Black Market (4 page)

Only now Nora was gone. Nearly three years back, in the cancer ward of New York Hospital.
Merry Christmas, Carroll family. Your friend, God
…

“I'm just a kid, Arch,” Nora had whispered to him once, after she'd found out she was dying. She'd been thirty-one then, a year younger than he.

Carroll slowly sipped his can of watery beer. A song played through his head: “… The beer that made Milwaukee famous, made a loser out of me.” Ever since she'd died, he understood he'd been trying to commit slow, sure suicide. He'd been drinking too much; eating most of the wrong things; taking stupid chances on the job…

It wasn't as if he didn't understand the problem, because he did. He just couldn't seem to do a damn thing to stop his steep downhill slide. He was like some daredevil skier determined to destroy himself on the most treacherous slopes. He didn't seem to care enough anymore…

Arch Carroll, supposed tough-guy cop, well-quoted cynic around town-sitting in the tub with one of his kid's rubber toys floating next to him. The kids delighted and astonished Carroll. So why was he screwing up so badly lately?

He was tempted to wake them up now. Maybe go sleigh riding at midnight on the back lawn. Play catch with Mickey Kevin. Teach Lizzie how to do a plie and become a hot-shit little ballerina.

Arch Carroll's ears suddenly tuned in sharply. He thought he heard voices. A door slammed. There were loud steps in the hallway and the familiar creak of the floor-boards.

The kids were up! Exactly what he needed, Carroll thought, and he began to smile broadly.

There was a light tap on the bathroom door. That had to be Lizzie or Mickey trying to be cute. Soon to be followed by Dolby Stereo kid screams and uncontrollable belly laughs.

“
Entrez
. Come right in, you little assholes,” he called.

The bathroom door opened slowly, and Carroll cupped his hands, ready to splash them with water.

He managed to control his impulse just in time.

The man framed in the doorway was wearing a black London Fog raincoat, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, a white button-down shirt, and a striped rep tie. Carroll had never seen him before.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said.

“How did you get up here? Who the hell are you?” Carroll asked.

The stranger looked like a banker, maybe an account executive at a brokerage firm.

The man spoke with Ivy League formality, pretending not to notice the little yellow duck. Nothing even close to a smile crossed his pale, thin lips. “Your sister let me come up. Sorry to barge in on you, to trouble you like this at home. I need you to get dressed and come with me, Mr. Carroll. The president wants to see you tonight.”

Washington, D.C.

As early as the hot and steamy summer of 1961, John Kennedy had confided to close advisers that the stressful work of the presidency had already aged him ten years. He said it would do the same to anyone who wanted, or needed, the job of chief executive in the most powerful free country in the world.

As he hurried down the plush, half-darkened corridors on the second floor of the White House, Justin Kearney, the forty-first president of the United States, was realizing the same inescapable truth that Kennedy had put into words. He had recently begun to question the motives that had driven him to his present residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Indeed, he had begun to question the intrinsic value of the office itself-he had become acutely aware of the limitations of his power, and this greatly disillusioned him.

Justin Kearney was only forty-two years of age; by one month, he was the youngest American president ever elected and the first Vietnam War veteran to reach the White House.

At one-fifty on Saturday morning, President Kearney took what he hoped would be a calming breath and entered the National Security Council conference room. Those already gathered there rose respectfully, Archer Carroll among them.

Carroll watched the president of the United States take his customary place at the head of the heavy oak conference table. In the course of his three previous visits to the White House, he'd never seen Kearney so nervous, so clearly uncomfortable.

“First of all, I truly thank you for getting here on such very short notice.” The president sloughed off his wrinkled navy blue suit coat. “I think everyone knows everyone else. One, maybe two exceptions… Down there, sitting between Bill Whittier and Morton Atwater, is Caitlin Dillon. Caitlin is the chief enforcement officer for the SEC. She just might be the toughest enforcer since James Landis himself…

“Down at the far right corner, gentleman in the tan corduroy sport coat is Arch Carroll. Mr. Carroll is the head of the DIA's Antiterrorist Division. This is the same group that was created following Munich and Lod.” The president licked his lips nervously as he gazed around the assembly.

Commissioner Michael Kane from the New York Police Department was asked to report first.

“Right now we have men down inside the rubble of all the buildings that were hit. We have explosive-arson squads underground. They've already reported that Thirty Wall, as well as the Fed, is badly damaged and extremely dangerous. Either building could conceivably collapse tonight.

“Based solely on a raw visual impression of the explosions, gentlemen, the people who did this are at the highest levels of their trade. The plan was brilliantly executed. It was all carefully,
obsessively
worked out in advance.”

Claude Williams of the U.S. Army Engineers was called to speak next.

