“This the lot of it, Liam?” Chief O’Neil asked the inspector. “This Pan Am Three Ten 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 grinned broadly. He was trailing grand clouds of smoke all around the freight inspection shack. He both chewed and puffed his Cubans, to get his money’s worth.
Thomas O’Neil had been born and raised in New York’s Yorkville section; he’d worked as an inspector at Kennedy International, nearly nine years before his fortuitous transfer as Head of the U.S. service at Shannon.
Before that, O’Neil had been a master sergeant in general supply in Viet Nam. Over in Nam, he’d managed to look like a junior Patton, instead of Churchill.
He was also Vets 28.
“Looks fine and dandy to me, lad. Let the boys load it up for the trip north. Spiffy new clothes for women and 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?
Chapter 45
FOUR A.M.
Why were there suddenly so many 4:00 A.M.’S crowding into his life? Carroll wondered.
For a foggy moment he was disoriented: he felt like a man on a treadmill sent spinning off into space, where time zones collapsed, where clocks had no meaning.
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 all 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, anyway …
First you waited.
Almost always you waited.
And waited.
You drank drums of bitter black coffee, you smoked countless stale cigarettes; you paid 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 Rite Hotel.
For the past few hours, Caitlin 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 sweet and vulnerable. Her legs were neatly curled under her like a folding pin inside.
They’d been on emergency alert for twenty straight hours now. They were one of several police/financial teams which had been rushed to London following Margarita Kupchuck’s warning transmission from inside Russia.
It was exactly like the unpleasantly tense and chaotic Wall Street deadline on December 4.
Nothing had happened when it was supposed to happen.
No Russians with an extraordinary $120 million 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 Francois Monserrat? Monserrat is unknown. ‘Virtually 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 in a leather club chair positioned opposite Carroll in the hotel suite. Patrick Frazier was a tall man with thinning pale blond hair and a pencil-thin moustache. He wore his clothes in a rumpled manner, and he spoke in a cultivated drawl, every word deliberately shaped. Frazier was one of Britain’s resident experts on urban terrorism.
Physical pain was coursing through Carroll’s body as he listened.
Yes, you paid your dues every single time with police work.
Too much bitter-tasting coffee and unrelieved tension; not enough sleep. Too much being lost and confused without any recognizable point of reference.
And the arm still ached like hell even though he’d discarded the sling in favor of a bulky bandage.
Hours later, the hotel room telephone rang and Frazier eagerly snatched it up. “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 as Carroll took over the line. Harris was from the Yard’s Serious Crime Squad. Carroll had worked with Harris twice before in Europe and respected the man.
“Listen to what we’ve just found. You’re not going to believe it, I’ll wager. There’s been an incredible turn. The IRA… the IRA has just contacted us…. They want a meeting set up with you in Belfast. You specifically. They’re in the game now, too.”
“In what way? How are the Provos involved, Perry?”
Blood was suddenly pounding in Carroll’s forehead. Green Band came at you hard, then they pulled away just as fast. They came at you—then they disappeared again. The second you dropped your guard, bang, right between the eyes.
Come to Florida, Mr. Carroll. A clue there? Florida?
Go see Michel Chevron. A key somewhere in Europe?
And now the Provos.
“They’ve come into some securities, U.S. bonds. Over a billion American dollars’ worth according to the boyos…. They listed names and serial numbers for us to check in New York. They check.”
“Hold on, wait a minute,” Carroll was sitting upright in his hotel chair.
“The IRA has taken over the stolen securities?”
“I don’t know. They’re definitely in possession of some stolen goods.”
“But how?”
“Who knows. They’re telling us as little as possible, of course.”
“Son of a bitch.“ They’d come so far; they’d seemed so close to some kind of break in the Green Band puzzle. “All right, all right. We’ll be in touch as soon as we sort out things here. We’ll be back to you, Perry.”
Carroll slammed down the phone receiver. He glared across the London hotel room at Frazier, at Caitlin, whose eyes were suddenly wide open and alert.
“Somehow the IRA has made a move into this thing…. It seems the Provos want to talk about selling some securities back to us. Over a billion American dollars’ worth. They know we’re in London. How could they know?”
