False Impression

JACK WAS APPALLED by his first reaction when he heard what sounded like a bomb exploding on the other side of the road. Sally had rushed in to tell him that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

“Let’s hope it scored a direct hit on Fenston’s office,” he said.

His second thoughts were a little more professional, as expressed when he joined Dick Macy, the supervising special agent, along with the rest of the senior agents in the command center. While other agents hit the phones in an attempt to make some sense of what was happening less than a mile away, Jack told the SSA that he was in no doubt that it was a well-planned act of terrorism. When a second plane crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 A.M., all Macy said was, “Yes, but which terrorist organization?”

Jack’s third reaction was delayed, and it took him by surprise. He hoped that Anna Petrescu had managed to escape, but when the South Tower came crashing down fifty-six minutes later, he assumed it would not be long before the North Tower followed suit.

He returned to his desk and switched on his computer. Information was flooding in from their Massachusetts field office, reporting that the two attack flights had originated out of Boston and two more were in the air. Calls from passengers in those planes that had taken off from the same airport suggested they were also under the terrorists’ control. One was heading for Washington.

President George W. Bush was visiting a school in Florida when the first plane struck, and he was quickly whisked off to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Vice President Dick Cheney was in Washington. He’d already given clear instructions to shoot down the other two planes. The order was not carried out. Cheney also wanted to know which terrorist organization was responsible, as the president planned to address the nation later that evening and he was demanding answers. Jack remained at his desk, taking calls from his agents on the ground, frequently reporting back to Macy. One of those agents, Joe Corrigan, reported that Fenston and Leapman had been seen entering a building on Wall Street just before the first plane crashed into the North Tower. Jack looked down at the many files strewn across his desk and dismissed as wishful thinking, “Case Closed.”

“And Petrescu?” he asked.

“No idea,” Joe replied. “All I can tell you is that she was seen entering the building at seven forty-six and hasn’t been seen since.”

Jack looked up at the TV screen. A third plane had crashed into the Pentagon. The White House must be next, was his only thought.

“A second plane’s hit the South Tower,” a lady on the step above Anna repeated. Anna refused to believe that kind of freak accident could happen twice on the same day.

“It’s no accident,” said another voice from behind, as if reading her thoughts. “The only plane to crash into a building in New York was in ‘forty-five. Flew into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. But that was on a foggy day, without any of the sophisticated tracking devices they’ve got now. And don’t forget, the air space above the city is a no-fly zone, so it must have been well planned. My bet is we’re not the only folks in trouble.”

Within minutes, conspiracy theories, terrorist attacks, and stories of freak accidents were being bandied about by people who had no idea what they were talking about. There would have been a stampede if they could have moved any faster. Anna quickly became aware that several people on the staircase were now masking their worst fears by all talking at once.

“Keep to the right, and keep moving,” was the constant cry emanating from whatever uniform trudged passed them. Some of the migrants on the downward journey began to tire, allowing Anna to overtake them. She was thankful for all those hours spent running around Central Park and the shot after shot of adrenaline that kept her going.

It was somewhere in the lower forties that Anna first smelled smoke, and she could hear some of those on the floors below her coughing loudly. When she reached the next landing, the smoke became denser and quickly filled her lungs. She covered her eyes and began coughing uncontrollably. Anna recalled reading somewhere that 90 percent of deaths in a fire are caused by smoke inhalation. Her fears were only exacerbated when those ahead of her slowed to a crawl and finally came to a halt. The coughing had turned into an epidemic. Had they all become trapped, with no escape route up or down?

“Keep moving,” came the clear order from a fireman heading toward them. “It gets worse for a couple of floors but then you’ll be through it,” he assured those who were still hesitating. Anna stared into the face of the man who had given the order with such authority. She obeyed him, confident that the worst must surely be behind her. She kept her eyes covered and continued coughing for another three floors, but the fireman turned out to be right, because the smoke was already beginning to disperse. Anna decided to listen only to the professionals coming up the stairwell and to dismiss the opinions of any amateurs going down.

