Fallen Masters Page 7

  His body clock might tell him it was 5 P.M., but he clearly had morning mouth, so he brushed his teeth, then turned sideways to look at his body. Now, that he was still happy with. He had been blessed with good genes and a muscular build that enabled him to maintain the body of a Greek statue. It was still clearly defined but required a daily workout regimen in order to be sustained.

  Realizing that sleep was not going to be an option, he decided to get a jump-start on the day of media and press interviews. The Moses Mosaic was his third novel, following hard on the heels of two previous international bestsellers.

  “A writer?” Miss Hall had said. Miss Hall was his freshman high school English teacher. “Dawson, I don’t mean this as a put-down, but you have dyslexia. The first time you turned in a paper, I thought your name was Noswad.”

  It wasn’t just the dyslexia Dawson had to overcome. It was also that he was following in the wake left by his brother, Boyd, who was two years older. Boyd’s transgressions were infamous, and he had left all the teachers embittered and predetermined not to let another Rask run amok in their classroom.

  But Dawson, despite, or perhaps because of, the legacy left by his brother, excelled in high school, not only in academics, where he overcame his dyslexia, but in athletics, becoming a conference champion cross-country runner. A writer for Profile Magazine, while doing a piece on Dawson, wrote:

  It is fitting that the bestselling author, Dawson Alexander Rask, ran cross country in high school and college. Cross country is a grueling sport that pits the runner against himself as much as against the other participants. It requires strength of body, as well as strength of character. Dawson Rask’s character, Matt Matthews, exhibits those very traits, and one must wonder, as one always does, if Matthews isn’t Rask.

  Dawson had been born and raised in Decatur, Illinois. His grandfather had served in the Korean War, his father as an army draftee in the early 1960s. When he came back he began teaching at Milliken University in Decatur, becoming a full professor a few years later. Dawson’s father didn’t talk much about his military service, which included a two-year tour in Vietnam in 1965 and ’66—and when he did talk about it, it was always some innocuous story or a humorous event. He never talked about any combat experience, and Dawson would not have known that he won a Silver Star if he had not accidentally found the medal and the citation.

  Because of his father’s position, Dawson could have gone to school at Milliken very cheaply, but he chose to attend Washington University in St. Louis, instead. Washington U. was a fine school with a great academic reputation, and he was able to put together several academic scholarships, including one scholarship from a beer company, simply because he was the son and grandson of veterans. He also chose Washington University because, while it wasn’t in his hometown—and he did want to get out on his own—it wasn’t so far from Decatur that he couldn’t make it back home on long weekends.

  His brother flunked out of Milliken, as well as Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He wasn’t dumb; in fact, Dawson knew that his brother was quite intelligent. But it never was a matter of intelligence with Boyd. It was Boyd’s psyche. He was a congenital troublemaker who was caught drinking when underage, and using pot when he was older.

  As he had in high school, Dawson ran track and cross country at Washington University in St. Louis. One good thing about running in high school and college is that the athlete could continue with that sport for many years by participating in fun runs and marathons. And it was the running that helped him keep the trim body that he still enjoyed. Dawson earned a degree in English, and his father thought that he was going to become a teacher; in fact he urged him to do so. But Dawson moved to New York where he found a job as an associate editor at Penword House. He did well and moved up to editor, then senior editor. That was when he met Mary Beth Williams. Mary Beth had no desire to ever be published.

  That was important to someone who was an acquisitions editor, someone who could fulfill the dreams of struggling writers all over the country. He used to attend writers’ conferences, and had to exercise restraint and common sense in order to resist the flirtations of women who made it clear that they would do almost anything to have their book published. That she didn’t give a fig for what he could do for her was one of the first things that endeared Mary Beth to him—just one of many—and he fell hopelessly in love. They were soon married, and their life together was about as perfect as anyone could ever hope for. But all that changed one bright September morning.

  Mary Beth was a financial wizard, a bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald. She worked on the 101st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Dawson had often replayed his last telephone conversations with her on that terrible September 11, 2001. She had just been promoted, which allowed her to have a desk next to one of the windows, and she wanted to celebrate by having lunch with him at Windows on the World.

  “Remember,” she said early that morning. “You must be wearing a jacket and tie.”

  “Windows on the World is pretty expensive,” Dawson replied. “Couldn’t we just celebrate at a burger joint somewhere?”

  “You don’t worry about how expensive it is. I’m paying for it. This is my celebration, remember.”

  Dawson got to the office early and was starting on at least ten submissions he had to look at, all ten from respected agents, which meant he had to do more than just scan them. He was about thirty pages into Remembered Faces, Forgotten Names when his cell phone rang. Seeing that it was Mary Beth, he picked up.

  “I know, I know, jacket and tie. I won’t forget,” he said.

  “Dawson,” Mary Beth responded, “I’m not calling to talk about that. I’ve been trying to reach you for fifteen minutes, but the phone lines have been jammed. The World Trade Center has just been hit by a plane.”

