Black Market Read online

  SAALAM: Yeah, I did.

  CARROLL: Good. Thank you for your forthrightness. Now, who did you sell the M-23s to? Wait. Before you answer. Remember that I'm the PLO. Don't say anything you'd be afraid to say to a PLO investigator in Beirut.

  SAALAM: I don't know who they are.

  CARROLL: Oh, Jesus Christ.

  SAALAM: No, wait a minute. They knew who I was. They knew everything about me. I never saw nobody, I swear it. I felt like they had set me up.

  CARROLL: I love former-inmate sincerity. Unfortunately, I happen to believe you… Because that's what your current roommate, Mr. Rashad, said, too. Please get the hell out of here now… Oh, by the way, Mr. Saalam. We had to rent your apartment up in Yonkers. We rented it to a very nice welfare lady, with these three little kids.

  SAALAM: You did what?

  CARROLL: We rented the apartment you were selling guns out of. We rented it to a nice lady with a batch of kids. Skoal, brother.

  “It's all so incredibly methodical. That's what is so mystifying. They keep evading all contact with this huge international police dragnet. How?”

  Caitlin Dillon lit up a cigarette and slowly drew in millions of carcinogens.

  She and eighty-three-year-old Anton Birnbaum, both red-eyed and exhausted, sat together on stiff leather Harvard chairs in Birnbaum's Wall Street office. Caitlin was a good six inches taller than the birdlike, deceptively frail financier. Earlier in her career, when she had worked for Birnbaum, he wouldn't walk anywhere on Wall Street with her for that very reason. “Vanity is a living legend,” she'd kidded him once she found out the truth.

  Anton Birnbaum rubbed the small of his back as he talked. “Something so very methodical, so carefully orchestrated… something absolutely systematic is happening throughout Western Europe right now.”

  Caitlin watched Birnbaum's face with its corrugated lines, which shifted and moved as he spoke. She waited patiently for more to come. It usually did with Anton, who thought much faster than he could now speak.

  “There is a book… The Real War, it's called. The book's central thesis is that Germany and Japan have found an eminently reasonable road to further world conquest. Through commerce. That's the real war. As a country, we're losing that war spectacularly, don't you think, Caitlin?”

  The former chairman of the venerable investment house, Levitt Birnbaum, was something of a prig, Caitlin knew. He could be savagely impatient with people he didn't like or respect, but he was also undeniably brilliant. Anton Birnbaum had been adviser to presidents, to kings, to multinational corporations such as Fiat, Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor. He had controlled the fate of untold billions of dollars. Anton Birnbaum had also been one of Caitlin's staunchest backers ever since she'd first left the Wharton School. Only as she'd come intimately to know Birnbaum had she begun to understand why.

  Caitlin Dillon was a challenging mystery that Birnbaum still hadn't completely solved. She was a natural businessperson, perhaps the most gifted Anton Birnbaum had met. She had the intelligence, the necessary discipline, and the kinds of instincts Birnbaum rarely saw anymore. Yet she seemed to have little interest in actually making money.

  She was a confounded mystery in other ways as well. She had been brought up in a small Ohio town, yet she exhibited the most cosmopolitan tastes and opinions. She spoke German and French fluently. She kept surprising Birnbaum with new talents whenever they spent time together.

  Of course, her father had been teaching her about the stock market since she had expressed an interest in high school. But there was more to it than early coaching. Caitlin Dillon obviously wanted to be a force on Wall Street. Anton Birnbaum was certain that she wanted to be a legend one day herself. He steadfastly refused ever to say it out loud, even to hint it to his male peers, that the financier's protégée was a woman.

  “What do you think is happening in Western Europe? We're having an impossible time piecing it together, Anton. Some very important data are missing. The absolutely essential thread of logic that might explain who they are.” Caitlin stood up and wandered around the old man's office as she talked.

