The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  And so, Beth thought as they walked on, the senator felt too that foretaste of disaster. We’re like something out of a Tolstoy novel, she thought: the gala ball before the disastrous battle—how ridiculous.

  “Maybe,” the governor said. (Had she, then, spoken aloud?) “And maybe not,” he added. “We have built an entire civilization on the stiff-upper-lip principle. Others have different ways. Personally, I’ve never found breast-beating and hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing very attractive, have you?” He smiled down at her. “Rhetorical question. I know you haven’t. Defeat—”

  “Have you known defeat, Bent?” I want to know all about him, everything.

  “Many times,” the governor said. “In politics as in sports, you win some and you lose some. It doesn’t make losing any easier, just a little more familiar.”

  Grover Frazee had a dark-brown drink beside him in the office. He said, “You spoke to the populace, Bent? You told them the unpleasant facts and you placed the blame squarely where it belongs?” The drink had had its effect.

  “Where does it belong, Grover?” The governor perched on a corner of the desk. “That is a point I’d like cleared up.”

  Frazee waved one hand in a broad gesture of disclaimer. “Will Giddings came to my office with a cock-and-bull tale I didn’t begin to understand—”

  “Not quite, Grover,” Ben Caldwell said. “You were lucid about it when you phoned me.” He turned to the governor. “There are change orders in existence authorizing certain deviations from the original design of the building’s electrical system. They came to light only today, and until now”—he gestured at the candles that were the only lighting in the room—“we had no idea whether the changes had actually been made or not. Now we have to assume that at least some of them were made.”

  The governor said, “You knew they were potentially dangerous?” He was looking at Frazee.

  “I’m not an engineer, for God’s sake! Stop trying to pin it all on me. Giddings showed me the damn things and I told him I didn’t understand them—”

  “So,” Ben Caldwell said, “what did Will say then?”

  “I don’t even remember.”

  Some men grow in crises, Beth thought, some shrink. Frazee, the dapper jaunty patrician was already smaller than life size, and still shrinking rapidly. She felt a sad contempt for the man.

  “You asked me,” Caldwell said, “if I thought we should call off the ceremonies and the reception. If that was your idea, then you must have understood a great deal of what Giddings told you. If it was his idea, then you must have understood something of its urgency.” Cold pitiless logic. “Which was it, Grover?” Caldwell said.

  Frazee’s hand of its own volition reached for the drink. He drew it back. “You said there was no need to call the reception off.”

  “Not quite.” Caldwell’s voice was cold. “I said that public relations was not in my line. A very different answer, Grover. You—”

  The governor broke in. “The question was asked, Ben. Whether Giddings wanted the reception scrubbed or Grover merely wondered about it is largely immaterial. You are the technical man. Did you see the potential danger?” The question hung in the air.

  “The answer to that ought to be obvious,” Caldwell said at last. “I came myself. I am here, along with the rest of you.” He showed an almost glacial calm. “No one could anticipate a madman down in the main transformer room. No one could anticipate the fourth-floor fire, which by itself might not have caused more than small unpleasantness.” He paused. “But taken together, along with the design-change orders, which apparently were followed—” He shook his head. “As I said before, a concatenation of errors.”

  “Leading how far?”

  Caldwell shook his head faintly. “You are asking for an impossible judgment, Governor.”

  The mayor spoke up. “That,” he said, “is precisely what he is asking for, Ben: a judgment, not a hard-and-fast answer.”

  Even Bob, her cousin, Beth thought, whom she had never considered one of the earth-shakers, even he had this quality of command, of clarity in crisis, the total willingness to face facts which, in her experience, few men or women had possessed.

  Caldwell nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I see.” He looked at the fire commissioner. “Let’s have a judgment from your people. Then let me speak again to Nat Wilson.”

  Assistant Commissioner Brown’s voice was hollow on the telephone’s desk speaker. “We’re doing the best we can—” he began.

