The Burning Wire

to me! You are the target. The office building’s a diversion! The package delivered to Logan? The rectangular images on the drawing? It was a diagram of the grounds of the Jamaicanembassy, where you are right now. The rectangles are the blast barriers. And you drive a Lexus LX five-seventy?”
    “Yes . . . You mean, that was the five hundred seventy?”
    “I think so. And the Watchmaker was given a Jamaican passport to get into the compound. Is there a car parked nearby with three seven nine in the license plate?”
    “I don’t . . . Why, yes. It’s a Mercedes with diplomatic plates.”
    “Clear the area! Now. That’s where the bomb is! The Mercedes.”
    He heard shouting in Spanish, the sound of footfalls, hard breathing.
    Then, a stunning explosion.
    Rhyme blinked at the startling noise that rattled the speakers of the phone.
    “Commander! Are you there? . . . Rodolfo?”
    More shouting, static, screams.
    “Rodolfo!”
    After a long moment: “Captain Rhyme? Hello?” The man was shouting—probably because he’d been partially deafened by the blast.
    “Commander, are you all right?”
    “Hello!”
    A hissing noise, moans, gasping. Shouts.
    Sirens and more shouting.
    Cooper asked, “Should we call—”
    And then “ Qué ? . . . Are you there, Captain?”
    “Yes. Are you hurt, Rodolfo?”
    “No, no. No bad injuries. Some cuts, stunned, you know.” The voice was gasping. “We climbed over barriers and got down on the other side. I see people cut, bleeding. But no one is dead, I think. It would havekilled me and the officers standing beside me. How did you know?”
    “I’ll go into that later, Commander. Where is the Watchmaker?”
    “Wait a moment . . . wait. . . . All right. At the explosion he fled. Arturo’s men were distracted by the blast—as he planned, of course. Arturo said a car drove into the park and he got inside. They’re moving south now. We have officers following him. . . . Thank you, Captain Rhyme. I cannot thank you enough. But now I must go. I will call as soon as we learn something.”
    Inhaling deeply, ignoring the headache and the sweat. Okay, Logan, Rhyme was thinking, we’ve stopped you. We’ve ruined your plan. But we still don’t have you. Not yet.
    Please, Rodolfo. Keep after him.
    As he was thinking this, his eyes strayed over the evidence charts in the Galt case. Maybe this would be the conclusion of both of the operations. The Watchmaker would be apprehended in Mexico, and Ray Galt, in an abandoned school near Chinatown.
    Then his eyes settled on one bit of evidence in particular: Chinese herbs, ginseng and wolfberry .
    And another listing, a substance that had been found in proximity to the herbs: Diesel fuel .
    Rhyme originally had thought that the fuel was from a possible site of an attack, a refinery perhaps. But it occurred to him now that diesel fuel would also run motors.
    Like in an electric generator.
    Then another thought occurred to him.
    “Mel, the call—”
    “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine,” Rhyme snapped.
    “You look flushed.”
    Ignoring the comment, he instructed, “Find out the number of the cop who called in about Galt being in the school.”
    The tech turned away and made a call. A few minutes later he looked up. “Funny. I got the number from Patrol. But it’s out of service.”
    “Give it to me.”
    Cooper did, slowly. Rhyme typed it into a mobile phone database at the NYPD.
    It was listed as prepaid.
    “A cop with a prepaid mobile? And now out of service? No way.”
    And the school was in Chinatown; that’s where Galt had picked up the herbs. But it wasn’t a staging area or where he was hiding out. It was a trap! Galt had run wires from a diesel-powered generator to kill whoever was searching for him and then, pretending to be a cop, he called in to report himself. Since the juice was off in the building, Sachs and the others wouldn’t expect the electrocution danger.
    There’s no power. It’s safe. . .  .
    He had to warn them. He started to press “Sachs” on the speed-dial panel on the computer. But just at that moment his nagging headache swelled to a blinding explosion in his head. Lights like electric sparks, a thousand electric sparks, flashed across his vision. Sweat poured from his skin as the dysreflexia attack began in earnest.
    Lincoln Rhyme whispered, “Mel, you have to call—”
    And then passed out.

Chapter 60
    THEY MADE IT to the back of the school without being seen.