The Zero Hour

by Joseph Finder

  Taylor, who’d been massaging his eyes, suddenly looked at her.

  Vigiani said sharply: “Heinrich Fürst?”

  “Just ‘Fürst’ or ‘Herr Fürst.’”

  “German?” Ullman said.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I mean, the alias was, obviously, but not the mere.”

  “Did you get a true name on the mere?” Taylor asked.

  “No. Just that, and a nickname, sort of a nom de guerre.”

  “Which was?”

  “Well, the guy was good, really good, and apparently as amoral as they come. Brilliant, ruthless, every adjective you can come up with—top-notch in his field. A white South African—rumored to have once worked for BOSS, the old South African secret intelligence service. And some of his admirers called him ‘Prince of Darkness.’”

  “Loves kids, dogs, Mozart, and walks on the beach,” said Vigiani dryly.

  Sarah went on: “Well, my German’s pretty rusty by now, but doesn’t Fürst mean—”

  Ullman interrupted: “Fürst—Prince—oh, Jesus. Fürst der Finsternis. Translates as ‘Prince of Darkness.’”

  “Right,” Sarah said. “Just a possibility.”

  Taylor gave a lopsided grin. “Nice. I think I’m beginning to understand why all the raves in your file. You’ve got a mind for this stuff.”

  “Thanks. I did, once.”

  “You still do. Now, if it’s true that our good Prince is really a South African, we should reach out to Pretoria. See what they have on anyone with this alias.”

  “I’d—I’d be careful about that,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, come on.” Vigiani scowled. “The new South African government is as cooperative as can be. If you think the guy used to work for BOSS, that’s where the answer will be. Pretoria.”

  “Wait a second,” Taylor said. “What’s your thinking, Sarah? That it might get back to him?”

  “I think we’ve got to consider the possibility—however remote—that certain white South Africans might be the ones hiring Herr Fürst.”

  “White South Africans are out of power,” Vigiani said irritably.

  Sarah gave Agent Vigiani a blank look. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” she said calmly. “Who do you think mainly staffs the South African intelligence service? White South Africans. Anglos and Afrikaners. And they’re not happy about how the rug was pulled out from under them.”

  Vigiani continued to scowl. Sarah noticed that Duke Taylor’s brow was furrowed, so she elaborated: “Say we contact the South African service and ask about a terrorist who calls himself Heinrich Fürst. And some group within that service is in fact running this agent for some nefarious purpose of its own. Suddenly you’ve set off all kinds of alarms.”

  Taylor grunted. “So if we’re not going the official route to Pretoria, that rules out both State Department channels and our new legat.” The FBI had sixteen legal attachés, or legats, in American embassies around the world, which exchange information with foreign police and intelligence agencies. For years the FBI did not have a legat in Pretoria, because of the sanctions applied by the U.S. government. Only recently, since the election of Nelson Mandela as president, had the FBI opened an office there. “We need to reach out and touch some people. Some trusted, private source.”

  “Do we have a paid asset over there?” Sarah asked.

  “Not that I know of. I’ll ask around, but I don’t think so. At least, not a paid asset high enough in the government.”

  “Someone with whom the Bureau or the Agency or the government has a relationship, someone reliable?”

  “We’ll have to shake the bushes. But the first step is to set up an elite, completely secret task force, Sarah, and I’d like you to be on it.”

  “Where? In New York?”

  “Right here,” Taylor said.

  “I’ve got a little boy, remember?” Sarah said.

  “He’s portable. Anyway, it’s summer. He’s not in school now, is he?”

  “No,” Sarah said. “But I’d really rather not.”

  Taylor regarded her for a moment in puzzled silence. In the old days—during the Hoover era—it was unheard of for an agent to refuse an assignment. In the old days, you’d be told, “You want your paycheck, it’ll be in Washington in thirty days.” They’d have said, “We didn’t issue you a son. You want him, bring him.”

