“Come on!” Maya shouted, and they started running.

The van drove around the concrete security barrier and stopped at the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central Terminal. A National Guardsman standing in front of the train station approached them, but Nathan Boone motioned to one of his mercenaries, a New York City detective named Ray Mitchell. Ray lowered the passenger window and showed the soldier his badge. “Got a call about a couple of drug dealers doing business in the terminal,” he said. “Someone said they had a little Chinese girl with them. Can you believe it? I mean-come on-if you’re selling crack, get a babysitter.”

The Guardsman grinned and lowered his rifle. “I’ve been in the city for six days,” he said. “Everyone here is a little crazy.”

The driver, a mercenary from South Africa named Vanderpoul, stayed behind the wheel as Boone got out of the van with Mitchell and his partner, Detective Krause. Ray Mitchell was a small, fast-talking man who liked to wear designer clothes. Krause was his opposite: a large, awkward cop with a flushed face who seemed to be permanently angry. Boone paid a monthly retainer to both police officers and gave them occasional bonuses for extra work.

“Now what?” Krause asked. “Where’d they go after they jumped?”

“Hold on,” Boone said. His headset was relaying continual information from two teams of mercenaries as well as the Brethren’s computer center in Berlin. The technicians had hacked into the New York transit system’s surveillance network, and they were using their scanning programs to look for the fugitives.

“They’re still in the subway station on a transit level,” Boone said. “The cameras are getting a direct feed as they walk toward the shuttle train.”

“So we go to the shuttle?” Mitchell asked.

“Not yet. Maya knows we’re tracking her, and that’s going to influence her behavior. The first thing she’ll do is get away from the cameras.”

Smiling, Mitchell glanced at his partner. “And that’s why she’s going to be caught.”

Boone reached back into the van and took out the aluminum suitcase that contained the radio tracking equipment and three sets of infrared goggles.

“Let’s go inside. I’m going to contact the response team parked on Fifth Avenue.”

The three men entered the terminal and walked down one of the wide marble staircases built to resemble a part of the old Paris opera house. Mitchell caught up with Boone as they reached the main concourse. “I got to make things clear,” he said. “We’ll guide you around New York and run interference, but we’re not taking anybody out.”

“I’m not asking you to do that. Just deal with the authorities.”

“No problem. I’ll check in with the transit police and tell them we’re at the terminal.”

Mitchell took out his badge, clipped it to his jacket, then hurried down one of the corridors. Krause stayed with Boone like a giant bodyguard as they approached a central information booth with a four-faced clock mounted on the roof. The size of the main concourse, its arched windows, white marble floors, and stone walls, confirmed his belief that his side was going to win this secret war. Millions of people passed through the terminal every year, but only a few of them knew that the building itself was a subtle demonstration of the Brethren’s power.

One of the Brethren’s strongest supporters in America during the early twentieth century was William K. Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon who had commissioned the construction of Grand Central Terminal. Vanderbilt requested that the main concourse’s arched ceiling be decorated with the constellations of the zodiac, five stories above the marble floor of the station. The stars were supposed to be arranged as if they were in a Mediterranean sky during Christ’s lifetime. But no one-not even the Egyptian astrologers of the first century-had ever seen such an arrangement: the zodiac on the ceiling was completely reversed.

It amused Boone to read the various theories as to why the stars were shown this way. The most popular idea was that the painter had duplicated a drawing found in a medieval manuscript and that the stars were shown from the point of view of someone outside our solar system. No one ever explained why Vanderbilt’s architects had allowed this odd conceit to appear in such an important building.

The Brethren knew that the ceiling’s design had nothing to do with a medieval concept of the heavens. The constellations were in the correct position for someone concealed inside the hollow ceiling, looking downward at travelers hurrying to their trains. Most of the stars were twinkling lightbulbs in a powder-blue sky, but there were a dozen sight holes as well. In the past, police officers and railroad security guards had used binoculars to follow the movements of suspicious-looking citizens. Now the entire population was being tracked with scanners and other electronic equipment. The reversed zodiac suggested that only the watchers from above saw the universe accurately. Everyone else assumed that the stars were in the right place.

A call came in on the sat phone, and a former British soldier named Summerfield whispered into Boone’s ear. The response team had arrived at the Vanderbilt entrance and had parked behind the van. For this operation, the team was comprised of mostly the same men who had worked in Arizona. The New Harmony operation had been good for morale; the necessary violence had unified a group of mercenaries with different nationalities and backgrounds.

“Now what?” Summerfield asked.

“Break into small groups, and then enter from different doors.” Boone looked up at the schedule board. “We’ll meet near track thirty-the train going to Stamford.”

“I thought they were getting on the shuttle.”

“All Maya wants to do is protect her Traveler. She’ll hide as quickly as possible. That means going down a tunnel or finding a maintenance area.”

“Is the objective still the same?”

“Everyone but Gabriel is now in the immediate-termination category.”

Summerfield switched off his phone, and Boone picked up another call from the Internet team. Maya and the other fugitives had reached the shuttle area, but they were lingering on the platform. Boone had killed Maya’s father, Thorn, in Prague last year, and he felt an odd personal connection to the young woman. She wasn’t as tough as her father, perhaps because she had resisted becoming a Harlequin. Maya had already made one mistake-and the next choice would destroy her.

Naz had guided Maya and the rest of the group through a warren of stairs and passageways to the Times Square shuttle. The platform was a brightly lit area where a shuttle train departed from one of three parallel tracks. The gray concrete floor was dotted with blackened pieces of chewing gum that formed a random mosaic. A few hundred feet away, a group of West Indian men with steel drums pounded out a calypso tune.

So far, they had avoided the mercenaries, but Maya was sure they were being watched by the underground surveillance system. Now that their presence in New York had been discovered, she knew that the full resources of the Tabula would be used to find them. According to Naz, all they had to do was walk down the subway tunnel and take a staircase to the lower level of Grand Central Terminal. Unfortunately, a transit policeman was patrolling the area and, even if he disappeared, someone might tell the authorities that a group of people had jumped onto the tracks.

The only safe route into the tunnel was through a locked door labeled with the tarnished gold lettering KNICKERBOCKER. In a more convivial era, a passageway once led directly from the subway platform to the bar of the old Knickerbocker Hotel. Although the hotel was now an apartment building, the door remained-unnoticed by the tens of thousands of commuters who walked past it every day.