The Burning Wire

by Jeffery Deaver

  Sachs said, "I was thinking back to something you said when I met you at Algonquin. Why did she ask you to help me with the investigation?"

  He paused. "You're right. She could've asked a dozen people."

  "I think she was setting you up."

  Then he gasped and said, "Oh, Jesus."

  "What?" Rhyme asked.

  "Maybe it's not just me who's at risk. Think about it: Everybody here at the convention's a threat to Algonquin. The whole event's about alternative energy, microgrids, decentralization. . . . Andi could see every exhibitor here as a threat, if she's that obsessed with Algonquin being the number-one energy provider in North America."

  "Is there somebody at Algonquin we can trust? Somebody to shut off power there? And not let Andi know?"

  "Algonquin doesn't run service here. Like some of the subway lines, the convention center makes its own juice. The plant's next to the building here. Should we evacuate the place?"

  "Would people have to go over a metal floor to get outside?"

  "Yes, most of them would. The front lobby and the loading docks are all steel. Not painted. Pure steel. And do you know how much electricity there is feeding in here? The load on a day like this is close to twenty million watts. Look, I can go downstairs, find the supply. Maybe I can pull the breakers. I could--"

  "No, we need to find out exactly what they're doing. And how they're doing it. We'll call as soon as we know more. Stay put!"

  Chapter 73

  SWEATING, FRANTIC, CHARLIE Sommers looked around him at the tens of thousands of visitors at the New Energy Expo, some hoping to make a fortune, some hoping to help, if not save, the planet, some here because it seemed like a fun idea to stop in for a while.

  Some were young, teenagers who, like him years ago, would be inspired to take different courses in high school after seeing these exhibits. More science, less foreign language and history. And become the Edisons of their generations.

  They were all at risk.

  Stay put, the police had told him.

  Crowds jostled, carting colorful bags--the exhibitors' giveaways, with the company logos printed boldly: Volt Storage Technologies, Next Generation Batteries, Geothermal Innovations.

  Stay put . . .

  Except his mind was in a place his wife called "Charlie-think." It was spinning on its own, like a dynamo, like an electricity storage flywheel. Ten thousand RPM. Thinking of the electricity usage here in the convention center. Twenty megawatts.

  Twenty million watts.

  Watts equals volts times amps . . .

  Enough electricity, if channeled through this conductive superstructure, to electrocute thousands. Arc flashes, or just ground faults, the massive current surging through bodies, taking lives and leaving smoldering piles of flesh and clothing and hair.

  Stay put . . .

  Well, he couldn't.

  And, like any inventor, Sommers considered the practical details. Randall Jessen and Andi would have somehow secured the power plant. They couldn't risk that the police would call the maintenance staff and simply cut the supply. But there'd be a main line coming into this building. Probably like an area transmission line it would be carrying 138,000v. They would have cut into the line to electrify floors or stairways or doorknobs. The elevators again maybe.

  Sommers reflected:

  The attendees here couldn't avoid the juice.

  They couldn't protect themselves against it.

  So he'd have to cut its head off.

  There was no staying put.

  If he could find the incoming line before Randall Jessen ran the splice, Sommers could short it out. He'd run a cable from the hot line directly to a return. The resulting short circuit, accompanied by an arc flash as powerful as the one at the bus stop the other morning, would pop breakers in the convention center power plant, eliminating the danger. The emergency lighting system would kick on but that was low voltage--probably from twelve-volt lead-calcium batteries. There'd be no risk of electrocution with that small supply. A few people would be stuck in the elevators, maybe there'd be some panic. But injuries would be minimal.

  But then reality came home to him. The only way to short out the system was to do the most dangerous procedure in the utility business: bare hand work on an energized line carrying 138,000 volts. Only the top linemen ever attempted this. Working from insulated buckets or helicopters to avoid any risk of ground contact and wearing faraday suits--actual metal clothing--the linemen connected themselves directly to the high-voltage wire itself. In effect, they became part of it, and hundreds of thousands of volts streamed over their bodies.

  Charlie Sommers had never tried bare hand work with high voltage, but he knew how to perform it--in theory.

