“Excellent,” Curt said. “We’ll come by sometime after dark. I’ll have a firefighter’s rabbit tool bag. It’s about twenty inches by ten and about ten high. It’s like a small duffel bag. Will that be big enough for the plastic sausages?”

“More than enough,” Yuri said. “The key thing is to make sure there are no sharp edges on the inside. In fact, I’ll give you a towel to roll them up in.”

“Sounds good,” Curt said. He gave a halfhearted military salute. Self-consciously, Yuri returned the gesture.

Curt preceded Steve out the door. They could hear Yuri bolt it as they descended the front walk. Reaching the truck they climbed in their respective sides.

“So what was your take?” Curt questioned as he started the engine.

“I was encouraged,” Steve said. “At first when he acted so nervous I had my doubts. I thought he was going to try to give us a hard time about getting the anthrax or maybe argue we should do Central Park rather than the federal building.”

“I did, too,” Curt said. “But then it was like he suddenly saw the light and realized that Operation Wolverine had better be executed fast before something else goes wrong. Thank God we came out here and put pressure on him. I suppose we should have done it a week ago. But at the moment, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Operation Wolverine is going to happen, and come Friday all hell’s going to break loose here in the Big Apple.”

“I’m glad he’s decided to be cooperative, but he’s still one weird duck,” Steve said. “Did it make you nervous when he took the gun out?”

“A little,” Curt admitted. “But it was more because of what you’d said before we went in. I actually think the guy’s pathetic. Pretending to shoot the gun like that was so juvenile. And when he put that beard on, I almost cracked up.”

“I think it was a brilliant idea to ask him to write out how to make the anthrax powder,” Steve said.

“It was a touch of genius,” Curt said with a wry smile as he made the turn onto Ocean Avenue. “The idea just came to me like a bolt out of the heavens. If this all goes as well as I’m sure it will, we’ll probably want to make future strikes.”

FIFTEEN

________

FIFTEEN

Tuesday, October 19

7:30 P.M.

Jack liked to work after hours. With few people in the building and no phone calls to distract him, he was able to get much more done than he could during the day. The only person he’d seen over the previous hour had been one of the janitors, who’d whisked by the door with a large dust mop.