The Zero Hour

by Joseph Finder

The four young Basques came into the suite uncomfortably dressed in suits and ties: merely to enter the hotel in those days you had to wear a tie. Their leader was an enormous, bulky, awkward man with short-cropped hair. They seemed awed by Baumann, although they knew him by another name. Baumann, of course, wore a disguise and did not speak. They would never see his face. The only personal habit he allowed himself was a bit of disinformation: though he was not a smoker—that habit he developed only later, in prison—he made a point of smoking Ducados, the most popular Spanish cigarette. They would not be able to determine his nationality.

  They knew nothing about him, but he had come highly recommended by a middleman, which was why they were offering a quarter of a million dollars for his services. For 1973, that was a good deal of money. They had gathered their pesetas for a long time, scrimped and saved, robbed banks.

  In the privacy of the hotel suite, they told their story. They were Basque separatists—freedom fighters or militants or terrorists, depending upon your politics—and they belonged to an organization called ETA. In Basque, this stood for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Nation and Freedom.

  They came from Iruña and Segovia, Palencia and Cartagena. They despised the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, which oppressed their people, forbade them to speak their own languages, had even executed Basque priests during the Spanish Civil War.

  They wanted amnesty for the fifteen ETA members, students and workers, who had been jailed as political prisoners after the December 1970 Burgos trials. Franco was dying—he had been dying forever—and the only way to bring down his detested government was to assassinate his sole confidant, his number two, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. That was the only way to shatter the leadership’s aura of invincibility.

  Carrero Blanco, they explained, was the prime minister and was believed to be Franco’s designated successor, the future of the regime. He embodied pure Francismo; he represented the post-Franco era. He was anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, ultrarightist. Because of his fiercely bushy eyebrows he was known by the nickname Ogro, the ogre.

  ETA had made several bumbling attempts to eliminate both Franco and Carrero Blanco. These four young Basques had recently seen the film The Day of the Jackal, about a fictional plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, and were inspired to hire a professional, an outsider about whom nothing was known. In fact, they realized they had no choice if the job was to be done.

  Hence, Operation Ogro.

  Baumann never spoke with them—not once. He communicated with them by means of a child’s magic slate. Not once did they hear his voice. Not once were they successful in tailing him, though they tried.

  Ten ETA volunteers were provided for his assistance, but all the logistical details were left to him. Baumann prepared carefully for the hit, researched thoroughly as he always did. He learned that every morning at nine o’clock, Carrero Blanco attended mass at a Jesuit church in the Barrio de Salamanca. He studied the route that Carrero Blanco’s chauffeur took, noted the license plate of his black Dodge Dart.

  Baumann rented a basement apartment at 104 Calle Claudio Coello in the Barrio de Salamanca, along the route that Carrero Blanco took to church, located directly across the street from the church. The ETA volunteers dug a two-foot-high tunnel through the apartment wall to the middle of the street, twenty-one feet long, T-shaped. Dirt was carried out in plastic garbage bags; there was an enormous amount to dispose of. Digging the tunnel was brutally arduous labor. There was little oxygen to breathe, and the soil emitted a foul-smelling gas that gave them violent headaches. And there was always the fear that the stench of the gas would seep into the apartment building and alert the neighbors.

  The digging took eight days. Meanwhile, an ETA contact procured, from the Hernani Powder Magazine, two hundred kilos of Goma Two explosives, in tubular lengths like Pamplona sausages. Five packages of explosives were placed in large, square milk cans a few meters apart along the transverse of the tunnel. For a long time, Baumann wrestled with the conundrum of how to ensure that the explosion would throw up a vertical, upward, force; he eventually solved the problem by sealing the tunnel up with several feet of tightly packed dirt.

  The night before the assassination, Baumann dined alone on fresh baby eels and black sausage, washed down with Oruja. The next day—December 20, 1973—Carrero Blanco’s black Dodge Dart turned the corner of Diego de León on Calle Claudio Coello. There, Baumann stood on a ladder, dressed as a house painter. When the vehicle was directly over the tunnel, Baumann threw an electrical switch concealed in a paint can.

