Black Market (17 page)

Carroll's pulse was thumping so damn hard. He'd never in his life held off this long, never felt excited in quite this way. His head grew light.

“Please wait. Okay?” Caitlin whispered to him. Her body spasmed lightly.

“Trying…”

“Just… wait… please… Arch?”

Carroll's brain was screeching, burning up. His body was a million raw exposed nerves-as he floated down, floated down, floated down. Finally-he went inside Caitlin, both of them hyperventilating.

Her mouth opened. Wider and wider, and unbelievable soft, delicately pink mouth.

Her face was generous, so surprisingly sweet in passion. She actually seemed to be smiling all the time…

Then Caitlin's eyes opened-looked at him-and she made him feel so good. Wanted again. So necessary to somebody.

“Hi there, Arch. Nice to have you here.”

“Hi yourself. Nice to be had.”

They moved faster together. Her hair slowly danced backward and forward. Her thick curls spread across the pillow, brushed, flowed majestically across his face-hid her eyes.

Carroll arched dramatically. He spasmed, shuddered, called out her name so loudly that it embarrassed him.

“
Caitlin
.”

It was a new way of saying… trust.

Completely new feelings were coming so fast… Old familiar feelings were returning.

Again: “Caitlin.”

“Oh, Arch. Sweet, dear Arch.”

He felt as if she knew him-instantly saw through his defenses, his poses… Finally, somebody… Jesus.

When it was over, when it was finally, finally over, neither of them could move at all… Nothing anywhere in the universe could possibly move. Not ever again.

Carroll and Caitlin slept in each other's arms. Carroll was able to sleep deeply for the first time in days. He had a dream, and it wasn't a bad one this time; it wasn't a dream haunted by past losses and old wounds. He and Caitlin were in a quiet French seaside village. They were walking hand in hand on a deserted, rock-strewn beach. They met his four kids along the way. The kids had been playing and swimming…

A soft ringing sounded in his ears.

He was suddenly looking all around the beach, searching for the sound. Caitlin and the kids were searching as well.

Telephone.

Carroll flung out his arm across a tangle of quilt and bedsheets. He groped for the unseen phone receiver, finally picked it up.

“Yes, who is it?”

It was Phil Berger of the CIA. He had something that might interest Carroll.

Berger's voice was characteristically cold. It was obvious he didn't care to pass along information to Carroll, but at the same time he realized he was under an obligation to do so. The investigation of Green Band was still a team effort, right?

The call was about Margarita Kupchuck's coded letter from Zavidavo.

The call was about the Russians.

About an upcoming meeting in London.

About two billion dollars. At least that much.

About Green Band happening again.

“How soon can you leave, Carroll?”

“I'm on my way.”

Carroll put the receiver back in place and turned to look at Caitlin, who was watching him through half-open eyes, her look one of pleased satisfaction-as if she'd at least solved one of the puzzles in her life.

“Four minutes?” She smiled outrageously. “Uninterrupted time? Phone-off-the-hook seclusion and quiet?”

Outside Dublin, Ireland

Thomas X. O'Neil, chief of U.S. Customs at Dublin International Airport, Ireland, habitually walked with his weight ponderously thrown back on his boot heels. As he walked, his toes splayed out as if he were wearing ill-fitting bedroom slippers. His size 47 waist protruded obscenely, as did his customary nine-incher Cuban cigar. Chief O'Neil looked like an unflattering caricature of Churchill, and he couldn't have cared less. He had a public image, and he enjoyed it. He didn't give a good goddamn what anyone thought.

At noon O'Neil casually waddled across the frozen gray tarmac toward North Building Three at the Irish airfield located outside Dublin. As he walked, O'Neil could smell fresh peat settling in the air. Nothing quite like that blessed aroma, he was thinking. He looked up and saw a majestic 727 from America just gliding in through a blowing fog. Seven years before, he'd come over from New York himself. He never ever planned to return to that syphilitic rat's asshole. He had even tried to alter his accent so that he'd sound Irish. It was a ludicrous attempt, and he came off sounding like a ham in some third-rate touring company doing George Bernard Shaw.

Inside Building Three there were literally hundreds of various-size wooden crates marked with the usual faded corporate logos. A carrot-haired Irish inspector stood with a red marker and clipboard beside a bare wooden desk in the center of the cluttered warehouse room.

“This the lot of it, Liam?” Chief O'Neil asked the inspector. “This Pan Am 310 from this morning?”

“Aye, sir. These particular boxes're from the Catholic charities in New York. Clothes and such for sendin' up north. Givin' us all their old Calvin Kleins, their Jordache jeans, so they are. Look very smart and chic on the provos, I'll bet.”

Chief Inspector O'Neil grinned broadly and nodded. He was trailing grand clouds of smoke all around the freight-inspection shack. He chewed and puffed his Cubans, to get his full money's worth.

