Will ran south down Broadway. He ran past groups of pedestrians, he ran between moving cars, he ran as snow began falling gently from the sky, he ran in a nighttime that was brightly illuminated by the city’s lights.
He checked his watch and cursed the crowds and traffic. He cursed everything that was slowing his attempt to get to the Metropolitan Opera House. What was the fastest way south? He knew a subway could work, but he could also be waiting on a platform—and he had no stomach for that. He knew his only hope was finding a cab.
As he ran, he wondered what he should do. He knew that under other circumstances the correct thing for him to do would be to call Patrick and instruct the man to get the FBI Critical Incident Response Group to take over what was now a federal police matter. It would secure the area around the opera house, and it would have drills and procedures to evacuate the building while simultaneously searching for terrorists and bombs. But Will was unsure if that was the right thing to do, because he was sure something was wrong. Something had been said by Megiddo that did not sound right. He knew what it was.
I will make you my audience.
He sprinted across an intersection blocked with traffic, still keeping his eye out for a southbound cab. And he desperately tried to think. He knew that Megiddo was not the type of man who needed an audience. He knew that the man had told him about his plan for another reason. But he could not grasp what that reason was. He wondered whether Megiddo had simply fed him another lie and had bombs planted at a different location. He concluded that made no sense at this stage, as Megiddo would have forced Lana to confess everything, including the fact that Will did not really have information that could thwart his plot. He wondered if Megiddo had wanted his plot foiled and maybe even had a desire to stop the death of the children and wives and, ultimately, millions of others. But he recalled the look of death in Megiddo’s eyes and knew that the man had no intention of stopping his attack.
He cursed, then saw a cab turning onto Broadway half a block ahead and knew he had to catch it. Another sprint later, he caught it as it slowed down at a stoplight. He jumped in and told the driver “Lincoln Center. As fast as you can.”
He kept thinking, trying to outthink Megiddo, reminding himself that the man was a mastermind, telling himself that the man did everything for a reason, would have left nothing to chance, and would have thought through every possible potential outcome.
Megiddo told me about his plan because he knew that if I killed him, I would take action to stop the bombs from detonating at 9:00 P.M. He wanted me to be in the opera house or, if not, close to it when bombs went off. He wanted me to suffer, because he thought I was the son of his father’s killer. But I am not. And that was why he finally concluded that his presence in the hotel room was pointless.
He knew he was right. And he also knew that even though Megiddo was dead, he was still outsmarting him.
Why was Megiddo so confident that he would succeed no matter what I did?
He closed his eyes for a moment as the answer banged into his brain.
Megiddo has a bomber in the building. That man took Lana into the building earlier in the day and is watching over her. That man is there to detonate the bombs ahead of 9:00 P.M. if I or the FBI tries to evacuate the building. The man is prepared to die by his own hand.
He opened his eyes, saw the city racing past him, and he felt hopeless.
Traffic and sidewalk crowds were growing as they got closer. He checked his watch and saw that it was just after 7:30 P.M. The concert would begin in less than thirty minutes. Bombs would destroy the place in less than ninety minutes.
The cab slowed as traffic became heavier. Will looked around. He could see glimpses of trees beyond two blocks to the east. They belonged to Central Park. He would never think of that place and not think of Soroush. Every place in New York now reminded him of Soroush.
He forced the recollection out of his mind to focus on what was happening here.
By the time the cab got to Sixty-Ninth Street, it was bumper to bumper traffic, so he threw some cash at the driver and got out to run the rest of the way. He dodged pedestrians for several more blocks, then stopped to get his bearings, bent over, and sucked in a lungful of air. When he stood up, a bus pulled away from the curb and revealed the massive glass-fronted Alice Tully Hall and the Juilliard School right in front of him, only one more block to the south. He knew the Metropolitan Opera House would be just beyond, slightly to the west.
