— Give me five minutes.

With that, his friend left him alone.

Kneeling in a parody of prayer, sweat streaming, his fingers slippery, he wiped his face, but it made no difference, his shirt was soaked and could absorb no more. Finish the job! And he’d never have to work again. Tomorrow he’d take his little daughter for a walk by the river. The day after he’d buy her something, watch her smile. By the end of next week he would’ve forgotten about this church, about the five golden domes and the sensation of the cold stone floor.

He snatched hold of the blasting cap, crouched down to the dynamite.

STAINED GLASS SHOT OUT from all around the church, every window shattering simultaneously — the air filling with colored fragments. The back wall transformed from a solid mass to a rushing dust cloud. Ragged chunks of stone arced up then crashed to the ground, chewing up the grass, skidding toward the crowd. The flimsy barrier offered no protection, swatted aside with a shrill clang. To Lazar’s right and left people dropped as their legs were knocked out from under them. Children on their fathers’ shoulders clutched their faces, sliced by whistling stone and glass shards. As though it were a single entity, a great shoal, the crowd pulled away in unison, crouching, hiding behind each other, fearful that more debris would rip through them. No one had been expecting anything to happen yet; many hadn’t even been looking in the right direction. The film cameras weren’t set up. There were workers within the blast perimeter, a perimeter hopelessly underestimated or an explosion misjudged.

Lazar stood, his ears ringing, staring at the plumes of dust, waiting for it to settle. As the cloud thinned it revealed a hole in the wall twice the height of a man and equally wide. The damage made it appear as if a giant had accidentally put the tip of his boot through the church and then apologetically retracted his foot, sparing the rest of the building. Lazar looked up at the golden domes. Everyone around him followed suit, a single question on everyone’s mind: would the towers fall?