The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  “What are you going to do, Nat?”

  The question caught him off balance. “That,” he said, “is what I’m trying to think of.”

  “No,” Patty’s voice was gentle now. “I mean when all of this is over.”

  Nat shook his head in silence.

  “Will they rebuild?”

  He had not even considered it, but the answer came loud and clear: “I hope not.” Pause. “Just this morning,” Nat said, “Ben Caldwell talked of the Pharos, the lighthouse that stood at the mouth of the Nile. For a thousand years, he said. That was how he thought of this building.” He shook his head. “What is the word? Hubris: human pride that affronts the gods. In places in the Middle East they never finish a building. Always a few bricks or a few tiles are left out.” He smiled down at the girl. “That’s because a completed job is considered an affront. Man is supposed to strive for perfection, but he’s not supposed to achieve it.”

  “I like that,” Patty said.

  “I’m not sure I like it, but I think I understand it. A man told me once that it was good every now and again for anybody to be cut down to size.” He paused. “Let’s go back in.”

  “Have you thought of something?”

  “No.” Nat hesitated. “But I can’t stay away any more than you can.” A new thought occurred: “What if you were not Bert’s daughter,” he said, “but just—married to somebody involved?”

  “To you?” Small, brave, willing to face even conjecture, hypothesis. “Would I be down here at the building?” Patty nodded emphatically. “I would. Trying not to be in the way, but I would be here.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Nat said slowly, and wondered at the sudden pleasure the knowledge gave him.

  Inside the trailer one of the battalion chiefs was on the walkie-talkie. His voice was the only sound. “You can’t tell how deep the fire in the stairwell is above you?”

  The voice that answered was hoarse with exhaustion. “I told you, no!”

  The chief said almost angrily, “And below you?”

  There was silence.

  “Ted!” the chief said. “Speak up, man! Below you?”

  The voice came at last, almost hysterical this time: “What is this, a fucking quiz show? We’re going down. If we come out, I’ll tell you how deep it was, okay? We’re on fifty-two right now—”

  “Inside,” the chief said. “How about that? Any chance? You could break through the door—”

  “The goddam door will blister your hand. That’s what it’s like inside. I tell you, we’re going down. There’s no other way.”

  Assistant Commissioner Brown took the walkie-talkie. “This is Tim Brown,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “We’ll stand by for word.”

  “Sure.” And then, speaking aside, “All right. Haul your ass. Here we go.” The walkie-talkie clicked dead.

  The two battalion chiefs stood motionless, staring at nothing. Tim Brown’s lips, Patty saw, moved gently. In prayer? Giddings wore a scowl and his blue eyes were angry. He looked at Nat and slowly, almost imperceptibly shook his head. Nat nodded faintly in acknowledgment, perhaps agreement. Patty closed her eyes.

  It was not possible, she thought, and knew that it was. No dream, no nightmare this. There would be no sudden awakening, no rush of relief that the horror had fled with the morning light. She wanted to turn and run. Where? To Daddy? As she had run only this noontime for comfort, solace, understanding? But there was no—

  The walkie-talkie in Brown’s hand came to sudden hollow life. It uttered a scream and then another. And then there was merciful silence, and the trailer was still.

  Brown was the first to move. He walked to the drafting table and set the walkie-talkie down very carefully, switched it off. He looked at no one. In a slow monotone he began to swear.

  27

  6:19P.M.-6:38P.M.

  Paula Ramsay walked up to the two chairs in the quiet corner of the Tower Room. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but what’s happening behind your back—” She shook her head. “I’m afraid I am old-fashioned.”

  The governor nodded, expressionless. “With the exception of Paul Norris and Grover,” he said, “they’ve all done splendidly, so far. What can we expect?”

  “Cary Wycoff is making a speech.”

  The governor cocked his head. He could hear the voice, not the words; but the tone, high-pitched, angry, almost hysterical, spoke volumes. “He’s probably saying that someone is to blame and he is promising an investigation.”

