Page 7 of Mastermind

Our helicopter begins to ascend, and the wall of the Void moves past until we can see the night sky above. The tallest skyscrapers poke out from certain spots, their aircraft-warning lights dead.

“We’re going to take a closer look,” says Sheppard.

“Is that wise?” I ask.

“We’ll stay above the mist.”

I’m not sure how that’s possible, since there are two kinds of mist here. There’s the one that’s shrouding the city and then a finer, thinner one creating a purple haze around everything near the Void.

The helicopter flies into the thinner mist. Below us, the thicker haze swirls and spreads under the pressure of the helicopter blades.

Our pilot keeps a careful watch on his thermal and infrared monitors, which tell him where the hidden buildings are located.

“Look!” says Vaslov, pointing to the silhouette of a tall building. Along the top edge are the outlines of people waving their arms in the air like shadows on an invisible wall.

We fly closer. Hands frantically gesture for us to land, which isn’t possible without a proper helipad. I can even see expressions on faces. Some are frightened, others confused, and more than a few amused. At least we know there are survivors.

Our helicopter continues moving through the canyon of buildings. There are more shadows of people on rooftops. Through a gap between two skyscrapers, I see a bright glow.

“There!” I call out.

The helicopter turns and heads toward the source of light. The mist thins, and we can see an entire block that still has electrical power.

“How is this possible?” asks Sheppard.

“They have their own generator, I’d guess,” replies Vaslov. He points to more people. “Look over there.”

People are on rooftops, not because the air is better out there, but because they don’t want to miss the show.

A thought crosses my mind.

“Sheppard? Can you talk to the news choppers?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Look at all these people watching. If you did this, wouldn’t you want to see it?”

“Okay . . . ,” he replies uncertainly.

“We need to record all the faces of people on either side of Manhattan who are out watching this. Some of those faces will belong to whoever did this. There’s no way they’d miss it,” I explain.

“Okay. On it.”

The interior of the helicopter lights up, and the first thing I notice is the smell of ozone in the cabin.

The second thing I realize is that the engine has stopped.

“Buckle up,” says the pilot. “We’re about to have a hard landing.”

CHAPTER FIVE

CRASH

My great-grandfather, the one who started my family’s magic dynasty, which I brought to a close with my application to the FBI, once went over a waterfall in a barrel . . . by accident. He’d been a rival of Houdini and was always looking for a way to outshine the great magician. Eventually his interest in magic faded and he took up farming, only to have his son, my grandfather, answer the siren call of show business and revive the family name—and then for me to leave it in the past.

As Grandfather explains it, Great-Grandfather Henry Blackstar thought it would be a marvelous idea to fake going over the less treacherous of the falls at Niagara and present it as an escape. He’d be locked and shackled—as was our family habit—welded into a barrel, and pushed into the river, only to reappear at the bottom on dry land in approximately the amount of time it would take him to crawl from his hiding location under the platform where the barrel was to be sealed, run down the steps in a fake mustache, and reappear in the crowd below.

What he didn’t account for was that the newfangled electric welder he was using because the Sparco-Weld company was sponsoring him would also cause the metal lining of the barrel bottom’s trapdoor to weld shut when the electrical current passed through the lid. (Years later, this was one of the reasons his son, my grandfather, made it a point to study physics and chemistry in his spare time.) When the barrel was hoisted by the crane and dropped into the water, poor Henry was still inside.