Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [65]
He was also Vets 28.
“Looks fine and dandy to me, lad. Let the boys load it up for the trip north. Spiffy new clothes for women and children. A very good cause.”
Chief Inspector O’Neil laughed for no apparent reason. He was in a chipper mood that afternoon.
And why not? Had he not just succeeded in getting one billion four worth of freshly stolen stock certificates and securities into Western Europe?
Chapter 45
FOUR A.M.
Why were there suddenly so many 4:00 A.M.’S crowding into his life? Carroll wondered.
For a foggy moment he was disoriented: he felt like a man on a treadmill sent spinning off into space, where time zones collapsed, where clocks had no meaning.
This, he remembered, was the heart of London.
But that didn’t matter because 4:00 A.M.’S were mostly alike. A bleached-out, dour hour of the day when cities slept and only cops and criminals wandered around, following some curious ancient chronology all their own.
Everything always started as the same intense four-bell-alarm emergency, but nothing ever happened after you broke every imaginable speed and safety law getting to the supposed crime scene. Not right away, anyway …
First you waited.
Almost always you waited.
And waited.
You drank drums of bitter black coffee, you smoked countless stale cigarettes; you paid your full dues every single time on a police case.
His fingers gently massaged his warm, throbbing temple. He felt weirdly numb as he watched Caitlin, who catnapped across the room in the stuffy Rite Hotel.
For the past few hours, Caitlin had been drifting in and out of a restless sleep. Her pale lips parted slightly as she swallowed. The scooped hollow in her throat made her look sweet and vulnerable. Her legs were neatly curled under her like a folding pin inside.
They’d been on emergency alert for twenty straight hours now. They were one of several police/financial teams which had been rushed to London following Margarita Kupchuck’s warning transmission from inside Russia.
It was exactly like the unpleasantly tense and chaotic Wall Street deadline on December 4.
Nothing had happened when it was supposed to happen.
No Russians with an extraordinary $120 million payment.
No Green Band with their enormous pilfered hoard of stocks and bonds.
First, you wait.
“How in hell did they manage to make contact with Francois Monserrat? Monserrat is unknown. ‘Virtually without a face. Damned fellow’s an enigma to every intelligence agency I know of in the world.”
A chief Inspector from Britain’s MI6, the secret intelligence service, sat in a leather club chair positioned opposite Carroll in the hotel suite. Patrick Frazier was a tall man with thinning pale blond hair and a pencil-thin moustache. He wore his clothes in a rumpled manner, and he spoke in a cultivated drawl, every word deliberately shaped. Frazier was one of Britain’s resident experts on urban terrorism.
Physical pain was coursing through Carroll’s body as he listened.
Yes, you paid your dues every single time with police work.
Too much bitter-tasting coffee and unrelieved tension; not enough sleep. Too much being lost and confused without any recognizable point of reference.
And the arm still ached like hell even though he’d discarded the sling in favor of a bulky bandage.
Hours later, the hotel room telephone rang and Frazier eagerly snatched it up. “Ah, Harris. How are you, old man? Oh, we’re holding up. I suppose we are. It’s for you, Carroll. Scotland Yard.”
Perry Harris on the other end was speaking very loudly as Carroll took over the line. Harris was from the Yard’s Serious Crime Squad. Carroll had worked with Harris twice before in Europe and respected the man.
“Listen to what we’ve just found. You’re not going to believe it, I’ll wager. There’s been an incredible turn. The IRA… the IRA has just contacted us…. They want a meeting set up with you in Belfast. You specifically. They’re in the game now, too.”
“In what way? How are the Provos involved, Perry?”
Blood was