  “That, goddammit,” the commissioner said, “is no answer, Tim. I know already that you’re doing the best you can. What I want to know is how much is that accomplishing and how does it look?”

  There was hesitation. Then, “It doesn’t look very good, to be honest with you. There isn’t equipment anywhere that will reach up there, as you know. We’re going in from the outside as high as we can, and we’re going up inside—up the stairs. There are two men in each stairwell climbing to you, or trying to. They have masks—”

  “The smoke is bad?”

  “It isn’t good. How long some of those fire doors will hold is anybody’s guess, no matter how they’re rated. If it gets hot enough—”

  “I’m aware of it, Tim. Go on.”

  Brown’s voice took on an almost angry note. “Wilson here, Caldwell’s man, has tried to talk me into phoning the Coast Guard—”

  “For God’s sake, man, why?”

  “They have guns that shoot lines out to ships in trouble. And he thinks maybe, just maybe—” The voice was silent.

  “At least Wilson is thinking,” the commissioner said.

  “He’s got another wild idea—”

  “Put him on.” The commissioner nodded to Caldwell.

  “Caldwell here, Nat,” Caldwell said. “What is your thinking?”

  “If we can get power in from the substation,” Nat said, “I’ve got Joe Lewis working on it, then maybe we can jury-rig something for one of the express elevators.” Pause. “At least that’s what we’re working on. We’ll need some men—”

  “Simmons can provide them.”

  Nat’s voice changed. “Yes,” he said. “I’m anxious to talk to Simmons. About a lot of things.”

  Caldwell turned back into the room. “You heard it,” he said.

  Nat’s voice came again on the desk speaker. “The choppers can’t see any way. With the tower mast there’s no place for them to set down.”

  “All right, Nat,” Caldwell said. “Thank you.” He looked around the silent office.

  The governor was the first to speak. “I’ve read about situations like this,” he said. “I never expected to be in one.” He showed his smile. “Anyone for parchesi?”

  The time was 4:59. Thirty-six minutes had passed since the explosion.

  15

  4:58P.M.-5:10P.M.

  Concrete and steel—Insensitive? Indestructible? Not so. The building was in pain, and the men climbing the interminable stairs could feel even through the fire doors the fever of the building’s torment.

  Firemen Denis Howard and Lou Storr paused for a breather on the thirtieth floor. Smoke was not constant, only the heat, and at this level the air was clear. They took off their masks gratefully.

  “Mother of God!” This was Howard. “Do you feel like one of those mountain goats?” He was catching his breath in great gasps.

  “I told you to stop smoking,” Storr said. “See what it did for me?” His breathing was at least as labored as Howard’s. “I make it ninety-five floors to go.”

  They breathed in silence for a time. Then, “Do you remember a poem in school?” Howard said. “It was about this crazy mixed-up kid who walked through some little town waving a flag that said ‘Excelsior’?”

  Storr nodded wearily. “Something like that,” he said.

  “Well,” Howard said, “I always wondered just where in hell he thought he was going.” He paused. “Like now.” He faced the stairs again. “Let’s get on with it.”

&nbs
p; They had carried the charred body from the subbasement covered decently with a stretcher sheet. The TV cameras followed the body’s progress to a waiting morgue wagon, where patrolman Frank Barnes stopped the stretcher, raised the sheet, and had a long careful look. To Shannon he said, “That’s our boy, Mike.” I could have kept him out, he thought. Self-recrimination, accomplishing nothing. He looked at the morgue attendant. “Does he have a name?”

  “There’s a name inside his toolbox—if it’s his, that is.”

  Barnes looked at the toolbox, blackened from explosion but still recognizable. “That’s the one he was carrying.”

  “The name in it,” the attendant said, “is Connors, John Connors with an O.” He paused. “‘Citizen of the World’ is what it says after his name. A nut.”

