The Zero Hour (26 page)

“But if the Manhattan Bank is the target,” Sarah said, “why bother with nine hundred other companies?”

“On the assumption that the Manhattan Bank might be one of a
series
of targets. Probably I’m wrong, but I figure it’s safer to rule things out instead of being surprised down the line.”

“What are you going to ask them?”

“If they’ve received any threats or noticed any suspicious behavior. This is New York City. Threats and suspicious behavior are a way of life, so the answer will be yes, and we’ll have to screen. I mean, we got the resources, right, so why not squander them?”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Sarah said.

“Plus, I was thinking we should just go down the list of major landmark buildings and locations and keep them on our radar screens.”

“Like the Empire State Building and the Trade Center towers?”

“And Rockefeller Center, Lincoln Center, the United Nations, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the New York Stock Exchange.”

“The Statue of Liberty?”

“Hey, a bunch of Croatian nationalists planted a bomb there fifteen, twenty years ago. The thing went off. Fair amount of damage, luckily no injuries. The big lady’s managed by the National Park Service, and they use electronic scanning equipment on visitor’s packages.”

She nodded, leaned back in the mustard-yellow chair. It gave a squeak of protest. There was a deferential knock at the door, and Russell Ullman entered, bearing a large manila envelope. “It’s in,” he said.

“What’s in?” Sarah asked.

“The prints.”

“The prints of your Prince,” Roth said. “I told you someday your prints would come.”

“We’re on the home stretch,” Ullman said. He could barely contain his excitement. “We got him now.”

Lieutenant Roth rubbed a large, fleshy hand over his face. “Oh, is that right?” he asked, affecting the deepest boredom. “Kid, the race hasn’t even started.”

Sarah snatched the envelope from Ullman and tore it open. Roth was right. They hadn’t even started.

It was a complete set of fingerprints, carefully done.

“Where’s the photo?” she asked.

“They couldn’t turn one up,” Ullman said.

“
What?
What do you mean, they couldn’t ‘turn one up’? They couldn’t find a photograph of the guy?”

“The South Africans say they’re unable to turn up any photo of Baumann. In cases like his—deep-cover agents—the old secret service used to keep only one photograph, in its locked central personnel files. Reasons of security. But that one photograph appears to be missing—stolen, pilfered, something.”

“Try the prison, Russell,” Sarah snapped. “You didn’t think of that?”

“No, I did,” Ullman replied. “Pollsmoor photographs all incoming prisoners, like every other prison, and stores them in two different places, but both photos of Baumann have disappeared sometime in the last few weeks.”

“Bullshit!” Sarah exploded.

“No, really,” Ullman protested. “They did a thorough search, but the file photos have been stolen.”

“How can that be?”

“Look,” Ullman said, “for years the South African government did everything it could to keep this guy’s face a secret. The way CIA does with its deep-cover agents. Maybe there were three extant photographs of him in all the government files. So if our guy had enough pull, or some powerful friends in the right places, it was no big deal to make those photos disappear. The South Africans protected his anonymity so well and for so long that now—when they
want
a picture—they can’t get their hands on one.”

“Looks like your terrorist,” Roth interjected, “has some powerful friends.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Perry Taylor arrived at the FBI headquarters at 8:20
A.M.
and pulled into the main employee entrance in the middle of the Tenth Street side of the building. This meant he would be in his office by 8:30
A.M.
He was a punctual man, which was good for Baumann, because it meant he was also a man of regular habits, a most useful vulnerability.

Unfortunately, Taylor’s car did not leave the FBI building the entire day. The red dot remained fixed and flashing: the Hound Dog hadn’t been discovered, it was still transmitting, and the car hadn’t been moved.

Baumann spent a few hours walking the streets around FBI headquarters. He bought a pair of cheap sunglasses and a Washington, D.C., T-shirt, and played the tourist. For lunch he got a hot dog from a stand at Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

He noticed that the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the FBI garage was shut, the gates drawn, presumably for security reasons. The World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings had made the FBI understandably nervous. He saw that groups of tourists could gain access to the building by taking a guided tour. For no particular reason, except that he had time to kill, he took a tour at midmorning, which began in front of a display of America’s Ten Most Wanted criminals and ended with a film about handguns.

