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  Carroll’s eyes roamed over the red brick garage. His body was tense, his neck and forehead damp. He slowly raised his pistol to the firing position.

  The Vets garage remained quiet.

  Something definitely wasn‘t right about this.

  ‘Twenty-five seconds… come out of the garage…”

  Walter Trentkamp leaned close and forced a whisper. One of the things Carroll appreciated was that Walter was still basically a street cop. He still needed to be in on the action himself. “Suppose this is all bullshit? Suppose we’ve got the wrong men, the wrong messenger service? Something’s not right here, Arch.”

  Carroll still said nothing. He was watching, and thinking.

  ‘Twenty seconds…”

  “C’mon Walter… come with me.”

  Carroll suddenly stepped forward. Walter Trentkamp somewhat reluctantly followed him toward the garage doors. The Police Commissioner had stopped counting down.

  Then FBI agents and city cops were everywhere, pushing through the jagged edges of the broken doors and into the darkened building itself.

  Somebody turned on a light revealing a somewhat ordinary, gloomy and cavernous garage.

  Carroll, Browning in hand, froze.

  His eyes blinked several times. He could smell oil and grease, all the harsh odors left behind by sick and aging automobiles. Slick puddles of oil covered the concrete floor. There were professional mechanics’ tools lying around in disarray.

  But nothing else was left in the Vets garage.

  There were no vehicles on the basement floor.

  There were no people, no Viet Nam veterans. Colonel David Hudson was nowhere to be seen.

  Nothing was left of whatever had been here before.

  Carroll and Trentkamp wandered around the garage, their guns still clutched in their fists. They entered each small room in a careful police crouch. They finally climbed narrow, twisting stairs to the top floor.

  And then they both saw it… the message left for them.

  It was taped to the grease-stained wall and it mocked them, mocked them all. It laughed at all the helpless police investigators—a shrill funhouse cackle, the screeching caw of jungle birds.

  A green ribbon had been tied in a perfect bow, and it hung on a barren wall like something left over from a Christmas package.

  Yeah, Arch Carroll thought.

  Have a merry one.

  Green Band had disappeared from the garage on Jane Street—as always, one frustrating jump ahead.

  One cold, calculating jump… moving toward what?

  Chapter 80

  CAITLIN CARRIED A leather portfolio overflowing with her notes as she walked down the darkened hallway of an Upper West Side apartment building. The door to 12B was halfway open.

  Anton Birnbaum was there waiting. Caitlin wondered why he had called her so late at night? What did Anton want from her now?

  He let her in and they walked together to his library, a room crammed to its high ceiling with old books and periodicals.

  “Thank you for coming right away,” he said. He seemed incredibly relieved to see Caitlin.

  “Coffee? Tea? I’ve been living on the unhealthy stuff lately.” He gestured to a tarnished espresso pot near the glowing fireplace.

  Caitlin declined.

  His hands were trembling slightly. This whole room, in its papery disarray, indicated that Anton Birnbaum had been burning the midnight oil with a fevered vengeance.

  “Let me begin all the way back in Dallas, Caitlin.” Birnbaum, his small face looking like a burned-out moon, finally sat down alongside her. “The tragic assassination of President John Kennedy… it’s a good place to start, I think. In terms of the fantastic versus the expected reality. The assassination was probably orchestrated, as we all know.

  “Next comes Watergate, 1973. I think, I firmly believe that Watergate was permitted to escalate. Its flames were fanned… in order to remove Richard M. Nixon from office. That, my dear, is history. American history.” Birnbaum’s cup gently rattled in the saucer. “Both these events were clearly orchestrated. Both events were devised by a cabal working both inside and outside the United States government. This elitist group is a remnant, Caitlin, a cell of the old OSS, our own World War Two intelligence network.

  “I have heard them called the Wise Men. I’ve also heard them called the Committee of Twelve. They exist. Permit me to continue before you comment.

