Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

Headley was getting impatient, but decided to let Fleck continue with Elevator 101.

“Stats show that one in every twelve million elevator trips results in a mishap, and often that may be as simple as a door failing to close or open properly,” Fleck continued. “When passengers in an elevator are injured, it’s not usually a fault of the elevator itself. For example, a woman goes into an elevator with some big flowing scarf and it gets caught in the doors, and the elevator stars to rise and that scarf is stuck at the floor below and the other end is still wrapped tightly around the woman’s neck and—”

“I get the picture,” the mayor said.

“Sometimes you get an idiot who wants to elevator-surf and—”

“I’m sorry, what?” asked Headley.

“Elevator-surf. Gaining access to the shaft and riding on top of the car for the thrill of it. Kids do it. The problem is, there are cables galore and parts that stick out, and the cables are greasy, and you’re either going to fall and get caught between the car and the shaft, or—”

“Just tell me what happened here,” the mayor said.

“Well,” Fleck said, “Petrov, this Russian science lady, she’s partly to blame.”

Headley gave the Homeland agent a weary glance. “If it was her fault, why are we all standing here?”

“It wasn’t her fault that the elevator stopped,” Fleck said. “It was her mistake to climb out. Actually, if she’d stopped there, she’d have been okay, but according to the boy, she reached back into the opening for her purse and that was when the elevator suddenly continued its descent, and she got caught and, well, lost her head. But the fact that the elevator stopped in the first place is the thing we’re looking at.”

“We think it may have been sabotaged,” Cartland said.

“Sabotaged how?”

“We’re not sure,” the Homeland Security agent said.

“Not sure?”

“It might have been hacked.”

The mayor’s eyes widened. “Hacked? Is that possible?”

“Yes,” Cartland said. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but it can be done. The elevator system here was recently upgraded. Loads of high-tech stuff. The more high-tech things get, the greater chance there is of messing about with them. Those old-fashioned ones, with the big metal gates you had to close, that needed a guy to run them, those didn’t get hacked.”

“But you don’t have any actual proof that that’s what happened,” the mayor said.

“No,” said Cartland.

This time, Fleck weighed in. “In yesterday’s incident, as far as we can tell, given that there are no survivors, the car started acting like it had a mind of its own. Passing floors riders had pressed buttons for. That part sounds a bit like a hack, like someone was messing with the system. They’ve got an upgraded system over there, too. So up and down they went, and then, when they were around the twentieth floor, the car plummeted. That suggests a total override of the system.”

“How could that happen?”

“If someone had control of it. Someone outside the elevator itself.”

Headley looked at Cartland. “What the fuck are we looking at here?”

The Homeland Security agent looked grim. “We’re still assessing. But we have to consider the possibility that one or both of these elevator accidents were not accidents at all.”

Headley studied the man. “So if they weren’t accidents, who’s doing it? If you’re here, does that mean terrorism? Does ISIS know how to hack elevators? They’ve decided to stop running cars and trucks into crowds? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? I mean, as far as terrorism is concerned, it’s about the most inefficient method I can imagine. And not only that, the level of expertise required would be off the scale. You want to kill a bunch of people, there are lots of easier ways to go about it.”

“I don’t disagree,” Cartland said. “But it doesn’t change the facts that have been presented to us.”

“Let me see if I get what you’re saying. Someone might have tampered with one or two elevators. Someone might have hacked in, or sabotaged the mechanism, but you really don’t know yet. Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

Cartland shook his head. “Not for this, specifically.”

“Is there anyone you think might claim responsibility?”

“We have been dealing, lately, with an uptick in domestic terrorist acts. In Seattle, in Portland. Just yesterday in Boston. The group responsible for those incidents might be looking for a higher profile. They’re very much on our watch list. But there’s no shortage, in this country, of crazy individuals with an ax to grind.”

“But so far, no one’s taking credit.”

Cartland shook his head again.

“Could it be you guys are blowing something out of proportion, looking for something that’s not there, to justify your existence?”

Cartland clearly did not think that deserved a response, and said nothing.

“What would you have me do?” Headley asked. “Tell New Yorkers to stop using the elevators until further notice? You have any idea what kind of chaos that would create in a vertical city like this? The entire fucking town would come to a halt.”

“We should show him,” Fleck said to Cartland.

“Show me what?” the mayor said.

Cartland said, “Let’s take a walk upstairs. There’s something you need to see.”

Welcome back to New York Day ,” said the woman, looking into the camera. “I’m Anjelica Briscoe.”

Briscoe adopted a stern expression. “A bombing in a Seattle coffee shop. More bombings in Portland and Boston. People dead, and wounded. Disgusting, cowardly acts. What do they have in common, and what do these cities have in common? Many things, of course, but one is that they’re coastal cities, and that makes them, symbolically, targets for those who identify themselves as members of the Flyovers, a domestic extremist group whose somewhat self-deprecating name is actually a shot at the so-called coastal elites, the people who fly from New York or Boston to Los Angeles and San Francisco and back again. They feel these elites literally look down on the rest of the country and hold the people who live there in contempt. Our guest here today is the head of the Flyovers, Eugene Clement. Mr. Clement, thank you for coming in to speak with us here today.”

The camera panned to the other end of the desk, where Clement sat, grim-faced.

“I think your characterization of what the Flyovers stand for is grossly unfair and inaccurate,” Clement said.

Briscoe looked him straight in the eye and said, “The Flyovers has been branded by some as a terrorist group. Is it?”

“Absolutely not. That’s a reckless assertion,” he said. “The Flyovers is made up of good, decent American citizens who want nothing more than to be recognized for their contributions to this great country.”

“You heard what I said off the top. Law enforcement officials say these bombings in various coastal cities are very possibly the work of Flyovers adherents.”

The blood vessel in Clement’s right temple could be seen pulsing as he leaned forward in his chair and said, “These bombings are despicable, horrible acts. To even suggest they have anything to do with us breaks my heart, outrages me.”

“So the Flyovers eschew violence as a means to highlight their issues?”

“Without question,” he said.

“And yet, you were among the armed militants involved in the occupation of a national wildlife refuge in Colorado last year. Are you going to tell me that wasn’t a violent act?”

Eugene Clement appeared slighty taken aback by the question. He took a moment to respond. “A couple of things, Anjelica. First, that was not an event connected in any way to the Flyovers. Second, no one was injured in that, well, what you call an occupation. I would call it a demonstration against abusive federal authority. Washington controls millions of acres of land in the state that it has no business being involved in. That was a protest aimed directly at the federal government. Which, thank God, did not come in with guns blazing and kill a peaceful protester, as they did at a similar demonstration a few years ago.”