The Ragnarok Conspiracy (6 page)

Pants Henry lay in an alcohol-induced daze on a hard park bench.

A cool breeze stirred through the darkness surrounding him, rustling leaves and pieces of litter along the sidewalk, searching for morning. The boiling New York summer had not yet triumphed over the spring, and the city had still to warm to its deep tissue of concrete and metal. A rare and soft stillness rested over Manhattan. A good time to sleep it off.

A beige moon hung over the East River, and a winking handful of stars forced their way through the moonlight and the orange haze of streetlamps. Pants breathed slowly on his bench in Dag Hammarskjold Park in Midtown, a brown paper bag on the ground next to him, a pushcart and several bags of cans and sundry objects to the side. After so many years frequenting this park, he was nearly a decoration. The locals tolerated him, and his one intact pants leg, as best they could.

The moonlight darted through the metal grid of a park sculpture that rose from the middle of the plaza. Six spidery pillars of black iron climbed toward the heavens from foot-tall concrete blocks, and six filigreed arches curved upward, intersecting at a small ring to create a netted dome. The moonlight danced through this meshwork, alighting on Pants's haggard face, beard, and the thin wire transmitter/receiver running from ear to mouth. Soft static bursts escaped from the device as he quietly responded.

“Eagle 7, this is Alpha center.” The language was guttural, vaguely Germanic, uninterpretable to anyone who might have overheard.

“Copy,” Pants whispered in the same tongue, his eyes cracked open imperceptibly.

“Report.”

“Plaza is clean.”

“Remain in position. Delta team has exited the target zone. Surveillance has been redirected. The gardeners are planting. Estimate less than ten minutes. Situation is nominal but critical. Execute extreme caution. This is it, Eagle 7.”

“Roger, Alpha center.”

Pants knew that ten minutes was more than enough. The city block at Second Avenue had been re-created in the deserts of the Southwest, the operation rehearsed more times than he wished to remember, with too many different scenarios, too many failures and unexpected events encountered. Nothing could go wrong tonight.

That was why, when he saw motion at the far end of the park, training took over, and the outcome was never in doubt.

He watched as two young men stepped into the plaza. Their voices were loud for the hour, alcohol a likely culprit. They appeared to be fair-skinned blacks or Latinos, with loose-fitting jeans, sharply cut shirts revealing strong muscles, and not a few thin-edged scars. Unmoving on the park bench, Pants was not surprised to see the black-and-gold tattoos.
Latin Kings.
Fallen from their heyday, broken by police and changing times, their members were still feared. He would need to be focused.

“Alpha center, two unidentifieds, moving toward the garden. Latin Kings. Moving to intercept.”

“Roger that, Eagle 7. Mission critical. Sanitize the plaza.”

“Roger, Alpha Center. In progress.”

He rose slowly from the bench, an old bum seemingly both drunk and hungover. He reached down for his paper bag and shuffled toward the middle of the plaza, walking slowly beneath the iron dome, grasping bars to steady himself. The two Kings slowed, still laughing, but many nights living near death's edge had sharpened intuitions that preserved life. There was nothing unusual about the wino in front of them—Pants had made sure of that—but still they slowed. Pants understood: that place of unreason that awakens in the face of danger whispered deep within them.

He made himself appear oblivious to their motions, stumbling forward and talking to himself and to the brown stone-tiled walkway at his feet. Approaching within ten yards, he raised his head, babbling nonsense and quickening his gait. The young men slowed and stared at each other. They seemed amused, an initial sense of caution replaced with a smirking mischief. Pants watched as the man on the right reached into his pocket and pulled out a short knife, grinning.

The youth's smile faded.
Can't hide the eyes.
Pants knew the young man did not see the clouded eyes of a drunk; he saw those of a hunter.

With surprising speed, Pants spun into action. From underneath his shabby coat, he removed a handgun, a silencer protruding from the barrel. Without hesitation, he aimed and squeezed the trigger twice. Two soft spits melted into the soft June wind blowing through the park, followed by the wet impact of a human form dropping to the ground. Even as the first figure began its descent to the hard pavement, Pants rotated his arm a few degrees and fired again. The head of the other man arched backward as the second shot exploded near his heart. Both bodies lay crumbled on the ground.

Pants paused, listening, the gun still and upright, his body tense, his head cocked at an angle. From one of the bodies came a soft moaning. The first target placed his hands on the ground in front of him as he tried vainly to rise. Blood covered his chest and hands; his face looked pale. Posture erect, motions sure and controlled, Pants stepped toward the prone man and aimed the weapon.

“No…” the young man whispered, seeing the barrel pointed at his head. He dropped straight down as a shot blew apart the upper right corner of his forehead, spraying blood and bone across the cobbled walkway. Pants knelt down and checked the other body. Satisfied, he glanced around the plaza carefully, also scanning the windows of surrounding buildings, then spoke into his microphone.

“Alpha center, this is Eagle 7. Plaza is sanitized. Repeat, plaza is sanitized.”

“Roger that, Eagle 7. Gardeners have seeded the area. Exit plaza and proceed to rendezvous with flock.”

“Any disposal, Alpha center?”

“Negative, Eagle 7. Unnecessary, and there's no time. After tomorrow, your little mess will be the least of their worries.”

“Roger that. Eagle 7, out.” Pants resumed a stumbling gait and slowly made his way down the plaza walkway toward First Avenue. There, he turned left, uptown, glancing back only momentarily at the dancing currents of the East River. Somewhere, he knew, those currents were carrying the body of the real Pants Henry, who was finally at rest.

