by Joseph Nagle
Instead, he smiled mendaciously at the bouquet of microphones and cameras thrust forward at his face and projected a faux sense of comfort. “Thank you for taking the time to see Senator Faust and me off; unfortunately, as you all will understand, my statement will be brief, as the senator is already aboard the plane and still recovering from the horrific events of the last twenty-four hours, and I am still coping with the loss of—”
For effect, Francis Q. Door choked up a bit on his last word, lowered his chin to his chest, and paused; he worked hard to force a tear to stream down his cheek and was quietly pleased that he was able to do so. Casting a newly determined gaze at the cameras and journalists, Door slowly wiped away the tear.
“—and I am still coping with and coming to terms with the death of my wife—of my Elizabeth; the sooner that we can be airborne, the better. Having said that, my message to you all is this: first, the senator and I both thank the people of this great country for your care of the senator and the work undertaken to ensure his speedy and full recovery. Second, to the family and friends of those lost in the act of cowardice at Notre Dame: when we win the election, and win we will, Senator Faust as president and I as the vice president will hunt down those responsible for its destruction and avenge those lives that were lost! We will avenge the loss of your president’s life, of my wife’s, and the lives of the countless and innocent unnamed people, whose only mistake on that horrific day was to be standing in support of democracy and civility inside and outside of Notre Dame—this much I promise you!”
For emphasis, Door swung his clenched fist in front of his body and clenched his teeth; in a flash, his face of grief was replaced with one of clear anger. Staring at each member of the press, there was a fire in his eyes that projected sincerity rather than the rhetoric it really was.
Taking a breath, Door finished: “Finally, I have a message as well to those out there who seek to bring their uncivilized and outdated terror to the civilized soil of progress, we are not going to sit back idly and passively watch as you spread the disease of your polluted ideology; we will be vigilant and without hesitation in the protection of any citizen of any nation that has embraced democracy from your kind; and rest assured, we will find you, we will hunt you down, and we will bring every last one of your sickened, backward-thinking, weak-minded kind to justice!” With a nod that stated he had finished, Door turned and climbed the stairs that led into the private jet; the journalists had waited patiently during Door’s address, but were now shouting a barrage of questions at him, with each journalist trying to outdo the shouts of the one next to him.
One of them had been prepared ahead of time.
“Mr. Door! Mr. Door!” shouted Geneviève Paulette. “Please, will you address the rumor that it was Dr. Michael Sterling, the deputy director of the CIA, who was behind Senator Faust’s abduction and the murder of your wife?”
Door froze on the stairs of the plane; he had nearly entered into its fuselage when the reporter had volleyed the question. Turning, he responded, “What a curious question you’ve asked, considering all that the man has done for us. Let me be clear—no, let me be quite clear—on this: Dr. Michael Sterling is a patriot, and a man whose country is indebted to him, and not the other way around. I am not authorized to speak on behalf of the United States on any involvement on the part of Dr. Michael Sterling in any of the godforsaken events that have transpired, but this I can say: any part taken in these matters by Dr. Michael Sterling was assuredly to the benefit of both Senator Faust and to the United States; the rest is just malicious conjecture.”
Francis Q. Door entered the plane, and the door was soon closed behind him.
The journalists watched as the plane taxied away from them. Soon it was thundering down the runway. They began to disperse as the private jet’s wheels separated from the tarmac; within moments the plane was nothing more than a fast-disappearing dot in the sky.
Geneviève watched the Gulfstream for a moment longer than the rest. Her microphone dangled loosely at her side. Behind her, a growing buzz among the remaining journalists caught her attention and curiosity. She first looked at her cameraman, who shrugged, and then she headed to one of the small groups nearest to her to find out what the commotion was about; they were bantering wildly back and forth. Her intention had been to ask one of them what was going on, but her producer was already dialing her cell phone with the news.
Stopping in her tracks, she answered, “Oui?”
Geneviève could only listen; her mouth was agape, but nothing came out. What she was hearing shocked her, and she suddenly wished that she hadn’t pulled the short straw for this assignment. Her cameraman watched as her angular face went from its normal pale appearance to a crimson hue, a color that meant only one thing.
“I know that look, Geneviève; what’s happened?”
She tossed her long, curly auburn hair over her right shoulder and smiled devilishly. “Grab your gear, and let’s move!” she shouted, having not answered his question.
She rushed past him without any care for his troubles with his equipment. He fumbled with his heavy black bag that held the numerous pieces necessary for his trade.
“Ah, idiot! Come on! You need to move quickly!” she shouted while backpedaling.
With his equipment hanging hastily over his shoulder and his camera in hand, the cameraman moved awkwardly, but quickly, trying to close the distance between him and Geneviève. When he did, he asked in between his huffs and desperate gulps for air, “What is it? What’s happened?”
Through a wicked smile, Geneviève replied, “A survivor!”
A survivor? the cameraman thought.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
FROM THE ASHES
MOMENTS AGO
“Café?” he asked, while holding out a small Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“Oui, merci.”
