“This is your floor, Colonel. That door straight ahead. You can just walk inside. You’re most definitely expected.”
“Point of information? I have a question for you, for all of you. Curiosity on my part.” David Hudson spoke without turning to face his escort group.
An impatient grunt came from behind…
The Lizard Man. Past interrogations. Special Army training. Hudson’s mind continued to churn at a furious rate.
All to prepare him for this very moment?
“Do they ever tell you what’s really happening? Has anyone bothered to tell you the truth about this operation? Do you know what this meeting really is? Do you know why?”
David Hudson was introducing some element of doubt into their minds, petty doubts and confusion, paranoid unease he could use later, if he needed to.
Deception.
Always deception.
“Don’t bother to knock, Colonel.” The man in charge calmly spoke again. “Just go right in; you’re expected. Everything you try to do is expected, Colonel.”
A slice of dull, yellow light emanated from within as David Hudson peered inside the fourth-floor tenement room.
Hudson paused at the doorway’s edge.
He was about to confront the mysterious and dangerous Monserrat. He was about to conclude Green Band’s appointed business, to end his mission.
The Viet Cong’s Lizard Man had taught Hudson an essential lesson in Viet Nam; it was to play games in which your opponent wasn’t given the rules. This was the principle behind all successful guerrilla warfare.
Colonel David Hudson versus Monserrat.
Now it began.
Chapter 88
“ALL BLUE AND WHITE UNITS! We’ve picked them up again…. We’ve got our friends Green Band!”
NYPD cruiser radios echoed brassily above the noise of whining police and hospital emergency sirens at the helicopter crash site near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“They’re moving into a residential neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant. It’s right in the heart of the fucking ghetto. They’re traveling on Halsey Street in Bed-Stuy, now. Over.”
Carroll sagged heavily against the open front door of one of the half-dozen police cruisers that had arrived after the helicopter accident. Crime-scene technicians were already swarming onto the fire-lit street.
He wasn’t sure if he’d heard the radio report right?… Green Band appeared; Green Band disappeared. Which was it?
Carroll tried to clear the gauze from his head as he listened to the minute by minute updates squawking over nearby police cruiser radios.
He couldn’t feel any recognizable emotion. His regular system of response to stimuli had come to a halt. He was beyond pain as he’d known it before.
The police helicopter pilot had been carried on a litter into a waiting EMS ambulance. KIA, Carroll was almost certain.
“Carroll? You’re Arch Carroll, aren’t you? Do you want to go with me? I’m heading to Halsey Street. It’s about ten minutes from here.” A police captain, a plump, white-haired man Carroll knew from a saner niche in his life, came up alongside him.
Carroll knew he appeared dazed and confused. In fact, he felt far worse than that, but he nodded. Yes, he definitely wanted to witness the end. He had to be there. Colonel Hudson—Monserrat—Carroll—they all had to be there, didn’t they? Why was that? Why had everything led to this point—like veins of glass back toward the impact point in a shatter?
A moment or so later, he was hunched forward in a police patrol car, feeling like he might be sick. Hammers of fear were tripping off inside his head.
The police cruiser lurched into motion. The flashing light began to revolve, cherry red. The siren of the speeding car warbled above the rooftops of Brooklyn.
Chapter 89
THIS WAS THE MASTER, Monserrat.
Hudson could not believe what his eyes told him was true.
Monserrat? … Or was this more misdirection? Another trick? The highest manifestation of deception?
Smoke sifted through his mind, obscuring his vision, scrambling his understanding. And there was renewed tension: an electric tingling in his fingertips, his arm, his legs.
He watched the dark-suited figure come forward toward him. He noted the gunmen who waited in shadows against the far wall.
“Colonel Hudson.” The handshake was quick, firm. “I’m Francois Monserrat. The real one this time.” A smile played at the corners of the terrorist’s mouth. It was the most confident and assured look David Hudson had ever witnessed.
Monserrat’s smile dimmed. “Let’s get to business. I believe we can complete our transaction quickly. Look at what he’s brought, Marcel. Rapidement!”
Another person in a suit stepped inside the room at Monserrat’s command. The man was perhaps sixty, and had the pallid complexion, the weak eyesight of someone who spends much of life looking through the lenses of microscopes and magnifying glasses. He bent low to examine the securities Hudson had brought with him.
Hudson watched closely as he rubbed the individual trading bonds carefully, lightly testing their texture between his thumb and forefinger.
He smelled selected bonds, testing for fresh ink, for any unusually pungent odors, anything that would suggest too recent printing. He worked extremely fast.
Each minute nevertheless passed with excruciating slowness.
“For the most part, the bonds are authentic,” he finally looked up and spoke to Monserrat.
“Any problems at all?”
“I have a slight question about the Morgan Guaranty, perhaps about the smaller Lehman Brothers lot. I think there are possibly some counterfeit papers in those stacks. As you know, there are always some counterfeits,” he added. “Everything else is quite in order.”
Francois Monserrat nodded curtly. Even Monserrat seemed uneasy now. The terrorist picked up the plain black telephone on the table. Monserrat dialed a telephone company business office, gave a four-digit number, then spoke to what was clearly an overseas operator. Seconds later, the terrorist was speaking directly to someone obviously known at a bank in Geneva, Switzerland.
