The Zero Hour (27 page)

This particular Airtel was addressed to ADIC NY, the assistant director of the FBI in charge of the New York office. It was from Perry Taylor, and it listed members of a special working group of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, code-named Operation MINOTAUR, along with their affiliations. Five of them were FBI: two from headquarters, two from the Boston office, and one recently retired from the Boston office.

Baumann understood at once that these were the names of the FBI agents who had been assigned to investigate an “alleged,” “impending” act of terrorism in New York City. It was Baumann they were after.

He had the names of his hunters.

He did not want to take the time to bring the papers to a photocopy shop, so he copied down the names and identifying information and replaced the papers neatly in the briefcase. Then he got out of his car, opened the trunk of Taylor’s Olds, replaced the briefcase, and shut the trunk. He quickly leaned over to retrieve the transmitter from the rear bumper—it was too risky to leave it there any longer. He felt along the underside of the bumper until his fingers slid up against the magnetized transmitter and closed around it, and then he heard someone speak very close to him.

“Freeze,” the voice said. “FBI.”

Baumann whirled around and saw Perry Taylor standing just a few feet away, and he could not suppress a smile. He had been sloppy, or perhaps he had underestimated Taylor. Taylor must have seen someone standing next to his car, must have left the supermarket by some unseen exit. He had no shopping bags.

This was a very bad situation indeed, and Baumann’s head spun. He did not want to kill Perry Taylor; that had not been his intention at all. Baumann gave an abashed smile, laughed awkwardly. He spoke in a Southern accent, which by now felt natural. “Of all the places to drop a contact lens,” he said.

He could see Taylor hesitate. “Where’d you drop it?” Taylor asked skeptically. Had he seen Baumann open the trunk?

No one was walking by, no one even close. No one could see them. “Right … right here, somewhere, it’s got to be,” Baumann said, shaking his head. “Man, it’s one of those days.”

“I know what you mean,” Taylor said. “Here, let me help you.”

Of course: Taylor didn’t have a gun with him. His gun was locked in his trunk. Taylor moved closer, pretending to help Baumann look for the lost contact lens, but really—Baumann was sure of it—to grab Baumann, catch him off base, perhaps attempt to disarm him.

“Thanks,” Baumann said, and waited for Taylor to come closer, and when Taylor did, Baumann’s right hand shot toward Taylor’s throat, as quick as the dart of a snake’s tongue, and got hold of the FBI man’s trachea and squeezed, and Perry Taylor sank to the ground dead, looking very much like a middle-aged man overcome by the sweltering heat of a Washington summer evening.

Part 4

FINGERPRINTS

Under fragrant bait there is certain
to be a hooked fish.

—Sun-tzu,
The Art of War

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Police around the world still use the old Henry system of fingerprint classification, which groups fingerprints by their various features, their loops, arches, whorls, and ridges.

It is a fairly baroque system. A loop may be ulnar or radial; a central pocket loop may be plain or tented. Whorls come in four types: plain, center-loop, double-loop, or accidental. Additionally, a whorl can be an inside tracing, an outside tracing, or a “meet” tracing. Then there are ridges. Every fingerprint has a unique pattern of ridges, enclosures, ending ridges, and bifurcations, places where the ridge lines end or split in two. To make a positive identification, one must have eight or more points of identification, also called Galton’s details, after the nineteenth-century English scientist Sir Francis Galton. Under the Henry classification system, unfortunately, comparisons have to be done manually, in a print-by-print search, which can take weeks or even months.

But since 1986 a different, computerized method of sorting and storing prints has been in use in the United States. It is called the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, and it uses high-speed optical scanners to analyze prints, digitalize them, and store them in computerized form. The position of minutiae are counted on a 512-pixel-per-inch scale and converted into a series of numbers, which can easily be compared with others. Loops and whorls are effectively turned into bytes and bits. Using AFIS, the FBI and major police forces around the nation have the remarkable ability to compare fingerprints at the rate of nine thousand a minute.