The two-man crew had set up their camera from a vantage point across the Seine River. They had a direct and crisp view of the Pont Neuf, but had grown bored from the repetitive scene.
Each moment was no different than the last.
Firemen and volunteers moved steadily about, carrying whatever it was they could. Their faces were worn and vacant of emotion; the death that surrounded them had robbed them of any palpable energy, draping their faces with blank and hollow one-hundred-yard stares. They were drones. They were at the mercy of their morbid mission. They no longer held out for a living soul to be found amid the broken pieces of stone and rubble; instead, their hope had twisted into finding the remnant of someone dead.
Even that proved difficult.
On the rare occasion when a piece of someone lost was found, it was isolated, and the men and women—policemen, firemen, and rescue worker volunteers—hovered over it in solemn prayer as if what remained of the dead man’s, dead woman’s, or dead child’s soul was in it.
They never spoke. To the contrary, each person wondered his or her own questions.
Who were you?
Did I know you?
Were you loved?
Did you matter?
No matter the individual questions, each shared the same one with the equivalent measurement of pain: will your family have this piece of you to bury?
The two men sipped on their coffee; neither wanted to be over there—there as they now called it, robbing the place of its once-revered identity—completely content with being separated from there by the icy, fast-flowing waters of the river at their feet. They were unsure why they were still camped out across from the place. There was nothing more to see that hadn’t already been shown to the world countless times.
“So what do you think, another hour or two?”
“Who knows?”
But they both knew that it wouldn’t be another hour or two; it would be much longer.
Philippe sipped his coffee slowly, enjoying the steam that rose up and flowed over the tight skin of his cheeks. He held the cup to his lips without drinking and blew slowly on the hot surface
of the coffee, forcing the heat and steam to his cheeks as he watched the men and women do their morbid work on the grounds of Notre Dame.
On he watched, not expecting much.
A policeman was walking what looked like a German Shepard on a short leash when the leash suddenly went taut, and the canine lunged forward. His owner was caught by surprise as the leather snapped tightly, and the dog reared instinctively onto its hind legs.
Philippe raised his lips from the cup and smiled, wondering what would happen next. He silently begged the dog to pull even harder and placed an unspoken wager on how long the tug-of-war would last and on who would win.
It was the first bit of something that was different than the last twenty hours or so they’d been onsite, and he quietly begged the dog to be victorious. Suddenly, he was aware and surprised that he was having a conversation in his mind about a dog excitedly disobeying his master. Sleep deprivation and boredom.
Onward the dog pulled the policeman. Each pull forward by the dog was with more force and strength than the last. Soon, the policeman let him go, or he lost control of the leash; Philippe couldn’t tell.
The newly freed dog lowered its head and bolted forward and up a small pile of rubble where it stopped in front of a large metal object covered in a thick layer of gray dust—just as all items in a half-mile radius of there, both animate and inanimate, were. The dog was sniffing and simultaneously barking wildly, while every so often spinning in a complete circle or two.
The policeman was running in pursuit, and it took a moment for him to catch up to the dog. When he did, he rubbed his hand on the dog’s scalp to calm him down. He rubbed his other hand on the side of the round bit of metal protruding from the rocks, next to where the dog was barking wildly. He wiped the metal a bit, exposing its brass coloring.
The Emmanuelle Bell.
The policeman put his ear to the brass of the bell and then suddenly jerked backward. The inexplicable movement by the policeman startled Philippe, and he too jumped a bit. A splash of hot coffee landed directly in the middle of his chest, causing him to curse loudly.
By this time, Philippe’s partner had seen what was transpiring and had pointed the camera in the direction of the policeman and the Emmanuelle Bell.
When he zoomed in, what he saw made him shriek with a mixture of glee and disbelief.
“Philippe, a survivor! The policeman is shouting that there is a survivor! Call the studio!”
Philippe was already on the phone.
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
HOW CAREERS BEGIN
WHILE OTHERS END
CANAL 16—PARIS
The coverage of the destruction of Notre Dame was nonstop. Even from the studio, the scene displayed was somber, only surpassed by what the world had witnessed on September 11, 2001.
Taking the place of a headstone, an ashen, dark-gray plume of smoke floated endlessly upward and over the skyline, marking the final resting place of the many whose bodies would be forever entombed in the rubble.
Reporting since the beginning of the tragedy was anchorman Jean-Pierre Fabrice, who wore the seasoned and sunken face of a man nearing his own end. Dark circles had many hours ago formed under his eyes and could no longer be smoothed over and blended into his natural skin color by the studio’s makeup artist; the turned-up corners of his mouth—a trademark by which he was mostly remembered—had vanished somewhere between the twelfth and fifteenth hour of reporting. Adding to the chaos from Notre Dame were the thefts of the Crown of Thorns, the Shroud of Turin, and Samothrace. Jean-Pierre was more than sleep-deprived, and his face showed it.
He hadn’t left the studio since the first stone of Notre Dame fell.
He had not-so-quietly refused.