  There was a muffled explosion, and the burning wreck of the car was catapulted high up into the air and over the roof of the five-story Jesuit mission and church to the second-floor terrace on the other side. At the Ogro’s funeral, Madrileños and right-wing partisans loudly sang the Falange anthem “Cara al Sol.”

  When the frantic investigation was launched, Baumann fingered, through an intermediary, each of the ETA volunteers who had dug the tunnel. The ten died during the vigorous police “interrogation.” Baumann had done the job he was hired to do, and no one alive who was involved in the conspiracy had ever seen his face.

  Now visitors to Madrid can find 104 Calle Claudio Coello, the building in which Baumann had rented the basement apartment, still standing and looking rather shabby. Across the street from it, at the exact site of the assassination, a stone plaque is engraved:

  AQUI RINDIO SU ULTIMO SERVICIO

  A LA PATRIA CON EL SACRIFICIO DE SU VIDA

  VICTIMA DE UN VIL ATENTADO EL ALMIRANTE

  LUIS CARRERO BLANCO

  20-XII-1974

  A few years after the bombing, a book was published internationally in which the four Basque leaders claimed total credit for the assassination, neglecting to mention that they had hired a professional. This fraudulent account had been suggested by Baumann. Not only did it redound to the greater glory of the Basque movement, but it deftly covered his tracks. The world didn’t have to know that the Basque ETA were bumblers. There were rumors—which persist to this day—that the CIA provided the Basques with intelligence support, to help defeat Franco. (The truth is, sophisticated intelligence was hardly needed.)

  By the time Baumann had returned to Wachthuis, the headquarters of the South African security police in Pretoria, word had gotten around of his accomplishment. A story was told and retold of how H. J. van den Bergh, the six-foot-five head of the security police, reacted upon learning what one of his agents, Henrik Baumann—cryptonym Zero—had just done in Madrid. “Jesus Christ,” van den Bergh is said to have exploded. “Who the hell is this Baumann? An intelligence agent, my arse. He sounds like the bloody Prince of Darkness!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At eight-thirty sharp the next morning, Duke Taylor arrived at his office at FBI headquarters in Washington and was startled to see both Russell Ullman and Christine Vigiani sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of his closed office door. To either side of them, rising in three towering piles, were folders, striped with various colors. The two looked weary, disheveled. The normally fresh-faced Ullman had heavy purple circles under his eyes. Vigiani’s eyes, which usually bulged with ferocious concentration, looked sewn shut.

  “Jesus,” Taylor said. “You two look as if you slept in your clothes.”

  “Yeah…” Vigiani began with malice.

  “Your office door was locked,” Ullman interrupted, his voice hoarse. “I hope it’s okay we heaped the dossiers here.”

  Taylor glanced admiringly at the three piles again and said. “Gosh, I didn’t think you’d take me literally.” He shook his head as he unlocked his office door. “Who wants coffee?”

  When they were all seated, Ullman said: “Let’s start with the most obvious ones. Eliminating all those dead or in custody, that leaves mostly Arabs. Also, most of the better-known terrorists are fairly old by now.”

  Taylor nodded encouragement.

  “Ahmed Jabril, the leader of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine/General Command. Former captain in the Syrian army. Ba’athist. Hard-line Palestinian. He and his group are responsible—”

  “Jabril’s a creature of Syrian intelligence,” Taylor interrupted. “Go ahead.” He was leaning back in his office chair, eyes closed. Vigiani and Ullman sat in chairs sandwiched among pillars of dossiers. As Ullman made his presentation, Vigiani pored through a stack in her lap and made notes on her clipboard.

  “All right, well, Abu Nidal, of course,” Ullman went on. “Nom de guerre of Sabri al-Banna, broke with Yasir Arafat in 1974 to found the Fatah Revolutionary Council. Brutal, brilliant, the shrewdest operator there is. Estimated to have killed a thousand people, two-thirds of them Palestinians. Responsible for terrorism in more than twenty nations, including the Istanbul synagogue massacre in ’86 and attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports in ’85. Never captured. Lived for a while in Libya. He and his organization are now based in the Bekaa Valley. Do you know, there’s no picture of him available?”

  Taylor shook his head. “One of that rare breed of terrorist, a true ideologue. Never hire out. Go on.”