The FBI’s Identification Division has the fingerprints of some twenty-four million convicted criminals on line, in addition to the print file cards of forty million other Americans, including federal employees and military veterans. And very recently, the FBI’s AFIS has been electronically connected to AFIS machines at state capitals and major cities around the country. This network, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which is housed in a new site in Clarksburg, West Virginia, ties the local police booking station to the FBI in a paperless transmission system that will soon eliminate the old-fashioned fingerprint cards entirely.

*   *   *

The task force had been hastily assembled by beeper. Even Ken Alton, awakened from slumber, straggled in clutching a take-out cup of coffee. Sarah passed out copies of Henrik Baumann’s “ten-print,” his ten fingerprints compiled on a file card by the South Africans. On this form, each print was carefully rolled onto its own block. On the lower portion of the card were the “slap prints,” the four fingers of each hand slapped down at once.

“You may not have any use for the prints,” she announced, “but it’s there in case you do. Those numbers there beneath each print are the Henry numbers, which the South Africans still use. Stone-age technology, but we’re not in a position to complain. The Identification Division is already working on these, blowing them up, tracing the ridges, and converting them to the AFIS system.”

“What, no lip prints?” asked Lieutenant Roth dryly.

There were a few chuckles, some louder than others, as if this were an inside joke.

“Sorry?” Sarah said, mystified.

“It’s a running joke,” explained Wayne Kim from NYPD Forensics, shaking his head. “There’ve been a couple of papers in the
Journal of Forensic Science
on using lip prints for personal identification. They look at labial wrinkles and grooves, bifurcated, trifurcated, reticulate, stuff like that.”

“I see,” she said. “Now, a couple of things about these prints you may or may not know, since I know you’re not all fingerprint jocks. Until we get the AFIS classifications, you can fax these ten-prints or receive latents by fax, but make sure to use not just the high-resolution fax, but the
secure
high-resolution fax, okay? And be careful, because even the high-res fax can introduce false minutiae. If you get a set of latents you think might be from our guy, I’d rather courier them down to Washington than mess around with the fax.”

“Sarah,” Ken said groggily, “what’s the deal on reliability of AFIS matches?”

“Okay, the machine classifies the quality of the prints A or B. C is a reject. It doesn’t give you a definite yes-or-no, this-is-it kind of thing. It’ll give you a list of the top contenders in descending order by PCN number. A so-called perfect score is nineteen thousand, nine hundred ninety-eight. But remember, we’re in the law-enforcement business, not the intelligence business, so everything we do has to stand up in court. And legally, even after the computer spits out the winner, ID’s still going to have to chart it by hand, or rather by eye.”

Ken nodded.

“We going to put this out on the NCIC?” asked Mark McLaughlin of the NYPD, who had sandy blond hair and a face dense with freckles.

Sarah shook her head. “NCIC uses a different system, a simple numerical classification the Bureau came up with in order to be able to store prints on computer. It’s based on a line count of ridges between the delta and the core—you know, ‘center loop, outside tracing,’ or ‘radial loop with a four count,’ like that. It’s actually a pretty crude system, useful for pointing the way and that’s all. AFIS and IAFIS are really a hell of a lot more useful.”

“And Albany, too, since we’re assuming the guy’s right here,” Lieutenant Roth said. “The Division of Criminal Justice, Fingerprints Section. So if he’s arrested and printed anywhere in the state, we’ve got him. I say it’s worth the time to send prints on to every state to search for a match, and retain them if they’re willing to. New York will, but a lot of states won’t.”

“So what do you want us to do with prints if we get any?” asked one of the street agents, Dennis Stewart, whose specialty was organized crime.

“We’ve got some basic equipment set up here,” she replied. “A RAMCAM, the little fingerprint reader that makes a thermal picture of the print, and the CRIMCON, which is hooked up to a video monitor. Lieutenant Roth is the man to see if you have a print—he’ll be in charge of all that.”

Later, as the group dispersed, Pappas approached her and spoke quietly. “Listen, Sarah, with all this sophisticated technology, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that all the fancy computers in the world aren’t going to make up for some good solid shoeleather.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m just afraid that the clock’s ticking and we’re being sidetracked by all these toys.”

“Alex, we ignore the new technology at our own peril.”

