ASSASSINS

by Mike Bond

  She grabbed his hand, nibbled his lip, flicked her tongue at his. “The kids’ll be up in a moment –”

  “Honey it’s been so long –”

  “Don’t be silly... We have years and years to do it.”

  He glanced up. “Look at this sky! A magnificent day!”

  She laughed. “You nut!”

  He crossed to the edge of the terrace and looked down into Christopher Street, the people and cars small and busy below. As always his gut recoiled at the height, his mind imagining the fall, the scrabbling at brick, the awful smash of concrete. But if he hated heights why did he live in a penthouse and work atop an office tower?

  He went inside to the head of the stairs, called “Leo!”, grabbed a battered Wilson football from his bedside table. “Leo!”

  Leo clattered down the stairs, running shoes untied, eighteen, long-haired, unshaven. “Relax, will you?”

  “Don’t be too long,” Sophie called. “I want to leave by eight.”

  He went back and kissed her, carried away by the sweet taste of her lips and their solid feel on his. “You have to help me, Doctor... my little guy may not make it till tonight.”

  She glanced past his shoulder: Leo had gone. She slipped a hand down and squeezed him gently. “Getting to be such a big boy already. But I think he’ll be fine...”

  The ache for her kept rising inside him. “Let’s go back to bed, for just a minute...”

  “I want to too, Darling, but there isn’t time –”

  She was right, but still... Passion was supposed to cool after years together, wasn’t it? But theirs never had, not from the first days in Paris, nor had his loving her diminished since the first time he’d looked up from the bloody hospital bed in Kabul into her green eyes – she’d been the angel of desire to him then, and still was... In how many ways had she saved his life? He kissed her again, not wanting to stop. “We’ll make up for it tonight.”

  He and Leo jogged west on Christopher Street past Greenwich then downtown. Leo pushed ahead then slowed for him as they broke west toward the River then south on the jogging path along the highway, flipping the football back and forth. “I told Mrs. Gravitch I wouldn’t be in today,” Leo called, “that I’d give her my report Monday.”

  “You tell her why...” Jack panted, already winded, “you aren’t going... field trip?”

  “I said we go to France every summer so why do I need to see the Cloisters again?” Leo chattered on about how silly to dismantle abbeys in Europe only to rebuild them on the Hudson, and do you suppose the surf will be up at Fire Island this afternoon so he could use the boogie board, and after a while Jack just listened as they jogged, too winded to talk.

  At Battery Park they took turns running and passing, Leo gunning them fast and flat, Jack lobbing them, favoring his bad shoulder. Leo yanked one down and trotted back to him.

  Jack pump-faked. “Go deep!”

  “What is this?” Leo reached for the ball. “You go deep.”

  He smiled at this tough gentle kid he loved so much. “I’m not the one who wants to make wide receiver at the Point! You go deep!”

  They turned uptown, the World Trade Center on their right. Jack counted down 12 floors from the top of the North Tower to his office, imagined the sun pouring in, the computers humming sleepily and waiting for his people to bring them to life.

  When they got home Sarah was eating Raisin Bran with sliced banana, watching the Today Show and listening to K-ROCK. “Television rots your brain,” Jack said.

  “Daddy stop fussing,” she said through a spoonful. “It’s current events – we’re ‘sposed to know what’s happening in the world.”

  “And that music! All they think they need any more is a tattoo and a guitar.”

  “Don’t say ‘any more’, Daddy. It dates you.”

  Sweetheart, I am dated... First date I ever had with your mother, time stood still...”

  “No more puns. You promised –”

  He made another espresso and sat beside her. “Yuck,” she said. “You should take a shower.”

  “You don’t have current events today. You’re coming with Mother and me to the office so she can take you to the dentist at eleven. Then we’re going to Fire Island.”

  “I won’t wear braces. I’d rather have buck teeth. You have buck teeth, Daddy, sort of.”

  “I do not!”

  “– and you never wore braces. Mommy has little teeth and mine are going to be like hers.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re both girls, silly.”

  Sophie came in fluffing her shower-damp hair out, still in the white terrycloth. “Someone called from the Saudi Oil Ministry while you were gone. Wants you to meet some deputy minister, first thing, at the Plaza. Name’s by the phone.”