The rest of the day he kept watch on the various employee entrances and exits to see whether Taylor emerged. He did not. Many FBI employees went out for lunch to the food malls nearby, and there was said to be a large and adequate cafeteria within the complex, but Taylor probably ate his lunch at his desk, from the white bag he had taken out of the delicatessen.

By four o’clock in the afternoon, Baumann had returned to his parked car and prepared for Taylor to leave the building. The red dot did not begin to move until 6:45
P.M.
Baumann waited until Taylor was a good distance away before he began to follow. Taylor appeared to be taking the same route home he’d taken to work.

Baumann drove with a sense of discouragement. This could go on for days, and he would learn nothing unless he got into Taylor’s office or home. Taylor was indeed going home, Baumann saw, but to be sure, he followed the Olds as far as he could prudently do so.

Getting into Taylor’s home would not be a problem, although there was no reason to believe he would find anything there. Careful FBI men like Taylor did not keep a set of files at their homes. Getting into Taylor’s office was possible, though perilous to the point of being foolhardy. Obviously he or someone who worked with or for him had been delving into Baumann’s past. That meant he might recognize Baumann in person.

But even assuming Baumann entered the office wearing a persuasive disguise, what could he expect to find there, really, without being left alone—a highly unlikely possibility?

Baumann suspected that the gray Samsonite briefcase would contain Taylor’s FBI building pass, a personnel list, or any of a hundred things. If Taylor were to stop somewhere on the way to or from work, Baumann would have an opportunity.

There was no keyless entry system on the driver’s door, which was too bad, because that would have made it easy to get into the car. All Baumann would have had to do was to watch through the binoculars as Taylor keyed in the code.

If Taylor were to leave his briefcase on the front seat again, Baumann could just slip in a slim jim and have the car open in a matter of seconds, without anyone noticing.

If Taylor locked the briefcase in the trunk, that was a different situation. There were simple, brute-force methods. You could use a dent-puller to pop the trunk lock out, then open the trunk with a screwdriver. But no matter how carefully you did it, the damage would be immediately visible. Taylor would know someone had gotten into his trunk, and he would be immediately suspicious. Such a move would blow everything.

The smash-and-grab had to be ruled out.

Baumann returned to the Jefferson, made some notes, went out for a brief walk. From a pay phone he hadn’t used before he called Perry Taylor’s number. If Mrs. Taylor answered, he would ask for him, say he was an old friend, make it clear he was not a salesman of any kind.… But Taylor answered the phone himself.

“Hello,” he said.

“Perry Taylor?” Baumann asked pleasantly.

“Speaking. Who’s this?

“Mr. Taylor, according to our records, you don’t subscribe to
Time
magazine, and we’d like to offer—”

“Sorry,” Taylor said brusquely, “but we’re not interested. Good night.”

Baumann read for a while, an architectural history of New York City, and went to sleep early.

In the morning, Baumann followed the same routine, picking up Perry Taylor’s signal from a half-mile away and following him at a distance. Once again, Taylor stopped at the delicatessen on Pennsylvania Avenue to buy what Baumann assumed was his lunch. He drove into the FBI garage by the same entrance on Tenth Street, and again did not leave the building until his workday was done.

In the meantime, Baumann had plenty of time to do what he needed to do. He returned to the Jefferson and placed a call to the auto dealership whose name—Brautigan Motors—was on Perry Taylor’s license-plate bracket.

“Yes,” he said when the service department came on the line. “I feel like such an idiot.” He laughed. “This is Perry Taylor, and I bought a car from you guys, a ’94 Olds, and I just went and locked my keys in the car.”

From his brief conversation with Perry Taylor the night before, Baumann had learned the eccentricities of the FBI man’s voice—a resonant baritone, a slight Southern accent, a careful enunciation. The imitation would fool anyone except a good friend; fortunately, the young man in the service department did not seem to know Taylor.

