Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

January 3. A date that would initiate the purification of the city.

He had no illusions. It would start small, he knew — if you could call so many pilgrims “small.” But he had a tool that prophets before him had not: the Internet. The one thing he had instructed his followers not to dispose of was their cell phones. They were critical for two reasons: first, they allowed him to orchestrate the logistics of the bonfire, and second, they would be able to document it.

What would start as a single act of purification in Manhattan would spread: to big cities and small towns, from America to Europe and beyond. The world, divided more than ever between the haves and have-nots, was hungry for this message. The people would rise up and unite to rid their lives of greed, materialism, and the ugly social divisions caused by money, forsaking wealth for a life of simplicity, purity, and honorable poverty.

But he must not get ahead of himself. He had paved the way, set things in motion — but now his next act was crucial. His followers, he knew, were awaiting his signal. The trick would be to get them to assemble on the Great Lawn at precisely the right moment, without alerting the authorities.

Turning back to his desk, he composed a tweet for his base: short, instructive, and to the point:

TONIGHT. Pray, fast & prepare for what is to come. Final LOCATION & instructions sent at 3 PM.

— The Passionate Pilgrim (@SavonarolaRedux)

January 3, 6:08 AM

He read it over once, then again, and then — satisfied — posted it and sent it on its way. At three he would send his final instructions and then it would all be in God’s hands.

Howard Longstreet’s cell phone chirruped just after 6 AM.

He sat up with a grunt and glanced at it. It was not his personal cell, but the official mobile phone that the FBI issued to its agents and supervisors. It had the ability to send and receive both cleartext and encrypted mail — and the icon on the screen told him he had just received an encrypted note from S. A. Aloysius Pendergast.

He plucked the phone from the table, ran the email through the decryptor, then read it.

We must speak on a matter of great urgency. Significant breakthrough made. Connections proving far deeper than expected. Secrecy vital. Meet at old King’s Park, Building 44, 2 PM to plan apprehension of perps (sic). Any attempted contact in the interim is inadvisable. Backup is vital; bring Lt. D’Agosta, to whom I have also reached out.

P.S. We are being surveilled.

Longstreet cleared the message from his phone, then replaced it thoughtfully on the nightstand. Perps. The plural was no typo, as the “sic” indicated. More than one. This was indeed deeper than expected. Was it Hightower and others? He tried to parse Pendergast’s shorthand. It seemed he had made a critical discovery about the man. But the message also implied that Hightower’s connections to law enforcement ran deeper than either of them had suspected. Perps. Was Pendergast hinting at a conspiracy within the NYPD? It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, given the NYPD’s old history of corruption. No wonder secrecy was paramount — especially since Pendergast had enough evidence to use the word apprehension .

Pendergast, Longstreet knew, disliked email and rarely sent it. However, in this case the situation was dire enough, the stakes high enough, and the suspected perps well placed enough to make a high degree of caution necessary.

What about this business of being surveilled? Did this mean his work phone was actually at risk? Longstreet found that hard to believe; the FBI had the latest in encryption and protection. Damn that Pendergast and his deliberately inscrutable ways. He found himself tugged with curiosity as to what the agent had uncovered. And also... what was this place, “old King’s Park”?

Reaching for his laptop, he turned it on, fired up the secure Tor browser, and used it to access the Dark Web. This was a highly irregular undertaking for a ranking member of the FBI, he knew, but if his email, phone, and texts were vulnerable, as Pendergast implied, so were his browsing habits. At least now he could make an untraceable search.

It took only a few minutes to learn that King’s Park was a vast, rambling psychiatric hospital on the North Shore of Long Island, built in the late nineteenth century and now abandoned. He downloaded a map of the site and quickly familiarized himself with it. Building 44 was a small warehouse, originally used for depoting food supplies for the enormous complex.

Committing the map to memory, Longstreet closed the browser, then quickly shut down the computer. Why King’s Park Psychiatric Center? But as he considered the matter further, he realized it was an ideal location for a meeting — outside New York City limits, thus curbing the effectiveness of any dirty NYPD surveillance, yet both isolated and easy to get to. And Building 44 had no doubt been chosen for its access to Old Dock Road, which bisected the grounds of the sanitarium.

There was only one more thing to do: reach out to D’Agosta. He would use his regular cell phone for this, just the one call, and keep it banal. He looked through his log of his associates’ contacts, found D’Agosta’s number, and dialed.

Although it was not yet six thirty in the morning, the call was answered on the first ring, and the voice on the other end did not sound sleepy. “Yeah?”

Longstreet noticed the voice did not identify itself. “Lieutenant?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the one our mutual acquaintance calls ‘H.’”

“Correct. Please keep your answers as brief as possible. Has he contacted you?”

“Yes.”

“And suggested a place where the two of us should go?”

“No place. Just told me to expect a call from you — urgent and confidential.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you outside your, ah, place of business at noon.”

“Okay.”

“Absolutely confidential.”

“Got it.”

The line went dead.

Longstreet replaced the phone. Despite a long career in covert operations, he could not help feel a quickening of excitement. After years of commanding large assault teams, a small, tactical operation like this was like going back to his roots. That Pendergast — always full of surprises. He had handled this extremely well. Nevertheless, the lieutenant’s involvement would be crucial if this was an NYPD situation.

He lay down in bed, hoping not for sleep — that was now impossible — but for clarity of mind and concentration of purpose. Noon would be at hand soon enough, and the case would enter its final stretch: the takedown. He hoped to God this nightmarish string of serial murders was finally at an end.

He closed his eyes as the breaking dawn light illuminated the bedroom curtains.

Bryce Harriman was led by the armed corrections officer down the sterile hallways of the Manhattan Detention Complex, then ushered into a tiny room with a table bolted to the floor, two chairs, a clock, and an overhead light — both fitted with wire screens. There were no windows; he only knew that it was quarter to nine in the morning because of the clock.

“Here you are,” the officer said.

Harriman hesitated, looking at two beefy, shaved-head characters already in the holding cell who were eyeing him as if sizing up a cut of rare roast beef.

“Come on, let’s go!” The guard gave Harriman a light shove. He entered and the door clanged shut behind him, the bolt shooting into place with a clank.

He shuffled in and took a seat. At least he wasn’t wearing leg irons anymore, but the orange prison jumpsuit was stiff and abrasive against his skin. The last many hours had passed in a dreadful kind of blur. The arrest, the trip in a squad car to the local precinct, the waiting, the arraignment and booking for embezzlement, and then the depressingly short ride to the detention complex just a few blocks away — it was over almost before he could process what had happened. It was like a nightmare from which he could not shake himself awake.