His career was at its end, and this was the most important matter he had ever reported; he wouldn’t let the younger, more attractive, and well-chiseled faces of the new breed do this work. They were too eager for something to sensationalize, something by which they could make a name for themselves, but they had neither the breadth of knowledge on world affairs nor the latitude of experience to connect with anything of true significance the destruction of Notre Dame, the murder of two world leaders, and the thefts of priceless works of art.
He secretly loathed the handsome men nearly as much as he detested the pretty faces of the overly attractive and well-proportioned women. No longer did a broadcast journalist have to scratch and claw to get a break, to get a story on the air. No longer did they take any work home; no longer was it necessary to investigate a story, to find the news, and to report on it, to create. Today, one needed only a pretty face, a sultry or memorably husky voice (take your pick), and an ability to read a fast-moving teleprompter.
Gone were the skills needed to be a true journalist.
This story, however, had been his last chance to report on a story of real and historical significance the way it should be reported.
Staring at camera number one, he waited for the red light to come on so that he could continue with his task.
But the red light never illuminated.
Jean-Pierre eyed the in-studio producer and gestured his curiosity at him.
The producer held his hand out, signaling for him to wait, and held tightly with his other hand the earpiece in his left ear, listening intently to whatever it was that was being said. Within a few moments, the producer moved frantically in both directions, shouting his commands with both words and a flurry of hand gestures.
Jean-Pierre had no idea what was happening and certainly had even less knowledge that he would never be seen on the air again.
The in-house producer ran out of the studio and into the control room.
Once in the control room, he shouted, “Go live to Notre Dame, in five, four, three—” He didn’t say two or one. All in the room knew the drill and silently counted down. Where the word “go” should have been was only a hand gesture.
Broadcast to all of France and soon to be picked up by the station’s affiliates in most places around the world was the tanned and perfectly sculpted, patrician face of a handsome Philippe Montreau. A wisp of his thick black hair fell seductively over his left eye as he began to speak. Philippe’s numbers—as his boss called them—were climbing, especially with the female audience. He let the errant hair stay where it was; it was a purposeful tactic.
Women wanted to be with him.
Men wanted to be him.
Good boy, thought the producer in the control room.
Philippe was still breathing a bit hard from the run he and his cameraman had just completed from one side of the Seine River to the other. Now atop the Pont Neuf, Philippe gave a knowing glance at the cameraman who nodded that they were ready to begin his broadcast.
They were live; Philippe began: “For the previous two days, I have been fixed to the grounds, or what was left of them, of Notre Dame. For two days, the only life that could be witnessed over the cracked stone and destroyed marble belonged to officials and to the stonefaced rescue workers. Their mission long ago had converted from one of search and rescue to one of search and recover. There were no survivors found during those horrible first long days and nights. Onward, the men and women have worked. They have toiled through the day and all through the dark of night, asking for nothing. They have not stopped. They have not surrendered. Never did they give up on their task. Their gruesome mission has been to recover every human life lost under this rubble. Under the rock and dust are the remains of friends, family, and loved ones—”
Philippe paused and slowly inhaled; this, too, was for effect. He lowered his gaze at the camera and continued without knowing if what he would say was entirely true, “Not one man or woman has left this site; each has worked tirelessly and selflessly in order to recover and identify every victim. They all knew that the world watched; that it was their duty to bring closure to every waiting family member and friend who has lost someone in the tragedy. It was the only thing that has continued to drive them forward in their sombe
r task—”
By now, the other news organizations had picked up that something big was happening and scrambled to catch up, but it was too late. Philippe had seen it first; the story was his.
“Today, that somber work is being rewarded—a survivor, a survivor has been found! Almost impossible to believe, when the half-ton Emmanuelle Bell came crashing to the earth from the height of the south tower, one lone person was fortune to be underneath it! In a twist of miraculous fate, the bell encapsulated the survivor, saving one soul from the fate met by the thousands of Notre Dame’s victims. We are paying witness to a miracle!”
In the studio, a collective gasp resonated in the control room.
Jean-Pierre Fabrice slumped in his chair. The cameras were no longer on and pointed at him. As much as he wanted to celebrate this one life, he couldn’t. He knew that he had been overtrumped by the younger, better-looking, and just damn lucky Philippe Montreau. He could almost hear the producer dialing his boss and recommending Philippe for the role of anchor.
By now all of the cameras of the different news organizations had zoomed in on the location where the south tower once stood with the organizations’ respective journalists frenetically playing catch-up.
In the distance, a frenzy of seemingly uncoordinated movement blurred the many bodies of the policemen and rescue workers into one homogenous blur.
The reporters struggled to understand what they saw. Philippe took a chance; they don’t come often in this business, and he took it without question. Yanking his cameraman and partner of four years, he ran toward the collection of rescue workers while shouting for his partner to keep the camera focused on the scene.
It was more luck than skill. Philippe didn’t have a knack for getting a story; hired only for his good looks and ability to speak well and eloquently, he was merely in the right place at the right time. As Philippe’s cameraman zoomed in and peered through the optical lens, the entire world had tuned in and was now watching live—seeing what he was seeing.