by Mark Joseph
“God damn, Donnie! I always wanted to do that. Wow.”
Copeland rubbed his shoulder where the recoil had pressed his flesh. “I’m fucked,” he muttered.
Doc’s voice emanated once more from the speakers. “You can shoot all the TVs in the house if you have enough ammunition, Donnie, but then you’ll miss the show.”
“Can you hear me, you son of a bitch?”
“Of course. The place is bugged. Cameras, too. Want to know where they are? None in the bathrooms.”
“Donnie, what the fuck is going on here?” Spillman cried. “What is this?”
“Do you want to explain, or shall I?” Doc asked. “Perhaps Mr. Spillman would be entertained by the saga of Butch and Sundance and the Chase Manhattan Bank.”
“Donnie, what the hell is he talking about?”
“Jonathon,” Copeland said. “You’re a good guy, a decent man. We’ve been friends for a long time. Can I use your shotgun to kill myself?”
“Hell, no. Give it back.”
Copeland took a step backward, but Spillman didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the weapon and snatched it away.
“Wha’d you get yourself into, Donnie? What’s this guy talkin’ about?”
Copeland shot back, “Aren’t you worried about Shirley? She’ll go nuts if you don’t call and don’t come back.”
“So what? She’s already nuts. I want to know why we’re locked in your house.”
“Do you think we should try all the doors and windows?”
“Donald, later. Tell me what’s going on here.”
“Tell him!” Doc demanded, his voice registering somewhere between Big Brother and God.
Copeland squirmed. Looking back and forth between the shattered TV and his friend, he spit out the words. “We robbed the fucking bank.”
“You what?”
“You heard me.”
Spillman blinked a few times. “Wait a minute. Of course. You had access to all the codes, the most sensitive accounts, everything. You didn’t. C’mon, man. You didn’t. You fox. You son of a bitch.” He punched Copeland in the shoulder. “Yeah! Rob the fucking bank. Why the fuck not.”
“Donald!” Doc said curtly.
“Yes?”
“No one robbed the bank.”
“Say what?”
“Donnie, you might as well know right now, the whole thing was a hoax. There was no robbery and never was. I put you on for all these years. That’s all there is to it.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Spillman thought his friend was going to have a seizure. His eyes bulged, his face turned red, he breathed deeply several times and then a calm spread over his features and he sagged against the kitchen counter.
Spillman searched the ceiling for a camera and guessed it was inside an air conditioning vent high in the corner. He pointed.
Copeland looked up and said to Doc, “A hoax? A put on?”
“Yep.”
“A practical joke?”
“Yep.”
“What about Chase? Did you put a virus into their systems?”
“Of course not.”
“You did all this just to fuck with my head?”
“Yep.”
“You bastard.”
“You can see it that way if you like, but we never could have pulled it off. We would have been caught. Simple as that. Plus we didn’t need the money. I’m sorry to disappoint you. You can’t be the biggest bank robber of all time, but those are the breaks. You can’t gloat, and you can’t feel guilty, either. You’re clean, Donnie boy. You may be a greedy prick, but you’re legal. You should thank me. Don’t worry. Business is fine. Earlier this evening Maria Maranello sold a package to Hamburg Private GmBH for I don’t know how many millions. Since most satellites are down and power is off in Hamburg, I don’t know exactly how you’ll wrap up that contract, but I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
Copeland sat down on a counter stool, resigned and defeated. Spillman poured a pair of scotches and without a toast they drained their glasses.
“Atta boy,” Doc said. “Drink up. Things aren’t as bad as you think.”
“Hamburg Private?”
“At five dollars per line of code, your new rate. Believe me, Donald, you don’t need Chase’s money. There’s a videotape in the machine in the living room. I think you’ll find it interesting and worth your time. You’re going to have your minds blown, gentlemen, and after you’ve seen it, we’ll talk again. Enjoy the show. It’s called the Midnight Club.”