  “The lieutenant,” Barnes said, “will want to know.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” the morgue attendant said, “the lieutenant is welcome to the whole fried carcass. You know about radar ovens, instant cooking? That’s what we got here.”

  Barnes went off to find the police lieutenant, whose name was James Potter. The lieutenant listened, wrote the name down in his notebook, and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a start.”

  “I could have kept him out of the building, Lieutenant,” Barnes said. “I could have—”

  “Can you read cards through their backs, Frank? I can’t. Did he wear a sign saying he was a nut carrying explosives?”

  Barnes went back to rejoin Shannon at the barricades, feeling no better, while the lieutenant went to the construction trailer. There was a conference in progress, and the lieutenant sighed again, leaned against a drafting board, and waited for the conference to end. Patty was perched on a nearby stool. The lieutenant wondered idly what she was doing there, but did not ask.

  “Two ways,” one of the battalion chiefs was saying. “The stairs or, if you can work a miracle, an elevator.” He was speaking to Nat.

  “We’re trying,” Nat said. “Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t.” He paused. “And maybe the stairs won’t work, either. Maybe your men will get so far and find they can’t go any farther because fire has broken through into the stairwell above them.”

  The battalion chief could think of another distinct possibility: fire might break through beneath his men, and that would be that. He said nothing.

  “So the third possibility may be all we have,” Nat said.

  Tim Brown said, “The gun that shoots a line, and then what?”

  “Breeches buoy.”

  Giddings was looking out the trailer window. “To where?”

  “North Trade Center tower. It’s the closest and the tallest.”

  All five men stared up at the soaring buildings. Their tops seemed to converge. Tim Brown said, “Sitting in a canvas bag with your legs sticking through, swinging in air a quarter of a mile above the street, a quarter of a mile!” Glaring at Nat.

  Patty, listening, shuddered.

  “All right,” Nat said, and his voice was almost brutal, “which would you rather be—swinging in that canvas bag and scared half to death or being cooked to a cinder by a fire that won’t stop halfway? Because that’s the choice.”

  “Unless,” the battalion chief said, “the stairs or the elevator.”

  Nat shook his head. “We can’t wait.”

  Potter said to no one in particular, “Hobson’s choice.”

  All five men looked at him.

  “You can take any horse in the stable,” Potter said, “as long as it’s the one nearest the door.” He took out his identification folder and opened it to show the badge. “If one of you has got a little time—”

  Tim Brown said almost explosively, “All right! We’ll get Coast Guard people here. Any other ideas?” He was looking straight at Nat.

  The man is scared, Nat thought, and so are we all. “Not for the moment,” he said, and moved to stand closer to Potter. “I don’t know if I can be any help,” he said.

  Potter looked at Nat’s badge. “Architect,” he read. “Wilson.” He paused. “A man named John Connors. Ring any bell?”

  Nat thought about it. He shook his head.

  “He,” Potter said, “is the—charred one.”

  “The electrician?”

  Potter’s eyebrows rose. “You know about him?”

  “The cops told me. The black cop. The man was inside, riding elevators. I heard him. I never saw him.” Brief memory of that grizzly bear so long ago, also unseen.

  At the far end of the trailer Tim Brown’s voice said loudly into the phone, “I won’t argue that it’s unusual, Captain, and maybe far out as well. But we’re running out of options.” His voice dropped to normal tone, the words indistinguishable.

  Potter said to Nat, “The other dead man—” He left it there.

  “I don’t know him,” Nat said, “but I understand he was at the computer console.”

  Potter was silent, thoughtful. He said at last, “Could he have—done anything if he’d been alive when the stuff hit the fan? Is that why he was clobbered?”

  We are standing here, calmly talking about what has already happened, Nat thought, when what is really important is what is going to happen, to the building, to the people up in the Tower Room, those most important, unless somebody can figure out some way to get them down.

  He was tempted to brush off the lieutenant’s questions as beside the point. But they were not. You have to work both ways, he told himself, forward and back. Why? So that maybe, just maybe, this kind of thing could be prevented from happening again.