When he made it to Lincoln Center Plaza, crowds of people were outside the front of the Met, and it was clear that they were there for the concert. Most were children, and they were being marshaled into groups by supervising adults wearing different-colored fluorescent jackets bearing the names of various schools or clubs. Everyone was dressed in coats and other warm clothes as protection from the cold and snow, and some held umbrellas. Gradually the crowds were organized into long, snaking lines that curled across the open plaza and around the brightly illuminated fountains. The supervisors moved back and forth, barking instructions at the children, and they were no doubt anxious to get their wards out of the cold and into the building as quickly as possible. Will slowed to a walk and moved among the crowds. He felt his hidden Heckler & Koch MK23 brush against his hip bone as he did so.
He stopped and knew that he needed to make a decision, even if it was the wrong one. He decided the FBI could not be involved because its arrival here would be too visible, that he had to enter the building covertly and alone, hope that he was not seen by the bomber, and finish this one way or the other.
He moved close to the building’s entrances and saw members of the opera house’s staff standing by them. He turned and looked back at the crowds. He saw five lines of children and their supervisors, and he saw a sixth line that contained only adults. He looked away from the lines that led to the house’s entrances and examined adults who were not part of any lines. Many were clearly parents of the children standing in the lines, waving and calling to their sons and daughters. A small number were media types and were taking photographs or using video cameras or holding microphones. Some seemed to be passing tourists or New Yorkers who were taking in the evening spectacle. Some looked like parents or media types or passing tourists or random New Yorkers, but Will’s trained eye could see that they were none of those things. He saw one of them, then another, then counted six of them before deciding that there were nine of them spaced out in the plaza area before the building. They were not wearing their trademark and recognizable black suits and lapel pins but instead were dressed like anyone else in this weather. They were Secret Service and were clearly here because of all the VIPs. And they were clearly positioned among the crowds to search for bad people or people like Will.
Will looked around in frustration. He was in danger of appearing out of place and therefore being identified by one of the Secret Service men or women. They would have no hesitation in trying to put him on the ground with guns pointed at him for simply looking as though he shouldn’t be there. They were trained to be some of the quickest and deadliest shooters in the world, although he knew he would be quicker and deadlier than all of them put together. But if a confrontation ensued, the bomber might be warned that something was happening.
He walked casually away from the plaza so that he was looking down one side of the opera house. Police were gathered there, and they stood alongside barricades that stopped pedestrians from getting too close to the building. Will swore under his breath, although he had expected all but the main entrances to be sealed off and protected. He moved to the other side of the building and saw more barricades and more police and also more Secret Service men and women. He stood for a while watching them. He stood as one limousine, two unmarked cars, and four police vehicles pulled up to the side of the building. He saw doors open and men exit and stand by their stationary vehicles as a group of four indistinguishable women walked quickly from the limousine into the opera house. He watched the cavalcade move off quickly. Within an additional ten minutes, three more cavalcades came and went after offloading three more women. Will walked back to the front of the house, knowing that the premiers’ wives were now in the building.
The lines were moving forward, and Will estimated that at least half of the crowd was now inside. He checked his watch again and saw that the concert was due to start in minutes. He heard the staff members by the entrances call to their crowds to keep moving forward, saw the children’s supervisors liaise with them while holding clusters of tickets and sheets of paper, and watched uniformed police officers walking slowly through the crowds.
He knew that he was running out of time and options. He felt his handgun press hard against his body, and he decided he had to get rid of the weapon. He looked around, saw a garbage can, walked to it, and quickly dropped the gun and spare bullet clips inside. He walked slowly back to the center of the plaza and looked at the line containing only adults. There were approximately three hundred people in the line. Most of them were couples and therefore of no use to him, as he knew that they were most likely parents of either child performers or spectators and therefore would never give up their space in the line. But a handful of them were solitary adults, and Will looked up and down the line at them. He wasted no time in moving toward the line.
He approached a man who looked to be in his midthirties. “Do you have a ticket?”
The man frowned at Will and no doubt briefly wondered whether he was an official before deciding he was not. “Of course. Why?”
Will shrugged and nodded toward the opera house. “My daughter’s playing in there tonight.” He shook his head. “I only found out two days ago. My ex-wife didn’t feel like telling me. I would do anything to see her perform, but I know the event’s sold out. Would you sell me your ticket?”
