IT WAS JUST past nine when I arrived at the police do not cross barricade of the command center. Before I was tempted to construe that message as a standing order for me to return home to my family, I cut the Chevy’s engine and opened the door.

I shook my head at the ongoing life-and-death siege as I threaded my way through the growing media encampment, then was waved through each of three checkpoints.

Reflected in the graphlike black glass of the modern office building neighboring to the north, the spire of the cathedral looked like a stock that had spiked and was now plummeting. A couple of reporters were doing stand-ups for feeds into their stations. When there was news, the print reporters typed into their laptops, the TV folks did stand-ups, and the radio people filed-very loudly-over their phones.

I had just turned away from the media folks and their bullshit when I caught the movement of the cathedral doors across Fifth. The doors were opening again!

At first it seemed as if the figure that flew from the arched shadow was another person who had been released. When I noted how fast the black-suited man was moving, my pulse quickened. I thought maybe somebody was escaping.

Then I saw the body go facedown on the stone stairs without any attempt at breaking its fall, and I knew something was very wrong.

I didn’t allow myself to think too much as I skimmed the bumper of the dump-truck barricade and crossed the avenue at a run.

It was only as I was coming up the cathedral steps and kneeling beside the fallen figure when it occurred to me, coldly, that I wasn’t wearing my Kevlar vest.

The fallen body had plowed through a section of the street shrine that had been left for Caroline Hopkins the day before. The upended votive candles now looked more like tossed beer bottles than solemn offerings. A bouquet of wilted roses lay just beyond the downed man’s outstretched hand, as if he’d dropped it in his fall.

I couldn’t get a pulse out of him. A needle of ice spiked my heart when I turned the body over to perform CPR.

My eyes went from the priest’s white collar to the hole in his temple to his open, lifeless eyes.

I closed my own eyes and covered my face with one hand for a second. Then I turned and glared at the already closed bronze doors.

They’d murdered a priest!

ESU lieutenant Reno was at my side. “Mother of God,” he said quietly, his stone face faltering. “Now they’re murderers.”

“Let’s get him out of here, Steve,” I said.

Reno got the man’s legs, and I got his hands. The priest’s hands were soft and small, like a child’s. He hardly weighed anything. His scapular, hanging down from his lolling head, scraped the asphalt as we ran with the corpse to the police lines.

“How come all this job is anymore is pulling out bodies, Mike?” Reno said sadly as we rushed past the barricade.

I HEARD A PHONE RING from the open front door of the command bus as I laid the murdered priest down on an EMS stretcher. I didn’t need caller ID to figure out who it was. Instead of sprinting to grab the phone, though, I let it ring on as I carefully closed the priest’s eyelids with my thumb.

“Bennett!” I heard Commander Will Matthews bellow.

I zombie-stumbled past him without acknowledgment and made my way farther into the bus. For the first time, I didn’t have any butterflies as I accepted the phone, any latent fear that I would somehow screw something up. Quite the opposite.

I was dying to talk to the son of a bitch.

FBI negotiator Martelli must have sensed my fury. He grabbed my wrist.

“Mike, you need to relax,” he said. “No matter what happened, stay calm. Unemotional. You go ballistic, we lose the rapport you’ve established. Thirty-two people are still in jeopardy.”

Unemotional! I thought. The worst part about it was that Martelli was absolutely right. My job was to be Mister Super Calm. It was like getting your nose broken and having to apologize for getting blood on your sucker-punching attacker’s fist. I was really starting to hate my current role.

I nodded to the com sergeant at the desk.

“Bennett,” I said.

“Mike,” Jack said merrily in my ear. “There you are. Listen, before you guys get all upset, I can explain. Father Stowaway must have been hitting the house wine pretty hard yesterday morning because we told everybody to leave. He jumped out at the wrong time and tried to run for it. With that black suit of his, we thought he was one of you SWAT guys trying to crash the party.”

“So you’re saying what? It was just an accident? Not really your fault?” I said, my grip threatening to pulverize the plastic cell phone.

“Exactly,” Jack said. “One of those wrong place-wrong time deals, Mike. Not that there’s any real big loss, if you think about it. Fudgepacker takes a dirt nap. Way I see it, there’s a lot of altar boys out there who’ll be sleeping a little easier tonight.”

That was it, I thought. Role or not, I was done listening to this monster.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. “You absolute piece of shit. You killed a priest.”

“Do my ears deceive me?” Jack yelled happily. “Or did I actually just hear a little real emotion. I was starting to think I was speaking with a voice-mail computer there, Mikey. All that psychotherapy, all that calming negotiating strategy crap you’ve been spouting almost made me want to eat my gun. Finally! Let’s put it all out on the table, laddie. We want the money and to get away, and you guys want to blow our heads off with high-powered rifles at your earliest convenience.”

Jack laughed easily.

“We’re not friends. If there ever were enemies on this earth, they’re me and you. And you’re right, Mike. We’re sons of bitches. In fact, we’re the evilest sons of bitches you ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. If we’re willing to kill a priest over nothing, how much more willing do you think I am to body-bag one of these worthless celebrities over seven figures? Either kill us, or get us our money. Just stop wasting my time!”

“You sure you don’t want to choose that other option?” I said suddenly.

“What option is that, Mikey?”

“Eating your gun,” I said.

“Fat chance,” Jack said with a laugh. “I’m not that hungry. But you keep messing around with me, you better watch out. Before this thing is over, I might just decide to feed it to you.”

A CONNECTION-CUTTING dial tone howled in my ear-just as Mike Nardy, the cathedral’s caretaker, entered the trailer.

“I’m afraid I have a confession to make,” he blurted, looking out over the assembly of cops and agents. “There is another way into the cathedral.”

The FBI HRT commander, Oakley, stepped forward to handle this himself.

“Tell us about it, Mr. Nardy,” he said.

The old man was seated in a swivel chair and handed a coffee.

“The reason I didn’t say anything before was, well, it’s kind of a secret. Kind of embarrassing for the church, too. The only reason I’m even here is that Father Miller, the priest who was just shot, was a friend of mine, and well, I have your word that it won’t get out? The passageway?”

“Of course,” Oakley said immediately. “Where’s the way in, Mr. Nardy?”

“From the Rockefeller Center concourse,” the caretaker said. “There’s a passage that cuts under Fifth into a, um, bomb shelter. Back in the sixties, Cardinal Spellman, God rest his soul, got quite, I guess the word is paranoid, after the Bay of Pigs incident. He was convinced New York was going to get nuked. So he allocated some funds for an undisclosed construction project.

“A bomb shelter was built off the archbishops’ crypt. With the Rockefellers’ permission, an alternate escape passage was dug to the lower concourse of Rockefeller Center, where they now have shops and such. I’ve never been through the passage; no one has since they built it.”