Her Name Will Be Faith (52 page)

She shuddered; Alloan. The memory of that visitation
made her skin crawl. Presumably the police would have got him out of the city,
along with all prisoners on remand. Ironic, in a way, that the scum of society
should be saved, while possibly hundreds of decent folk could die.

And meanwhile she could do nothing but wait, trying
not to wonder what was happening downstairs. Or outside in the city.

"Here
come the choppers," Mitch said.

"About time," Naseby
grunted. "Everything ready to go?"

"Just about."

"Well,
get them moving."

Mitch nodded and hurried from the Mayor's office. Naseby
rested his head on his hands for a moment, raised it again as the phone buzzed.
"Naseby."

"I have Mr Hatton from Hunt National, Mr
Mayor," the girl said.

"On
a Saturday?"

"Well,
it seems he has some problems."

"Haven't we all. Put him on. Good morning, Mr Hatton.
Can I help you?"

"Mr
Mayor, we are facing a serious situation."

"I
know that, Mr Hatton. We are doing the best we can."

"I'm talking about here on Wall Street. Mr Mayor, we
are trying to
transfer funds… I'm
not just speaking of Hunt. I am speaking for all
the
banks..."

"You're
transferring funds on a Saturday?"

"Our customers are uneasy about the situation should
this hurricane
strike New York."

"I don't think 'should' is any longer the operative
word, Mr Hatton."
Naseby gazed through his
window into City Hall Park and watched the first
helicopter lift off, the wind was now very nearly up to hurricane force,
and
the big chopper swayed uneasily
— it had obviously been packed to the door
with files and computer disks… all the million and one records that are
required to operate a city. But then the rotors
began to win, and the machine
rose out of the park, immediately to be
replaced by another.

"Quite," Hatton was saying. "That is the
point. The wire services, the
telephone
systems, just don't seem able to cope. Everybody and his brother
must
be using the phone at the same time."

"I
can believe that, Mr Hatton. Just like you and me."

"Well, really, something has got to be done about
it. And now we are
told that Wall Street is
liable to be flooded."

"The
word is certain," Naseby said, with gloomy satisfaction.

"That is quite intolerable. Perhaps you do not
realize this, Mr Mayor,
but it is possible that
water may penetrate our vaults."

"I
do understand, Mr Hatton."

"Well, then, you will understand that as it is quite
impossible to transfer
all
our accounts in time, even if we had sufficient air space, we simply
must
move out our computer systems."

"That's
a good idea. If you can."

"We
must be assisted to do so, Mr Mayor. A road must be cleared for us. . ."

"Forget it, Mr Hatton. Roads are for people. Use
helicopters. That's
what we're doing.
Charter every chopper you can… Holy Christ!"

The third helicopter had been put down and loaded, and was
now
lifting off. But at that
moment there was a stronger than average gust of
wind; the entire City Hall shook, and the helicopter was
whipped sideways
before
it was properly airborne. The pilot obviously gave it everything he had, and it
rose sharply, but still being pushed sideways too fast; its belly
brushed a tree and then another, and it turned over,
plummeting to the
ground to burst into
flames with a sickening explosion.

"Did
you see that?" Mitch shouted, running into the office.

"I saw it," Naseby said. "That's it, Mitch.
Send the rest of those guys
home. We're just risking
brave men."

"But . ."

"We'll
have to think of something else."

Mitch
hesitated, then left the office.

"Mr Mayor? Mr Mayor?" Hatton asked. "What's
happening? What
was that noise? Do you
know there's a fire very close to City Hall?"

"I know, Mr Hatton," Naseby said. "It means
helicopters are out. The
wind is just too
strong."

"But
what are we to do?" His voice had become a wail.

"Organise yourselves a truck convoy. We will do the
same, and we'll
leave
together, under police escort. But Mr Hatton, no truck leaves until
I am satisfied the roads are sufficiently clear of people.
They still have
priority."

The door phone buzzed on the wall of the tiny kitchen,
barely audible
above
the blare of the pop music coming out of the cassette recorder. "I'll
get
it," Lila Vail called to her sister, lifting the handset.

"Who
is it?" Tootsie called.

"Some guy called Evans. Says he's a friend of
yours," Lila shouted
through the bathroom
door.

"Oh, Dai!" Tootsie gave a girlish giggle; she
had been widowed several
years
longer than Lila, and was not without her admirers. "Yeah, tell
him
to come up."

The sisters were still in curling pins and dressing gowns
when the
visitor hurried in. "Say, you girls packed
and ready to leave?"

"Leave? What, you planning to take us on
vacation?" Tootsie dug him
in
the ribs with her elbow, adding, "Your old lady gone off to see your
mother
again?"

