Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [109]
“In 1945, the men who ran the OSS realized that the cloak of responsibility they had assumed in wartime was coming to an end. They were faced with giving their enormous power back to the same politicians who had almost managed to obliterate the human race a few years before.… They had no desire to do so, Caitlin. In many ways, one can almost justify their actions.”
Birnbaum sipped his coffee. “A high-ranking clique of these OSS men surrendered only some of their wartime powers to President Truman. They remained behind the scenes in Washington. They began to maneuver a series of political puppets. These men, and their protÉgÉs, the current Committee of Twelve, have gone so far as to select the, presidential candidates for political parties. For both parties, Caitlin, in the same election.”
Caitlin stared at the old man. The Wise Men? The Committee of Twelve? A secret cabal with unlimited powers? She already knew a great deal about real and imagined government conspiracies. They had always seemed woven into the tapestry of American history. Unconfirmable rumors; uncomfortable realities. Uncomfortable whispers in high places.
“Who are these men, Anton?”
“My dear, they are not exactly faces familiar from Newsweek or Time magazine. But that’s beside the point right now. What I am trying to tell you is that I have no doubt this group is involved in the Green Band incident. Somehow, Caitlin, they encouraged or caused the December fourth attack on Wall Street. They’re behind whatever is happening right now.”
Caitlin didn’t have the words to respond to what Birnbaum was saying. With any other person, she might have dismissed this whole thing; with Birnbaum she knew he wouldn’t have told her any of this if he wasn’t certain himself.
The Financier stared at Caitlin and there was an unusually weary glaze over his eyes.
“This veterans’ group—” Birnbaum started again.
“You’ve heard of them already?” Caitlin was surprised. An alarm sounded inside her brain.
Birnbaum smiled. A slender fissure opened across his small face. “My dear, information has always been the wellspring of my success. Of course I have heard of the veterans group. I have my sources inside Number 13.
“But what I don’t know is whether the Committee of Twelve manipulated these misfits, or whether the veterans are paid operatives I do believe I know why the dangerous mission was undertaken.… I think it can be traced to a Soviet-run provocateur called Francois Monserrat. A mass-murderer. A killing machine that has to be destroyed.”
“But what is Monserrat’s connection with the Committee of Twelve, Anton? What’s going to happen now? Can you tell me that?”
Anton Birnbaum smiled, but the smile was tight. “I believe that I can, my dear.”
Chapter 81
EARLY ON SUNDAY MORNING David Hudson patrolled the dimly lit corridors of the sprawling Queens VA Hospital. The home of the brave, he thought bitterly.
The Queens VA was situated at Linden Boulevard and 179th Street. It was a dismal, red brick complex that called no attention to itself. Eleven years before, Hudson had been an outpatient there, one of tens of thousands who had been subjected to VA hospitals after the War.
A hollowness, like that at the heart of an empty gymnasium, caused his footsteps to echo as he plunged deeper into the hospital complex.
There were buzzing voices, but no people he could see. Ghosts, he thought. Straining voices from another dimension of reality. Voices of cruel pain and madness.
He turned a corner—and suddenly he encountered a gruesome row of veterans. They were wraiths mostly, but a few were overweight. The odor in the still, dead air was overpowering: part industrial disinfectant, part urine, part feces. A synthetic Christmas tree blinked spastically at the heart of the claustrophobic room.
At least half of the patients seemed to have tiny metal radios pressed like cold packs to their heads. A black hussar in a torn, pinstriped johnny was discoing around an amputee fitfully sleeping in his wheelchair. Hudson