Manhattan Lockdown (10 page)

“Mr. Ritter, you work for Lazarus. Can you tell me what the fuck is really going on?”

“We'll have an answer soon. Secretary Lazarus is meeting with the president and his folks right now.”

Raising his hands in exasperation, Roland said, “This is all stunningly inept. It takes my breath away.”

Ritter and General Foster didn't respond. Ritter glared at Roland as the general, almost without blinking, stared from his segment of the split screen. He looked like a photograph, not a man on a live feed.

Roland asked the secretary of defense, “Roger, do you have anything to say?”

“Sure. The general and Mr. Ritter are experts on military issues, but the president is the final decision-maker. As soon as this conference call is over, I'll join a video conference with the president, Secretary Lazarus, and the general.”

“Commissioner Carbone,” Roland said, “do you have any reaction to what we've been hearing?”

“I have as many uniformed officers with as many M-16s on the streets as I can find, but it's a thin net.”

“At least it's something,” Roland said.

He turned to Hans Richter, an impeccably organized deputy mayor responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the Sanitation, Housing, and Health Departments. He was a fifty-five-year-old bachelor who always seemed to be in his office in the Municipal Building across Centre Street from City Hall. “Hans, what's happening from your perspective?”

“Candidly, Mr. Mayor, Manhattan is in a steady state of collapse. Garbage is piling up on every street, normal ambulance service is almost nonexistent. We also have thousands of people who were in the city yesterday only for a day, visitors from the suburbs for the most part. They have no apartments or homes to return to.”

“Didn't someone tell me that if we had a Code Apache situation
there were shelters with food and other essentials where people could go?”

“We do. But they're overflowing. There are six hundred cots set up in the Armory on Park Avenue, for example. They're all occupied. But many of the other shelters are in neighborhoods that apparently don't feel as safe to out-of-towners. So there are thousands of people who, for the first time in their lives, are living in the parks and streets. We are managing to provide food and water and some, but not enough, sanitation facilities.”

Increasingly in pain, suddenly focusing on the image in his mind of Sarah and the recollection of her scent, Roland recognized that his spirit was bruised. He worried that his mood was deflating. Everything seemed too immense and too complicated and too uncertain. He said, “What else, Hans?”

“Food supplies in the stores have virtually vanished. There's been a rush for food, water, and other supplies that's happened with a speed we didn't anticipate. So we're experiencing more and more pleas for food assistance.”

“This lockdown can't last,” Roland said.

Hans Richter continued. “Even though this is not my area of expertise, I have to also say the financial markets in New York are closed. I'm no economist, God knows, but that's spreading financial confusion around the world.”

Roger Fitton, a career politician who himself wanted to be president, spoke soothingly, “Roland, the president is aware of that. He's the decision maker.”

“As in George W. Bush, I'm the decider?”

“I hope I'm going to recommend to him that the lockdown be gradually lifted today and tomorrow if the situation begins to stabilize.”

“I can't have a city under siege. Even after the Paris attacks there
were no sieges. Sieges cause fear, and fear will rapidly unravel the whole fabric of the city.”

***

From the back seat of the SUV racing from 14
^th
Street to City Hall, Roland saw empty streets that looked like cities in those Japanese-made horror movies from the 1950s in the grip of an invasion from space aliens. Although this was Manhattan on a bright Monday morning in June, there were very few people outside. There was virtually no traffic. The usual congestion of double-parked delivery trucks replenishing the city after a weekend was gone. Stores and diners were closed since they were places staffed mainly by people from the outer boroughs who hadn't been able to cross the river into Manhattan. As the caravan of heavily guarded SUVs rushed down the old sections of lower Broadway, a squadron of fifteen bicyclists on sleek Italian machines and in skintight, gaudy clothing sped on the freshly painted bike lanes.

“I hope,” Roland said, “that the TV stations capture that. It might brighten things up more than I will.”

Irv Rothstein, on the rear-facing seat directly across from Roland, said, “Weave the bike riders into your speech. Something like these people are vital and undaunted.”

“Or maybe, Irv, they're just crazy.”

Roland leaned forward to see the lead rider, a woman. Although all the riders had helmets and were thin and hard to differentiate, she had a special, powerful litheness. “By the way, Irv, is the doctor there yet? I want to talk to him before we go on the air.”

“Dr. Hauser?”

“The one who did all that work with the wounded people. As the kids would say, that was some brave shit.”

“He didn't want to show up with you.”

“Did you scare him, Irv? Haven't I told you to learn to make nice-nice?”

“No, I was smooth. He told me he was more interested in being a doctor than a celebrity.”

“Did you tell him he can raise the spirits of this city? We need at least one man in bright shining armor.”

“He was adamant. I asked if he'd speak to you.”

“Get him on the line for me. I'll talk to him right now.”

Gina had sat quietly beside Roland since the convoy pulled out of the warehouse building where the command center was hidden. She held up her right hand. “Mayor, don't do that.”

He turned to look at her. “We might have time to get him down here.”

“We don't want him down here.”

“Come again?”

“I'll tell you later.”

The convoy made the turn through the iron gates surrounding City Hall. Knowing that cameras were trained on him, Roland jumped athletically out of the back seat of the SUV as if on a campaign stop. He was smiling. But his movement triggered acute pain. He shook the hands of the police officers who were guarding the plaza in front of City Hall. He walked up to the microphones on the top step, looked out at the television cameras, and spoke.

***

After the press conference, the mayor, Irv Rothstein, and three other staff members, his political and campaign cadre, watched the replay of the press conference. Just as it was ending, Irv said, “You sure did good.”