The arch reply she anticipated never came. Dai Evans was
not his normal self, today; the short, chunky body was unusually tense, his
unshaven face grey and serious, lapsing into obvious alarm
when he
realized they didn't know
what he was talking about. Frowning, he
switched off the tape so he could make himself heard
without shouting.
"Don't you realize
the Mayor has ordered an evacuation of the city?"

"He's
what?" Lila swung round, kettle in hand. "Is it a nuclear
attack?"

"When did you girls last have the TV or radio on?
It's this hurricane, Faith. They say it's the biggest storm in history, and
it's headed straight
for us. Could be here
this afternoon. Can't you hear that wind?"

With
the cassette off, the howling of the wind was very loud.

"Oh, shit." Lila poured water on to her tea
bag. "You sure had me
worried
there for a moment. I thought maybe it was something serious.
It's been blowing like that all night. Call that wind?
You want to be in
Florida when it's really
gusting."

"It hasn't got here yet." Dai grabbed Tootsie's
arm. "This is serious,
honey.
They're saying that half of Manhattan will be flooded – and we're
in
the wrong half. "

“Jees, I guess I'd better get dressed. How do we get
out?" Tootsie
turned pale under her
recently applied pancake make-up.

Lila threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, come on,
you goddamned
fool rabbits. You
really should take a spell living down in Florida. We get this crap on the news
stations every summer, and the hurricanes to
match. Newcomers would fall all about with heart attacks,
frightened to
death by these panic
stirrers. I bet it's that damned fool, what's his name,
the good-looking boy… Connors, that's right, Richard
Connors. I bet
he started all
this."

Dai looked at her, doubtfully. "Yeah, I guess he
did. But it seems he's
right this time. The
Mayor says so."

"The Mayor says so," she mimicked. "Come
on, Dai. Can't you see
he's
been got at?" She carried her teacup to the table and sat down,
crossing her legs and lighting a cigarette. "Well,
I'll tell you this; you
won't
catch me sitting for hours in a traffic pile-up, trying to run away
from
some non-existent flood waters twelve floors down. So what if the
basement
floods? That's the landlord's problem. I'm staying right where
I am."

Tootsie looked from one to
the other. If Lila hadn't been staying with
her,
she would have been out of the apartment by now, running like hell.
Dai's news scared her to death, but… well, Lila
had lived with hurricanes
for years,
and she undoubtedly knew more about them than the Mayor…
or, probably, Richard Connors. Anyway, she wanted
to finish turning
up the hem of her
dress, and she'd promised to make a big batch of
almond cookies for the Senior Citizens' Party tomorrow. "Don't
worry
about us, Dai," she said.
"You get your old lady out of town if she's
scared, but..." She smiled confidently at her sister. "I guess
we're
staying. Like a cup of tea before you go?"

Dai wanted to argue, tell
them that their lives were in danger, but he
could
see it would be useless. Some people would always believe only
what they
wanted to believe. Anyway, the wife was waiting with her bags packed, and he'd
told her he was just getting the old Dodge – she didn't know about the
spare time he spent with Tootsie, and he had been going
to pretend he had met the sisters preparing to leave and had offered
them
a ride. He sighed. "Okay
girls, if that's the way you want it. I can only
tell you… best of
luck."

When
he'd gone, Tootsie turned on the tape again, sat opposite her
sister, and lit a
cigarette. While the music had been off, the sound of the
wind whistling outside of the apartment, the
constant growl of the thunder
had been very loud and quite frightening.
She wanted to shut it out. She
also wished
she could shut out the nasty niggling feeling of unease at the
back of
her mind, which seemed to be affecting her chest, giving it an unpleasantly
tight feeling. The music would help her to relax and get rid of it, but if she
couldn't, she could always take one of her pills.

"Come on, you guys, I need
help with the dishes," Nancy called from
the kitchen. As expected, there was no reply – they were all
playing deaf
as usual, and they knew she
expected assistance with breakfast, even on
Saturdays – the
hairdressing salon opened, of course, six days a week.
She went to the door and shouted, “I know you can hear me, you lazy
bums.
I'm going to be late for work again, and I've got an early customer
who's always difficult." Christ, she thought;
the kids you could understand, but you'd think Bill...

"Nance,
shut up your bawling and come here," Bill called from the
lounge. "They've just
said the Mayor's gonna address the city in a few minutes. It's a recording of
some speech he made earlier, this morning."

"What's
it to do with you, Bill? You didn't vote for him last time. And
I haven't got the time..."

"It's
not an election speech," he snapped. "It's about evacuating the
city. Will you shut up and
listen?"