James Patterson - Black Market

President Kearney continued. “Our intelligence people have learned that Middle Eastern and South American oil-producing countries have been seriously considering a run on the New York Stock Market.

“This action was to be ‘just’ retribution for what they considered broken promises, even outright fraud practiced by U.S. banks and the New York brokerage houses. At the very least, the oil cartel hoped to initiate a short-term panic, which they alone would be in a position to take advantage of. Is this rumored scenario related to tonight? At this moment, I don't know…

“I have serious fears, though, that we're at the beginning of a grave international economic crisis. Gentlemen, it would not be an exaggeration to postulate, to prepare ourselves for the possibility, that the Western economy could effectively collapse on Monday, when the market will conceivably reopen.”

President Kearney's intense blue eyes continued to make contact around the crisis table. “We might find out who initiated the attack on Wall Street last night. We have to find out how they did it. We have to find out why… What is the meaning of this insane, unthinkable thing?”

Arch Carroll's head was buzzing and his eyes stinging as he filed out of the White House conference room at 2:55 A.M. The other participants were subdued and silent; they looked reflective, exhausted.

Carroll had already started down the flight of creaking, thickly carpeted south White House stairs when he felt a hand rest lightly on his shoulder, startling him. He turned to see Walter Trentkamp, impressive as ever at three in the morning.

“Trying to run out on me?” Trentkamp shook his head like a father about to chastise his son in the friendliest terms possible. “How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while. Have a minute to talk?”

“Hello, Walter. Sure, we can talk. How about going outside? It might clear our heads a little.”

Moments later Carroll and one of his earliest mentors were walking side by side through the early morning mist shrouding Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was a heavy gray slab covering the capital like the roof on a mausoleum. In the distance Carroll could see the Washington Monument.

“I haven't seen enough of your homely face lately. Probably not since you and the kids moved back to the old homestead.”

“We miss you, too. It was kind of odd, going back there at first. Now it's good, absolutely the right choice. The kids call it their ‘country house.’ They think they live on a Nebraska farm now. Riverdale, right?” Carroll grinned.

“Wonderful kids. Mary Katherine's a gem, too.” Trentkamp hesitated a moment. “How are you doing? You're the one who concerns me.”

Carroll began to feel as if he were talking to a rabbi on the police force. “Holding up pretty well. I'm all right. I'm actually doing fine.” He shrugged.

Trentkamp shook his closely cropped silver-gray curls. His eyes held a knowing look, and Carroll felt suddenly uncomfortable. The cop part of Walter had a knack of wheedling his way inside you, so that you were left feeling transparent, like thin paper held up to a bright light.

“I don't think so, Archer. I don't think you're doing fine at all.”

Carroll stiffened. “No? Well, I'm sorry. I thought I was all right.”

“You're not so fine. You're not even in the general ballpark of fine. The late night drinking bouts have become legend. Risks you're taking with your life. Other cops talk too much about you.”

It was the wrong hour for this kind of talk, even from the man he'd grown up calling “Uncle Walter.” Carroll bristled. “That all, Rabbi? That all you wanted to see me about?”

Walter Trentkamp abruptly stopped walking. He laid a hand on Carroll's shoulder and squeezed it lightly. “I wanted to talk to the son of an old friend of mine. I wanted to help if I could.”

Arch Carroll turned his bleary eyes away from those of the FBI director. His face reddened. “I'm sorry. I guess it's been a long day.”

“It has been a long day. It's been a long couple of years for you since Nora. You're close to being broken out of your unit in the DIA. They like the results, but not your working style. There's talk about replacing you. Matty Reardon's one name I've heard.”

It was a verbal punch. Arch Carroll knew, somewhere in the back of his mind that this was coming. “Reardon'd be a good choice. He's a good company man. Good man, period.”

“Arch, please cut the crap. You're playing games with someone who's known you thirty-five years. Nobody can replace you at the DIA.”

Carroll frowned, and he began to cough in the manner of Crusader Rabbit. He felt like a real shit. “Aww, hell, I'm sorry, Walter. I know what you're trying to do.”

“People understand what you've been through. I understand. Please believe that, Archer. Everybody wants to help… I asked for you on this one. I had to ask.”

Carroll shrugged his broad, sloping shoulders, but he was hurt. He hadn't known his reputation had slipped so badly, maybe even in Walter Trentkamp's eyes.

“I don't know what to say. I really don't. Not even a typical Bronx Irish wisecrack. Nothing.”

“Talk to me on this one. Let me know what you find out. Just talk to me, okay?… Don't go it alone. Will you promise me that?” said Trentkamp.

“Promise.” Carroll nodded slowly.

Walter Trentkamp turned up the collar of his overcoat against the early morning mist. Both he and Carroll were over six feet tall. They looked like father and son.

“Good,” Trentkamp finally said. “It's real good to have you. We'll need you on this nasty son of a bitch. We'll need you at your best, Archer.”

Manhattan

At six o'clock on Saturday morning, December 5, a bleak Seventh Avenue subway train, its surface covered with scars of graffiti, lackadaisically rocked and rattled north toward the Van Cortlandt Park station. The New York subways were generally a bad joke. This particular train wasn't so much public transportation as public disgrace.

Colonel David Hudson sat in an inconspicuous huddle on an uncomfortable metal seat. As always, he was wearing clothes no one would look at twice. Uninteresting clothes that created a street camouflage of drab gray and lifeless brown. He realized it wasn't a very successful disguise because people had looked at him, anyway. Their probing eyes invariably discovered the missing arm, the empty flap of his coat.

Hot-and-cold flashes coursed through his body as the train dutifully hurled itself north. He was drifting in and out of the present, remembering, trying to accurately replicate long hours spent at a Vietnam firebase perimeter listening post… Every one of his senses had been at its sharpest back then. Head cocked-listening, watching, trusting no one but himself… He needed exactly the same kind of brilliant clarity right now, the same kind of absolute self-reliance-which was probably the greatest high he'd known in his lifetime.

From Fourteenth Street, where he'd boarded the inhospitable subway train, up past Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and Fifty-ninth streets, Hudson objectively contemplated the first days of his capture in Vietnam. An old Doors song, “ Moonlight Drive,” drifted through his mind. A period piece.

He was vividly remembering the La Hoc Noh prison now. Above all else, Colonel David Hudson was remembering the one known as the Lizard Man…

La Hoc Noh Prison, North Vietnam: July 1971

Captain David Hudson, his nervous system a mass of fire, felt each bruising, jarring bump, even the smallest stones underfoot, as four prison guards half carried, half dragged him toward the central thatch-roofed hut at the La Hoc Noh compound.

Through the flat white glare of the Asian sun, which resembled a bleached penny, he squinted at the pathetic hootch, with its tattered North Vietnamese flag and sagging bamboo walls.