Black Market

37

Just past midnight on December 19, Colonel David Hudson emotionally addressed the assembly of twenty-four Vets gathered inside the Jane Street garage.

“This has been a long and particularly hard mission for all of you,” he said. “I know that. But at each important stage you've done everything that has been asked of you… I feel very humble standing here before you.”

Hudson paused and looked at the upturned faces. “As we approach the final stages of Green Band, I want to stress one thing. I don't want anyone to take needless risks. Is that understood? Take no chances. Our ultimate goal from here on is zero KIA.”

Again Hudson paused. When he finally spoke, there was an uncharacteristic edge of emotion in his voice. “This will be our last mission together. Thank you once again. I salute you all.”

From that moment, Green Band was designed to be a thoroughly disciplined army-style field maneuver. Every possible detail had been scrutinized again and again.

The grease-stained garage doors at Vets Cabs and Messengers rolled open with a heavy metallic roar. Diffused amber headlights pierced the darkness.

Vets 5, Harold Freedman, ran outside the Vets building. He looked east and west on Jane Street, then began to bark orders like the army drill sergeant he'd once been.

It was just past 12:30 P.M.

If anyone in the West Village neighborhood saw the three army transport trucks emerge from the garage, they paid little attention, in the tried-and-true tradition of New Yorkers.

The trucks finally hurtled down West Street.

Colonel David Hudson crouched attentively on the passenger seat of the lead troop truck. He was in constant walkie-talkie contact with the two other troop transports… This was a disciplined field maneuver in every respect.

They were carefully moving into full combat again. None of them had realized how much they missed it. Even Hudson himself had forgotten the intense clarity that came before a major battle. There was nothing else like this in life, nothing like full combat.

“Contact. This is Vets One. You are to follow us straight down West Street to the Holland Tunnel entrance. We'll be maintaining strict military speed limits in the city. So sit back. Just relax for the ride. Over.”

Two hours passed before the lead transport truck pulled to a shuddering stop at a military guardpost less than sixty yards off Route 35 in New Jersey. Over the wooden sentry box the sign read FORT MONMOUTH, UNITED STATES ARMY POST.

The private on duty had been very close to falling asleep. His eyes were glazed behind horn-rimmed glasses and his movements comically stiff as he approached the lead truck.

“Identification, sir.” The private cleared his throat. He spoke in a high-pitched whine and didn't look much more than eighteen years old to Hudson. Shades of Vietnam, of brutal wars fought by innocent boys for thousands and thousands of years.

David Hudson silently handed across two plastic ID cards. The cards identified him as Colonel Roger McAfee of the Sixty-eighth Street Armory, Manhattan. The inspection that followed was pro forma. The regular guard-duty speech was given by the sentry.

“You may proceed, sir. Please obey all posted parking and traffic regulations while you are at Fort Monmouth. Are those transports behind you with you, sir?”

“Yes, we're going on bivouac. We're here to pick up supplies. Small arms and ammunition for our weekend in the country. Two helicopters have been requisitioned. They'll have the details inside. I'm to see Captain Harney.”

“You can all proceed, then, sir.”

The youthful sentry stepped aside. He crisply waved on the small army reserve convoy.

“Contact. This is Vets One.” As soon as they passed the gate, Colonel Hudson spoke into the PRC transmitter. “We're now less than twelve hours until the termination of operation Green Band. Everyone is to use extreme, repeat, extreme caution. We're almost home, gentlemen. We're almost home at last. Over and out.”

Inconspicuous and drab, the Vets garage on Jane Street wasn't the kind of place to draw attention. It sat in the middle of a West Village block, its large metal doors rusted and grease-stained and bleak.

At both ends of the block, the desolate street had silently been cordoned off. NYPD patrol cars were positioned everywhere around the garage. Carroll counted seventeen of them.

Beneath the darkened edifice of a Shell gas station, he could see unmarked FBI cars and as many as thirty heavily armed agents. Each of them watched the front of the garage with the kind of intensity that represented professionalism in the Bureau.

The police and the FBI agents carried M-16 automatic assault rifles, twelve-gauge shotguns, and.357 Magnums. It was as frightening an arsenal and attack force as Carroll had ever seen.

