“Of course.”

“Have you seen him?” Yuri asked. “Or heard anything about him?”

“I haven’t seen him all day. But that’s not surprising. Our paths rarely cross.”

“Thanks,” Yuri said.

“My pleasure.”

Yuri went to the store on the east side of the Corinthian Rug office. He got the same response. He then got back into his cab and thought about what he should do next. He considered trying to call the neighborhood hospitals, but he gave up on the idea when he remembered he didn’t know where Mr. Papparis lived. He pondered getting a phone book to see if he could find Mr. Papparis’s number but quickly decided that calling his home would be foolhardy. Yuri had been extraordinarily careful so far and had no desire to take any unnecessary chances. For what he had in mind to do to New York, he didn’t want there to be any warning.

Yuri drove off. When he came to the corner of Walker and Broadway it occurred to him that he was only a little more than six blocks away from Curt and Steve’s fire station on Duane Street. Although Yuri had never visited his partners’workplace, he decided to drop by. He wouldn’t yet be able to confirm that the anthrax was potent, a question Yuri thought was academic, but he could at least inform them that the trial was under way. That was exciting enough, because it meant that Operation Wolverine was truly imminent. All the planning and preliminaries were over. Now it was only a question of producing adequate amounts of the agents and dispersing them.

______

THREE

Monday, October 18

11:30 A.M.

“Do you think we should be doing this?” Steve Henderson asked. “I can’t imagine we’re going to learn enough to justify the risk.”

Curt grabbed his friend’s sleeve and pulled him to a stop. They were standing in front of the Jacob Javits Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza. Crowds of people were coming and going. It was a busy place. It housed nearly six thousand government employees and was visited daily by a thousand civilians.

Curt and Steve were dressed in their freshly pressed blue class B firefighter uniforms. Their black shoes glistened in the bright October sunlight. Curt’s shirt was a lighter blue than Steve’s, and Curt had a tiny gold bullhorn on his collar. Curt had made lieutenant four years previously.

“With an operation of this magnitude, reconnaissance is an absolute must,” Curt hissed. He glanced furtively at the scurrying crowd to make sure no one was paying them any heed.

“What the hell did they teach you in the army? We’re talking about basics here!”

Curt and Steve had been childhood friends. Both had grown up in the strongly blue-collar area of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Both had been quiet, polite, and neat loners who’d gravitated toward each other over the years as kindred spirits, particularly during high school. They had been indifferent students although they’d scored high on aptitude tests, Curt higher than Steve. Neither had played any sports despite Curt’s older brother’s being one of Bensonhurst’s legendary football stars. They had mostly “hung out,” as they explained in their own words. Both had ended up in the armed forces: Curt after an abortive six-month try at college and Steve after working for his plumber father for a year.