“How the hell can I answer that?” It was almost a shout. And then, quieter, “It doesn’t make sense. None of it. You’ve got a man who flipped because somebody let his wife die.” Brown pointed at Patty. “She’s got a husband who did things he wasn’t supposed to do.”
Giddings said, “And there’s an electrical foreman and a building inspector who ought to be strung up by their”—he stopped and looked at Patty—“thumbs.”
“Some of my men,” Tim Brown said, “let things get by that they shouldn’t have.” He shook his head angrily.
“And,” Nat said, “some of us ought to have caught mistakes and worse while they were going on.” He was silent for a few moments. “One more thing.” he said, “maybe bigger than all the others put together.” His voice was solemn. “Just who in hell do we think we are, designing a building that size, that complicated, and that—vulnerable?”
It was then that the walkie-talkie came to life. “Roof to Trailer,” it said.
In the sudden silence, Nat picked it up. “Trailer here.” The chief’s voice said, “Something white is waving. You’d better get on the air. I have the breeches buoy and I’m holding it.”
Nat took a deep breath. “Here we go,” he said and reached for the phone.
33
Accounts vary; that of course is the norm. But in telling what happened there in the Tower Room, each survivor actually appears to have his own private version which holds him, if not heroic, at least blameless; and no amount of contradiction by others is even listened to. Perhaps that is the norm as well.
On one point there is agreement without warning, and by one of those freaks that were so much a part of this disastrous day, the air-conditioning ducts suddenly belched out quantities of hot acrid smoke. And that, like the pulling of a trigger, apparently set off the explosion.
This was the setting.
The transistor radio, tuned now to the city’s own station, played quiet music. The women were gone now, and there was no more dancing.
In a comer of the large room Rabbi Stein, Monsignor O’Toole, and the Reverend Arthur William Williams spoke quietly together. The subject of their discussion has not been disclosed.
In the loading area behind the table barricades, Harrison Paul, conductor of the city’s symphony orchestra, allowed himself to be hoisted into the breeches buoy and swung out through the window. He tried to keep his eyes closed, but the temptation to look was too great, and what he saw of the city beneath him from this terrifying and almost unsupported height made him violently sick. The storm music from the “Pastoral” Symphony thundered through his mind, he later recalled, as he clung desperately to the canvas bag, swaying and bouncing, positive that he was going to be killed. When at last he reached sanctuary, and the chief and Kronski together lifted him out of the breeches buoy, he dropped immediately to his knees to kiss the Trade Center roof.
He was the first man out, and for a time it appeared that he would also be the last.
The waiter with three kids was sitting on the floor now, still nursing his bottle of bourbon. The number of the crude lottery ticket in his pocket was ninety-nine. He had already decided that his chances of getting out safely were just about those of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through Hell. He did not particularly enjoy the bourbon, but he was determined that he was not going to panic; and he thought that maybe if he passed out, he wouldn’t mind so much what he was powerless to prevent.
The two firemen, two waiters, the fire commissioner, and the secretary general were behind the table barricades. One of the waiters testified later that the room was quiet; that you could feel tension building, particularly after the women were gone, but that everything seemed under control. “Until,” he added, “the stuff hit the fan.” There was surprise in his voice that it had been so.
Cary Wycoff was talking with a dozen men, only one of whom, another waiter, has been identified. His name was Bill Samuelson, and he had been at various times a longshoreman, a semi-pro football player, and a professional boxer of small accomplishment. No one else has ever chosen to admit being part of that group.
It was hot and getting hotter; on that point too there is agreement. The waiter from the barricaded area told it like this:
“It was funny. The wind coming in from the broken-out windows was cold and my hands were almost numb. But my feet were hot and the rest of me felt like, you know, like I was standing in a hot room in the gym, you know what I mean? Heat all around us, but still the cold wind, and that was what was so—funny, if you see what I mean.”
Ben Caldwell and the Soviet ambassador were talking together about the architecture of Moscow and the nostalgia that always struck the ambassador whenever he saw in this alien land of America a Zwiebelturm, the onion-shaped tower of Eastern European design.
Senator Peters was at the west bank of windows, quietly watching gulls over the river and the harbor. For him there was never-ending pleasure and release from tension in watching birds, and sometimes even heart-lifting surprises as well, as when his eye and he had quickly counted thirty-five great birds in flight, heading south, their black-tipped white wings slowly beating and their long legs trailing to identify them beyond a doubt as the single remaining flock of whooping cranes, probably off their normal migrating path in order to avoid a storm, but still heading with that mystical knowledge and compulsion about which so little is known straight for their Texas nesting grounds. Now, watching the herring gulls wheeling and probably shrieking as well, free as the air in which they flew, he wondered as he had wondered infinite times before why man in his evolution had chosen to remain earthbound.
The governor was still alone in the office with the dead telephone and his thoughts. He could hear faintly the music on his transistor radio, but other than that the big room outside was quiet. The governor’s thoughts were not.
Why had he not even tried to pull rank and place himself among the first of the men to ride the breeches buoy to safety? On the face of it, there was no answer that made any kind of logical sense. By now, or within a very few minutes, he could have been over on that Trade Center roof instead of sitting here at this stupid desk waiting—waiting for what? The answer to that was plain. He was waiting for the end to this tragic farce, but as a participant, not a spectator. How ridiculous could the situation be?
What thoughts a man allows himself in private! Ignoble, craven thoughts, sometimes lewd thoughts, dishonest thoughts, warped, even mad thoughts: all of the mental brew the devil’s cauldron can contain.
But they are only thoughts, and neither obsessive nor translated into action; and there is the difference between what men call sanity on the one hand and madness on the other.
So regardless of what he had done or not done through selfish use of power, he could wish that it had been otherwise. He told himself that he retained that privilege—and found that he was amused by his own hair-splitting. Amused, and not a little disgusted. He—
“So solemn, Bent.” Beth’s voice from the doorway. She stood quietly, a half-smile on her lips, awaiting his judgment.
The governor stared at her in wonder, gaping he thought. “Something happened to the breeches buoy?” Smiling still, she shook her head.
The governor raised his hands, and then dropped them. It was near disbelief that he felt, colored by joy and sorrow. “You didn’t go,” he said. He paused. “I couldn’t watch.”