  She stopped with her back to the window and looked at the framed photographs on the walls. There was Anton, snapped in the company of the very powerful and famous. Statesmen, controversial industrialists, people from the entertainment industry… there were photos of Konrad Adenauer, Harold MacMillan, and Anwar Sadat. Also Henry Ford and J. Paul Getty. John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

  Anton Birnbaum scratched the bridge of his blotched and mottled nose as he contemplated his choice of words. He was reminded once again that Caitlin was one of the few people on Wall Street he could really talk to. Complex explanations of his theories and insights were unnecessary when speaking with her.

  “The Europeans simply don't trust us. Which is precisely why they don't talk to us anymore. They believe we have different attitudes, different priorities toward the Middle East, also toward the Soviet bloc. They're certain we're too casual about the dangers of a nuclear war. They don't feel we understand Marxist-Leninist ideology.”

  Birnbaum stared directly into Caitlin's deep brown eyes. His own eyes were watering hopelessly behind thick glasses. He reminded Caitlin of Mole in The Wind in the Willows.

  “I sound like an alarmist, no? But I feel the intrinsic truth of what I'm saying. Almost prima facie, I feel it. There will be a crash now. I believe there will be a serious crash, possibly another Black Friday. Very, very soon.”

  Caitlin sat down on the stiff leather chair.

  Another Black Friday, her mind raced. A stock market crash! Her own worst fears had been confirmed by the man she most respected on the Street. Her father's jeremiads twenty years before had finally come home to roost.

  Complete collapse; the entire economic system falling. Impossible ideas were formulating in her brain.

  She stared at Birnbaum and saw that he was watching her with an expression of vague sorrow. The light from an antique brass lamp turned the lines on his face into deep dark bands.

  Complete collapse… The phrase continued to ring. It meant the end of an entire way of life.

  And after the failure of an economic system, who would survive? Who would finally crawl out of the rubble and be able to go on? If she had the answer to that, maybe she'd also have the answer to the mystery of Green Band.

  Anton Birnbaum spoke again. “As I said, I think we could be in the middle of a war. The money war. The great Third World War we have so long feared-it may already be upon us.”

  25

  Manhattan

  “Goddamn it! Look at this! Look at this now!” The speaker was Walter Trentkamp, and his voice was harsh with disbelief. “Gentlemen, it's happening everywhere!”

  Philip Berger, Trentkamp, and General Frederick House were gathered around the computer terminals when Caitlin and Carroll arrived. Several display screens were working simultaneously, rapidly flashing words as well as color graphics.

  Berger glaneed up as Caitlin Dillon and Carroll hurried across the crisis room.

  “Emergency reports have been coming in for about fifteen, twenty minutes,” he said to the others. “Since three-thirty our time. They've definitely got something hopping. Something's happening all over the world this time.”

  Paris, France

  At one o'clock Paris time, on December 14, La Compagnie des Agents was suddenly closed by official order of the president of France.

  All stock trading was immediately halted on the Bourse.

  Bourse officials reluctantly admitted that the market's CAC Index had fallen more than three percent in a single morning.

  The afternoon newspapers in Paris carried the most shocking headlines in four decades:

  MARKET CLOSE TO PANIC!

  BOURSE CRASH!

  PARIS MARKET IN SHAMBLES

  FINANCIAL DISASTER!

  For once, however, the tabloids were actually being written with some understatement.

  Emergency government meetin
gs were immediately called in the Palais de Élysées, rue de Faubourg-St-Honoré. But no one knew what to do next about the unparalleled financial panic in Europe.

  Frankfurt, West Germany

  The Frankfurt Stock Exchange was in complete chaos, meanwhile, but still managed to stay open for the entire session.

  The Commerzbank Index had fallen under a thousand for the first time since 1982. The largest losers for the immensely tragic day included Westdeutsche Landesbank, Bayer, Volkswagen, and Philip Holzmann.

  Yet none of the economists in West Germany understood why prices were dropping or how far they might plummet in the very near future.

