“Did you,” another voice asked, “know about the dark prison on Pier 37?”
“In the final analysis, the responsibility for protecting the people of this city rests with me. I gave Commissioner Carbone the task of protecting the city as she in her experienced professional judgment saw fit to do.”
“What did you know,” the same voice asked, “about Pier 37 and when did you know it?”
“I knew there were secure facilities established all through the five boroughs of New York City, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, that were designed by the commissioner to give her and her force of almost 40,000 officers the ability to deal with the dangerous unpredictabilities of the world in which we all live. As I now understand it, Pier 37, an abandoned warehouse on the East River waterfront from the era of the classic On the Waterfront film, was reconfigured to serve emergency purposes. I have never set foot on Pier 37. If it was reconfigured by the commissioner, she did that under the general mandate I gave her. She, in other words, had my complete approval.”
“What about the secret arrests and torture reported on the Gandhi blog?”
“I’m assured there were no secret arrests. Everyone-and there are hundreds of people-who has been arrested has undergone the usual processing even in these extraordinary times and either has been or will be brought before a judge for arraignment. Those judges will, as always, ask for pleas of guilty or not guilty and will apply the usual standards that apply to bail decisions on whether to let an accused go free to await trial or to detain him or her. The issue for the judge at that stage always is twofold: Is the person a danger to the community? Is that person a risk of flight? If he or she is one or the other, he or she will be detained. And all of this is a matter of public record.”
“What about torture?”
Just as Gina had instructed him, Roland answered, “There has been no torture. Certainly there has been questioning of detained people. And some leads have proven useful. They were voluntarily given, not forced.”
And then another voice: “We understand just now that the FBI has arrested Antonio Garafalo, a close friend of the commissioner, for the murder of Raj Gandhi, an investigative reporter for the New York Times.”
Roland Fortune was a consummate actor. He made believe the question hadn’t been asked and he made other people believe the same thing. “Even as we speak, delivery trucks containing all the myriads of essential products on which the people of Manhattan rely-food, water, flowers, and, yes, even beer-are arrayed in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and have been cleared for entry into Manhattan. Our stores will soon be replenished. The pulse of this vibrant city will soon return to normal. Any threats will be stifled. The only changes Manhattanites will see that will make the city different from the tranquil world of four days ago will be the welcome presence on every street corner of soldiers, police, and military equipment.”
Roland raised his left arm, an embracing gesture. “Manhattan will soon be what it always has been. The streets will be alive with all of our vibrant residents. The subways will reverberate under us, like the flow of blood through healthy, vigorous bodies. Tourists from every nation will fill our streets. Yes, we will have all the noise, the excitement, and all the quiet places of refuge, the museums, the parks, the book stores, the irreplaceable diners, that provide the texture of this greatest of all cities.”
As had so often happened in his flawless and charmed career, Roland Fortune smiled at the reporters gathered in front of him, a motley group of some well-dressed men and women who could have passed for bankers to scruffy people who seemed to have been transported in time from Berkeley in 1968, and said, “Thank you all for coming. Relax, resume your lives.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE PRIVATE CORPORATE jet seated just twelve passengers. The aircraft bore no external markings or seals except for the name of the manufacturer Bombardier, the Canadian company selected by the Secret Service for the rapidly assembled flight on the theory that its most important passenger would fly only on a North American-constructed corporate jet. There was not a single symbol of American power or prestige or presence on the jet’s gleaming surfaces.
President Andrew Carter, as he glanced from the window, was struck again by how the New Jersey Meadowlands, whether he saw them from the ground or the air, were one of the most desolate areas in America. As the jet gradually slowed for its descent into the small Teterboro airport in northern New Jersey, it was less than two thousand feet above the expanse of Meadowlands that always made him think of the title to the Eliot poem The Waste Land. Still-polluted rivers and streams ran through the reeds. There were ragged open areas where car and truck dumps were fully exposed, rusting. Unadorned and anonymous warehouses whose flat roofs were at least two acres large were scattered among the reeds and filthy swamplands. Even the new professional football and basketball stadiums, fed by long ribbons of new highways, looked from above like Lego toys, a failed effort to create a Disneyland in a wasteland.
As the jet banked just slightly, that most spectacular of all man-made views in the world came suddenly into sight: the island of Manhattan. Carter scanned the city skyline beginning at lower Manhattan. The new World Trade Center tower, a triangular, multi-sided building that glinted like a sword and was topped by an immense antenna, dominated the downtown collection of tall office buildings. Then, slightly farther to the north, the skyline gradually declined in the older areas of Tribeca, Soho, and the West Village.
The president and the passengers on his side of the jet all stared at the familiar, always magical sight: the Empire State Building, still stunning and sleek; the Chrysler Building whose top resembled frozen lava; and the triangular heights of the modern green-tinted Citibank Building. For the first time Andrew Carter saw the new slender apartment building that rose like a needle more than ninety stories above 57th Street. It was black, so tall and thin that it was eerie.
When the jet made its final adjustment for the landing at Teterboro, the Manhattan skyline slid out of view, like a magical illusion. The president settled into his oversize seat and strapped and snapped on his seat belt. To his right was Roger Fitton, the secretary of defense whom Carter had privately decided to fire just a week before the assault on Manhattan. On the president’s left, in full formal military clothing, was dour, determined General Malcolm Foster, that scrawny native of West Virginia the president completely trusted even though the two men couldn’t have been more different. Carter was naturally eloquent; Malcolm Foster spoke only when he had a fact to convey. Secret Service agents sat silently in the rows of seats behind and in front of the president of the United States.
The perfectly engineered Bombardier was as quiet as a glider plane when it was two miles from Teterboro. Suddenly Roger Fitton, who had taken a three-minute call on his cell phone, said, “Mr. President, your favorite mayor just finished a press conference.”
Carter smiled. “He’s the only man in the world who loves those cameras more than I do.” He lapsed into silence. “So tell me what he said about Gina Carbone’s resignation?”