the black market is structured, the principals involved. And I want to hear all about Francois Monserrat.”
Chevron cleared his throat hoarsely. “You have no idea what you're saying, what you're asking of me. You have no idea the predicament you're placing me in. We are speaking of billions of dollars. We are speaking of participants of a less than savory nature… The French Corso… the Italian Cosa Nostra.”
Chevron seemed to wipe imaginary crumbs from his fingertips now. He sat back in his chair, and Carroll could see tiny stars of perspiration glistening on the man's forehead. Even the impressive black hair seemed to have lost its color. Carroll felt relaxed and confident for the first time since he'd arrived in Paris.
“I'm listening,” he said. “Keep going. I love stories about the Cosa Nostra.”
But Michel Chevron had already spoken the last words of his life. The oak doors into the executive suite splintered and crashed open.
For one frightening, incomprehensible moment Carroll imagined that what had happened on Wall Street was repeating itself in Paris. He jumped from his chair and turned to face the shattered door.
Three heavily armed men in trench coats had come from the director's reception area. Each had a machine pistol drawn. In the narrow corridor behind them stood Michel Chevron's blond assistant, armed with a small black Beretta.
Carroll's lingering jet lag suddenly left him. He was already diving across the floor. Glass and expensive wood were everywhere around him. Machine pistol explosions slashed through the previously secure and elegant office suite.
The terrifying volley nailed Michel Chevron against the wall. His body arched spastically, then spun to the floor. His blue suit was instantly blood soaked. Particles of bone and flesh floated through ghostly spirals of gunsmoke in the office suite.
The professional assailants now switched their attention to Carroll. Hollow-headed slugs thudded like hammer blows into the oak-paneled walls all around him.
His heart pounding, Carroll crawled beyond the heavy drapes, which fanned the air as bullets ripped through the fabric. Sharp needles of glass and wood pierced his hands.
He scrambled to his feet, the glass slivers slicing deeper with every movement. The outside terrace was a narrow stone catwalk, sixteen stories above the Paris street. The walkway seemed to stretch around the entire length of the floor.
Carroll inched toward the nearest corner of the building, bloodying the ancient stone. He could hear the deafening gunshots, followed by screams of incredulous terror and agony inside the bank offices. Machine pistols coughed and fired repeatedly, insanely.
French terrorists? The brigade? Francois Monserrat?
What was happening now?
Who had known he was going to be here?
Bullets were whistling past his head, nicking the brooding stone body of a crouching gargoyle. Behind him and to the left, he registered the direction of the gunfire and glanced over his shoulder.
Two of the assassins were closing fast, their leather trench coats flapping. They were the kind of European thugs he thought existed only in French movies. Painfully, Carroll raised his own gun. He fired, hearing the slightly unreal, muted spit of the silencer in his ears.
The man running in front grabbed his chest, then stumbled and fell over the stone wall, somersaulting sixteen stories to the street.
“Oh, goddammit!” Carroll suddenly clutched his shoulder. Blood spread instantly where he'd been shot. He felt sick and afraid. These could be the final seconds of his life. He could hardly breathe as he stumbled around the next stone corner of the building.
He moved now as if he were in a bad dream.
He weakly moved to another clear stretch of stone terrace. The walkway ended abruptly at a gray brick wall topped by severe iron fencing.
He was dizzy. He could taste warm blood in his mouth. Piercing chest pains came with each breath. The wounded arm ached with a deep, searing pain such as he'd never felt before.
To die suddenly here in Paris seemed ironic and appropriate.
To die here surrounded by memories of Nora.
He watched the sky slip away from him. The wintry sun was a hard uncaring disk.
Carroll used his good arm on the restraining wall and vaulted over the side. He saw a spinning flash of cars sixteen floors below. And cold concrete, as gray as a tombstone.
As he landed safely on the terrace six feet below, he struck his wounded shoulder hard against a slab of granite. The pain that exploded was a savage, biting agony. Blinded by it, he forced himself toward a casement door that opened as he leaned into it.
He was bleeding badly now. He could see a package-crowded stockroom, and he stumbled in. Crouched on trembling legs, he waited. Airborne Express mail was stacked all around. There was no possible place to hide if they came through. If they found him now.
He couldn't think clearly. Everything was blurry. His forehead, his cheeks, and the back of his neck throbbed from the splinters of glass embedded in his flesh. He felt dizzy and sick. And he was filled with rage.
