He turned his face away from the president, who seemed, in his Olympian wisdom, to have reached this decision single-handedly. That fact troubled and perplexed Carroll. But there was something else, one thing that disturbed him even more.
It was the general boardroom coldness, the sterile big business atmosphere that was growing up everywhere in the government. It was the supersecrecy, the superdeceit usually under the misleading cover of “national security” and “need to know.”
“I guess I understand, Mr. President, and I'm afraid I have to quit under those circumstances. With all due respect, I resign, sir. I'm out of this.”
Arch Carroll got up and walked out of the conference room, out of the White House entirely. It was over for him. Washington was a bureaucratic company town, and he just didn't want to work for the company anymore.
Approximately an hour later, Arch Carroll was in an Eastern shuttle jet destined for New York.
Outside, an electrical storm whipped the sky. From his window he could see dramatic black clouds. He stared at the gathering storm, and he felt overwhelmed by a curious loneliness.
It was at times like these he missed Nora most. Nobody he'd met before or since was as good at making him feel whole; nobody else seemed able to make him laugh at himself. And that was the real trick, being able to laugh when you needed to-and right now, Arch Carroll needed to laugh at something.
He felt Caitlin Dillon's hand on his arm. Turning, he gave her a weary half smile. She was trying her hardest to be sympathetic, to be kind.
“You must know it isn't your fault. Everybody's frustrated, Arch. Green Band didn't just do a number on Wall Street, it created an atmosphere of panic. Our president, who is turning out to be even less decisive than I imagined he'd be, made a panicky decision. That's all.”
She patted his arm, and he felt like a kid with a scarred, bloody knee. This warm, almost maternal, streak in Caitlin surprised him.
“It isn't your fault. You've got to keep that in mind. Washington is loaded with scared men making inadequate decisions.” She paused before asking, “What will you do? Go into legal practice? Draw up wills? Deed of trust? Maybe something like corporate law?”
Carroll drifted back from somewhere distant inside his mind. Her light sarcasm didn't escape him. He even welcomed it. Law, he thought. The reason he'd never used his degree was because he couldn't stomach the idea of law tomes, of hunting down precedents in the dust of unreadable books, of having to fraternize with other lawyers. They were a breed that depressed the hell out of him.
He was quite for a time. Then he said, “Can you honestly imagine me reporting to that CIA clown Phil Berger?”
Caitlin shook her head. A puff of smoke surrounded her face a moment, and she blinked. “He's an egghead in more than one sense of the word. The man must have been hatched.”
Carroll suddenly roared. The storm rocked the plane a moment. “When I was a kid, my mother used to give us, hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Some tradition from the old country. All of us kids would beat the tops open with our spoons. That's what I should have had back there in the White House. A goddamn big spoon to beat on Phil Berger's head.”
Carroll turned his head toward Caitlin Dillon. She was laughing, too. It was a musical laugh, like some quirky tune you couldn't forget, one that ran through your mind in a tantalizing way but you couldn't put a name to. “You surprise me. You really surprise me.”
“Why is that?”
“You look so damn straight and businesslike, but you've got this weird sense of humor underneath all that-”
“Weird for a Wall Street business type, I guess. For a dyed-in-the-wool midwesterner. A Presbyterian.”
Arch Carroll laughed some more, and it felt pretty good. Tension knots in his neck were finally loosening up. “Yeah. Of course. For a country hick from Ohio.”
“My father taught me that you need a good sense of humor to survive on Wall Street. He survived it, though just barely.”
She gazed at him, saying nothing more. She had stopped laughing, and her expression was serious; her eyes searched his face. She looked as if a small, important gear had just shifted in her mind.
Carroll watched her, conscious of something happening in his body, the unsettling motions of desire. For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was betraying Nora, betraying a sacred memory.
Christ, it had been a long time since his body had reacted like this; he was suddenly aware of how deprived he was, how hungry he'd become. He raised one hand, his fingers trembling slightly, and placed the palm against Caitlin's cheek.
Gently, tenderly, he kissed her.
And then the moment was over, suddenly, as if it had never happened.
Caitlin Dillon was looking from the window at the theatrical cloud display and talking about how soon they'd be back in New York-and what Arch Carroll wondered was whether he'd really kissed this woman. Or if it had been nothing more than a passing hallucination.