  Toronto, Canada

  The Toronto Stock Exchange was one of the very worst hit. The exchange's composite index of three hundred stocks fell 155 points to under 2000.

  Trading volumes set new records, until the major Canadian exchange was officially closed at 1:00 P.M.

  Tokyo, Japan

  The Nikkei-Dow Jones Index was extremely shaky all day, finally closing at 9200. This was a full 12.5 percent decline in a single day.

  Hardest hit were all companies trading heavily with the Middle East. These included Mitsui Petrochemical, Sumitomo Chemical, and Oki Electric.

  Almost on cue, Japanese student riots broke out in major cities all over the islands.

  Johannesburg, South Africa

  Heavy European and American deposits made the Johannesburg Stock Exchange the only apparent winner. Bullion was suddenly trading at one thousand dollars an ounce. The rand instantly appreciated to one dollar and fifty cents.

  Hundreds of millions of dollars were made in South Africa. Suspicions rose, but still no satisfactory answers came.

  London, England

  London dramatically shut down at noon, four and a half hours shy of regular closing.

  The Financial Times Index of seven hundred and fifty companies had fallen nearly 90 points; it was down almost 200 since the initial Green Band bombing in New York.

  The scene on Threadneedle, near the Bank of London, was nearly without hope and as bleak as bombed-out Wall Street in New York.

  Manhattan

  With its forty-button telephone-computer consoles, the crisis room at 13 Wall Street was beginning to resemble the starship Enterprise more than the traditional Chippendale feel and look of the Street. Nonetheless, the thirty or so police, army, and financial experts in the room had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to accomplish next.

  The Western economic system seemed to be crashing to a disastrous halt, right before their eyes. No one knew why.

  There was only maddening silence from Green Band.

  Moscow

  Major General Radomir Raskov peered nervously over half-moon reading spectacles. He studied the august group seated at the long, highly polished mahogany conference table inside the Moscow KGB offices-specifically, the offices of the Directorate.

  The Politburo officials who had been at Zavidavo were also at the emergency meeting. They were joined now by Mikhail Slepovik, director of Soviet security, and a very cultured gentleman, Popo Tvardevsky, undersecretary of the Communist party, some said the future premier.

  Premier Yuri Belov slapped shut the thin black folder set before him. He looked at the others and scowled menacingly. “I find it utterly, utterly incomprehensible that we have no more knowledge than this. During this crisis! During this world-threatening emergency situation!”

  Premier Belov's gray eyes were piercing, forbidding to encounter for more than a brief glance. “Not five months ago, I sat in this very room and I listened to a plan, the ‘Red Tuesday Plan.’ In this highly detailed proposal, it was clearly and emphatically stated that it was in the best interests of the Soviet Union to sabotage and disable Wall Street, in effect, the entire Western economic system.

  “This plan, as you may all recall, was thoroughly analyzed and finally approved by the parties here in this room. It was an immaculate plan and a daring one, and there was every possibility it would succeed.”

  Premier Belov paused. His jaw twitched. “Now, that very thing has happened! And you expect me to believe that we have no complicity, no knowledge whatsoever, of any of the causes?” Belov slammed his heavy palm on the gleaming wooden table. His next words were spoken in a gravelly voice, almost a whisper. Several of his listeners had to lean forward to hear every word.

  “The entire world is hurtling toward chaos, perhaps even its economic destruction… Now someone please tell me-what is Green Band? What is Green Band's precise relationship to the ‘Red Tuesday Plan’? For there is some relationship… Who is running Green Band?… And why?”

  26

  Manhattan

  The infernal noise Arch Carroll heard inside his head was the sound of financial markets collapsing all over the world. It was a brutal and grinding thought.

  He and Caitlin were sitting on an old floral couch in Carroll's Manhattan apartment, facing down over the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin. A Beethoven concerto played soothingly on the tape deck. River winds occasionally buffeted the dark living room windows.

  Once again they were waiting for Green Band. There was nothing to do but wait for morning.

