“The plan must have taken months, maybe years, to develop and execute with this high a level of success. PLO? IRA? Red Brigade? I assume we'll know more on that score before too long. They have to contact us eventually. They must want something. Nobody goes to this extreme without having some kind of demand in mind.” Trentkamp shrugged and looked around at the puzzled, solemn faces in the room. “In other words, gentlemen, I've got nothing right now.”
Each of those present was called upon to give a report, from the secretary of defense to SEC representative Caitlin Dillon. All spoke briefly. Although Caitlin Dillon didn't have a great deal to add, she spoke with remarkable fluency, the kind where you could see the semicolons in her speech. Arch Carroll couldn't take his eyes away from her face. Only when she fell silent did he glance elsewhere.
“Arch? Are you with us?”
Carroll gave the room an embarrassed smile as he rose to address the group. The mostly recognizable faces that turned his way were dark and impassive.
Carroll was characteristically rumpled. His long brown hair and street clothes brought to mind underground witnesses and policemen called in drug-related grand jury trials. His face was strong. His brown eyes were bright and alert, even though he was exhausted. He'd thought about wearing his one good Barneys warehouse sale suit, but then had changed his mind. What was it Thoreau had advised? Beware all enterprises that require new clothes… something like that.
Several of the principals attending the emergency session knew Carroll by reputation, at least. As a modern-day policeman, Carroll was thought to be appropriately unorthodox and extremely effective. The team he supervised was credited with helping to make the world's terrorists think twice about raiding forays into the United States.
Arch Carroll had also occasionally been characterized as a troublemaker: too much of a perfectionist for the Washington politicians to handle, too off-Broadway theatrical at times. Moreover, he was becoming increasingly known as an Irish drunk. It was a reputation that might not have hurt him too much in the old days of New York police work, but it wasn't doing him any good in these more rarefied circles.
“I'll try to be brief,” Carroll began softly. “For starters, I don't think we can make the assumption yet that this is an established or known terrorist group.
“If it is, then it probably means one of two groups: the Soviets, through the GRU-which could include François Monserrat and his network-or a second possibility, a freelance group, probably sent out of the Middle East. Financed there, anyway.
“I don't believe anyone else has the organization and discipline, the technical know-how or money to manage something this complex.” Carroll's intense brown eyes roamed the room. Why did his own remarks sound so hollow? “You can cross out just about everyone else as suspects.” He sat down.
Walter Trentkamp raised a finger and spoke again. “For everyone's general information, we've set up an investigative unit down on Wall Street. The unit is inside the stock exchange building, which suffered limited damage during the raid. Somebody from the NYPD already released number Thirteen Wall to the press. So that's what we'll call headquarters.
“There's no such address, actually. The stock exchange is on Wall, but the actual address is Broad Street. That may be significant. See, we've made our first mistake, and we haven't even started the investigation.”
Almost everyone laughed, but the important irony was lost on none of them. There would be more mistakes-a lot more serious mistakes-before anything was resolved. Number 13 was surely an omen of things to come.
President Kearney stood once again at his end of the massive conference table. His face registered the day's extreme stress. He was no longer the good-looking, energetic young senator who'd successfully hit the national campaign trail two years before. Now he seemed cruelly drained.
Kearney said, “I need to clear the air about something else. Something that must never go beyond this room.” The president paused, looked up and down the rows of his closest advisers. Then he went on.
“For several weeks now, the White House, Vice President Elliot, and myself have been receiving reliable intelligence leaks, steady information about a dramatic counterinsurgent plot. Possibly a scenario involving the elusive François Monserrat.”
The president paused again, deliberately pacing himself. Arch Carroll turned the name Monserrat over in his mind. “Elusive” didn't quite do Monserrat proper justice. There were times, indeed, when he had seriously doubted the man's existence, times when he'd considered Monserrat as the nom de guerre of several different individuals acting in collaboration. He was in France one day, Libya the next. He might be reported in Mexico even as somebody else claimed to have seen him at the same time stepping aboard an unmarked plane in Prague.