  Like a bird on a wire . . .

  At the Algonquin booth he now grabbed his pathetically sparse tool kit and borrowed a length of lightweight high-tension wire from a nearby exhibitor. He ran into the dim hallway to find a service door. He glanced at the copper doorknob, hesitated only a moment then yanked it open and plunged into the dimness of the center's several basements.

  Stay put?

  I don't think so.

  Chapter 74

  HE SAT IN the front seat of his white van, hot because the air conditioner was off. He didn't want to run the engine and draw attention to himself. A parked vehicle is one thing. A parked vehicle with an engine running exponentially increased suspicion.

  Sweat tickled the side of his cheek. He hardly noticed it. He pressed the headset more firmly against his ear. Still nothing. He turned the volume higher. Static. A clunk or two. A snap.

  He was thinking of the words he'd sent via email earlier today: If you ignore me this time, the consequences will be far, far greater than the small incidents of yesterday and the day before, the loss of life far worse. . . .

  Yes and no.

  He tilted his head, listening for more words to flow through the microphone he'd hidden in the generator he'd planted at the school near Chinatown. A Trojan horse, one that the Crime Scene Unit had courteously carted right into Lincoln Rhyme's town house. He'd already gotten the lowdown on the cast of characters helping Rhyme and their whereabouts. Lon Sellitto, the NYPD detective, and Tucker McDaniel, ASAC of the FBI, were gone, headed downtown to City Hall, where they would coordinate the defense of the convention center.

  Amelia Sachs and Ron Pulaski were speeding to the center right now, to see if they could shut the power off.

  Waste of time, he reflected.

  Then he stiffened, hearing the voice of Lincoln Rhyme.

  "Okay, Mel, I need you to get that cable to the lab in Queens."

  "The--?"

  "The cable!"

  "Which one?"

  "How the hell many cables are there?"

  "About four."

  "Well, the one Sachs and Pulaski found at the school in Chinatown. I want the trace between the insulation and the wire itself dug out and run through their SEM."

  Then came the sound of plastic and paper. A moment later, footsteps. "I'll be back in forty minutes, an hour."

  "I don't care when you get back. I care when you call me with the results."

  Footsteps, thudding.

  The microphone was very sensitive.

  A door slammed. Silence. The tapping of computer keys, nothing else.

  Then Rhyme, shouting: "Goddamn it, Thom! . . . Thom!"

  "What, Lincoln? Are you--"

  "Is Mel gone?"

  "Hold on."

  After a moment the voice called, "Yes, his car just left. You want me to call him?"

  "No, don't bother. Look, I need a piece of wire. I want to see if I can duplicate something Randall did. . . . A long piece of wire. Do we have anything like that here?"

  "Extension cord?"

  "No, bigger. Twenty, thirty feet."

  "Why would I have any wire that long here?"

  "I just thought maybe you would. Well, go find some. Now."

  "Where am I supposed to find wire?"
/>
  "A fucking wire store. I don't know. A hardware store. There's that one on Broadway, right? There used to be."

  "It's still there. So you need thirty feet?"

  "That should do it. . . . What?"

  "It's just, you're not looking well, Lincoln. I'm not sure I should leave you."

  "Yes, you should. You should do what I'm asking. The sooner you leave, the sooner you'll be back and you can mother-hen me to your heart's content. But for now: Go!"

  There was no sound for a moment.

  "All right. But I'm checking your blood pressure first."

  Another pause.

  "Go ahead."

  Muffled sounds, a faint hiss, the rasp of Velcro. "It's not bad. But I want to make sure it stays that way. . . . How are you feeling?"

  "I'm just tired."

  "I'll be back in a half hour."

  Faint steps sounded on the floor. The door opened again then closed.

  He listened for a moment more and then rose. He pulled on a cable TV repairman's uniform. He slipped the 1911 Colt into a gear bag, which he slung over his shoulder.

  He checked the front windows and mirrors of the van and, noting that the alley was empty, climbed out. He verified there were no security cameras and walked to the back door of Lincoln Rhyme's town house. In three minutes he'd made sure the alarm was off and had picked the lock, slipping into the basement.

