An anchorwoman was on the screen. “ . . . one minor injury. A bomb squad officer who was driving a remote-control robot in an attempt to defuse the bombs was wounded slightly by shrapnel. He’s been treated and released. Property damage was estimated at five hundred thousand dollars. Despite initial reports, neither al-Qaeda nor any other Islamic terrorist group has been implicated in the bombing. According to a New York Police Department spokeswoman, a domestic terrorist organization was responsible. Again, if you’re just joining us, two bombs exploded around noon today in the office of Housing and Urban Development in lower Manhattan but there were no fatalities and only one minor injury. An undersecretary of state and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were among the intended victims. . . .”

Sachs muted the volume and turned a smug gaze toward Charlotte.

“No,” the woman gasped. “Oh, no . . . What—?”

Rhyme said, “Obviously—we figured it out before the bomb went off and evacuated the room.”

Charlotte was appalled. “But . . . impossible. No . . . The airports were shut down, the trains—”

“Oh, that,” Rhyme said dismissively. “We just needed to buy some time. At first, sure, I thought he was stealing the Delphic Mechanism but then I decided it was just a feint. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t done something to the NIST clock. So while we were figuring out what he was really up to, we called the mayor and had him order flights and public transportation in the area suspended.”

You know what’s going to happen if we push that button. . . .

She glanced into the bedroom where her husband had died such a pointless death. Then the ideologue within her kicked in and she said in a flat voice, “You’ll never beat us. You may win a battle or two. But we’ll take our country back. We’ll—”

“Yo, hold that rhetoric, wouldja?” The speaker was a tall, lanky black man, stepping into the room. This was FBI Special Agent Fred Dellray. When he’d heard about the domestic terrorist angle he’d handed off the accounting fraud case that he’d been assisting on (“Was a yawner anyway”) and announced that that he was going to be the federal liaison on the HUD bombing.

Dellray was wearing a powder blue suit and a shocking green shirt underneath a brown herringbone overcoat, circa 1975; the agent’s taste in couture was as brash as his manner. He looked Charlotte over. “Well, well, well, lookit what we caught ou’selves.” The woman gazed back defiantly. He laughed. “A shame you’re going to jail for . . . well, forever, and you didn’t even do whatcha’ll had your heart set on. How’s it feel t’be swimmin’ laps in the loser pool?”

Dellray’s approach to interviewing suspects was a lot different from Kathryn Dance’s; Rhyme suspected she wouldn’t approve.