London Bridges: A Novel (13 page)

From a distance, the ornate silver-painted ironwork and finials had made the old bridge look rather delicate. Up close, the real power of the structure was revealed: the massive trusses; rivets as large as a man's kneecaps.

This sounded crazy, but it would work—his piece would work.

Sometimes he wondered how he'd gotten so sour on everything, so bitter and full of rage. Hell, years ago in the Marines he'd been part of the rescue team that had extracted downed pilots like Scott O'Grady in Bosnia. Well, he wasn't a war hero anymore. He was just another capitalist working in the system, right? And that was a lot truer statement than most people could let themselves believe.

As he continued to walk out on the support structure, Capistran couldn't help humming, then singing the words, “Groovy. Feeling very groovy.”

The strangest, most puzzling thing happened next.

The deadline passed—and nothing happened.

There was no message from the Wolf, no immediate attacks. Nothing. Silence. It was eerie, but also incredibly scary.

The Wolf was the only one who knew what was going on now—or maybe, the Wolf, the president, and a few other world leaders. Rumor had it that the president, vice president, and the cabinet had already been moved out of Washington.

This thing wouldn't stop, would it? The news stories certainly wouldn't. The Post, the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the networks—they had all gotten hold of some version of the threats against major cities. No one knew which cities, or who was doing the threatening. But after years of yellow and orange alerts from Homeland Security, no one seemed to take the threats and rumors too seriously.

The uncertainty, the war of nerves had to be part of the Wolf's plan, too. I was in Washington for the Memorial Day weekend, and was asleep when I got a call to get over to the Hoover Building right away.

I looked at the alarm clock, squinting to focus, saw that it was three in the morning. Now what? Have there been reprisals? If so, they weren't telling me over the phone.

“I'll be right there,” I said, pushing myself out of bed, cursing under my breath. I showered under hot, then cold water for a minute or two, toweled off, threw on clothes, and got in the car and drove through Washington in a horrible daze. All I knew was that the Wolf was going to call in thirty minutes.

Three-thirty in the morning, after a long weekend, with the expired deadline hanging over our head. He wasn't just controlling, he was sadistic.

When I arrived at the crisis room on five, there were at least a dozen others already there. We greeted one another like old friends at somebody's wake. For the next couple of minutes, bleary-eyed agents kept filing into the conference room, nobody seeming completely awake. A ragged line formed at the coffee table as a couple of pots finally arrived. Everybody looked nervous and on edge.

“No Danish?” said one of the other agents. “Where's the love?” But nobody even smiled at his joke.

Director Burns came in a few minutes past 3:30. He was wearing a dark suit and tie, formal for him, but especially at this time of the morning. I had the sense that he didn't have any idea what was happening, either. The Wolf was in charge, not any of us.

“And you thought I was a tough boss,” Director Burns cracked after a couple of minutes of silence in the room. Finally, there was a sprinkling of laughter. “Thank you for coming,” Burns added.

The Wolf came on the line at 3:43. The filtered voice. The characteristic smugness and disdain.

“You're probably wondering why I scheduled a meeting in the middle of the night,” he began. "Because I can. How do you like that? Because I can.

"In case you haven't been able to tell, I don't like you people very much. Not at all, actually. I have my reasons, good ones. I hate everything America stands for. So maybe this is partly about revenge? Maybe you've wronged me somewhere, sometime in the past? Maybe you wronged my family. That's a part of the puzzle. Revenge is a sweet bonus for me.

"But let me get to the present. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I instructed you not to conduct any more investigations into my whereabouts.

"So what do you do? You bust six poor bastards in downtown Manhattan because you suspect they're working with me. Why, one poor girl was so distraught that she went out a third-floor window. I saw her fall! I suppose that your thinking—such as it is—was that if you took out my operatives there, then New York City would be safe.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I almost forgot. There's also a little matter of a deadline you missed.

“Did you think I had forgotten about that? Well, I didn't forget about the deadline. Or the insult in your missing it. Now, watch what I can do.”