  Paula Ramsay smiled faintly. “You have it exactly right, Bent.”

  “In a little while,” the governor said, “Cary will lead a delegation demanding that something be done. God, how many delegations like that I’ve listened to!”

  “People,” Paula said, “are swarming to the bar. One of the waiters is sitting in a corner by himself, drinking from a bottle—”

  The governor wondered if it was the waiter with three kids. He sighed and stood up. “What do you think I can do, Paula?”

  Paula’s smile was brilliant. “I am like Cary Wycoff, Bent,” she said. “I think something ought to be done, but I don’t know what.” She paused. “And so I turn to you.”

  “I am flattered.” The governor’s smile sadly mocked himself and the entire situation. “There was a Mark Twain character who was tarred and feathered and being ridden out of town on a rail.” The smile spread. “He said that if it weren’t for the honor of the occasion, he would just as soon have walked. I’d just as soon sit right here.” He glanced down at Beth. “But I’ll give it a try.”

  He passed the closed fire door where Grover Frazee’s body lay beneath a white tablecloth. The secretary general was standing looking down at the motionless shape. Slowly, solemnly he crossed himself, and then, seeing the governor, smiled almost apologetically.

  “Since my student days,” the secretary general said, “I have prided myself on my freethinking. Now I find that early beliefs do not die so easily. Amusing, is it not?”

  “It is not, Walther. I find it almost enviable instead.”

  The secretary general hesitated. “I am beginning to understand,” he said, “that you are basically a kind man, Bent. I am sorry I did not realize before.”

  “And,” the governor said, “I always thought that you were, that anybody in your position simply had to be just a stuffed shirt.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “In my country,” the secretary general said, “where mountain climbing is a popular sport, men tie themselves together with ropes for safety when they climb, and we have a saying: ‘There are no strangers on a rope.’ It is sad, is it not, that it requires a crisis situation before people come to know one another?” He paused. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Pray,” the governor said without mockery.

  “I have done that. I shall continue.” Again the pause, polite, solicitous, sincere. “If there is anything else, Bent—”

  “I’ll call on you,” the governor said, and meant it. He walked out into the center of the room and looked around.

  Paula had not exaggerated. The bar was doing a land-office business; in the center of the room Cary Wycoff was making a speech; it was the waiter with three kids who was sitting by himself drinking from a bottle of bourbon; in the far corner the transistor radio was playing rock, and some of the younger people were maneuvering in spastic gyrations.

  There was smoke leaking from the air-conditioning ducts now, but it was not yet oppressive; its acrid taste hung in the air. The governor sneezed.

  Mayor Ramsay nearby said, “Good God, look at that!”

  One of the younger dancers, female, was carried away. With a single motion she stripped her dress over her head and threw it from her. She wore mini-briefs and no brassiere. Her generous breasts bounced with each pelvic lunge.

  “It would have gone over big at the Old Howard when I was in college,” the governor said. “Kitty wo
uld have enjoyed it.” He smiled. “So would I.”

  Senator Peters walked up. “It’s getting hot,” he said, “in more ways than one.”

  Ben Caldwell joined the group. His face was expressionless. “More smoke,” he said. “Until we broke out the windows, this was a more or less sealed system. Now—” He shook his head, smiling faintly to indicate that he understood there had been no other course. “I am still waiting for Nat Wilson’s other idea.”

  Cary Wycoff let out a sudden wordless roar and shook his fists above his head. “Goddammit, have you all gone mad?” He glared at the governor’s group. “Old men standing around at a tea party! Don’t you even understand what’s happening?”

  The temptation was strong to reply in kind, shouting, gesticulating, charge and counter-charge until all sanity disappeared. The governor stifled the temptation. “I quite understand that you are having a temper tantrum, Cary,” he said. “Are you going to hold your breath until your face turns blue? That is popularly supposed to get results.”

  Cary got himself under control with effort. A group had gathered behind him. The governor recognized a face here and there. They watched him cautiously.

