Jeffrey Archer - False Impression

Obtaining an export license for the masterpiece had not proved difficult, as few institutions or museums could raise the sixty million dollars necessary to stop the painting leaving the country, especially after the National Galleries of Scotland had recently failed to raise the required £7.5 million to ensure that Michelangelo’s Study of a Mourning Woman didn’t leave these shores to become part of a private collection in the States.

When a Mr. Andrews, the butler at Wentworth Hall, had rung the previous day to say that the painting would be ready for collection in the morning, Ruth had scheduled one of her high-security air-ride trucks to be at the hall by eight o’clock. Ruth was pacing up and down the tarmac long before the truck turned up at her office, just after ten.

Once the painting was unloaded, Ruth supervised every aspect of its packing and safe dispatch to New York, a task she would normally have left to one of her managers. She stood over her senior packer as he wrapped the painting in acid-free glassine paper and then placed it into the foam-lined case he’d been working on throughout the night so it would be ready in time. The captive bolts were tightened on the case, preventing anyone breaking into it without a sophisticated socket set. Special indicators were attached to the outside of the case that would turn red if anyone attempted to open it during its journey. The senior packer stenciled the word FRAGILE on both sides of the box and the number 47 in all four corners. The customs officer had raised an eyebrow when he checked the shipping papers, but as an export license had been granted, the eyebrow returned to its natural position.

Ruth drove across to the waiting 747 and watched as the red box disappeared into the vast hold. She didn’t return to her office until the heavy door was secured in place. She checked her watch and smiled. The plane had taken off at 1:40 P.M.

Ruth began to think about the painting that would be arriving from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam later that evening to form part of the Rembrandt’s Women exhibition at the Royal Academy. But not before she had put a call through to Fenston Finance to inform them that the Van Gogh was on its way.

She dialed Anna’s number in New York and waited for her to pick up the phone.

There was a loud explosion, and the building began to sway from side to side.

Anna was hurled across the corridor, ending up flat on the canvas as if she’d been floored by a heavyweight boxer. The elevator doors opened and she watched as a fireball of fuel shot through the shaft, searching for oxygen. The hot blast slapped her in the face as if the door of an oven had been thrown open. Anna lay on the ground, dazed.

Her first thought was that the building must have been struck by lightning, but she quickly dismissed that idea as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. An eerie silence followed and Anna wondered if she had gone deaf, but this was soon replaced by screams of “Oh, my God!” as huge shards of jagged glass, twisted metal, and office furniture flew past the windows in front of her.

It must be another bomb, was Anna’s second thought. Everyone who had been in the building in 1993 retold stories of what had happened to them on that bitterly cold February afternoon. Some of them were apocryphal, others pure invention, but the facts were simple. A truck filled with explosives had been driven into the underground garage beneath the building. When it exploded, six people were killed and more than a thousand injured. Five underground floors were wiped out, and it took several hours for the emergency services to evacuate the building. Since then, everyone who worked in the World Trade Center had been required to participate in regular fire drills. Anna tried to remember what she was supposed to do in such an emergency.

She recalled the clear instructions printed in red on the exit door to the stairwell on every floor: “In case of emergency, do not return to your desk, do not use the elevator, exit by the nearest stairwell.” But first Anna needed to find out if she could even stand up, aware that part of the ceiling had collapsed on her and the building was still swaying. She tried tentatively to push herself up, and although she was bruised and cut in several places, nothing seemed to be broken. She stretched for a moment, as she always did before starting out on a long run.

Anna abandoned what was left of the contents of the cardboard box and stumbled toward stairwell C in the center of the building. Some of her colleagues were also beginning to recover from the initial shock, and one or two even returned to their desks to pick up personal belongings.

As Anna made her way along the corridor, she was greeted with a series of questions to which she had no answers.

“What are we supposed to do?” asked a secretary.

“Should we go up or down?” said a cleaner.

“Do we wait to be rescued?” asked a bond dealer.

These were all questions for the security officer, but Barry was nowhere to be seen.

Once Anna reached the stairwell, she joined a group of dazed people, some silent, some crying, who weren’t quite sure what to do next. No one seemed to have the slightest idea what had caused the explosion or why the building was still swaying. Although several of the lights on the stairwell had been snuffed out like candles, the photoluminescent strip that ran along the edge of each step shone brightly up at her.

Some of those around her were trying to contact the outside world on their cell phones, but few were succeeding. One who did get through was chatting to her boyfriend. She was telling him that her boss had told her she could go home, take the rest of the day off. Another began to relay to those around him the conversation he was having with his wife: “A plane has hit the North Tower,” he announced.

“But where, where?” shouted several voices at once. He asked his wife the same question. “Above us, somewhere in the nineties,” he said, passing on her reply.

“But what are we meant to do?” asked the chief accountant, who hadn’t moved from the top step. The younger man repeated the question to his wife and waited for her reply. “The mayor is advising everyone to get out of the building as quickly as possible.”

On hearing this news, all those in the stairwell began their descent to the eighty-second floor. Anna looked back through the glass window and was surprised to see how many people had remained at their desks, as if they were in a theater after the curtain had come down and had decided to wait until the initial rush had dispersed.

Anna took the mayor’s advice. She began to count the steps as she walked down each flight — eighteen to each floor, which she calculated meant at least another fifteen hundred before she would reach the lobby. The stairwell became more and more crowded as countless people swarmed out of their offices to join them on each floor, making it feel like a crowded subway during rush hour. Anna was surprised by how calm the descending line was.

The stairwell quickly separated into two lanes, with the slowest on the inside while the latest models were able to pass on the outside. But just like any highway, not everyone kept to the code, so regularly everything came to a complete standstill before moving off unsteadily again. Whenever they reached a new stairwell, some pulled into the hard shoulder, while others motored on.

Anna passed an old man who was wearing a black felt hat. She recalled seeing him several times during the past year, always wearing the same hat. She turned to smile at him and he raised his hat.

On, on, on she trudged, sometimes reaching the next floor in less than a minute but more often being held up by those who had become exhausted after descending only a few floors. The outside lane was becoming more and more crowded, making it impossible for her to break the speed limit.