Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [108]
The Vets garage remained quiet.
Something definitely wasn‘t right about this.
‘Twenty-five seconds… come out of the garage…”
Walter Trentkamp leaned close and forced a whisper. One of the things Carroll appreciated was that Walter was still basically a street cop. He still needed to be in on the action himself. “Suppose this is all bullshit? Suppose we’ve got the wrong men, the wrong messenger service? Something’s not right here, Arch.”
Carroll still said nothing. He was watching, and thinking.
‘Twenty seconds…”
“C’mon Walter… come with me.”
Carroll suddenly stepped forward. Walter Trentkamp somewhat reluctantly followed him toward the garage doors. The Police Commissioner had stopped counting down.
Then FBI agents and city cops were everywhere, pushing through the jagged edges of the broken doors and into the darkened building itself.
Somebody turned on a light revealing a somewhat ordinary, gloomy and cavernous garage.
Carroll, Browning in hand, froze.
His eyes blinked several times. He could smell oil and grease, all the harsh odors left behind by sick and aging automobiles. Slick puddles of oil covered the concrete floor. There were professional mechanics’ tools lying around in disarray.
But nothing else was left in the Vets garage.
There were no vehicles on the basement floor.
There were no people, no Viet Nam veterans. Colonel David Hudson was nowhere to be seen.
Nothing was left of whatever had been here before.
Carroll and Trentkamp wandered around the garage, their guns still clutched in their fists. They entered each small room in a careful police crouch. They finally climbed narrow, twisting stairs to the top floor.
And then they both saw it… the message left for them.
It was taped to the grease-stained wall and it mocked them, mocked them all. It laughed at all the helpless police investigators—a shrill funhouse cackle, the screeching caw of jungle birds.
A green ribbon had been tied in a perfect bow, and it hung on a barren wall like something left over from a Christmas package.
Yeah, Arch Carroll thought.
Have a merry one.
Green Band had disappeared from the garage on Jane Street—as always, one frustrating jump ahead.
One cold, calculating jump… moving toward what?
Chapter 80
CAITLIN CARRIED A leather portfolio overflowing with her notes as she walked down the darkened hallway of an Upper West Side apartment building. The door to 12B was halfway open.
Anton Birnbaum was there waiting. Caitlin wondered why he had called her so late at night? What did Anton want from her now?
He let her in and they walked together to his library, a room crammed to its high ceiling with old books and periodicals.
“Thank you for coming right away,” he said. He seemed incredibly relieved to see Caitlin.
“Coffee? Tea? I’ve been living on the unhealthy stuff lately.” He gestured to a tarnished espresso pot near the glowing fireplace.
Caitlin declined.
His hands were trembling slightly. This whole room, in its papery disarray, indicated that Anton Birnbaum had been burning the midnight oil with a fevered vengeance.
“Let me begin all the way back in Dallas, Caitlin.” Birnbaum, his small face looking like a burned-out moon, finally sat down alongside her. “The tragic assassination of President John Kennedy… it’s a good place to start, I think. In terms of the fantastic versus the expected reality. The assassination was probably orchestrated, as we all know.
“Next comes Watergate, 1973. I think, I firmly believe that Watergate was permitted to escalate. Its flames were fanned… in order to remove Richard M. Nixon from office. That, my dear, is history. American history.” Birnbaum’s cup gently rattled in the saucer. “Both these events were clearly orchestrated. Both events were devised by a cabal working both inside and outside the United States government. This elitist group is a remnant, Caitlin, a cell of the old OSS, our own World War Two intelligence network.
“I have heard them called the Wise Men. I’ve also heard them called the Committee