He could feel the vibrations of unadulterated warmth that these men felt toward him. And for one brief moment Colonel David Hudson almost lost control.
Hudson finally offered a wry conspiratorial smile. “It’s good to see you all again. Carry on with your party. That’s an order.”
Hudson ambled on, gripping hands, greeting the rest of the Vets group: Jimmy Cassio, Harold Freedman, Mahoney, Keresty, McMahon, Martinez—men who hadn’t been able to fit back into American society after the war, men he’d recruited for Green Band.
As he walked, Hudson thought about his men; his final combat command; the final mission.
The Vets were antisocial, chronically unemployable; they were dramatic losers by the standard American measurements of success and accomplishments. At least half of them still suffered some form of PTSD, the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome so common among war veterans.
The men packed into the cabdrivers’ locker room had performed spectacularly. Every one of them had served under Hudson at one time or another. Each was a highly trained technical specialist; each had a totally unique skill, which no one other than Hudson seemed to want or need in civilian society.
Steve “the Horse” Glickman and Pauly “Mr. Blue” Melindez were the finest rifleman-sniper team Hudson had ever commanded.
Michael Doud and Joe Barreiro were experts at ordnance, at assembling and creating complex plastique explosives.
Manning Rubin could have been making a thousand a week for either Ford or GM. If his skill at fixing automobiles had been matched by patience, just a little ability to handle bullshit…
Davey Hale had an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything, including the Stock Market.
Campbell, Bowen, Kamerer and Generalli were high-caliber professional soldiers and mercenaries.
“All right gentlemen. We have to do some homework now,” Hudson finally spoke. “This is the last time we’ll have the chance to review these details and any of our operating schedules. If this sounds like a formal military briefing, that’s because it damn well is.”
Hudson paused and looked around at the circle of assembled faces. Each was turned toward him with intense concentration.
“Personal anecdote, gentlemen…. At the highly thought of JFK School at Fort Bragg, they repeatedly told us that ‘genius is in the details.’ When the truth of that finally sunk in, it held like nothing I’ve ever learned before or since…
“So I want to go over the final details one last time. Maybe two last times with all of you. Details, gentlemen…”
Vets One had purposely modeled his presentation after the concise and technical Special Forces field briefings. He wanted the men to vividly remember Viet Nam now. He wanted them to remember how they’d acted: with daring and courage, with dedication to the United States.
Hudson could feel his body pulsing and tingling lightly. He spoke to the men without using written notes.
For nearly two and a half hours, Hudson painstakingly reviewed every scenario, every likely and even unlikely change that might occur up to and including the end of the Green Band mission. He used memory aids: reconnaissance topographical maps, mnemonics for memorizing; Army-style organization charts.
A gravelled voice finally sounded from the shadowy rear of the Vets locker room.
One of the combat mercenaries, a Southern black named Clint Hurdle, had taken the floor. “Why you so sure there won’t be no attacks of conscience? This going to heat up now, Colonel. Who says nobody going to fuck up and run?”
There was a hush around the room.
Hudson considered the question carefully before answering. He had posed almost the same question hundreds of times in his own head.
“Nobody, not a single one of you men, broke during combat.… Not even in a war none of you wanted or believed in Nobody broke in POW camps!… None of you will break now, either. I’m prepared to bet everything on that.”
There was an uncomfortable silence after the question and emotional answer. David Hudson’s intense eyes slowly surveyed the Vets dressing room one more time.
He wanted them to feel that he was sure about everything he’d just said. Even though it might not look it, every man in the room had been handpicked from hundreds of possible vets. Every soldier in the room was special.
“If any one of you wants to leave, this is the time .… Right now, gentlemen. This afternoon …Anybody?…”
One Vet slowly started to clap. Then the rest of them.
Finally, all twenty-six men were solemnly clapping their hands. Whatever was going to happen, they were together.
Chapter 25
COLONEL HUDSON NODDED: the military commander once again took control.