  “I think I have to turn in.” Caitlin was already half asleep. She kissed Carroll's forehead. “I'll get a few hours, anyway.”

  Carroll looked at his wristwatch. His eyes felt unbelievably heavy. “What a party pooper. No sense of adventure. It's only two-thirty.”

  “People from Ohio go to bed at nine-thirty, ten o'clock. The Lima Holiday Inn restaurant is filled at five-thirty. Closed down by eight,” said Caitlin.

  “Yeah, but you're a sophisticated New Yorker now. We party until two or three on weekdays here.”

  Caitlin kissed Carroll again, and the idle talking stopped. He was amazed at how comfortable he was with her. Watching someone you thought you cared about almost being killed seemed to accelerate the courting process.

  “Is anything the matter? You look, I don't know, a little sad. Tell me…”

  “It's probably my dumb Irish-Catholic conscience. Guilt about not doing my duty properly. Taking myself too seriously, as usual.”

  “Are you telling the truth? About being all right? Sometimes I can't tell with you.” She nestled gently against Carroll's shoulder. She was no longer untouchable.

  “I'm not quite ready for bed yet. That's all. I'm overtired, I guess. I'll be in soon. You go ahead.”

  Caitlin leaned in closer and kissed Carroll very softly again. She always smelled so wholesome and nice, he thought. She had the softest lips he could imagine kissing.

  “Do you want me to stay with you?” she whispered.

  Carroll shook his head decidedly.

  Caitlin finally left the living room, sleepily cocooned in a blanket.

  Carroll immediately got up from the couch. He started to pace back and forth, past the darkly reflective windows. His body felt all wrong: wired, incandescent.

  He went to his desk and began to shuffle through the dusty, littered drawers. Then he looked inside an antique blanket chest he'd bought years back in central Pennsylvania. His mind was wandering into very odd places, weird time zones…

  He wondered if Caitlin liked kids much…

  He thought for a few minutes about the possibility of getting hurt by Caitlin. How she just might move on after Green Band was finally over. Her romantic interlude with a real-life policeman.

  He then considered what he felt to be a somewhat lesser possibility: that he might somehow hurt her. She'd already told him things about her two previous love affairs. One guy had been a highly successful New York investment lawyer, who was so busy making his second or third million, he hadn't bothered to notice that Caitlin wasn't just an extraordinarily pretty face, an asset in certain demanding social situations… Her second lover had been a professional tennis player, “with an ego as big as Forest Hills Stadium,” as Caitlin had described him. Number two had expected her to be his housemate, his sexy Playboy bu
nny, and his mom. Caitlin had finally said no to all three roles.

  Jesus, he was so incredibly wired. So uptight tonight.

  Finally he did it, though. The absolute worst thing he could have done under the particular set of circumstances.

  On the anniversary.

  Nora's death three years before.

  December 14.

  First, he gathered up a handful of old photographs. He found most of the photos on a cluttered bottom shelf inside a glass-enclosed book cabinet. Next, he pulled a tattered wicker chair up close to one of the tall windows facing the lights of Riverside Drive and the river.

  Carroll stared down at the West Side Highway, the peacefully quiet boat basin. He was letting the present go all fuzzy and blurred.

  Then he stood up again.

  He took three particular record albums off the uneven stacks on the stereo. One album was 52nd Street, Billy Joel self-consciously holding a trumpet on the cover. The second album was mainstream country and western, I Believe in You by somebody called Don Williams. The third was Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb Guilty.

  Carroll switched on the stereo, and the big floor speakers immediately hummed. He felt the power surge through the soles of his bare feet. He turned the volume way down.

  He'd never been a big Streisand fan, but there were two particular songs he wanted to hear on this album: “Woman in Love” and “Promises.” Out in the world, a moving van rumbled along Riverside Drive.

  He still kept an old framed picture of Nora, hidden away facedown in the bottom of the bookcase. He slid it out now and carefully propped it on the arm of the couch.