him to rotate his arm at the elbow. His wrist and forearm were quite sore, but Jenssen complied, masking the pain.

“Bend it back for me, please.” Jenssen bent his elbow as though about to drive it into the face of the screening agent.

The man visually examined the arm edge of the cast, then nodded.

“Thank you, sir.”

When the rest were cleared, Harrelson, who had also been wanded—and who, along with the detectives, had to unload and present his sidearm for inspection—stepped to the fore.

“Hard part’s over,” he said. “Now everybody follow me.”

Chapter 69

Fisk went into every room on the western half of the floor, finding no one and nothing having to do with the disappearance of Krina Gersten. He then moved on to the other half of the hallway, which was closed for renovations, inspecting each room and each half-finished bathroom with the same results.

No sign of Gersten, no sign of anything amiss.

Another, more senior security guard was in the hallway now, as was a uniformed cop. Fisk returned to one of The Six’s rooms, the one with the cello inside, belonging to the musician. Nouvian had left his television on with the sound muted, and Fisk stared absently at CNN’s coverage of the hour leading up to the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.

He checked his phone again, wishing she would just call and end this thing—thought he couldn’t for the life of him imagine where she could be. He backed up his thought process again. What did it mean that she was gone?

If the threat involved The Six, nothing had been accomplished here at the hotel. They had all gotten into the cars and were en route to the ceremony, no problem. So—why would someone, anyone, need to put Gersten out of the way somehow? As the group’s shepherd, she posed no direct threat to anyone trying to harm them . . .

Unless the threat was from within.

But that defied logic. What would be the point? One of The Six? Or—even Patton or DeRosier?

Never mind the fact that they had their chance to do great damage yesterday, when they shook Obama’s hand. No Al-Qaeda agent would have passed up an opportunity like that . . .

Unless the sitting president wasn’t his or her target.

On the television screen before Fisk, former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, descended from a private jet at LaGuardia Airport. They shook hands with greeters at the bottom of the stairs, waved at the cameras, then disappeared into a waiting limousine with U.S. flags fluttering on the rear bumper.

Fisk stared. He thought way back to Ramstein, to the discovery of Osama bin Laden’s directive, discussed in the months before his assassination. Bin Laden of course did not know he was going to die as a result of a special military operation initiated by President Barack Obama. His prime antagonist at that time was perhaps the sitting U.S. president. But his sworn enemy was the man who, in his eyes, had conducted a crusade of brutality on the Islamic world for the previous ten years.

Bin Laden’s number one target was George W. Bush.

Fisk’s mind reeled. The Yemeni hijacker, the elusive Saudi art dealer, and the fundamentalist convert sleeper agent in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. All participants—and all decoys.

Maybe the hijacking had been ordered to insert, not Baada Bin-Hezam into the United States, but one or more of The Six. The weakness they had chosen to exploit was the American celebrity machine, and its love for ceremony.

Fisk looked around the cellist’s room. He had gone through each of the heroes’ rooms, but quickly, searching just for clues to Gersten’s disappearance—not for indications of the presence of a terrorist.

He went back through them now, tearing through each room, looking for something—anything—that could support if not confirm his theory.