“I’ve saved the foreign travel assignments until last.
“I’m not going to entertain any discussion, any disagreement over these assignments. The operational environment is already confused. We will not be confused. That’s another reason we’re going to win this war.”
Colonel Hudson walked to a long wooden table. He began to pass out thick, official-looking portfolios. Each one had a white tag pasted onto the front.
Inside the envelopes were counterfeit U.S. passports and visas, first-class airplane tickets, generous expense monies; copies of elaborate topographical maps from the briefing. The genius was in the details.
“Cassio will go to Zurich,” Hudson announced.
“Stemkowsky and Cohen have Israel and Iran…
“Skully will go to Paris. Harold Freedman to London, then on to Toronto. Jimmy Holm to Tokyo. Vic Fahey to Belfast. The rest of us stay put right in New York.”
A schoolboy’s groan went up. Hudson silenced it with a short chopping hand motion.
“Gentlemen. I’ll say this one time only, so you have to remember it.… While you’re in Europe, in Asia, in South America, it is absolutely essential that you act, that you groom and dress yourselves in the particular style we’ve laid out for you.
“All your air travel arrangements are first class. All your clothing and restaurant expense money is meant to be spent. Spend that money. Throw it around. Be more extravagant than you’ve ever been in your lives. Have fun, if you can under the circumstances. That’s an order!”
Hudson eased up. “For the next few days, you have to be self-assured, successful American business types. You have to be like the people we’ve been studying on Wall Street for the past year. Think like a Wall Street man, look like one, act like a high-powered Wall Street executive.
“At 0430, you’ll be given corporate haircuts, shaves, and—believe it or not—manicures.
“Your wardrobes have been carefully selected for you, too. They’re Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart—your favorite shops, gentlemen. Your shirts and ties are Turnbull and Asser. Your billfolds are from Dunhill. They contain credit cards and plenty of cash in the appropriate denominations you’ll need in your respective countries.”
Colonel Hudson paused. His eyes slowly roamed across the room.
“I think that’s all I have to say.… Except one important thing… I wish you all the very best luck possible. I wish you the best, in the future after this mission.… I believe in you. Believe in yourselves.”
Chapter 26
IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK on Sunday afternoon when Carroll kicked both weathered Timberland work boots up on his desk inside No. 13. He yawned until his jaw cracked.
He’d finished four draining and futile interrogations. He’d been lied to by the very best—the most dangerous provocateurs and terrorists from all around New York.
Carroll had purposely chosen a cramped office for himself, tucked away at the back of the Wall Street building. His small but hardy DIA group, a half-dozen unorthodox police renegades, two efficient and extremely resilient secretaries, surrounded the uninspiring office in a satellite of Wall Street-style cubicles.
Paint peeled from the walls of Carroll’s office like diseased skin; the windowpane had been shattered courtesy of Green Band. He’d tacke
d a square of brown paper to the hole but rain soaked through anyway.
The first four suspects Carroll had interviewed were known terrorists who lived in the New York City area: two FALN, a PLO, an IRA fund-raiser. Unfortunately, the four were no more knowledgeable about the Wall Street mystery man Carroll was himself. There was nothing circulating on the street. Each of them convincingly swore to that after exhaustively long sessions.
Carroll wondered how it could be possible.
Somebody had to know something about Green Band. You couldn’t calmly blow away half of Wall Street and keep it a state secret for over forty hours.
The scarred and rusted wooden door into his office opened again. Carroll watched the door over the smoking cardboard lid of his coffee container.
Mike Caruso, who worked for Carroll at the DIA, finally peeked inside. Caruso was a small, skinny, ex-office cop, with a black fifties pompadour pushed up high over his forehead. He habitually wore wretched Hawaiian shirts outside his baggy pants, attempting to create a splash of colorful identity in the usually drab police world. Carroll liked him immensely for his dedicated lack of style.
“We got Isabella Marqueza up next. She’s already screaming for her fancy Park Avenue lawyer. I mean the lady is fucking screaming out there.”