  He found the electrical service panel and silently went to work, rigging another of his remote control switchgear units to the incoming service line, 400 amps, which was double that of most other residences in the area.

  This was interesting to note but not particularly significant, of course, since he knew that all he needed to cause virtually instant death was a tiny portion of that.

  One tenth of one amp . . .

  Chapter 75

  RHYME WAS LOOKING over the evidence boards when the electricity went off in his town house.

  The computer screen turned black, machinery sighed to silence. The red, green and yellow eyes of the LEDs on the equipment surrounding him vanished.

  He swiveled his head from side to side.

  From the basement, the creak of a door. Then he heard footsteps. Not the footfalls themselves, but the faint protest of human weight on old, dry wood.

  "Hello?" he shouted. "Thom? Is that you? The power. There's something wrong with the power."

  The creaking grew closer. Then it vanished. Rhyme turned his chair in a circle. He scanned the room, eyes darting the way they used to dart at crime scenes upon first arrival, taking in all the relevant evidence, getting the impression of the scene. Looking for the dangers too: the places where the perp might still be hiding, maybe injured, maybe panicked, maybe coolly waiting for a chance to kill a police officer.

  Another creak.

  He spun the wheelchair around again, three-sixty, but saw nothing. Then he spotted, on one of the examination tables at the far end of the room, a cell phone. Although the power was off in the rest of the town house, of course, the mobile would be working.

  Batteries . . .

  Rhyme pushed the controller touch pad forward and the chair responded quickly. He sped to the table and stopped, his back to the doorway, and stared down at the phone. It was no more than eighteen inches from his face.

  Its LCD indicator glowed green. Plenty of juice, ready to take or send a call.

  "Thom?" he called again.

  Nothing.

  Rhyme felt the pounding of his heart through the telegraph of his temples and the throbbing veins in his neck.

  Alone in the room, virtually immobile. Less than two feet away from the phone, staring. Rhyme turned the chair slightly sideways and then back, quickly, knocking into the table, rocking the phone. But it remained exactly where it was.

  Then he was aware of a change in the acoustics of the room, and he knew the intruder had entered. He banged into the table once again. But before the phone skidded closer to him, he heard footsteps pound across the floor behind him. A gloved hand reached over his shoulder and seized the phone.

  "Is that you?" Rhyme demanded of the person behind him. "Randall? Randall Jessen?"

  No answer.

  Only faint sounds behind him, clicks. Then jostling, which he felt in his shoulders. The wheelchair's battery indicator light on the touch pad went black. The intruder disengaged the brake manually and wheeled the chair to an area illuminated by a band of pale sunlight falling through the window.

  The man then slowly turned the chair around.

  Rhyme opened his mouth to speak but then his eyes narrowed as he studied the face before him carefully. He said nothing for a moment. Then, in a whisper: "It can't be."

  The cosmetic surgery had been very good. Still, there were familiar landmarks in the man's face. Besides, how could Rhyme possibly fail to recognize Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, the man who was supposedly hiding out at that very moment in an unsavory part of Mexico City?

  Chapter 76

  LOGAN SHUT OFF the cell phone that Lincoln Rhyme had apparently been trying in his desperation to knock into service.

  "I don't understand," the criminalist said.

  Logan sloughed a gear bag off his shoulder and set it on the floor, crouching and opening it. His quick fingers dug into the bag and he extracted a laptop computer and two wireless video cameras. One he took into the kitchen and pointed into the alley. The other he set in a front window. He booted up the computer and placed it on a nearby table. He typed in some commands. Immediately images of the alley and sidewalk approaches to Rhyme's town house came on the screen. It was the same system he'd used at the Battery Park Hotel to spy on Vetter and determine the exact moment to hit the switch: when flesh met metal.

  Then Logan looked up and gave a faint laugh. He walked to the dark oak mantelpiece where a pocket watch sat on a stand.

  "You still have my present," he whispered. "You have it . . . have it out, on display." He was shocked. He'd assumed the ancient Breguet had been dismantled and every piece examined to determine where Logan lived.

