Manhattan Lockdown (37 page)

“I am your son,” Roland Fortune said.

They stared at each other. Without touching or embracing, they both cried, quietly, their faces contorted.

A
T SIX THAT
night, in much steadier rain that made the early summer day prematurely dark, like a century-old Stieglitz photograph of Manhattan, Irv Rothstein said, “No one will worry about not seeing you, Mr. Mayor, in the next thirty-six hours.”

They were in an unmarked police van driving to the same heliport at the UN building where President Andrew Carter had landed and from which he had already left for Washington hours earlier. “I'm still not sure,” Roland answered, “that this is the right thing to do.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, Mr. Mayor, but no one in Manhattan or the world will give a shit that New York City's mayor has gone quiet for a day and a half. Bloomberg used to fly to his island in the Caribbean every weekend, come hell or high water, and nobody complained. Besides, the public is overloaded with you. It's natural, as we've announced, that the mayor of the City of New York, wounded as he was in the first minutes of the attack before bravely ignoring his injuries, brought the city back to life. The dancing clubs are packed, the movie theaters are open. Nobody can even make a restaurant reservation because they're filled. Gina Carbone has everyone's back covered, and a grateful president has said you and the commissioner will be given special Presidential Medals of Honor soon. So it makes all the sense in the world that for the next thirty-six hours the mayor, with a team of doctors, is resting quietly, healing.”

Irv smiled, relishing as always his role as comedian, court jester, and the wizard of public relations. “And,” he said, “it's never good to disappoint Carolina. She made us promise.”

Carolina Geary was the chairman of Goldman Sachs. She had early on in her rapidly expanding career recognized Sarah's talents and was her “godmother” at the firm. Carolina, the first woman to lead Goldman Sachs, was all business. She had twice met Sarah's boyfriend, the mayor of New York City. Geary had been at her estate in East Hampton when the first explosions at the Met detonated, and she had stayed in East Hampton. When the siege was lifted, one of her key assistants contacted Irv Rothstein and said Carolina would have her private helicopter fly Roland directly to the secluded, oceanfront estate for a day or two of rest.

At first, Roland had hesitated. “Irv,” he had said, “I'm no Bloomberg. I barely know Carolina. And how will it look if the mayor of the City of New York, with all this shit going on, suddenly decides it's time for a vacation getaway?”

But Roland relented. “Let's go,” he said.

The interior of the Goldman Sachs corporate helicopter resembled one of those immensely expensive entertainment rooms that people with enormous wealth built into their Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue apartments; plush seating, an ultramodern television screen, even two nineteenth-century Impressionist paintings. There were two pilots who didn't know that the chief passenger they were carrying for the one hour flight was Roland Fortune. The three flight attendants were long-term employees of Goldman Sachs who, given their salaries and the rules of the firm, had for years learned the artistry of complete secrecy, a kind of corporate
omertà
.

It was already dark when the helicopter rose from the UN heliport and, in the rain, flew southward over the East River. Roland
was in a seat next to a large window. Because of the tilt of the helicopter as it gained altitude, he was able to see, even through the shroud of rain and mist, the sights that were so profoundly familiar to him: the southern end of Roosevelt Island where the broken, eerie, nineteenth-century, long-abandoned insane asylum was; the stone outcropping in the middle of the East River on which was placed the powerful lighthouse that warned the river traffic; and the heights of the now heavily traveled Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges. Dimly, too, he could see through the rain and fog the millions of lights that filled the Manhattan skyline.

The helicopter's flight path was to reach the Verrazano Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island and then abruptly turn left to fly over the edge of the ocean on an almost straight course along the south shore of Long Island to Carolina's estate in East Hampton.

