“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 the 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?”