“My account is Number 411FA. Make the agreed-upon deposit into the account…” Less than four minutes later, Monserrat hung up.
Moments afterward, the phone rang and Hudson received a confirmation that the money had indeed been successfully transferred in Europe. Over two hundred million dollars had gone out of the Soviet accounts into special accounts opened by the Vets in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Madrid. Vets 28, Thomas O’Neil, the Customs Chief of Shannon Airport, had come through again. The Green Band plan was perfect.
“Colonel, I believe our business is concluded. You seem to have won each round. This time, anyway.” Monserrat executed a deferential bow.
As Hudson stood up from the table, he felt that a terrible weight had finally been lifted. He was free of an obsession he’d carried for almost fifteen years.
At that exact moment, he was silently counting down to zero.
Green Band was almost at an end.
Almost, but not quite.
Just one more twist, one final surprise.
Deception at its best.
Chapter 90
LESS THAN FORTY SECONDS REMAINED. …Two pistols drawn in the room…
Concentrate.
Hudson eased himself toward a controlled calmness.
Talk to them. Keep talking to Monserrat.
“I have one question before I leave. May I? May I ask one question?”
Monserrat nodded.
“What harm? You may ask anything. Then perhaps I have a question.”
Colonel Hudson watched Monserrat’s eyes as he spoke. He saw nothing there—no affect, no emotion. The two of them were close in so many ways.
“How long have you been with the Russians? How long have you been one of their moles?”
“I was always with the Russians, Colonel. I am a Russian. My parents were stationed in America. They were among hundreds
of agents who came here in the late 1940s.
“I was taught to be American. There are others like me. They’re all over the U.S. Waiting, Colonel. We want to destroy the United States financially, and in every other way.”
Fourteen seconds. Twelve seconds. Ten seconds.
Hudson kept counting in his head, kept talking in a monotone to Francois Monserrat.
“Harry Stemkowsky… Do you remember a man named Stemkowsky? Poor crippled sergeant? One of my men?”
“One of the casualties of war. Your war, Colonel, not ours. He wouldn’t betray you under any circumstances.”
As he reached three in his countdown, Hudson took two fast, unexpected steps to his left. Both Russian terrorists swung up their pistols to fire. Too late.
Hudson tucked his chin down hard against his chest. He dove head-first through a glass window pane, crashing into the factory section of the building.
At that moment, the entire building shook from the first round from the M-60s, which completely pulverized the tenement’s fourth floor.
Flash fires broke out in three separate areas of the factory. Bright orange and crimson flames danced, straining to reach the stained yellow ceiling. Huge panes of glass buckled, then leaped from their casements and crashed to the cement below. Everywhere, the old struts and supports of the building were beginning to sag, warped by the rising heat, the hungry reaches of the lapping flames.
M-16 rifles coughed and rattled everywhere.
The Vets attack was under way.
Hudson waited in a combat crouch behind heavy factory machines. The thick smoke from the fire was an advantage and his enemy at the same time. The billowing smoke and flames made it impossible for Monserrat and his people to locate Hudson, but it also made him vulnerable, exposed to attack from any side.
At that instant, Hudson heard the sound he’d been waiting for. The whirring of the helicopter rotors was loud and clear.
The Cobra had arrived on the rooftop. Exactly as they’d planned it. Everything was perfect, right to the final escape.
Colonel Hudson finally allowed himself a trace of a smile.
Just a trace.
Chapter 91
“GET THE FUCK out of my way! Move it! Move it! Move, move, move!
A roaring, unbelievable firelight had erupted. Carroll saw rows of fiat rooftops shooting flames as he pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd already gathered on Brooklyn’s Halsey Street to watch the action. Ghouls, he thought. The worst kind of ambulance chasers.
He winced in pain. His left arm was numb and something was wrong with his spine: when he ran like this the contact of his heels with the pavement sent jarring shudders climbing up his backbone.
None of the neighborhood people—leather-jacketed teen-agers, sullen young women, small, grinning children—seemed to realize that this violent spectacle was for real. They were shrieking with what almost sounded like joy.
“Get back! Dammit, get back!” Carroll yelled as he ran forward. “Get inside with those kids! Get back inside your houses!”
Expectant, wide-eyed faces were crowded into every apartment window. Further down Halsey Street, hundreds of neighborhood people filed outside into the cold, rainy afternoon. They were peering toward the explosions, enthralled by the blazing fire, the sudden jolting volleys of M-16 rifle and pistol shots.
Carroll continued to run in his clumsy battle crouch, moving closer to the exploding, gunshot riddled building.
A police bullhorn boomed out to his left. It thundered over the cacophony of gunblasts and human shouts.
“You there! You, running! Stop right there!”
Carroll ignored the voices. He kept charging forward.
His steps weaved as he struggled with pains that attacked his body from every direction.
As he reached the fiery building, an even more familiar and terrifying sound seized his mind.
The same Army Cobra was hovering over the factory roof. The same helicopter that had shot him down was back Green Band was here.
