They had made Andy promise he would pick them up at Rockefeller Center at five-thirty that afternoon—a feat he still had no idea how to accomplish—and his father had dropped the keys to the Buick in his hand as he went out to work that morning. And so here he was, at 9:11 a.m. on a Monday morning, already more than ten minutes late for work, driving down into some subterranean nightmare and not knowing whether or not he was ever going to see a ray of sunlight again.

He did. In record time. Andy was up on the sidewalk and trotting along through the heavy pedestrian traffic three minutes later.

As he jogged along, he continually checked his watch at thirty-second intervals, each time stepping up the pace a little more. Plowing through the chok-ing throng of people, he caught a few angry glares from other pedestrians but in spite of everything that could have gone wrong, he was at the bank by twenty minutes past nine.

In front of the massive building, Andy noticed that the gutter had been marked off with several strate-gically placed orange traffic cones. These were obviously set up to discourage anyone from slowing down or parking in front of the bank's double doors.

The sounds of honking horns and angry shouts were proof that not everyone appreciated their careful placement.

At the center of the arrangement of cones, directly across from the glass foyer doors of the bank, a large white van sat soaking up the few feeble rays of di-luted sunlight that managed to penetrate the smog and towering buildings. The van's engine hummed softly.

As he approached, Andy noted that the cab of the van was empty.

Not a very wise move in New York. It was an open invitation to thieves. As he drew closer, Andy noticed the name PlattDeutsche A.G. stenciled in small black script above the door handle on the passenger's side. That explained it. This was the new security company which for the past few weeks had been installing the bank's new high-tech camera and vault system. Probably the van was wired to explode the minute somebody touched the door handle.