“That sounds promising. Somebody’s upset at least. Why don’t you bring her in?
Chapter 27
MOMENTS LATER THE Brazilian woman appeared like a sudden tropical windstorm inside the office.
“You can’t do this to me! I’m a citizen of Brazil!”
“Excuse me. You must be mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. Why don’t you sit down. “Carroll spoke without getting up from his cluttered work desk.
“Why? Who do you think you are?”
“I said, sit down. I ask the questions, not you.”
Carroll leaned back in his chair and studied Isabella Marqueza. The Brazilian woman had shoulder-length, gleaming black hair. Her lips were full and painted very red. There was an arrogant tilt to her chin.
Her hair, her clothes, even her skin seemed expensive and cosmopolitan. She had on tight gray velvet riding pants, a silk shirt, cowboy boots, a half-length fur jacket Terrorist chic, Carroll thought.
“You dress like a very wealthy Che Guevara.” Carroll finally smiled.
“I don’t appreciate your attempt of humor, senhor.”
“No, well, join the crowd.” Carroll’s smile now broadened. “I don’t appreciate your attempts at mass murder.”
Carroll already knew this woman by reputation. Isabella Marqueza was an internationally renowned journalist and news-magazine photographer. She was the daughter of a wealthy man who owned tire factories in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Though it apparently couldn’t be proved, Isabella Marqueza had sanctioned at least four American deaths.
She was responsible, Carroll knew, for the disappearance, then the cold-blooded, heartless murders of a Shell Oil executive and his family. The American businessman, his wife, their two small girls had vanished that past June in Rio. Their pitiful, mutilated bodies had been found in a sewer ditch inside the favelos.
Marqueza reportedly worked for the GRU through Francois Monserrat. According to rumors, Isabella had also been Monserrat’s lover.
She tossed Carroll the coldest, most indignant look he could imagine. Her dark, sullen eyes smoldered as she stared him down.
Arch Carroll wearily shook his head. He set aside the steaming coffee container. The impression he got from Isabella was that of a tempest about to unleash its force. He watched as she leaned forward and thumped her hands on the desk: the fiery light, the gleam in her dark eyes was something.
“I want to see my lawyer! Right now! I want my lawyer! You get my lawyer. Now, senhor!”
“Nobody even knows you’re here.” Carroll spoke in a purposely soft, polite voice. Whatever she did, however she acted—he would do the exact opposite, he’d decided.
Carroll knew that two of his agents had intercepted Isabella Marqueza as she walked down East 70th Street after leaving her apartment that morning. She’d screamed out, struggled and fought as they grabbed her off the streets. “Somebody please help me!”
Half a dozen East Side New Yorkers, with the anesthetized look of people observing a distant event which interests but doesn’t particularly involve them, had watched the scene. One of them had finally yelled as Isabella Marqueza was dragged, fighting and sobbing, into a waiting station wagon. The rest did nothing at all.
“You people kidnap me off the streets,” Isabella Marqueza complained. Her red mouth pouted.
“Let me confess to you. Let me be honest, and kind of frank,” Carroll said, still going gently. “In the last few years, I’ve had to kidnap a few people like yourself. Call it the new justice. Call it anything you like. Kidnapping’s lost most of its glitter for me.”
The louder Isabella Marqueza got, the softer Carroll’s speaking voice became. “I kind of like the idea of being a kidnapper. I kidnap terrorists. It’s got a nice ring to it, you know. Don’t you think?”
“I demand to see my lawyer! Goddam you! My lawyer is Daniel Curzon. You know that name?”
Arch Carroll nodded and shrugged. He knew Daniel Curzon.
“Daniel Curzon’s a piece of sorry shit. I don’t want to hear Curzon’s name again. I’m serious about that.”
Carroll’s eyes now fell to a manila package, a plain-looking folder wrapped in brown string on his desk. Inside was his moral justification to do whatever he needed to do right now.