A sudden feeling of relief swept through those emerging from the smoke, and they immediately tried to speed up their descent. But sheer numbers prevented swift progress in the one-way traffic lane. Anna tried to remain calm as she slipped in behind a blind man, who was being led down the stairs by his guide dog. “Don’t be frightened by the smoke, Rosie,” said the man. The dog wagged its tail.

Down, down, down, the pace always dictated by the person in front. By the time Anna reached the deserted cafeteria on the thirty-ninth floor, the overloaded firemen had been joined by Port Authority officers and policemen from the Emergency Service Unit—the most popular of all New York’s cops because they dealt only in safety and rescue, no parking tickets, no arrests. Anna felt guilty about passing those who were willing to continue going up while she went in the opposite direction.

By the time Anna reached the twenty-fourth floor, several bedraggled stragglers were stopping to take a rest, a few even congregating to exchange anecdotes, while others were still refusing to leave their offices, unable to believe that a problem on the ninety-fourth floor could possibly affect them. Anna looked around, desperately hoping to see a familiar face, perhaps Rebecca or Tina, even Barry, but she could have been in a foreign land.

“We’ve got a level three up here, possibly level four,” a battalion commander was saying over his radio, “so I’m sweeping every floor.”

Anna watched the commander as he systematically cleared every office. It took him some time because each floor was the size of a football field.

On the twenty-first floor, one individual remained resolutely at his desk; he’d just settled a currency deal for a billion dollars and he was awaiting confirmation of the transaction.

“Out,” shouted the battalion commander, but the smartly dressed man ignored the order and continued tapping away on his keyboard. “I said out,” repeated the senior fire officer, as two of his younger officers lifted the man out of his chair and deposited him in the stairwell. The unfulfilled broker reluctantly joined the exodus.

When Anna reach

ed the twentieth floor, she encountered a new problem. She had to wade through water that was now pouring in on them from the sprinklers and leaking pipes on every floor. She stepped tentatively over fragments of broken glass and flaming debris that littered the stairwell and were beginning to slow everyone down. She felt like a football fan trying to get out of a crowded stadium that had only one turnstile. When she finally reached the teens, her progress became dramatically faster. All the floors below her had been cleared, and fewer and fewer office staff were joining them on the stairs.

On the tenth floor, Anna stared through an open door into a deserted office. Computer screens were still flickering and chairs had been pushed aside as if their occupants had gone to the washroom and would be back at any moment. Plastic cups of cold coffee and half-drunk cans of Coke littered almost every surface. Papers were scattered everywhere, even on the floor, while silver-framed family photographs remained in place. Someone following closely behind Anna bumped into her, so she quickly moved on.

By the time Anna reached the seventh floor, it was no longer her fellow workers, but the water and flotsam that were holding her up. She was picking her way tentatively through the debris when she first heard the voice. To begin with, it was faint, and then it became a little louder. The sound of a megaphone was coming from somewhere below them, urging her on. “Keep moving, don’t look back, don’t use your cell phones—it slows up those behind you.”

Three more floors had to be negotiated before she found herself back in the lobby, paddling through inches of water, and on past the express shuttle elevator that had whisked her up to her office only a couple of hours before. Suddenly even more sprinklers jetted down from the ceiling above, but Anna was already drenched to the skin.

The orders bellowing from the megaphones were becoming louder and louder by the moment, and their demands even more strident. “Keep moving, get out of the building, get as far away as you possibly can.” Not that easy, Anna wanted to tell them. When she reached the turnstiles she’d passed through earlier that morning, she found them battered and twisted. They must have been brushed aside by wave after wave of firemen when they transported their heavy equipment into the building.

Anna felt disorientated and unsure what to do next. Should she wait for her colleagues to join her? She stood still, but only for a moment, before she heard another insistent command that she felt was being addressed directly at her. “Keep moving, lady, don’t use your cell phone, and don’t look back.”

“But where do we go?” someone shouted.