whom had been murdered. There were also grainy photographs of an American couple who had disappeared in Jamaica, pictures of a Unilever accountant from Colombia, and a man named Jordan who had disappeared last spring. Isabella Marqueza was suspected of murdering all eight individuals.
Carroll continued softly. “Anyway, my name's Arch Carroll. Born right here in New York City. Local boy makes good… Son of a cop who was the son of a cop. Not a lot of imagination at work in our family, I'll admit. Just your basic poor working slobs.”
Carroll paused briefly and lit up the stub of a cigarette Crusader Rabbit style. “My job is to locate terrorists who threaten the security of the United States. Then, if they're not too strongly politically connected, protected, I try my best to put a stop to them… Put another way, you could say I'm a terrorist for the United States. I play by the same rules you do-no rules. So stop talking about Park Avenue lawyers, please. Lawyers are for nice civilized people who play by the rules. Not for us.”
Carroll slowly untied the string bow on the manila envelope. Then he slid out the handful of photographs. Casually he passed them to Isabella Marqueza. The pictures were the most obscene pornography he'd ever seen. Still, he remained calm.
“Jason Miller's body. Jason Miller was an engineer for Shell Oil. He was also a financial investigator for the State Department, as you and your people in Sao Paulo know. A fairly nice man, I understand… Information gatherer for State, I'll admit. Basically harmless, though. Another poor working slob.”
Carroll made soft clicking noises with his tongue. His eyes briefly met those of Isabella Marqueza.
She was quiet suddenly. His putting-green voice was throwing her off. She obviously hadn't expected to encounter the deck of photographs, either.
“Miller's wife, Judy, here. Alive in this photo. Kind of a nice midwestern smile… Two little girls. Their bodies, that is. I have two little girls myself. Two girls, two boys. How could anybody kill little kids, huh?”
Carroll smiled again. He cleared his throat. He needed a beer-a beer and a stiff shot of Irish would go real good right now. He studied Isabella Marqueza a moment. He had an urge to get up from his desk and whack her. Instead he kept speaking gently.
“In July of last year, you ordered and then participated in the premeditated murders, the political assassination, of all four Millers.”
Isabella Marqueza instantly shot up from her seat. “I did nothing of the sort! You prove what you say! No! I did not kill anybody. Never. I don't kill children!”
“Bullshit. That's the end of our friendly discussion. Who the fuck do you think you're kidding?”
With that, Arch Carroll slapped the wrinkled portfolio shut and jammed it back in his lopsided desk drawer. He looked up at Isabella Marqueza again.
“Nobody knows you're here! Do you have that memorized? Nobody's going to know what happened to you after today. That's the truth. Just like the Miller family down in Brazil.”
“You're full of shit Carroll-”
“Yeah? Try me. Push me a little and find out for sure.”
“My lawyer, I want to see my lawyer-”
“Never heard of him-”
“I told you his name, Curzon-”
“Did you? I don't remember-”
Isabella Marqueza sighed. She stared at Carroll in silence, her expression one of exquisitely cold hatred. She folded her arms, then sat down again. She crossed and uncrossed her long legs and lit a cigarette.
“Why are you doing this to me? You're crazy.”
This was a little better, Carroll thought. He could sense she was melting a little, cracking at the edges.
“Tell me about Jack Jordan down in Colombia. American business accountant. Machine-gunned to death in his driveway. His wife got to watch.”
“I never heard of him.”
Carroll clucked his tongue and slowly shook his head back and forth. He seemed genuinely disappointed. Sitting behind the bare, bleak office desk, he looked like someone whose best friend had just inexplicably lied to him.
“Isabella… Isabella.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I don't think you get the total picture. I don't think you really understand.” He stood up, stretched his arms, fought back a yawn. “You see, you no longer exist. You died suddenly this morning. Taxi accident on East Seventieth Street. Nobody bothered to tell you?”
Carroll was feeling dangerously overloaded now. He didn't want to finish this brutal interrogation. He walked out of the questioning room without saying another word.
He'd done his best, he thought as he idly patrolled the long, blurry hallway outside, passing busy secretaries who were tapping away at purring typewriters.
