Read Online False Impression by Jeffrey Archer - Free Book Online

him, confident that the worst
must surely be behind her. She kept her eyes covered and continued coughing for
another three floors, but the fireman turned out to be right, because the smoke
was already beginning to disperse. Anna decided to listen only to the
professionals coming up die stairwell and to dismiss the opinions of any
amateurs going down.
    A sudden feeling
of relief swept through those emerging from the smoke, and they immediately
tried to speed up their descent.
    But sheer
numbers prevented swift progress in the one-way traffic lane. Anna tried to
remain calm as she slipped in behind a blind man, who was being led down the
stairs by his guide dog. ‘Don’t be frightened by the smoke, Rosie,’ said the
man. The dog wagged its tail.
    Down, down,
down, the pace always dictated by the person in front. By the time Anna reached
the deserted cafeteria on the thirty-ninth floor, the overloaded firemen had
been joined by Port Authority officers and policemen from the Emergency Service
Unit – the most popular of all New York’s cops because they deal only in safety
and rescue, no parking tickets, no arrests. Anna felt guilty about passing
those who were willing to continue going up while she went in the opposite
direction.
    By the time Anna
reached the twenty-fourth floor, several bedraggled stragglers were stopping to
take a rest, a few even congregating to exchange anecdotes, while others were
still refusing to leave their offices, unable to believe that a problem on the
ninety-fourth floor could possibly affect them. Anna looked around, desperately
hoping to see a familiar face, perhaps Rebecca or Tina, even Barry, but she
could have been in a foreign land.
    “We’ve got a
level three up here, possibly level four,’ a battalion commander was saying
over his radio, ‘so I’m sweeping every floor.’
    Anna watched the
commander as he systematically cleared every office. It took him some time
because each floor was the size of a football field.
    On the
twenty-first floor, one individual remained resolutely at his desk; he’d just
settled a currency deal for a billion dollars and he was awaiting confirmation
of the transaction.
    ‘OUT,’ shouted
the battalion commander, but the smartly dressed man ignored the order and
continued tapping away on his keyboard. ‘I said OUT,’ repeated the senior fire
officer, as two of his younger officers lifted the man out of his chair and
deposited him in the stairwell. The unfulfilled broker reluctantly joined the
exodus.
    When Anna
reached the twentieth floor, she encountered a new problem. She had to wade
through water that was now pouring in on them from the sprinklers and leaking
pipes on every floor. She stepped tentatively over fragments of broken glass
and flaming debris that littered the stairwell and were beginning to slow
everyone down. She felt like a football fan trying to get out of a crowded
stadium that had only one turnstile. When she finally reached the teens, her
progress became dramatically faster. All the floors below her had been cleared,
and fewer and fewer office staff were joining them on
the stairs.
    On the tenth
floor, Anna stared through an open door into a deserted office. Computer
screens were still flickering and chairs had been pushed aside as if their
occupants had gone to the washroom and would be back at any moment. Plastic
cups of cold coffee and half-drunk cans of Coke littered almost every surface.
    Papers were
scattered everywhere, even on the floor, while silver framed family photographs
remained in place. Someone following closely behind Anna bumped into her, so
she quickly moved on.
    By the time Anna
reached the seventh floor, it was no longer her fellow workers, but the water
and flotsam that were holding her up. She was picking her way tentatively
through the debris when she first heard the voice. To begin with, it was faint,
and then it became a little louder. The sound of a megaphone was coming from
somewhere below them, urging