Hickey walked ahead to the chancel organ. “One fellow, that Inspector Langley. Gave us a chance to surrender. Promised us a low bail—that sort of thing.”
“Did the British relay any information—any indication they would compromise?”
“The British? Compromise? They’re not even
“They didn’t get word to you through anyone?”
“You’ll not hear from them.” He looked at Flynn. “You’ve got to play the bells now, Brian, while we still have everyone’s attention. We’ll begin with—let’s see— ‘Danny Boy’ and then do a few Irish-American favorites for our constituency. I’ll lead, and you follow my tempo. Go on now.”
Flynn hesitated, then moved toward the center aisle. Hickey began playing “Danny Boy” in a slow, measured meter that would set the tempo for the bells.
The four hostages watched Flynn and Hickey, then turned back to the television. The reporters in the Cathedral press room were discussing Hickey’s speech. Baxter said, “I don’t see that we’re any closer to being let out of here.”
Father Murphy replied, “I wonder … don’t you think after this, the British … I mean …”
Baxter said sharply, “No, I don’t.” He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes and we go.”
Maureen looked at him, then at Father Murphy. She said, “What Mr. Baxter means is that he, too, thinks they were probably considering a compromise after Hickey’s speech, but Mr. Baxter’s decided that he doesn’t want to be the cause of any compromise.”
Baxter’s face reddened.
Maureen continued. “It’s all right, you know. I feel the same way. I’m not going to be used by them like a slab of meat to be bartered for what they want.” She said in a quieter voice, “I’ve been used by them long enough.”
Murphy looked at them. “Well … that’s fine for you two, but I can’t go unless my life is in actual danger. Neither can His Eminence.” He inclined his head toward the Cardinal, who sat looking at them from his throne. Murphy added, “I think we all ought to wait….”
Maureen looked back at the Cardinal and saw by his face that he was struggling with the same question. She turned to Father Murphy. “Even if Hickey’s speech has moved the people out there toward a compromise, that doesn’t move
Murphy looked at the television screen. A segment of John Hickey’s speech was being replayed. The volume was turned low, and Hickey’s voice wasn’t audible over the organ. Murphy watched the mouth moving, the tears rolling down his face. He looked into the narrow eyes. Without the spellbinding voice the eyes gave him away.
Father Murphy looked out over the sanctuary rail at Hickey playing the organ. Hickey’s head was turned toward them as he watched himself on television. He was smiling at his image, then turned and smiled, a grotesque smile, at Father Murphy. The priest turned quickly back to Maureen and nodded.
Baxter looked up at the Cardinal’s throne; the Cardinal bowed his head in return. Baxter glanced at his watch. “We go in twenty-seven minutes.”
Flynn rode the elevator to the choir practice room, then stepped out into the loft. He walked up behind Leary, who was leaning over the parapet watching the hostages through his scope. Flynn said, “Anything?”
Leary continued to observe the four people on the sanctuary. At some point years ago he had realized that not only could he anticipate people’s movements and read their expression, but he could also read their lips. He said, “A few words. Not too clear. Hard to see their lips.” The hostages had reached a point in their relationships to each other where they communicated with fewer words, but their body language was becoming clearer to him.
Flynn said, “Well, are they or aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“How? When?”
“Don’t know. Soon.”
Flynn nodded. “Warning shots first, then go for the legs. Understand?”
“Sure.”
Flynn picked up the field phone on the parapet and called Mullins in the bell tower. “Donald, get away from the bells.”
Mullins slung his rifle and pulled a pair of shooters’ baffles over his ears. He snatched up the field phone and quickly descended the ladder to the lower level.
Flynn moved to a small keyboard beside the organ console and turned the switch to activate the nineteen keys that played the bells. He stood before the waist-high keyboard and turned the pages of bell music on the music desk, then put his hands over the big keys and joined with the chancel organ below.
The biggest bell, the one named Patrick, chimed a thunderous B-flat, and the sound crashed through the bell tower, almost knocking Mullins off his feet.
One by one the nineteen huge bells began tolling in their carillon, beginning at the first bell room where Mullins had been and running upward to a point near the top of the spire twenty-one stories above the street.
In the attic a coffee cup fell off a catwalk rail. Arthur Nulty and Jean Kearney covered their ears and moved to the Madison Avenue end of the Cathedral. In the choir loft and triforia the bells resonated through the stonework and reverberated in the floors. In the south tower Rory Devane listened to the steady chiming coming from the opposite tower. He watched as the activity on the rooftops slowed and the movement in the streets came to a halt. In the cold winter air the slow rhythmical sounds of “Danny Boy” pealed through the dark canyons of Manhattan.
The crowds around the police barricades began cheering, raising bottles and glasses, then singing. More people began moving outdoors into the avenues and side streets.
Television coverage shifted abruptly from the press room of the Cathedral to the roofs of Rockefeller Center.
In bars and homes all over New York, and all over the country, pictures of the Cathedral as seen from Rockefeller Center flashed across the screens, bathed in stark blue lighting. A camera zoomed in on the green and gold harp flag that Mullins had draped from the torn louvers.
The sound of the bells was magnified by television audio equipment and transmitted with the picture from one end of the continent to the other. Satellite relays picked up the signal and beamed it over the world.
Rory Devane slipped a flare into a Very pistol, pointed it up through the louvers, and fired. The projectile arched upward, burst into green light, then floated on a parachute, swinging like a pendulum in the breeze, casting an unearthly green radiance across the buildings and through the streets. Devane went to the eastward-facing louvers and fired again.
Remote cameras located in the streets, bars, and restaurants began sending pictures of men and women singing, cheering, crying. A kaleidoscope of images flashed across video screens—bars, street crowds, the green-lit sky, close-ups of tight-lipped police, the bell tower, long shots of the Cathedral.
The flares suddenly changed from the illumination type to signal flares, star bursts, red, white, blue, then the green, orange, and white of the Irish tricolor. The crowd reacted appropriately. All the while the rich, lilting melody of “Danny Boy” filled the air from the bell tower and filled the airwaves from televisions and portable radios. “O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are callingFrom glen to glen, and down the mountain side,The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,’Tis you, ’tis you, must go and I must bide….”
Finally, on each station, reporters after an uncommonly long period of silence began adding commentary to the scenes, which needed none.
In the sanctuary the hostages watched the television in fascinated silence. Hickey played the organ with intense concentration, leading Flynn on the bells. Both men glanced at each other from time to time across the hundred yards that separated them.
Hickey swung into “Danny Boy” for the third time, not wanting to break the spell that the bittersweet song had laid over the collective psyche of the Cathedral and the city. He laughed as tears rolled down his furrowed