“You remember when the Reagan administration spent seventeen million bucks on a computer system they called TRAP/TARGIT that was supposed to predict terrorist incidents based on early signals? It was a complete bust. Never worked. A huge joke. I’m just wondering whether we shouldn’t be doing some more basic, old-fashioned brainstorming. What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m picking up Jared from camp. Between six and seven at Penn Station.”

“You two doing something, going out for dinner?”

“I didn’t have any plans. I thought I’d see what Jared’s up for.”

“Maybe I could come by later, when Jared’s asleep. No, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you ask Jared when he gets in if he feels like having dinner with you and me at a nice Greek place I discovered on First Avenue. You and I can talk, and Jared can put in his two cents. But I don’t want to horn in on your little reunion—”

“Oh, he always loves seeing you, Alex. But I don’t know about Greek. You know how discriminating he is about food.”

“McDonald’s it is. The one at the intersection of Seventy-first, Broadway, and Amsterdam.”

*   *   *

Alex Pappas devoured his Big Mac and fries with as much gusto as he did moussaka or spanakopita. A good portion of his fries, of course, went directly to Jared, who ate ravenously, as if he’d just come not from summer camp but a Soviet hard-labor camp.

In the two weeks since she’d last seen him, Jared seemed to have grown taller and more slender, more a young man than a pudgy little boy. Sarah could at times see him as an adult, a breathtakingly, head-turningly handsome man. And in the next instant he was again the kid in tie-dyed shorts with scuffed knees letting out a fake belch, telling them about all the games he’d learned at camp. “I can’t wait to play in Central Park,” he said.

Sarah shook her head. “Not without supervision, you’re not.”

“Oh, God, I don’t need
supervision
.”

“You’re not playing in Central Park unless I’m there, Jared. ‘Stranger danger,’ remember?”

Jared pouted. “I’m not a baby, Mom.”

“Central Park can be a dangerous place for kids. That’s the rule. Only with supervision. Now, I’m going to be really, really busy during the days, and I don’t want you staying in the apartment all day and watching TV, so I got you into the summer program at the YMCA near Lincoln Center. It’s on West Sixty-third Street, not too far from here. Sort of a neat building. That’s where you’ll spend your days.”

“YMCA?” Jared said. “I don’t want to swim.”

“It’s not just swimming, it’s arts and crafts and basketball and other games. You’ll have a great time.”

“Oh, God,” Jared wailed.

“Believe me,” Pappas said to him, “when you get to be as old as me, you’d give anything to be able to spend your days at a day camp.
Anything!
”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“If Baumann is indeed in New York City,” Pappas said after Jared had gone to sleep, “he has to have entered within the last month, since his escape from Pollsmoor.”

Sarah nodded. “That narrows the time frame, but we don’t know if he entered legally or illegally. He’s a pro, so he might have sneaked in without a trace. Which makes finding him just about impossible.”

“You can’t think that way. You have to think in terms of probabilities. Yes, people can and do enter the U.S. illegally by walking across the border from Canada—so you have the Canadians search their entry records.”

“And if he came in by way of Mexico? We’re screwed if we have to depend on the Mexicans to help us out.”

“Think probabilities. Mexico’s used far less often for illegal entries in cases like this.”

“But what do we ask the Canadians to search for? They’re only going to be able to help if he flew in on his own passport, under his true name. Which isn’t likely.”

“Granted, but it’s still worth a try.”

“And if he flew into the U.S. directly—whatever passport he used—there are lots of international airports. The guy has his choice. Wouldn’t he choose some little, Podunk place like—oh, I don’t know, isn’t there an international airport in Great Falls, Montana, with just one INS inspector?”

“Not at all,” Pappas said. “One inspector means much closer scrutiny, which he wants to avoid. Much better to enter the country at a large, crowded airport that’s got six hundred people waiting to get through Customs and Immigration. All those people, and just one poor, overworked customs inspector for the teeming hordes. That’s what I’d do—JFK or Dulles or Miami, something big like that.”

“Great,” she said bitterly. “So we’re looking for a guy who entered the U.S. sometime in the last month. Under any name whatsoever. Just … a guy. That really narrows it, doesn’t it?”