Caitlin took in the command post scene and then, as she stepped nimbly around the broken glass and debris that had been shaken loose from the ceiling, she was surrounded by heavily armed policemen who demanded to see her identification.
She smiled to herself as she showed her ID. No one knew who she was; no one recognized her here in the stock exchange foyer.
How very typical that was. Damn it, how typical.
For the past three years the SEC's director of enforcement had been a most unlikely Wall Street figure: Caitlin Dillon was clearly a major force yet a person of supreme mystery to almost everybody around her.
Women in general had only been permitted on the floor of the stock exchange since 1967. Nevertheless the idea hadn't particularly caught on. In fact, in the visitors' gallery of the exchange one infamous sign still retained a position of prominence:
WOMEN MAKE POOR SPECULATORS.
WHEN THROWN UPON THEIR OWN
RESOURCES, THEY ARE COMPARATIVELY
HELPLESS. EXCELLING IN CERTAIN LINES,
THEY ARE FORCED TO TAKE BACKSEATS
IN SPECULATION. WITHOUT THE
ASSISTANCE OF A MAN, A WOMAN ON
WALL STREET IS LIKE A SHIP WITHOUT A
RUDDER.
Caitlin Dillon had actually inherited her job because of her predecessor's bad luck in the shape of a sudden fatal coronary. Caitlin knew that insiders had predicted she wouldn't last two months. They compared the fateful situation with that of a politician's wife taking over for an unexpectedly invalid husband. Caitlin was called by some “the interim enforcer.”
For that reason, and some strong personal ones from her past, she had decided that-for however long she might last in the job-she was going to become the sternest, hardest SEC enforcement officer since Professor James Landis had been doing the hiring himself. What did she possibly have to lose?
She was, therefore, stubbornly serious. Some said Caitlin Dillon was unnecessarily obsessed with white-collar criminal investigations, with skillfully prosecuting malfeasance by senior officers of major American corporations.
“I'll tell you something off the record,” Caitlin had once said to a dear friend, Meg O'Brian, the financial editor of Newsweek. “The Ten Most Wanted men in America are all working on Wall Street.”
As the “interim” enforcement officer at the SEC, Caitlin Dillon made a lot of news very fast. The mystery of Caitlin Dillon-how she had surfaced virtually from nowhere-grew each week she held on to the important job. The power brokers on the Street still wanted to replace her, but suddenly they found they couldn't do so very easily. Caitlin was simply too good at what she did. She'd become too visible. She was almost instantly a strong symbol for the disenfranchised in America 's financial system.
At seven forty-five that morning, Caitlin finally reached her office inside 13 Wall. It was respectably large, even elegant. She removed her coat and took a deep breath as she sat down. On her desk lay a damage report prepared for her the previous night. As her eyes scanned the page, she felt a deepening despair at the sheer amount of destruction done:
The Federal Reserve Bank
Salomon Brothers
Bankers Trust
Affiliated Fund
Merrill Lynch
U.S. Trust Corporation
The Depository Trust Company
The list went on to detail fourteen downtown New York buildings that had been partially or completely destroyed.
She closed her eyes and placed her hands on the report. If only it could give her a hint, a clue. Fourteen different buildings in the Wall Street financial district-the whole thing was beyond her, out of control by any measure.
She opened her eyes.
It was the start of the second day of her formal investigation of Green Band, and she knew no more than she'd known before. It was going to be a long, long Sunday.
Arch Carroll strode briskly from a comfortable State Department limousine toward the ominous gray stone entranceway to 13 Wall Street. At least Green Band had left this building mostly intact-a fact that caused him to wonder. If a terrorist cell was going to strike out hard at U.S. capitalism, why wouldn't they destroy the New York Stock Exchange?
Carroll had on a knee-length, black leather topcoat that Nora had given him the Christmas before her death. At the time she'd joked that it made him look like a tough-guy hero in an action movie. The coat was now one of his few personal treasures; that it was a little too tight under the arms didn't matter. There was no way he'd have it altered. He wanted it exactly as it was when Nora had given it to him.
Carroll was smoking a crumpled cigarette. Sometimes on the weekends he wore the coat and smoked crumpled cigarettes when he took Mickey Kevin and Clancy to the New York Knicks or Rangers games. It made both kids laugh hysterically. They told him he was trying to look like Clint Eastwood in the movies. He wasn't, he knew. Clint Eastwood was trying to look like him-like some nihilistic, tough-guy city cop.
Hurrying down the long, echoing corridors, Carroll pulled his way out of the leather coat. For a few hefty strides he left it capelike over his shoulders. Then he folded it over one arm, in the hope that he'd look a little more civilized. There were lots of very straight business people in the hallowed halls of 13 Wall.
Carroll pushed open leather-covered doors into a formal meeting room thick with perspiration and stale tobacco smoke. The room where the New York Stock Exchange professional staff usually met was the size of a large theater.
The scheduled meeting was already in progress. He was late. He was also weary from his flight, and his nerves-kept moderately alert by an infusion of amphetamine-were beginning to complain. He glanced at his watch. There was another long day ahead of him.
Carroll scanned the shadowy room. It was filled with New York City police and U.S. Army personnel, with corporate lawyers and investigators from the major banks and brokerage houses on Wall Street. The only seats left were' way in front.
Carroll groaned and crouched low. He clumsily climbed over gray-and-blue pin-striped legs, and over someone's abundant lap, toward the front row. He thought everybody in the room must be staring at him.
The speaker was saying, “Let me tell you how to make a hell of a lot of money on Wall Street. All you have to do is steal a little from the rich, steal a little from the middle rich, steal a lot from the lower rich…”
Nervous laughter cascaded around the vast meeting room. It was a muted, mirthless outbreak that sounded more like a release of fear than anything else.
The speaker went on: “The Wall Street security system simply doesn't work. As you all know, the computer setup here is one of the most antiquated in all of the business world. That's why this disaster could happen.”
Carroll finally found a seat. He lowered himself onto it until only his head peeked above the theater's gray velvet seat back and pressed his knees against the wooden stage in front.
“The computer system on Wall Street is a complete disgrace…”
Carroll looked up and took in the meeting's speaker. Jesus. He was completely taken aback by the sight of Caitlin Dillon on the podium. Her hair, a sleek chestnut-brown color, was bobbed at the shoulders. Long legs, slender waist. Tall-maybe five feet eight. She looked, if anything, even more intriguing than she'd seemed that first night in Washington.
She was staring down at him. Her brown eyes were very calm, measuring everything they saw. Yes, she was staring directly down at Carroll himself.
“Are you expecting trouble during my briefing, Mr. Carroll?” Her eyes had fastened onto his Browning, his beat-up leather shoulder holster. He was suddenly embarrassed by her question and the way his name had sounded through her microphone. Those pale red lips seemed to be lightly mocking him.