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He nodded.
He hoped if she said anything it wouldn’t be common, like good luck or take care.
It wasn’t.
What she said was a single word: “Prague.”
60.
ENDGAME …
Lincoln Rhyme had been thinking of his earlier concern, of not being able to grasp the Watchmaker’s strategy to win their deadly chess game.
But what if that was not the proper question?
Perhaps the query should be: What is yourrealgoal?
What if you have no interest in taking the king?
Maybe it’s the queen you want. Or her knight? Or the king’s bishop?
Or a lowly pawn, which might one day ascend to the role of matriarch of the board by traipsing doggedly and unnoticed all the way to the distant edge of the checkerboard world.
And even if it’s then checkmate to you, and your king is snagged … You don’t care. You’ve won after all.
Lon Sellitto took a call. His conversation was lengthy—and apparently alarming.
He disconnected. “Okay, Linc. Stuff’s happening. That was the mayor’s office. The counter’s disappeared from that website,13Chan. And Computer Crimes and the Bureau were monitoring chatter. ‘Kommunalka’ was the keyword. CC intercepted an email. Anonymous account in Philly to an anonymous account here, Manhattan. It says, ‘It’s time. Do the last one, and place packages where discussed on alternate routes. And keep up the façade of Kommunalka. There are people who are checking, they don’t believe it. We can’t let them find us. Remember: “Men make their own history.”—Karl Marx.’
“That’s why we couldn’t find Kommunalka. It’s a front for some other radical outfit. Group X.”
Mel Cooper said, “And ‘Do the last one.’ Does that mean a crane?”
Sellitto: “So it was Group X that hired the Watchmaker, and …” His phone hummed and he took the call. This conversation was troubled too. “No shit. Send me details.” He disconnected. “Another one, Linc. A crane.”
“Where?”
“Downtown.”
Mel Cooper had tuned in to the news on his phone. He called, “It was at a jobsite near the entrance to the Holland. Nobody dead. Injuries. Some serious.”
“What did it hit?”
Cooper examined his screen. “Odd. No buildings anywhere near it. Landed on a street is all. The injuries were in cars and trucks.”
Sellitto lifted the phone away from his ear and filled in with information that was likely not public. “This one was different. He used C4.”
“Ah, now that’s significant.”
“Why?”
“Time.”
“Huh?”
“Obvious,” Rhyme muttered. “He can’t know for certain exactlywhen the acid’d eat through the counterweights of the cranes. But for some reason he needed this one to drop at a particular time. Down. To. The. Minute.” Frowning at the murder board, the map of the city. “The Holland’s closed?”
“At least eight hours, they’re talking maybe longer. The traffic’s a—”
