Absolute silence followed. Shocked silence.

Then came uncontrollable buzzing, frantic rumor-trading. Almost three minutes of unprecedented confusion and chaos on the exchange floor.

Finally, there was the deep and resonant voice of the stock exchange manager blaring over the antiquated PA system.

“Gentlemen… ladies… the New York Stock Exchange is officially closed… Please leave the floor. Please leave the trading floor immediately. This is not a bomb scare. This is an actual emergency! This is a serious police emergency!”

Outside the heavy stone-and-steel entranceway to the Mobil Building on East Forty-second Street, a series of personal stretch limousines-Mercedeses, Lincolns, Rolls-Royces-were arriving and departing with dramatic haste.

Important-looking men, most of them in dark overcoats, and a few women hurriedly got out of their limousines and entered the building's familiar deco lobby. Upstairs on the forty-second floor, other CEOs and presidents of the major Wall Street banks and brokerage houses were already gathered inside the exclusive Pinnacle Club.

The luxurious main dining room of the private club, which was set up for lunch with crisp white linens and shining silver and crystal, had been commandeered for the emergency meeting. Several of the dark-suited executives stood before floor-to-ceiling nonglare windows, which faced downtown. They looked dazed and disoriented. None of them had ever experienced anything remotely like this, nor had they ever expected to.

The view was a spectacular and chilling one, down uneven canyons to lower Manhattan, all the way to the pencil pocket of skyscrapers that was the financial center itself. About halfway, at Fourteenth Street, there were massive police barricades. Police buses, EMS ambulances, and a paradelike crowd could be seen waiting, watching toward Wall Street as if they were studying some puzzling work of art in a midtown museum.