Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [57]
It was likewise the independent, nontraditional part of Caitlin that enjoyed other mild eccentricities—like wandering the streets of New York in tight-fitting Italian jeans, crumpled oversized T-shirts, leather boots that came almost to her butt.
She might happily devote a Sunday afternoon to some exotic Italian recipe from Marcella Hazan—but she could go weeks abhorring the idea of doing any cooking at all, avoiding all housework in her East Side apartment. She was proud of earning six figures a year at the SEC, but sometimes she wanted to throw it all over and have a baby. Sometimes, she was physically afraid she might never have a child. She ached with the idea, the way one aches from a real loss. And she had no idea, absolutely none, whether these opposing impulses could ever peacefully coexist.
She had been thinking along these insane lines ever since that kiss on the Washington-to-New York airplane.
It had been quick, and yet she had the instinctive feeling she wanted to go beyond the first kiss with Carroll.
What was she thinking, anyhow?
She hardly knew Carroll. His kiss had been the kiss of a stranger. She wasn’t even sure if it had meant anything to him, or whether it had been something thrown up by the peculiar circumstances of the flight, his way of relieving tension, and disappointment, and more than a little justified anger.
I don’t really know the first thing about him, she thought.
A shuffling noise made her turn and she saw Carroll in the computer room doorway. She was embarrassed, as if she suspected he’d been standing there, reading her thoughts.
He had his arm in a fresh white sling and he looked pale. She smiled. She’d already heard about the success of Walter Trentkamp’s personal appeal and she was relieved—decisions made under duress were almost always the wrong ones, she knew. Carroll’s impetuousness was part of his charm: but one day, she thought, one day he might run into the kind of serious trouble he couldn’t extricate himself from.
“I had Michel Chevron ready to talk about the European black market,” he said.
“Don’t keep blaming yourself.”
“Somebody knows all our moves. Christ, who knows what Michel Chevron could have told me?” Carroll shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She was reminded of a restless prizefighter warming up.
“How’s the arm?” she asked. “Hurt?”
“Only when I think about Paris.”
“Then don’t think.” She slid down from the wooden stool. She wanted to go across the room and somehow ease his discomfort, his embarrassment. She didn’t. “I’m glad …” she said instead.
“Glad?”
She stared at him. Carroll had a vulnerable quality that inspired her to strange sympathies and concerns, but also anxieties she couldn’t quite articulate. He had a lost boy quality, maybe, that-was it.
“Glad you didn’t get yourself killed,” she said and finally smiled.
There was a breathless silence in the room.
She finally turned back to one of the computer screens, studying the mass of crawling green letters. The spell between them was broken again.
“Another Baader-Meinhof member was shot and killed in Munich.” Caitlin looked up from the display screen message. She watched him, wondering again what the kiss on the airplane had meant.
Carroll merely nodded. “The West Germans are using Green Band as an excuse to solve their local terrorism problems. The BND is pragmatic. They’re probably the toughest police force in Western Europe.”
Caitlin perched herself atop the high wooden stool again. She loosely hugged both her legs at the knees.
Another message started to blip over the nearest computer. Caitlin turned and watched the computer screen closely.
Her mind had suddenly frozen.
“Look at this, Arch.”
Chapter 40
MOSCOW. THE KGB HAS INTERCEPTED PYOTR ANDRONOV. IMPORTANT UNDERWORLD BLACK MARKET SPECIALIST. ANDRONOV HOLDING U.S. SECURITIES, PRESUMED STOLEN. ANDRONOV LINKS STOLEN BONDS TO GREEN BAND. AMOUNT: