Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [66]
Come to Florida, Mr. Carroll. A clue there? Florida?
Go see Michel Chevron. A key somewhere in Europe?
And now the Provos.
“They’ve come into some securities, U.S. bonds. Over a billion American dollars’ worth according to the boyos…. They listed names and serial numbers for us to check in New York. They check.”
“Hold on, wait a minute,” Carroll was sitting upright in his hotel chair.
“The IRA has taken over the stolen securities?”
“I don’t know. They’re definitely in possession of some stolen goods.”
“But how?”
“Who knows. They’re telling us as little as possible, of course.”
“Son of a bitch.“ They’d come so far; they’d seemed so close to some kind of break in the Green Band puzzle. “All right, all right. We’ll be in touch as soon as we sort out things here. We’ll be back to you, Perry.”
Carroll slammed down the phone receiver. He glared across the London hotel room at Frazier, at Caitlin, whose eyes were suddenly wide open and alert.
“Somehow the IRA has made a move into this thing…. It seems the Provos want to talk about selling some securities back to us. Over a billion American dollars’ worth. They know we’re in London. How could they know?”
The question stuck in Carroll’s brain like a shriek.
And since he couldn’t answer it, since he hadn’t been able to answer it so far, what was the point in asking it now?
How could they know everything ahead of time?
Chapter 46
THE MAN CALLED Francois Monserrat, who was wearing a black nylon anorak and a dark beret, and who now walked with a pronounced limp, moved down the Portobello Road in the west of London.
He passed through the open market for which this street was famous; now and then he would pause at this stall or that and examine an antique. There were some very fine pieces to be had here. There were also some obvious fakes.
You need a good eye, a practiced eye, to tell the real article from the false, he thought.
In the palm of his hand he turned over a jade piece in the shape of a small lynx. He curled his fingers around it, squeezing hard…. He was not a man who gave way to his emotions easily. In fact, he came at them in a circumspect way, circling as if they were live packets of plastique. At any given moment, an emotion could all too easily explode.
Like right now.
The sensation coursing through Monserrat was one of cold anger. If the jade lynx had been fur and bone, the life would have been squeezed out of it. He was angry because he didn’t like clever games, when they were played by the other side’s rules.
Green Band, for instance, had become a threat.
They created their own rules, their own games.
They said one thing.
They did another.
They suggested important meetings that never took place.
They were like air. They were very much wisps and phantoms. Monserrat’s admiration was grudging.
He set the jade lynx down and he closed his eyes. He had a trick to guard against emotion. He would retreat into a dark, cool place in the deepest part of his mind: a monastery of silence. In this sanctuary he almost always had control. Nothing slipped away from him here.
This time, though, his little trick of the mind failed. He opened his eyes and the bustling market assaulted his senses.
Green Band was somewhere close. What did they really want?
Perhaps soon, he would know all about Green Band.
Chapter 47
THEY HAD TO wait one final time.
They had to wait at the tiny, fastidious Regent Hotel in Belfast.
Carroll tried to accept the helpless feeling that they had no control over anything that was happening. The Green Band strategy—whatever it was—seemed to be working flawlessly.
Well-coordinated economic terror.
Massive psychological disorientation, designed to create escalating chaos and even more terror.
Patrick Frazier kept up a cheery pep talk under the unusually trying circumstances. The Special Branch man was tirelessly