The man looked sympathetic. “Tough break. But I’m here with the New York Times to write a review of the concert, so unless that’s something you could do in my absence, I’m going to have to decline your request.”
Will nodded, thanked the man anyway, and moved farther up the line. He spotted a woman and gave her the same story. The woman told him to get lost.
He walked up to a man who looked to be in his sixties and was clearly suffering from the cold, with his arms wrapped around his torso. Will said, “Cold night.”
The man said, “Damn right.”
Will said, “My daughter’s playing in there tonight. I’m sure she’d love to see me in the audience. Could I buy your ticket?”
The man said, “My granddaughter’s playing in there tonight. That’s why I’ve spent forty minutes out here freezing my ass off, and I’m not about to move an inch away from this line.”
Will felt frustration coursing through him as he again looked up and down the line. He spotted a solitary adult toward the front and walked over to him. The man was very young, maybe only twenty, and was dressed like a student. Will said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for your ticket.”
The man looked at him in surprise. “A thousand dollars?”
Will nodded.
The man frowned, looked unsure, then repeated, “A thousand dollars?”
Will spoke in a stern voice. “In ten seconds you can walk away from this line with that cash in your pocket. But if you don’t want it, I’m sure someone else here does.”
The young man shook his head quickly and thrust his hand into his coat pocket. “Here.” He showed Will his ticket.
Will put his hand into his suit pocket, pulled out the plastic envelope that he knew contained just over two thousand dollars, looked at it, and said, “It’s a bit more than I told you. Take it and go.”
They exchanged the ticket and the cash, and Will joined the line. The young man walked quickly away.
Will was approximately ten meters from the opera house’s entrance. He pulled up the collar of his suit jacket and stamped his feet on the ground while hugging his chest to try to make him look cold to any observers. Officials kept calling, telling people to move forward. Nearly all the children were in the building now, and the plaza area was no longer crowded. Will casually looked around the place. The nine Secret Service men and women had all moved position but were still on the plaza. He looked toward the entrance and saw glimpses of the inside of the building. He saw people in his line move through a metal detector and felt huge relief that he had disposed of his weapon.
As people entered the building, Will shuffled forward until he was five meters from the entrance. He turned a little to look back up the line. His eyes narrowed as he saw the woman whom he had earlier approached take two steps away from the line and talk to a police officer. She was about forty meters from Will, looked up and down the line, shrugged her shoulders, and stepped back into the line. The police officer spoke on his radio. Will immediately fixed his eyes on one of the plainclothes Secret Service men. The man was very still for a moment before walking quickly toward one of his colleagues. Will’s heart beat faster. He knew that the woman had reported his approach to her as suspicious and that all security officials in the vicinity of the opera house would now be aware of that approach. He turned to face the entrance and shuffled forward a couple of yards.
There were three people in front of him now. Will pulled out his ticket and breathed carefully to calm himself. The ticket attendant by the door looked stressed and grabbed tickets with one hand while waving people through the doorway with the other. Will took a step forward as the three people in front of him became two. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a police officer walking slowly along the line, examining every man and woman standing behind Will. He looked away from the line and saw that four of the Secret Service people had moved closer to the line. He willed the line to move more quickly. The two people in front of him became one, and Will stamped his feet to make himself look colder. The man in front of him handed his ticket to the attendant and walked in.
Will took a deep breath and smiled as he handed his ticket to the official. He exhaled slowly as he stepped into the opera house.
He moved through the metal detector, stopped, calmly looked at the officials who were monitoring the detector, saw them nod at him, and then walked on. He moved quickly, knowing that other attendees who were not yet seated were doing the same. He glanced at his ticket, saw that he was supposed to be seated on one of the balcony aisles and that he would need to walk up the sweeping red-carpeted stairway to reach his place. But he had no intention of going there and instead walked onward at ground level, scouring doors to his left and right. People were all around him, and some seemed to know where they were going and some not. He moved forward and wished that he’d had time to study the layout of the huge building he was in. But he was grateful that he was not the only one who didn’t know the layout, and for a while he hid among the ranks of the lost.
