The Cold Moon

calendar, the day, date and month, the season, moon phases, lunar orbit and power reserve indicators for both the watch’s movement and the several chimes inside.
    The trouble with complications, though, is that they’re just that. They tend to distract from the ultimate purpose of a watch: telling time. Breitling makes superb timepieces but some of the Professional and Navitimer models have so many dials, hands and side functions, like chronographs (the technical term for stopwatches) and logarithmic slide rules, that it’s easy to miss the big hand and the little hand.
    But complications were exactly what Charles Hale needed for his plan here in New York City, distractions to lead the police away from what he was really about. Because there was a good chance that Lincoln Rhyme andhis team would find out that he was no longer in custody and that he wasn’t really Gerald Duncan, they’d realize he had something else in mind other than getting even with a crooked cop.
    So he needed yet another complication to keep the police focused elsewhere.
    Hale’s cell phone vibrated. He glanced at the text message, which was from Charlotte Allerton. Special Report on TV: Museum closed. Police searching for you there.
    He put the phone back in his pocket.
    And enjoyed a moment of keen, almost sexual, satisfaction.
    The message told him that while Rhyme had tipped to the fact that he wasn’t who he seemed to be, the police were still missing the time of day and focusing on the complication of the Metropolitan Museum. He was pointing the police toward what appeared to be a plan to steal the famous Delphic Mechanism. At the church he’d planted brochures on the horologic exhibits in Boston and Tampa. He’d rhapsodized on the device to Vincent Reynolds. He’d hinted to the antiques dealer about his obsession with old timepieces, mentioning the Mechanism specifically, and that he was aware of the exhibit at the Met. The small fire he’d set at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Brooklyn would make them think he was going to somehow reset the country’s cesium clock, disabling the Met’s time-security system, and steal the Mechanism.
    A plot to steal the device seemed to be just the clever, subtle deduction for the cops to seize as Hale’s real motive. Officers would spend hours scouring the museum and nearby Central Park looking for him and examining the canvas bag he’d left. It contained four hollowed-out books, inside of which were two bags of baking soda, a small scanner and, of course, a clock—a cheap digital alarm. None of them meant anything but each was sure to keep the police busy for hours.
    The complications in his plan were as elegant, if not as numerous, as those in what was reportedly the world’s most elaborate wristwatch, one made by Gerald Genta.
    But at the moment Hale was nowhere near the museum, which he’d left a half hour ago. Not long after he’d entered and checked the bag, he’d walked into a restroom stall, then taken off his coat, revealing an army uniform, rank of major. He’d donned glasses and a military-style hat—hidden in a false pocket in his coat—and had left the museum quickly. He waspresently in downtown Manhattan, slowly making his way through the security line leading into the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    In a short time a number of soldiers and their families would attend a ceremony in their honor, hosted by the city and the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, in the HUD building. Officials would be greeting soldiers recently returned from foreign conflicts and their families, giving them letters of commendation for their service in recent world conflicts and thanking them for reenlisting. Following the ceremonies, and the requisite photo ops and trite statements to the press, the guests would leave and the generals and other government officials would reconvene to discuss future efforts to spread democracy to other places in the world.
    These government officials, as well as the soldiers, their families and any members of the press who happened to be present, were the real point of Charles Hale’s mission in New York.
    He had been hired for the simple purpose of killing as many of them as he could.

    With husky, ever-smiling Bob driving, Lucy Richter sat in the car as they made their way past the reviewing stand outside the Housing and Urban Development building, where the parade was just winding down.
    Her