Black Market (23 page)

At seven that night, Carroll and Caitlin Dillon watched a chilling news report with more than a hundred of the principals who were actually making the headlines inside the World Trade Center. TV camera teams, top free-lance national magazine and newspaper photographers, and network radio reporters carrying lightweight tape recorders on their shoulders were swarming all over the man on the street in New York City.

A TV news interviewer stopped a man entering St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. “How do you personally react to today's financial tragedy?” he asked. “What they're now calling a Black Market?”

“It makes me very frightened. Very sad. Nothing in this society of ours seems secure anymore. I had a few dollars. Safe. In IBM, in A T and T, the blue-chips only. Now I have virtually nothing. I'm seventy-three years old. What am I going to do?”

A TV interview crew from “Eyewitness News” was set up to intercept pedestrians near Lincoln Center on Columbus Avenue.

“Excuse me, sir,” called the reporter to one man. “What's your response to the latest reports, the critical situations on Wall Street?”

“My response! I'll tell you what. There's nothing you can believe anymore. After Watergate, you couldn't believe in the president of the United States. After Vietnam, you couldn't believe in our military's moral stance. You can't believe in church leaders anymore. Now? Now you can't even believe in the almighty dollar…”

TV news teams roamed Forty-second Street near Grand Central Station. One interviewer even thrust his mike at a cop.

“You're a police officer. You've undoubtedly seen this city in other times of great stress… blackouts, racial riots… How do you compare this situation right now?”

“This is about the hairiest I've seen it in New York. Not violent. Not yet, anyways. It's just, people are like, they're like walking zombies. Everybody I talk to, totally blitzed. It's like somebody changed all the rules.”

TV camera crews were a constant fixture all over Wall Street and the World Trade Center area. TV newsman Curt Jackson had actually been living in a construction-company trailer on Wall Street since the Friday-night bombing. He promised his audience he wouldn't leave until the crime, the Green Band mystery, was solved.

“You're a native New Yorker, sir?” Curt Jackson asked a gentleman in his familiar, authoritative voice.

“That's right. I'm a New Yorker, thirty-eight years.”

“What comment do you want to make about the terrible panic, the tragedy in the market today?”

“A comment for you? Well… you see this gold chain I wear? You see this beautiful gold watch I wear? That's where I keep my emergency money… always ready to travel. Always right here with me at all times… Any more trouble like this, it's adios, New York City. You oughta buy a gold watch for yourself. Just in case we don't do so good tomorrow.”

Around ten-thirty, Caitlin and Carroll ran into Walter Trentkamp. They had been walking the long, broad hallways inside the World Trade Center, still waiting for definitive news from around the world. They were holding hands when they came upon the avuncular FBI head.

Walter didn't say anything, but his gray-green eyes fairly sparkled with delight. “You see,” he said to Caitlin and Carroll, “something decent can come out of anything. Damn, this is the first good thing I've seen or heard in a week.”

With that, and a special wink toward Caitlin, Trentkamp continued on his way down the corridor.

Suddenly he turned and called out to Carroll. “Hey, I thought I told you to keep me posted on what was going on!”

Then he disappeared around the corner.

Late that night, Caitlin swallowed sips of warm diet soda and sat entranced before a forty-inch television screen just off the main crisis room. The monitor's reception was crisp and terrific. The antennae for all the major national networks were on the roof.

“This is it,” she whispered to Carroll. “The exchange in Hong Kong will be the first important one to open around the world. Sydney and Tokyo are both staying closed until noon, we hear. Yesterday, the Hang Seng Index fell eighty points. This will really tell the story.”

Caitlin and Carroll were sitting with a tightly clustered nest of Wall Street bankers, frayed men and women who were like spectators burned out by watching some unlikely event. A closed-circuit TV broadcast was being beamed by satellite from Asia to New York. The blackest gallows humor had gained control of the waiting room-as it often does in the worst disasters and emergencies.

On the flickering color TV screen, they all watched cameramen and news reporters-live-recording history from behind Hong Kong police lines. Farther down the crowded, rowdy street, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents were chanting loudly, waving hand-printed political placards. Meanwhile, single lines of dark-suited stockbrokers were beginning to march solemnly into the exchange itself.

“The brokers look like pallbearers,” Carroll whispered to Caitlin. He stroked her arm lightly.