14
The great city began to convulse. Riptides of fear and anxiety crisscrossed the island as the phone system broke down, the Internet collapsed and network television vanished. The loss of the GPS and communications satellites was only a harbinger of things to come. Few understood how deeply these delicate space mechanisms affected their lives, but everyone knew their phones didn’t work properly. Local TV was broadcasting over the air, but millions of televisions no longer had aerials. Sticking to their New Year’s Eve schedules, New York 1 had Barbra Streisand with an upbeat show live from Madison Square Garden, and WABC had Nebraska and Alabama in the M&M’s Official Millennium Bowl from Giants’ Stadium. Concerts and football seemed to have lost their cachet. People wanted news, but just as the graphic TV images of devastation in Europe had built to a peak, they’d abruptly ceased, leaving millions on the edges of their seats wondering what happened next. The bug was racing across the Atlantic in silence, making its approach that much more terrifying.
Time was all that mattered. The 20th Century had only a few hours to live, and in New York everyone was staring at the clock. The seconds ticked away; minutes spun off and disappeared into the past; hours lasted forever. Time was thick, like oil. You could rub it between your fingers and taste it.
The magnificent skyscrapers glistened as always. Surrounded by the towering walls of steel and glass, Doc stood with Jody on the roof of the building on Nassau Street, and with great passion told her the tale of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. The good doctor sold his soul to the devil for knowledge, women and a song. Near midnight, as Mephistopheles was coming to collect his due, Faustus cried,
Stand still you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease and midnight never come.
“I like Mephistopheles,” Doc declared. “He’s a lot more clever than Cinderella.”
“I like Cinderella,” Jody said. “Shut up and kiss me.”
Startled, Doc felt awkward and clumsy. Kiss? Here? Now? What is this, a reality check? And then he abandoned himself to the moment, gently took her in his arms and kissed her.
Fireworks exploded over a barge on the East River. The bands played on. The city shuddered and had another drink.
“C’mon, Doc,” she breathed, and led him downstairs into the building, past the equally surprised members of the Midnight Club, and straight into the bedroom.
* * *
A few minutes after eight o’clock, a small group of demonstrators appeared with signs and slogans at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence at East 88th and East End Avenue. With no media present, the chants were half-hearted and had no chance of reaching the mayor’s ear. “What do you want us to do?” the mayor’s spokesperson asked the people. Confused and afraid, the demonstrators had no coherent plan of action. Barely distinguishable from the New Year’s Eve crowds surging through the streets, their chants and shouts inaudible above the din of horns and noisemakers, the futility of protesting was readily apparent. His Honor’s harried spokesperson had more enthusiasm for the demonstration than the demonstrators. She didn’t mind being out in the cold engaging in a little give and take with a bunch of cranks because anything was better than being locked in with the mayor. Rudy Giuliani had been out of his mind ever since returning from Washington late in the afternoon.
Inside the mansion, Mayor Giuliani screamed in frustration at his advisors and aides. Stuck in the mansion by impossible traffic, he was reduced to communicat
ing with the outside world by motorcycle messenger and radio. The streets were impassable, even to him, and he was forbidden the use of his helicopter—nothing could fly, although he wondered who the hell would stop him if he could get to the heliport.
Staring out his office window he could see the huge Con Edison Ravenswood power plant across the river in Queens. Big Allis, queen of the grid. Rudy knew the truth. He’d promised no problems with the lights. He’s sworn to his public that everything would be okay. He’d guaranteed no interruption of the biggest party the world had ever seen, but things were already fucked up beyond belief. He wanted a meeting with the CEO of Con Edison, Mr. Peter Wilcox, but that gentleman was nowhere to be found. The mayor was livid. Shit. He didn’t feel good, either. Outside, the city growled at him. Fuck, this thing was bigger than New York, bigger than him even, and he couldn’t stand that. It really pissed him off. His people really pissed him off. They were supposed to take care of this. The city had paid half a billion dollars and they’d better be fuckin’ well ready.
“And if the fuckin’ phones don’t work now, what the fuck is going to happen at midnight? I want answers!” he shouted at an aide who hunched his shoulders and looked at his feet.
