Her Name Will Be Faith (49 page)

They
hadn't looked at a television or read a newspaper since coming
to Coney Island: Bert's
idea of a vacation was to forget the world existed,
and if there'd been considerable discussion and agitation about the
weather
amongst their fellow boarders the past few days, he had ignored it with great
determination.

"Hurricanes
don't come this far north, girl," he pontificated. "They
kick off into the
Atlantic. Come on back to bed for a cuddle; it's been a long time."

"Now
then, Bert," his wife scolded. "We can't have any of that first
thing
in the morning. Emmie's in the next room and the walls in this
place are paper
thin."

"So
what? Don't she think we do it any more? Huh, come to think of
it, it's been one hell of
a long time," he finished on a note of complaint.

Florence sighed and started to remove the curling pins
from her hair –but there was a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.

Washington
Jones took his father's silver pocket watch out of his fob
pocket
and peered at the Roman numerals, only vaguely readable without
his
spectacles. Five o'clock: Edwardes wasn't due to relieve him for
another
hour – if he was coming at all. He returned the watch to its
pocket,
rubbed his eyes, and yawned. Boy, was he weary. Quite apart
from
the lack of sleep involved in night duty in any event, he had been
on his
feet for the better part of the past five hours, ever since Mrs
Donnelly
had told him about the emergency. He had called all the
apartments, and then he'd
gone up to each floor to knock on the doors of those who hadn't answered the
phone, just to check that everyone was warned about the possible dangers of
this storm they called Faith. He hadn't liked leaving the foyer unattended all
that time – he'd had to leave
the
glass doors open so that anyone who wanted could get out… but
that had meant anyone who wanted could also get in.
Not that anyone
had done that, apparently, and waking the tenants had
been the more important. Strange the way different folk had reacted. Some had
been terrified, effusively grateful to him for contacting them, and couldn't
get out fast enough, not even waiting to pack a bag, while others, like old Mr
Jurgens, looked like they'd wanted to knock his
head off his shoulders for
waking them up, and just slammed the door in
his face.

Then
there had been Miss Schmitt, who was deaf as well as elderly;
he had
spent damned near an hour in Miss Schmitt's apartment, trying
to explain exactly what
was going on. Well, she had gone in the end, and
so had everybody else… except for Mr Jurgens. If he wanted to stay
that
was his decision. Certainly no one, not even the agent, could expect him to
hang about any longer. Mrs Donnelly had told him to get out of town, and he'd
told the wife to pack. She'd be waiting.

He
frowned at the suitcase placed neatly in the corner, bent to examine
it.
The nametag said Donnelly, which didn't make sense. Except that
Mrs Donnelly must have
forgotten it in the elevator when she and the
children
had left – they sure had been in a hurry – and some other tenant
must have found it and put it where it could come to no harm. They were
a
real good crowd, his tenants – except for Mr Jurgens.

But that Mrs Donnelly was
the best. He was truly happy she and her
kids
had got out so early, before the traffic had built up. She was one nice
lady
– and the only tenant who had given a thought to his predicament. Well,
he was going to start thinking about himself, right now. He was damned sure
Edwardes wasn't coming in. So the hell with it.

He took off his green
uniform jacket and hung it neatly on its hanger,
slid his shirt sleeves into the crumpled black plastic raincoat, and
picked
up the zipper bag in which he
had carried his dinner, before switching
off the security screens and
the office light and locking the door. It went against his instincts to leave
the apartment building all but empty and
unguarded,
but the agents should have contacted him and told him what
they wanted done. Instead, he had been entirely
forgotten and those guys
were
probably fifty miles away by now. He had a responsibility to his
family
just as great as to his employers.

He had turned off the
automatic street doors as well, and had to push them open, to gasp in
amazement. The wind was strong enough to make walking against it difficult, and
the rain was slicing across the traffic in
vicious,
swishing gusts, carrying bits of plastic garbage into the air to hit
windows
several floors up. And what traffic! It was thick, and crawling,
bumper to bumper, so slowly you could walk at
twice the speed, while
not even the
howling gale could drown the noise of the horns and
the shouted curses
that were being hurled back and forth. There were
policemen everywhere, and National Guardsmen as well, attempting to
get cars to move this way or that, but they didn't
seem to be having much
success. Well, it wasn't his problem. He never
brought his old Chevy to
work, anyway; it
wasn't worth the hassle of sitting in ordinary traffic
jams, and the exercise did him good. He locked the
street doors, pulled
a flat cap from his pocket and dragged it down over
the tight grey curls, turned up his collar, and headed for home. Celestine
would be packed and ready, and have the girl and the grandchild waiting at the
house for him, and Robert as well, if she'd done what he told her and called
the
place where the boy worked nights –
and she'd have a pot of coffee
brewing. He looked forward to that.