  Though they were enemies, and Logan would soon kill him, he admired Rhyme a great deal and was oddly pleased that the man had kept the timepiece intact.

  When he thought about it, however, he decided that, of course, the criminalist had indeed ordered it taken apart, down to the last hairspring and jewel, for the forensics team but then had it reassembled perfectly.

  Making Rhyme a bit of a watchmaker too.

  Next to the pocket watch was the note that had accompanied the timepiece. It was both an appreciation of Rhyme, and an ominous promise that they'd meet again.

  A promise now fulfilled.

  The criminalist was recovering from his shock. He said, "People'll be back here any minute."

  "No, Lincoln. They won't." Logan recited the whereabouts of everyone who'd been in the room fifteen minutes ago.

  Rhyme frowned, "How did you . . . ? Oh, no. Of course, the generator. You have a bug in it." He closed his eyes in disgust.

  "That's right. And I know how much time I have."

  Richard Logan reflected that whatever else occurred in his life, he always knew exactly how much time he had.

  The dismay on Rhyme's face then faded into confusion. "So it wasn't Randall Jessen masquerading as Ray Galt. It was you."

  Logan fondly studied the Breguet. Compared the time to a watch on his own wrist. "You keep it wound." Then he replaced it. "That's right. I've been Raymond Galt, master electrician and troubleman, for the past week."

  "But I saw you in the airport security video. . . . You were hired to kill Rodolfo Luna in Mexico."

  "Not exactly. His colleague Arturo Diaz was on the payroll of one of the big drug cartels out of Puerto Vallarta. Luna is one of the few honest cops left in Mexico. Diaz wanted to hire me to kill him. But I was too busy. For a fee, though, I did agree to pretend I was behind it, to keep suspicion off him. It served my purposes too. I needed everyone--especially you--to believe I was someplace other tha
n New York City."

  "But at the airport . . ." Rhyme's voice fell to a confused whisper. "You were on the plane. The security tape. We saw you get in that truck, hide under the tarp. And you were spotted in Mexico City and on the road there from the airport. You were seen in Gustavo Madero an hour ago. Your fingerprints and . . ." The words dissolved. The criminalist shook his head and gave a resigned smile. "My God. You never left the airport at all."

  "No, I didn't."

  "You picked up that package and got onto the truck in front of the camera, on purpose, but it just drove out of view. You handed the package off to somebody else and got a flight headed to the East Coast. Diaz's men kept reporting you in Mexico City--to make everybody think you were there. How many of Diaz's people were on the take?"

  "About two dozen."

  "There was no car fleeing to Gustavo Madero?"

  "No." Pity was an emotion that to Logan was inefficient and therefore pointless. Still, he could recognize, without being moved personally, that there was something pitiable about Lincoln Rhyme at the moment. He also looked smaller than when last they met. Nearly frail. Perhaps he'd been sick. Which was good, Logan decided; the electricity coursing through his body would take its toll more quickly. He certainly didn't want Rhyme to suffer.

  He added, as if in consolation, "You anticipated the attack on Luna. You stopped Diaz from killing him. I never thought you'd figure it out in time. But, on reflection, I shouldn't have been surprised."

  "But I didn't stop you."

  Logan had killed a number of people in his lengthy career as a professional. Most of them, if they were aware they were about to die, grew calm, as they understood the inevitability of what was about to happen. But Rhyme went even further. The criminalist now almost looked relieved. Perhaps that was what Logan saw in Rhyme's face: the symptoms of a terminal illness. Or maybe he'd just lost the will to live, given his condition. A fast death would be a blessing.

  "Where's Galt's body?"

  "The Burn--the boiler furnace at Algonquin Power. There's nothing left." Logan glanced at the laptop. Still all clear. He took out a length of Bennington medium-voltage cable and attached one end to the hot line in a nearby 220-volt outlet. He'd spent months learning all about juice. He felt as comfortable with it now as with the fine gears and springs of clocks and watches.

  Logan felt in his pocket the weight of the remote control that would turn the power back on and send sufficient amperage into the criminalist to kill him instantly.