Manhattan
When Carroll returned to 13 Wall Street, all that remained was for him to clear out his desk and leave the world of pointless stakeouts and twenty-hour workdays. It was easy and mostly painless, he thought. Something he probably should have done a long time ago. He'd had enough cops and robbers for one lifetime.
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Walter Trentkamp came in. The FBI man walked slowly across the room. He leaned against the cluttered desk and sighed loudly.
“I'd quit, too, if I had an office like this.” Trentkamp frowned. He stared around the room. “I mean, I've seen bleak before.”
“What can I do for you, Walter?”
“You can reconsider the decision you made in Washington.”
“Did somebody send you up here? Did they tell you to go talk some sense into Carroll?”
Trentkamp pursed his lips. He shook his head. “What'll you do now?”
“Law,” Carroll lied. It was something to say.
“You're too old already. Law's a young man's game.”
Carroll sighed. “Quit, Walter. Quit it right now.”
Trentkamp continued to frown. “Nobody knows terrorists the way you do. If you leave, lives will be lost. And you know it. So what if your goddamn pride is a little wounded right now?”
Carroll sat down hard behind his desk. He hated Walter Trentkamp just then. He hated the idea that another person could see through him so easily. Walter was so goddamn smart. There was an impressive superiority that peeked through his policeman's facade every now and then. “You're a manipulative son of a bitch.”
“Do you think I got where I am without some small understanding of human foibles?” Trentkamp asked. He held out his hand. “You're a cop. It's in your blood. Every day you remind me a little more of your father. He was a stubborn bastard, too.”
Carroll hesitated. With his own hand in midair, he hesitated. He could choose-right now he had a choice.
He shrugged and shook Trentkamp's hand.
“Welcome back on board, Archer.”
On board what? Carroll wondered. “One thing I want you to know. When Green Band is settled, I quit.”
“Sure,” Trentkamp said. “That's understood. Just keep in touch until Green Band
“I want to be a free man, Walter.”
“Don't we all?” Walter Trentkamp asked, and finally smiled. “You're so fucking cute when you pout.”
16
Manhattan
On the second floor of 13 Wall, meanwhile, Caitlin Dillon sat in dark silhouette on a high wooden stool. Most of the overhead lights in the room known as the crisis room had been dimmed. She listened to the soothing electronic whirr of half a dozen IBM and Hewlett-Packard computers, complex machines she was entirely comfortable around.
It had been Caitlin's original idea to collect and evaluate all the available newspaper information and police intelligence flowing in over the word processor consoles. The news arrived in sudden, urgent bursts, streams of tiny green letters that came from both the financial sectors and the police agencies all around the world. As she sat there, her eyes hurting from the glare of the screens, she pondered two things.
One was the scary and real possibility of a total international financial collapse.
The other was the intricate and almost hopeless puzzle of her own private life.
Caitlin was aware that she had lived her thirty-four years subject to two strong and contrary urges, two radically different pulls on her energies and emotions. Part of her wanted to be a traditional woman: feminine, desirable, the kind of woman who loved to dress in expensive things from Saks, or Bergdorf Goodman, or Chloe and Chanel in Paris.
The other separate and equal part was independent, highly competitive, and ambitious, possessed of an unusually fierce will.
Many years before, Caitlin's father, who was a deeply principled and intelligent investment banker in the Midwest, had tried to stand up to the large Wall Street clique of firms. He had lost his battle, lost an unfair fight, and been thrown into bankruptcy. Year after year Caitlin had listened as he'd lectured bitterly against the injustice, the unfairness, and sometimes the utter stupidity built into the American financial system. In the same way that some children grow up wanting to be crusading lawyers, Caitlin had decided that she wanted to help reform the financial system. She had finally come east as a kind of avenging angel. She was fascinated and repelled by the self-contained world of big business and by Wall Street in particular. In her heart of hearts Caitlin wanted the financial system to work properly, and she was fierce, almost obsessed with the application of her moral position as the SEC enforcer…
It was likewise the independent, nontraditional part of Caitlin that enjoyed other mild eccentricities-like wandering the streets of New York in tight-fitting Italian jeans, crumpled oversize T-shirts, leather boots that came almost to her butt.
She might happily devote a particular Sunday afternoon to some exotic Italian recipe from Marcella Hazan-but she could easily go weeks abhorring the idea of doing any cooking at all, avoiding all housework in her East Side apartment. She was proud of earning almost six figures a year at the SEC, but sometimes she wanted