“Sorry to hear that, sir. I assume you don’t have a spare set—?”

“I’m embarrassed to say it, but my wife has the spare, and she’s in Miami Beach visiting the in-laws. Pretty swift of me, huh?”

“Mr. Taylor, I’m going to have to ask you for your VIN number, which is located on the car or in your paperwork. Do you think you can find that for me?”

“No problem, I got that.”

“Great,” the young man said. “Otherwise we
would
have a problem.” Baumann gave him the VIN number. “Okay, now hold on a moment while I pull your file.”

When he returned to the phone a few minutes later, the serviceman said, “I’m going to give you a number now, Mr. Taylor.” He spoke as if Mr. Taylor were a simpleton, which was probably a fair assumption given the circumstances. He gave Baumann the number. “You bring that number—it’s your key code, okay?—to any locksmith, and they can make you a new one. All right?”

“All right, great,” Baumann said. “Thanks so much.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The next afternoon, unfortunately, Perry Taylor drove home from work without stopping. Baumann placed a call to the auto dealership, asked for Kevin, the young man who had helped him, and thanked him for his help. It would not do at all to have Kevin call Taylor to make sure everything turned out all right.

The next morning, Taylor made his regular delicatessen stop, but that was too short a time to do anything.

That evening after work, Taylor made a stop at a Giant Foods supermarket a few miles from his home, part of a strip mall containing a People’s Drug, a Crown Books, and a variety of smaller shops.

Baumann pulled into the lot just in time to see Taylor get out of the car.

The opportunity had come.

Taylor locked his briefcase in the trunk of the car. Baumann waited for him to enter the store before he went up to the Oldsmobile.

He had left the car alarm off again. Baumann nonchalantly inserted the trunk key in the lock and popped it open. Taylor kept his trunk immaculate—no debris, no old newspapers or rags or dog-eared magazines. There was only an unopened can of tennis balls and the gray Samsonite briefcase. He lifted it out, shut the trunk, and returned to his own, rented car.

Although the briefcase had a locking mechanism beneath its handle, three numbered dials, Taylor had not locked it, and why would he? It was safe in his trunk.

In one of the pockets there was a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, Model 1006, which took 10mm rounds. There was also a datebook and a thick sheaf of file folders. As he went through the datebook and the files, wearing latex gloves, Baumann began to sweat. He turned the car on to get the air-conditioning going, but it did a feeble job. The car had to be in drive for the air-conditioning to really kick in.

Taylor was not holding a shopping list, so it was possible that he was only making a quick stop, in which case Baumann had to get through these files in a matter of minutes and return the briefcase to the trunk. Taylor must not know anyone had been in his car. Fortunately, Taylor had parked his Olds in a remote corner of the lot, where there was little foot traffic.

There were a lot of documents, many of them marked “Confidential” or “Secret,” but that was meaningless. No one paid any attention to any document that wasn’t marked at least “Top Secret.” Baumann knew that in the U.S. government there are three levels of secrecy: confidential, secret, and top secret. Top secret is the highest level of secrecy; despite what is commonly believed, there is none higher.

But there do exist more than thirty
subsets
of classification, known as compartments. A person in the government may be granted access to one or more compartments, yet not for others.

Then Baumann found a document that was of interest, one he hadn’t expected to find. Hadn’t
hoped
to find, in fact.

It was a sheet of green paper marked
AIRTEL
.

Baumann knew enough about the workings of the FBI to realize that there were three categories of communications sent between headquarters and field offices. A routine communication was called a Letter and was printed on white paper. One level of urgency up from Letter was an Airtel, printed on green paper. At least, at headquarters it was green; the field offices got blue copies. In the old days, an Airtel was sent by airmail, although that distinction had long since become meaningless. Now Airtels (also known as “greenies”) were either faxed or sent by courier. The highest level of urgency was a Teletype, on manila paper, which was once sent by Teletype and now faxed or couriered. The only operative difference between the two was the heading.