  “Agent Cahill,” Taylor said icily, “if our intelligence is accurate, we’re looking at a major act of terrorism that’s going to take place in New York City in a matter of weeks. You want to tell me what the heck you’re working on that’s more important, more urgent, than that?”

  Surprised by his sudden intensity, Sarah sat up straight. She leaned forward and said, returning intensity for intensity: “You’re asking me to disrupt my life, pack up my boy, and move out of Boston for what could be weeks or months. Okay, fair enough. But to work here? In Washington? Why don’t we set up shop in Altoona?”

  “Excuse me?” Taylor said incredulously.

  Agents Ullman and Vigiani watched the exchange with fascination, spectators at a bullfight.

  “If the terrorism is to occur in New York, we’ve got to be in New York. You want to do a search, that takes massive shoeleather. That means working closely with the NYPD. It’s crazy to be in D.C.”

  “Sarah, all the resources are here, the computers, the secure links—”

  “For God’s sake, I had secure links with the Bureau when I was in Jackson, Mississippi, just out of New Agents school. You mean to tell me you can’t do that in New York City? I don’t believe it.”

  “Then you’re talking about running a secret Ops center out of 26 Federal Plaza,” Taylor said. 26 Federal Plaza was the headquarters of the New York office of the FBI.

  “Why not take out a full-page ad in The New York Times?” Sarah said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you want to keep it secret, forget about 26 Federal Plaza. We’ve got to find another location in the city.”

  “I take it from your use of ‘we’ that you accept.”

  “With a couple of conditions.”

  Vigiani shook her head in disgust. Ullman studied his notes.

  “Such as?”

  “We’re off-site, for one.”

  “That’s incredibly expensive.”

  “Look, we’re going to need a lot of phone lines, some secure phones. NYO isn’t going to have the facilities anyway.”

  “All right. I’m sure the New York office has something available. What else?”

  “I’d like to bring a couple of people with me. A friend of mine on the OC squad, Ken Alton. He’s a computer whiz, and we may need his skills.”

  “Done,” Taylor said. “And?”

  “Alexander Pappas.”

  “Alex Pappas?” Taylor said. “I thought he retired a couple of years ago.”

  “Last year, actually.”

  “What would he think about going back on the job?”

  “I could twist his arm,” Sarah said, “but I think he’d secretly jump at the chance. They called him in on TRADEBOM.” This was the Bureau designation for the World Trade Center bombing.

  “Well, it’s highly unusual, but I suppose it can be arranged. All right. So you’re on?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “I’m on.”

  “Good. Now, how about leading it?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The components of a sophisticated bomb are not difficult to obtain. Quite the opposite: the fuse components, wires, and fittings can easily be purchased at any electronics supply shop. Explosives and blasting caps are available at most construction sites.

  But the fusing mechanism—the device that fires the bomb at a specified time or under specified conditions—is a far trickier thing. Often it is constructed uniquely for each bomb. It must function under set circumstances with a high degree of reliability. In fact, it takes a good deal of skill to construct a reliable fusing mechanism. For this reason, most terrorists or operatives wou
ld no sooner think of assembling their own fusing mechanisms than building their own automobiles. You can’t be expert at everything.

  Baumann arrived in the small industrial city of Huy, in a manufacturing belt southwest of Liège, by sunrise as he’d planned. The proprietor of a stationery store directed him to the modern brick multistoried building that housed Carabine Automatique of Liège (CAL), a small manufacturer of assault rifles and related components that had long since relocated to Huy, but had kept its name. Although he had no interest in assault rifles, he had made an appointment to see the marketing director, Etienne Charreyron.

  It had been easy to arrange the meeting. Posing over the telephone as a British subject named Anthony Rhys-Davies, Baumann had explained that he was a munitions salesman for Royal Ordnance, the vast British arms manufacturer that makes virtually all the small arms for the British military. He was, he explained, a military-history buff on holiday, making a tour of famous Belgian battlefields. But he was mixing business with pleasure and thought he’d stop by to meet Mr. Charreyron and discuss the possibilities of doing business with Royal Ordnance. It would not look at all strange for a businessman on vacation to be dressed in casual attire.