  “In 1945, the men who ran the OSS realized that the cloak of responsibility they had assumed in wartime was coming to an end. They were faced with giving their enormous power back to the same politicians who had almost managed to obliterate the human race a few years before.… They had no desire to do so, Caitlin. In many ways, one can almost justify their actions.”

  Birnbaum sipped his coffee. “A high-ranking clique of these OSS men surrendered only some of their wartime powers to President Truman. They remained behind the scenes in Washington. They began to maneuver a series of political puppets. These men, and their protÉgÉs, the current Committee of Twelve, have gone so far as to select the, presidential candidates for political parties. For both parties, Caitlin, in the same election.”

  Caitlin stared at the old man. The Wise Men? The Committee of Twelve? A secret cabal with unlimited powers? She already knew a great deal about real and imagined government conspiracies. They had always seemed woven into the tapestry of American history. Unconfirmable rumors; uncomfortable realities. Uncomfortable whispers in high places.

  “Who are these men, Anton?”

  “My dear, they are not exactly faces familiar from Newsweek or Time magazine. But that’s beside the point right now. What I am trying to tell you is that I have no doubt this group is involved in the Green Band incident. Somehow, Caitlin, they encouraged or caused the December fourth attack on Wall Street. They’re behind whatever is happening right now.”

  Caitlin didn’t have the words to respond to what Birnbaum was saying. With any other person, she might have dismissed this whole thing; with Birnbaum she knew he wouldn’t have told her any of this if he wasn’t certain himself.

  The Financier stared at Caitlin and there was an unusually weary glaze over his eyes.

  “This veterans’ group—” Birnbaum started again.

  “You’ve heard of them already?” Caitlin was surprised. An alarm sounded inside her brain.

  Birnbaum smiled. A slender fissure opened across his small face. “My dear, information has always been the wellspring of my success. Of course I have heard of the veterans group. I have my sources inside Number 13.

  “But what I don’t know is whether the Committee of Twelve manipulated these misfits, or whether the veterans are paid operatives I do believe I know why the dangerous mission was undertaken.… I think it can be traced to a Soviet-run provocateur called Francois Monserrat. A mass-murderer. A killing machine that has to be destroyed.”

  “But what is Monserrat’s connection with the Committee of Twelve, Anton? What’s going to happen now? Can you tell me that?”

  Anton Birnbaum smiled, but the smile was tight. “I believe that I can, my dear.”

  Chapter 81

  EARLY ON SUNDAY MORNING David Hudson patrolled the dimly lit corridors of the sprawling Queens VA Hospital. The home of the brave, he thought bitterly.

  The Queens VA was situated at Linden Boulevard and 179th Street. It was a dismal, red brick complex that called no attention to itself. Eleven years before, Hudson had been an outpatient there, one of tens of thousands who had been subjected to VA hospitals after the War.

  A hollowness, like that at the heart of an empty gymnasium, caused his footsteps to echo as he plunged deeper into the hospital complex.

  There were buzzing voices, but no people he could see. Ghosts, he thought. Straining voices from another dimension of reality. Voices of cruel pain and madness.

  He turned a corner—and suddenly he encountered a gruesome row of veterans. They were wraiths mostly, but a few were overweight
. The odor in the still, dead air was overpowering: part industrial disinfectant, part urine, part feces. A synthetic Christmas tree blinked spastically at the heart of the claustrophobic room.

  At least half of the patients seemed to have tiny metal radios pressed like cold packs to their heads. A black hussar in a torn, pinstriped johnny was discoing around an amputee fitfully sleeping in his wheelchair. Hudson saw broken, gnarled bodies harnessed into steel and leather braces. “Metals of honor” the hospital aides used to say when Hudson had been there.

  He felt such rage now, such hatred for everything American, everything he’d once loved about his country.

  There were still no hospital personnel in sight. There wasn’t a single corpsman, not a nurse or nurse’s aide in any of the halls.

  David Hudson kept walking—faster—almost hearing a soft military drum roll in his head.