“Take it easy, Mr. Mayor. Your blood pressure.”
“Did you get a list of chemical plants and all that crap like I told you to?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Did they all get the message to shut down?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Mayor. I had one hundred and sixty-seven locations and twenty messengers.”
“My God,” said the mayor. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t fucking believe this. No fucking telephones! Ow!”
“Mr. Mayor?”
“Damn. Something’s wrong with my arm.”
“Mr. Mayor? Rudy? Jesus Christ.”
* * *
At 8:45 Bill Packard was ready to leave the hospital and get drunk. He’d done his bit. Sensible people throughout the hospital had seen the wisdom of doing things right and didn’t need him anymore. Nurses were placing yellow stickers on dangerous machines in every ward. He was exhausted and thought two or three drinks would put him under. On the other hand, he mused, he could go over to the 24th Precinct house, surprise his pal Ed and take a gander at the zoo that place must be.
Still wearing his white coat and stethoscope, Packard was standing outside the emergency room doors smoking a cigarette, something he hadn’t done in years. Two nurses and an ambulance driver were smoking a few yards away. Off to his right, the drive curved around to First Avenue, but no ambulances had come in for at least an hour. Not even flashing lights and sirens could get through the streets. To his left, the East River sparkled with reflected light. Above the low, rumbling din of night he heard a motor launch close by. A moment later, two paramedics with a stretcher rushed out the doors and headed toward the river where a small pier for police boats served the hospital. Presently, the paramedics, a man on the stretcher, and four bodyguards with headsets returned from the pier.
Packard watched the stretcher wheel past. Lying unconscious on his back with a respirator over the lower half of his face was Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Then the stretcher was through the doors and a guy with a bad suit, tinted glasses, and a headset was standing less than a foot away, eyeballing Dr. Packard as though he were a cockroach.
“Who are you?” the guy demanded.
“Looks like your man was having trouble breathing,” Packard answered mildly.
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m a cardiac surgeon. Do you want me to examine him?”
“No way.”
In no mood to be intimidated by political creeps, Packard blew smoke in the guy’s face. The man hesitated, then backed off and said, “Sorry, Doctor. We don’t want any publicity right now. You know what I mean? He has his own doctor. He’s gonna be okay. Can I get your name?”
Before Packard could answer “No” the man was distracted by a voice in his headset.
“What?” he exclaimed into his tiny microphone. “You’re shitting me.”
The other security types were interrogating the nurses and driver. Three police motorcycles roared up the drive, and the cops congregated to one side, radios crackling, the night air condensing in macho puffs as they spoke among themselves.
The bodyguard was responding to his caller with a sense of urgency. “I don’t know where the hell the damned doctor is. He was supposed to meet us at the door. No. Wait a minute, I got one right here.” He tapped Packard on the shoulder and said, “You’re a heart guy? That’s what you said, right? Come with me.”
Streetwise, Packard wasn’t about to be drafted without his consent. “Ask me nice and I’ll think about it,” he said as a way of opening negotiations.
“Okay, pal. Whaddya want?”
“What I want,” Packard said, “is for you to keep the hell away from me and let me do my job. That’s what I want. Otherwise, I’ll let the son of a bitch croak.”
* * *
Doc and Jody lay in bed, cuddling and listening to the radio, when the President addressed the nation at 9:00 A.M. No one in New York saw him on TV. The President started with an excessively long explanation of the millennium bug and date-sensitive computers, and then notified his audience that some of our global neighbors had already experienced problems.
“We are much better prepared for the crisis than any other nation,” said the President in his most reassuring tone. “We’ve spent trillions of dollars. The smartest people in America have been working on this problem, and we’re confident in their ability. Some things will go wrong, that’s certain, but we’ll get things working again as soon as humanly possible.”
He politely asked everyone to go home and remain calm. Cooperate with your neighbors. Don’t loot, he said, because that’s not neighborly. He called on the governors of the fifty states and Puerto Rico to shoulder the responsibility of using the National Guard to maintain order.
