Black Market

1

Wall Street, Manhattan: December 1985

The tawdry yellow cab was double-parked at the base of Wall Street, where it intersects with South Street and the East River. Colonel David Hudson leaned his tall, athletic body against its battered trunk.

He raised one hand to his eye and loosely curled his fingers to fashion a makeshift telescope. He carefully studied 40 Wall Street, where Manufacturers Hanover Trust had offices, then 23 Wall, which housed executive suites for Morgan Guaranty. Then the New York Stock Exchange. Trinity Church. Chase Manhattan Plaza. At five in the morning the towering buildings were as impressive and striking as monuments; the feeling of history and stability was overwhelming.

Once he had it all vividly in sight, Colonel Hudson squeezed his fingers tightly together. “Boom,” he whispered.

The financial capital of the world completely disappeared behind his clenched fist.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Seconds before five-thirty on that same morning Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky, the man designated Vets 24, sped down the steep, icicle-slick hill that was Metropolitan Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He was in a nine-year-old wheelchair, from the Queens Veterans Administration. Right now he was pretending the chair was a Datsun 280-Z, silver metallic, with a shining T-roof.

“Aahh-eee-ahh!” He let out a banshee screech that pierced the deserted, solemnly quiet streets. His long thin face was buried in the oily collar of a khaki fatigue parka replete with peeling sergeant's stripes, and his frizzy blond ponytail blew behind him like a bike streamer. Periodically he closed his eyes, which were tearing badly in the burning cold wind. His pinched face was getting as red as the gleaming Berry Street stoplight that he was racing through with absolute abandon.

His forehead was burning, but he loved the sensation of unexpected freedom. He thought he could actually feel streams of blood surge through his wasted legs again.

Harry Stemkowsky's rattling wheelchair finally came to a halt in front of the all-night Walgreen Drug Store. Under the parka and the two bulky sweaters he wore, his heart was hammering wildly. He was so goddamn excited-his whole life was beginning all over again.

Today, Harry Stemkowsky felt he could do just about anything.

The drugstore's glass door, which he nudged open, was covered with a montage of cigarette posters. Immediately he was blessed with a draft of welcoming warm air, filled with the smells of greasy bacon and fresh-perked coffee. He smiled and rubbed his hands together in a gesture that was almost gleeful. For the first time in years, he was no longer a cripple.

And for the first time in more than a dozen hard years, Harry Stemkowsky had a purpose.

He had to smile. When he wrapped his mind around the whole deal, the full, unbelievable implications of Green Band, he just had to smile.

Right at this moment, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky, the official messenger for Green Band, was safely at his firebase in New York City. Now it could begin.

Federal Plaza, Manhattan

Inside the fortress that was New York FBI headquarters in Federal Plaza, a tall, silver-haired man, Walter Trentkamp, repeatedly tapped the eraser of his pencil against a faded desk blotter.

Scrawled on the soiled blotter was a single phone number: 202-555-1414. It was the private number for the 'White House, a direct line to the president of the United States.

Trentkamp's telephone rang at precisely 6:00 A.M.

“All right, everybody, please start up audio surveillance now.” His voice was harsh this early in the morning. “I'll hold them as long as I possibly can. Is audio surveillance ready? Well, let's go.”

The legendary FBI Eastern Bureau chief picked up the signaling telephone. The words Green Band echoed ominously in his brain. He'd never known anything like this in his Bureau experience, which was long and varied and not without bizarre encounters.

Gathered in a grim, tight circle around the FBI head were some of the more powerfully connected men and women in New York. Not a person in the group had ever experienced anything like this emergency situation, either. In silence, they listened as Trentkamp answered the expected phone call.

“This is the Federal Bureau… Hello?”

There was no reply on the outside line. The tension inside the room could be felt by everyone. Even Trentkamp, whose calm in critical situations was well known, appeared nervous and uncertain.

“I said hello. Are you there?… Is anyone there?… Who is on this line?”

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Walter Trentkamp's frustrated voice was being monitored electronically in a battered mahogany phone booth at the rear of the Walgreen Drug Store in Williamsburg.

Inside the booth, Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky finger combed his long, unkempt hair as he listened. His heart had gone beyond mere pounding; now it was threatening to detonate in his chest. There were new and unusual pulses beating through his body.

This was the long overdue time of truth. There would be no more war-game rehearsals for the twenty-eight members of Green Band.

