Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

“DO YOU WANT to know, Mr. President, why you’re still alive?”

Andrew Carter arrived at Gracie Mansion exactly four minutes after the explosion. Within that time, dozens of armed men and women, some of them Army soldiers, some New York City police officers, some Secret Service agents, some in uniforms that were unrecognizable because they bore no insignias, had swarmed over the ordinarily peaceful streets of the neighborhood. Gracie Mansion had first been built in the 1800s, when most of Manhattan above 14^th Street was farmland. The mansion, originally a farmhouse, was a security nightmare. Its main entrance was less than thirty feet from the edge of East End Avenue. A tasteful brick wall and a tall wooden fence surrounded the mansion on all sides. No barbed wires, no electrified fences, no concrete barriers. The mansion was in effect part of Carl Schurz Park and of the quiet neighborhood.

Roland Fortune had learned within seconds about the explosion on First Avenue. But he had only learned a few minutes before that the President of the United States had landed, unannounced to anyone in Roland’s administration, at the UN building and that a fast-moving motorcade was speeding uptown to Gracie Mansion. Roland believed he had sensed or felt or intuited the explosion, just as some people believe they felt, sensed, or intuited the first tectonic shift of an earthquake.

In that four-minute interval, no one had told him definitively that the president’s damaged motorcade was speeding to Gracie Mansion. He simply knew that dozens of armed men and women had suddenly materialized on the quiet nearby streets and in the usually bucolic park. Gina Carbone had ordered him to sit in the only space in the old building that did not have windows. That was the colonial-style foyer at the main entrance to the Mansion.

Andrew Carter was uninjured. He didn’t have any visible bruises. By the time his SUV had stopped five feet from the mansion’s main door, a female Secret Service agent had given Carter several slightly astringent baby wipes and said, “Sir, you need to wash your face with these.” She held her makeup mirror to his face. Long experienced with the politician’s skill at cleaning and freshening up, Carter used all the wipes to remove grime from his forehead and the dirty streaks on his cheeks.

Repeating the first words he spoke to Carter when the president walked through the front door, Roland asked, “Do you know why you’re still alive?”

Carter’s expression was not just puzzled, it was angry. He said nothing.

“Commissioner,” Roland suddenly called out.

As if appearing on cue through a side door on a stage, Gina Carbone entered the hallway. Roland knew that Carter had only seen newspaper, magazine, and television images of Gina. He’d be impressed by how tall and striking she was in person.

The foyer in the mansion was small. It was crowded: Andrew Carter and Roland Fortune, both large and powerfully built men; slender and malevolent-looking Harlan Lazarus with at least two of his aides, both wizened men who resembled their boss; and four bulky, pumped-up Secret Service agents, all of them black and with the size of comic book characters.

Yet Gina Carbone, the only woman, dominated the narrow space. She projected absolute confidence and calm.

“This,” Roland said, “is Gina Carbone.”

She said nothing. Likewise, President Carter didn’t speak to her although he glanced at her.

“Why is she here? What was it,” the president icily asked Roland, “about my message to fire her that was unclear?”

Roland was close enough to Carter in this densely packed space to detect, faintly, that distinctively acrid odor of sweat the president shed on the basketball court during those times Roland had been invited to play in the White House gym-which was constructed over the old pool that was legendary for years as the place where President Kennedy used to swim in the nude every afternoon cavorting with secretaries, actresses, socialites, and prostitutes. Unlike Kennedy, Carter was a happily married man with no need for afternoon trysts with hundreds of women. One of his first orders as president was to have the long-neglected fetid pool ripped out and replaced with the basketball court.

“And what is it,” Roland asked, “about my question that you won’t answer?” He paused, calmly defiant. “Do you know why you’re alive?” he repeated.

Harlan Lazarus interrupted, “Do you know who you’re talking to, Mr. Fortune? Does the word respect mean anything to you?”

There were at least ten seconds of utter silence. The only sound was the faint sibilance emanating from the earpieces the Secret Service agents each wore.

Roland said, “Listen to me carefully. Commissioner Carbone learned that a man and a woman were on the sidewalks near the city playground your convoy was about to pass. She was informed they were suicide bombers with enough explosives to take down a building. One, a woman, was on the east side of 62^nd Street and First Avenue, and the other, a man, directly across the avenue. There must have been dozens of children and young parents there who were killed or hurt in that playground. Within three minutes of learning about the suicide bombers, and about your sudden, miraculous arrival and route, the commissioner had two sharpshooters in place. The woman was hit in the head and died before she could do whatever these people do to detonate themselves. Your convoy was less than half a block away. The other sharpshooter was slightly off target. The male suicide bomber was struck in the middle of the chest. Hence the explosion. But had that explosion happened at the same time as Mata Hari was supposed to explode five seconds later, as these people had planned, you would have been the first assassinated president since 1963.”

Andrew Carter’s face was impassive.

Shrilly, Lazarus said, “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

Roland turned to him. They were two feet from each other. “And why the fuck, after four days of begging this man to come to New York, weren’t we told he was on his way here? You know how the commissioner found out? Can you guess? She had taken down a suspect half an hour earlier who, after a few minutes of very uncomfortable hesitation, found it necessary to tell her people that the President of the United States was in an Army helicopter over Manhattan and about to land next to the UN building and get into a convoy to drive up First Avenue to see me to tell me to fire her. There wasn’t any fucking time to waste.”

Roland had a powerful voice. His shouting resonated in the hallway. And then in a whisper he said, “So there was no time to tell you, Mr. Lazarus. There was only time for the commissioner to let me know what her people had learned and for me to tell her to do whatever she needed to do to save this man’s life. If I’d been spending my time firing her, on your say-so, the president would be dead.” He stopped. “Do you get that, you fucking jerk?”

President Cater raised his hand, signaling Lazarus not to respond. “Everyone leave this room, except the agents. My friend the mayor and I need to have a heart-to-heart, locker-room kind of talk.”