He leaned against his own car, studying the metal doors, the crooked, bleached sign that read VETS CABS AND MESSENGERS. He tapped his fingers nervously on the car hood.

Something was wrong here. Something was definitely wrong.

Arch Carroll peered hard in the direction of the Shell station. The FBI guys stood perfectly still, waiting for the signal that would bring them rushing into action.

At Carroll's side was Walter Trentkamp. He had kept Walter informed. Now Trentkamp was inside the dangerous maze with him.

Carroll took out his Browning. He turned the heavy weapon over in the palm of his hand and thought it was strange how some voice in his head was telling him to be careful. Careful, he thought. He hadn't been careful before-so why start now? He thought he knew why.

“Archer.” Walter nudged him. A black limousine was threading its way down the grim, quiet street.

Police Commissioner Michael Kane solemnly climbed out. The commissioner, whose street experience was limited and who was more politician than cop, had a gleaming bullhorn in one hand. He held it as if he'd never touched such a thing before.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, no,” Carroll muttered.

Commissioner Kane's voice echoed down the deserted West Village street. “Attention… this is Commissioner of Police Kane… You have one minute to emerge from the Vets garage. You have sixty seconds before we open fire.”

Carroll's eyes roamed over the red brick garage. He 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. 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. 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 mechanics' tools lying around.

And nothing else.

There were no vehicles of any kind.

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

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

And then they saw it.

It was taped to the grease-stained wall mocking them, mocking them all.

A green ribbon had been tied in a perfect bow, and it hung on a barren wall. They couldn't miss it.

Green Band had disappeared from the garage on Jane Street-still one frustrating jump ahead of them.

Caitlin Dillon carried a leather portfolio, overflowing with her notes, down the darkened hallway of an Upper West Side apartment building. The door to 12B was halfway open.

Anton Birnbaum was standing there, waiting. Caitlin wondered why he had called her so late at night.

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

Caitlin declined. She sat down on an antique sofa and lit as Du Maurier as the old financier poured himself a demitasse from the pot.

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

“Let me go all the way back to Dallas, Caitlin. The tragic assassination of President John Kennedy… The assassination was probably orchestrated, as we all know.”

Caitlin crushed out her cigarette. Anton Birnbaum was very agitated now.

“Next comes Watergate, 1972. I think, I firmly believe, that Watergate was permitted to escalate. Its flames were purposely fanned… in order to remove Richard M. Nixon from office. That, my dear, is history. American history.” Birnbaum's cup rattled gently in the saucer. “Both these events were clearly orchestrated. Both events were devised by a cabal cleverly working both inside and outside the United States government. This elitist group is a remnant, 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 suddenly 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. None at all. In many ways, one can almost justify their actions.”

Birnbaum sipped his coffee. He made a sour face. “A high-ranking clique of these OSS men surrendered only some of their wartime powers to President Truman. They remained working behind the scenes in Washington. They began to maneuver a long 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 firmly 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 somehow involved in the Green Band incident. Somehow they encouraged or caused the December fourth attack on Wall Street. They're behind whatever is happening right now.”

Caitlin didn't have the appropriate words to respond to what Birnbaum was saying. With any other person she might have dismissed this whole thing; but Birnbaum, she knew, wouldn't have told her any of this if he wasn't certain himself. Anton Birnbaum double- and triple-checked all of his information, no matter the source.

The financier stared at Caitlin, and there was a weary glaze over his eyes. She looked slightly European smoking Du Mauriers, not completely like herself, he thought. He started again.

“This veterans group-”

“You've heard of them already?” Caitlin was surprised, alarmed.

Birnbaum smiled. “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 Thirteen. But what I don't know yet is whether the Committee of Twelve manipulated these poor misfits or whether the veterans are actually paid operatives… I do believe I know why the dangerous mission was undertaken… I think it can be traced directly to a dangerous Soviet-run provocateur called François Monserrat. A cold-blooded mass murderer. A killing machine that has to be destroyed.”

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

Anton Birnbaum smiled, but the smile was strangely tight. “I believe that I can, my dear. Are you sure you don't want some coffee or tea? I think you should have something warm against the cold.”