  “What the Hell for? You tell him I was busy?”

  “The secretary said it was very important –”

  “Whose secretary?”

  “Dammit go look on my note!”

  “Mother!” Sarah pointed at them. “Stop arguing! You too, Daddy.”

  7:22 on the kitchen clock. “Nearly three-thirty in the afternoon in Riyadh.” Jack chuckled. “Someone’s working late.”

  Karim al-Saleh, the note said. Plaza 9:00. “Who is this guy?”

  “He wants to meet you before the markets open.” Sophie snapped off the television.

  “Mother!” Sarah protested.

  “You know the Ministry,” Sophie said, ignoring her. “All nephews of some sheik or other. With his four wives and twenty concubines taking up God knows how many rooms at the Plaza he’s got to pretend to be doing something.”

  “No, he’s got some deal going on the side, sold some crude short, wants to burn it in the market. I’m not going.”

  “Jack!” Sophie slapped the orange juice pitcher on the table. “This is what you do, remember? You deal with these assholes.”

  “They’re not assholes,” he grinned. “They’re President Bush’s close friends.”

  “I’m leaving.” Sarah got up. “You two are insupportable.”

  Sophie giggled. Jack grabbed Sarah, tickling her ribs. “That’s French, not English, sweetheart.” He looked at Sophie over Sarah’s head. “So I see this Saudi for half an hour... If he’s Feisal’s guy what can it hurt? Then I meet you three at the office –”

  “Can I go with you, Daddy?” Sarah wriggled free, arms round his neck. “I won’t go to the orthodontist. Daddy please?”

  For an instant he wavered. Just her presence in the taxi uptown would be a joy. How she saw so much he never did or had forgotten how to see. How she inhaled life. But bringing her to the Plaza made no sense, and to an Arab would be an offense. “You go with Mother, darling.”

  With a dissatisfied, alien feeling he showered and dressed, a plain blue shirt, a hand-tailored Paris pinstripe rather than the regular bespoke suits from London, a crimson tie – red is the color of aggression, and with the Saudis it was always good to be subtly incursive.

  He should relax; life wasn’t always war... And he wasn’t who he’d been; the world was safe now. And to have this lovely family – so much happiness – how had he deserved it?

  SOPHIE rinsed off the bowls and put them in the dishwasher. “Brush your teeth good,” she called to Sarah who stalked off tossing her hair. The dishwasher wasn’t full but Sophie ran it anyway, thinking we won’t be here tonight.

  How lovely having a weekday in Fire Island, nobody there, to sit on the porch and watch the surf roll in. At night in bed, Jack close as her own skin. Another month and it’d be too cold at night to leave the windows open and you’d barely hear the ocean any more.

  She ran the hair dryer one last time, angry at the few gray strands in the brush. Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. Her father in his white sweater vest, his white moustache, in his rocker on the porch in Normandy. “You’ve got a wonderful husband, Sophie. You’ve got Leo and Sarah. And think of all the lives you’ve saved. Of what you’ve a
lready done with your life. It’s time to make peace with what you’ve got.”

  “IT’S STUPID getting braces,” Sarah said over the roar of the incoming subway. “My teeth aren’t even grown up yet. Who knows what they’ll be like?”

  “What a mutant,” Leo said. “I didn’t have to have braces.”

  Sophie dug three tokens from her purse. Never enough time, she thought. You think you’re catching up but more new things keep cascading down.

  The subway clatter drowned Sarah’s retort. Downtown Investment Bubbles, yelled a headline of the Post in a man’s hands. Data Processors – Double Your Income! an ad on the side of the subway car promised.

  The North Tower elevator was packed; she had to squeeze the kids in beside her. “It was great food,” a woman was saying, “but the place was so loud.”

  “My boss just had a baby,” a man said. “Today’s her first day back.”

  The elevator raced up the shaft. Everyone fell silent. A bell bonged and the top floor numbers lit. When it slowed Sophie felt lightheaded. She thought of the long dark hole dropping back down. That’s silly, she reminded herself. It’s safe.

