Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [7]
But that was the unlikely place they had all entered now. An unfamiliar territory where things couldn’t be properly articulated: the uncharted territory of the unspeakable.
“They’ve been extremely punctual up to now. Almost obsessive about getting details and schedules perfect. They’ll call. I wouldn’t worry, they’ll call.”
The speaker was the Vice-president of the United States, who’d been rushed from the U.N. to the nearby Mobil Building. Thomas More Elliot was a stern man with the look of an Ivy League scholar. He was a Brahmin who was out of touch with the complexities of contemporary America, his harshest critics carped.
For the next hundred and eighty seconds, there was almost uninterrupted silence in the Pinnacle Club dining room.
This tingling silence was all the more frightening because there were so many highly articulate men crowded into the room—the senior American business executives, used to having their own way, used to being listened to, and obeyed, almost without question. Now their voices were stilled, virtually powerless.
Their power, normally awesome, had distilled itself into a sequence of small, distinct, noises:
The scratchy rasp of a throat being cleared.
Ice cracking in a glass with an almost glacial effect.
The tapping of fingers on the bowl of a dead pipe.
Madness. The thought seemed to echo in the room.
The most fearsome urban terrorism had finally struck deep inside the United States, stabbing right to the heart of America’s economic power.
There were anxious, repeated glances at the glinting faces of Rolex, Cartier, and Piaget wristwatches.
What did Green Band want?
Where were the final demands? What was the no-doubt outrageous ransom for Wall Street to be?
Edward Palin, the seventy-seven-year-old Chief Executive of one of the largest investment firms, had to slowly back away from the darkly reflective picture windows. A few of the others embarrassedly watched as he sat down in a Harvard chair pulled up beside one of the dining tables and, in a gesture that was almost poignant, put his head between his gray pinstriped knees.
There were less than twenty seconds left to the expiration of the Green Band deadline.
“Please call. Call, you bastards,” the Vice-president muttered.
What seemed like thousands of emergency sirens were screaming, a peculiar high-low wail, all over New York. It was the first time the emergency warning system had been seriously in use since 1963 and the nuclear war scares.
Finally, it was five minutes past five.
The sudden, terrifying realization struck every person in the Pinnacle Club’s dining room—they weren’t going to call again!
They weren’t going to negotiate.
Without any further warning, Green Band was going to strike.
“A fast recap for you,” said Lisa Pelham, who was the President’s Chief of Staff, an efficient, well-organized woman who spoke in the clipped manner of one whose mind was used to making succinct outlines from mountains of information.
“By twelve noon, all trading had been halted on the New York and all regional exchanges in the U.S. There is no trading in London, Paris, Geneva, Bonn. The key New York business people are meeting right now at the Pinnacle Club inside the Mobil Building.
“All the important securities and commodities exchanges have ceased trading around the world. The unanswered question is the same everywhere. What’s the nature of the demands we are secretly negotiating?” Lisa Pelham paused and stroked a strand of hair away from her oval face. “Everyone believes we’re negotiating with somebody, sir.”
“And we are definitely not?” President Justin Kearney’s expression was one of extreme doubt and suspicion. He had discovered the awkward fact during his term of office that one branch of government all too frequently didn’t know what another was doing.
“Which we are not, Mr. President Both the CIA and FBI have assured us of that Sir, Green Band has still made no demands.”
President Justin Kearney had been rushed,