“There's a disturbing attention to detail in every area-that's what is particularly frightening about this. The river pier, the initial setup with the FBI, the elaborate study of Wall Street itself. I've never seen anything like this, and I'll tell you, I'm not standing here exaggerating for effect. It's as if a well-organized army hit Wall Street. It's as if a war's been started down there.”

Walter Trentkamp from the FBI spoke next. Trentkamp had been an old and dear friend of Arch Carroll's father. He'd even helped talk the younger Carroll into his first police job. Arch Carroll leaned forward to listen to Walter's report.

“I agree with Mike Kane,” Trentkamp said in a gravelly, imposing voice. “Everything has the veneer of an expert paramilitary operation. The explosives on Wall Street were placed for maximum damage. Our ordnance boys actually seem to admire the bastards. The whole operation was brilliantly organized, very thoughtfully devised. I haven't seen anything like it, either. The closest would be Munich.

“The plan must have taken months, maybe years, to develop and execute with this high a level of success. PLO? IRA? Red Brigade? I assume we'll know more on that score before too long. They have to contact us eventually. They must want something. Nobody goes to this extreme without having some kind of demand in mind.” Trentkamp shrugged and looked around at the puzzled, solemn faces in the room. “In other words, gentlemen, I've got nothing right now.”

Each of those present was called upon to give a report, from the secretary of defense to SEC representative Caitlin Dillon. All spoke briefly. Although Caitlin Dillon didn't have a great deal to add, she spoke with remarkable fluency, the kind where you could see the semicolons in her speech. Arch Carroll couldn't take his eyes away from her face. Only when she fell silent did he glance elsewhere.

“Arch? Are you with us?”

Carroll gave the room an embarrassed smile as he rose to address the group. The mostly recognizable faces that turned his way were dark and impassive.

Carroll was characteristically rumpled. His long brown hair and street clothes brought to mind underground witnesses and policemen called in drug-related grand jury trials. His face was strong. His brown eyes were bright and alert, even though he was exhausted. He'd thought about wearing his one good Barneys warehouse sale suit, but then had changed his mind. What was it Thoreau had advised? Beware all enterprises that require new clothes… something like that.

Several of the principals attending the emergency session knew Carroll by reputation, at least. As a modern-day policeman, Carroll was thought to be appropriately unorthodox and extremely effective. The team he supervised was credited with helping to make the world's terrorists think twice about raiding forays into the United States.

Arch Carroll had also occasionally been characterized as a troublemaker: too much of a perfectionist for the Washington politicians to handle, too off-Broadway theatrical at times. Moreover, he was becoming increasingly known as an Irish drunk. It was a reputation that might not have hurt him too much in the old days of New York police work, but it wasn't doing him any good in these more rarefied circles.

“I'll try to be brief,” Carroll began softly. “For starters, I don't think we can make the assumption yet that this
is
an established or known terrorist group.

“If it is, then it probably means one of two groups: the Soviets, through the GRU-which could include François Monserrat and his network-or a second possibility, a freelance group, probably sent out of the Middle East. Financed there, anyway.

“I don't believe anyone else has the organization and discipline, the technical know-how or money to manage something this complex.” Carroll's intense brown eyes roamed the room. Why did his own remarks sound so hollow? “You can cross out just about everyone else as suspects.” He sat down.

Walter Trentkamp raised a finger and spoke again. “For everyone's general information, we've set up an investigative unit down on Wall Street. The unit is inside the stock exchange building, which suffered limited damage during the raid. Somebody from the NYPD already released number Thirteen Wall to the press. So that's what we'll call headquarters.

“There's no such address, actually. The stock exchange
is
on Wall, but the actual address is Broad Street.
That
may be significant. See, we've made our first mistake, and we haven't even started the investigation.”

Almost everyone laughed, but the important irony was lost on none of them. There would be more mistakes-a lot more serious mistakes-before anything was resolved. Number 13 was surely an omen of things to come.

President Kearney stood once again at his end of the massive conference table. His face registered the day's extreme stress. He was no longer the good-looking, energetic young senator who'd successfully hit the national campaign trail two years before. Now he seemed cruelly drained.

Kearney said, “I need to clear the air about something else. Something that must never go beyond this room.” The president paused, looked up and down the rows of his closest advisers. Then he went on.

“For several weeks now, the White House, Vice President Elliot, and myself have been receiving reliable intelligence leaks, steady information about a dramatic counterinsurgent plot. Possibly a scenario involving the elusive François Monserrat.”

The president paused again, deliberately pacing himself. Arch Carroll turned the name Monserrat over in his mind. “Elusive” didn't quite do Monserrat proper justice. There were times, indeed, when he had seriously doubted the man's existence, times when he'd considered Monserrat as the nom de guerre of several different individuals acting in collaboration. He was in France one day, Libya the next. He might be reported in Mexico even as somebody else claimed to have seen him at the same time stepping aboard an unmarked plane in Prague.