Spread out below him were the rigid grids of light from the myriad small homes in Brooklyn and Queens, as well as full views of LaGuardia to the north and the larger terrain of JFK airport to the south. And, of course, there was the vast blackness of the Atlantic Ocean. There were ships at sea, with their toy-like lights; freighters, Naval and Coast Guard ships, pleasure boats. It seemed there were hundreds of freighters for ten to twenty miles near New York Harbor, backed up and immobilized during the days and nights before the lifting of the lockdown.

When Roland checked the time, he realized that, if it was on schedule, British Airways Flight 767 at LaGuardia, with the body of Sarah Hewitt-Gordan in the cargo compartment, was about to leave or was already airborne. He thought of the usually stoic John Hewitt-Gordan, who had once to Roland appeared to be a caricature of a British officer, on the same plane. Now, Roland thought, he and they might be in the air at the same time flying east, with
John in the first-class compartment and Sarah's casket in the baggage area in the British Airways plane and Roland in a powerful helicopter. Just as the ocean was filled with the lights of hundreds of vessels, so, too, the sky was filled with the twinkling lights of many aircraft suddenly freed from the lockdown.

***

Fire Island, a fragile enclave of land that somehow had survived millennia of geological change which had submerged hundreds of other similar land masses off the south coast of Long Island, glimmered below the helicopter. He knew the island well and quietly gazed out at its peaceful outlines. The summer season had just started, the parties were under way, men were meeting men, women were joining women, and young men and women were coming together, too. To them, the siege of Manhattan must have been a riveting nightmare, but it was over now, and now was the time to party.

Just as the sight of Fire Island receded, Roland heard the pilot's voice. It was a startled command, “Look at that.”

Ten miles away and fifteen thousand feet higher, a fireball like an exploding star illuminated the sea. In the vivid light, the waves resembled molten lead, suddenly frozen.

The object in the sky that created the spectacular glare was a British Airways Airbus. Roland watched as one of its immense wings, all enflamed, detached itself from the body of the plane that, although it was now gradually descending toward the ocean, continued its forward motion on its powerful momentum. Irregular fragments of the plane spun away, all in flames.

What a sight
, Roland thought.
This can't be real
. And then he was jarred into reality as the calm pilot said, “Traffic control wants to know if any of you saw a rocket or an object hit that plane.”

No one answered. The Airbus had just been one of the many planes in the air, in the beauty of the immense night as they flew above the low-lying cloud cover. Roland had certainly seen nothing rise to or toward the Airbus. It was only when the pilot first spoke out that he became transfixed, horrified, mesmerized.

Without the severed wing that was still dropping, spinning, to the ocean's illuminated surface, the remainder of the Airbus revolved slowly. The cockpit was gone, plummeting faster than what remained of the plane. The crazed thought occurred to Roland that now the burning, shredding plane could not be saved because the two men or women who knew how to control it were in free fall, doomed.

The burning remnants of the Airbus rolled yet again as it descended into almost an upright, normal position. And then, incredibly, the tail separated from the rest of the fuselage, as if it were made of frail balsa wood.

Then another blast exploded from the bottom of the fragmented airplane, and the contents of the cargo compartment were released from the blazing plane. Hundreds of objects fell like confetti into the ocean.

The helicopter pilot announced, “We have word now that the plane was British Airways Flight 767 to London.”

***

At that moment, the helicopter tilted radically, as if it was struck. Only the seat belt Roland wore kept him from being thrown from his plush seat and smashed against the other wall.
Is this how I'm going to die, too?
he thought,
near her?

The calm pilot, using his skills to straighten the reeling helicopter, said, “The commissioner of the New York City Police
Department has ordered us to return to the city and fly over the middle of Long Island itself, not the shore. Ms. Carbone said a flight over the ocean might not be safe. Don't be alarmed: you'll soon see Air Force fighter jets over us, to our sides, behind and ahead of us. The mayor is safe.”
Am I? Do I want to be?

Roland Fortune strained to his side to look out the window again. In the distance, all he saw on the remote ocean surface was a faint glow from the remnants of the destroyed plane, like ashes that the ocean would soon absorb.