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filling the elevator shafts and the stairwells. The people on the stairwell started moving

again, slowly. At the landing of the ninth floor, firemen rushed by, heading up.

Bernstein heard running water and saw, floors below, a veritable river. Clearly something

had hit--and burst--a water main. He crossed to the northeast corner of the building, near

the fourth floor, to reach an alternate stairwell. He had been in the stairwell for 20

minutes, but it felt like seconds--and hours.

He went down another couple of flights of stairs and got to the mezzanine, where he was

able to leave the building. Outside, the ground was covered with fallen debris, and people

were yelling, screaming, and looking up with terror in their eyes. "Get out! Get out!" they

cried to friends, co-workers, and strangers who couldn't hear them.

Across the street, on the 10th floor of the World Financial Center, Tom Russo, Gregory,

Freidheim, and Jeff Vanderbeek gathered in Fuld 's office. (Bradley Jack was in San

Francisco that morning.) Gregory led the conversation, with Fuld on speakerphone. They

debated whether they should evacuate their floors immediately--Gregory said they didn't

have all the facts and he was concerned that employees could be hit by falling debris

outside. He suspected that a commuter plane had accidentally hit the tower. Gregory

decided that they should stay.

Freidheim walked back to his office. He could see on a TV screen that large crowds were

evacuating lower Manhattan. Before he returned to Fuld's office, he found his assistant of

10 years, Ringel. She recalls Freidheim telling her to leave. She objected, but Freidheim

cut her off. "If you stay, I will fire you." Ringel left.

Two minutes later--at 9:03 A.M.--United Airlines flight 175, heading from Boston to Los

Angeles, hit the South Tower. The same group of senior Lehman officials gathered again

in Dick 's office, which faced the building, and as they looked up they could see the

fireball as the plane exploded.

Jeff Vanderbeek's voice cracked. "Oh my god!" he said, and buried his face in his hands

and started to quietly weep.

They called Fuld back. Gregory said, "Dick, something just happened. We' re not sure.

We' re going to look into it. We' re going to get the facts." Freidheim looked at the TV in

Fuld's office, and saw again that everyone was fleeing from the towers and the

surrounding buildings. He looked around the room and saw that Tom Russo, too, looked

very concerned.

Freidheim pulled Russo into his office and argued that they were taking a huge risk by

staying. Russo then called Fuld, who told him to call another meeting in Gregory's office.

This time, Fuld told Gregory to "get everyone out. Now."

Gregory relayed the order. He, Lessing, Vanderbeek, Goldfarb, Russo, Anthony "Tony"

Zehnder, Fran Kittredge--the head of philanthropy--and a few others swept the building,

floor by floor, to make sure all their people had evacuated. Fuld's assistant, Marianne

Burke, was still frozen at her desk. Gregory leaned over her and shook her.

"Marianne, we are going--now!" She got up and went with them.

Lehman's 7,000 employees in the World Financial Center building quickly took the stairs

to the lobby and then left. The last group, the 15 sweepers, ran for the street, now covered

in dust. They then headed west, for the Battery docks, where they got on a ferry that

would take them across the Hudson River to Hoboken, New Jersey, where Lehman had a

backup facility.

They were halfway across the river when suddenly there seemed to be an extra blast of

light. It was like an eclipse had just lifted. Then came a grating roar, as a cloud of smoke

and dust slowly bellowed up from lower Manhattan.

Gregory said, "One of the towers is gone."

Someone pointed and said, "No, it's right there."

"That's the other tower," said Gregory. "One tower's down."

No one spoke for the rest of their trip across the Hudson.

Freidheim got separated from the others,