President Kearney continued. “Our intelligence people have learned that Middle Eastern and South American oil-producing countries have been seriously considering a run on the New York Stock Market.

“This action was to be ‘just’ retribution for what they considered broken promises, even outright fraud practiced by U.S. banks and the New York brokerage houses. At the very least, the oil cartel hoped to initiate a short-term panic, which they alone would be in a position to take advantage of. Is this rumored scenario related to tonight? At this moment, I don't know…

“I have serious fears, though, that we're at the beginning of a grave international economic crisis. Gentlemen, it would not be an exaggeration to postulate, to prepare ourselves for the possibility, that the Western economy could effectively collapse on Monday, when the market will conceivably reopen.”

President Kearney's intense blue eyes continued to make contact around the crisis table. “We might find out who initiated the attack on Wall Street last night. We have to find out how they did it. We have to find out why… What is the meaning of this insane, unthinkable thing?”

Arch Carroll's head was buzzing and his eyes stinging as he filed out of the White House conference room at 2:55 A.M. The other participants were subdued and silent; they looked reflective, exhausted.

Carroll had already started down the flight of creaking, thickly carpeted south White House stairs when he felt a hand rest lightly on his shoulder, startling him. He turned to see Walter Trentkamp, impressive as ever at three in the morning.

“Trying to run out on me?” Trentkamp shook his head like a father about to chastise his son in the friendliest terms possible. “How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while. Have a minute to talk?”

“Hello, Walter. Sure, we can talk. How about going outside? It might clear our heads a little.”

Moments later Carroll and one of his earliest mentors were walking side by side through the early morning mist shrouding Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was a heavy gray slab covering the capital like the roof on a mausoleum. In the distance Carroll could see the Washington Monument.

“I haven't seen enough of your homely face lately. Probably not since you and the kids moved back to the old homestead.”

“We miss you, too. It was kind of odd, going back there at first. Now it's good, absolutely the right choice. The kids call it their ‘country house.’ They think they live on a Nebraska farm now. Riverdale, right?” Carroll grinned.

“Wonderful kids. Mary Katherine's a gem, too.” Trentkamp hesitated a moment. “How are
you
doing?
You're
the one who concerns me.”

Carroll began to feel as if he were talking to a rabbi on the police force. “Holding up pretty well. I'm all right. I'm actually doing fine.” He shrugged.

Trentkamp shook his closely cropped silver-gray curls. His eyes held a knowing look, and Carroll felt suddenly uncomfortable. The cop part of Walter had a knack of wheedling his way inside you, so that you were left feeling transparent, like thin paper held up to a bright light.

“I don't think so, Archer. I don't think you're doing fine at all.”

Carroll stiffened. “No? Well, I'm sorry. I thought I was all right.”

“You're not so fine. You're not even in the general ballpark of fine. The late night drinking bouts have become legend. Risks you're taking with your life. Other cops talk too much about you.”

It was the wrong hour for this kind of talk, even from the man he'd grown up calling “Uncle Walter.” Carroll bristled. “That all, Rabbi? That all you wanted to see me about?”

Walter Trentkamp abruptly stopped walking. He laid a hand on Carroll's shoulder and squeezed it lightly. “I wanted to talk to the son of an old friend of mine. I wanted to help if I could.”

Arch Carroll turned his bleary eyes away from those of the FBI director. His face reddened. “I'm sorry. I guess it's been a long day.”

“It has been a long day. It's been a long couple of years for you since Nora. You're close to being broken out of your unit in the DIA. They like the results, but not your working style. There's talk about replacing you. Matty Reardon's one name I've heard.”

It was a verbal punch. Arch Carroll knew, somewhere in the back of his mind that this was coming. “Reardon'd be a good choice. He's a good company man. Good man, period.”

“Arch, please cut the crap. You're playing games with someone who's known you thirty-five years. Nobody can replace you at the DIA.”

Carroll frowned, and he began to cough in the manner of Crusader Rabbit. He felt like a real shit. “Aww, hell, I'm sorry, Walter. I know what you're trying to do.”

“People understand what you've been through. I understand. Please believe that, Archer. Everybody wants to help… I
asked
for you on this one. I had to ask.”

Carroll shrugged his broad, sloping shoulders, but he was hurt. He hadn't known his reputation had slipped so badly, maybe even in Walter Trentkamp's eyes.

“I don't know what to say. I really don't. Not even a typical Bronx Irish wisecrack. Nothing.”

“Talk to me on this one. Let me know what you find out. Just talk to me, okay?… Don't go it alone. Will you promise me that?” said Trentkamp.

“Promise.” Carroll nodded slowly.

Walter Trentkamp turned up the collar of his overcoat against the early morning mist. Both he and Carroll were over six feet tall. They looked like father and son.