“It isn't exactly a cheery sight, is it? It certainly
does
look like a state funeral.”

“Yeah. And whose funeral?” Carroll asked.

A foreign correspondent for one of the major American networks eventually stepped up to a TV camera planted on the mobbed cacophonous Hong Kong street. The newsman wore a rumpled seersucker suit and spoke with an affected, clipped British accent.

“Never before have we seen such a graphic demonstration of the polarization between Third World and Western hopes and dreams. Here in Hong Kong, I believe we are seeing a minidrama of the imminent future of the world. It is now the day after stock prices have tumbled precipitously everywhere… The bond market is in shambles; the French and Arabs are liquidating their holdings at the rate of billions a day… And in Hong Kong this morning, many people are deeply concerned, even sad-faced… But
the majority
, surprisingly large numbers, mostly university and street-gang youths, but also the unemployed-are shouting anti-U.S. slogans, even praying for a shattering stock market crash. These people are clearly rooting for a full-scale world economic crash. They're expecting the worst, and they're gleeful about the expected disastrous outcome… The long-awaited fall of the West.”

Suddenly, everything changed!

Unbelievably.

Beautifully, and all around the world.

Almost as if it had been prearranged, too.

Not forty minutes after the Hong Kong Exchange opened, stock prices on the Hang Seng began to stabilize; then stock prices actually started to rise-to surge powerfully upward on the index.

To the keen disappointment of many of the jeering university students and workers mobbing the streets outside, a dizzying spiral of nearly 75 points followed in the next hour alone.

The exchange in Sydney opened in very much the same manner. Grim and exhausted brokers at first, highly organized labor and student rallies against capitalism, against the United States in particular-then a burst of excited buying. A dramatic spiral up.

The same scenario followed at the late-opening exchange in Tokyo.

In Malaysia an hour later.

Everywhere
.

Carefully orchestrated recovery.

The manipulator's manipulation-but to what end?

At 8:30 A.M. New York time, looking as if he'd recently been liberated from the dustiest carrel in the New York Public Library, Anton Birnbaum peered inside the World Trade Center emergency meeting area. This time, however, a boisterous entourage surged forward and escorted the financier to the front of the pandemoniacal room.

President Justin Kearney appeared relaxed, almost jovial, as he met the aging financial mastermind. Vice President Thomas Elliot was standing beside him, still looking controlled and restrained. The vice president was the coolest of the Washington leaders. Birnbaum himself seemed astonished by the general hubbub, the strange celebration, so early in the morning. He was equally astonished by the way the market, like some whimsical thing subject not to the rules of money, but to the patterns of the wind, had come back so strongly.

“Mr. Birnbaum. Good Morning.”

“Yes. Good morning, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President. And I hear it
is
a pretty good morning.”

“By God, you did it.”

“By God. Or in spite of Him, Mr. President.”

“This is amazing. It's quite moving. See?… Real tears.” Caitlin was hanging lightly on to Carroll's arm. She dabbed her eyes and was not alone in the gesture.

They were at the heart of the frenzied celebration. Off to one side of the room, President Kearney was emotionally clutching his chief of staff. The secretaries of Treasury, State, and Defense were positively boyish with their loud whoops, their hand clapping. The gray-suited chairman of the Federal Reserve had danced briefly with the cantankerous chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I don't believe I've ever seen bankers so joyous before,” Caitlin said.

“They still dance like bankers, though.” Carroll smiled at the odd but genuine scene of relief. “No threats to Michael Jackson here.”

He couldn't help feeling elation in the midst of this crazy, almost riotous room. It wasn't as if they'd actually found Green Band, but it was something, a sliver of merriment at the heart of all the recent grimness and frustration.

Caitlin nuzzled the side of his face with her mouth. “I'm already getting worried again. I only hope…”

“What do you hope?” Carroll held Caitlin's arm. He felt unbelievably close to her. They had already shared more charged moments than some people did in a lifetime.

“I hope that it continues like this, and doesn't come crashing down.”

Carroll was silent, studying the oddly uplifting scene before him. Somebody had found a phonograph, and the sound of Scottish bagpipers could be heard over the general din. Somebody extremely resourceful was dragging in a couple of cases of champagne. There was something just a little forced in the sudden celebration-but what the hell? These were people who'd been about to fall off the edge of their world, and slippery though it might be, they'd found some kind of temporary footing.