Far more intently, he followed the lights alongside the river, staring up at the towering form of the United Nations building at the river's edge.

Traffic rushed like swarms of locusts across Second Avenue.
Swarms of large, cheap, ugly metallic locusts
, thought Fahd Shobokshi, aide to the Saudi Counselor, as he stepped over a fresh pile of dog excrement left by some undoubtedly charming member of this filthy city of infidels. Fahd Shobokshi hated his job. He hated being away from his homeland. He hated having to fawn over the pompous and idiotic head of the Saudi Consulate in Manhattan. He hated the small and poorly furnished hole they called an apartment in this city. He hated living in this nation of sinners and in this chief city of Satan, where a righteous man could not walk two blocks without having to turn away from pornography. He hated the dinners overflowing with Western dishes, the long hours of tedious paperwork. Most of all, he hated the mornings when he knew he would be dressed down by the counselor for being late. Today, he was late again.

The street sign blinked to “walk,” and Fahd dodged the rushing cab as he stepped across the street. There was one thing he did like about the city, and that was the—what did they call it in Urdu?
The kulfi wala.
Yes, he liked the kulfi wala, he thought pleasantly, as a stinking and sweating American jogger bumped into him. If it made him even later, then he would gain much and lose little. His dressing down was already assured. At the corner of the plaza, the cart was there, as it was every working summer day. The short little Pakistani would be there, too, with his terrible but wonderful kulfi. Fahd had come to love the mornings and his kulfi—so superior to the dripping and too-thick ice cream these Americans preferred. A day felt incomplete without it.

He stepped up to the cart and smiled at the man. These Pakistanis
were good people, but they were barely Muslims. An inferior race still tainted by their roots in paganism.
But Allah is merciful, and he offers his mercy to all people who follow his precepts.
He paid and took his plastic bowl and spoon and began to eat, tasting the cool of the ice milk in the warming June sun, pausing long enough outside of 866 Second Avenue for a final moment of peace before the day began. He glanced over toward the plaza.
Police.
There were several, and they had begun to fence off a region of the park.
More crime in this murderous city.

He glanced up at the tall building, its black-glass windows filled with floor after floor of United Nations' representatives. It was a rather imposing building, sucking the light out of the nice little corner between the tree-lined plaza and the small park across the street. He'd rather wait outside, especially on a nice day like today. But he could not. He took a deep breath. He was late already, and pausing outside would not benefit his situation.

A moment later, he watched the door to hell open in front of his feet.

He felt turned inside-out in the middle of a fire, pummeled by stones and bathed in rushing air. His ears ached from an assault by a multitude of sounds, as if submerged in water. He reached up to touch them, then pulled his hands down. With blurred vision, he saw that they were covered in blood. Suddenly, his back erupted in a spasm of pain, and his eyes focused. He was lying on the street surrounded by broken glass, nearly underneath a large truck parked on the west side of Second Avenue.

I am across the street.
How?
Through the wetness of the blood in his injured ears, he began to filter sounds. Alarms, many of them. Building alarms, car alarms; he could not tell. Voices screaming—commands, exclamations. Cries for help. His eyes could see only a brown haze, a thick cloud of dust like a choking fog surrounding the block. Cars were overturned or crushed by what seemed like enormous slabs of concrete. Glass was everywhere, and flakes like confetti rained down from above.

He tried to stand. The pain in his back was paralyzing. He tried again, groaning from the effort, and finally made it to his feet. His left
arm was not working; it hung limply at his side.
I cannot feel it.
He looked down to realize that he was covered in bloody ash. One shoe was missing.
Merciful God, what has happened?

He limped forward over what had been the busy street. No cars drove there now. Thousands of shards of glass covered the roadway. He heard sirens, choruses of sirens blaring, it seemed, from all directions. Glancing forward, across the street, he gasped. The cloud of dust was still amazingly thick, a sharp rain descending like sand. It had cleared enough, however, to leave no doubt. A gaping hole was carved out of the earth. Fires ranged along the crater, in nearby vehicles, in the trees of Dag Hammarskjold Park. The corner of Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street was a giant hole, a black pit of nothingness opening its maw to drink the dust above it. The building,
his building
, a tower of polished black glass and steel, filled with workers from twenty different nations, was simply gone. Blown and dispersed into the air of New York.

For several seconds, he could not move. Police cars and fire trucks arrived at the scene, and the sounds of chaos flowed over his shattered ears like water in a sea cave. A hulking fireman in a mask rushed toward Fahd, shouting at him and pointing across the road, telling him something he could not understand. Fahd nodded dumbly, turning left to retreat back across the street. He glimpsed the pushcart he had visited this morning, in a place and time far from this one, in another world. Next to the overturned cart lay a body unmoving. A small dark form. His Pakistani friend.

Fahd stumbled over debris in the road. He looked down to right himself and noticed an irregular object. He stared in horror. He began to shake. Below him was the face of a woman.
Not her head, dear Allah, not her head.
Three-quarters of her face was removed from the rest of her body, an eye along with distorted and grotesque lips and cartilage from the nose, tattered bits of a forehead, all soaked in blood. He heard it now, crashing against his bleeding eardrums. Screams and screams and screams of terror. He looked around, turning in every direction, edging away from the demonic mask of death near his feet. The screams
grew louder and louder in his head, and he turned to look but could not find the source of the voices. Only as he began to limp maniacally across the road, no longer caring what he stepped on, glass or flesh, did he realize that the screams were his own.