The question stuck in Carroll’s brain like a shriek.
And since he couldn’t answer it, since he hadn’t been able to answer it so far, what was the point in asking it now?
How could they know everything ahead of time?
Chapter 46
THE MAN CALLED Francois Monserrat, who was wearing a black nylon anorak and a dark beret, and who now walked with a pronounced limp, moved down the Portobello Road in the west of London.
He passed through the open market for which this street was famous; now and then he would pause at this stall or that and examine an antique. There were some very fine pieces to be had here. There were also some obvious fakes.
You need a good eye, a practiced eye, to tell the real article from the false, he thought.
In the palm of his hand he turned over a jade piece in the shape of a small lynx. He curled his fingers around it, squeezing hard…. He was not a man who gave way to his emotions easily. In fact, he came at them in a circumspect way, circling as if they were live packets of plastique. At any given moment, an emotion could all too easily explode.
Like right now.
The sensation coursing through Monserrat was one of cold anger. If the jade lynx had been fur and bone, the life would have been squeezed out of it. He was angry because he didn’t like clever games, when they were played by the other side’s rules.
Green Band, for instance, had become a threat.
br />
They created their own rules, their own games.
They said one thing.
They did another.
They suggested important meetings that never took place.
They were like air. They were very much wisps and phantoms. Monserrat’s admiration was grudging.
He set the jade lynx down and he closed his eyes. He had a trick to guard against emotion. He would retreat into a dark, cool place in the deepest part of his mind: a monastery of silence. In this sanctuary he almost always had control. Nothing slipped away from him here.
This time, though, his little trick of the mind failed. He opened his eyes and the bustling market assaulted his senses.
Green Band was somewhere close. What did they really want?
Perhaps soon, he would know all about Green Band.
Chapter 47
THEY HAD TO wait one final time.
They had to wait at the tiny, fastidious Regent Hotel in Belfast.
Carroll tried to accept the helpless feeling that they had no control over anything that was happening. The Green Band strategy—whatever it was—seemed to be working flawlessly.
Well-coordinated economic terror.
Massive psychological disorientation, designed to create escalating chaos and even more terror.
Patrick Frazier kept up a cheery pep talk under the unusually trying circumstances. The Special Branch man was tirelessly gung-ho.
“When we do meet with them,” Frazier slid off his wire glasses and briskly robbed his eyes, “you’ll be outfitted with an internal transmitter. Absolute state of the art, Designed for the military. Armalite Corporation. You swallow the damn thing.”
Carroll shook his head. Ah, police work. Sometimes he wondered what he’d thought it was going to be like—long, long ago when he’d first decided on what he now sometimes called the wrong side of the law.
“If we ever do meet up with them, Caitlin will verify that the securities are genuine,” Frazier said.
“If we ever meet up with them.”
Six more hours droned by in the most painfully, slow waltz-time. The only perceptible change was the morning sliding into afternoon outside, the day turning to the steel-blue shades of the Northern Irish cityscape.
A red-haired serving girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, finally brought in steaming tea and hot Irish soda bread. Carroll, Frazier, and Caitlin ate out of boredom more than anything.
Carroll remembered to check in with Trentkamp’s office in New York. He left a message for Walter, “Naught, zero, bupkis, zip, goose egg… as in wild goose egg chase.”
Ten hours passed inside the Regent Hotel suite.
It was exactly like what had happened the night of December fourth in New York, when the final deadline for the bombings had gone past, and the clock hands had begun to move with intolerable slowness. Why, though? How were they supposed to investigate a chimera or a mirage?
From the fourth-floor window of the hotel suite, Carroll saw an antiquated bicycle bumping over the cobblestoned street outside. It was ridden by a man of about seventy, whose thin frame didn’t look like it could survive the shuddering motions of the bike.
Carroll leaned closer to the dormer window. His brain felt like something shapeless lying in a basin of tepid water.
The rider parked his bike almost directly below the Regent Hotel window.
“Could this be our contact?” Carroll asked in a hoarse voice.
Patrick Frazier moved into the window and studied the old man. “Doesn’t look the terrorist type. That’s a good sign. They never do in Belfast.”