  He went down a bright yellow hallway, a falsely cheery one.

  He remembered all of the surroundings with clarity now. Almost uncontrollable rage swept through his body.

  In the fall of 1973, he’d been admitted into the VA, ostensibly for psychiatric evaluation and tests. A smug doctor had talked to him twice about his affliction, his unfortunate loss of an arm. The Army doctor was equally interested in Hudson’s POW experience. Had he killed a Viet Cong camp commandant while making his escape? Yes, Hudson assured him, in fact the escape was what had first brought him to the attention of Army Intelligence. They had tested him in Viet Nam; then they sent him back to Fort Bragg for further training.… The interviews lasted no more than fifty minutes each time. Hudson had then filled out endless Veterans Administration questionnaires and numbered forms. He was assigned a VA caseworker, an obese man with a birthmark on his cheek, whom he never saw again after their first half-hour interview.

  At the end of the yellow hallway were glass double doors to the outside. Through the hospital doors, Hudson could see fenced-in back lawns.

  The fences were not intended to keep the veterans in, he knew. They’d been built to keep the people outside from seeing what was inside: the terrifying, awful disgrace of America’s veterans.

  David Hudson hit the glass door squarely with his right shoulder. He was instantly plunged outside into sharp winter cold, into the dark clinging dampness.

  Directly behind the main hospital building was a steep frost-covered lawn which ended in threadbare scrub pines. Hudson moved across it quickly. Concentrate, he instructed himself. Don’t think about anything but the present Nothing but what’s happening right now.

  Two men stepped suddenly from behind a row of thickly snow-laden firs.

  Chapter 82

  ONE MAN HAD the formal appearance of a United Nations diplomat. The other was a common looking street thug with a tough, expressionless face.

  “You might have chosen the Oak Bar at the Plaza just as easily. Certainly that would have been more convenient,” the impressive-looking man spoke first. “Colonel Hudson, I presume?… I am Monserrat.”

  The distinguished man’s English was accented. He might have been French?… Swiss?… Monserrat.

  Hudson smiled without any real mirth. He showed slightly parted teeth. Every one of his senses was coming alive now.

  “The next time we meet, it can be your turn to choose locations. Under the clock in the Biltmore Hotel? The observation deck of the Empire State Building? Whatever site pleases you,” he offered.

  “I’ll remember that. You have a proposition for me to consider, Colonel? The remainder of the securities from Green Band? A substantial amount, I take it.”

  Hudson’s eyes remained hooded, showing almost no emotion, not a hint of the seething rage inside.

  “Yes, I would say substantial. Over four billion dollars. That’s enough to cause an unprecedented international incident. Whatever you wish.”

  “And what do you want from us, dare I ask? What is your reward out of this, Colonel?”

  “Less than you might think. The deposit of one hundred fifty million in a secure, numbered account. Your assurance that the GRU won’t pursue my men afterward. The end of Green Band, as far as you’re concerned.”

  “That’s all? I can’t accept that.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t all. I have something else in mind.… You see, I want you to destroy the pathetic American way of life. I want you to end the American century a little early. We both hate the American system—at least what it’s become. We both want to set it on fire, to purify the world. We’ve been trained to accomplish that.”

  The terrorist stared into Colonel Hudson’s eyes. Hudson’s apocalyptic words hung in the chilled air. Finally, Monserrat smiled. He understood Hudson perfectly now.

  “You’re planning to complete this transaction soon I take it? The exchange?”

  Hudson looked at his wristwatch as if to check the time. He knew precisely what time it was. He was only going through the motions. “It’s ten-thirty now. In six hours, gentlemen.”

  Monserrat hesitated, an uncharacteristic flicker of indecision and doubt, but only a second’s pause.

  “Six hours is acceptable. We will be ready by then. Is that all?”

  Hudson seemed to have a sudden insight as he stood huddled with the two men. His head cocked slowly, at an odd angle. A smile finally appeared, full of charm, his old West Point charisma.

