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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?”
19
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 pla
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 gri
Thomas O'Neil had been born and raised in New York 's Yorkville section. He'd worked as an inspector at Ke
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 spi
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 thi
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.