Black Market

“Glad you didn't get yourself killed,” she said.

There was a breathless silence in the room.

She turned to one of the computer screens, studying the mass of crawling green letters. The spell between them was broken again.

“Another Baader-Meinhof member was shot and killed in Munich.” Caitlin looked up from the screen message. She watched him, wondering again what the kiss on the plane had meant.

Carroll merely nodded. “The West Germans are using Green Band as an excuse to solve their local terrorism problems. The BND is very pragmatic. They're probably the toughest police force in Western Europe.”

Caitlin perched herself atop the high wooden stool again and hugged her knees. Another message started to blip over the nearest computer. She turned to watch the computer screen closely.

And froze.

“Look at this, Arch.”

MOSCOW. THE KGB HAS INTERCEPTED

PYOTR ANDRONOV. IMPORTANT

UNDERWORLD BLACK MARKET SPECIALIST.

ANDRONOV HOLDING U.S. SECURITIES,

PRESUMED STOLEN. ANDRONOV LINKS

STOLEN BONDS TO GREEN BAND.

AMOUNT: ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED

FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. REFERRED TO

AS “SAMPLES.”

Moments later another equally curious item began to appear on the screen.

The second entry was from the Swiss in Geneva.

INTERPOL. RELIABLE LOCAL INFORMER

HAS REPORTED “FLOODING” OF GENEVA

MARKET WITH STOLEN BOND OFFERS.

SELLER LOOKING FOR “SERIOUS BUYER.”

AMOUNT SUGGESTED AS HIGH AS FIVE TO

TEN MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS.

SOURCE VERY RELIABLE.

Carroll gnawed at his lip. “I think this might be the moment of truth.”

“Something's definitely happening. But why is it happening all at once like this?”

For the next hour and a half, during which the various screens virtually exploded with new information, as many as a dozen U.S. Army and police officials rushed down to look at the messages inside the crisis room. News was being transmitted from all over the world, all at once.

As bad as it seemed, there was the sense of relief that something was happening. Was Green Band finally moving?

ZURICH. PREVALENT RUMORS HERE TONIGHT OF STOLEN U.S. SECURITIES AVAILABLE. VERY LARGE AMOUNTS. HIGH SEVEN-FIGURE THEFT INDICATED BY SOURCES.

LONDON, SCOTLAND YARD. DURING ROUTINE SEARCH IN KENSINGTON, AMERICAN STOCK CERTIFICATES FOUND. SERIAL NUMBERS TO FOLLOW. SUSPECT NOT IN FLAT WITH CACHE. SUSPECT IS JOHN HALL-FRAZIER, A KNOWN FENCE IN EUROPE BOND MARKET. SUSPECT KNOWN TO MICHEL CHEVRON.

BEIRUT. AHMED JARREL ARRESTED THIS EVENING HERE. TRADED THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION… JARREL HAD BEEN ATTEMPTING TO SELL U.S. SECURITIES IN BEIRUT. ASKING PRICE THIRTY-FIVE CENTS ON A DOLLAR VALUE. VERY HIGH-QUALITY BONDS. SOME BLANK CHEQUES ALSO. JARREL CLAIMS AMOUNT AVAILABLE UP TO ONE HUNDRED MILLION AMERICAN.

Half an hour later, using an ordinary hand calculator, Caitlin added up the amounts indicated on the display screens so far.

The final sum came to just under a hundred million U.S. dollars.

“Samples…”

Next she made a quick printout of the Fortune 500, America 's largest individual corporations, to check against the stolen securities reported thus far.

Nearly all the thefts were in the top one hundred companies. Those reported to date created an unusual, elite universe. Was there a clue or potential lead in that?

