The next sharp voice, this one from the rear of the crowd: “Mayor, Manhattan has been locked down for more than thirty hours. When do you plan to end the lockdown?”
“The easy answer,” Roland said, “is when the conditions warrant it. But the real answer is that the end of the lockdown is in sight. It was never intended that the lockdown be open-ended. Its purpose was to contain and confine. It may have outlasted its purpose. That’s under evaluation.”
A voice with a strident, skeptical tone sounded through the others, distinctly audible to Roland, everyone else in the room, and the audience around the world: “There are reports of confrontation and nasty words between members of your police department and Army soldiers attached to the 101st Airborne Division on the bridge.”
Roland said, “We have no such reports. The coordination among federal, state, and city agencies has been remarkable.”
Another voice, a baritone, recognizable as one of NPR’s radio broadcasters but impossible for Roland to name because of the anonymity of radio: “Do you have a timetable for President Carter’s arrival?”
“Certainly the president is the best source of that information. I don’t have it. I can tell you that he is in touch with me continuously. Everything I do, everything we do, is with his knowledge and approval and with the coordination and support of the exceptional professionals who serve him.”
“There are reliable reports,” the NPR reporter said, “that the president’s security people view Manhattan now as a city in chaos and under siege, a kind of Baghdad or Kabul on the Hudson, and that the reason the president is not here rests on profound concerns about his safety.”
“Again I believe it’s crucial not to exaggerate. New York is not Kabul or Baghdad or Damascus. There are not terrorist armies on the outskirts about to invade. There have been terrible events committed by cadres of sick people. Those people are now, through the heroic efforts of Commissioner Carbone, either dead or captured or in disarray.”
The same voice continued, “But what about the president’s arrival? What do you expect if he arrives?”
“Commissioner Carbone, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and the other top-notch federal agencies involved with us, can protect the president.”
“When is he arriving?”
Gina leaned toward the microphone: “For security reasons, we can’t make a comment on that.”
And then slender, soft-spoken Raj Gandhi spoke up. “Who is Silas Nasar?”
“We have no idea who that is,” Gina Carbone answered.
“Where is he? Is he in detention?” Raj asked.
“That, too,” Gina said, “is not something we can answer. It’s difficult to detain a person we don’t know.”
In reality, Gina Carbone wanted to find some way to confine, silence, or eliminate Raj Gandhi. None of that, she knew, was easy to do to a reporter for the New York Times.
Irv Rothstein then stepped directly in front of the microphone. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is all the time we have for now. Thank you for your attention.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RAJ GANDHI MET Gabriel Hauser on the stone bench at the front of the Church of the Heavenly Rest at the corner of 90th Street and Fifth Avenue. Directly across the avenue, at the Engineers’ Gate to Central Park, dozens of runners moved north and south on the internal roadway that encircled the park for six miles. Bicyclists on five-thousand-dollar sleek machines and wearing colorful skintight clothes raced by. Just beyond the runners and bikers the leaves of an immense ancient tree shimmered in the clear light. And the acres of water in the reservoir glowed so much that the air above it seemed to have an incandescent brightness. A cluster of three fountains embedded in the reservoir sprayed tall columns of white water above the reservoir’s surface, just as they did on normal days.
Raj removed his iPhone from the rumpled seersucker jacket he always wore. “Dr. Hauser, are you sure I can record this?”
“I said so twice, haven’t I?”
Raj pressed the icon that converted the miraculous object to a voice and video recorder. “Let me start,” Raj said, “by telling you that I believe Silas Nasar was one of the masterminds, one of the key planners, of these attacks.”
Gabriel gave Raj a charming smile, saying something that Raj had never heard from anyone who had given him permission to record an interview. Reaching into the pocket of his well-tailored slacks, Gabriel brought out his own iPhone and held it aloft alongside Raj’s identical iPhone. “Not that I don’t trust you,” Gabriel said, still smiling. “But I’ve read about the famous eighteen-minute gap in the Nixon Watergate tapes.”
Although surprised, Raj remained impassive.
Gabriel started, “Not Silas Nasar. His real name is Hakim Khomani.”
“How do you know that?”
“I had a close friend in Afghanistan. When I left the country, we continued to e-mail one another. He was, and I hope still is, a friend.”
“Who is he?”
“A nurse. He worked with me at the central hospital in Kabul. I was hustled out of Kabul quickly. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. I did have his e-mail address. Caregiver7@aol.com.”
Gabriel, a man who was trained to observe people as a whole person so that he could detect and diagnose conditions such as fear, deceit, illness, or comfort that other people might not see, for the first time looked at Raj Gandhi as he might look at a patient. Raj had slightly jaundiced eyes, thin hair, fingernails that were almost transparent, cheeks that were in the early stages of waste. He was either an incipient diabetic or a man who didn’t yet know he was HIV-positive. He was also, Gabriel saw, shy and sincere. Reliable, a truth teller. And doomed.
“How do you know Khomani?”
“My friend in Afghanistan-we were lovers, Mr. Gandhi, as well as friends-told me he had relatives in the U.S. who had been able to come here during the Russian invasion in the ’80s. Khomani, my friend’s cousin, had a degree from MIT in electrical engineering. So when that war was under way, and Khomani told the American embassy he wanted to come here, he had easy access. Clans, blood relationships, those kinds of ties are important among Afghans. The cousins stayed in touch. First by phone, expensive land lines at the time, by letters, and then by e-mails and text messages. They were both science types, well-educated, interested in technology, very early users of the Internet.”
The simple marble bench in front of the elegant church, which was like a cathedral on a small scale and one of the most beautiful buildings on the Upper East Side, was a popular resting place for people who had finished long runs in Central Park and for tourists to sit. Raj and Gabriel stopped speaking when a young woman runner, sweating, wearing a baseball cap from the back of which her braided blond hair extended to her shoulders, sat on the bench next to them. She took a slender cell phone from a pouch on her waistband. “Chumley’s,” they overheard her say, “just reopened. Let me shower and change. See you there in two hours.”
Gabriel knew Chumley’s was a bar on Second Avenue at 80th Street. When she said, “Ciao,” Gabriel for the first time smiled at Raj Gandhi. When she stood up, moving effortlessly, she said to them, “Have a nice day.” And on her perfect legs she began running east on 90th Street.
Gabriel, noticing that Raj had not looked at this exquisitely built young woman, said, “Life goes on.” Raj smiled. Gabriel had never met a gay Indian.
“Did you,” Raj asked, “meet Silas Nasar? Or Khomani?”
“I didn’t, but I planned to.”
“Why?”