Black Market

Carroll didn't know what to say. He shrugged and tried to sink a little deeper onto his seat. Why didn't he have one of his usual wisecracks to throw back at her?

Caitlin Dillon smoothly switched her attention back to the audience of senior police officers and heavy-duty Wall Street businessmen. Without missing a beat, she resumed her briefing at exactly the point where she had interrupted herself.

“In the past decade,” she said, and her next chart efficiently appeared on the screen at her back, “foreign investment in the United States has skyrocketed. Billions of francs, yen, pesos, and deutsche marks have flowed into our economy to the sum of eighty-five billion dollars. The Midland Bank of England, for instance, took full control of the Crocker National Bank of California. Nippon Kokan purchased half the National Steel Corporation. The list goes on and on.

“At this rate, I'm sorry to say, the Japanese, the Arabs, and the Germans will very soon control our financial destiny.”

As she recited exhaustive facts and numbers that defined the present situation in the financial community, Carroll listened attentively. He also watched attentively. Nothing could have drawn his eyes away from her, short of a second Wall Street bombing raid.

There was a disarming twinkle in her eyes, an unexpected hint of sweetness in her smile. Was it really sweetness, though? Coyness? How could she hold down the job she had if she was shy and retiring and sweet? “Sweet” was not in the Wall Street lexicon.

She was chic-even in a conservative, salt-and-pepper tweed business suit. She looked stylish and somehow just right.

Most of all, though, she looked untouchable.

That was the single word, the most precise idea floating through Carroll's head, that seemed to sum up Caitlin Dillon best.

Untouchable.

In Carroll's experience, neither he nor anybody he knew ever actually got to meet the spectacular-looking women you all too frequently saw in midtown New York, in Washington, in Paris. Who the hell did get to know them?… Was there a matching species of untouchable men whom Carroll never bothered to notice?… What sort of man woke up with this Caitlin Dillon woman next to him? Some superwealthy Wall Street lion? One of those buccaneers of the stock arbitrage game? Yes, he'd bet anything that was the case.

His attention drifted back to her speech, which was a succinct description of the Green Band emergency, of the current state of Wall Street's insufficient computer records, and of the stoppage of all international transfers of funds. She had some sobering and scary material up there on the podium.

“Surprisingly, there's still been no further contact by the terrorist group, whatever kind of group they are. As you may know, no actual demands were made. No ultimatums. Absolutely no reason has been given so far for what happened on Friday.

“There'll be another meeting after this, for my people and for the analysts. We have to get something going with the computers before the market opens on Monday. If not… I would expect major unpleasantness.”

The meeting room became still. The scraping of feet, all paper shuffling, stopped.

“Are we talking about a stock market panic? Some kind of crash? What sort of major unpleasantness?” someone called out.

Caitlin paused before she spoke again. It was obvious to Carroll that she was choosing her next words with extreme care and diplomacy.

“I think we all have to recognize… that there is a possibility, even a likelihood, of some form of market panic on Monday morning.”

“What constitutes a panic in your mind? Give us a for instance,” said a senior Wall Street man.

“The market could lose several hundred points very quickly. In a matter of hours. That's if they decide to open on Monday. In Tokyo, London, Geneva, the subject's still under discussion.”

“Several hundred points!” Quite a few of the brokers groaned. Carroll watched them envision their comfortable lives eroding. The stretch Mercedeses, the Westchester estates, the fashionable clothes-everything gone. It's so fucking fragile, he thought.

“Are we talking about a potential Black Friday situation?” asked someone from the back of the auditorium. “Are you saying there could actually be a stock market crash?”

Caitlin frowned. She recognized the speaker, a stiff, stuffy bean counter from one of the larger midtown New York banks. “I'm not saying anything like that yet. As I suggested before, if we had a more modern system of computers down here, if Wall Street had joined the rest of the twentieth century, we'd know a lot more. Tomorrow is Monday. We'll see what happens then. We should be prepared. That's what I'm suggesting-preparedness. For a change.”

With that, Caitlin Dillon stepped down from the stage. As Carroll watched her leave the room, he became conscious of another figure approaching him: Captain Francis Nicolo from the New York City Bomb Squad, a cop who liked to think he was something of a dandy with his sleek, waxed mustache and his three-piece pin-striped suits.

“A moment, Arch,” Nicolo said, and gestured rather mysteriously for Carroll to follow.

They hurried out of the room and along various dimly lit stock exchange corridors, Carroll trailing behind. Nicolo opened the door to a small i

“What's happening?” Carroll asked, both curious and slightly amused. “Talk to me, Francis.”

“Check this,” Nicolo said. He pointed to a plain cardboard box propped on the desk. “Open it. Go ahead.”

“What is it?” Carroll hesitantly stepped toward the desk. He laid the tips of his fingers lightly against the box lid.

“Open it. Won't bite your widget off.”

Carroll removed the lid. “Where the hell did this come from?” he asked. “Christ, Frank.”

“Janitor found it behind a cistern in one of the men's rooms,” Nicolo answered. “Scared the living piss out of the poor guy.”

Carroll stared at the device, at the length of shiny green ribbon that was wound elaborately around it. Green Band.

“It's harmless,” Nicolo said. “It was never meant to go off.”

Arch Carroll continued to stare at the makings of a professional terrorist's bomb. It was never meant to go off, he thought. Another warning? “They could have totaled this place,” he said with a sick feeling.

Nicolo made a clucking sound. “Easily,” he said. “Plastique, like all the others. Whoever did it knew what the hell he was up to, Arch.”

Carroll wandered over to the window and peered down into the street, where he saw New York cops standing all over the place, where he saw the incomprehensible war zone.

9

Using a tine of his fork, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky punctured each of the three su

The superb greasy-spoon meal was his usual breakfast: corned beef hash, eggs, and bialys. The place was the Dream Doughnut Coffee at Twenty-third Street and Tenth Avenue. The meal arrived at the table approximately three hours into his day shift. Stemkowsky had been looking forward to the food all through his first dreary hours on the road.

Harry Stemkowsky almost always went through the same exact thought process while he was devouring breakfast at the Dream…

It was so unbelievably good to be out of that Erie VA hospital, that piss-and-shitting hole. It was just so goddamn tremendous to be alive again. He had a valid reason to keep going now, to get really psyched about his life.

And it was all thanks to Colonel David Hudson. Who happened to be the best soldier, the best friend, one of the best men Stemkowsky had ever met. Colonel Hudson had given all the Vets another chance. He'd given them the Green Band mission to get even.