TEN MINUTES LATER, we were outside in the frosty air, staring up at the magnificent church. As we stepped around the side of one of the dump trucks, Oakley spoke into his hands-free radio and ordered his snipers to get an angle on the irreplaceable windows of the Lady Chapel.

The gray light cast shadows into the church’s second-story windows and its arched entryway. The front of the cathedral resembled a large face, I thought: wide, dark eyes and a very large mouth, gaping open as if in outrage and shock.

I stopped dead still and almost went for my Glock again when the bells started sounding. I thought it was another move by the hijackers-until I glanced at my watch and saw that it was twelve.

The bells, set on some timer no doubt, were sounding out the Angelus, reminding the bustling heathens of Midtown to pray for some specific devotion I couldn’t remember. If failing to induce a communal saying of the Rosary, the tolling of the bells at least silenced the crowd of cops and press and onlookers.

Each long peal rang out loudly and forebodingly off the surrounding skyscrapers’ stone and aluminum and glass.

I scanned the crowd as an idea occurred to me.

I spotted the caretaker, Nardy, talking to a young woman across the 50th Street barricade.

“Mr. Nardy, where are the bells located?” I said as I jogged up to him, interrupting his conversation with the woman.

He stared at me before answering. “In the north spire,” he said with a grimace.

I looked at the ornate thirty-story cone of stone. About a hundred feet up, I noticed green slats that seemed like faded copper shutters.

“Is there access to the bells from inside?” I asked Nardy.

The caretaker nodded. “There’s an old winding set of wooden maintenance stairs from a time when the bells were rung by hand.”

It seemed risky, but if we could get up there somehow-maybe we could quietly pry loose some of the copper slats and get in.

“Can the inside of the north spire be seen from down in the church?” I asked.

“Why?” asked the woman Nardy had been talking to. “Do you plan to blow it up, too? Detective…?”

I NOTICED the New York Times press pass on the lapel of her cloth coat for the first time. So much for my keen detectively powers of observation.

“Bennett,” I said.

“Bennett, yes. You’re Manhattan North, right? I’ve heard of you. How’s Will Matthews doing?”

Like most cops, I couldn’t quite buy the whole “the people have a right to know” argument the press likes to toss around. I might, if all that journalistic nobility didn’t have a price tag attached to it. They sold newspapers last time I checked.

I gave the young newsie my best pissed-off cop face. Though it was easily as fierce as Commander Will Matthews’s, she didn’t seem fazed by it in the least, the little snot.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I finally said.

“I would. But he has caller ID. So, what’s the story, Detective? Does nobody know nuttin’?” she said, her cultured voice dropping into passable New Yorkese. “Or is nobody tawkin’?”

“Why don’t you choose the answer you like the most,” I advised, turning away.

“Hmmm. Speaking of choices, I wonder if my editor will like biggest security blunder in world history for the headline? Or maybe nypd drops ball then stonewalls?” the Times reporter said. “That’s kinda catchy. What do you think, Detective Bennett? Too New York Post?”

I winced, remembering what Will Matthews had said. He wouldn’t like it if I were the one to single-handedly bring more bad press for the NYPD.

“Listen, Ms. Calvin,” I said, turning. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here. I’ll talk to you, of course, but strictly off the record. Agreed?”

The reporter nodded quickly.

“You basically know as much as we do at this point. We’re in contact with the kidnappers, but they have yet to give us their demands. As soon as we know, and I get permission, I’ll give you all the information I can, all right? But we are in crisis mode right now. If the psychos inside have a radio or a TV and get tipped off about what we’re going to do, then people will die. Very important people.”

When I turned, I saw Ned Mason waving frantically at me from the door of the trailer.

“We all have to come together on this,” I yelled over my shoulder as I began to run.

MASON HANDED ME the ringing cell phone just as I made it to the doorway.

“Mike here,” I said.

“Mike. Hey, buddy,” Jack said. “What’s up with letting the phone keep ringing like that? You falling asleep on me? If I didn’t know what a sweet guy you were, I might get the impression you were busy plotting against me or something.”

“Thanks for releasing the president,” I said sincerely.

“Ah, don’t mention it,” Jack said. “It was the least I could do. Say, listen, the reason I’m calling is, I’ve got those demands together, and I was thinking of maybe e-mailing them to you. That all right? I’m usually a snail-mail kind of guy, to tell you the truth, but you know how much of a zoo the post office is around the holidays.”

The pseudocasual way Jack was speaking to me was starting to grate on my nerves. My negotiation training was mostly based on calming dangerous people who were actually distraught, people who had snapped, had gone over the edge.

But Jack was nothing but a cocky wiseass… killer?

In the parlance of the NYPD, with apologies to mixed-breed dogs, criminals-human beings who have forgone their humanity-are referred to as “mutts.” As I stood there with the phone in my hand, I reminded myself that’s all Jack was. A smart mutt, a sophisticated mutt maybe, but a mutt all the same.

I checked my anger by visualizing cuffing him, dragging him by the scruff of his neck past the people he was terrorizing. It was going to happen, I knew. Just a matter of time, I thought as I was handed an e-mail address by a tech cop.

“All right, Jack,” I said. “Here’s our address.”

“Okay,” Jack said after I gave him the specifics on the NYPD Web site. “We’ll send the stuff over in a minute or two. I’ll give you a little while to absorb things and then call you back. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Oh, and Mike?” Jack said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“I’m really appreciating all the cooperation. We all do. Things keep running this smooth, it’s going to turn out to be a real holly, jolly Christmas,” Jack said, and hung up.

“HERE IT IS,” one of the youngish cops in front of a laptop at the back of the trailer called in a high-pitched choirboy’s voice, “the demands are coming in.”

I raced to the rear.

Then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I looked at the screen. I was expecting a number, but what appeared looked like a long, fairly sophisticated spreadsheet.

Down the left-hand margin were the full names of the thirty-three hostages.

Next to each name was a ransom between two and four million dollars followed by contacts: the names of the hostages’ lawyers, agents, business managers, spouses, and all of their respective phone numbers.

At the bottom of the sheet was a bank routing number and specific, very clear instructions on how to wire the money via the Internet into the account.

I absolutely couldn’t believe this bullshit. The hijackers, instead of negotiating with us directly, were going straight to the source-namely the wealthy hostages themselves.

ESU lieutenant Steve Reno cracked his knuckles loudly behind me. “First they take us out of action,” he said angrily. “Now they make us their errand boys.”