At 3:40 in the morning, following instructions, the Weasel took up a position on a bench in the riverfront park on Sutton Place and Fifty-seventh Street. There was a great deal that bothered him about this job, but the problems were balanced by two large positives: he was being paid a lot of money, and he was in the middle of the action again. Jesus, am I ever in the middle of the shit.

He stared down on the East River's dark, swift-moving currents. A red tugboat marked MCALLISTER BROTHERS was assisting a containership on its way. The city that never sleeps, right? Hell, the bars on First and Second Avenues were just getting down to their last call. A little earlier he'd passed an animal medical center that was still open for late-night pet emergencies. Pet emergencies? Jesus, what a city, what a messed-up country America had become.

A lot of New Yorkers would be wide-awake soon, and they would find it exceedingly difficult to get back to sleep. There would be weeping and the gnashing of teeth. The Wolf was going to make certain of that in a minute or so.

Shafer watched the seconds on his watch tick down to 3:43, but he was also keeping an eye on the river and the Queensboro Bridge.

Cars and cabs and quite a few trucks were whizzing along up there, even at this hour. Easily a hundred vehicles were crossing the bridge right now, probably more than that. The poor wankers!

At 3:43 Shafer pressed a button on his cell phone.

This transmitted a simple coded squirt to a small antenna on the Manhattan side of the bridge. A circuit began to close. . . .

A primer fired. . . .

Microseconds later, a message straight from hell was delivered to the people of New York City, and the rest of the world.

A symbolic message.

Another wake-up call.

A massive explosion ripped through the girders and trusses of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Joints were severed instantly, shockingly, terminally. The old steel structures snapped like peanut brittle. Huge rivets popped out and plummeted toward the East River. Tarmac crumbled. Reinforced concrete fractured like paper being shredded.

The upper roadbed cracked in two, then enormous sections dropped like bombs onto the lower deck, which was breaking up as well, peeling away, twisting and twirling toward the water below.

Cars were falling into the water. A delivery truck carrying a full load of newspapers from a plant in Queens rolled backward down the inverted roadway and then pirouetted into the East River. It was followed by more cars and trucks, dropping like lead weights. Electric lines drooped and sparked along the entire length of the bridge. More cars, dozens of them, plummeted from the bridge, fell into the river, then disappeared beneath the surface.

Some people were exiting their cars, then jumping to their death in the river. Shafer could hear their terrifying screams all the way across the river.

And in every apartment building lights began to blink on, then TVs and computers, as the people of New York heard the first reports about a terrible disaster that was impossible to believe and that would have been unthinkable until a few years ago.

His work for the night done, Geoffrey Shafer finally rose from his park bench and went to get some sleep. If he could sleep. He understood this much: things were just getting started. He was on his way to London.

London Bridge, he thought. All the bridges of the world, falling, crashing down. Modern society coming apart at the seams. The sodding Wolf may be a madman, but he is a brilliant bugger at being bad. A bloody brilliant madman!

Part Three

WOLF TRACKS

The Wolf slowed his powerful black Lotus to just over a hundred miles an hour while he talked on his mobile phone, one of six he had with him in the car. He was headed toward Montauk on the tip of Long Island, but he had important business to attend to on the way, even at one in the morning. He had the American president, the German chancellor, and the British prime minister on the line. Top to top. What could beat that?

“This call can't be traced, so don't waste your time trying. My tech people are better than your people,” he informed them. “Now, what's on everybody's mind? We're eight hours past the deadline. And?”

“We need more time,” the English prime minister spoke up for the group. Good for him. Was he the real leader of the three? That would be a surprise. The Wolf had thought of him more as a follower.

“You have no idea —” the American president started to say, but he was cut off by the Wolf, smiling to himself, relishing the show of disrespect toward the powerful world leader.

“Stop. I don't want to hear any more lies!” he yelled into the phone.