  Mr. Charreyron, of course, was happy to arrange a meeting at any time convenient for the British salesman. The possibilities were irresistible. Charreyron’s secretary was expecting Mr. Rhys-Davies and greeted him cordially, taking his overcoat and offering him coffee or tea before showing him into Charreyron’s cramped office.

  Baumann went to shake Charreyron’s hand and momentarily started. It was bound to happen, in the small and insular world in which he operated. He and Etienne Cherreyron had known each other years before, though under different names. This was potentially a disaster. Baumann’s head spun.

  Etienne Charreyron reacted as if he’d seen a ghastly apparition. “What—you—I thought you were dead!” he gasped.

  Baumann, who had quickly gained an outward semblance of composure, smiled. “Sometimes I feel that way, but I’m very much alive.”

  “But you—Luanda—Christ Almighty—!”

  For the next ten seconds or so, Charreyron did little more than babble and stare in horror and incomprehension. His secretary stood in the doorway, uncertain what to do, until he dismissed her with a wave of his pudgy hand.

  Ten years earlier, Charreyron and Baumann had served together in Angola. A former Portuguese colony, Angola had since 1976 been racked by civil war, with the Cuban-supported, Marxist MPLA battling the pro-Western UNITA forces, aided by South Africa.

  Baumann’s employers had sent him there to help orchestrate a covert campaign of terrorism. There he had met a bomb-disposal specialist who went by the nom de guerre Hercule, a mere who had once worked for the Belgian police.

  Back in the 1960s, Baumann later learned, this Hercule had built bombs for the legendary mercenary leader Mike O’Hore, the South African leader of the Fifth Commando, nicknamed the Wild Geese. Baumann had always considered O’Hore, whose exploits were world-famous, something of a slacker, a slob whose greatest skill was getting himself good press. But his bomb makers were always the best.

  When it became necessary for Baumann to disappear from Angola, he had arranged an “accident” outside the capital city, Luanda, in which it appeared that he had been ambushed and killed. All the other mercs, including, no doubt, Hercule—who knew Baumann only under another name—had always believed that he was dead, one of the many casualties of war.

  Bomb-disposal experts are a strange breed. They do their harrowing work in odd corners of the world, traveling to where the work is, often on contract for various governments. Many of them were brought in to clear land mines in Cambodia in the 1970s; in Angola, most of the land mines were cleared by Germans, although a few Belgians were brought in as well. After the Gulf War, the Kuwaiti government contracted with Royal Ordnance for an enormous number of bomb-disposal specialists to clear the leftover munitions. Their work is so stressful that many of them—those who escape unharmed—retire as soon as they can find good work elsewhere. Baumann now learned that this Hercule/Charreyron had left this hazardous line of work in the early eighties, when he was hired by the small Belgian firm Carabine Automatique of Liège.

  “My God, it’s great to see you,” Charreyron at last exclaimed. “This is—this is just amazing! Please, sit.”

  “And you too,” Baumann said, sinking into a chair.

  “Yes,” Charreyron said, as he sat behind his desk. “How marvelous it is to see you again!” He was brave, genial, and clearly terrified. “But I don’t understand. You—well, the report of your death was some sort of disinformation, is that right?”

  Baumann nodded, seemingly pleased to be sharing this secret with his old comrade in arms.

  “I take it Rhys-Davies is a cover name, then?”

  “Exactly,” Baumann said. He confided to the Belgian a fabricated, though plausible, story of his defection from South Africa to Australia and eventually to England, his hush-hush security work on behalf of a London-based sheik. “Now, this client of mine has asked me to undertake a highly sensitive project,” he went on, and explained the fusing mechanism that he needed to have built.

  “But really, I haven’t done that sort of work for a few years now,” Charreyron protested mildly.

  “I suspect it’s like riding a bicycle,” Baumann said. “You never forget. And the technology has changed little if at all in the last few years.”

  “Yes, but…” His voice trailed off as he listened to Baumann, taking notes all the while.