Gunshot explosions and horrible screams continued to echo through the Societe Generale building. Then warbling police sirens shrieked and howled outside. They filled the air with the sudden news of terrifying disaster. Carroll finally took off his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his bleeding arm.
Michel Chevron would be telling nothing about the powerful black market in Europe and the Middle East now. Nothing about what Green Band might be.
Who was behind this horrifying noonday massacre? What could the French banker Michel Chevron have possibly known?
Carroll was too weak to stand. He slumped against a plaster wall, his head down between his knees.
What could Chevron have possibly known?
What could be worth this terrifying massacre?
What in the name of God could justify this?
14
Queens, New York
It was a magical moment, one that Sergeant Harry Stemkowsky knew he would never be able to forget. It was like a fantastic movie scene he'd been dreaming about for as long as he could remember.
As dawn edged through soiled, slate-gray skies, Stemkowsky rolled his wheelchair down the concrete ramp he'd built to get in and out of his house in Jackson Heights, Queens. His wife, Mary, a former nurse who was ten years older than Harry, sauntered close behind him.
“This is it, sweetheart,” she said in a whisper.
“This is definitely it,” Harry said brightly.
Mary Stemkowsky carefully set down Harry's two new Dunhill travel bags. She glanced at her husband. She couldn't believe how impressive and businesslike he looked in his dark pin-striped suit. His blond hair and beard were neatly trimmed and shaped. He held a soft leather attache case that looked as if it cost big money, impossible money.
“Excited, Harry? I'll bet you are.” Mary Stemkowsky couldn't control a shy, softly blossoming grin as she spoke. She believed that Harry was truly a saint. You could ask any of his friends at the Vets Cab Company, any of the physical therapists who worked with him at the VA hospital, where she and Harry had originally met.
Mary Stemkowsky didn't know how he'd done it, but Harry seemed to completely accept what had happened to him more than a decade before in Vietnam. He almost never complained about the wounds or the constant pain. In fact, he seemed to live his life for other people, for their happiness, especially her own.
“Tell the truth, I'm a li-li-little scared. Nuh-nuh-nice scared.”
Harry tried to smile, but he looked pale around the gills, Mary thought. She immediately bent and kissed him on both cheeks, then on his slightly bloated lips. It was strange the way she loved him so much, what with his infirmities, his physical limitations. But she did. She truly loved Harry more than she loved the rest of the world combined.
“Sa-sorry
“Oh, I'll go next time, I guess. Sure, sure. You better believe I will.” Mary suddenly laughed, and her broad, horsey smile was close to radiant. “You look like the president of a bank or something. President of Chase Manhattan Bank. You do, Harry. I'm so proud of you.”
She stooped and kissed him again. She didn't want him to ruin one minute, not a single heartbeat, of his European trip just because she couldn't go with him this time.
“Oh, here he comes! Here comes Mitchell now.” She pointed up along the row of dull, virtually faceless tract houses.
A yellow cab had turned onto their street. Mary could make out Mitchell Cohen at the wheel, wearing his usual flap-eared Russian fur hat.
She knew that Mitchell and Harry had been working on their business scheme for almost two years. All they would tell her and Neva Cohen was that it had to do with arbitrage-which Mary loosely understood as trading currencies from country to country, making money on discrepancies in the exchange rates-and that this arbitrage scheme was their ticket out of hacking cabs for the rest of their lives.
“He takes two Dilantins before bedtime,” Mary said as she and Mitchell Cohen helped load Harry into the Vets cab.
Harry absolutely cracked up at that remark. He loved the way Mary continually worried about him, worried about dumb things like the Dilantin, which he took regularly every night and three times during the day.
“You have a wonderful trip over to Europe, Harry. Don't work
“Awhh, cah-cah-mon. I muh-muh-miss you already,” Harry Stemkowsky muttered, and he sincerely meant it.
He'd never really been able to understand why Mary had decided to live with a cripple in the first place. He was just happy that she had. Now he was going to do something for her, something that both of them deserved. Harry Stemkowsky was going to become an instant winner in life. And fuck everybody who didn't believe in him.
Tears suddenly welled in his red-rimmed eyes. They continued to roll down his cheeks as the Vets cab slowly bumped up the deserted early morning Queens street. He had wanted desperately to take Mary along-it just wasn't possible. Among other complications, he wasn't going to Geneva, Switzerland, as he'd told her. He