“Your local authorities know your situation better than we do here in Washington,” the President said. “Trust your public officials.”
“Why do we have a president, then?” Jody asked.
Doc considered his answer for a moment and then replied, “Nobody remembers.”
* * *
By 9:30 traffic in and out of Manhattan had reached critical mass. Nothing moved across the bridges or through the tunnels. After being stuck in traffic for hours, hundreds of people ran out of gas and abandoned their cars, ultimately immobilizing every traffic lane and isolating the island. Gridlock seized midtown and the bridge and tunnel approaches, and elsewhere on the island vehicles crept along, drivers making liberal use of their horns while passing bottles of champagne back and forth between cars.
True to the Broadway tradition that the show must go on, the festivities around Times Square continued as planned. Bands played, choirs sang, the 24 monster video screens displayed extravagant party scenes from around the city. Revelers in the street were treated to galas at the World Trade Center, the Plaza, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Diamonds glittered in the bright lights. Senators and judges in tuxedos smiled for the cameras, projecting an illusion of power and security.
The planned night regatta of tall ships commenced on schedule under the first round of fireworks along the Hudson River. The fleet of sailing vessels all had modern navigational equipment that depended on the GPS satellites that were no longer transmitting, but this posed no problem for experienced sailors. However, one of the ships near the front of the line, the Mexican training sloop Emiliano Zapata, was under the command of a young lieutenant who owed his billet to political connections rather than maritime skill, and he promptly rammed the Greek ship Marathon just off the 23rd Street sports complex. Under exploding rockets and pyrotechnic magic, the ships behind the two colliding craft maneuvered frantically to avoid a waterborne accordion crash, and presently the stately procession of nautical heritage was in complete disarray. The river turned white
with churning foam from propellers thrust into reverse, and small boats escorting the ships were suddenly tossed into a maelstrom of right-of-way violations and abrupt maneuvers. In the midst of the chaos on the river, the Coast Guard discovered their GPS-driven radar system that controlled ship traffic in the harbor was malfunctioning. The radars were giving false positions when checked against simple hand-held radars. Ghosts and reflections were being displayed as solid objects. When the radar operators began reporting their difficulties to the captains and the pilots of the 37 ships underway between the Atlantic Ocean and the piers in New York, they learned to their horror that thirty vessels had lost their radars as well. The average ship of modern construction contained over 300 embedded chips and at least two dozen date-sensitive chip controllers, and almost every operation on board from propulsion to emission monitoring was automated and computerized. With most ships’ clocks set to GMT, midnight in London marked the century rollover for the ships’ computers, and ten ships immediately lost propulsion power. Their engines stopped. Four of the ten suffered failures in all their computer-controlled systems and were adrift without radar, communications, or steering.
The fireworks never stopped. The bursting balls and star clusters had no balky silicon transistors to impede their moment of glory. As a result, people in tall buildings could watch the Brownian movement of ships as the confusion in the harbor developed in slow motion. A huge container ship ran aground on Liberty Island, another rammed a pier at the foot of Broad Street just under the Brooklyn Bridge, and an automobile ship full of new Mercedes-Benzes smashed into the western support of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The bridge held. The bow of the ship started taking on water. The steel containers had been expertly sealed by skilled craftsmen in the old country and kept the cars dry.
* * *
Spellbound, Copeland and Spillman watched Doc’s videotape, and when it ended Copeland rewound it and started it again. From the opening shots of Con Edison’s Manhattan power plants, he realized he was being presented with the greatest business opportunity of his life. Doc had recorded the work of the Midnight Club, and then edited the footage down to a forty-five-minute presentation of the plan to save New York. The Midnight Club had refined the principles Doc had developed while writing the Copeland 2000 software packages for the banks and adapted them for electric utilities. After midnight, when the Midnight Club knew which parts worked and which didn’t, they’d be able to debug the programs and in very short order create a viable, eminently saleable product. The software was incredibly valuable.