Roland nodded. He had been well-prepared, not through the angry and discordant voices he had heard at the command center, but by his own half hour, in private, thinking about what he wanted to convey. And he could see in the video that, in fact, he'd succeeded in delivering that balance of reality and optimism he sought. The broadcasters who summarized the conference spoke about his reassurance, his message of sternness in hunting down the terrorists and preventing further attacks, the need for vigilance and calm, and the steady scaling back of the lockdown to begin to restore essential services.

“You did good,” Irv repeated.

T
HE INTERSECTION OF
Wall Street and Broad Street in front of the now-closed New York Stock Exchange was one of the oldest in the city. The intersection was created in the 1600s when virtually all of Manhattan north of the Battery was forest and Broad and Wall were only winding trails. The intersection was wide, more of a plaza than just the crossing of two streets. Looming over the northern side was the immense statue of George Washington in front of the Federal Building as he took the first presidential oath.

Over the last five decades, Wall Street had gradually and radically changed. As recently as the 1960s it was still the street of America's financial power. It was lined with the imposing buildings that housed the headquarters of the world's largest banks. Their big corporate flags hung over both sides of the street, a daily ceremonial display of America celebrating its capitalism. The buildings also housed the offices of what were always called the “Wall Street law firms,” the legal institutions that carefully served the interests of the banks in whose buildings they were housed.

But over the years those banks and law firms had steadily abandoned Wall Street and migrated to midtown, first to Park Avenue between 50
^th
and 57
^th
Streets and then west to Times Square when it was renovated and made into a corporate theme park, a kind of urban Disneyland. In the wake of the migration uptown, Wall Street now had health clubs, European clothing stores, and fancy cafés. Instead
of the institutional bank flags and American flags overhanging the narrow street, there were now banners advertising the health clubs, stores, and Starbucks.

On the morning after the bombings at the Met and the rocket assault at the World Trade Center Memorial, there was no one in the normally packed intersection. The area from Trinity Church at one end of Wall Street to the East River at the other end was cordoned off as a crime scene after the killing of Officer Cruz.

It was in 1920 at the intersection of Wall and Broad that a horse-drawn fruit wagon exploded on a morning when the same intersection was crowded with office workers. Although the statue of George Washington was untouched, heavy fragments from the powerful explosion not only killed dozens of people but tore holes in the monumental stone facades of the bank buildings. Left as a memorial, those deep gashes in the stone facades were never repaired. You could still touch the gashes almost a century later.

***

Forty-five minutes after the press conference and only moments after Roland Fortune had reviewed the video of that conference, his cell phone, the one to which only Gina Carbone and six other people including Sarah Hewitt-Gordan had access, rang. Roland picked up the vibrating phone.

It was Gina. “There's been an explosion at the corner of Wall and Broad.”

“Jesus, Jesus. How many people did they get this time?'

“Not sure. Maybe none. The place was empty.”

“What happened?”

“There's a sports club right next to the George Washington statue. Our information is that explosives were put near the windows of
the club, hidden in gym bags that were probably placed there before yesterday or even last night. They were detonated from a remote source today.”

“My God, Gina. When is this going to end?”

Gina was tempted to say she lived in the world of facts, not predictions. “We've covered some ground, Roland. They may not be as smart as they think they are. We think this first explosion at the Met might have gone off before they all left the scene.”

“So some of them were killed, too? Is that what you're saying?”

“We have a DNA bank with some of the DNA from people we were interested in, traces left on cigarettes or plastic coffee cups that these people threw out on the streets. We're trying to match the DNA from some of the bodies with what we have in the bank.”

“So, what, Gina? Let's assume you find a match and that one of the dead men is a guy you had under surveillance. Unfortunately dead men tell no tales.”

“But we also think there's a live one who may have been caught off guard when the first explosion happened at the museum.”

“Who?”

“His name is Silas Nasar. He owns an electronics company, five or six of those cheap stores that rip off tourists. But he's also, we believe, one of those guys who loves any and all electronic devices. The stores might be a front. We think he's got tons of money and he's able to develop really sophisticated communications devices all over the world.”

“And you think he was near one of the wagons?”

“He wasn't selling any pretzels, but it appears he was in the vicinity, possibly making sure all was in place before he made himself scarce.”

“Where is he?”

“He was taken to Mount Sinai. You know that film of the Angel of Life? Dr. Hauser?”

“Who doesn't by now? The aloof Dr. Hauser.”

“Silas was the first guy treated by the doctor on the museum steps.”

“How do you know that?”

“Enhanced videotapes. Right down to the ability to see a birthmark on Silas' face. It's his distinguishing feature. It's shaped like Japan.”

Even though he was in an air-conditioned room, Roland began to sweat profusely. The pain in his shoulder and back, controlled only by the Vicodin that he had not wanted to use before the press conference, had a powerful resurgence. The painkiller's cottony cushioning of his brain and body seemed to reach a certain point and rapidly dissolve. He found the envelope in which he carried the pills in his suit jacket and shook them out onto the table in front of him. He gestured to Irv Rothstein for water.

Roland said, “Have you found him? He must be in a hospital somewhere, unless he died.”

“We have surveillance video from the emergency room at Mount Sinai. Believe it or not, the Angel of Life was with him again. We have it on the tape.”

“What are you saying?”

“Not certain,” she answered. “But they were together for a little over five minutes. They talked. And they exchanged something, what it is, is not clear. What is clear from the enhanced video at the museum is that the Angel took something from Nasar there. And something—a bracelet, a watch, who knows—went back and forth between them a few hours later.”

Roland said quietly, “I'm still listening, Gina.”

“Our people think they knew each other.”

“Where was Nasar moved?”

“He did what you did. He checked himself out. Some friends of his came to get him.”

“When I did it a doctor named Edelstein had to sign the release papers, too. Who signed Nasar's?”