Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [101]
The President then laid the substantial packet of confidential papers he’d been carrying on the table. The booklet was approximately 160 typewritten pages. It had never been copied, and never would be. It looked somewhat like an investment offering book or perhaps a condominium plan.
On the dark blue cover something had been printed in regal-looking gold letters.
Green Band. Extremely Confidential and Classified.
The title page was dated May 16.
Seven months before the actual bombing attack on Wall Street.
PART THREE
Arch Carroll
Chapter 74
FRIDAY IN WASHINGTON dawned with rain clouds rolling across a nearly colorless horizon. A spitting wind blew wintry gusts in from Maryland. The temperature was dropping hourly. From 7:00 A.M. on, Carroll waited impatiently in the front seat of a rented sedan parked in the Washington suburb of McLean.
The dark car blended with a wall of even darker fir trees overhanging Fort Myers Road.
Detective work, Carroll thought as he stared off into nothingness. First you wait. Always the waiting.
Carroll passed the early time eating breakfast out of a warm cardboard box from Dunkin’ Donuts. The doughnuts weren’t as hot as the box itself. They also had no taste. The coffee he sipped was room temperature, a little less satisfying than the doughnuts.
Carroll read some Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine, and that was good, at least. Several times he found himself thinking about Colonel Hudson.
The All-American Boy? West Point honor student…
Then Viet Nam assassin? America’s jackal? America’s Francois Monserrat?
He wanted to meet Hudson. He wanted to encounter him one-on-one, face-to-face. Maybe inside the interrogation room at No. 13 Wall, Carroll’s own turf. Tell me, Colonel Hudson, what do you know about the Green Band fire-bombings? What about the stolen Wall Street securities? Tell me why you left the Army, Colonel?
He wondered how far he’d get with somebody like Colonel Hudson, a U.S. saboteur trained to resist interrogation.
About 7:30, a second-floor light finally blinked on inside the white colonial across the roadway. A second light followed moments later. Bedroom and bathroom, probably.
Moments later, a light went on downstairs. Kitchen? The porch light blinked out.
Just past 8:00, which Carroll thought a respectable hour, he trudged up the flagstone front walk and rang a bell which made a chimey sound like old department store bells.
A tall man of about sixty appeared in the pristine white doorway. He wore plaid trousers, house slippers, a powder blue cardigan sweater. His head, shaped like a torpedo, was topped with white-gray stubble.
General Lucas Thompson, former Commander-in-Chief of the United States Evacuation Forces in Viet Nam, still had a craggy, commanding presence. He still appeared capable of taking on combat duty demands. There was something hard and alert in his eyes, like small electric lightbulbs burning there.
“General Thompson, I’m Arch Carroll with the DIA. Sorry to bother you so early in the morning. I’m here about the Green Band investigation.”
General Thompson looked appropriately suspicious: his eyes became slats of loose flesh. “What about it, sir? I’m up, but as you say, it’s still quite early in the morning.”
“I would have called last night, to say I was coming, General. It was late when I left the Pentagon. I thought that might have been a worse breach of etiquette than just coming out here this morning.”
The look of consternation and puzzlement faded on General Thompson’s face. It was as if the mention of the word “Pentagon” had reassured him; a look of pleasant recognition spread across his features.
“Of course. Arch Carroll. I’ve read about you.”
“General Thompson, I have just a few questions. It’s about your command in Southeast Asia. It shouldn’t take more than, say, twenty minutes.”
“That means an hour,” Lucas Thompson said with a sniffling laugh. He swung open the front door anyway. “That’s fine. I have the time. Time is plentiful these days, Mr.