Black Market (29 page)

And now Archer Carroll was out of the grand chase. He had lost Green Band. They had eluded him again.

The Vets cabs proceeded northeast, then almost due east across Brooklyn. They were moving inexorably toward François Monserrat and the appointed end of Green Band. Everything was precisely on schedule.

Erect and alert behind the wheel, David Hudson was experiencing a moment of unusual anxiety. It all had to do with being this close to the end. They were less than seven minutes from the rendezvous with Monserrat.

Nothing could distract David Hudson from Green Band now. He would concentrate as if he were entering a combat zone. Nothing must look even mildly suspicious…

François Monserrat's soldiers could be watching the streets from neighborhood rooftops and darkened apartment windows. If they spotted the unexpected attack force, the final massive exchange of Wall Street securities would fail. Green Band would fail.

Like an advance scout in 'Nam, Hudson noted everything. A knot of black youths was easing out of Turner's Grill. Their voices carried-low, guttural sounds in syncopated street rhythms. He checked and rechecked the squat, cheerless brick buildings as he drove closer to the agreed-upon meeting place.

Hudson drove slowly on until he found a parking spot farther down the slope-shouldered Bedford-Stuyvesant side street. Very nonchalantly he climbed out of the car. He continued to look around the quiet neighborhood, searching for any sign of danger. He finally popped open the cab's dented and scarred trunk. The Wall Street securities were there in ordinary-looking gray vinyl suitcases.

Hudson hoisted up the bags and began to walk as rapidly as he could toward a red brick factory at the next corner. He was certain he was being watched. François Monserrat was somewhere nearby. All of his senses and instincts corroborated that warning signal. This was to be the moment of reckoning. Hudson's Special Forces training to be matched against Monserrat's years of experience, his years of meticulous deceit.

Hudson shouldered open the heavy wood front door of a building that housed shabby apartments and a small Italian-American shoe factory, the Gino Company of Milano.

He pushed into a dark hallway, where trapped cooking smells immediately assaulted him. The musty scent of old winter clothes hung in the air. The meeting place seemed appropriately isolated, but almost too mundane.

“Don't turn around, Colonel.”

Three men with long-nosed Magnums and Berettas drawn, stepped into the dim corridor.

“Move right up against the wall… That's good. Right there. That will be fine, Colonel Hudson.”

The leader had a cultivated Spanish accent, more than likely Cuban. François Monserrat ran the Caribbean and most of the terrorist activities in South America, Hudson remembered. At the rate he was going, one day Monserrat was going to run the entire Third World.

“I'm not armed,” Hudson said quietly.

“We have to search you anyway.”

One of the men positioned himself about three feet away from Colonel David Hudson. He pointed his gun between Hudson's eyes. It was a popular gunman's trick, one Hudson himself had been taught at Fort Bragg. At close range, shoot out the eyes.

The second man patted him down, quickly and professionally. The third man searched the suitcases, slashing them carefully with a knife, looking for false siding, a false bottom.

“Upstairs!” the terrorist who held the gun finally commanded Hudson. He spoke like a military officer, Hudson noted.

They began to climb a steep and creaking flight of stairs, then another flight. Were they leading him to Monserrat? Finally, the enigmatic Monserrat himself? Or would there be more deception?

“This is your floor, Colonel. That blue 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 them.

An impatient grunt came from behind…

The Lizard Man. Past interrogations. Special Forces training. Hudson's mind continued to churn at a furious rate.

All to prepare him for this very moment? For this and no other?

“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 all of their minds, petty doubts and confusion, paranoid unease he could use later, if he needed to.

Deception.

“Don't bother to knock, Colonel.” The man in charge calmly spoke once again. “Just go right in; you're expected. Everything you try to do is expected, Colonel.”

A slice of dull yellow light emanated from the fourth-floor tenement room as David Hudson peered inside. He paused at the doorway's edge.

He was about to confront the mysterious and dangerous Monserrat. He was about to end Green Band's long mission.

The Vietcong's Lizard Man had taught Hudson an essential lesson in Vietnam: Play games in which your opponent wasn't given the rules. This was the principle behind all successful guerrilla warfare, Hudson believed.

Colonel David Hudson versus Monserrat.

Now it would begin, and end.

“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. Bed-ford-Stuyvesant. It's right in the heart of the fucking ghetto. They're traveling on Halsey Street in Bed-Stuy. Over.”

Arch Carroll sagged heavily against the open front door of one of the half-dozen police cruisers that had arrived after the 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 now?

Carroll tried to clear his head as he listened to the minute-by-minute updates squawking over nearby police-cruiser radios.

He felt numb. He was beyond pain.

Parrish was 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 to him.

Carroll knew he appeared badly dazed. He felt far worse than that, but he nodded. Yes, he definitely wanted to witness the end. He had to be there. Colonel David Hudson-Monserrat-Archer Carroll-they all had to be there. Everything had led to this point.

