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single accumulation of gold stored anywhere in the world. It all belonged to foreign governments. The Fed both guarded the gold and kept track of who owned what. In an ordinary change of ownership, the Fed merely moved gold from one country's bin to another's. The gold was transported on ordinary metal carts, like books in a library. The security system in the deep basement was so highly elaborate that even the bank's president had to be accompanied when he ventured into the gold storage area.
    Now patrolmen Havens and Simmons were alone in the cavernous basement. Gold was everywhere around them. Rivers of shining gold ran through the dust and rubble. Gold bars, more than they could possibly count, surrounded them. There was well over a hundred billion dollars at the day's market price of three hundred and eighty-six dollars an ounce, all within their reach.
    Patrolman Robert Havens was hyperventilating, taking enormously deep breaths. His broad, flat face was expressionless.
    Suddenly both emergency policemen stopped inching forward. Robert Havens let out a sharp gasp. “Christ Jesus! What the hell is
this?
”
    An armed Federal Reserve Bank guard was sitting on a caned wooden chair, directly blocking their path from the gold section into the Fed's main garage. The cane chair still smoldered.
    The guard was staring directly into Robert Havens's eyes, but he was beyond words. He was horribly burned, charred a blistering charcoal black. The ghastly sight made them so sick, they almost missed the most important clue…
    Wrapped around the bank guard's right arm was a shiny, bright green band.
    As Archer Carroll carefully maneuvered his battered station wagon along the Major Deegan Expressway, the words of the Atlantic Avenue restaurant owner came back to him with the persistence of an unanswerable philosophical question:
And what are you?
…
What are you, please tell me, mister?
    He glanced at his tired face in the rearview mirror. Yeah, what are you, Arch? The Rashids and Hussein Moussa are bad people, but you're some kind of okay national hero, right?
    He was drained, completely numb. He wanted everything to be quiet and still inside his throbbing head.
    And what are you, mister?
    “Nothing worth a shit,” he finally answered in the general direction of the station wagon's fogged windshield. He felt as if he were traveling inside a sealed capsule. The world he could see beyond the grimy car windows had retreated one step farther away from him.
    He turned on the car radio, looking for a diversion from his mood.
    Immediately he heard the news about Wall Street, delivered by a voice edged in the hushed hysteria so favored by newscasters when they describe events of national importance. Carroll turned up the volume.
    Along with the newscaster's tensely delivered reportage were a couple of man-on-the-street interviews recorded against a brassy background of screaming sirens. The people spoke in shocked tones.
    Carroll tightened his hands on the steering wheel. His mind was crowded with realistic images of urban guerrilla destruction. He understood that Wall Street was a perfect target for any determined terrorist group-but he couldn't make the jump from his thoughts to the horrible reality of what had just happened.
    He didn't want to think about it. Not tonight, anyway. He was almost home, and he didn't need to drag the world inside the last sanctuary left to him.
    Moments later Carroll swung his stiff, aching body inside the familiar, musty front hallway of his house in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Automatically he hung his coat up on the hook under an ancient totem-the snoopy-eyed Sacred Heart of Jesus. Turn out the night-light. Home from the wars, at last, he thought.
    As he slumped into the living room, Carroll sighed.
    “Oh,
poor
Arch. It's almost eleven-thirty.”
    “Sorry. Didn't see you there, Mary K.”
    Mary Katherine Carroll was sitting neatly curled up on one corner of the couch. The room was only dimly