Still…

Still…

Even as Carroll sipped his champagne, something kept him from getting too hopeful. This is all premature, and therefore dangerous, he was thinking as the party heightened in intensity. The policeman inside him never stopped working, never stopped probing, never stopped figuring out all the possible angles. Damn it, police work
was
in his blood.

Where is Green Band? Is Green Band watching right now?

What are they thinking? What kind of party are they having today?

Who's telling them everything we do before we even do it?

There was no more time to waste. Clearly, there was no time at all. Every passing hour was vitally important. Anton Birnbaum's hyperactive mind was clicking automatically like a computer.

Birnbaum had begun to make urgent phone calls from his eleven-room apartment on Riverside Drive, near Columbia University. He had definite hunches now-strong suspicions after talking to Caitlin Dillon and her policeman friend Carroll.

At junctures in his life, Birnbaum had been thought of as the consummate international businessman, at times as the world's preeminent economist. Certainly he was an intense student of life, intrigued by the vicissitudes of human behavior. His curiosity was boundless, even at his age.

Never a day passed that Birnbaum didn't read for at least six or seven hours. Because of that lifelong habit, the financier knew he was still several steps faster than the other people in his business, especially the lazy boys on Wall Street.

What was the operative connection between Green Band, the bombing of December 4, and the dangerous economic events of the past two days?

Why had nothing conclusive been discovered about Green Band yet?

Why were the Green Band provocateurs consistently two steps ahead of those conducting the investigation? How could that be happening again and again?

Like nature, Anton Birnbaum abhorred a vacuum, and that was precisely what Green Band had masterfully created: a huge empty space in which logical questions had no apparent answers.

Months back he had heard rumors of a Russian-sponsored plot to dramatically disrupt the stock market… His closest and most reliable contacts at the CIA had been worried about the activities of the wretched François Monserrat. Was Monserrat somehow connected with the Green Band plot? And what about certain members of the government here in America? The CIA's Philip Berger? He was a character Birnbaum had never found it in himself to trust… Or Vice President Thomas Elliot? He was a chilly one as well, and he played everything close to the vest.

Too many possibilities. Almost as if
that
were part of the plan.

As the tiny ancient man made his inquisitional phone calls that morning-to Switzerland, England, France, South Africa, to both West Germany and East Germany-he felt like someone who had an important name on the tip of his tongue but just couldn't remember it.

Anton Birnbaum wrote down the most suspicious names.

Philip Berger

Thomas More Elliot

François Monserrat

And perhaps the connecting link: Red Tuesday.

The clue was there-the beginning of the answer they were searching for. He was certain of that.

If he could just find the one clue… If he could just figure out the motive for the events thus far. It was here, somewhere.

Anton Birnbaum worked at his desk, sketchily making notes, making highly confidential calls. He worked feverishly, like a man who felt his time running out.

Carroll had decided to start at square one again, to thoroughly check and recheck every lead, every hunch he'd ever had about Green Band. The task would take countless hours. he knew. It would require an intense search through the computers, even allowing for the fact that he had high-speed data at his disposal. Ah, police work.

He asked for clearance from the CIA and the FBI to make a search of their computer files. Neither organization gave him too much trouble, although Phil Berger imposed certain limitations on his access, for the usual reasons of national security.

Nearly eleven hours later Carroll stood before the dozen or so computer screens inside the crisis room at 13 Wall Street. He stared at the screens, and his eyes ached from the dull green glow.

He glanced at Caitlin, who sat with her slender fingers raised over a computer keyboard, ready to type out a password for further access to the FBI's files. There was no skill she didn't seem to have.

When the display screen answered, she rapidly typed again, this time requesting a readout of active and nonactive Vietnam veterans who, for whatever reason, had been under police surveillance during the past two years-a time frame she and Carroll had agreed on.

She added the subcategories: Explosives Experts; New York and Vicinity; Possible Subversive Leanings.

There was a long pause, a spooky electronic pause, and then the machine began its requested readout of Vietnam veterans.

Carroll had been down this particular route of investigation, only not with this equipment and Caitlin's help. American terrorist-related groups were out there, but none was considered very powerful or well organized. Phil Berger of the CIA had been investigating American paramilitary groups himself. He had waved Carroll off that trail once before.

