Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [40]
“All right, let’s explore that avenue. People who would benefit from a Market crash?” Birnbaum took a legal pad and pencil in hand. “A multinational that has a huge discrepancy to hide?”
“That’s one. Or the Soviets. They’d benefit—in terms of world prestige, anyway…”
“Then perhaps one of the Third World madmen? I believe Qadaffi is capable of something like this. Perhaps capable of getting the necessary financing, as well.”
Caitlin looked at her watch, a functional, ten-year-old Bulova, a gift from her father one Christmas back home in Ohio. “I don’t know what to try next. What are they waiting for? What happens when the Market opens on Monday?”
Anton Birnbaum took off his horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, which was reddened and deeply indented. “Will the Market even open, Caitlin? The French want it to. They’re insisting they will open in Paris. Perhaps it’s one of their typical bluffs.”
“Which means the Arabs want their French Banks open. Some toady in Paris either wants to take advantage of this situation—or they hope to get some of their money out, before there’s a complete panic.”
Birnbaum replaced his glasses. He gazed at Caitlin for a moment. Then he gave one of his characteristic shrugs, a huffy gesture of the shoulders that was barely perceptible. “President Kearney is talking with the French. They’ve never appreciated him tremendously, though. We haven’t been able to placate them since Kissinger.”
“What about London? What about Geneva? How about right here in New York, Anton?”
“They’re all watching France. France is threatening to open their market, business as usual on Monday. The French, my dear, are being carefully, carefully orchestrated. But by whom? And for what possible reason? What is coming next?”
Both Caitlin and the old man were quiet for several moments. Over the years they had become comfortable with long periods of silent thought when they were examining a problem together.
“I’ll tell you something, my dear. In all my years on the Street, I have never felt this apprehensive. Not even in October of 1929.”
Chapter 29
BERGDORF’S ON 57TH had been open all day Sunday for the usual neurotic rush of Christmas shopping.
Francois Monserrat entered the department store at a little past 6:30 that evening. Another snowstorm was threatening outside.
Monserrat was wearing thick wire-rimmed glasses and an unmemorable gray tweed overcoat. He also wore a matching hat and black gloves, which created a monochromatic impression. The wire-rimmed glasses magnified his eyes for observers, but didn’t distort his view of the world. He’d had them made by a lens grinder on the Rue des Postes in Bizerte, a city north of Tunis.
Monserrat quietly marveled as he got off a crowded elevator onto one of the upper floors.
There was nowhere else, no city he knew of, in which one consistently saw quite so many provocative and stunning women. Even the store’s perfume demonstrators were dreamily sensual and exotic.
A stylishly anorexic blaek girl approached and asked if he’d like to experience the new Opium.
“I’ve already experienced it. In Thailand, my dear,” Monserrat answered with a smile and an effete wave of the hand.
A thick gallery of shoppers hugging glittering shopping bags from other department stores moved slowly before Monserrat’s wandering eyes. “Winter Wonderland” played from a hidden stereo system.
It was taxing and exceedingly difficult to move forward in certain directions, more like visiting a New York disco than a store at Christmas time.
As he strolled through the store, Monserrat reflected on his reputation with a measure of pride. What did it matter if he’d been responsible for this act or that one—when his only real goal, his sole driving force, was the total disruption and eventual fall of the West? A dead Egyptian President. A wounded Pope. A few Irish bombs. These amounted to nothing more than grains of sand on a beach. What Monserrat was interested in changing was the direction