Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [53]
Lucky to be alive, Carroll thought again. There were four less orphans in the world that way.
A morbid little syllogism clicked in his head.
A cat has nine lives.
I am not a cat.
Therefore I don’t have nine lives.
So how many lives do I have? How many more chances if I keep playing the game this hard?
President Kearney finally entered the room and everyone stood.
The President of the United States was dressed casually. He had chosen a navy Lacoste shirt and slightly wrinkled, knock-around khakis. He looked like a kind of regular guy, Carroll thought to himself. You could imagine him, in better times and another season, pottering around the backyard barbecue, poking the center of a sirloin for readiness. Carroll remembered that Kearney had two young boys: maybe he played ball with them. But there wouldn’t be much leisure for that these days. Kearney had taken the brunt of press criticism over Wall Street, a case of the press creating a convenient scapegoat for the public. Suddenly, in the space of a mere couple of days, his political moon had severely waned, shedding its former brightness.
The participants inside the White House conference room avoided formal handshakes this time. They’d all brought bulging leather briefcases and portfolios for the early morning meeting: the artifacts, the physical proof of the past four days of relentless investigations were there to be reviewed and acted upon.
Judging from the impressive look of the paperwork, someone had to have discovered something about Green Band, Carroll thought as the meeting began.
He looked across the room at Caitlin Dillon, who smiled back at him. She too had an overstuffed briefcase. Today, she looked businesslike and efficient in a tailored navy blue suit, plus an unadorned white shirt. She wore a navy necktie in the form of a large bow.
“Good morning to all of you—although I don’t know what might be good about it. To be blunt, I’m even more concerned than I was on Friday night.”
President Kearney certainly did nothing to relieve the strain as he delivered his opening remarks. He remained standing stiffly at the head of the long wooden table.
“Every reliable projection we have says that a Stock Market panic, a full-scale crash, may soon be on us…. Some of the more manipulative bastards around the world have actually figured how to make this tragedy work to their advantage…
“I will tell all of you this in strict confidence—the Western economy cannot survive a major crash at this time. Even a minor Market crash would be catastrophic.”
The President had raised his voice and there was the palest flash of his old campaign style, the inspirational voice, the characteristic firmness of the jaw—but then, as suddenly as the echo had come, it vanished.
The President again solicited information, new data around the table. Each adviser gave a succinct report on any findings relating to Green Band.
When his turn arrived, Carroll inched his chair closer to the conference table. He tried to make everything very still inside his head. He was hazy after Paris. His body was still numb and cold following the shooting. And his arm was throbbing again.
“My news isn’t good either,” Carroll began. “We have some facts, some statistics, but not a lot that’s worthwhile. The raw information about the bombings is complete, anyway. Five packages of plastique were required per building. They could have leveled lower Manhattan if they’d wanted to. They didn’t want to …
“They wanted to do exactly what they did. New York was a controlled, a rightly disciplined demonstration. My team has spent forty-eight hours going through every terrorist contact that exists. There are no connections to this group.
“There was a somewhat unclear, but promising connection with the European black market,” Carroll continued, flipping a page on his notepad. Maybe it would have been more promising if Michel Chevron had survived, if some ID had been found on the man he’d shot in Paris. There were too many ifs and maybes; twice as many as