The rider hobbled inside the hotel entrance, then disappeared from Carroll’s sight.
“He’s inside now.”
“Then we wait and see,” Frazier said, muttering to himself.
Carroll sighed. The tension buzzing inside him was familiar now. He looked toward Caitlin, who smiled at him. How did she stay so calm? The journey, the tension, the awful waiting.
Less than ninety seconds after he went inside the Regent, the old man came marching out again. He rigidly climbed back on his bike.
Almost immediately there came a solid rap on the hardwood door of the hotel suite.
Caitlin rose and opened the door.
“An old man just delivered this message,” a British detective entered and reported. He walked forward to his commander, passing both Caitlin and Carroll without so much as a nod.
Patrick Frazier immediately ripped the envelope open and read it without any discernible expression. Frazier’s eyes finally peeked over the wrinkled note page at Carroll.
He read the words of the message aloud for both Carroll and Caitlin:
“There’s no salutation or date…. It reads as follows: ‘You are to send your representative with the proof of transfer of funds. Your representative is to be at Fox Cross Station, six miles northwest outside of Belfast. That’s (he railroad. Be there at 0545 hours. The precious securities will be safely waiting nearby…. The messenger is to be Caitlin Dillon.’”
Chapter 48
AT 5:30, the morning air was misty in Belfast.
It was the kind of day in which objects have 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 both arms around her rising and falling chest. She could hear the drumming of her own heart.
She wasn’t going to let herself be frightened, though. She vowed not to act the way a woman would be expected to act under the circumstances.
Caitlin 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?
Who was Green Band finally going to turn out to be?…
What part did the North Irish play? And what could have happened between the Russians and Green Band in London?
A black leather briefcase hung from her wrist. Inside were codes to release the sums now on deposit at a Swiss bank, which were to be paid outright this morning.
The ransom of the century was to take place here at little Fox Cross Station. Historic Fox Cross Station outside Belfast, Ireland.
Caitlin imagined she looked like a successful businesswoman 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 well—on the outside, at least.
She glanced at her watch and saw it was a few seconds before 5:45. The time they’d indicated for the exchange had come. Caitlin cautioned herself that they were not necessarily punctual.
What would their lack of punctuality mean right now? What would it mean in terms of any emergency police action planned for the Fox Cross railroad platform?
Caitlin’s body tensed. Every muscle, every fiber inside her involuntarily tightened.
A faded blue panel truck had appeared, and was approaching the deserted station from a thick row of pine trees to the north.
The slow-moving truck steadily got larger and larger. Caitlin saw that there were three passengers, all of them men.
Then the blue panel truck passed Caitlin by.
A gust of frozen wind swept back her hair, and Caitlin let out what must have been the deepest sigh of her lifetime.
Carroll and the British detectives were close by, a thought she found more than a little comforting. They were less than a mile away. Still, there was nothing they could do if trouble suddenly bloomed—if someone panicked, if someone made a simple, foolish mistake now.
A car, a nondescript sedan approached moments after the panel truck.
Caitlin tried to observe everything about the car as it rolled forward over the parking lot gravel. Very possibly it was just a passenger drop-off for the first scheduled tr
ain at 6:04.
It was a late model Ford, grayish-green, with a slightly smashed-in front grill. There was a tiny chip in the windshield. Four passengers inside;—two in front, two in the back.
Irish working men? Thick, heavy-set types anyway. Maybe farm workers?
But the second car passed her by, too.
Caitlin was both relieved and disappointed. She was confused, trying to keep her wits and remnants of her concentration.
Then the car stopped suddenly. The tires screeched in reverse.
Two burly men in back jumped out; both were wearing black cloth masks, both carried machine gun pistols.
They ran to Caitlin at full speed, workshoes 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 slightly buckle; her knees were suddenly on hinges.
“You were born in Old Lyme, Connecticut?”
“I was born in Lima, Ohio.”
“Birth date—January 23, 1950?”
“1953. Thanks a lot.”
The masked IRA terrorist laughed at Caitlin’s 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 hair, then pulled it down tight over Caitlin’s 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.
“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 everywhere; her body seemed no longer to belong to her. She found herself saying, “Thank you. I’m fine right here.”