“You have to listen to what we have to say,” the German chancellor interjected. “Give us the opportunity —”

The Wolf ended the conversation then and there. He lit up a victory cigar, took a couple of satisfied puffs, then set the smoke down in the ashtray. He reconnected the call, using a second cell phone.

They were still there, waiting for him to call back. He didn't actually underestimate any of these powerful men, not really, but what choice did they have but to wait on his call?

"Do you want me to attack all four cities? Is that what I have to do to prove how serious I am? I'll do it in a flash. I'll do it now, give the order right now. But don't tell me you need more time. You don't! The countries holding the prisoners are your puppets, for Christ's sake.

“The real problem is that you can't be seen for what you really are. You can't be viewed around the world as weak and powerless. But you are! How did it happen? How did you allow it to happen? Who put people like you into these positions of great power? Who elected you? The money and the political prisoners. Good-bye.”

The prime minister spoke before the Wolf could disconnect again. “You have it all wrong! It is you who have a choice to make, not us. We take your point about the strength of your position versus ours. It's a given. But we cannot put this package together quickly. It can't physically be done, and I think you know that. Of course we don't want to make a deal with you, but we will. We have to. We just need more time to get it done. We will get it done. You have our promise on it.”

The Wolf shrugged. The English prime minister definitely surprised him: he was succinct, and he at least had some balls.

“I'll think about it,” said the Wolf, then disconnected. He picked up his cigar and savored this idea: he was the most powerful person in the world right now. And unlike any of them, he was the right man for the job.

A business-class passenger who called himself Randolph Wohler de-planed the British Airways flight from New York at 6:05 in the morning. His passport and other pieces of ID backed up his identity. It is good to be home again, thought Wohler, who was actually Geoffrey Shafer. And it's going to be even better if I get to blow London off the map.

The seventyish-looking gentleman passed through Customs without a problem. He was already thinking about his next move: a visit to his children. That was his piece. Curious and strange. But he was past questioning orders from the Wolf. Besides, he wanted to see his progeny. Daddy had been away for far too long.

He had a part to play, another mission, another piece of the puzzle. The brat pack lived with his deceased wife's sister in a small house near Hyde Park. He remembered the house as he pulled up in a rented Jaguar S type. He had a most unpleasant memory of his wife now, Lucy Rhys-Cousins, a brittle, small-minded woman. He'd murdered her in a Safeway in Chelsea, right in front of the twins. That truly merciful act had orphaned his twin daughters, Tricia and Erica, who were six or seven now, and Robert, who must be fifteen. Shafer believed they were far better off without their whining, sniveling mother.

He knocked on the front door of the house and found that it was unlocked, so he barged in unannounced.

He discovered his wife's younger sister, Judi, playing with the twins on the living-room floor, bent over a game of Monopoly, which he believed they were all capable of losing —not a winner in the group.

“Daddy's home!” he exclaimed, and beamed a smile that was perfectly horrible. He then pointed a Beretta at dear Aunt Judi's chest.

"Don't make a sound, Judi, not a one. Don't give me the slightest excuse to pull this trigger. It would be so easy, and such a great pleasure. And yes, I sincerely hate you, too. You remind me of a fat version of your beloved sister.

“Hello, children! Say hello to your dear old dad. I've come a long ways to see you. All the way from America.”

His twin girls, his sweet daughters, started to cry, so Shafer did the only thing he could think of to restore order: he pointed his gun straight at Judi's tear-stained face and walked closer to her. “Make them stop whining and screeching. Now! Show me you deserve to be their keeper.”

The aunt bent low and pressed the girls to her chest, and while they didn't actually stop crying, the sound was at least muffled and subdued.

“Judi, now listen to me,” Shafer said as he moved behind her and pressed the barrel of the Beretta to the back of her head. “As much as I would like to, I'm not here to fuck and murder you. Actually, I have a message for you to be passed on to the home secretary. In a strange, ironic twist, your absurd, pitiful life actually matters for now. Can you believe it? I can't.”