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.Fenston's latest demand had been to collect a Van Gogh from Wentworth Hall and transport it, without delay, to his office in New York.Obtaining an export licence for the masterpiece had not proved difficult, as few institutions or museums could raise the sixty milliondollars necessary to stop the painting leaving the country.Especially after the National Galleries of Scotland had recently failed to raise the required 7 pounds 5 pencemillion to ensure that Michelangelo's Study of a Mourning Woman didn't leave these shores to become part of a private collection in the States.When a Mr Andrews, the butler at Wentworth Hall, had rung the previous day to say that the painting would be ready for collection in the morning, Ruth had scheduled one of her high security air-ride trucks to be at the hall by eight o'clock.Ruth was pacing up and down the tarmac long before the truck turned up at her office, just after ten.Once the painting was unloaded, Ruth supervised every aspect of its packing and safe dispatch to New York, a task she would normally have left to one of her managers.She stood over her senior packer as he wrapped the painting in acid-free glassine paper and then placed it into the foam-lined case he'd been working on throughout the night so it would be ready in time.The captive bolts were tightened on the case, preventing anyone breaking into it without a sophisticated socket set.Special indicators were attached to the outside of the case that would turn red if anyone attempted to open it during its journey.The senior packer stencilled the word 'FRAGILE' on both sides of the box and the number '47' in all four corners.The customs officer had raised an eyebrow when he checked the shipping papers, but as an export licence had been granted, the eyebrow returned to its natural position.Ruth drove across to the waiting 747 and watched as the red box disappeared into the vast hold.She didn't return to her office until the heavy door was secured in place.She checked her watch and smiled.The plane had taken off at 1.40pm.Ruth began to think about the painting that would be arriving from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam later that evening to form part of the Rembrandt's Women exhibition at the Royal Academy.But not before she had put a call through to Fenston Finance to inform them that the Van Gogh was on its way.She dialled Anna's number in New York, and waited for her to pick up the phone.There was a loud explosion, and the building began to sway from side to side.Anna was hurled across the corridor, ending up flat on the canvas as if she'd been floored by a heavyweight boxer.The elevator doors opened and she watched as a fireball of fuel shot through the shaft, searching for oxygen.The hot blast slapped her in the face as if the door of an oven had been thrown open.Anna lay on the ground, dazed.Her first thought was that the building must have been struck by lightning, but she quickly dismissed that idea as there wasn't a cloud in the sky.An eerie silence followed and Anna wondered if she had gone deaf, but this was soon replaced by screams of 'Oh, my God!' as huge shards of jagged glass, twisted metal and office furniture flew past the windows in front of her.It must be another bomb, was Anna's second thought.Everyone who had been in the building in 1993 retold stories of what had happened to them on that bitterly cold February afternoon.Some of them were apocryphal, others pure invention, but the facts were simple.A truck filled with explosives had been driven into the underground garage beneath the building.When it exploded, six people were killed and over a thousand injured.Five underground floors were wiped out, and it took several hours for the emergency services to evacuate the building.Since then, everyone who worked in the World Trade Center had been required to participate in regular fire drills.Anna tried to remember what she was supposed to do in such an emergency
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