It was 2:36. The dead man had reached the outer edge of the large crowd. He paused for a few seconds, as if searching for a weak point to make his entry, then shouldered his way between two startled women. Gabriel entered at a different spot several yards to the man’s right, slipping virtually unnoticed through a family of American tourists. The crowd was four-deep in most places and tightly packed, which presented Gabriel with yet another dilemma. The ideal ammunition for a situation like this was a hollow-point round, which would inflict greater tissue damage on the target and substantially reduce the risk of collateral casualties due to over-penetration. But Gabriel’s Beretta pistol was loaded with ordinary 9mm Parabellum rounds. As a result, he would have to position himself to fire at an extreme downward trajectory. Otherwise, there was a high probability he might inadvertently take innocent life in an attempt to save it.
The dead man had breached the inner wall of the crowd and was now headed directly toward the street comedian. The eyes had taken on the glassy thousand-yard stare. The lips were moving. Final prayers . . . The street comedian wrongly assumed the dead man wished to take part in the performance. Smiling, he took two steps toward him but froze when he saw the hands emerge from the pockets of the overcoat. The left was slightly open. The right was bunched into a fist, with the thumb cocked at a right angle. Still, Gabriel hesitated. What if there was no detonator? What if it was a pen or a cylinder of lip balm? He had to be sure. Tell me your intentions, he thought. Sign your name.