This is when and how I die. Gabriel suddenly sensed a profound spirit of ease, as he listened to Mohammad’s familiar voice. It was a glorious summer day. A light breeze tinged with the scent of ocean water swept over the Hudson River. During his childhood and teenage years this powerful river had been part of his life, like the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s life. Gabriel had seen it every day from the slender and grimy window in the kitchen of his parents’ apartment. And during those wonderful years when he had loved Jerome Fletcher every room of that large apartment on Riverside Drive had views of this ancient, all-powerful river. Gabriel had learned the exuberance of running on the miles of the esplanade that bordered the Hudson. He knew its scents, its moods, the qualities of light on its surface. Now he was about to join its eternal flow and become a part of it.
“Now the Islamic State is here,” Gabriel vaguely, almost serenely, heard Mohammad say. “Allah is a God of love and a God of vengeance. We have just taken the life of the president of this evil nation. And we now take the life of this betrayer. Allah will do with him as Allah sees fit.”
All of this, Gabriel knew in the last seconds of his life, was being broadcast on YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, television, every device able to deliver sights and sounds as they happened around the globe. But they could not deliver his ecstatic inner sense that he was now part of the river, the flow of air, the scent of fish and the plants that had always thrived on the river’s life-giving waters.
As the fire engulfed him, he made no sound. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THEY STOOD IN the middle of the pastel-painted hallway. Each of the four Secret Service agents was in a corner, one as close to the oak door as possible to make sure it was secure and stayed that way.
Andrew Carter spoke first. “She’s a remarkable woman.”
“She has balls.”
“Apparently more than that, Roland. How else can you explain this Garafalo guy? He couldn’t have been interested in her balls.”
“It’s her personal life, Mr. President. I knew about her and him.”
“Did you tell her it didn’t show good judgment for the commissioner of the biggest police department in the world to be the playmate of a Gambino family member who’d served several years in a federal prison?”
“No, I didn’t. And she didn’t give me advice about my personal life.”
“Well,” Carter said, “the personal is now political. Lazarus has a great deal of power.”
“Is that so? He hasn’t done much to impress that on me in the last four days.”
“He has many friends in the courts and the justice department. There is already a grand jury investigating her, and Garafalo, and the tape that crazy doctor made, and the murder of a New York Times reporter. Who knows? I’m not a lawyer. She could be indicted and arrested in an hour. All Garafalo has to do is talk.”
“Mr. President, he went to jail for years because he wouldn’t talk.” Roland was so close to the president that he smelled the man’s rancid, fear-tinged breath. “Let me make it clear,” Roland continued, “I’m not firing her. And we have more important things to talk about. There are millions, probably billions, of people in the world who think you are dead. It was the explosion heard around the world. Whoever those people are-Boko Haram, ISIS, the evil spawn of Timothy McVeigh-billions of people saw on Twitter what was happening half an hour ago on First Avenue.”
“My people,” Carter answered, “are setting up a press conference right now, in the dining room. There will be a curtain hanging behind me, with American flags all over it. Roland, you should be flattered. I’m taking a cue from your stage acting when people thought you were dead at the Met. The only difference is that no one will know where my broadcast is coming from.” He stopped, as if deciding whether to say what was on his mind. Then he said, “I admired you, by the way, when you went to the Museum the day of the first explosions. It took courage. I admired that.”
“Or,” Roland answered, “it was just stupid. I didn’t imagine at the time that these attacks would continue.”
Carter’s expression changed, from near admiration to something more somber. “You had no authority to order the lifting of the lock-down. That’s my authority.”
“It is? Really, the silence from D.C. was stunning. You and Lazarus and that bizarre general talked a great deal. But nothing happened. You don’t know this city. Garbage piles up quickly here. Millions of people move around all the time. They’re not really obedient. There’s more and more chaos. I knew that. You didn’t. And you still don’t. A ride in a motorcade from the UN building along scenic First Avenue is not going to reveal much to you.”
“Roland, you knew about the plan for a lockdown almost from the day you became mayor. My sources told me you never once voiced an objection.”
“The people, including Lazarus, who briefed me about this always seemed to be living in a fantasy land. He was always with these anonymous, white, obsessed men and women from Tulsa, Oklahoma, or outlandish places like that. I listened and said nothing. They knew less about Manhattan than they know about Neptune.”
“Why didn’t you say that? Leaders ask questions, they probe, they ask, what if?”
“Are you telling me, Mr. President, what leaders do?”
“I’m telling you that this lockdown will continue until I decide it will end.”
Roland said, “We barely know each other. You learned how to play basketball at Stanford. I learned on a cracked tar court on 106th Street that had hoops but no nets. I learned that if some guy elbowed you, you elbowed him back. You learned that when gentlemen played every elbow throw was accidental and called for an apology. So what I know from what I learned as a kid is that in this city if this lockdown continues several hundred thousand people will start to move and overwhelm the tunnels and the bridges.”
“I’ve ordered General Foster to place Marines and Special Forces troops to take over all exits and entrances to Manhattan.”
“I can’t tell you how idiotic, dangerous, that is, Mr. President. You’re living in the world of Alice in Wonderland.”
At that moment a heavy hand, forceful and persistent, slammed against the closed door. One of the enormous agents pressed the earpiece more deeply into his ear. He listened intently. “Mr. President,” he finally said, “it’s Judge Lazarus. He says it’s essential that he see you.”
Without glancing at Roland Fortune, Carter said, “Unlock the door and let the scarecrow in.”
Lazarus carried an iPad. Without speaking, he held the iPad between the president and the mayor. On the screen was the image, as clear as a Hollywood production, of an Arabic-accented man speaking perfect English saying that ISIS had just exploded to infinity the president of the United States. And next on the screen was the stunning image of the extraordinarily handsome, troublesome Gabriel Hauser, in a wire cage, as he was immolated above the Hudson River.
Wordlessly, Carter watched the whole scene as transfixed as a teenager by a horror movie. With the scene unfolding, Roland first wondered if he too was watching a Hollywood movie scene. And then he dwelt on how Gabriel Hauser didn’t make a sound. As a teenager in high school studying modern American history, Roland had seen a film of saffron-dressed Buddhist monks on fire in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War. What had struck him most about the newsreels was that, in all-consuming flames, the monks, too, had never made a sound. Now, in this horrific image, Gabriel Hauser also was silent even as his body first became a torch entirely on fire and then diminished. It soon became a smaller and smaller mound of ash as the flames had less and less to consume.