“Coincidence? We could have helped you sort that out if we’d been consulted.”
“I’m not buying into that version of the story, Andrew. We acted because these men, whoever they were and wherever they came from, were an unacceptable danger. And a danger in my city, not yours.”
There was a twenty-second suspension of the conference. Roland was determined not to speak the next words. Andrew Carter did. “You don’t have a rosy outcome here.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. President, I’m responsible for the outcome, not you, and certainly not Mr. Lazarus. What was it that JFK said? Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
“What is it that you plan to do?”
“In forty-five minutes I’m holding a press conference to tell the world what we know.”
“Don’t you think you have to be careful?”
“Is there anything I’ve done that has not been careful, Andrew?”
Lazarus’ voice rose up. “Isn’t that what we’ve been discussing here. The absence of carefulness.” It was not a question.
“Andrew, my primary obligation is to the people of this city. And what that means today, in this moment, is to keep them safe. And to do that I can only use the resources Commissioner Carbone has.”
“And we’ve done everything we can to help you with that. We’ve activated an Army reserve division which I’m told is already in Manhattan.”
“And guess what? Hundreds of them are gathered around Times Square, attracted by the bright lights, big city. We have zero information that there’s any threat in Times Square. Do you?”
Another pause, this one filled by an old-fashioned audio screech like the sudden roar of a 1960s loudspeaker system.
“Your press conference is problematic, Roland. What will you say about the role of Homeland Security?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t describe this as a joint operation. I will thank Homeland Security for its continued assistance and cooperation.”
“I want one or two of our people to be there standing behind you.”
“Not Lazarus.”
“The judge has no intention of being there.”
“Now that’s cooperation I can genuinely appreciate.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
RAJ GANDHI, WHO had just spent several years in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, had what he called on-the-job-training in the petty corruption, greed, arrogance, and blind egotism of politicians. When he started as a journalist fresh out of graduate school a decade earlier, he had Plato’s idealized view of politicians as men who exercised their creative powers for the common good. But what he had seen on a daily basis during nine years overseas were powerful elected and unelected men who lied, diverted immense amounts of money to themselves and their families and clans, and never hesitated to order murders. They weren’t statesmen. They were harlots who made no effort to conceal what they were doing.
When he returned to New York, he made a deliberate decision to give politicians in the United States the benefit of the doubt. He saw his role as a journalist in an old-fashioned way, and for him objectivity was an important goal. But nothing he had seen during the months he’d already spent in New York justified the giving of the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to resist the pull of gravity in the direction of viewing local politicians as New York versions of the ruling men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, but it was difficult not to see the men and women who were city council members and their staffs, local New York state assemblymen, and borough presidents as mirror images of the men in the clans that surrounded the presidents in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet, Roland Fortune had consistently impressed him. Raj had attended only two of his press conferences, and each time the mayor was relaxed, responding to the questions he was asked instead of delivering a speech about the issues he wanted to discuss, and he was respectful. And often funny in the understated way Raj, never a backslapper, preferred. The only thing about Roland Fortune that had aroused Raj Gandhi’s critical instincts was that when the mayor called on him at a press conference he used Raj’s first name. Roland had taken the time to know the new faces in the press corps at City Hall, obviously for the purpose of stroking their egos. Raj decided not to let his ego be stroked or to hold this against Roland Fortune.
Raj Gandhi was one of six Times reporters who watched the elevated television screen in the newsroom as Roland Fortune made a statement and then answered questions at the press conference about the battle at the George Washington Carver projects. His delivery was deliberate, sober, informative, even modest. He described the murdered police as antiterrorism officers and never once used the constantly repeated word hero. As the anonymous caller had said, since 9/11, every fireman was a hero, every cancer survivor was a hero, all soldiers were heroes, every first responder was a saint. Strangely the weird caller in the mocking way he spoke had confirmed what Raj had privately thought for a long time. Raj cringed at the use of the word hero, and admired Roland Fortune for not invoking it.
He listened as the mayor lucidly and calmly said as the conference was coming to an end, “The simple truth is that we do not yet precisely know who is responsible for these despicable acts against the people of New York, indeed, against the entire country. There could be more than one group. Or there could be elements of one centrally controlled group. And we don’t know whether the men who are doing these things are Muslim, anarchists, fringe right-wingers or far-out leftists. And I will not speculate.”
An unseen reporter said, “There are rumors that the slain men in the apartment were all dark skinned.”
“I don’t want to comment on that. Their skin color won’t tell us who they were, what organization they had, or whose orders they were carrying out. Certainly I authorized the action that was taken because I had crystal-clear evidence that a group of six to ten men had seized control of a floor in a public housing project. That they were heavily armed. That the floor might have been only a staging area from which they would soon disperse and mount other operations. That we had one last clear chance to stop them. That they refused to negotiate. That they may have had one or more hostages.”
“Who made the decision to go in?”
“I did, with the assistance of Commissioner Carbone.”
“Aren’t you concerned that they are all dead?”
“It was not our objective to kill any one or all of them. It was our objective to stop them. But this was combat in very close spaces. Our team’s highest priority once they were engaged was to protect themselves. I’ve never been in combat, nor have any of you. I won’t second-guess any of our people. All or almost all of them were infantry veterans of multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. They sustained terrible losses within seconds. Obviously they had to do whatever they thought was necessary to avoid more losses.”
Then a voice behind Roland Fortune, the voice of the Brooklyn-accented Irv Rothstein, firmly intoned, “That’s what we have for now, ladies and gentlemen.”
And Roland Fortune, cool, formidable, and extraordinarily handsome, turned away from the podium, and like an actor at the end of a scene, slipped through a door behind the stage.
Raj Gandhi’s cell phone vibrated in the left pocket of his pants. He had several seconds of trouble extracting it. When he finally had the phone in his hand, he touched the icon that resembled a telephone receiver.