Seconds later he was uncomfortably hunched up in a patrol car. He felt sure he was going to be sick. Hammers of fear were tripping off in his head.

The cruiser lurched into motion. The flashing cherry-red light began to revolve. The siren of the speeding car warbled above the Brooklyn rooftops.

This was the master terrorist Monserrat.

This was François Monserrat.

David Hudson could not believe that what his eyes told him was true.

Monserrat?… Or was this more incredible deception? The highest manifestation of deception? He felt the familiar electric tingling in his fingertips, his arm, his legs.

He watched the mysterious dark-suited figure come toward him. He noted the two gunmen in the shadows against the far wall.

“Colonel Hudson.” The handshake was quick, firm. “I'm François Monserrat. The real one this time.” A thin smile played at the corners of his mouth. It was the most confident and assured look that David Hudson had ever witnessed.

Monserrat's smile dimmed immediately. “Let's get down to business. I believe we can complete our transaction quickly. Look at what he's brought, Marcel.
Rapidement!
”

A man in a dark suit stepped inside the room at Monserrat's command. He was perhaps sixty and had the pallid complexion, the weak eyesight, of someone who spent much of his life looking through microscopes and magnifying glasses. He bent low to examine the securities Colonel David Hudson had brought with him.

Hudson watched closely as he rubbed the individual trading bonds carefully, 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 recent printing. He worked extremely fast.

Nevertheless, each minute passed with excruciating slowness.

“For the most part, the bonds are authentic,” he finally said to Monserrat, looking up.

“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.”

François Monserrat nodded curtly. He seemed uneasy now. The terrorist picked up the plain black telephone on the table. He dialed a telephone company business office, gave a four-digit number, then spoke to someone who was clearly an overseas operator. Seconds later the terrorist was speaking directly to someone obviously known at a bank in Geneva.

“My account is Number four-eleven/FA. Make the agreed-upon deposit into the account…” A few minutes later Monserrat hung up.

Then the phone rang, and Colonel Hudson received a confirmation that the money had indeed been successfully transferred in Europe. More than 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 Dublin International Airport, had come through once 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 cold deferential bow.

As Colonel David 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 with him for almost fifteen years.

At that precise 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 element of surprise.

Deception, at its best.

A game in which Hudson alone knew the rules. An amazing game called Green Band.

Less than forty seconds remained… Two pistols were drawn in the room…

Concentrate. David 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 troubling 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, no emotion there. No affect. The two of them were close in so many ways. Killing machines.

“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
Russian. My parents were stationed in middle America. They were among the hundreds of agents who came here in the late 1940s. I was taught to assimilate myself-to be American. There are many others like me.
Many
others. They're all over the United States right now. Waiting, Colonel. We want to destroy this country financially, and in every other way.”

Fourteen seconds. Twelve seconds. Ten seconds. Colonel David Hudson kept counting in his head, kept talking in a monotone to François Monserrat. His heartbeat remained low. He was still in complete control.

“Harry Stemkowsky… Do you remember a man named Stemkowsky? A poor crippled sergeant? One of my men?”

“One of the casualties of war. Your war. Your war, Colonel, not ours. He wouldn't betray you under any circumstances.”

As he reached three in his countdown, Colonel David Hudson took two fast, unexpected steps to his left. Both Russian terrorists awkwardly swung up their pistols. They were too late.

Hudson tucked his chin down hard against his chest and dove headfirst through a glass window, crashing into the factory section of the building.

At that precise moment, the entire building shook with the first savage round from the M-60s, which completely pulverized the tenement's fourth floor.

Flash fires broke out simultaneously in three separate areas of the factory. Bright orange-and-crimson flames strained to reach the stained yellow ceiling. Huge panes of glass buckled, then burst 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 licking flames.

M-16 rifles coughed and rattled everywhere.

The Vets attack force was under way.

David Hudson waited in a combat crouch behind heavy factory machines. The thick smoke from the fire was friend and enemy at the same time. The billowing smoke and flames made it impossible for Monserrat and his men to locate Hudson, but it also made him vulnerable, exposed to sudden attack from any side.

Colonel Hudson heard the sound he'd been waiting for. The whirring of the helicopter rotors was unmistakably 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 David Hudson allowed himself a trace of a smile. Just a trace.

“Get the fuck out of my way! Move it! Move it!
Move, move, move!
”

A roaring, unbelievable firefight had erupted. Arch Carroll saw rows of flat rooftops shooting flames as he pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd gathered on Halsey Street. Ghouls, he thought. The worst kinds of ambulance chasers.

He winced. His left arm was numb, and something was wrong with his lower back; contact with the pavement sent jarring pains up his spine.

None of the neighborhood people-leather-jacketed teenagers, sullen young women, small grinning children-seemed to realize that this violent spectacle was real.