The Burning Wire

take or send a call.
    “Thom?” he called again.
    Nothing.
    Rhyme felt the pounding of his heart through the telegraph of his temples and the throbbing veins in his neck.
    Alone in the room, virtually immobile. Less than two feet away from the phone, staring. Rhyme turned the chair slightly sideways and then back, quickly, knocking into the table, rocking the phone. But it remained exactly where it was.
    Then he was aware of a change in the acoustics of the room, and he knew the intruder had entered. He banged into the table once again. But beforethe phone skidded closer to him, he heard footsteps pound across the floor behind him. A gloved hand reached over his shoulder and seized the phone.
    “Is that you?” Rhyme demanded of the person behind him. “Randall? Randall Jessen?”
    No answer.
    Only faint sounds behind him, clicks. Then jostling, which he felt in his shoulders. The wheelchair’s battery indicator light on the touch pad went black. The intruder disengaged the brake manually and wheeled the chair to an area illuminated by a band of pale sunlight falling through the window.
    The man then slowly turned the chair around.
    Rhyme opened his mouth to speak but then his eyes narrowed as he studied the face before him carefully. He said nothing for a moment. Then, in a whisper: “It can’t be.”
    The cosmetic surgery had been very good. Still, there were familiar landmarks in the man’s face. Besides, how could Rhyme possibly fail to recognize Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, the man who was supposedly hiding out at that very moment in an unsavory part of Mexico City?

Chapter 76
    LOGAN SHUT OFF the cell phone that Lincoln Rhyme had apparently been trying in his desperation to knock into service.
    “I don’t understand,” the criminalist said.
    Logan sloughed a gear bag off his shoulder and set it on the floor, crouching and opening it. His quick fingers dug into the bag and he extracted a laptop computer and two wireless video cameras. One he took into the kitchen and pointed into the alley. The other he set in a front window. He booted up the computer and placed it on a nearby table. He typed in some commands. Immediately images of the alley and sidewalk approaches to Rhyme’s town house came on the screen. It was the same system he’d used at the Battery Park Hotel to spy on Vetter and determine the exact moment to hit the switch: when flesh met metal.
    Then Logan looked up and gave a faint laugh. He walked to the dark oak mantelpiece where a pocket watch sat on a stand.
    “You still have my present,” he whispered. “You have it . . . have it out , on display.” He was shocked. He’d assumed the ancient Breguet had been dismantled and every piece examined to determine where Logan lived.
    Though they were enemies, and Logan would soon kill him, he admired Rhyme a great deal and was oddly pleased that the man had kept the timepiece intact.
    When he thought about it, however, he decided that, of course, the criminalist had indeed ordered it taken apart, down to the last hairspring and jewel, for the forensics team but then had it reassembled perfectly.
    Making Rhyme a bit of a watchmaker too.
    Next to the pocket watch was the note that had accompanied the timepiece. It was both an appreciation of Rhyme, and an ominous promise that they’d meet again.
    A promise now fulfilled.
    The criminalist was recovering from his shock. He said, “People’ll be back here any minute.”
    “No, Lincoln. They won’t.” Logan recited the whereabouts of everyone who’d been in the room fifteen minutes ago.
    Rhyme frowned, “How did you . . . ? Oh, no. Of course, the generator. You have a bug in it.” He closed his eyes in disgust.
    “That’s right. And I know how much time I have.”
    Richard Logan reflected that whatever else occurred in his life, he always knew exactly how much time he had.
    The dismay on Rhyme’s face then faded into confusion. “So it wasn’t Randall Jessen masquerading as Ray Galt. It was you.”
    Logan fondly studied the Breguet. Compared the time to a watch on his own wrist. “You keep it wound.” Then he replaced it. “That’s right. I’ve been Raymond Galt, master electrician and troubleman, for the past week.”
    “But I saw you in the airport security video. . . . You were hired to kill Rodolfo Luna in Mexico.”
    “Not exactly. His colleague Arturo Diaz was on the payroll of one of the big drug cartels out of Puerto Vallarta. Luna is one of the few