“Can you print out a list of the real hard cases?” Carroll asked Caitlin.

“This is a computer. It can do anything if you ask it nicely.”

The printer obligingly kicked back into life. Paper slid through it as the dot matrix clacked back and forward. A total count showed no more than ninety names of current soldiers and veterans with extensive explosives experience in Vietnam -men whom the FBI considered important enough to keep track of. Carroll ripped the paper from the printer and took it to a desk.

Adamski, Stanley. Corporal. Three years VA hospital, Prescott, Ariz. Member of left wing-oriented veterans group called the Rams, ostensibly a bikers club.

Carroll wondered how much of this was standard FBI paranoia.

The list was filled with dizzying cross-references, he soon discovered. One name was connected to another, creating a mazelike effect. He could spend months working on all the permutations.

Keresty, John. Sergeant. Munitions expert. Discharged VA hospital, Scranton, Pa. 1974. Occupation: custodian, plastics corp. Member of the American Socialist party. Ridgewood, N.J. SEE: Rhinehart, Jay T.; Jones, James; Winston files.

The lists went on and on.

Carroll massaged his eyelids. He went for two coffees, then returned to the desk and even more sprawling computer sheets.

He said, “Any one of these men, or two or three of them could have helped blow up the financial district.”

Caitlin gazed over his shoulder at the printout. “So where do we start?”

Carroll shook his head. He was filled with doubts again. They would have to investigate, maybe even visit, every name on the lists. They didn't have time.

Scully, Richard P. Sergeant. Plastique expert. Hospitalized Manhattan, 1974, for alcoholism. Extreme right wing sympathizer. Occupation: cabdriver. New York City.

Downey, Marc. Military assassin. Hospitalized 1971-73. Occupation: bartender. Worcester, Mass.

Carroll gazed at the burgeoning list again. An army officer, maybe? A disaffected officer with a grudge or a cause? Somebody exceptionally smart, nursing a grievance, year after year.

He laid his hands on the warm computer console. He wished he could coax all the secrets out of it, all the electronic links of which it was capable. He stared at the lengthy printout again. “An officer,” he said. “Try that.”

Caitlin went back to the keyboard to request more information. He watched her fingers move expertly over the keys. She was requesting information on known or suspected subversives who had been officers in Vietnam. Under the general rubric of “subversive” were included all kinds of people.

The screen began to issue more names. Colonels. Captains. Majors. Some were listed in these official records as schizophrenics. Others were supposedly burned out on drugs. Others had become evangelists, panhandlers, small-time bank and liquor store robbers. Carroll received a printout of these names as well. There were twenty-nine of the hard-core category in and around New York City.

The screen flickered again.

Names of the various officers on the FBI list now shimmered forth. Carroll once again ran his eyes over them.

Bradshaw, Michael. Captain. Discharged VA hospital, Dallas, Tex., 1971. Occupation: real estate salesman, Hempstead, Long Island. Post traumatic stress disorder victim.

Babbershill, Terrance. Major. Discharged dishonorably, 1969. Known Vietcong sympathizer. Occupation: English-language tutor for various Vietnamese families. Brooklyn, N.Y.

Carroll tried to focus. His eyes were beginning to water. He needed to feel the fresh cold night air on his face. But he continued to run his eyes up and down the screen.

Rydeholm, Ralph. Colonel.

O'Donnell, Joseph. Colonel.

Schweitzer, Peter. Lieutenant colonel.

Shaw, Robert. Captain.

Craig, Kyle. Colonel.

Boudreau, Dan. Captain.

Kaplan, Lin. Captain.

Weinshanker, Greg. Captain.

Dwyer, James. Colonel.

Beauregard, Bo. Captain.

Arnold, Tim. Captain.

Morrissey, Jack. Colonel.

Too many names, Carroll thought. Too many casualties in a war of total waste.

“Can you get me cross-references, Caitlin? Associations and connections between any of these men? The officers. The real hard-asses out of Vietnam?”

“I'll try.”

Caitlin tapped a few keys. Nothing happened this time. She stared at the screen thoughtfully, then tapped another brief message.

Nothing happened.

She tapped out another message. Still nothing happened.

“Is something wrong?” Carroll asked.

“This is the best I can get, Arch. Damn it.”