Inside the tan envelope were a dozen or so black-and-white and 35-millimeter color photographs of the Jason Miller family, formerly of Rio: the murdered family of the Shell Oil executive. There were also grainy photographs of an American couple who had disappeared in Jamaica, pictures of a Unilever accountant from Colombia, a man named Jordan who had disappeared last spring.
Carroll continued softly. “My name’s Arch Carroll. Born right here in New York City. Local boy makes good.… Son of a cop who was the son of a cop. Not a lot of imagination at work in our family, I’ll admit.”
Carroll paused briefly. He lit up a leftover cigarette stub, Crusader Rabbit style.
“My job is to locate terrorists who threaten the security of the United States. Then, if they’re not too strongly politically connected, protected, I try my best to put a stop to them…
“Put it another way, you could say I’m a terrorist for the United States. I play by the same rules you do.… No rules. So stop talking about Park Avenue lawyers. Lawyers are for nice, civilized people who play by the rules. Not for us.”
Carroll slowly untied the string bow on the manila envelope. Then he slid out the handful of photographs inside.
He casually passed them to Isabella Marqueza.
“Jason Miller’s body. Miller was an engineer for Shell Oil. He was also a financial investigator for the State Department, as you and your people in Sao Paulo know. A fairly nice man, I understand…. Information-gatherer for State, I’ll admit. Basically harmless, though.”
Carroll made soft clicking noises with his tongue. His eyes briefly met those of Isabella Marqueza.
She was quiet suddenly. His putting-green voice was throwing her off slightly. She obviously hadn’t expected to encounter the deck of photographs.
“Miller’s wife Judy here. Alive in this photo. Kind of a nice Midwestern smile.… Two little girls. Their bodies, that is. I have two little girls myself. Two girls, two boys.”
Carroll smiled again. He cleared his throat. He needed a beer—a beer and a stiff shot of Irish would go real good right now. He studied Isabella Marqueza a moment.
“In July of last year, you participated in the premeditated murders, the political assassination of all four Millers.”
Isabella Marqueza shot up from her seat in the interrogation room. She began to yell at Carroll again.
“I did nothing! You prove what you say! No! I did not kill anybody. Never. I don’t kill children!”
r /> “Bullshit. That’s the end of our friendly discussion. Who the hell do you think you’re kidding?”
With that Carroll slapped the wrinkled manila portfolio shut, he jammed it back in his lopsided desk drawer. He looked up at Isabella Marqueza again.
“Nobody knows you’re here! Nobody’s going to know what happened to you after today. That’s the truth. Just like the Miller family in Brazil.”
“You’re full of shit, Carroll—”
“Yeah? Try me. Push me a little and find out for sure.”
“My lawyer, I want to see my lawyer—”
“Never heard of him—”
“I told you his name, Curzon—”
“Did you? I don’t remember—”
Isabella Marqueza stared at Carroll in silence. She folded her arms, then sat down again. She crossed her long legs and lit a cigarette.
“Why are you doing this to me? You’re crazy.”
This was a little better, Carroll thought.
‘Tell me about Jack Jordan down in Colombia. American business accountant. Machine-gunned to death in his driveway. His wife got to watch.”
“I never heard of him.”
Carroll clucked his tongue and slowly shook his head back and forth. He seemed genuinely disappointed. Sitting behind the bare, bleak office desk, he looked like someone whose best friend had just inexplicably lied to him.
“Isabella. Isabella.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t think you get the total picture. I don’t think you really understand.” He stood up, stretched his arms, fought back a yawn. “You see, you no longer exist. You died suddenly this morning. Taxi accident on East Seventieth Street. Nobody bothered to tell you?”
Carroll was feeling dangerously overloaded now. He didn’t want to finish this interrogation.
An hour passed. Two hours. He desperately needed a drink.
“You were Francois Monserrat’s mistress here in New York. Come on. We already know about that. Two summers ago. Right here in Nueva York.”