He moved along a corridor until he was away from other people and door entrances to the auditorium. He moved on until he was alone. He reached a door that said NO ADMITTANCE, STAFF ONLY. He looked back down the corridor. Nobody was looking at him. He swiveled back to face the door, turned the handle, opened it, and walked through. Narrow stairs were immediately ahead of him. He walked quickly down them until he knew he was in a part of the building that was below stage level. A slender corridor was before him, with other corridors leading away from it to its left and right. Everywhere was dimly illuminated. A corridor on his right was lined with lockers that he imagined were used by performers, as was another corridor on his left. He kept walking.
He stopped suddenly as a huge sound came from above him. His heart pounded. He realized the sound was the start of the concert. He could now clearly hear instruments and singing. His heartbeat slowed, and he kept going. The music quieted.
There were more corridors to his left and right. Some had signs and arrows directing him to rehearsal rooms, management offices, changing rooms. Will imagined that before the concert this whole subterranean floor would have been bustling with performers getting ready, officials fretting about schedules and timings, backstage well-wishers, and crews that would move curtains and stage pulleys and manhandle props on and off the stage. But right now the labyrinth of rooms around him seemed empty.
Rapid footsteps suddenly told him that the place was not empty. He looked around quickly, trying to ascertain where the steps were coming from. He decided they were behind him but heading in his direction. He jogged forward and darted left into yet another corridor. He stopped, swiveled, crouched, and wished he still had his gun. The footsteps grew louder, and he realized they belonged to more than one person. Police officers? Secret Service? As the footsteps drew nearer, he bunched his right hand into a fist and waited, briefly wondering what he would do if armed officials found him here. He decided he would have no choice other than to inflict rapid, absolute, but nonlethal pain on them and render them unconscious.
The footsteps were nearly directly in front of him now, and Will clenched his fist tighter, braced his body to move fast, and focused solely on the corridor ahead and the other corridor traversing it. The footsteps slowed. Will got ready.
A woman and a girl appeared at the end of the corridor. Will exhaled slowly and unclenched his fist. The woman had her arms around the girl and seemed to be consoling her. The girl was wearing a black dress and a white blouse and was crying. She carried a flute.
They stopped, and the woman told her, “It’s called stage fright. I used to get it when I was your age. Let’s find you a warm drink and see if you feel like going back out there afterward.”
They walked away from Will’s position, and soon they were gone. He stood upright and looked around. He decided that he was in the wrong place. He decided that the bomber would be hidden someplace where he could not be accidentally found by innocents. He moved on, and the noise of the concert grew louder as he went.
He tried to imagine the layout of a building like this and what it would need to support it and keep it running. He decided that the Metropolitan Opera House would need power generators and air-conditioning and heating units and thick pillars to support its stage and overall structure. He could see that most of those things were not on this floor. He knew that there had to be another floor beneath him and that it would be the perfect place for the bomber to wait while holding Lana captive.
He rubbed his face and desperately tried not to think about Lana, her condition now, and whether she was even still alive. He tried not to think of anything that would hinder his focus and concentration to stop the most terrible event.
Lights flashed to his right, and Will instinctively pushed himself against a wall. The lights were close and moved over floor and ceiling. He knew that they were flashlights, that in a place like this flashlights were unusual and would be carried only by officials who were looking for something. He decided that the officials had to be looking for him and were probably armed. He turned and ran away from them along the corridor he was in. He moved into an area of shadows and looked back down the corridor he’d just covered. He saw two men dressed in windbreakers, jeans, and hiking boots. They were carrying handguns. He couldn’t see their faces clearly, but they were dressed like the Secret Service men he’d spotted outside the opera house. They hadn’t seen him, but he knew that if he stayed where he was, he would be found.
He moved deeper into the shadows, turned into another corridor, jogged silently along it, past empty rooms and other corridors, and stopped. The lights were some distance behind him but had now separated. Will looked at the ceiling above him. Judging by the sounds coming from it, he knew he had to be directly under the stage. He ran along another corridor and estimated that he was close to one of the building’s exterior walls. He looked at every opening and every doorway near him, desperately searching for a route that would take him down to the opera house’s basement.