  “We’ve listened to you,” Cary said. His voice was calmer now. “We’ve behaved like little ladies and gentlemen—”

  “All of you,” the governor said, “except Paul Norris and Grover Frazee. They wanted action. You saw the results. Is that what you have in mind, Cary?” His voice now was cold and hard. “If you do, there is the fire door. It is unlocked.”

  Cary was silent, breathing hard.

  “There is an alternative,” the governor said. “We were just discussing the broken-out windows. You could jump.”

  Someone in the group behind Cary said, “There has to be some way, goddammit! We can’t all be trapped here like rats!”

  “And,” Cary shouted, “that silly gesture of shooting a line over from the Trade Center tower. A token! That’s all it was! Everybody knew it couldn’t work!”

  There was a general murmur of agreement. The governor waited until it subsided. The faces, he thought, were no longer polite, even deferential; they were the faces of a mob preparing to stone the police. Fear and the anxiety of helplessness needed no purpose.

  “I am open to suggestion,” the governor said. “We all are. Do you think I enjoy the situation?”

  The blaring rock music stopped suddenly. The almost-naked girl continued her gyrations, lost in her own ecstasy, but the other dancers turned to watch the confrontation, to listen.

  The governor raised his voice. “I’m not going to make a speech,” he said. “There isn’t anything to make a speech about. We’re in this together, all of us—”

  “Who’s responsible?” Cary shouted. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “I don’t know,” the governor said. “Maybe down on the ground they do, but I don’t. Unless”—he paused—“unless we all are because we’ve come too far from our beginnings, lost touch with reality.”

  “That,” Cary shouted, “is crap!”

  The governor merely nodded. He was beyond anger now, into the calmness of scorn. “Have it your own way, Cary,” he said. “I won’t argue the point.”

  A new, quiet voice said, “What is your assessment, Governor?”

  “Grave.” The governor faced them all. “I won’t try to fool you. There would be no point. We are still in contact with the ground by telephone. They know our situation. You can look down at the plaza and see the fire equipment, the hoses like spaghetti leading into the building. Everything that can be done is being done.” He spread his hands. “Grave,” he said again, “but not hopeless—yet.” He looked around the room, waiting.

  There was silence.

  “If there is any change,” the governor said, “I promise to let you know. That is damn small consolation, I realize, but it is the most I can give.” He turned away then, and walked back toward the deserted corner, past the tablecloth-covered body without a glance.

  Beth was waiting with Paula Ramsay. “We heard,” Beth said. She was smiling gently. “That was well done, Bent.”

  “The next time,” the governor said, “isn’t going to be quite so easy.” He felt old and tired, and he wondered if his subconscious was merely preparing for the end. He gathered himself with effort. “And there will be a next time,” he said. “Panic comes in waves, each one stronger than the last.” Well, all they could do was wait.

  Chief Petty Officer Oliver had his twenty years behind him in the Coast Guard. He had served on shore stations and aboard cutters, in tropical waters and in the Arctic ice lanes. He had helped fish men from burning oil-covered water and plucked them from the decks of foundering vessels; and sometimes the men he had gathered in had been dead.

  He had learned the long hard way that some operations are impossible. But a part of him refused to believe it, and all of him rebelled against failure of any kind.

  Now, standing large and helpless on the roof of the Trade Center tower, staring across at the row of broken windows marking the Tower Room, so close, really, and yet so goddam far away, he was almost, but not quite, on the point of explosion from sheer frustration.

  Kronski said, his voice weary, “So we shoot another line?” He paused. “You remember that poem? ‘I shot an arrow into the air/ It fell to the ground, I knew not where’? I’ll bet that guy lost a lot of arrows that way. You want me to try another?”

  “No,” the chief said at last. Sheer waste, he thought, and that he could not countenance either. He stood motionless for a time, staring across the gap. There were people over there. He could see them. And he could see and smell the smoke.