He walked with his head down, talking to no one. Blood pounded furiously in his temples. He was drained and bleached, and his throat was dry. The vision of a cold beer and a shot had rooted itself firmly in his mind, and the image was roaring for attention.
He paused at a water fountain, pressed the button, and let the cold water splash across his face. It was better than nothing. He wiped his puckered lips with the back of his hand, then leaned against the wall. Isabella Marqueza. Green Band. A green ribbon tied neatly, almost cheerfully, around a plastique bomb in a cardboard box.
Questions. Too many disconnected questions. He didn't have any answers. He doubted whether Walter Trentkamp himself could have cracked Isabella Marqueza.
Ordinarily Carroll might have felt bad about the harshness of the Marqueza interrogation. Except he kept seeing the creased snapshot faces of the two senselessly murdered little Miller girls. Those two innocent babies helped put Isabella Marqueza in perspective for him. Beautiful Isabella was a worthless piece of shit.
He finally trudged back to his office, where Isabella Marqueza was waiting.
She looked like a wilting flower. He'd read in her files that she'd joined a GRU terrorist cell in 1978, after which she'd worked for Francois Monserrat in South America, then in Montreal and Paris, and finally here in New York. Her supposed weakness was that she had little tolerance for discomfort and pain. She'd never had to suffer any in her life. Carroll considered that momentarily, then moved in for the kill.
An hour and a half later Carroll and Isabella Marqueza were finally beginning to communicate. Carroll sipped the day's hundredth coffee. His stomach had begun to scream at him.
“You
Isabella Marqueza sat with her head hanging. She wouldn't look up at Carroll for long stretches of time. Dark sweat stains had spread under her arms. Her right leg kept tapping the floor nervously, but she didn't seem aware of it. She looked ill. Carroll decided to keep up his staccato attack. Stage three of his interrogation.
“Who the
It took thirty minutes more of cajoling, threatening, and screaming at Marqueza, thirty grueling minutes in which Carroll's voice grew hoarse and his face turned red, thirty minutes during which his shirt stuck to his sweaty body. Finally Isabella Marqueza stood up and shouted at him.
“
How do you
The woman clapped her hand across her hollow, darkened eyes. “I
“Then how do you know?”
“There are telephone messages. There are sometimes whispers in private places.
“Where is he, Isabella? Is he here in New York? Where the hell is he?
The South American woman shook her head stubbornly. “I don't know that, either.”
“What does Monserrat look like these days?”
“How should I know that? How should I know anything like that? He changes. Monserrat is always changing. Sometimes dark hair, a mustache. Sometimes gray hair. Dark glasses. Sometimes a beard.” She paused. “Monserrat doesn't have a face.”
Now conscious of having said too much, Isabella Marqueza had begun to sob loudly. Carroll sat back and rested his head against the grimy office wall. She didn't know anything more; he was almost certain he'd gone as far with her as he could possibly go.
Nobody had anything concrete about Green Band. Only that wasn't possible. Somebody had to know what the hell Green Band wanted.
But who?
Carroll looked up at the interrogation room ceiling before he shut his sore and heavy eyes.
Faded, yellowing newspapers, at least a dozen different ones dated October 25, 1929, were spread haphazardly across a heavy oak library-style worktable. The thirty- and forty-point headlines were as jarring now as they must have been fifty-odd years before.
WORST STOCK CRASH EVER; 12,894,650-SHARE
DAY SWAMPS MARKET; LEADERS CONFER, FIND
CONDITIONS SOUND.
WALL STREET PANIC! RECORD SELLING OF STOCKS!
HEAVY FALL IN PRICES!
STOCK PRICES SLUMP $14,000,000,000 IN
NATIONWIDE STAMPEDE TO UNLOAD; BANKERS TO
SUPPORT MARKET TODAY.
PRICES OF STOCKS CRASH IN HEAVY LIQUIDATION,
TOTAL DROP OF BILLIONS.
TWO MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES
SOLD IN THE FINAL HOUR IN RECORD DECLINE!