He ran to the end of the corridor and stopped. A door was before him that had a sign saying MAINTENANCE ONLY. He was about to move to the door when a beam of light struck the floor only a few feet in front of him. He silently moved backward and sidestepped into a corridor on his right. He stood motionless and watched the floor near him. He could still see the flashlight, and it was getting very close. The music above him grew, and Will cursed the noise as it obliterated any chance of his hearing the movement of the men on this floor. He breathed in deeply and tensed his muscles to lunge forward if the man closest to him turned into his corridor. The flashlight moved left and right over the floor and walls. It came closer. Will stayed still.
He saw the gun before he saw the man. It moved slowly across his vision and was almost within arm’s reach. The gun stopped for a moment and then moved forward. The man stepped into view and walked carefully along the corridor. Will pushed himself flush against a wall, even though he knew he would be seen if the man looked hard left in his direction. But the man kept walking and soon disappeared from view.
Will waited for thirty seconds before stepping carefully forward to the edge of the corridor containing the Secret Service man. He lowered himself down so that he was not at eye level and quickly poked his head out into the corridor before pulling it back. The Secret Service man was gone. Will slowly moved out and ran low toward the door for maintenance men.
He carefully shut the door behind him and saw stairs heading down. He took them, and with every step the sounds from the concert above him grew quieter. He reached the subbasement and now more than ever wished he were armed. He looked around him and knew that this was a perfect place to hide Lana. And he knew that it was also a perfect place for Megiddo’s bomber to wait and detonate his bombs ahead of schedule if anything happened.
The area around him had large, square metal vents jutting out of its roof and traveling at head height through space before reentering the roof at different points. Big generators were positioned nearby, humming in a low drone. He saw thick steel pillars that reached from floor to ceiling and assumed they supported the opera house’s stage and everything on it. He saw wall-mounted fixtures and occasional ceiling fixtures, but the light here was even dimmer than that on the floor above. He looked back up the staircase and wondered if the Secret Service men would soon open the door and search this basement. He looked around the vast area before him and wondered if there were other routes into this place. He decided that there had to be other entrances, that the Secret Service men could use any of those routes to find him here, and that they would know every inch of the place.
He checked his watch. It was now 8:20 P.M.
He walked forward, occasionally ducking his head to avoid the vents, and scoured the area to his left and right and ahead of him. But the place was a tangled mess of big machinery, narrow spaces, and dark recesses, and he could barely see beyond a few yards ahead of him. The hum of the generators was everywhere, and the concert could hardly be heard.
He walked faster and moved into an area that contained instrument panels, with switches and levers and warnings about voltage. He brushed a hand over one of the panels and saw that it was covered with fine dust and had therefore clearly not been touched for a few days. He moved on through an area containing dozens of thin pipes at floor level. He stepped over them into an area that was clear of anything at floor level, and as he did so, he heard a clunk of metal behind him. He spun around and saw that the metallic sound had come from one of the pipes. Whatever was coursing through it was causing it to vibrate and bang against an adjacent pipe. He turned to move forward.
Then he felt a hard object against the back of his head.
He stood frozen. He heard feet scuffing the floor. The object pressed harder against his head. He knew it had to be the muzzle of a gun and that the gun could belong to Megiddo’s bomber, but he also knew that it more likely belonged to one of the two Secret Service men who were searching for a man who had been desperate to enter the opera house. He wondered whether to spin around, grab the muzzle, simultaneously grab the hand holding the gun, and twist both so that he was in possession of the weapon. He could do the movement in under four-fifths of a second. But if the gun belonged to a Secret Service man, his colleague could be with him, and that man would shoot Will before he could complete the movement. He turned slowly.
Lana was before him. She was holding the gun.
Will frowned, looked to her left and right to see if some hidden person was pointing a gun at her to make her do what she was doing, saw nothing, and looked back at her. He felt totally confused. He felt as if nothing made sense.