Thomas O'Neil had been born and raised in New York 's Yorkville section. He'd worked as an inspector at Kennedy International, nearly nine years before his fortuitous transfer as head of the U.S. service at Shannon. Before that, he had been a master sergeant in general supply in Vietnam. Over in ' Nam, he'd managed to look like a junior Patton, instead of Churchill.

He was also Vets 28.

“Looks fine and dandy to me, lad. Let the hearty boys load it up for the trip north. Spiffy new clothes for the women and wee children. A very good cause.”

Chief Inspector O'Neil laughed for no apparent reason. He was in a chipper mood that afternoon.

And why not? Had he not just succeeded in getting one billion four worth of freshly stolen stock certificates and securities into Western Europe? Had he not just become an instant multimillionaire himself?

London, England

Why were there suddenly so many 4:00 A.M.'S crowding into his life? Arch Carroll wondered. For a foggy moment he was disoriented. He felt like a man on a treadmill, sent spinning off into space, where time zones collapsed, where clocks had no meaning.

This, he remembered, was the heart of London.

But that didn't matter because 4:00 A.M.'S were mostly alike. A bleached-out, dour hour of the day when cities slept and only cops and criminals wandered around, following some curious ancient chronology of their own.

Everything always started as the same intense four-bell-alarm emergency, but nothing ever happened after you broke every imaginable speed and safety law getting to the supposed crime scene. Not right away…

First you wait.

Always you wait.

And wait.

You drink drums of bitter black coffee; you smoke countless stale cigarettes; you pay your full dues every single time on a police case.

His fingers gently massaged his warm, throbbing temple. He felt weirdly numb as he watched Caitlin, who catnapped across the room in the stuffy Ritz Hotel. For the past few hours she had been drifting in and out of a restless sleep. Her pale lips parted slightly as she swallowed. The scooped hollow in her throat made her look particularly sweet and vulnerable. Her long legs were neatly curled under her.

They'd been on emergency alert for twenty straight hours now. They were one of several police/financial teams that had been rushed to London following Margarita Kupchuck's warning transmission from Russia.

It was exactly like the tense and chaotic Wall Street deadline on December 4.

Nothing happened when it was supposed to happen.

No Russians with an extraordinary one-hundred-and-twenty-million-dollar payment.

No Green Band with their enormous pilfered hoard of stocks and bonds.

First, you wait.

“How in hell did they manage to make contact with François Monserrat? Monserrat is completely unknown. Without a face. Damned fellow's an enigma to every intelligence agency I know of in the world.”

A chief inspector from Britain 's MI6, the secret intelligence service, sat on a leather club chair opposite Carroll in the London hotel suite. Patrick Frazier was a tall man with thinning pale blond hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He wore his clothes in the rumpled manner favored by Oxford dons, and he spoke in a cultivated drawl, every word deliberately shaped. Frazier, however, was one of Britain 's resident experts on urban terrorism.

Pain was coursing through Arch Carroll's body as he listened. Yes, you paid your dues every single time.

Too much tension, not enough sleep. Too much confusion. And the arm still ached like hell.

Hours later, the telephone rang and Patrick Frazier snatched it up eagerly. “Ah, Harris. How are you; old man?… Oh, we're holding up. I suppose we are. It's for you, Carroll. Scotland Yard.”

Perry Harris on the other end was speaking very loudly. Harris was from the Yard's serious crime squad. Carroll had worked with Perry Harris twice before in Europe, and Carroll respected the man, who was thorough and honest and who spoke to criminals in a voice that effectively bludgeoned them. A hard man of the fast-disappearing old school.

“Carroll, listen to what we've just found. You're not going to believe it, I'll wager. There's been an incredible turn. The IRA… the IRA has just contacted us… They want a meeting set up with you in Belfast. You specifically. They're in the game now, too. The Russians seem to be out.”

“In what way? How are the provos involved, Perry?”

Blood was suddenly pounding in Carroll's forehead. Green Band came at you hard, then they pulled away just as fast. They came at you-then they disappeared again. They were like cardsharps. Carroll was assailed by the same exasperating thought as before-they're still playing games. He sighed wearily.

Come to Florida, Mr. Carroll.

Go see Michel Chevron, Mr. Carroll.

And now the provos.

“They've come into some securities, some U.S. bonds. Over a billion American dollars' worth, according to the boyos… They listed names and serial numbers for us to check in New York. They check.”

“Hold on, wait a minute,” said Carroll. “The IRA has taken over all the stolen securities?”

“I don't know. They're definitely in possession of some stolen goods.”

“But how?”

“Who knows. They must have met with Green Band, maybe with François Monserrat's people. They're telling us as little as possible, of course.”

“Son of a bitch.” They'd come so far; they'd seemed so close to some kind of break in the Green Band puzzle. “All right, all right. We'll be back in touch as soon as we sort out some things here. Thanks for calling. We'll get back to you, Perry.”

Carroll slammed down the phone receiver. He glared across the hotel room at Chief Inspector Frazier, at Caitlin, whose eyes were now wide open and alert.

