‘Maybe I didn’t ask,’ Rhyme grumbled. The best ‘sorry’ the man was going to get. ‘But turn the fucking thing on now.’

In the corner the Samsung clicked to life.

Rhyme stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Breaking News, News Alert, This Just In, We Interrupt This Program. Why aren’t I seeing those? … I’m looking at a fucking commercial for car insurance!’

‘Don’t use your arm for useless gestures.’ Thom changed the channel.

‘… press conference ten minutes ago the mayor told citizens of Manhattan and Queens that an evacuation would not be necessary at this time. He urged people—’

‘No evacuation?’ Rhyme sighed. ‘He could at least have cleared Queens. They can go east. Plenty of room on Long Island. Orderly evacuation. He could’ve arranged for that.’

Mel Cooper said, ‘It wouldn’t be orderly, Lincoln. It’d be chaos.’

‘I recommended announcing an evacuation. He ignored me.’

‘DEP’s calling,’ Pulaski said, nodding at the caller ID box on the main monitor over a worktable.

Rhyme’s mobile rang too. The area code was 404. Atlanta, Georgia.

‘It’s about goddamn time,’ he muttered. ‘You take the water people, rookie, and coordinate with Sachs. I’ll talk to our friends in Dixie. Let’s move, everyone! We’ve only got minutes!’

And he hit the answer button on his keypad hard, drawing another admonishing look from Thom.

CHAPTER 63

In his Department of Environmental Protection coveralls and hard hat, Billy Haven stepped into a cross street in Midtown, the East Side, and lifted a manhole cover with a hook, then descended partway and muscled the disk back in place.

He climbed down to a metal floor and began walking through the tunnel, under the shadow of a water main pipe glistening with condensation. This huge conduit ran from Water Tunnel 3’s main valve room, in central Midtown, to the three submains that supplied water throughout Manhattan and to parts of Queens. Approximately eighteen thousand households and businesses received water that passed through this pipe.

He switched the heavy gear bag from one hand to the other as he walked. It weighed 48 pounds. The contents were what he’d removed from the workshop on Canal Street: the drill, portable welding kit, electric cord and other tools, along with the bulky steel thermos. He didn’t have his American Eagle with him now. That part of the Modification was over with. No more inking with poison.

Though the Rule of Skin was still very much at work, of course.

He checked his GPS, made an adjustment and kept walking.

The plan for the Modification was complex, as befit a scheme delivered through an intermediary whom God Himself had picked.

The Commandments …

At the last scene, at TT Gordon’s tattoo parlor, the police would have found trace of explosives he’d intentionally planted and Lincoln Rhyme would immediately wonder about this anomaly. Explosives and poison? What was the relationship?