Threat Level Black

“No talking. Work only.” The man’s frown deepened. “Maybe that’s why they quit, eh? They don’t even have the respect to tell me to my face. I have to guess when I don’t see them. These people.”

“They spend a lot of time talking to people when they worked here? Friends or anything?”

“No talk. I pay good money to work. Work only. No friends. None.”

“No one?”

“Everyone who comes in: shoes and a ticket. You want to talk, you go to Joe’s down the street.” He gestured in the direction of a barber. “He talks. Aiyeee, he talks. Numbers too.”

“Did they know any customers?”

The cobbler rubbed his chin with his little tack hammer. “Well, customers. They bring a few. That’s good for business.”

“They filled out a ticket?”

“All the time. Those are the rules.”

The tickets were discarded once the book was filled, but by then the important customer information had been added to the owner’s permanent records. Each night after closing, the cobbler copied the day’s ticket stub information into a black-and-white marble notebook of the sort schoolchildren once used before the days of PDAs.

“See, is guaranteed,” explained the cobbler. “A sole, guaranteed for the life of the shoe. What if you come in next year, you say I have given you a sole, when all I did was the heel? Ehhh.” He waved his hand as if he were smacking an imaginary cheater.

“You don’t remember your work?” said Fisher.

“Oh, I remember, but this way, I put it on paper, the customer just nods. I learn in the early days. Believe me, people cheat you.”

“I’ll bet,” said Fisher.

After Fisher’s heel was fixed and paid for, they sat together going over the notebooks from the past six months. Fisher jotted down addresses of people the cobbler didn’t recognize as being longtime residents of the area.

It amounted to only three entries. Each name was Arabic, though that was hardly telling in New York.

Fisher found a cab that had somehow strayed uptown in error and went to check out the addresses. One was over on Amsterdam Avenue, a few blocks away in a large apartment complex; the second was up in Inwood, the very northern tip of the island. And the third one didn’t exist.

Which naturally made it the most interesting of all.

Chapter 2

The bomb had already been made for him. All Faud had to do was put the wiring in and set it in the hallway. He had been warned to follow the directions very carefully or face catastrophe. He worried now as he stood with the wire over the connector: Had he followed the steps precisely right?

Surely he had, he told himself. It was a devil again distracting him. The imam had warned him of this.

Seeing the imam had been a surprise and a great consolation. He was prepared now. He had told himself before that he was prepared, but now he truly felt it.

The truck would be waiting. He would take the canister he had prepared and then drive to the station. So long as he went in at precisely two A.M., no one would see him. Once past the gate-he had practiced jimmying the lock already-no one would stop him or even ask about the bags he carried.

He could open them if asked. The gear inside looked as if it came from the fire department.

If all went well, he would be in his spot by four o’clock. And then he would simply have to wait.

Pray and wait. Things he was used to doing.

Faud’s fingers shook as he brought the wire near the connector on the bomb he was setting. Worry seized him.

What if the imam had lied? What if this bomb was not a diversion in case he was found, but a way of killing him?

The top was covered with a mesh bag of nails. His body would be torn to shreds.

He was unprepared and would not enter paradise if he died today. His hand jittered again.

No, he told the empty apartment. I trust the imam and I trust God. He closed his eyes and pushed the wire around the post, screwing it down as he caught his breath.

Chapter 3

Dr. Blitz frowned in the direction of the tuna fish sandwich Mozelle had brought, then turned his attention back to the draft report on the Korean government situation, studying the language the State Department had recommended the President use in his speech to the UN next Monday. The speech would call for a plebiscite on reunification, though the wording being recommended was so guarded even Blitz wasn’t sure that’s what it said.

Certainly there was a need to be diplomatic: Anything the President said might be interpreted as pressure and be used by Korean critics to stir up resentment not just in the North but in the South as well. Still, it had to be clear that the U.S. was not only in favor of the vote but would help Korea -all of Korea -work toward overcoming its divided and tumultuous past.

It would be an expensive commitment. Treasury had sent over a memo claiming that simply keeping the North from starvation would cost twice what the U.S. had spent on Iraq, and there were no oil reserves to defray the costs. Peace was an expensive proposition.