"Okay, Buster, hold
it right there."

Washington
obeyed. He wasn't going to argue with any large young
man
wearing rain-soaked khaki and carrying an automatic
weapon.

"Where do you think
you're going?" the guardsman inquired.

"Home."
They were both shouting above the whine of the wind and
the roar of the traffic.

"Yeah? Home being
where?"

Washington
told him; he lived only a couple of blocks from Penn
Station.

"You got proof of
that?"

"I need a passport to
get home?"

"Listen, Buster..."

"Hi,
Washington," said a patrolman, joining them.

"Morning,
officer," Washington said gratefully. "Get this kid off my
back, will you?"

"Says he's going
home," the guardsman explained. "Well, if he's on
48th Street he has to stay on 48th Street, right? Those
are our orders: no
movement south."

"He only works up here," the policeman
explained. "And his home is
below
the 50-foot marker. I guess you're going home to collect the family
and
get out of town, eh, Washington?"

"You're
damn right," Washington agreed.

"You'll need this." The policeman reached
inside his wet gleaming
cape
and produced a piece of cardboard. "That gives you permission to
go
down to your home, and to leave the city after."

Washington scratched his head through the cap; it appeared
he did
need some kind of a
passport to go home. But, as he had just been given
one, he wasn't going to quibble. He thrust the by now very
wet piece of cardboard into his pocket, and weaved across the street, through
the all
but stationary autos. This
traffic was starting to get him worried; suppose
they all got stuck in a big jam in the Chevy, what would
happen when
the storm broke? In
his hurricane chats, that Connors had said there
might be window glass and other debris flying about all
over – one
wouldn't
even be safe in an automobile… well, there was nothing for
it; they'd have to get out by Subway and take a train
from Jersey
City.

A vivid blue light flashed at the same moment as the
street rocked with the violent crack of thunder; one of the buildings nearby
had been struck,
and
the noise bounced off the walls, echoing and re-echoing all the way
across Manhattan. Fear gripped Washington Jones' chest,
and his lips
moved in an
incoherent prayer… that he had not left his departure too
late.

"Will you get me that Michael Donnelly number in
Connecticut again,
please, Maisie?"
Richard said.

"Of course, Mr Connors. Say, I've been so busy I
didn't tell you before,
but that Mrs Donnelly
called again."

Richard sighed with relief; she must have reached Bognor.
"Great,
Maisie. What time was that?"

"Let
me see..." She was consulting her pad. "2.47."

She
must have driven like a bat out of hell, Richard thought. Still, say
two and a half hours… it could be done. "Okay,
Maisie, but try that
number anyway."

Julian had just finished putting out another update; they
had a minute
or two. Jayme was
making coffee, part-blonde hair still straggling. It was
difficult to realize that they had been on duty all night
without a wink of
sleep,
because he did not feel the least tired. Subconsciously, he had been
waiting for this day all his adult life, ever since he
had taken up meteorology as a profession: that when it arrived he was
being prevented from fulfilling his other ambition, to be the man who kept giving
news of the
storm to the nation,
was just an aspect of Murphy's Law. But at least
things were happening, officially; Hal Waring and a camera
crew had
been whisked away by the
helicopter which had put down on the NABS
roof, over the traffic jams and the skyscrapers, to
enable the Mayor to
broadcast
to his people and, hopefully, begin to sort things out…
supposing
he had the time.

"Bognor,
Mr Connors," Maisie said.

"For Jesus' sake, not you again?" Big Mike
complained. "Don't you
ever sleep?"

"I just wanted to make sure Mrs Donnelly got to you
okay, Mr
Donnelly."

"Look, asshole, she isn't due here until breakfast
time. Right?"
"Breakfast
time? She left her apartment to drive up to you just after
midnight.
With your grandchildren."

"The grandchildren? Goddamn! But that's nonsense. It
don't take five
hours to drive from New
York to Bognor. Three maximum."

"Yes," Richard said. "That's what I
thought. Something's happened
to her."

"Happened to her? Holy shit! You mean a breakdown? In
this rain?
Say, is it raining in New York?"

"Yes, Mr Donnelly. It is raining in New York. And
there's not a hope in hell of anyone getting out in a hurry to go look for her
right now. I'm
going
to have to leave this one with you. But I'd be very grateful if you'd
call
me back and let me know what's happened to her."

"Yeah,"
Big Mike said. "Yeah. Holy shit! What a fuck up."

The phone went dead, and Richard gazed at it. It had to be
a simple
breakdown. And if it was
outside of the city there would be no problem.
But if it had happened on one of the bridges… and there
was absolutely
nothing
he could do about it. Even if he decided to abandon the studio,
he wouldn't know where to start looking… the door opened
and he
gazed at Kiley.