Black Market

20

At five-thirty, the morning air was misty in suburban Belfast.

It was the kind of day in which objects had no hard definition. The railway platform at Fox Cross was silent. All the trees were stripped and bare and looked arthritic in the wintry absence of clear light. Up beyond the mist the sky was dark gray and the cloud cover low.

Caitlin shivered slightly and folded her arms around her chest. She could definitely hear the drumming of her own heart. She wasn't going to let herself be frightened. She vowed not to act the way a woman would be expected to act under the difficult circumstances. She wouldn't give in to the rising sense of hysteria she was feeling.

She sucked in a raw, cold breath. She shifted impatiently from one boot to the other.

No one was visible yet, not anywhere up and down the weathered railway platform.

Was it all going to be over after this?

Would they learn the identity of Green Band?…

What possible part did the North Irish play? And what could have happened between the Russians and Green Band back in London?

A black leather briefcase hung down from her wrist. Inside were codes to release the enormous sums now on deposit at a Swiss bank, and which were to be paid outright this morning. The ransom of the century was to take place here at historic Fox Cross Station.

Caitlin imagined she looked like a successful business woman with the fine black leather briefcase. Some regular commuter heading into downtown Belfast. Another day at the bloody office. She thought she was playing the part fairly well.

She glanced at her watch and saw it was a few seconds before five forty-five. The time they'd indicated for the exchange had come. She cautioned herself that they were not necessarily punctual.

What did their lack of punctuality mean now? What did it mean in terms of any emergency police action pla

Caitlin tensed. Every muscle, every fiber in her body, tightened involuntarily.

A faded blue panel truck had appeared and was approaching the deserted station from a thick row of pine trees.

The slow-moving truck steadily loomed larger and larger. Caitlin saw that there were three passengers, all of them men.

Then the truck passed by her. A gust of frozen wind swept back her hair, and Caitlin let out what must have been the deepest sigh of her life.

Carroll and the British detectives were less than a mile away, according to the plan. It was a comforting thought, but there was nothing they could do if trouble suddenly bloomed-if someone panicked, if someone made a simple, foolish mistake. Was Green Band nothing more than an outrageous robbery?

A car, a nondescript sedan, approached moments after the panel truck. Caitlin tried to observe everything about it as it rolled forward over the parking lot gravel. Very possibly it was just dropping off a passenger for the first scheduled train at 6:04.

It was a late-model Ford, grayish green, with a slightly smashed-in front grille. There was a tiny chip in the windshield. Four passengers inside-two in front, two in back, Irish working men? Thick, heavyset types, anyway. Maybe farmworkers?

But the second car passed by her, too.

Caitlin was tremendously relieved and disappointed at the same time. She was trying desperately to keep her wits about her.

Then the car suddenly stopped and the tires screeched as it reversed. The two burly men in back jumped out; both were wearing black cloth masks, and each carried a machine pistol.

They ran to Caitlin, work shoes splatting hard against concrete.

“You're Caitlin Dillon, missus?” one of the masked men asked. He thrust forward his menacing gun muzzle.

“I am.” Caitlin's legs had begun to buckle.

“You were born in Old Lyme, Co

“I was born in Lima, Ohio.”

“Birth date-January 23, 1950?”

“Thanks a lot-1951.”

The masked IRA terrorist laughed at Caitlin's automatic response. He apparently appreciated a modicum of coolness and humor. “All right, then, dearie, we're going to put one of these hangman masks on you. No eyeholes for lookin' out. Nothing to be afraid of, though.”

“I'm not afraid of you.”

The other man, the silent partner, looped a black hood over her head and pulled it tightly over her face. He was careful not to bump or touch any other parts of her body. How very Irish Catholic, Caitlin couldn't help thinking. They'd put a bullet into her without blinking, she knew that. But no impure thoughts, no accidental touching of a female breast.

“We're going to lead you back to the car now. Nice and easy… Easy does it… All right, step up, step inside. Now down in back. On the car floor here. There we go, all comfy.”

Caitlin was feeling numb; her body didn't seem to belong to her. She found herself saying, “Thank you. I'm fine right here.”

“Your mum's name is Margaret?” Cleverly timed.

“My mother's name is A

“No tracking device anywhere on your person.”

“No.”

Caitlin had answered a little too quickly, she thought. Her skin became clammy, cold. She couldn't breathe.

There was no apparent reaction, nothing she could perceive as wrong, from the Irishmen. They seemed to believe her, not even to question what she'd said about the tracking device.

“I have to check you all the same. Pat you down. All right, here goes.”

Clumsy male hands (mechanic? some kind of working man?) groped all over her body. Caitlin tensed her stockinged legs as a man's hand wedged up between. The intruding hand felt very harsh and rude. The worst part so far. Probably not the worst she was going to experience today, though.

“If you have a transmitter, we have orders to kill you… If you don't, tell us right now. Don't lie about this, dearie. I'm quite serious. Do you have any tracking device? We'll check you thoroughly as soon as we're out of here. Please tell me the truth.”

“I have no tracking device on me.” Inside me. Could they really find that?

There was no more talking after that. The horrible body search ended abruptly.

The car's engine coughed and came alive.

Someone wiped her face with a dripping wet cloth.

Jesus. The fumes were everywhere. The fumes wouldn't let her breathe.

“No, I-”

Chloroform!

“Oh, bugger it. Look at this hopeless mess,” Patrick Frazier exclaimed.

Torrents of water jackhammered the black Bentley that Carroll and Inspector Patrick Frazier were riding in. Rain blasted the steamy windshields, hitting with the solid force of a fire hose.

It had begun to spit rain at five minutes to six. Then suddenly it was coming down heavily, piercing the mist, making it nearly impossible to see the road ahead.

“They're on the Falls Road now. That's in the rough-and-tumble part of Belfast,” Frazier said. “The Provisional Irish Republican Army owns it… It's your basic urban ghetto, where they regularly ambush our soldiers. Hit-and-run snipers in there, mostly. Urban guerrilla warfare at its best.”

Carroll and Frazier were hunched forward on the front seat of the Bentley. The transmitter-beeper tracking Caitlin was coming over frighteningly loud and clear. It sounded a little like a sequence of radar blips, all originating somewhere deep in Caitlin's stomach.

Carroll couldn't help thinking of a heart-monitoring device in an intensive care unit, something that registered one's hold on life. Poor Caitlin. But he couldn't have done anything to stop her from going-he couldn't have offered himself as a substitute messenger; the instructions had been specific and final.

The monitoring blip blip blip was becoming louder now, more stubbornly insistent.

The car with Caitlin was apparently slowing down. Maybe it had temporarily stopped at a streetlight? In heavy traffic? What now?