  Eight-thirty and already the office was full. Jack has such good people. “You want to stay out here with Patrick?” she said to the kids, “or come in Dad’s office?”

  “I’m going to work on Daddy’s computer,” Sarah said.

  Leo sprawled on the office couch poking his Game Boy. Sophie sat at Jack’s desk, glanced away from the papers stacked across it. Strange how this paper had made its way high up inside this tower, paper with the power to make or lose money, that could change lives.

  “What’s ‘adolescence’?” Sarah held out printed pages. “I got this off the internet.”

  It was a monograph from the Harvard School of Dentistry, Jaw Patterns Not Set Till Early Adolescence. “Much early retainer work may not be necessary,” it said.

  “Do braces give you headaches?” Sarah held up Maxillary Anomalies Resulting from Inappropriate Orthodontic Procedures. “Jaw and headache pain, as well as bite abnormalities,” said a boldface box, “may be due to premature or invalid installations.”

  “I’m printing out nine others!” she added.

  Sophie laughed, leaning back in the chair. “Darling don’t ever become a lawyer.”

  “Okay, Mom – you give up?”

  Sophie sighed. “I’ll call Dr. Schwarz’s office and cancel. Till your Dad and I can –”

  “That plane! What’s it doing?”

  A jetliner too low. Coming between the buildings. Curving on one wing coming crazily closer and closer then hit with a brain-crushing roar and the building exploded knocking her down in shuddering raging fire and smoke. She couldn’t find Leo, tried to stop Sarah’s screaming then realized it was her own, dragged her from the caverned floor, people and desks and chunks of concrete tumbling into flames. “Leo!”

  The ceiling kept falling. Sophie couldn’t see or breathe the boiling black smoke and flaming kerosene, couldn’t hear through screaming metal. Hair on fire she crawled with Sarah to where the window had been, air howling in, then the backwash almost blew them out. “Leo!”

  Sarah pointed at the hole. Her skirt caught fire; Sophie rolled on it and it stuck to her, flaming. They stumbled through a shattered wall, the air unbreathable, staggered tripping over cords and cables, chairs, a body, bookcases, piles of paper, feeling for the door. It was shut but the wall was half-gone and they squeezed into the corridor. A woman grabbed them yelling “This way!” and shoved them along the corridor to stairs where flames seethed up.

  “Stay here!” Sophie ran back into the office. “Leo!” With a screech of metal the ceiling thundered down into the floors below. She ran back to the stairwell and grabbed Sarah, holding her breath against the blazing air.

  These steps coiled down into hellish fire. Sophie fell and Sarah landed on her, got up and kept going down. “Go, Mom, hurry!”

  Stair by stair Sophie felt the way, tripping on rubble and smoldering bodies. The stairs below crumbled into flames. They ran up three flights, felt blindly along the corridor through blazing smoke to the next stairwell but it was burning. The next stairwell and corner of the building were gone, nothing beneath it. Sophie saw blue sky and far below the tops of skyscrapers.

  The building shuddered. People were caught along an edge with no floor behind them. A man caught fire and jumped. She found the fourth stairwell and they ran down it past corpses and rubble and blazing debris, the melting concrete slippery. It was hard to go down against the tornado of fiery wind howling up the stairs. Her wrist hurt terribly and she realized it was broken. Ninety floors to go.

  The building yawed, tipping. Eighty more floors. “Hurry!” Sarah yelled.

  Voices came from below. “Go back up!” A husky man, face and hair burnt. “Stairs gone,” he gasped. “Go up!”

  “There’s nothing up there!”

  “The roof! Helicopters!” They ran up through the searing air that would not let them breathe. Sarah fell; the man grabbed her and they ran higher, over burning bodies and rubble.

  He fell across the stairs. Sophie tried to pull him up. He pushed her away. She grabbed Sarah and kept climbing, the fire screeching like a hurricane.

  Daylight now above the smoke. Ten more to go. Nine. A helicopter, that sound? The last stairs, the shattered door, people crying, calling. “Once they get the fire out,” a man said, “we can go down.”

  “We made it,” Sarah wailed. “Oh God Leo.”

  Terror of falling off the edge, the building swaying. The roof of people waiting, kneeling praying begging watching. Talking on cell phones, weeping, holding each other. A man alone by the edge looking out over the city.

