The complications in his plan were as elegant, if not as numerous, as those in what was reportedly the world's most elaborate wristwatch, one made by Gerald Genta.

But at the moment Hale was nowhere near the museum, which he'd left a half hour ago. Not long after he'd entered and checked the bag, he'd walked into a restroom stall, then taken off his coat, revealing an army uniform, rank of major. He'd donned glasses and a military-style hat-hidden in a false pocket in his coat-and had left the museum quickly. He was presently in downtown Manhattan, slowly making his way through the security line leading into the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In a short time a number of soldiers and their families would attend a ceremony in their honor, hosted by the city and the U.S. Departments of Defense and State, in the HUD building. Officials would be greeting soldiers recently returned from foreign conflicts and their families, giving them letters of commendation for their service in recent world conflicts and thanking them for reenlisting. Following the ceremonies, and the requisite photo ops and trite statements to the press, the guests would leave and the generals and other government officials would reconvene to discuss future efforts to spread democracy to other places in the world.

These government officials, as well as the soldiers, their families and any members of the press who happened to be present, were the real point of Charles Hale's mission in New York.

He had been hired for the simple purpose of killing as many of them as he could.

With husky, ever-smiling Bob driving, Lucy Richter sat in the car as they made their way past the reviewing stand outside the Housing and Urban Development building, where the parade was just winding down.

Her hand on her husband's muscular thigh, Lucy was silent.

The Honda nosed through the heavy traffic, Bob making casual conversation, talking about the party tonight. Lucy responded halfheartedly. She'd grown troubled once again about the Big Conflict-what she'd confessed to Kathryn Dance. Should she go through with the reenlistment or not?

Self-interrogation…

When she'd agreed a month earlier; was she being honest or being deceptive with herself?

Looking for the things Agent Dance told her: anger, depression…Am I lying?

She tried to put the debate out of her head.

They were close to the HUD building now and across the street she saw protesters. They were against the various foreign conflicts America was involved in. Her friends and fellow soldiers overseas were pissed off at anybody who protested but, curiously, Lucy didn't see it that way. She believed the very fact that these people were free to demonstrate and were not in jail validated what she was doing.

The couple drew closer to the checkpoint at the intersection near the HUD building. Two soldiers stepped forward to check their IDs and to look in the trunk.

Lucy stiffened.

"What?" her husband asked.

"Look," she said.

He glanced down. Her right hand was on her hip, where she wore her sidearm when on duty.

"Going for the fast draw?" Bob joked.

"Instinct. At checkpoints." She laughed. But it was a humorless sound.

Bitter fog…

Bob nodded at the soldiers and smiled to his wife. "I think we're pretty safe. Not like we're in Baghdad or Kabul."

Lucy squeezed his hand and they proceeded to the parking lot reserved for the honorees.

Charles Hale was not completely apolitical. He had some general opinions about democracy versus theocracy versus communism versus fascism. But he knew his views amounted to the same pedestrian positions offered by listeners calling in to Rush Limbaugh or NPR radio, nothing particularly radical or articulate. So last October when Charlotte and Bud Allerton hired him for the job of "sending a message" about big government and wrong-minded American intervention in "heathen" foreign nations, Hale had yawned mentally.

But he was intrigued by the challenge.

"We've talked to six people and nobody'll take the job," Bud Allerton told him. "It's next to impossible."

Charles Vespasian Hale liked that word. One wasn't bored when taking on the impossible. It was like "invulnerable."

Charlotte and Bud-her second husband-were part of a right-wing militia fringe group that had been attacking federal government employees and buildings and UN facilities for years. They'd gone underground a while ago but recently, enraged at the government's meddling forays into world affairs, she and the others in her nameless organization decided it was time to go after something big.

This attack would not only send their precious message but would cause some real harm to the enemy: killing generals and government officials who'd betrayed principles America was founded on and sent our boys and-God help us-girls to die on foreign soil for the benefit of people who were backward and cruel and non-Christian.

Hale had managed to extract himself from his rhetoric-addicted clients and got to work. On Halloween he'd come to New York, moved into the safe house in Brooklyn, and spent the next month and a half engrossed in the construction of his timepiece-acquiring supplies, finding unwitting associates to help him (Dennis Baker and Vincent Reynolds), learning everything he could about the Watchmaker's supposed victims and surveilling the HUD building.

Which he was now approaching through the bitterly cold morning air.

This building had been chosen for the ceremonies and meetings not because of the department's mission, which had nothing to do with the military, of course, but because it offered the best security of any federal building in lower Manhattan. The walls were thick limestone; if a terrorist were somehow to negotiate the barricades surrounding the place and detonate a car bomb, the resulting explosion would cause less damage than it would to a modern, glass-facaded structure. HUD was also lower than most offices downtown, which made it a difficult target for missiles or suicide airplanes. It had a limited number of entrances and exits, thus making access control easier, and the room where the awards ceremony and later the strategic meetings would take place faced the windowless wall of the building across the alleyway so no sniper could shoot into the room.

With another two dozen soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons on the surrounding streets and tops of buildings, HUD was virtually impregnable.

From the exterior, that is.

But no one realized that the threat wouldn't be coming from outside.

Charles Hale displayed his three military-issue IDs, two of them unique to this event and delivered to attendees just two days ago. He was nodded through the metal detector, then physically patted down.

A final guard, a corporal, checked his IDs a second time then saluted him. Hale returned the gesture and stepped inside.

The HUD building was labyrinthine but Hale now made his way quickly to the basement. He knew the layout of the place perfectly because the fifth supposed victim of the psycho Watchmaker, Sarah Stanton, was the estimator of the flooring company that had supplied carpeting and linoleum tile to the building, a fact he'd learned from public filings regarding government contractors. In Sarah's file cabinets he found precise drawings of every room and hallway in HUD. (The company was also across the hall from a delivery service-which he'd called earlier to complain about a package to the Metropolitan Museum that had never been delivered, lending credence to the apparent plot to steal the Delphic Mechanism.)

In fact, all of the Watchmaker's "assaults" this week, with the exception of the attention-getting blood bath at the pier, were vital steps in his mission today: the flooring company, Lucy Richter's apartment, the Cedar Street alleyway and the florist shop.