False Impression by Jeffrey Archer

needed to find out if
she could even stand up, aware that part of the ceiling had collapsed on her
and the building was still swaying. She tried tentatively to push herself up,
and although she was bruised and cut in several places, nothing seemed to be
broken. She stretched for a moment, as she always did before starting out on a
long run.
    Anna abandoned
what was left of the contents of the cardboard box and stumbled towards
stairwell C in the centre of the building.
    Some of her
colleagues were also beginning to recover from the initial shock, and one or two even returned to their desks to pick up personal belongings.
    As Anna made her
way along the corridor, she was greeted with a series of questions to which she
had no answers.
    What are we
supposed to do?’ asked a secretary.
    ‘Should we go up
or down?’ said a cleaner.
    ‘Do we wait to
be rescued?’ asked a bond dealer.
    These were all
questions for the security officer, but Barry was nowhere to be seen.
    Once Anna
reached the stairwell, she joined a group of dazed people, some silent, some
crying, who weren’t quite sure what to do next. No one seemed to have the
slightest idea what had caused the explosion or why the building was still
swaying. Although several of the lights on the stairwell had been snuffed out
like candles, the photoluminescent strip that ran along the edge of each step
shone brightly up at her.
    Some of those
around her were trying to contact the outside world on their cellphones, but
few were succeeding. One who did get through was chatting to her boyfriend. She
was telling him that her boss had told her she could go home, take the rest of the day off.
    Another began to
relay to those around him the conversation he was having with his wife: ‘A
plane has hit the North Tower,’ he announced.
    ‘But
where, where?’ shouted several voices at once. He asked his
wife the same question. ‘Above us, somewhere in the nineties,’ he said, passing
on her reply.
    ‘But what are we
meant to do?’ asked the chief accountant, who hadn’t moved from the top step.
The younger man repeated the question to his wife, and waited for her reply.
‘The mayor is advising everyone to get out of the building as quickly as
possible.’

10
    O n hearing this
news, all those in the stairwell began their descent to the eighty-second
floor. Anna looked back through the glass window and was surprised to see how many
people had remained at their desks, as if they were in a theatre after the
curtain had come down and had decided to wait until the initial rush had
dispersed.
    Anna took the
mayor’s advice. She began to count the steps as she walked down each flight – eighteen
to each floor, which she calculated meant at least another fifteen hundred
before she would reach the lobby. The stairwell became more and more crowded as
countless people swarmed out of their offices to join them on each floor,
making it feel like a crowded subway during rush hour. Anna was surprised by
how calm the descending line was.
    The stairwell
quickly separated into two lanes, with the slowest on the inside while the
latest models were able to pass on the outside. But just like any highway, not
everyone kept to the code, so regularly everything came to a complete
standstill before moving off unsteadily again. Whenever they reached a new
stairwell, some pulled into the hard shoulder, while others motored on.
    Anna passed an
old man who was wearing a black felt hat. She recalled seeing him several times
during the past year, always wearing the same hat. She turned to smile at him
and he raised his hat.
    On, on, on she
trudged, sometimes reaching the next floor in less than a minute, but more often
being held up by those who had become exhausted after descending only a few
floors. The outside lane was becoming more and more crowded, making it
impossible for her to break the speed limit.
    Anna heard the
first clear order when she reached the sixty eighth floor .
    ‘Get to the
right,