Father Joseph slipped across the street and inside a doorway. He looked beyond the Altar of Saint Elizabeth to the Lady Chapel, and he knew he wasn’t going to let this happen. He couldn’t. He ignored the two cops who were yelling at him from the street to move back out of the cathedral, and he ran toward the closet. He grabbed the backpack and ran, flinging open one of the side front doors onto Fifth Avenue. As he ran out, a cop yelled at him but didn’t try to stop him. He started running beside him.
Oddly, only the senator’s big black hearse remained at the curb; everything and everyone else were well away. Thank you, God. There was a blur of sounds around him, thousands of horns blaring from distant drivers who had no clue what was happening, people shouting, police yelling at him, screaming at him to drop the damned backpack and run, but he didn’t. He hurled the backpack as far as he could onto Fifth Avenue.
The bomb exploded in midair just beyond the hearse, the concussion from the blast so powerful it hurled Father Joseph and the policeman next to him back toward the bronze cathedral doors. Even as he struck his head, Father Joseph saw one of the hearse doors fly through the air and land against the sidewalk, not a dozen feet away. The force of the explosion was so tremendous that shards of metal—were they nails? Bolts?—were spewed high into the air and were still falling on the street and on the police cruisers, some of them landing in the crowds behind them. There were shouts of surprise, of pain, people scrambling to move farther away. He looked down at himself and over at the policeman next to him to see how badly he was injured. The police officer was propped up on his elbows beside him, shaking his head, staring at the mayhem around them, and then their eyes met. “Are you all right, Father?”
Father Joseph nodded even though he knew shards of metal had torn through his cassock and into his body, but it didn’t matter. They’d both survived. “And you?”
“Yes. You’ve a brave man, Father.”
“So are you.” They smiled at each other. Father Joseph saw the cop was an older man, maybe close to fifty, his face scored with years of life. He took one of the officer’s hands in his. Together they watched.
Foley heard ambulances, sirens blaring, saw scores of paramedics making their way through the crowds, saw several of them on their knees beside Father Joseph and the cop who’d come running out of the cathedral with him. He saw a young altar boy in his white cape run to Father Joseph and fall to his knees beside him. He saw the priest speak to the boy, take his hands, squeeze them, saw the boy’s lips moving in frantic prayer. The agent beside Foley told him it was the young altar boy Romeo Rodriguez who’d alerted them to the bomb. He saw the paramedics didn’t try to send the boy away.
The cathedral hadn’t suffered much damage at all, from what Foley saw, just some chips of concrete gouged from the huge front pillars. It was less important than the lives saved, but a huge relief nonetheless. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the restoration of one of New York’s greatest icons hadn’t been wasted. Father Joseph Reilly had saved St. Pat’s and the little boy had saved eight hundred people, himself included. Foley would be sure the President thanked both of them personally. He called the President to update him as he was hustled to a limousine on Sixth Avenue.
Time passed, only slowly now that the danger was over, and Foley thought, wasn’t that odd?
? ? ?
KELLY GIUSTI PUSHED her way through the crowd. Only forty-three minutes had passed since the terrorist attack at JFK and now the bomb at St. Pat’s. She knew from the information that had come through her earbud so far, there had been injuries, but nothing fatal. Giusti wondered if there was such a thing as a miracle. Then she felt a wash of rage so great she couldn’t catch her breath. So many people could have been killed, the incredible interior of the cathedral damaged, and dozens more killed at JFK. Giusti wasn’t Catholic, but that didn’t matter. She raised her eyes heavenward and thanked God for Father Joseph Reilly and Romeo Rodriguez and the FBI agent at JFK. She had Nasim Arak Conklin under wraps. She was going to wring him out. He had to know about both attacks; they were two halves of the whole. He had to know who had planned them.
RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Wednesday, earlier in the day
Outside the third-floor office of Virginia congressman Burt Hildegard, George “Sparky” Carroll, a handsome young man dressed in his best suit, white shirt, and red tie, was wearing a face-splitting smile so wide his molars were on display. He was so pleased, he looked ready to dance, not that anyone would notice. The endless long hall before him seemed to go on forever, and was jammed with staffers, lobbyists, secretaries, visitors, and committee members pouring in and out of doors to add to the traffic, everyone on a mission. Mission. He liked the sound of that. Mr. George Carroll to Houston, I’ve completed my mission, ready for liftoff.
Sparky jostled against two big men who looked like bodyguards, hastily begged their pardon, and allowed himself a single small skip. But he could whistle, and as he wove his way through scores of people back down that endless institutional hallway toward an exit somewhere and a grumpy security guard, he did whistle, nice and loud, an old tune he knew, “I’ve Got the World on a String.”
No one paid him any mind. Everyone was hurrying somewhere, jostling one another, carried along by the sound of low conversations.
Thanks to Sparky’s intense study of his granny’s prized copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, he’d pumped himself up, made his presentation, and, glory be, Congressman Hildegard had signed on the dotted line. A contract for two years to cater all the congressman’s home district functions, a minimum of three dozen. He could hear his granddad’s old cash register cha-ching in his head.
Best of all, was he ever going to get laid tonight. He knew Tammy was probably carrying around her cell, waiting for his call. He’d buy her flowers, maybe lift a bottle of champagne from the storage room. Tammy had always believed in him, long before they’d gotten married four months before, a month before he’d inherited his father’s catering company, Eat Well and Prosper. He loved the name because his dad had raised him on Star Trek. His dad’s lasagna, now his lasagna, had made Eat Well and Prosper famous. Congressman Hildegard had even mentioned how much he’d loved Milt’s lasagna and his signature garlic toast, now Sparky’s lasagna and his signature garlic toast.
He was still whistling when he reached for his cell phone to call Tammy. He punched in her number, heard the beginning of the first ring, then her excited voice, “Sparky! What happened? Did the congressman sign our contract? Sparky, talk to me, tell me everything.”
He was grinning wildly into the cell as her words tumbled over one another, but before he could speak, a man ran right into him, shoving people out of the way, and pressed him back against the wall. Sparky felt a hit of cold as something sharp sank into his chest. It was more odd than painful, the feeling of his flesh splitting open, and then agony ripped through him, unspeakable, and he knew, he knew, he was dying. Sparky dropped his cell phone and began to slide down the wall. Vaguely he heard Tammy yelling his name. She sounded scared and he hated that. He heard people screaming around him. Then he didn’t hear anything at all.
GEORGETOWN
Late Wednesday afternoon
Savich heard about the terrorist incident at JFK a minute after it happened. He was in the Porsche, driving from Langley back to Georgetown after a meeting with some brass who wanted the FBI to pull their butts out of a bind. He liked to be owed favors, particularly by the CIA, and had complied.
He had only a minute to think about calling Sherlock, knowing she could have been in that security line at JFK, when his cell sang out Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart.”
“She’s all right,” Ollie Hamish said immediately, his voice hyper-excited, “she’s okay, asked me to call you because she had to shut her cell down. Go home and watch the news. You won’t believe this, Savich,” and Ollie rang off before Savich could ask him what he wouldn’t believe.