President Kearney continued. “Our intelligence people have learned that Middle Eastern and South American oil-producing countries have been seriously considering a run on the New York Stock Market.
“This action was to be ‘just’ retribution for what they considered broken promises, even outright fraud practiced by U.S. banks and the New York brokerage houses. At the very least, the oil cartel hoped to initiate a short-term panic, which they alone would be in a position to take advantage of. Is this rumored scenario related to tonight? At this moment, I don't know…
“I have serious fears, though, that we're at the beginning of a grave international economic crisis. Gentlemen, it would not be an exaggeration to postulate, to prepare ourselves for the possibility, that the Western economy could effectively collapse on Monday, when the market will conceivably reopen.”
President Kearney's intense blue eyes continued to make contact around the crisis table. “We might find out who initiated the attack on Wall Street last night. We have to find out how they did it. We have to find out why… What is the meaning of this insane, unthinkable thing?”
Arch Carroll's head was buzzing and his eyes stinging as he filed out of the White House conference room at 2:55 A.M. The other participants were subdued and silent; they looked reflective, exhausted.
Carroll had already started down the flight of creaking, thickly carpeted south White House stairs when he felt a hand rest lightly on his shoulder, startling him. He turned to see Walter Trentkamp, impressive as ever at three in the morning.
“Trying to run out on me?” Trentkamp shook his head like a father about to chastise his son in the friendliest terms possible. “How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while. Have a minute to talk?”
“Hello, Walter. Sure, we can talk. How about going outside? It might clear our heads a little.”
Moments later Carroll and one of his earliest mentors were walking side by side through the early morning mist shrouding Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was a heavy gray slab covering the capital like the roof on a mausoleum. In the distance Carroll could see the Washington Monument.
“I haven't seen enough of your homely face lately. Probably not since you and the kids moved back to the old homestead.”
“We miss you, too. It was kind of odd, going back there at first. Now it's good, absolutely the right choice. The kids call it their ‘country house.’ They think they live on a Nebraska farm now. Riverdale, right?” Carroll grinned.
“Wonderful kids. Mary Katherine's a gem, too.” Trentkamp hesitated a moment. “How are you doing? You're the one who concerns me.”
Carroll began to feel as if he were talking to a rabbi on the police force. “Holding up pretty well. I'm all right. I'm actually doing fine.” He shrugged.
Trentkamp shook his closely cropped silver-gray curls. His eyes held a knowing look, and Carroll felt suddenly uncomfortable. The cop part of Walter had a knack of wheedling his way inside you, so that you were left feeling transparent, like thin paper held up to a bright light.
“I don't think so, Archer. I don't think you're doing fine at all.”
Carroll stiffened. “No? Well, I'm sorry. I thought I was all right.”
“You're not so fine.
You're not even in the general ballpark of fine. The late night drinking bouts have become legend. Risks you're taking with your life. Other cops talk too much about you.”
It was the wrong hour for this kind of talk, even from the man he'd grown up calling “Uncle Walter.” Carroll bristled. “That all, Rabbi? That all you wanted to see me about?”
Walter Trentkamp abruptly stopped walking. He laid a hand on Carroll's shoulder and squeezed it lightly. “I wanted to talk to the son of an old friend of mine. I wanted to help if I could.”
Arch Carroll turned his bleary eyes away from those of the FBI director. His face reddened. “I'm sorry. I guess it's been a long day.”
“It has been a long day. It's been a long couple of years for you since Nora. You're close to being broken out of your unit in the DIA. They like the results, but not your working style. There's talk about replacing you. Matty Reardon's one name I've heard.”
It was a verbal punch. Arch Carroll knew, somewhere in the back of his mind that this was coming. “Reardon'd be a good choice. He's a good company man. Good man, period.”
“Arch, please cut the crap. You're playing games with someone who's known you thirty-five years. Nobody can replace you at the DIA.”
