58

MARSDEN SWOPE LOOKED on with a kind of passionate, benevolent grace, feeling an almost paternal love for the murmuring, chanting, singing throng that surrounded him.

Although he could not help feel a little disappointment in the actual number of believers that had shown up on the Great Lawn—in the dark it was hard to say how many, but it certainly wasn’t the countless thousands he had anticipated. Perhaps that was to be expected. Many had fallen by the wayside, like the rich man who wanted to follow Jesus and went away saddened when Jesus told him to give away all he owned first.

But there was another problem. The pile had grown so quickly, and with so many non-burnable items, that it had overwhelmed the fire that was meant to consume it. Swope had exhausted his supply of jerrycans and now the massive heap was simply smoldering, sending up coils of foul-smelling black smoke. Swope had sent one of his disciples—no, that was wrong, one of his brethren—out to get more fuel, and he hoped he would return soon.

The crowd around him was now swaying gently back and forth, singing “Peace in the Valley” in low, earnest voices. Swope joined in with a glad heart.

The one thing that really surprised him was the lack of police presence. Granted, the initial blaze had died down, but even so a crowd of this size, massing on the Great Lawn late at night with no permit, would surely have attracted the quick attention of law enforcement. But there had been no sign of them. Oddly, this was a disappointment to Swope, because it was his intention to confront the powers of the state and prevent—with his very life, if necessary—any interruption of the bonfire. A part of him yearned for martyrdom, like his hero Savonarola.

There was a jostling to one side, and then a woman approached through the crowd. She was in her late thirties, attractive, dressed in a simple down jacket and jeans, and in one hand she clutched something that had the gleam of gold. The woman held up the item, as if to toss it on the pile, then turned to Swope.

“Are you the Passionate Pilgrim?”

For the last ninety minutes, people had been coming up to shake his hand, embrace him, thank him tearfully for his vision. It had proven a most humbling experience.

He nodded gravely. “Yes, I am the Pilgrim.”

The woman looked at him a moment, awestruck, holding out her hand to shake his. When she did so, she opened her hand to reveal, not the piece of gold jewelry or watch that Swope expected, but the gold of a police badge. In that moment, she grasped his hand with her other and he felt the cold of steel latch around it.

“Captain Hayward, NYPD. You’re under arrest, shitbird.”

“Wha—?”

But the woman, who did not appear particularly strong or fast, suddenly grabbed him with some kind of martial arts movement, spun him around, pulled his hands behind his back, and cuffed the other wrist. It was all done in a second.

All of a sudden, the Great Lawn blazed with light. High-intensity lamps hidden in the trees along its perimeter had snapped on, illuminating the bonfire. And now, a large battery of official vehicles—police cruisers, SWAT vans, fire trucks—began rolling across the grass toward the group, light bars flashing and sirens whooping. Other police in riot gear trotted forward on foot, talking into their radios.

The brethren around Swope, looking around in surprise at the sudden raid, wavered, broke—and then began to back off and scatter. The police let them go.

It all happened so quickly that Swope could not process it at first. But as the woman pushed him forward through the chaos, toward the line of police, he began to realize what had happened. The cops had gathered themselves, quietly, in the trees. Instead of provoking a riot by moving in force to arrest him, they sent in one undercover officer, in plainclothes. And now, with him in cuffs, the cops were at last coming out, with bullhorns, calling on everyone to peaceably disperse, while a fire crew came over, dragging a hose, and sprayed water on the heap of smoldering valuables, putting it out.

Ahead loomed a wagon of the kind used to transport prisoners. Its rear opened and the plainclothes cop grabbed Swope by the elbow and lifted him onto the metal step. As the woman cop helped put him into the paddy wagon, she said: “Before we leave, you might want to have a good look at your followers.”

Swope turned to give them a farewell gaze, but what he saw shocked him. What just moments before had been a peaceful, prayerful assemblage had suddenly escalated into bedlam. Despite the police bullhorns, a large number of his followers had not dispersed: they had become looters, clustering around the pile, pulling things out and pocketing them, while the cops, surprised, yelled and chased them. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, followers now surged onto the dead pile of vanities, so many that the cops were temporarily overwhelmed. They grabbed fistfuls of money and silver bars and bearer bonds and jewelry and watches and shoes, frantically looting the very heap of vanities they had come to burn, and then scuttling away into the darkness of the trees with their swag, hooting in glee and triumph.

59

OZMIAN WAITED, THE echo of the shot slowly fading away, until Pendergast opened his eyes once again.

“Oops. Missed.”

He saw no corresponding reaction in the man’s eyes.

“Shall I give you another ten-minute head start, or shall I end it now?”

He waited, but Pendergast made no answer.

“All right. I’m a sport. You get ten more. But please try to muster a little more cleverness. There will be no more second chances.” He glanced at his watch. “One hour and thirty-five minutes left in the hunt.” He gestured with the barrel of his gun toward Pendergast’s Les Baer, lying in the debris. “Go ahead. Pick it up—two fingers only—and be on your way. I’ll remain here for ten minutes to give you another head start.”

The quarry bent down, reaching for the gun.

“Easy now. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get off a shot before I blow your head apart.”

Picking up the gun with two fingers, Pendergast slid it into his waistband.

Ozmian pulled a key from his pocket and showed it to Pendergast. “I used some of that downtime, while you were out there on that ledge, retrieving a key to these rooms from the orderly’s desk.” Gun still trained on Pendergast, he unlocked the door and pushed it open, then tossed the key out of the window into the night. “There. Once again, we’re even; no advantages. And now: on your way. Ten minutes.”

Pendergast walked silently out of the room. At the door he turned and briefly locked eyes with Ozmian. To Ozmian’s surprise, the look of defeat had changed; there was something even worse in those eyes now, a kind of existential despair…or was it his imagination? And then the figure was gone.

Ozmian waited, taking the ten-minute break to concentrate his thoughts and ponder where Pendergast would go next and what he might do. He was sure that, this time, his quarry would not waste a precious ten-minute advantage staking out his presumed exit point. Would he lead him on a fast chase through the building, trying to arrange a double-back? Or would he try to set up another trap? Ozmian wasn’t sure what the man’s next move would be—animals under the pressure of a close stalk sometimes behaved in unpredictable ways. His only certitude was that Pendergast would try to upend the game, change the assumptions—and the thought gave him a tingle of anticipation.

*

Pendergast raced down the hallway and plunged down the stairwell, intent on putting as much distance between himself and Ozmian as possible. He could run faster than Ozmian could track, so the key would be to lay down a long trail and buy himself even more time. He emerged from the stairwell and ran along dark corridors, up stairs and then down again, from floor to floor, creating a long, random and maze-like tracking problem for his opponent.

As he ran, he made a supreme effort to suppress an uncharacteristic feeling of desperation. Even though he had anticipated the second chance, he had also been finessed twice now. He may have gained psychological insight, but how could he turn that to his benefit? He saw that his fundamental mistake had been to think he could play Ozmian’s game and beat him at it; that he could out-ratiocinate his opponent. He was playing a game of chess with a grand master, and he now realized—halfway through and fatally down by pieces—that he was surely going to lose.

Unless…

Unless he changed the game entirely. Yes: changed the game from chess to a game of…craps. A game of chance.