His body low to the ground, Carroll vaulted up the building’s stone steps. He took the stairs three at a time and with each leap thought he could hear the rattle of his own skeleton, loose bones flying under his flesh.
A heavyset man suddenly burst out of the open doorway in front of Carroll. He was holding an 870 riot gun across his chest.
Carroll’s gun was set on rapid-repeat A round of .30-caliber bullets disintegrated the terrorist’s face. He reeled back inside the doorway.
The smoke, forcing itself out of the broken first-floor windows, took root in Carroll’s lungs. He kept running.
Then Carroll was climbing over the body of the dying gunman sprawled inside the doorway.
Instinctively, Carroll hugged the hallway wall Cheek tight against cold, peeling plaster, he gasped.
His head seemed to be spinning at an unbelievable speed.
An Army Cobra helicopter? How did they manage a Cobra? Getting an Army Cobra wasn’t possible…. Green Band was waiting upstairs, and that didn’t seem possible, either.
Chapter 92
A GRATED IRON DOOR opened slowly onto the tenement rooftop.
Columns of smoke, scattered by the wind, temporarily blurred Hudson’s vision. The doorway was less than forty yards from the waiting Cobra helicopter.
Colonel Hudson walked cautiously at first, then he began to trot like a victorious athlete toward the waiting Cobra. He’d done it. They had all done their jobs almost perfectly. The Green Band mission was finally over.
The sudden exhilaration of victory was unbelievable to savor.
Hudson never saw the second figure on the roof until the assailant was on top of him. His heart squeezed into his throat. He’d been careless.
For once, just once, he’d forgotten to check, to double-check every possibility.
“You can stop right there, Colonel.”
Face and shoulders still obscured in shadow, a figure appeared from behind the water tower. One hand, which held a revolver, preceded the rest of the body. Then a face came into the light.
A face came into the light.
Francois Monserrat stood fully exposed before Colonel Hudson.
Monserrat smiled—a final smile of triumph.
“My congratulations, Colonel. You nearly achieved the perfect crime.”
Chapter 93
CARROLL WAS UNSURE which way to head inside the burning tenement building.
He choked on a thick gust of smoke, and thought he was going to be sick. His lungs chafed as if they’d been rubbed down by sandpaper.
Crackling reports of M-16s, booming incendiary bombs rang against his eardrums. He could make out the sharp repeating sound of the rotors of the Cobra helicopter that had landed on the rooftop. Monserrat and Colonel Hudson were inside the building….
Carroll coughed and gasped as he climbed sets of steep winding stairs. All around him, flames curled at shadows, throwing off violently flickering light and heat. The shooting pain in his legs was unbearable. Something felt wrong, cracked at the base of his spine.
At the head of the stairs, there was a heavy metal door blocking his way. It stuck at first—then Carroll put his shoulder into it hard. He shouldered the stubborn door a second time.
The metal door finally swung open with a loud shriek.
The rooftop was revealed. Carroll’s eyes widened.
The crimson taillights of a U.S. military helicopter shone and sparkled in the haze of smoke.
The Army Cobra was being readied for takeoff. The rotors were spinning out thunder and sparks.
Somewhere in the smoke shrouding the rooftop, Carroll heard voices. The voices were strident and angry.
They originated from off to his left, beyond a high brick retaining wall. Fear raised the hammers of Carroll’s heart. Fear because he was finally beginning to understand.
“You see, you must see that governments of the past are no longer viable. The elected governments are mere illusions. They are ghosts of a
sentimentalized reality. You must understand that at least. There are no more democracies.” The voice was filled with the tension of the moment.
The second voice was harsh, erupting like another gunshot in the air.
The wind muffled the exact words. Whatever the second person had to say was whipped away by the roar of the chopper and the wind that was shuffling the clouds.
Carroll pressed his body closer to the brick wall. He edged toward the voices.
The conversation became clearer now. Each word pierced the noise and swirling smoke. His heart ached from the relentless pressure.
“I love this country,” one of the two shouted above the wind. “I hate what it did to the veterans after the war. I hate what some of the leaders did. But I love this country.”
At that moment, Carroll saw them both. Just as he thought he was beginning to understand, he realized that he understood nothing.
Colonel David Hudson. The same man pictured in all the FBI library and Pentagon photographs tall, strikingly blond … “the consummate military commander,” according to his classified records.
And the other …
Dear God, the other.
Carroll felt something vital subside deep inside him. It wasn’t really a physical thing. It wasn’t a bone, or a pain in the heart, a collapse of muscle. It was worse than that. Suddenly, he remembered the first time he’d experienced the horror of death—his father’s death in Florida. He remembered his exact feeling on the night Nora had died.
His mouth was dry and his head a cave of sad, hopeless chaos. His emotions were wilder than the guerrilla war raging everywhere around him. He was without speech and numb. All he could do was stare straight ahead.
Nothing could have prepared him for this awful moment. All his years as a policeman hadn’t prepared him.
The man Colonel David Hudson had addressed as Mon-serrat was Walter Trentkamp…. Except the clenched, shadowy face Carroll saw on this man was almost a stranger’s. The face was ruthless and uncaring.