“What are you doing?” Will said the words slowly, and they did not seem like his own.
Lana stared at him. Her expression was cold. She looked unharmed and strong. She looked in command of herself.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Lana shook her head slowly. “If you are here, then he is dead.”
Will’s heart pounded. Confusion overwhelmed him. “What is going on?” He could smell Lana’s perfume, feel her presence, and see her beauty. But he could also see that she had death in her eyes and that she wanted to kill him.
“You have been such a fool, Will Cochrane.”
She used my real name.
She smiled. “Such a fool.”
“Megiddo told you my real name?”
“I always knew your real name.”
Will felt an immediate sense of nausea and anger. “You’ve been working with Megiddo all along?”
She no longer smiled. “Ever since I met him all those years ago. From the beginning to the end.”
Will shook his head in disbelief.
Lana waved the muzzle of the gun a little before steadying it toward Will’s head. “You’ve been tricked by us all. Tricked by Megiddo, me, and . . . all of us.”
Will narrowed his eyes as a realization struck him. “All of you, including the man who introduced your name to me.”
Lana nodded. “Harry as well.” She widened her eyes. “I have always loved Megiddo, and he has always loved me. I had to be here to complete his masterpiece because you killed all his other soldiers.” She smiled. “I came here to trigger the bombs if someone like you tried to stop our attack from happening.”
Will’s mind raced with questions and confusion. There was so much he didn’t understand about what was happening, but he also knew he had no time to find answers to these questions. “How can you detonate the bombs?”
Lana patted a breast pocket. “I have a number programmed into my cell phone. If I call that number, the bombs receive my signal and detonate ahead of their preprogrammed time of nine P.M.”
Will checked his watch. It was 8:45 P.M.
He desperately tried to think. “You will have another number in your phone. A number that if called will stop the bombs from going off at nine P.M. A number that was to be called only in the event that the concert was postponed to another day or called off.”
Lana narrowed her eyes. “That number will never be called, because I have everything I need in the concert hall—the premiers’ wives and the thousands of children.”
Will shook his head. “Surely you don’t want this atrocity to happen? Surely you don’t want their deaths?”
Lana smiled. “They will die, you will die, and I will be with Megiddo again. I will be happy when the bombs destroy everything around us.”
Will felt sick. The woman before him was a woman he did not know. Lana meant what she said. If she had any heart, it was a heart that cared for nothing other than Megiddo. He decided that his only hope now depended upon her believing a lie. He shook his head. “Lana, it is you who’s been the fool. Megiddo never loved you.”
She glared at him. “You know nothing about the love we had for each other.”
Will shook his head again. “I came here expecting to find you tied up and a bomber holding a gun to your head.”
Lana sniggered. “That is what Megiddo wanted you to expect.”
Will nodded. “He did. Even when he was on his knees and I had a gun pointed at his head, even when he knew he was about to die, he knew that there was nothing I could do to stop his attack.” Will frowned. “So why would he describe the bomber in the opera house as a naïve and gullible pawn whose death would be as trivial as the deaths of the children? Why would he say that when he had no need to say such a thing to me?”
Lana frowned. “You’re lying.”
Will shook his head. “I’m not, but the comment he made was unnecessary. If Megiddo loved you, he would just have kept his mouth shut about his views of the bomber. Or maybe he would have used a more positive description. But he had absolutely no need to be disparaging about the bomber unless”—he nodded sadly—“unless he wanted me to truly know the magnitude of his strategy. He wanted me to know how he had manipulated every single person around him. Every person, including the man or woman who was going to detonate his bombs.”
Lana shook her head, but doubt clearly showed on her face. “He . . . he loved me. He always loved me.”
Will checked his watch. It was 8:52 P.M. His heart was hammering, but he kept his voice calm. “Think about it, Lana. He lived his life solely to outwit others.”
“You know nothing about him!” Lana spat. “He loved his work, but he also loved me.”
Will spoke forcefully. “He has always used you, and he is using you now. That is why he described you as a naïve and gullible pawn. And I agree with his description, because that’s precisely what you are!”