  Christine Vigiani looked up from her dossiers. “Actually, he takes money.”

  “Only for someone he wants to kill anyway,” said Ullman, flashing her a look of profound irritation. “Anyway, this doesn’t smell like an Abu Nidal op. But I was intrigued by Abu Ibrahim, a.k.a Mohammed Al-Umari. Leader of the May 15 Group. Expert in the use of barometric detonators and plastic explosives. Perhaps the most technically proficient bomb maker around. Also, there’s Imad Mughniya, who masterminded the hijacking of that Kuwaiti airliner back in 1988, who’s tied to Hezbollah.”

  “Problem is,” Taylor said, heaving a sigh, “none of them can plausibly pass as Germans. I’m not going to rule them out, but I wouldn’t be quick to count them in either. Chris, who are your prime suspects?”

  She sat up straight, took a large swallow of coffee, widened her eyes. “Okay if I smoke?”

  “I’d rather—” Ullman started.

  “All right,” Taylor said. “You probably need it.”

  She pulled out a pack of Marlboros and lighted one, inhaling gratefully. Russell Ullman glanced at her with snakelike distrust and shifted his chair a few symbolic inches away.

  “If we’re talking Arabs,” she said, “I can’t believe he didn’t mention either Islamic Jihad or Hamas. Particularly Hamas, which has really been acting up lately. If Warren Elkind is such a big Israel supporter, this sounds like a Hamas kind of thing, given how much they hate Israel, and how they set off that car bomb outside the Israeli embassy in London in July 1994. And that bombing in Argentina that killed—”

  “Because we’re not talking Arabs, we’re talking mercenary terrorists for hire, and none of those organizations has anyone that hires out,” Ullman said darkly. “Unless you know better.”

  There was a poisonous silence, and then Vigiani continued: “There’s an ETA Basque terrorist who worked as muscle for the Medellín cartel, but that was some time ago. He’s believed dead, but reports vary. I’ll keep on that one.”

  “That guy’s dead,” Ullman said impatiently.

  Vigiani ignored him. “And at first I would have thought that among the Provos—the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army—we’d find some good possibilities, but none of them fit the profile. None are known to hire out. Though I suppose any of them could. Also, according to the most recent intelligence, some of the Protestant groups in Northern Ireland—the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force—have started using mercenaries, paid assassins, for the real serious, clinical operations. I didn’t bother with those assholes who did OKBOMB,” she said, using the Bureau’s code name for Oklahoma City. “Way too primitive. And, let’s see, there’s a South African guy, but he’s locked up for life in Pretoria or Johannesburg or something. And this may seem sort of left-field, but there’s Frank Terpil, the former CIA guy Qaddafi hired to train his special forces.”

  Taylor nodded, eyes still closed.

  “Well, his buddy Ed Wilson’s serving a long sentence in a federal penitentiary, but Terpil’s still at large. File says he’s been involved in assassinations in Africa and a coup attempt in Chad in 1978. He’s alive and hiding somewhere, and for all I know he may still be active.”

  Taylor opened his eyes and frowned at the acoustic dropped ceiling of his office. “Maybe.”

  Vigiani jotted something down on her clipboard. “And all those old East German training camps—they may be history, but some of the folks who trained there are probably still on the market. Problem is, our data on those guys is pretty skimpy.”

  “You contact the Germans?” Taylor asked.

  “I’m working on it,” Ullman said.

  “All right,” Taylor said. “I’m inclined to take a second look at this Terpil fellow and any of the East German-trained personnel we can turn up. Tell your staff to keep digging. Chris, what did you turn up in the computer search on Warren Elkind?”

  Vigiani snubbed out her cigarette in the large glass ashtray she’d taken from Taylor’s desk. A plume of acrid smoke curled. She presented a quick biographical profile of Elkind, emphasizing his charitable work on behalf of Israel. “Apart from that, there’s not much, unfortunately. We’ve got an agent in Boston who just did a complete computer search on Warren Elkind.”

  “Really?” Taylor said with interest. “What’s he assigned to?”

  “OC, I believe. And it’s a she.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Cahill, I think. Sarah Cahill.”

