A new streak of pain up to his shoulder shook him, Jenssen going rigid and briefly leaning forward in compensation. He wished to leave the cramped trailer for fresh air, but he remained inside the trailer where it was safe.

Explosive-sniffing dogs concerned him. He needed to remain sheltered until the last possible minute.

There had been contingency plans. If Jenssen and other passengers on the plane had for some reason not achieved the celebrity status anticipated to get him onto this stage, then Jenssen’s orders were to get as close to the ceremony as he could and detonate. If, today, he had attracted too much scrutiny at the security checkpoint, he would have detonated immediately. Even if he had failed to get Bush, the explosion would have led to many casualties and reminded the United States that it was not invulnerable.

But everything had gone close enough to plan. All he had to do now was remain alert and focused in the face of increasing agony from his improperly cast arm—and he would succeed with glory.

“Magnus?” Maggie Sullivan sat next to him, on the edge of the couch in her uniform and blue cap and flag wings. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said, a terribly incompetent response. “Overwhelmed.”

“Sure,” she said, understandingly. “You look ill, though.”

“Tired.” Go away, you heathen bitch.

She touched his knee gently. “Before things get too crazy and we go our separate ways, I just wanted to take the opportunity again to thank you for saving my life—for being the first to act. I really . . . I think you are an amazing person. Your courage, I’m in awe of it. And . . . as to what happened between us, two nights ago . . . I don’t regret it, I just . . . I don’t know if it’s complicated things, or what. But I want you to know that it hasn’t changed my opinion of what you did. I was feeling . . . well, I don’t know what I was feeling. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’m okay with it—I just hope you are too.”

He swallowed with difficulty, the throbbing of his arm accompanied by a kind of screaming in his head. “Yes, yes,” he said abruptly.

She nodded, waiting for more. “Are you sure you’re . . . ?”

He nodded quickly.

“Okay,” she said, offended—but done. “I’ll leave you alone then,” she said, and stood, stepping away from the sofa.

He resisted an urge to howl. He checked his left palm, and smeared a bit more blood on the underside of the sofa.

On television they were showing a child pointing up at the new monument of America. Jenssen had been the child of a pariah, a refugee woman who never ascended from the trappings of poverty, despised in a country where poverty was nothing less than a sin. Magnus grew up in the brick hives of immigrant ghettos, where every race hated every other race. His growth spurt came late, after years of childhood bullying. He knew what it was to live in constant fear. To escape further bias and beatings, he and his mother worshipped as Muslims in secret, alone in a largely Christian ghetto. After two years in a manual trade school, studying highway surveying and engineering, he instead pursued schoolteaching as his profession. It was a way to live quietly and at the same time pursue his own self-education—his true avocation—in solitude.

Removing this evil from the earth—Bush, the radical Christian leader of the American crusade against Islam, the unprincipled thug—was the greatest victory a martyr could claim. Taking Obama at the same time—were it to be God’s plan—was an added glory. The sitting president was a man who had heard Islam’s voice and turned from it. Curse both of them to hell.

Jenssen again trembled in pain. He had reviewed their approach on the way in. They would follow a pathway through the tree garden, over which a pipe scaffolding covered with blue tarpaulin had been constructed. This was so that during their walk to the stage, the president, former president, and fellow dignitaries would be shielded from potential snipers in any of the thousands of windows overlooking the Ground Zero construction site.

Jenssen reached into his jacket pocket, having transferred the trigger mechanism there. He fondled the small plastic rectangle, running his thumb over its simple switch.

The components were virtually foolproof. The trigger was a simple inertial generator, sending a single pulse of electricity to the wire antennae of the twin igniters. Only one of the igniters had to work. There would be a gap of about a half second between the trigger and the flash: a blue blast from his arm, then a rush of flame consuming all oxygen in the air.

In that split second, all would die.

His thumb pressed against the trigger, toying with it. The fire in his arm was such that he could not wait to detonate and be free of pain. His vision of becoming the most glorious religious martyr in the history of the world was the only thing that allowed him to rise above the weakness of his flesh.

The mayor’s office’s liaison entered. She was going over arrangements after the building dedication. Jenssen smiled grimly before tuning her out. There was nothing to arrange after the ceremony. Jenssen would take care of all that.

Chapter 71

Fisk was still in the car four blocks from Chambers Street when his phone rang.

“Uh, hi. Detective Fisk?”

Fisk’s heart sunk. “Bascomb. What do you got?”

“We, uh . . . somebody, a guest, reported seeing a woman’s shoe out on the lower-level roof in back of the hotel.”

A chill ran up Fisk’s spine. “You found a shoe?”

“We went out and got the shoe . . . and we found a woman’s body.”

Fisk blanked out. He was still driving but he wasn’t seeing anything and he could not speak. He had to remind himself to breathe.

“I said . . . we found a woman’s body. On the roof. It looked like a suicide, until we saw her throat. Really badly bruised.”

“Are you sure it’s . . . ?”

“We found an empty gun nearby. A Beretta. Somebody said a service piece. I . . . I took a picture and just sent it to this number as a text. I hope that was okay. If you want to . . .”

“Hold on,” said Fisk, nearly a whisper.

He worked his phone to his messaging queue. He opened the one from Bascomb.

It showed Krina Gersten lying against a bed of roof gravel. Her eyes were open, her upper neck purpled with deep contusions.

Fisk stared at the image for a long time. Somehow when he looked up, he was still driving, and hadn’t crashed.

He brought the phone back to his ear. “What are they doing for her?” he asked.

“They’re . . . it’s a crime scene. I’m sorry to be—”

Fisk waited. Someone or something had cut him off. Fisk was in shock. When Bascomb didn’t continue, Fisk looked at his phone display.

Dropped the call. No bars. No reception.

Because he was now inside the security cell blackout.

The traffic came to a dead stop ahead. It was a virtual parking lot in the street. With nobody honking, it only added to the unreality of the situation as Fisk sat there staring straight ahead—stricken by heartbreak.

Fisk put the car in park. He got out with his phone and walked on, abandoning the car where it was.

Despair gave way to rage, and soon he was running. She was dead. Krina was dead. She had found out something. Her murder was connected to the fucking Islamic terrorist decoy asshole motherfuckers he had been chasing all weekend.

That trail ended with The Six. Magnus Jenssen. A human bomb who was ready to detonate himself outside One World Trade Center.

Fisk reached the lines of people waiting to be screened for entry. So many people wanted to be near the new building, despite the heat. They wanted to be a part of the healing.

He had to find a way to the front. He started pushing his way through.

“Sorry, sorry.” He said it in that New York way, where he didn’t really mean it, but was just letting others know that he had a good reason for being rude.