Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

The Eleventh Day would not exist without the initial interest and backing of our publishers at Random House. Group president Gina Centrello and Ballantine publisher Libby McGuire in New York, and Transworld’s Bill Scott-Kerr in London, kept us going along a bumpy trail.

Our editors, Mark Tavani and Simon Thorogood, were there for us in the final months with skill and good judgment. Where they saw clutter, they pointed the way to clarity. Our agent, Jonathan Lloyd, also reads everything we write with a keen editorial eye—a bonus for us—for he is himself a former publisher. He has steadied us, once again, with his combination of common sense and uncommon good humor.

We thank our good friends and neighbors, who have been endlessly supportive. Our neglected children heroically put up with the neglect—though one has asked, “When are we going to be a family again?”

The Eleventh Day is dedicated to our steadfast friends Chris and Gaye Humphreys—who know why—and to Angela Amicone, who turns ninety-five this year. Angela has been teaching children to read since 1940, and has no intention of giving up now.

Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

Ireland, 2011

AP Images

Flight 11 passenger Daniel Lewin, probably the first to die on 9/11.

Marco Greenberg

The Hanson family, passengers on Flight 175. On the phone to his father, Peter Hanson said: “Don’t worry.… If it happens, it’ll be very fast.”

Hanson famly photo

Flight 93 flight attendant CeeCee Lyles’s charred ID card, found after the crash. She had reached her husband to say the passengers were fighting back against the hijackers.

Moussaoui trial exhibit

Zoe Falkenberg, an eight-year-old passenger on Flight 77, and her sister, Dana, are among those remembered at the Pentagon memorial. Dana’s remains were not found.

Mariana Perez

Office workers at windows of the Trade Center’s North Tower. Trapped by fire, many jumped to their deaths.

Jeff Christensen/Reuters

Of those below the points of impact, most made their way to safety.

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

After the towers collapsed, New Yorkers ran pell-mell, a dust cloud at their heels. Hundreds have died, and many more are sick, from respiratory disease caused by the dust.

AP Images

President Bush is told that a second plane has crashed.

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

In the Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House, Vice President Cheney speaks by phone with Bush. To the left of him is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. To the left of her, kneeling, is Navy commander Anthony Barnes.

U.S. government

The facade of the Pentagon before it collapsed. Skeptics doubted that it could have swallowed a Boeing 757 airliner.

U.S. government

Wreckage at the Pentagon. Some skeptics suggested that evidence had been planted.

Moussaoui trial exhibit

Flight 93’s Cockpit Voice Recorder—hauntingly, minute by minute, it tracked the progress of the hijacking.

Moussaoui trial exhibit

Investigators search the Pennsylvania field where Flight 93 crashed. In the foreground is the crater.

Tim Shaffer/Reuters

After, in New York.

Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images

Nine months later, draped in the flag, the last steel girder is removed from the ruins of the World Trade Center. It stands now in the memorial at Ground Zero.

Peter Morgan/Reuters

Osama bin Laden and his “holy war” against the United States, acclaimed by a crowd in Pakistan after 9/11.

Ruth Fremson

/The New York Times

/Redux Pictures

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed credit for the plot. Ramzi Binalshibh

(below left)

acted as a go-between for the hijackers. Abu Zubaydah

(below right)

, a key al Qaeda logistics man, was gravely wounded during his arrest. How reliable are their confessions, obtained under “enhanced” interrogation?

Heroes to some: a poster produced two years after the attacks, glorifying the hijackers.

Authors’ collection