Carroll frowned, and he began to cough in the manner of Crusader Rabbit. He felt like a real shit. “Aww, hell, I'm sorry, Walter. I know what you're trying to do.”
“People understand what you've been through. I understand. Please believe that, Archer. Everybody wants to help… I asked for you on this one. I had to ask.”
Carroll shrugged his broad, sloping shoulders, but he was hurt. He hadn't known his reputation had slipped so badly, maybe even in Walter Trentkamp's eyes.
“I don't know what to say. I really don't. Not even a typical Bronx Irish wisecrack. Nothing.”
“Talk to me on this one. Let me know what you find out. Just talk to me, okay?… Don't go it alone. Will you promise me that?” said Trentkamp.
“Promise.” Carroll nodded slowly.
Walter Trentkamp turned up the collar of his overcoat against the early morning mist. Both he and Carroll were over six feet tall. They looked like father and son.
“Good,” Trentkamp finally said. “It's real good to have you. We'll need you on this nasty son of a bitch. We'll need you at your best, Archer.”
6
Manhattan
At six o'clock on Saturday morning, December 5, a bleak Seventh Avenue subway train, its surface covered with scars of graffiti, lackadaisically rocked and rattled north toward the Van Cortlandt Park station. The New York subways were generally a bad joke. This particular train wasn't so much public transportation as public disgrace.
Colonel David Hudson sat in an inconspicuous huddle on an uncomfortable metal seat. As always, he was wearing clothes no one would look at twice. Uninteresting clothes that created a street camouflage of drab gray and lifeless brown. He realized it wasn't a very successful disguise because people had looked at him, anyway. Their probing eyes invariably discovered the missing arm, the empty flap of his coat.
Hot-and-cold flashes coursed through his body as the train dutifully hurled itself north. He was drifting in and out of the present, remembering, trying to accurately replicate long hours spent at a Vietnam firebase perimeter listening post… Every one of his senses had been at its sharpest back then. Head cocked-listening, watching, trusting no one but himself… He needed exactly the same kind of brilliant clarity right now, the same kind of absolute self-reliance-which was probably the greatest high he'd known in his lifetime.
From Fourteenth Street, where he'd boarded the inhospitable subway train, up past Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and Fifty-ninth streets, Hudson objectively contemplated the first days of his capture in Vietnam. An old Doors song, “ Moonlight Drive,” drifted through his mind. A period piece.
He was vividly remembering the La Hoc Noh prison now. Above all else, Colonel David Hudson was remembering the one known as the Lizard Man…
La Hoc Noh Prison, North Vietnam: July 1971
Captain David Hudson, his nervous system a mass of fire, felt each bruising, jarring bump, even the smallest stones underfoot, as four prison guards half carried, half dragged him toward the central thatch-roofed hut at the La Hoc Noh compound.
Through the flat white glare of the Asian sun, which resembled a bleached penny, he squinted at the pathetic hootch, with its tattered North Vietnamese flag and sagging bamboo walls.
The command post.
What an incredible, existential joke this all was. What a cruel joke his life had recently become.
Well muscled once, clean-cut and always so perfectly erect, so proper, the young U.S. Army officer was pitiful to behold now. His skin was wrinkled and sallow, almost yellow; his blond hair looked as if it has been pulled out in great, diseased clumps.
He understood and accepted the fact that he was dying. He weighed less than a hundred and fifteen pounds; he'd had the dreaded yellow shits literally for months without end. He'd gone beyond mere exhaustion; he lived in a shifting, hallucinatory world where he doubted even his own sensations and ordinary perceptions.
All Captain Hudson possessed now was his dignity. He refused to give that up, too.
He would die with at least some essential part of himself intact, that secret place deep inside that nobody could torture out of him.
The SNR officer, the one they had called Lizard Man, was waiting expressly for him inside the dread command hootch.
The North Vietnamese leader sat in awful silence, crouched like some feral animal, behind a low, lopsided table.
He almost seemed to be posing for a photo beneath a twirling bamboo fan that barely stirred the hundred-and-five degree air.