  “I know the name. Big in Lockerbie. Counterterrorism expert. Wonder why she’s looking into Elkind. Hmm. I want to talk to her. Get her in here. Meantime, why don’t you two go home and get some sleep?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Early the next morning, after Peter had arrived to take Jared for the day, Sarah drove in to work. Saturdays at the office had become ritual since Peter’s weekend visits had begun. Anyway, she had a lot of work to catch up on, and she wanted to search for anything she could find on Valerie’s killer.

  It turned out not to be necessary.

  When she arrived at work, there was a voice-mail message from Teddy Williams. She listened, and immediately took a drive over to the Homicide Squad.

  “What have you got?” Sarah asked him.

  “Blowback,” Teddy said. This was the sometimes invisible spray of a victim’s blood found on the shooter’s clothing.

  “On what?”

  “A sport coat we found in the giant closet belonging to a guy named Sweet Bobby Higgins.”

  Sarah leaned against the wall, eyes closed. She felt queasy. “Sweet—?”

  “Sweet Bobby Higgins lives in a big house in Maiden with no less than four wives. They refer to each other as wives-in-law. I think three of them are sisters. Each of them has his made-up crest tattooed below her navel.”

  “Sort of like you’d brand cattle. Who is he?”

  “Sort of an on-again, off-again boyfriend of your friend Valerie’s madam. An enforcer.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Valerie was cheating on her, and the madam knew it.”

  “Maybe she knew it, but I doubt she’d have some pimp whack Val. You got a tip?”

  “We were there on a routine search warrant, based on the madam’s phone records. Your ex-husband saw it first. A white-and-gold jacket, looked like the sleeves were soiled. Peter looked closer, saw tiny drops, like elongated tears or commas, maybe a sixteenth of an inch long. Sweet Bobby didn’t see any blood. When we found it, he looked like he was getting ready to flex.”

  “You did a PGM test?” She was referring to a phosphoglucomutase enzyme test.

  “Precise match with Val’s blood. And if you’re thinking it’s a plant, he doesn’t have an alibi. Hinky as hell.”

  “Does he deny the jacket is his?”

  Ted laughed raucously. “Not with a straight face. That’s the ugliest jacket I’ve ever s
een.”

  “Ballistics?”

  “Sweet Bobby’s got a Glock. Matches the 9mm rounds used on Valerie Santoro.”

  “You think that clinches it? What did Ballistics tell you?”

  Defensively: “They got a match.”

  She shook her head. “Glocks aren’t bored. So it’s a lot more difficult to make a definitive ballistic match. But you want to say Sweet Bobby did it, go ahead. That’s your business. I really don’t give a shit, and as far as I’m concerned, the more pimps you lock up the better.”

  “Degrading to women, is that it?”

  “They’re just scumbags. You’d better hope he doesn’t have a lawyer slick enough to pick up on the Glock thing, or else the case’ll be dismissed without prejudice. You still don’t have a witness, do you?”

  “This is a guy with priors.”

  “And if you guys don’t get your clearance rate up, you’ll both be transferred to Auto Theft. No need to get defensive on me, Ted. I really don’t care. Congratulations, okay?”

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, driving home through the streets of Cambridge, Sarah passed a large grassy field and saw Peter and Jared. Wearing muddy jeans and T-shirts, they were throwing a football. It had just started raining. Peter was making large, sweeping gestures; Jared looked small and awkward. He gave his mother an enthusiastic wave when he saw her get out of the car.

  Peter turned, gave a perfunctory thumbs-up.

  “You’re early,” he shouted.

  “Mind if I watch for a couple minutes?”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Jared called out. “Dad’s just showing me how to run pass patterns.”

  Peter now pointed, making jabbing motions. “A square-out,” he called to Jared. “Go straight five yards, and then cut right five yards. All right?”

  “Straight and then right?” Jared asked. His voice was high, reedy.

  “Go!” Peter shouted suddenly, and Jared began running. Peter hesitated, then threw the football, and Jared caught it. Sarah smiled.

  “No!” Peter yelled. “I said a square-out, didn’t I? You’re supposed to cut on a dime. You’re running a square-out like a fly pattern!”