  “Where’s the helicopters?” Sophie asked a woman with broken glasses.

  “Not yet,” the woman coughed.

  “We’re safe now Mom,” Sarah begged, “aren’t we?”

  The building yawed. Through seething heat the gray-blue horizon danced, the perfect blue sky, the glistening city far below.

  Helicopters please save us.

  THERE WAS NO ONE at the Plaza named Karim al-Saleh. “He must be here,” Jack said to the desk clerk. “He just called me. I mean his secretary did.”

  The clerk made a show of glancing down the computer screen. “Look under A,” Jack said. He felt nervous, edgy, tried to hide it. “Or under S.”

  From the Plaza’s front steps he called the Pierre and the Waldorf Towers, annoyed at Sophie because maybe the secretary in Riyadh had said another hotel. But Sophie never got things wrong. And no, there was no one staying at either hotel under that name.

  In the Koran, he remembered, Saleh was the messenger God sent the infidels, telling them to believe. And when they did not God brought down upon them a great catastrophe. His Nokia buzzed: Sophie. “This guy’s not here –” he started to say crossly.

  “A plane hit us!” she screamed, “everything’s on fire, I’m on the roof with Sarah –”

  The phone died.

  HE RACED DOWNTOWN in a taxi, kept calling Sophie but there was no signal. Flashing police cars blocked Broadway. “Drive on the sidewalk!” he yelled at the driver but it was jammed with screaming people so he leaped out and ran through them, gasping and choking, falling and running, torn and bleeding, in the wail of fire engines, scream of sirens and crash of the flames so high above, pieces of building thundering down, a dead man, necktie over his shoulder, two firemen holding up another, a running woman smashed by a chunk of wall, a police car howling through rubble past a blazing fire engine, firemen and cops running towards the Towers, bodies flattened in pools of blood.

  The ground shook, tilted. From above came a gnashing of concrete and steel, wailing wind and fire and the day turned black. Someone shoved him down concrete stairs. The earth thundered, smashed him sideways into a wall, knocked him the other way off the stairs onto a concrete floor.

  Choking, deafened, blinded, his arm broken, Jack scrambled over mounds of
concrete and twisted steel into what had been a street. White debris hissed down like snow.

  A mountain of roaring darkness where the tower had been. People staggered through blazing streets past crushed fire engines and burning cars.

  A room of voices crying and screaming and yelling orders. He could not breathe, went outside, couldn’t breathe.

  He circled the rubble past half-blinded weeping stragglers, medics and cops. “Sophie!” he screamed, “Sarah! Leo!” till his burnt voice was a hiss. He saw Sophie lying in the street half-crushed under a concrete slab but it was another woman with bulging eyes.

  He glimpsed them in the distance and ran but it was a blonde woman with a little boy over her shoulder. From a shattered store window he snatched cardboard but could not find a pen so rubbed at his torn arm and wrote their names in blood and carried the cardboard through the streets stopping everyone, but saw no one from his office, no one he knew.

  The Nokia still didn’t work. He grabbed a ride with an ambulance to West Houston Street and ran home but the apartment was empty. He left a note inside and another on the door saying he’d be back at four. He ran back downtown, pushing away helping hands, cops, crazy people with cameras. “No list yet,” a fireman said. Tears and sweat streaked the dirt down his face. “Lots of people got out. Keep looking.”

  Medics tried to take him. Cops warned him away but he kept going. Cameramen shoved him, strangers pushed microphones in his face and yelled questions.

  A cop grabbed his shirt. “You can’t go there.” She was tall and tough, covered with dirt and blood. A badge on her breast said Sharpshooter.

  “My family. I have to find them.”

  “Go to the rescue centers.”

  “They’re not there.”

  She looked behind her toward the smoking mountains. “Give it time.” She steered him back up the street and let him go. “Go home, maybe they’re there.”

  “You need help,” a doctor said. “Your arm’s broken. Your head’s bleeding badly.”

  A blonde woman grabbed him. “Do you know Bill Hinthorn?” She shook his broken arm. “Have you seen him?” She turned away, grabbed someone else.