The generators near them seemed to hum louder. Pipes rattled and hissed. Vents groaned. The music from the concert above them sounded distant but was still audible.
A tear ran down one of Lana’s cheeks. “I love him.”
“But he never loved you.”
Her gun moved slightly.
Will watched her. “Lana, I loved you. But he had no love for anything other than his work.”
Lana looked away for a moment. When she looked back at Will, she had tears rolling down both cheeks. She spoke with a weak and trembling voice. “Then I have indeed been the fool.”
Will smiled with a look of sympathy, even though he felt anything but sympathy for the woman in front of him. “We have both been fools. And victims.”
She took a step back and leaned against a vent. She was breathing rapidly, and Will wondered if she was starting to hyperventilate. She shook her head, cursing. She lowered her gun and held it by her side. She looked around the basement and up at the ceiling. She shook her head some more and banged the butt of her handgun against the vent. She looked at Will. “What . . . what should I do?”
Will took a step toward her. “You must do something to show Megiddo that you are no longer a fool. You must do something to show him that you are no longer his pawn. You must do the one thing that will hurt him the most. You must call the number to disarm the bombs.”
Lana shook her head, and tears now streamed down her face.
“Lana, if you die here, you will never be with him. You will have died for nothing. Everyone here will have died for nothing.”
Lana again banged her gun on the vent and muttered, “Oh, dear God.” She looked at Will. “He told me he loved me. He showed me he loved me.”
“He did that so you would be here.”
Lana looked up at the ceiling and screamed, “A fucking pawn?”
She lowered her head and began breathing slower. She closed her eyes. She rubbed the back of her gun-carrying hand against her face. She looked at Will.
“Call the number.” Will looked at the time. It was 8:57 P.M.
She reached into her breast pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She looked at it. For a long time. She frowned. Then she looked at Will before looking back at the cell phone.
It was now 8:59 P.M.
“We have no time, Lana!” Will’s heart was racing.
She breathed in slowly. She pressed numbers into the phone. She held it to her ear. She waited a moment, then nodded. She dropped her arm to her side, still clutching the phone. She began weeping and shaking.
“Are the bombs disarmed?”
Lana wrapped her arms around her body and shook violently with emotion.
Will shouted, “Lana, are they disarmed?”
Lana inhaled slowly, and her body steadied. “They are. They’re safe.”
Will checked his watch. It was 9:00 P.M. He looked around, waited, counted seconds, could barely hear the concert, but life was clearly continuing in the building. He sighed and looked at Lana.
Her gun was pointing at him. She rubbed tears away from her face and breathed loudly. She shrugged. “So it’s over now.”
“Put the gun down, Lana.”
She shook her head.
“Put the gun down, Lana.”
Lana huffed. “You’ll put me in a prison cell for the rest of my life.”
“Lana, put the gun down! You’ve disarmed the bombs. That will go in your favor.”
Lana shook her head again.
“Put the gun down.” The voice was not Will’s.
He spun around and faced a man who was pointing his gun at Lana and Will. One of the men whom Will had seen on the floor above. A Secret Service agent. He was alone.
The man looked at Will. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Will nodded. Now that the bombs were disarmed, he decided that his work was done. He decided that he had to tell the Secret Service what was happening here.
The man looked at Lana and fixed his gun on her.
Will said, “I am a British intelligence officer.”
The Secret Service man glanced at Will.
A shot rang out, and a bullet struck the Secret Service man in the center of his head. Will closed his eyes. He turned slowly to look at Lana. Her gun was pointing at the now prone and dead agent. She moved the gun so that it was pointing at Will’s head.
Lana smiled. “My next bullet’s for you.”
Will shook his head. “Why did you kill him? Why are you still holding a gun?”
“Because I have fucking nothing now. Because it seems I’ve always had nothing.”
Will sighed and briefly felt pity for her. “You could have had so much more. I hoped that you and I could have been together.”
