Nelson DeMille: Night Fall

We walked to the open tent where about three hundred people were gathered. I’ve been to too many memorial services and funerals in my professional life, and I don’t volunteer to go to ones that I don’t have to go to. But here I was.

Kate said, “Most of the family members wear photos of their loved ones who died. But even if they didn’t, you’d know who they were.” She took my hand, and we walked toward the tent. She said, “They’re not here to find closure. There is no closure. They’re here to support and comfort one another. To share their loss.”

Someone handed us a program. There were no chairs left so we stood alongside the tent on the side that opened to the ocean.

Just about opposite this spot, maybe eight miles out, a giant airliner had exploded and fallen into the sea. Aircraft debris and personal effects washed ashore on that beach for weeks afterward. Some people said that body parts also washed up, but that was never reported by the news media.

I recalled thinking at the time that this was the first American aircraft to be destroyed by enemy action within the United States. And also that this was the second foreign-directed terrorist attack on American soil-the first being the bombing of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in February 1993.

And then, as the days, weeks, and months passed, another explanation for the crash began to gain more credibility: mechanical failure.

No one believed it and everyone believed it. I believed it and I didn’t believe it.

I looked out at the horizon and tried to imagine what it was that so many people saw streaking toward the aircraft just before it exploded. I have no idea what they saw, but I know they were told they didn’t see anything.

It was too bad, I thought, that no one had captured that brief moment on film.

CHAPTER THREE

As I said, I’ve been to many funerals and memorial services, but this service, for 230 men, women, and children, had not only the pall of death hanging over it, but also the pall of uncertainty, the unspoken question of what had actually brought down that airliner five years ago.

The first speaker was a woman, who, according to the program, was a chaplain of an interdenominational chapel at Kennedy Airport. She assured the friends and family of the victims that it was all right for them to keep living life to the fullest, even if their loved ones could not.

A few other people spoke, and in the distance, I could hear the sound of the waves on the beach.

Prayers were said by clergy of different faiths, people were crying, and Kate squeezed my hand. I glanced at her and saw tears running down her cheeks.

A rabbi, speaking of the dead, said, “And we still marvel at how these people, so many years dead, can remain so beautiful for so long.”

Another speaker, a man who had lost his wife and son, spoke of all the lost children, the lost wives and husbands, the families flying together, the brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, most of them strangers to one another, but all now joined for eternity in heaven.

The last speaker, a Protestant minister, led everyone in the twenty-third Psalm. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

Police bagpipers in kilts played “Amazing Grace,” and the service at the tent ended.

Then, because they’d been doing this for years, everyone, without instructions, walked down to the beach.

Kate and I walked with them.

At the ocean’s edge, the victims’ families lit one candle for each of the 230 dead, and the candles stretched along the beach, flickering in the soft breeze.

At 8:31P.M., the exact time of the crash, the family members joined hands along the beach. A Coast Guard helicopter shined its searchlight on the ocean, and from a Coast Guard cutter, crew members threw wreaths into the water where the searchlight illuminated the rolling waves.

Some family members knelt, some waded into the water, and nearly everyone threw flowers into the surf. People began embracing one another.

Empathy and sensitivity are not my strong points, but this scene of shared grief and comforting passed through my own death-hardened shell like the warm ocean breeze through a screen door.

Small knots of people began drifting away from the beach, and Kate and I headed back toward the tent.

I spotted Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a bunch of local politicians and New York City officials, who were easy to identify because of the reporters trailing alongside them, asking for quotable statements. I heard one reporter ask Rudy, “Mr. Mayor, do you still think this was a terrorist act?” to which Mr. Giuliani replied, “No comment.”

Kate saw a couple she knew, excused herself, and went over to speak with them.

I stood on the boardwalk near the tent watching the people straggling in from the beach where the candles still burned. The helicopter and boat were gone, but a few people remained on the beach, some still standing in the water looking out to sea. Others stood in small groups talking, hugging, and weeping. Clearly, it was difficult for these people to leave this place that was so close to where their loved ones fell from the summer sky into the beautiful ocean below.

I wasn’t quite sure why I was here, but the experience had certainly made this five-year-old tragedy less academic and more real for me. And this, I suppose, was why Kate invited me to come; this was part of her past, and she wanted me to understand this part of her. Or, she had something else in mind.

On a day-to-day basis, Kate Mayfield is about as emotional as I am, which is to say not very. But obviously this tragedy had personally affected her, and, I suspected, had professionally frustrated her. She, like everyone here this evening, didn’t know if they were mourning the victims of an accident or a mass murder. For this brief hour, maybe it didn’t matter; but ultimately, it did matter, for the living, and for the dead. And, too, for the nation.

While I was waiting for Kate, a middle-aged man dressed in casual slacks and shirt approached me.

He said, not asked, “John Corey.”

“No,” I replied, “you’re not John Corey. I’m John Corey.”

“That’s what I meant.” Without extending his hand, he said to me, “I’m Special Agent Liam Griffith. We work in the same place.”

He looked a little familiar, but in truth all FBI agents look alike to me, even the women.

He asked me, “What brings you here?”

“What brings you here, Liam?”

“I asked first.”

“Are you asking officially?”

Mr. Griffith recognized a little verbal trap when he heard one. He replied, “I’m here as a private citizen.”

“Me, too.”

He glanced around, then said to me, “I guess you’re here with your wife.”

“Good guess.”

We both remained silent for a while and stared at each other. I love these macho-eyeballing contests, and I’m good at them.

Finally, he said, “Your wife, as she may have told you, has never been fully satisfied with the final determination of this case.”

I didn’t reply.

He continued, “The government is satisfied. She-and you-work for the government.”

“Thanks for the hot tip.”

He looked at me and said, “Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.”

“Is English your second language?”

“Okay, hear me on this-the case is closed. It’s enough that we have private groups and individuals questioning the government’s findings. That is their right. But you, me, your wife-all of us in Federal law enforcement-cannot lend credence to those who have alternative and perhaps paranoid theories about what happened here five years ago. Understand?”