  “There is another matter. One more serious problem we have to discuss.”

  “And what might that be, Colonel Hudson?”

  ‘1 realize that no one is supposed to know who you are. That’s the primary reason I wanted you here. Why I insisted on it, if you were to get the bulk of these bonds. You see me, and I see you…. Except for one thing…”

  “Except what?”

  “Next time, I want to see the real Francois Monserrat. If he doesn’t come in person, there will be no exchange.”

  Having said that, David Hudson turned away. Hudson walked briskly back toward the VA hospital and disappeared inside.

  His revenge, his fifteen-year odyssey was almost complete now. The final, telling moment was coming.

  Deceit! As it had never been seen before. Not since the War, anyway…

  They had taught him so very, very well to destroy.… Whatever he wished to destroy…

  Chapter 83

  IN A FASHIONABLE and expensive part of New York City, Vice-president Elliot was alone and troubled that morning. He walked at a quickening pace along the edge of the East River, directly behind the United Nations complex.

  There was the customary parade of bundled-up joggers plodding along the concrete promenade. A spinsterish woman looked like she might be contemplating suicide. A slender young model walked her dog.

  There were no bodyguards for the Vice-president of the United States, no crew-cut Secret Service men were anywhere in sight. There was nothing and nobody to protect Thomas Elliot from recognition and possibly from harm.

  The walk alone was something the Vice-president did infrequently, but it was something he needed to do now. It was a fundamental human need: simply to be alone. Thomas Elliot needed to be able to think, to be able to see a complex and challenging plan in its entirety.

  The Vice-president finally let his mind settle on the real reason why he desperately needed to be off by himself…

  He paused and stared into the sluggish wintry gray river. Smoke drifted lazily upward on the other bank. He thought about his childhood then, as if those comforting recollections might put everything in perspective. The casual rise of smoke reminded him of those autumnal bonfires on the grounds of his family home in Connecticut—how could that boy, whose face he saw in memory, have come all this way? All the way to this seminal moment in American history?

  Vice-president Elliot placed his gloved hands in the pockets of his overcoat. Green Band was almost at an end. Out there, someplace in this vast city, the terrorist Francois Monserrat, the New York police, Colonel David Hudson and his men were rushing toward their rendezvous with destiny. Meanwhile, other po
werful forces were slotting quietly into place…

  He frowned. A barge crawled over the oily surface of the river. Dirty washing hung on a rope and smoke rose upward from a blunt funnel. The Vice-president thought he saw a shapeless figure move aboard the barge.

  Colonel David Hudson had his moment of destiny to come…

  As did he, the Vice-president of this country.

  In a very short time, when the dust had cleared on the brief reign of Justin Kearney—a disillusioned man who hadn’t been able to come to terms with the limitations of his power, a man who would resign his office in the wake of an economic crisis, who would be exiled to some rustic estate and live out the remainder of his days writing heavily censored memoirs—when all the dust had cleared, Thomas More Elliot, like Lyndon Baines Johnson twenty-odd years before, like Gerald Ford a little more than a decade ago, would step up to the presidency of the United States.

  Everything depended on the final act of Green Band.

  Chapter 84

  THE VETS CABS appeared suddenly. They paraded single file out of an abandoned warehouse garage in downtown Manhattan.

  The cabs were assimilated into normal traffic flow until they branched onto Division and Catherine streets leading toward the East River and FDR Drive.

  Each of the Checker cabs had been equipped with PRC-77 transmitter-receivers, known in Viet Nam as monsters. The PRC units automatically scrambled and unscrambled all transmissions. There was no way the New York police could intercept messages traveling between the cabs.

  There were six cabs, which could carry fourteen heavily armed Vets: an assault platoon with rifleman-snipers, M-60 gas-operated machine gunners, a thumper man with an M-79 grenade launcher, a communications operator.

  The most spectacular touch in the commando raid was that the ground attack force had air support. Two Cobra Assault copters would be backing the Vets if any combat action started on the street.