“I know you did.” She laughed humorlessly. “I might have been a pawn in Megiddo’s game, but you were certainly a pawn in mine. I wanted you to love me. I needed your emotions for me to cloud any possibility that you might suspect my true role in Megiddo’s plan. I had to try to get you to expose your soul to me so that I could watch you suffer when you realized that your emotions had been totally duped.”
Will shook his head. He felt a coldness descend over his mind. He felt momentarily numb. “I see.”
Lana watched him without emotion. “We often see the truth only at the very end of things. We both now know our truths, but only one of us is going to walk out of this place.”
“I know.” In a movement that was too quick to be seen and stopped, Will stepped forward, grabbed the barrel of Lana’s gun, used his other hand to twist her hand, and took possession of the gun, now pointing it at her head.
Will held the gun close to her. He no longer felt numb, and instead his heart filled with anger, regret, and sorrow. “I lied to you. Megiddo never described you as a pawn in his game. I think he really did love you.”
Lana’s mouth dropped open in a look of total surprise. Which swiftly turned to anger. “You tricked me!”
“I stopped you from making a dreadful mistake.”
Lana’s eyes darted left and right, and she seemed to be making some kind of calculation. She looked at Will. “I have to be with Megiddo again.”
“No, Lana.”
She raised her hand and brought her cell phone close to her chest.
“Lana, do not do that.”
She smiled and moved her other hand toward the phone’s number pad.
“Lana, stop now.”
She moved a single finger close to the cell phone. Her smile faded. “In a different life, it would have been wonderful to get to know you.”
Will’s heart pumped fast. “Don’t touch that phone! Don’t trigger the bombs!”
Her finger moved until it was an inch from the phone. She smiled again. “Good-bye, Will Cochrane.”
Her finger descended to the number pad.
In that tiniest moment, Will knew that it was too late to say anything else, that action was all that mattered now, but as he watched her finger move and squeezed his own finger back rapidly on the handgun’s trigger, he felt nothing but overwhelming sorrow. He heard the sound of his gun, felt the weapon recoil, saw his bullet strike Lana in the side of the head and rip open her beautiful face. He watched her move away from him, her knees buckle, her body start to fall, and her hand release the cell phone. He saw the death of Lana Beseisu.
He dashed forward and caught the phone before it fell to the floor alongside her. He looked at the display screen and sighed with relief as he saw that his trigger finger had been quicker than hers. No number had been depressed.
He looked at Lana’s dead body and felt giddy and sick. He had thought this woman would change everything for him. But now he stared at her, knowing that she’d been prepared to help Megiddo slaughter millions of people for no other reason than her love for the monster.
He looked around and imagined the floors above him in the opera house, the boxes where the premiers’ wives were sitting during the performance, the other boxes and the ground-level seats containing the audience of children and the orchestra area holding excited child performers. He pictured bombs and fire raining down from the ceiling and tearing through all of that, causing the total war that would have resulted from the abhorrent act were he not standing over the dead body of Lana Beseisu. He shook his head in disbelief.
He looked at Lana one last time. There was so much he wanted to know about her, so much that did not make sense. But he knew that things could have been different. He knelt beside her and smoothed a hand against her bloody face. He ran his fingers through her hair and whispered, “If I’d been there at the beginning, you would not be here now.”
He closed his eyes and saw the young Lana walking desperately through frozen Bosnian woods, her clothes torn and offering no protection against the bitter winter, her legs staggering, her eyes wide with fear, her body weak and in shock after being raped, her mind focused only on reaching the besieged city of Sarajevo and being with the man called Megiddo. He imagined her falling to the ground, crawling through thick snow, pulling herself to her feet again, staggering forward, falling again, crawling again, but continuing to use all her remaining strength to find the man she believed was her savior. He watched every movement she made and every exertion take her inch by inch closer to a man who would corrupt her life so that it would end with a bullet in her brain.
He wished he’d been there as she dragged her mind and her desecrated body through the terrible war-torn forests. He would have gone to her, taken her hand, and walked her away from Sarajevo and the deadly man it contained. He would have spoken soft but commanding words to her. Come with me. I am taking you to a better life.`