  “What? Where did it hit?” He looked at his watch. It was just past 9 A.M.

  “I don’t know. Below us somewhere.”

  “A small private plane?”

  “I don’t think so. The explosion was too loud, and there’s smoke everywhere.”

  Dawson could hear a lot of confusion in the background, shouts of anger and fear.

  “The sprinklers haven’t come on! Why haven’t the sprinklers come on?”

  “Where is the fire extinguisher?”

  “Someone used it to break out the window.”

  “Mary Beth, I hear a lot of commotion in the background. Is it really that bad?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” Mary Beth said, strangely calm. “Someone just came back in and said that all the stairwells are blocked, we can’t go down.”

  “Dawson, my God! Come out here and see what is on the TV!” Sam Bryant said. Sam was the publisher of Penword House. “I turned on the TV and CNN is reporting that an airliner just flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.”

  “North Tower,” Dawson said. “I’m talking to Mary Beth now. She’s in the North Tower.”

  “Both of them got hit,” Bryant said. “And they are now just saying that this is no accident!”

  “This is bad, Dawson,” Mary Beth said. Now he could hear the fear in her voice. “This is very bad.”

  “I’m sure that help is on the way,” Dawson said. But even as he said that, he could see on the TV screen smoke billowing out from the point of impact and obscuring the entire top of the building. He thought of telling Mary Beth of the second strike but didn’t want to frighten her more.

  He started to say something, but his telephone connection with Mary Beth suddenly went dead. He stood before the television in the office, less than two miles from the World Trade Center in Midtown Manhattan. In fact, if he were to go to the top floor in his building and look out the south-facing windows, he could see with his own eyes the ugly sight of the white and black smoke rising into the azure late-summer sky.

  He looked at his watch. It was now forty-five minutes past nine o’clock. He held his portable phone in his hand, hoping, praying
that it would ring again. He could not imagine what Mary Beth was going through in those moments. The television news broadcasts repeatedly showed the images of the two jetliners crashing into the buildings.

  He tried again and again to reach Mary Beth, to no avail.

  Suddenly, at almost precisely ten A.M. his coworkers, who had filed into the room and were gathered around the television, gasped as one. Dawson willed himself to look at the screen and listen to the news anchor: “The South Tower is collapsing. It’s going down! Oh, my God.…”

  There were sobs all around him, both men and women weeping.

  He punched the button to dial Mary Beth’s number yet again. There was a busy signal. He cleared the line so he could receive a call—her call, he prayed. He slipped into a nearby office that wasn’t his, but it was empty and a few steps away from the chaos in the other room.

  Dawson Rask was not a religious man. For his entire life, he had been self-sufficient, pulling himself up the ladder in his chosen profession by wit, skill, and hard work. Knowing he wasn’t always the smartest or smoothest person in the room, he had vowed that no one would ever outwork him. That’s why he put in fifteen- or twenty-hour days sometimes. Mary Beth had called him on it, and lately he had pulled back a bit, especially since they were both something of workaholics. Well, hadn’t Mary Beth just been promoted? He had almost completely forgotten about that in the fog of the past hour …

  Thousands of days and life’s ups and downs had passed since the last time he had prayed. He couldn’t even remember when that had been or why. Now, he was grasping at anything—anything—that might save the woman he loved and their yet-unlived life together.

  He closed his eyes tightly and held his breath, uttering a prayer in silence.

  His phone buzzed, and he picked up immediately. “Hello. Hello. Mary Beth?”

  “Yes, darling.” Her voice was muffled, and he could hear her covering a cough.

  “What’s happening now?”

  “It’s … getting hard … to breathe,” Mary Beth said. Her voice was different, distant and somewhat dreamlike. But who was dreaming? This was a real-life nightmare that neither could comprehend.

  “Lie down, Mary Beth. Listen to me, put your nose to the floor. There should be an inch or two of air there.” He sympathetically crouched down to mimic what he was telling her to do, even though she could not see him. He desperately tried to think of what he could do. He sat on the floor, scared and helpless.

  “Dawson, I think I’m not going to make it out of here. Tell me you’ll be okay.”

  His mind had been a jumble, chaos and irrational anger mingled with pity and bitterness. He felt the tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t help looking at his watch again. Why was he so obsessed with the time? What was it? About twenty-five minutes after ten o’clock. He could barely see the watchface anyway because his eyes were misted and his vision fogged.

  “Daw, honey, listen to me. I love you.”

  “Our house, our kids,” Dawson blurted, running through his mind what his plans were, what their world was going to be … “I love you. I love you,” he said in reply, wanting to keep her on the line—to keep her alive and present in his life—but he knew that his last words to her weren’t heard. “Hold on, Mary Beth! Hold on—”

  He heard someone scream and rushed back into the office with the television. On the TV screen, he watched the North Tower collapsing at about 10:28. Dropping the phone, he sank into the nearest chair and wailed. It had all happened in a little less than two hours, though it had alternatively seemed like endless days or mere seconds. He looked down at the phone lying on the floor, an ugly, dead object. He hated it. The last he had heard from Mary Beth was on that damned thing that lay there like a corpse. The worst thing he could have imagined had come true in his life—and for tens or hundreds of thousands of others.