“Hello? This is Trentkamp. New York FBI.” The phone receiver cradled between Stemkowsky's shoulder and jaw vibrated with each phrase.

After another interminable minute, Harry Stemkowsky firmly depressed the play button on a Sony portable recorder. He then carefully held the pocket recorder flush against the pay phone's receiver.

Stemkowsky had cued the recorder to the first word of the message-”Good.” The “good” stretched to “goood” as the recorder hitched once, then rolled forward with a soft whir.

“Good morning. This is Green Band speaking. Today is December fourth. A Friday. A history-making Friday, we believe.”

Over a squawk box the eerie, high-pitched voice brought the unprecedented message the men and women sequestered in the Manhattan FBI office had been waiting for.

Green Band was beginning.

Ryan Klauk from FBI Surveillance made a quick judgment that the prerecorded track had been tampered with to make it virtually unrecognizable and probably untraceable.

“As we promised, there are vitally important reasons for our past phone calls this week, for all the elaborate preparations we've made, and had you make to date…

“Is everyone listening? I can only assume you have company, Mr. Trentkamp. No one in corporate America seems to make a decision alone these days… Listen closely, then. Everybody, please listen…

“The Wall Street financial district, from the East River to Broadway, is scheduled to be firebombed today. A large number of randomly selected targets will be completely destroyed late this afternoon.

“I will repeat. Selected targets in the financial district will be destroyed today. Our decision is irrevocable. Our decision is nonnegotiable.

“The firebombing of Wall Street will take place at five minutes past five tonight. It might be an attack by air; it might be a ground attack. Whichever-it will occur at five minutes past five precisely.”

“Wait a minute. You can't-” Walter Trentkamp began to object vehemently, then stopped. He remembered he was attempting to talk back to a prerecorded message.

“All of Manhattan, everything below Fourteenth Street, must be evacuated,” the voice track continued methodically.

“The Target Area Nuclear Survival Plan for New York should be activated right now. Are you listening, Mayor Ostrow? Are you listening, Susan Hamilton? Is your Office of Civil Preparedness listening?

“The Nuclear Survival Plan can save thousands of lives. Please employ it now…

“In case any of you require further concrete convincing, this will be provided as well. Such requests have been anticipated.

“Our seriousness, our utter commitment to this mission, must not be underestimated. Not at any time during this or any future talk we might decide to have.

“Begin the evacuation of the Wall Street financial district now. Green Band cannot possibly be stopped or deterred. Nothing I've said is negotiable. Our decision is irrevocable.”

Harry Stemkowsky abruptly pushed down the stop button. He quickly replaced the telephone receiver. He then rewound the Sony recorder and stuffed it in the drooping pocket of his fatigue jacket.

Done.

He shivered uncontrollably. Christ, he'd done it. He'd actually goddamn done it!

He'd delivered Green Band's message, and he felt terrific. He wanted to scream out. More than that, he wished he could leap two feet in the air and punch the sky.

No formal demands had been made.

Not a single clue had been offered as to why Green Bank was happening.

Stemkowsky's heart was still beating loudly as he numbly maneuvered his wheelchair along an aisle lined with colorful deodorants and toiletries, up toward the gleaming soda fountain counter.

The short-order cook, Wally Lipsky, a cheerfully mountainous three-hundred-and-ten-pound man, turned from scraping the grill as Stemkowsky wheeled up. Lipsky's pink-cheeked face brightened immediately. The semblance of a third or fourth chin appeared out of rolling mounds of neck fat.

“Well, look what Sylvester the Cat musta dragged in offa the street! It's my man Pennsylvania. Whereyabeen keepin' yourself, champ? Long time no see.”

Stemkowsky had to smile at the irresistible fat cook, who had a well-deserved reputation as the Greenpoint neighborhood clown. Hell, he was in the mood to smile at almost anything this morning.

“Oh, he-he-here and there, Wally.” Stemkowsky burst into a nervous stutter. “Muh-Manhattan the mo-most part. I been wuh-working in Manhattan a lot these days.”

Stemkowsky tapped his finger on the tattered cloth tag sewn into the shoulder of his jacket. The patch read VETS CABS AND MESSENGERS. Harry Stemkowsky was one of seven licensed wheelchair cabbies in New York; three of them worked for Vets in Manhattan.

“Gah-gotta good job. Real job now, Wah-Wally… Why don't you make us some breakfast?”

“You got it, Pennsylvania. Cabdriver special comin' up. You got it, my man, anything you want.”