  “The relay,” Baumann said, “must be attached to a pocket pager. When the pager receives a signal, it will cause the relay to close, which will close the circuit between battery and detonator.”

  “Won’t you need some means of disabling it?”

  “Yes, but I want to set the electronic timer to go off automatically if it’s not disabled.”

  Charreyron, his composure returned, simply shrugged nonchalantly.

  “One more thing,” Baumann said. “There must also be a microwave sensor built into the mechanism that will set off the bomb if anyone approaches.”

  Charreyron nodded again, arching his brows in mild surprise.

  “I will need three of them,” Baumann said. “One for testing purposes, and the other two to be sent, separately.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Now, as to price.”

  “Yes,” the Belgian said. He did some rapid calculations and then announced a large sum in Belgian francs.

  Baumann arched his eyebrows in surprise. Fusing mechanisms of such complexity generally went for about ten thousand dollars apiece, and he did not like to be cheated.

  “You see,” Charreyron explained, “the difficulty lies in acquiring the pagers. You will need three of them, and they must be purchased in the United States. You know how complicated that is—with every pager comes a telephone number and a detailed registration. They must be bought clandestinely. And since I certainly don’t want the serial number plate on the pager to be traced through the paging company back to me, I’ll have to purchase several and do some alterations.”

  “But for an old friend…?” Baumann said jovially. Haggling over prices was common in this line of work; the Belgian would expect it.

  “I can go as low as fifteen thousand each. But less than that, and it’s simply not worth the risk. I will have to go to New York myself to get them, so I have to figure in the cost of travel. And you are asking me to do all this in such a short period of time—”

  “All right then,” Baumann said. “Forty-five thousand U.S. it is. No, let’s make it an even fifty thousand U.S.”

  The two men shook hands. For the first time, Charreyron appeared relaxed. Baumann counted out twenty-five thousand dollars and placed them on the desk. “The other half when I return in a week. Is there a vacant warehouse on the outskirts of town where we can do a test?”

  “Certainly,” Charreyron said. “But I think we ha
ve a little more business to transact.”

  “Oh?”

  “For an additional fifty thousand U.S., I can assure you that nothing of our past acquaintance will become known.”

  “Fifty thousand?” Baumann asked, as if seriously considering it.

  “And then”—Charreyron clapped his hands together—“the past is gone, just like that.”

  “I see,” Baumann said. “Please understand something. I have many police contacts who stand to benefit handsomely by giving me any information of possible interest to me. Rumors, reports of my presence here, that sort of thing. I am paying you well, with a generous bonus to come. But I don’t want to learn that the slightest detail of our talk, or of my past history, has left this office. Not a single detail. You can imagine the consequences for you and your family.”

  The color drained from Charreyron’s face. “I’m a professional,” he said, retreating hastily. “I would never betray a confidence.”

  “Excellent. Because you know me, and you know that I would stop at nothing.”

  Charreyron shook his head violently. “I would never say a word,” he said desperately. “Please. Forget what I said about the fifty thousand. It was a foolish mistake.”

  “Don’t worry,” Baumann said pleasantly. “It’s forgotten. We all make mistakes. But please don’t make the mistake of underestimating me.”

  “Please,” Charreyron whispered. In his days as a bomb-disposal expert, he had constantly faced the possibility of losing a limb, even his life. But nothing terrified him so much as this phlegmatic, ruthless South African, who had suddenly appeared in his office after ten years—a man who, Charreyron had no doubt whatsoever, would indeed stop at nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A few days after Baumann’s first visit to Charreyron, in southwest Belgium, he returned to inspect the fusing mechanisms.

  In the intervening time, he had combined a little business with a great deal of relaxation. On his first night back in Amsterdam, he met again with “Bones” Van den Vondel, who provided him with the three sets of stolen documentation he had requested—two American, one British—and a small bundle of credit cards. Bones made it abundantly clear he was happy to do business with Mr. Sidney Lerner, and happier still to have the opportunity to do an ongoing business with the Mossad, should it require any other assistance from an outsider.