  A few of the men came over to him and, awkwardly, silently, rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment. Several of the women, themselves crying, came over to hug him. Dawson had never felt such bitter pain in all his life.…

  That was more than a decade ago, yet he had relived it each day since—thousands of times, over and over again. It was a wound that had not healed, and he doubted it ever would.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Atlanta

  Several big HDTV screens were scattered around the ballroom of the W Hotel so that no matter where anyone was, they had a good view. As the New Year broke around the world, each screen carried the countdown. Some time zones were seen in replays of the event. One that particularly caught Karen’s attention was the replay of Australia’s fantastic fireworks display over the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge.

  Except for a weeklong vacation in Canada and a quick weekend in Mexico, Karen had never been out of the country. She was looking forward to the day that Tyler and their baby could travel with her and see the world like her parents were doing this year.

  Tyler made very good money and they wanted for nothing. It gave her a sense of confidence that they would be able to bring their son up in affluence, providing him with every advantage. But even as she wrapped her mind around that sense of security, she realized that they were paying for it in other ways. Sometimes she wondered what their life would be like if Tyler were not a doctor, if he could belong to her—and their son—and not to the hospital.

  It wasn’t as if the medical profession were new to her. Her father was a doctor, and she could remember times when some crisis at the hospital would take him away from the family at inopportune times. She had starred in the senior play when she was in high school, but her father didn’t see it, because he had been called away by a medical emergency.

  But those incidents, though frequent, never seemed to keep him away as often as Tyler was away. Maybe now that he had proved himself to be the best, he would ease up a bit, start backing off so many surgeries, and spend more time at home.

  Even as she was thinking that, she knew she was kidding herself. The hospital would always be the other woman. She had to accept that. While she was coming to terms with her fairy tale’s reality ending, the countdown to the New Year was happening—both on the TV monitors, and with the revelers in the room.

  “Ten … nine … eight … seven … six…”

  Tyler put his arm around her shoulders and got ready to bestow her with a New Year’s kiss.

  “Five … four … three…”

  Buzz, buzz, buzz!

  It was Tyler’s pager. The pager he had promised would be turned off!

  “Two … one! Happy New Year!”

  * * *

  All the couples in the room celebrated the moment with a kiss. But Tyler had taken out his pager to look at the ID to see what code was plugged in.

  “It’s…,” he started to say, but when he looked back toward Karen, she was all the way across the ballroom. He saw her wiping her eyes as she turned the corner to leave.

  “Karen!” he called, but she didn’t look back. Tyler hurried across the ballroom, picking his way among the kissing couples and the popping balloons. “Karen!” he called again.

  He caught up with her in the hallway. She did not come back to him at his call, but she at least stopped, and was standing there waiting for him as he approached.

  “Karen, what are you doing? Why did you run out like that?”

  Everyone in the ballroom shouted, “Happy New Year!” They could hear horns blowing and people laughing. There could not have been a greater contrast between the celebration going on not more than sixty feet behind them and the two people standing all alone in the shadows of the empty hallway.

  In the ballroom now, people began singing.

  Should old acquaintance be forgot,

  and never brought to mind?

  Should old acquaintance be forgot,

  and old lang syne?

  “You shouldn’t even have to ask why I left,” Karen said.

  “I promised you I would be here with you for New
Year’s, and I was,” Tyler said.

  “You were here physically, but you weren’t here,” Karen said. “Not really. The moment that pager went off, you jerked it out of your pocket.”

  “Well, that’s what a pager is for,” Tyler said, trying to soften his response with a smile.

  “You said you would leave your pager turned off. I know, I know, I’m not being fair,” Karen said. “But I’m hormonal and cranky, and I’m just not in the mood for a dose of doctor disappointment.”

  “What about a dose of Doctor Make-You-Feel-Real-Good?” Tyler asked, turning on the charm.

  For auld lang syne, my dear,

  for auld lang syne,

  we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

  for auld lang syne.

  “It won’t work,” Karen said. “Tyler, you told me, you promised me, that you were not going to be on call tonight. You said that tonight was the first day of the rest of our lives. This was supposed to represent our future. This is how you see our future? Well, I’m here now to tell you that this is not how I see my future.”

  “You don’t understand,” Tyler said.

  “What is it I don’t understand? I’ve been around doctors for my entire life. My father is a doctor, and I am married to a doctor. Is there some secret known only to doctors and not to their children or spouses that I don’t know?”

  “It’s Dr. Emory,” Tyler said.

  “What?”

  And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!

  And surely I’ll buy mine!

  We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

  for auld lang syne.