Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [73]
Kenny Sherwood cautiously slid a piece of parchment paper out of the envelope.
Now what the hell was this?
There was some kind of chained woman, holding a globe of the world at the top of the parchment paper.
Further down, the certificate said General Motors common stock.
The legend went on: “This certifies Kenneth H. Sherwood is the owner of five thousand shares.”
Tied around the parchment paper was a shiny green ribbon, a kind of green band.
PART TWO
Black Market
Chapter 53
DAVID HUDSON WOKE with a headache in his room in the Washington-Jefferson Hotel. It was snowing outside, the satiny whiteness evenly blanketing West 51st Street.
Hudson pinched his wristwatch off the wobbling night-stand. It was just past two.
He sat upright and yielded to an uncharacteristic moment of panic. His throat was dry, his hands clammy. His body felt fevered.
It wasn’t Green Band troubling him this time.
Green Band was hurtling along without an apparent hitch. Even at its psychological core, Green Band was moving beautifully, creating uncertainty in all the places where Hudson wanted to create it.
It wasn’t the time he’d spent in a North Vietnamese prison camp, either. The memories of the taunting Lizard Man had stayed out of his dreams that night.
None of these things bothered David Hudson right now. It was something else …. Something unexpected and un-planned.
It was Billie Bogan …
Like the poet, Louise.
He was angry with himself, disappointed that he’d let the woman affect him. It was unlike him; it was undisciplined and out of character for Hudson to permit such a distraction before his mission was complete. Yet somehow he felt he could handle it, that he could keep everything in perspective …
Or was he fooling himself? Was she going to be the reason he finally ruined everything? The one serious slip-up, his fatal flaw? Would he allow himself to blow Green Band because of Billie Bogan? This woman he barely knew.
He needed to see her at least once more, he decided. Tonight, if he could. The most vivid images of Billie suddenly drifted past his eyes.
Hudson felt himself aroused. He threw on an old mufti shirt and trousers and went down to the lobby. He prowled around nervously, watched by a clerk at the desk. He finally called the Vintage service, not wanting to use the phone in his own room.
“I’d like to see Billie. Tonight if possible. This is David. Number 323.”
There was a pause as he was put on hold; three or four minutes, which seemed even longer.
“Billie’s not on her beeper. She doesn’t seem to be available right now.” The answer came back. “You could meet one of our other escorts. They’re very beautiful. Former and part-time models and actresses, David.”
David Hudson hung up the telephone. He felt disappointed, unsatisfied, empty in a cold, gnawing way …. Maybe he couldn’t handle this right now. Maybe he shouldn’t ever try to see Billie again.
The idea of blowing Green Band over some English whore—almost made him laugh. It would be ludicrously funny—if it all ended like that.
Only David Hudson knew that was impossible. The final Green Band plan was flawless. It was so good, it could work without him from here on.
Deception, David Hudson remembered. The very beginnings of Green Band.
Deception and illusion that had started as far back as Viet Nam.
Chapter 54
La Hoc Noh Prison: July, 1971
CAPTAIN DAVID HUDSON’S TORTURED, one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound frame slumped forward. The fragile shell of his body threatened to shatter into pieces, to collapse in exhaustion or perhaps death. Hudson’s mind silently screamed for him to give up this useless fight.
What remained of his body was wracked by pain, intense suffering that would have been unthinkable before the last eleven months in North Vietnamese prison camps. He was unsuccessfully trying to put his mind somewhere else now. He ached to be outside the seething bamboo hut, somewhere safe and relatively sane in his past, even as far back as his Kansas boyhood.
He’d been trained to resist interrogation and