Rank in Company Fortune 500-Stockholder Equity

1 Exxon (New York)-$29,443,095,000

2 General Motors (Detroit)-20,766,600,000

3 Mobile (New York)-13,952,000,000

5 International Business Machines (Armonk, N.Y.)-23,219,000,000

6 Texaco (Harrison, N.Y.)-14,726,000,000

8 Standard Oil (Indiana) (Chicago)-12,440,000,000

9 Standard Oil of California (San Francisco)-14,106,000,000

10 General Electric (Fairfield, Co

15 U.S. Steel (Pittsburgh)-11,270,000,000

17 Sun (Radnor, Pa.)-5,355,000,000

20 ITT (New York)-6,106,084,000

26 AT &T Technologies (New York)-4,621,300,000

28 Dow Chemical (Midland, Mich.)-5,047,000,000

34 Westinghouse Electric (Pittsburgh)-3,410,300,000

39 Amerada Hess (New York)-2,525,663,000

42 McDo

43 Rockwell International (Pittsburgh)-2,367,300,000

45 Ashland Oil (Russell, Ky.)-1,084,824,000

50 Lockheed (Burbank, Calif.)-826,200,000

52 Monsanto (St. Louis)-3,667,000,000

55 Anheuser-Busch (St. Louis)-1,766,500,000

67 Gulf & Western Industries (New York)-1,893,924,000

69 Bethlehem Steel (Bethlehem, Pa.)-1,313,100,000

77 Texas Instruments (Dallas)-1,202,700,000

84 Digital Equipment (Maynard, Mass.)-3,541,282,000

89 Diamond Shamrock (Dallas)-2,743,327,000

92 Deere (Moline, III.)-2,275,967,000

97 North American Philips (New York)-883,874,000

By nine-fifteen the crisis room was filled with officials from the White House and the Pentagon. They scrutinized the computer screens like gamblers nervously watching the outcome of their bets. The secretary of the Treasury and the vice president were both present. Phil Berger of the CIA had been flown in by special air force helicopter from Washington.

At eleven O'clock urgent reports were still chattering in over the computer terminals. The president had been kept informed; another National Security conference had already been called for late that night.

This time, however, neither Arch Carroll nor Caitlin Dillon was invited to travel down to Washington.

“What did I do?” Caitlin complained angrily when she found out.

“You've got the wrong friends,” Carroll said. “You're traveling in some bad company.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Me.”

17

Zavidavo, Russia

At four-thirty that morning, three sets of yellow headlights lanced a dense gray wall of fog. The lights stopped suddenly, making circles on a twelve-foot-high electrified gate that dripped snow and ice.

The oppressive gate was meant to help protect the Russian version of Camp David, a heavily fortified hunting lodge called Zavidavo.

Two militiamen from the Internal Security Division immediately waddled out into the bracing cold. They were dressed in bulky coats and carrying machine guns. It was their job to check the identification of all visitors.

In a matter of seconds, with highly unusual dispatch, a Cheka and two hand-tooled Zil limousines were cleared to proceed up the icy lanes winding to the main hunting lodge.

The automobiles, side blinds drawn, carried six of the most important decision makers in Soviet Russia. The military guards hurried back into their gatehouse and immediately called for emergency security for the woodland resort compound.

Both men had been shocked by the identity of the six people they had just seen at the front gate. They exchanged looks and muttered quietly to each other, their breath hanging like thick clouds of smoke on the chill air. All at once the peaceful atmosphere of the compound had changed; the guards were nervous and alarmed.

Inside the main dacha, meanwhile, Major General Radomir Raskov of the GRU Secret Police was feeling apprehensive as well, but he was also heady with excitement and heightened expectation. Raskov had commissioned an elegant country breakfast to be served in a sun parlor, which was heated by a blazing log fire. Everything was ready.

Right after breakfast, Major General Raskov would drop his private bombshell on the six visiting leaders.

At a little past 5:00 A.M., the Politburo steering group sat down to steaming platters heaped with duck eggs, country sausage, and freshly caught fish. The breakfast group included Yori Ilich Belov, the Russian premier; a Cossack, Red Army general named Yuri Sergeivitch Iranov; the first secretary of the Communist party; General Vasily Kalin; and the heads of the KGB and GRU.