Electronics, because that office had windows that overlooked Lexington
Avenue. He fired the Walther PPK twice; the lock disintegrated under
the bullets’ impact.
Suggesting ways that she could help herself, favoring his injured left
arm, Graham pulled Connie onto the ledge.
Weeping, he hugged her with both arms, squeezed her so tightly that he
would have cut off her breath if they hadn’t been wearing the insulated
parkas. They swayed on the narrow ledge; and for the moment they were
unaware of the long drop beside them, temporarily unimpressed by the
danger. He didn’t want to let go of her, not ever. He felt as if he
had taken a drug, an upper, something to boost his spirits.
Considering their circumstances, his mood was unrealistic.
Although they were a long way, both in time and in distance, from
safety, he was elated; she was alive.
“Where’s Bollinger?” she asked.
Behind Graham, the office was full of light, the window opened.
But there was no sign of the killer.
“He probably went to look for me on the Lexington side,” Graham said.
“Then he does think I’m dead.”
“He must. I thought you were.”
“What’s happened to your arm?”
“He shot me.”
“Oh, no! ”
“It hurts. And it feels stiff, but that’s all.”
“There’s a lot of blood.”
“Not much. The bullet probably cauterized the wound; that’s how shallow
it is.” He held out his left hand, opened and closed it to show her
that he wasn’t seriously affected. “I can climb.”
,You shouldn’t.”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t have a choice.”
“We could go inside, use the stairs again.”
“As soon as Bollinger checks the Lexington side and doesn’t find me,
he’ll come back. If I’m not here, he’ll look on the stairs. He’d nail
us if we tried to go that way.
“Now what?”
“Same as before. We’ll walk this ledge to the corner. By the time we
get to Lexington, he’ll have looked over that face of the building and
be gone. Then we’ll rappel.
“With your arm like this?”
“With my arm like this.”
“The vision you had about being shot in the back-”
“What about it?”
She touched his left arm. “Was this it?”
“No.
Bollinger turned away from the window that opened onto Lexington Avenue.
He hurried out of the Opway Electronics suite and down the hall toward
the office from which he had shot at Harris a few minutes ago.
“Chaos, Dwight.
“Chaos-I”
“There are too damned many of- these subhumans lor the supermen to take
control of things in ordinary times. Only in the midst of Armageddon
will men like us ascend “You mean … after a nuclear war?”
“That’s one way it could happen. Only men like us wouldbave the courage
and imagination to lead civilization out of the ruins. But wouldn’t it
be ridiculous to wait until they’ve destroyed everything we should
inherit?”
“Ridiculous.
“So it’s occurred to me that we could generate the chaos we need, bring
about Armageddon in a less destructive form.
“How?”
“Well… does the name Albert DeSalvo mean anything to you?”
“No.
“He was the Boston Strangler.
“Oh, yeah. He murdered a lot of women.
“We should study DeSalvo’s case. He wasn’t one of us, of course.
He was an inlezior and a psychotic to boot. But I taink we should use
him as a model. Singlehandedly, he created so much fear that he almost
threw the city of Boston into a state of panic. Fear would be our basic
tool. Fear can be stoked into panic. A handful of panic-stricken
people can transmit their hysteria to the entire population of a city or
country.
”
“But DeSalvo didn’t come close to creating the kind of fear the degree
of-chaos that would lead to the collapse of society.
“Because that wasn’t his goal.
Even if it had been-”
“Dwight, suppose an Albert DeSalvo …
better yet, suppose a Jack the Ripper were loose in Manhattan. Suppose
he murdered not just ten women, not twenty, but a hundred two hundred.
In a particularly brutile fashion. With clear evidence of aberrant sex
in every case. So there was no doubt that they all died by the same