Black Market

Under the tent of a brightly striped wool blanket, with the windows thrown half-open, they made love once, and then again. Hudson was still learning to feel, and the vigorous lovemaking helped enormously. She brought him closer and closer to climax… right to the delicious edges. But he couldn't make it over.

Finally, the most debilitating wave of exhaustion swept over David Hudson. He felt shaky. He was sliding headlong toward a tranquil dream state. The warning alarms still hadn't completely stopped, but now they almost seemed a natural part of him.

One moment, he was softly stroking Billie's thick blond hair, touching the elegant oval of her face. The next, he was falling into sleep. His eyes closed gently.

Billie lay awake in the large brass bed, watching the ember glow on a filtered American cigarette. She sighed quietly.

Sometimes she surprised even herself with her ability to effortlessly create a lie, in perfect context, consistent with a whole world of other lies… Deception.

Her being able to play Chopin, and fitting that so naturally into the Birmingham, England, framework was an inspiration. But then again, wasn't that precisely why she was here with the great Colonel David Hudson?

She rose silently from the double bed, tossing off rumpled designer sheets. She was certain it would take a miracle to wake Colonel Hudson, even with a ca

She returned to the bedroom with a Beretta. A blunt-nosed silencer was attached to it.

She knew better than to hesitate for even a fraction of a second. She swung her arms up stiffly. She moved to fire the revolver into his lightly pulsing temple, just below the blond hairline. She hesitated a moment too long.

The sleeping body jumped forward. Colonel David Hudson's eyes blinked open, and he fired through the covers. He fired again and again and again.

Warning signals were shrieking in his head. Terrible pain screamed out at David Hudson.

Deception-forever-deception.

Everywhere. Even here.

The Committee of Twelve, the American Wise Men, did not want David Hudson to live. They had easily recruited him after the disappointments of Vietnam, the disappointment in knowing his early promise in the army could never be realized. He'd been their agent provocateur for crises around the world. They had been so intelligent, every bit as smart and precise as he was. They'd sent the girl, of course, his escort. They'd known about Vintage, about his habits. They'd used him so well.

Finally, Colonel David Hudson understood.

42

Brooklyn

Carroll slowly opened his eyes and sat up painfully. All around him were crashing sounds, police and U.S. Army perso

“What happened?” Carroll finally asked. “How long have… What happened to the body? A body was over there!”

A uniformed New York cop knelt down beside him. Carroll had never seen the man before. “What other body are you talking about?”

“There was a body there, over near the Cobra. Walter Trentkamp of the FBI was killed right over there.”

The policeman shook his head. “I was one of the first up here on the roof. There wasn't any other body. You know, you've got a small watermelon growing up on top of your head. You sure you're all right?”

Carroll stood up clumsily. Everything was spi

Arch Carroll, grasping the bricks in the wall for support, started down the winding metal stairs.

Somebody had taken Walter Trentkamp's body away.

“Hey, buddy, you ought to get yourself treated! Have somebody look at your head. There wasn't any body up here.”

Carroll hardly heard the policeman's words. He wanted to go home. He needed to go home, right away. He thought about his kids and about Caitlin.

He thought about Caitlin's meeting with Anton Birnbaum and wondered what might have transpired there. He was worried about the people he loved… There wasn't any body on the roof… Sure thing-this was all a dream, a horrible nightmare.

He didn't know how he managed the first wild minutes of the drive to Riverdale. Maybe it was practice-all those half-drunken nights of his recent past. Maybe God did look after babies and drunks. But there was a time coming when God might make him abdicate his responsibilities, his watchfulness…

What then?

The familiar lights of the old house in Riverdale were glittering brightly. As he drove up his street, Carroll remembered a time when his father and mother would have been there, a time when everything had seemed so much saner in America… when Trentkamp was Uncle Walter, for God's sake.

Walter Trentkamp had been his father's friend for all those incredible years. Had his father ever begun to guess anything? Had his father ever sensed the horrifying betrayal coming from Trentkamp? We had all been so naive about foreign governments back then. About our own government, as it was turning out. Americans thought of democracy as the world's one superior political system. We felt that we understood the parameters of our government's power. We understood nothing, Carroll now saw.

Trentkamp and the KGB had been so brilliant at fooling everyone. Walter Trentkamp had been so confident. He'd never hesitated to use Carroll. What better conduit for information? Walter's hubris was startling, but his modus operandi was consistent. As Carroll thought back now, he remembered that Walter had spent time in Europe after World War II. He recalled “fact-finding” trips to South America, to Mexico, to Southeast Asia, while Carroll had been serving there himself. It was no wonder they had never been able to identify Monserrat. They hadn't been looking in the right places.

No one had thought to look in New York or Washington. Why would anyone suspect the living legend? Walter Trentkamp had no respect for American intelligence, and he had been absolutely right. His ruse, the classic misdirection, had been perfect-the lifework of a master spy, a Donald Maclean or a Kim Philby.

Arch Carroll's eyes were watering again-only now it was because he was so glad to see his kids. They all jumped up and ran to him as he stumbled inside the house. Then the Carroll family was hugging and kissing. They were squeezing their father as tightly as they could.

“We have to get out of here fast,” Carroll whispered to Mary Katherine. “We have to move out of the house now… Help me dress them. Try to explain as little as you can. I have to call Caitlin.”

Mary Katherine nodded. She didn't even seem that surprised at the news. “You go call Caitlin now. I'll outfit the troops.”

Two hours later the Carrolls, the family of six, and Caitlin Dillon quietly checked into the Durham Hotel on West Eighty-seventh Street.

Carroll's initial plan was to stay there for a night, maybe a few nights, until they could decide how to work with Anton Birnbaum, how to work with the New York police. Life was suddenly full of treacherous false bottoms. Was there anyone he could trust?

Once they were alone together in the hotel, Caitlin and Carroll fell into an embrace. They shared a long, tender kiss that neither of them wanted to end. Caitlin pushed against Archer Carroll with a fierce, undisguised need. There was no more reason to hide anything, to hold back her feelings.

“I love you so much,” she said.

“I love you, too, Caitlin. I was afraid today. I thought… that I might never see you again.”

They made love in the hotel room, and it was all passion, definitely not Lima, Ohio. Then a second time, Caitlin and Carroll gently held hands-almost as if they might never do this beautiful thing again. Almost as if they would never share their love again.