North Vietnamese cooking smells-green chili, garlic, litchi, durian, and spoiled river prawn-made David Hudson suddenly gag. He clutched violently at his mouth. He felt himself begin to faint. But he wouldn't allow that. No! Honor and dignity! That was everything. Honor and dignity kept him alive.
He stopped at his own mental command, drawing on the scant resources, the human spirit, that remained in him.
The North Vietnamese guards held him up. He collapsed, a weightless puppet in their tangle of bony arms. A guard punched David Hudson's jaw with a hard bare fist. Hot blood filled his mouth, and he gagged repeatedly.
“You Cap-tan, ah Hud-son!” the senior officer suddenly screeched, cawing like a heat-crazed jungle bird. He peered at the wrinkled notepad he always carried. His fingers struck hard into the page to emphasize certain words.
“Ho-Ho. Twen-six yea-ah old. Veetnam, Lah-ose since nineteen six-nine. Yow spy six yeah. Ho-Ho. You 'ssain! 'ssassin! Convic to die, Cap-tan.”
The prison guards let Captain David Hudson fall to the dirt floor, which was littered with gaping fish heads and rice.
Hudson 's fragile mind was reeling, crashing, exploding with sharp-pointed lights. He'd understood only a few of the Lizard Man's fractured English words. “ Vietnam… spy… assassin… convicted to die.”
Hudson 's eyes absently ran over the highly polished board surface. Games? Why did they all love games?
The Lizard Man snorted obscenely. A distorted smile appeared across his face. His jaw moved slowly, seemingly unattached to the rest of his skull. David Hudson imagined he could see, just behind the loose lips, a flicking, reptilian tongue in the man's mouth. He shook his head, trying vainly to find a clearing, a little area of reality, within his wildly confused thoughts.
“Yow play game? Yow play game me, Hud-sun?”
David Hudson's eyes were riveted to the game table, trying to focus. Play a game with Lizard Man?
The board appeared to be real teak. It was precious wood, exotic and beautiful, incongruous in this sodden armpit of a place. Even more striking were the hundreds of polished black and white stones, exquisite playing pieces. They were circular in shape, convex on each side.
For a lucid moment, Hudson remembered a marble collection. Something magical
and forgotten from his youth in Kansas, on his father's farm. Collecting solids and cat's-eyes. Had he actually been a boy in this same lifetime? He honestly couldn't seem to remember. Die with dignity! Dignity!
“Play game for your life? Ho?” the Lizard Man asked.
The game board was divided into vertical and horizontal lines, creating hundreds of intersections. There were 180 white stones, 181 black.
Beside the pile of black stones, the Lizard Man's hand rested on a bulky Mosin-Nagant military rifle. One of his long yellowed fingers tapped the table relentlessly.
“Yow play. Play game me! Loser die!”
Captain David Hudson continued to stare hard at the game board. Focus, he thought. Concentrate. Die with dignity.
What did this man want from him now? It was an obscene joke, Hudson knew. One more way the Lizard Man had of torturing him.
The black and white stones seemed to be moving by themselves. Spinning, crawling like insects, in his blurred vision.
Finally Hudson spoke up. His voice was surprisingly strong, angry, even defiant.
“I have never lost at the game of Go,” Captain David Hudson said. “You play, asshole!” Dignity!
Manhattan: December 1985
The New York subway train braked noisily at a station stop. The soiled platform was bathed in eerie blue.
A few passengers on the sleepy, early morning train were staring absently at David Hudson. Even at a casual glance, he seemed like someone quietly in control of his environment. Beneath the drab street clothes, there was about him a sense of purpose. He was a man accustomed to taking command.
Hudson stared back at the other passengers. He peered into their hollow, pathetic eyes until most glanced away. The majority of American people were devoid of any real basic integrity, any sense of themselves. Civilians tended to disappoint David Hudson again and again. Maybe it was because he expected too much from them-he had to remind himself constantly that he couldn't apply his own high standards to others.
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