  Fire and storm: all of his adult life both had been his enemies. He had met them and fought them, and sometimes won, sometimes lost, but always before he had been able somehow to come to grips. Now—

  He raised the walkie-talkie. “Oliver here,” he said. “Come in, Trailer.”

  Nat’s voice came on immediately. “Trailer here.”

  “It’s no good,” the chief said. His voice was heavy with disappointment. “The range is too long and there’s too much wind against us.”

  “I see.” Nat kept his voice carefully expressionless. Another idea gone bad. Think, goddammit! Think!

  “We might as well pack it up,” the chief said.

  Holding the walkie-talkie in one hand, Nat pounded softly on the drafting table with the other. “Hold it a minute, Chief. Let me think.” A plea, a hope.

  The trailer was still. Brown, the battalion chief, Giddings, and Patty all watched in silence. You’re grandstanding, Nat told himself, just playing to an audience—and despised himself for it.

  And yet, something was crawling around in the back of his mind, and if he could get it out in the open—Goddammit, what triggered that feeling anyway? What—

  Another idea gone bad, he thought suddenly. That was the key. Another idea—but what if two of them were taken together? Into the walkie-talkie he said, “We had a chopper up there early on, Chief.” He made himself speak slowly, with unnecessary clarity, thinking it out as he went along. “They couldn’t find any place to land, so they couldn’t do any good.” He paused. “But what about getting the chopper back to take you and your gun over close to the building, close enough for you to shoot a line into the Tower Room? Then haul the line back to the Trade Center roof and start your operation from there?” Another pause. “Will that work? Is there a chance?”

  There was a long pause. Then, in slow wonderment, “I,” the chief said, “will be goddamned.” He was grinning now, and the sense of helplessness had fallen away like a discarded cloak. “I don’t see why it won’t. Call in your whirlybird.” He was looking at Kronski. “You’re going for a ride, son. Just don’t get airsick.”

  They called the governor from his secluded corner to the office. He listened to Nat’s voice on the telephone speaker. “Will it work?” the governor said.

  “We think it may.” Nat’s voice carefully
controlling enthusiasm. “The chopper can hover and give the Coast Guard almost a point-blank-range shot into the Tower Room. You’ll have to clear a good share of the room so nobody gets hit by the shot.” He paused. “It may take a couple of tries, but it shouldn’t be all that hard.” I hope, he thought.

  “We will see to clearing that whole side of the room,” the governor said. “And we will have men standing by to catch the line. And then?”

  “Make it fast to structure,” Nat said. “There’ll be strain while they carry the rest of the line back to the Trade Center tower. I’ll be on the walkie-talkie to Oliver, the Coast Guard chief, and I’ll also stay on this line with you. That way we can keep our signals straight.” He paused. “When they have the messenger line on the Trade Center roof, they’ll bend the heavier line to it. Then your men can start hauling in.” He paused again. “But not until we get the word.”

  “Understood,” the governor said. He was smiling faintly. “Your idea, young man?”

  “We promised to think of something.” Nat hesitated. “The only thing is, why didn’t we think of it before?”

  The governor’s smile spread. “For years,” he said, “I have been on the lookout for an idiot child of three I could hire to point out the obvious to me.” He turned the smile on Beth. “But there are also times,” he said, “when I manage to recognize a good thing as soon as I see it. Thank God.” His tone changed. “What is the status of the fire?”

  “Not good.” In the two words there was finality.

  “And those two men in the other stairwell?” the governor said.

  Nat could hear again the screams coming over the walkie-talkie. It was my idea to send them in the first place, he thought, and knew that he would make the same suggestion again at need, because it was a chance that had to be taken. “They didn’t make it,” he said.

  The governor watched Beth’s eyes close. He said gently, “Neither did Grover Frazee. He tried to go down the stairs.” His voice turned almost brutal. “What is the eventual butcher’s bill going to be?” And then, quickly, “Strike that.” He leaned back wearily and was silent.