False Impression (7 page)

She recalled the
clear instructions printed in red on the exit door to the stairwell on every
floor: ‘In case of emergency, do not return to your desk, do not use the
elevator, exit by the nearest stairwell.’ But first Anna needed to find out if
she could even stand up, aware that part of the ceiling had collapsed on her
and the building was still swaying. She tried tentatively to push herself up,
and although she was bruised and cut in several places, nothing seemed to be
broken. She stretched for a moment, as she always did before starting out on a
long run.

Anna abandoned
what was left of the contents of the cardboard box and stumbled towards
stairwell C in the centre of the building.

Some of her
colleagues were also beginning to recover from the initial
shock,
and one or two even returned to their desks to pick up personal belongings.

As Anna made her
way along the corridor, she was greeted with a series of questions to which she
had no answers.

What are we
supposed to do?’ asked a secretary.

‘Should we go up
or down?’ said a cleaner.

‘Do we wait to
be rescued?’ asked a bond dealer.

These were all
questions for the security officer, but Barry was nowhere to be seen.

Once Anna
reached the stairwell, she joined a group of dazed people, some silent, some
crying, who weren’t quite sure what to do next. No one seemed to have the
slightest idea what had caused the explosion or why the building was still
swaying. Although several of the lights on the stairwell had been snuffed out
like candles, the photoluminescent strip that ran along the edge of each step
shone brightly up at her.

Some of those
around her were trying to contact the outside world on their cellphones, but
few were succeeding. One who did get through was chatting to her boyfriend. She
was telling him that her boss had told her she could go
home,
take the rest of the day off.

Another began to
relay to those around him the conversation he was having with his wife: ‘A
plane has hit the North Tower,’ he announced.

‘But
where, where?’ shouted several voices at once.
He asked his
wife the same question. ‘Above us, somewhere in the nineties,’ he said, passing
on her reply.

‘But what are we
meant to do?’ asked the chief accountant, who hadn’t moved from the top step.
The younger man repeated the question to his wife, and waited for her reply.
‘The mayor is advising everyone to get out of the building as quickly as
possible.’

O
n hearing this
news, all those in the stairwell began their descent to the eighty-second
floor. Anna looked back through the glass window and was surprised to see how many
people had remained at their desks, as if they were in a theatre after the
curtain had come down and had decided to wait until the initial rush had
dispersed.

Anna took the
mayor’s advice. She began to count the steps as she walked down each flight – eighteen
to each floor, which she calculated meant at least another fifteen hundred
before she would reach the lobby. The stairwell became more and more crowded as
countless people swarmed out of their offices to join them on each floor,
making it feel like a crowded subway during rush hour. Anna was surprised by
how calm the descending line was.

The stairwell
quickly separated into two lanes, with the slowest on the inside while the
latest models were able to pass on the outside. But just like any highway, not
everyone kept to the code, so regularly everything came to a complete
standstill before moving off unsteadily again. Whenever they reached a new
stairwell, some pulled into the hard shoulder, while others motored on.

Anna passed an
old man who was wearing a black felt hat. She recalled seeing him several times
during the past year, always wearing the same hat. She turned to smile at him
and he raised his hat.

On, on, on she
trudged, sometimes reaching the next floor in less than a minute, but more often
being held up by those who had become exhausted after descending only a few
floors. The outside lane was becoming more and more crowded, making it
impossible for her to break the speed limit.

Anna heard the
first clear order when she reached the sixty eighth
floor
.

‘Get to the
right, and keep moving,’ said an authoritative voice from somewhere below her.
Although the instruction became louder with each step she took, it was still
several more floors before she spotted the first fireman heading slowly towards
her.

He was wearing a
baggy fireproof suit and sweating profusely under his black helmet emblazoned
with the number 28. Anna could only wonder what state he’d be in after he’d
climbed another thirty floors. He also appeared to be overloaded with equipment:
coiled ropes over one shoulder and two oxygen tanks on his back, like a
mountaineer trying to conquer Everest. Another fireman followed closely behind,
carrying a vast length of hose, six pole arms and a large bottle of drinking
water. He was dripping so much sweat that from time to time he removed his
helmet and poured some of the drinking water over his head.

Those who
continued to leave their offices and join Anna in her downward migration were
mostly silent, until an old man in front of her tripped and fell on a woman.
The woman cut her leg on the sharp edge of the step and began to scream at the
old man.

‘Get on with
it,’ said a voice behind her. ‘I made this journey after the ‘93 bombing, and I
can tell you, lady,
you ain’t seen nothin’ yet
.’

Anna leant
forward to help the old man to his feet, hindering her own progress, while
allowing others to scramble past her.

Whenever she
reached a new stairwell, Anna stared through the vast panes of glass at workers
who remained at their desks, apparently oblivious of those fleeing in front of
their eyes. She even overheard snatches of conversation through the open doors.

One of them, a
broker on the sixty-second floor, was trying to close a deal before the markets
opened at nine o’clock. Another was staring out at her, as if the pane of glass
was a television screen and he was reporting on a football game. He was giving
a running commentary over the phone to a friend in the South Tower.

More and more
firemen were now climbing towards her, turning the highway into two-way
traffic, their constant cry: ‘Get to the right, keep moving.’ Anna kept moving,
her speed often dictated by the slowest participant.
Although
the building had stopped swaying, tension and fear could still be seen on the
faces of all those around her.
They didn’t know what had happened above
them, and had no idea what awaited them below. Anna felt guilty as she passed
an old woman who was being carried down in a large leather chair by two young
men, her legs swollen, her breathing uneven.

On, on, on, Anna
went, floor after floor, until even she began to] feel tired.

She thought
about Rebecca and Tina, and prayed they were both safe. She even wondered if
Fenston and Leapman were still sitting in the chairman’s office, believing
themselves
impervious to any danger.

Anna began to
feel confident that she was now safe and would eventually wake up from this
nightmare. She even smiled at some of the New York humour that was bouncing
around her, until she heard a voice behind her scream.

‘A second plane
has hit the South Tower.’

J
ack 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 centre. 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 am, 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.

The 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 ‘45.
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
stairwell, the smoke became denser and quickly filled her lungs. She covered
her eyes and began coughing uncontrollably. Anna recalled reading somewhere
that 90 per cent 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 towards 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 die 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 deal 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.