  “I’d say yes,” Nat said, “but that’s just a guess. Almost any kind of trouble would show up on the console. Trouble ought to be taken care of automatically, but that’s why there’s a man there—just in case. He can override the automated systems, and maybe he would have had time to do something before everything went dead.” Nat paused. “It seems likely that Connors, if that’s who it was, thought the man at the console might be able to do something, so he took him out in advance.”

  Patty stirred on the stool. She cleared her throat. Both men looked at her and waited. “I don’t mean to—interfere,” she said.

  The lieutenant said, “Lady, if you’ve got any ideas at all, give them to us, please.”

  Patty said slowly, “If he, the man Connors, even knew there was a computer console and that someone would be monitoring it, let alone thought the man could do anything—then doesn’t that mean that Connors was familiar with the building and how it works?”

  Nat was smiling now. “Good girl.” He looked at Potter. “It means that Connors probably worked on the building, doesn’t it? To know his way around?”

  “And,” Patty said, “Daddy’s records will show if he worked for the general contractor. The subcontractors’ records will show if he worked on one of their crews.”

  Nat said slowly, “I called him an electrician.” He shook his head. “I doubt it. If he had been an electrician, unless he really wanted to kill himself, he’d have known better than to mess with primary power. He might just as well have soaked himself with gasoline and touched a match to it. Better; he might have survived burns.”

  Patty shivered. Then she said, “I’ll call Daddy’s office and have them see if Connors’ name shows up on a crew list.” She stepped down from the stool, glad to have something to do to occupy her mind, which kept returning to the big helpless man in the hospital bed.

  Nat watched her go. He was smiling.

  And here came Tim Brown on his stork legs, red hair rumpled. “The Coast Guard’s sending some men,” he said, “and some equipment.” He shrugged angrily. “They don’t think it will work, but they’re willing to have a look. The trouble is that the nearest Trade Center tower is probably too far away for shooting a line into the Tower Room, and unless they can do that—” He spread his hands. “No dice,” he said.

  Nat’s face was thoughtful. “We’ll just have to see,” he said.

  Paul Simmons was already in t
he midtown hotel room when Zib arrived breathless, her color high. She glanced at the television set. It was dark. So he doesn’t know, she thought, he thinks nothing is changed. Then, “No,” she said as Paul reached for her. “I didn’t come for that.”

  “That is a switch. Then why the summons?”

  Strangely, she felt almost calm. Perhaps resigned is the better word, she thought. Her voice was steady enough. “I have a message for you. You are wanted down at the World Tower building.”

  She walked to the television, switched it on. A picture sprang into instant focus—the plaza, the fire trucks and hoses, uniformed men, scene of controlled confusion. Zib turned the volume down and the room was still.

  “Nat called me,” she said. “He has been trying to reach you. Patty is with him down there and she told him I might know where you were.”

  “I see.” Merely that. Paul was watching the silent picture on the television screen. “What’s happening?”

  “All he said was that they have fires in the building, that Bert McGraw is in the hospital with a heart attack, that they have a hundred people—he said trapped in the Tower Room—and he needs some answers from you.” All? It was quite a bit to remember, but the words had been repeating themselves in her mind ever since she had hung up the phone after Nat’s call.

  “Trapped.” Paul repeated the single word. His eyes had not left the screen. “That means no elevators. That means no power.” At last he looked at Zib. “And just what answers does he think I can give him?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Paul wore a small quizzical smile. “Was that all he said?”

  Zib closed her eyes and shook her head. The entire conversation clamored in her mind. She opened her eyes again.

  Paul seemed a stranger, unaffected, uninvolved. “He said, ‘Where is the son of a bitch? If you don’t know where he is, find him. And get him down here. On the double.’”

  Paul said, “Well!” The quizzical smile spread.

  “I told him,” Zib said, “that he had never talked to me like that before.”