“
Somehow
the IRA has made a move into this thing. More chaos orchestrated by Green Band… It seems the provos want to talk about selling some securities back to us. Over a billion American dollars' worth. They know we're in London. How could they know?”

The question shrieked in Carroll's brain.

He couldn't answer it. He hadn't been able to answer it. What was the point of it all now? Something was deflating in him.

He wanted to sleep.

How could they know everything ahead of time? Who was keeping them informed?

The man called François Monserrat, who was wearing a black nylon anorak and a dark beret and who now walked with a pronounced limp, moved down Portobello Road in the west of London.

He passed through the open market for which this street was famous; now and then he would pause at this stall or that and examine an antique. There were some very fine pieces to be had here. There were also some obvious fakes.

You needed a good eye, a practiced eye, to tell the real article from the false. In the palm of his hand, he turned over a small jade lynx. He curled his fingers around it, squeezing hard… He was not a man who gave way to his emotions easily. But at any given moment an emotion could all too easily explode.

Like now.

Cold anger was coursing through Monserrat. If the lynx had been real, he would have squeezed the life out of it. He didn't like clever games, when they were played by someone else's rules.

Green Band had become a threat.

They said one thing. They did another.

They suggested important meetings. The meetings never took place.

They were phantoms. Monserrat had grudging admiration for them.

He set down the jade lynx and closed his eyes. He retreated into a dark, cool place in the deepest part of his mind. In this place he always had control. Nothing slipped away from him in that hidden recess.

This time, though, it failed him. He opened his eyes and the bustling market assaulted his senses.

Green Band was somewhere close by. What did they want?

Perhaps very soon, he would know.

Belfast, Ireland

They had to wait at the tiny, fastidious Regent Hotel in Belfast.

Arch Carroll tried to accept the helpless feeling that they had no control over anything that was happening. The Green Band strategy was working flawlessly.

Well-coordinated economic terror.

Massive psychological disorientation designed to create escalating chaos and worldwide terror.

Patrick Frazier kept up a cheery pep talk under the unusually trying circumstances. The British Special Branch man was almost tirelessly gung ho, but understated, too.

Frazier slid off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes briskly. “You'll be outfitted with an internal transmitter, Caitlin. Absolute state of the art. Designed for the military. Armalite Corporation. You swallow the damn thing.”

“If we ever do meet up with them, Caitlin, you must verify that the securities are genuine,” Frazier said.

“
If
we ever meet up with them.”

Six more hours droned by in painful, slow waltztime. The only perceptible change was the morning sliding into afternoon, the day turning to the steel blue shades of the Northern Irish cityscape.

A red-haired serving girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, brought in steaming tea and hot Irish soda bread. Carroll, Frazier, and Caitlin ate nervously, more out of boredom than of anything else.

Carroll remembered to check in with Walter Trentkamp's office in New York. He left a message for Walter: “Naught, zero, bopkes, zip, goose egg… as in wild goose egg chase.”

Ten hours passed slowly in the Regent Hotel suite.

It was exactly like the night of December 4 in New York, when the final deadline for the bombing had passed.

From the fourth-floor window of the hotel suite, Carroll saw an antiquated bicycle bumping over the cobblestoned street. The man on the bike looked to be about seventy, and his thin frame didn't look as if it could survive the shuddering motions of the bike. Carroll leaned closer to the window.

The rider parked his bike almost directly below the hotel window.

“Could this be our contact?” Carroll asked in a hoarse voice.

Patrick Frazier moved to the window and studied the old man. “Doesn't look the terrorist type. That's a good sign. They never do in Belfast.”

The rider hobbled into the hotel, then disappeared from Carroll's sight.

“He's inside now.”

“Then we wait and see,” Patrick Frazier said, muttering to himself.

Carroll sighed. He looked toward Caitlin, who smiled bravely at him. How did she always stay so calm? The journey, the tension, the awful waiting. The sense, all around them, of imminent danger. Belfast, after all, was a fully declared war zone-a tragic city where innocent people died daily, pursuing confusing beliefs that had their roots in a conflict begun hundreds of years before.

Less than ninety seconds after he went in, the old man came marching out again. He rigidly climbed back on his bike. Immediately there came a solid rap on the hardwood door of the suite.

Caitlin opened the door with a sharp pull.

“An old man just delivered this message,” a young British detective crisply reported. He went to his commander, passing both Caitlin and Carroll without so much as a nod.

Patrick Frazier ripped open the envelope and read without any discernible expression. Finally his red-rimmed eyes peeked over the wrinkled note at Carroll. He seemed nervous and concerned.

He read the message aloud to Carroll and Caitlin: “There's no salutation or date… It reads as follows: ‘You are to send your representative with the proof of transfer of funds. Your representative is to be at Fox Cross Station, six miles northwest outside Belfast. That's the railroad. Be there at oh five forty-five. The precious securities will be safely waiting nearby… The messenger is to be Caitlin Dillon. No one else is acceptable to us. There will be no further contact.’”