Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [49]
Then he started to sprint down another clear stretch of stone terrace. The walkway ended abruptly at a gray brick wall topped by severe iron fencing.
He could taste warm, metallic blood in his mouth. Piercing chest pains came with each breath. The wounded arm ached with a deep, searing pain he’d never felt before.
To die here in Paris suddenly seemed ironic.
To die here surrounded by memories of Nora.
He watched the sky slip away. The wintry sun was a hard uncaring disc.
Carroll used his good arm on the restraining wall and vaulted over the side. He saw a spinning flash of cars sixteen floors below. And cold concrete, gray as an undertaker’s face …
As he safely landed on the terrace six feet below, he struck the wounded shoulder hard against a slab of granite. The pain that exploded into his brain was a savage, biting agony. Blinded by it, he forced himself to reel forward toward a casement door which opened as he leaned into it.
He was bleeding badly. He stopped running. A package-crowded stockroom lay before him.
Carroll crouched on trembling legs, and waited inside. Emery Airborne mail was stacked all around. There was no place to hide if they came through. If they found him now.
His thoughts were shattered: His mind was blurred, almost useless. Nothing was left inside his chest but rage. Splinters of glass still ached in his forehead, his cheeks, the back of his neck. He felt dizzy and sick.
Gunshot explosions and screams continued to echo through the SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale office building. Then warbling French police sirens shrieked and throbbed outside. They filled the air with the sudden news of disaster. Carroll finally took off his shirt and wrapped it around his bleeding arm.
Michel Chevron would be telling nothing about the powerful black market in Europe and the Middle East now. Nothing about what Green Band might be.
Who was behind this horrifying massacre? What could the banker Michel Chevron have known?
Carroll could longer stand.
He slumped against a plaster wall, his head drawn between his knees.
What could Chevron have known?
What could be worth this massacre?
What could justify this?
Chapter 34
IT WAS A MAGICAL MOMENT, and one that Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky knew he would never be able to forget. It was like a movie scene he’d been dreaming about for as long as he could remember.
As dawn edged through soiled, slate gray skies, Stemkowsky rolled his wheelchair down the concrete ramp he’d built to get in and out of his house in Jackson Heights, Queens. His wife, Mary, a former nurse, who was ten years older than Harry, sauntered close beside him.
“This is it, sweetheart,” she said in a whisper.
“This is definitely it,” Harry said brightly.
Mary Stemkowsky carefully set Harry’s two new Dun-hill travel bags down. She glanced at her husband. She couldn’t believe how impressive and businesslike he looked in his dark pin-striped suit.
His hair was neatly trimmed and shaped. He held a soft leather attachÉ case that looked like it cost big money.
“Excited, Harry? I’ll bet you are.” Mary Stemkowsky couldn’t control a shy, softly blossoming grin as she spoke. She believed that Harry was a saint. You could ask any of his friends at the Vets Cab Company, any of the physical therapists who worked with him at the VA, where she and Harry had originally met.
Mary Stemkowsky didn’t know how he’d done it, but Harry seemed to accept what had happened to him more than a decade before in Viet Nam. He never complained about the wounds or the pain.
‘Tell the truth, I’m a li-li-litde scared. Nuh-nuh-nice scared.” Harry tried to smile, but he looked pale around the gills, she thought.
Mary bent and kissed him on both cheeks. It was strange the way she loved him so much. What with his infirmities, his physical limitations. But she did.
“Sa-sorry you can’t go, Muh-Mary.”
“Oh, I’ll go next time, I guess. Sure, sure. You better believe I will.” Mary suddenly laughed and her broad horsey smile was close to radiant. “You look like the president of a bank or something. President of Chase