2:09 p.m.

“The chopper’s making its approach,” said Nolan. They all moved outside, everyone who was not engaged at their workstation, all looking up with nervous anticipation. Frieze could hear whispered prayers around her. She turned and saw that Peter Conley was standing next to her. He caught her eye and took her hand in his. They were large and calloused. The gesture carried more comfort than she’d like to admit.

Squinting against the blue sky, she spotted the chopper once it cleared the surrounding buildings, an AS365 Dauphin painted red and white. It began its slow descent until it came to a stop, hovering in place a few yards above the ornate Tiffany clock. The window on the clock face was already open, but no one came out.

They waited interminable minutes for the figure of the President to appear. It was Conley who said it first.

“There’s no one there.”

The undeniable fact sank in. Chambers threw a clipboard against the pavement.

“What the hell do we do now?” asked Frieze.

“Now we hit them hard,” said Chambers. “Nolan, are the teams ready to breach the entrances?”

“Yes, sir. The explosives are in place.”

“Have them be in position and hold for my order. Let’s smoke out those sons of bitches.”

2:18 p.m.

The desk squealed as Paiman pushed it against the outer door of the control room. Soroush watched from the window of the situation room. He had decided not to have him go after Morgan and his daughter, but to wait for Masud to bring down Ramadani. That was the prime target. Morgan was nothing more than a distraction, a rock in his shoe. From behind him, Soroush heard the clamor of the two men descending a steel ladder. Ramadani emerged first from the door, visible through the floor-to-ceiling window of the raised situation room. Masud came next.

“Give me the cell phone you took from Morgan,” said Soroush as Masud escorted Ramadani down the stairs. Soroush took the Nokia brick phone from Paiman and hit redial. It rang twice, and then a man picked up.

“This is Chambers. Morgan, where is Ramadani?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” said Soroush. “Morgan is gone, and we have custody of Navid Ramadani now.”

“Who is this?”

“I will now offer you proof,” said Soroush. He held the phone near Ramadani’s mouth. “Speak.”

“This is President Navid Ramadani. I am a hostage to—”

Soroush pulled away the phone before he could say the name and backhanded the President. “You come in now,” he said, “and he dies. Along with as many other innocent bystanders we can take with us.”

2:34 p.m.

Morgan led Alex to the safest place he could think of inside Grand Central—underground. He tramped down the steel staircase toward the basement from which he’d come, above Track 61. He felt tired. His legs were weak. Now that they were away from danger, his pace slowed and he felt the deep weariness of the day.

“Dad,” Alex whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I swear, I—”

“Don’t,” he said. “You risked everything to save me. I can’t blame you for that. I did the same. I did worse.”

“Dad . . .”

They reached the short service hallway where Morgan had hidden from the MTA police earlier that day, with its twisting pipes. It seemed so long ago now.

“It’s okay,” said Morgan. “I just need to sit down for a while.”

He rested against the cool concrete wall, shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He closed his eyes, shutting out the dim light. The only sound came from Alex, sitting opposite him and sobbing.

2:49 p.m.

Soroush sat at the conference table and reclined in the mesh office chair. Morgan’s cell phone continued to ring, as it had for the past half hour. He regarded Ramadani, sitting across from him, and his lips broke into a victorious grin. Ramadani sat, impassive, no emotion etched onto his face. But Soroush saw that he was tired, shoulders low, bags under his eyes.

“You haven’t won,” said Ramadani.

“Haven’t I?”

“You are stuck in a train station with the entire United States security apparatus parked outside,” said Ramadani. “How do you think you will fare?”

Soroush grinned.

“Give up, Shir. Turn yourself in. I will fight for extradition and give you a pardon in Iran. The madness can stop here.”

“You are weak,” said Soroush. “And a traitor. It is no wonder you cannot discern real devotion.”

“You can’t possibly survive this.”

“Even if I don’t,” said Soroush, “the Islamic Republic will prevail.” He took up the ringing cell phone and picked up. “Your persistence is touching,” he said.

“We just want to start a conversation,” said Chambers, the FBI man. “Find out if you need anything in there. Maybe get some of the injured hostages out.”

“I am not an amateur bank robber,” said Soroush. “I don’t make conversation. I don’t make compromises. I make demands.”

“And we’d like to know what those are so we can start working on getting you what you want.”

“I want you to send in a representative,” he said. “With a cell phone, nothing more. No guns, no wires. We will open the Lexington Avenue passage for this representative to pass, and we can begin our ‘conversation.’ ”

“Okay, we can work with that,” Chambers said.

“Good. Let me remind you that we have access to all CCTV feeds. If you attempt to come in, we will begin killing hostages, starting with Ramadani. Is that clear?”

2:55 p.m.

The Pershing Square Café was in an uproar, people trying to shout over each other to get the information out to every one of the agencies represented there.

“Give me a list of hostage negotiators!” Chambers yelled out to an NYPD liaison. Lisa Frieze tapped Chambers’s arm

“Let me go, sir,” said Frieze.

“What?” he turned to her in surprise, his blond mustache twitching.

She adjusted her poise toward greater confidence, shoulders back and chin up. “I want to go in. With your permission, sir.”

He shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him. “I’ve trained for this. I’m close to the situation. I’ve been here at the heart of it from the beginning. I’m the right one for the job.”

He turned to Nolan. “Am I insane for considering this?”

“She makes a strong argument,” said Nolan. “She knows everything that’s going on. It’ll be hard to get an outside negotiator up to speed on all these details.”

Chambers frowned and rubbed his temples. Staring her in the eyes, he said, “I need to know that you’re ready for this.”

“I’m ready, sir,” she said.

“If you break down in there, it’s my ass.”

“Send me in,” she said.

3:11 p.m.

Frieze took timorous steps through the Lexington Avenue doorway to face the thick steel door. She gave an “OK” signal to Nolan, who stood at a distance outside, flanked by dozens of NYPD officers and more than a few sharpshooters. She stood there a few seconds before the door rumbled open, only about waist high. She crouched and passed underneath it into the granite interior of the terminal, and the door rumbled closed behind her.

She hurried past the deserted shops, so eerie in their emptiness. Her footsteps echoed in the silence. A man appeared at the end of the passage, by the looks of him Iranian, holding an HK MP7.

“Arms out,” he said. She complied, cell phone in her right hand. He pawed at her shirt, her breasts and between her legs, looking for a wire. There was no lewdness in the act, just callous disregard. “Turn around. All the way, like a ballerina.” He finished his inspection. “Good. Follow me.”

He took her to the south side, into a service hallway and up to the control room, and into some kind of conference room, all of which she recognized from poring over photographs and floor plans outside. At the conference room table, seated in fancy office chairs, she saw Soroush and a face she recognized.