The unfortunate message that shone in front of them read “Further data: see files.”

“See files?” he asked. “These
are
the files.”

“They apparently have more information in FBI files that aren't on the computer, Arch. They're down in Washington. Why is that?”

At ten o'clock on the evening of December 16, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky was thinking that he was actually solvent. He was financially comfortable, probably for the first time in his entire adult life.

He'd just bought a new Ford Bronco, also a luxurious beaver coat at Alexander's for Mary. Life was suddenly getting decent for them, for the first time in all their years together.

But Harry Stemkowsky couldn't bring himself to believe in any of it comfortably. This was all like Santa Claus and trips to Disney World-that kind of transient shit.

Who could identify with a sudden net worth of $1,152,000?

Stemkowsky felt a little like one of those Looney Tunes who won the New York State Lottery, then nervously kept their little jobs as janitors or U.S. postal employees. It was a matter of too much too fast. He kept getting the uneasy feeling that somebody was going to take it all away again.

At twenty past ten that evening, Stemkowsky carefully nosed his Vets cab out of the street noise and blazing yellow lights of midtown Manhattan. He'd finished his regular ten-hour shift, all according to Colonel Hudson's prescribed step-by-step plan for their ultimate success. The Checker cab bumped and rattled onto the Fifty-seventh Street entrance to the bridge.

A few minutes later the cab turned onto a busy avenue in Jackson Heights, then edged onto Eighty-fifth, where Stemkowsky lived with his wife, Mary. He absently licked his lips as he drove down the street. He could just about taste the stew Mary had said she was fixing when he'd left in the morning. The sudden expectation of beef, shallots, and those little light-puffed potatoes she usually made was mouthwatering.

Maybe he and Mary should retire to the south of France after this was over, he began to think. They'd be filthy rich enough for sure. They could eat four-star French food until they got absolutely sick of it. Maybe move on to Italy. Maybe Greece after that. Greece was supposed to be cheap. Hey-who cared if it was cheap or not?

Harry Stemkowsky began to accelerate down the last flat stretch toward home.

“
Jesus Christ, buddy!
” he shouted suddenly, and pounded his brakes.

A tall bald-headed man, with an incredibly pained look, had run right out in front of the cab. He was frantically waving both arms over his head; he was screaming something Stemkowsky couldn't make out with the windows up.

Harry Stemkowsky recognized the look from Vietnam, though, from dreaded cleanup patrols into villages after devastating Phantom air strafes. His heart had already dropped through the floorboards of the cab. Something horrible and unexpected had happened here-something awful had happened in Stemkowsky's own neighborhood.

The terrified man was up against the cab window now, still screaming at the top of his voice. “Help me, please! Help! Please help!”

Stemkowsky finally got the window rolled down. He had his radio mike in hand, ready to call for whatever emergency help was needed. “What the hell happened? What happened, mister?”

Suddenly a small black Beretta was shoved hard, crunching like a nightstick, against Harry Stemkowsky's temple. “
This
is the matter! Don't move. Put back that mike.”

A second man appeared now, quickly emerging out of the smoky side-street darkness. He yanked open the creaking passenger-side door.

“Just turn the cab right around, Sergeant Stemkowsky. We're not going home quite yet.”

An indefinite time later-hours? maybe days? There was no possible way to accurately gauge because all time had collapsed under him-Harry Stemkowsky felt hands angrily ripping under his armpits, lifting him rudely. The hands propped him hard onto a creaking wooden chair again. They'd injected him twice with drugs, probably Pentothal.

A man's face, a blur of soft pink, seemed to float down and step close to Stemkowsky's face. Harry Stemkowsky was aware of minty breath and musky cologne. Then his mind went into complete shock. He couldn't believe who this was.

This face
-he'd seen it before, recently always distilled by a network TV screen or a newspaper…

No, he was confused. The drug had fucked his brain over-

What was going on here? This person couldn't be-

The face smiled horribly and said, “Yes, I'm François Monserrat. You know me under another name. This is an extraordinary shock, I know.”

Harry Stemkowsky shut his eyes. This was all a bad dream. It would go away.

He opened his eyes and shook his head, which ached unbelievably. His eyeballs felt indescribably heavy. He simply could not believe it. So incredibly near the top. The ultimate traitor…