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Nothing in his life prepared Ro
It was just past noon. His hangover from his drinking binge with Boris yesterday wasn’t helping and the smell of the dusty air was making him very queasy. It was the same rank stench that he’d woken up to in Brooklyn these past two days, but far stronger here. A slow line of emergency and military vehicles moved down the street. A siren wailed in the distance and there was a constant cacophony of roaring and clattering from helicopters hovering what seemed like just feet above the tops of the skyscrapers on either side of him.
At least the time he had invested in his new best friend had not been in vain. Indeed, he was begi
For five thousand dollars, fifty per cent in advance, which Ro
But all this was small beer compared to the riches that awaited him if his plan succeeded.
A short distance ahead there was a barrier across the road, with the bar raised for the convoy of vehicles to pass through. Two young soldiers ma
A crowd of what looked like tourists, among them a group of young Japanese teenagers, stood staring, taking photographs of just about everything – the dust-coated store fronts, the sheets of paper and flakes of ash that lay ankle deep in places on the street. There seemed to be even more grey dust than on Tuesday, but the ghosts were less grey. They looked more like people today. People in shock.
A woman in her late thirties with matted brown hair, wearing a smock and flip-flops, with tears streaming down her cheeks, was weaving in and out of the crowd, holding up a photograph of a tall, good-looking man in a shirt and tie, saying nothing, just looking at each person in turn, silently imploring one of them to give a sudden nod of recognition. Yeah, I remember that guy, I saw him, he was fine, he was heading…
Just before he reached the soldiers, he saw on his left a hoarding with dozens of photographs taped to it. Most were close-ups of faces, a few of them mounted on Stars and Stripes backgrounds. They had clear cellophane wrapped round to rainproof them and all bore a name and handwritten messages, the most common of which was: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?
‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go past here.’ The voice was polite but firm.
‘I’ve come down to work on the pile,’ Ro
‘You and most of New York, buddy,’ said the older of the soldiers. He gave Ro
A backhoe excavator, followed by a bulldozer, rumbled through the barrier.
The other soldier pointed a finger down the street. ‘Make a left, first left, you’ll see a bunch of tents. They’ll kit you out, tell you what to do. Be lucky.’
‘Yeah,’ Ro
He ducked under the barrier and, after only a few more strides, the whole vista of the devastated area started opening up before him. It reminded him of pictures he had once seen of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.
He turned left, unsure of his bearings, and followed the street for a short distance. Then, ahead of him, the Hudson suddenly appeared, and right by the river he saw a whole makeshift encampment of stalls and tents at the edge of a massive area of rubble.
He walked past an upturned sports utility vehicle. A shredded fireman’s jacket lay on the ground near it, yellow bands on the grey, dusty, empty uniform. One sleeve had been ripped off and lay some distance from it. A fireman in a dusty blue T-shirt, sitting on a small mound of rubble, was holding his head in one hand, a water bottle in the other, looking as if he couldn’t take much more.
In a momentary respite from the helicopters, Ro
In a daze, he suddenly found himself in line, passing a stall where someone handed him a bottle of water. At the next stall he received a face mask. Then he went into a tent, where a smiling, long-haired guy who looked like a supera
Cramming his baseball cap into his pocket, Ro
Beyond a blackened leafy tree, Ro
He was stumbling over the roofs of smashed police cars and then across the underbelly of a half-buried fire truck. Every now and then from somewhere under the rubble there was the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Small teams of people were digging frantically and shouting. Dog handlers were dotted around, with German Shepherds, Labradors, Rottweilers and other breeds he didn’t recognize straining on their leashes, sniffing.
He continued forward, passing a swivel chair covered in dust, with an equally dusty woman’s jacket slung over the back. There was a telephone handset on a cord entwined around it, dangling from the seat.
He saw something glinting. Looking closer, he realized it was a wedding band. Near it he saw a smashed wrist watch. Chains of people were pulling out pieces of rubble, passing them back. He stepped aside, watching, taking it all in, trying to understand the pattern of what was going on. Eventually he realized there was no real pattern. There were just people in uniforms around the edges, holding huge black garbage sacks that people were bringing things they found to.