The Zero Hour

by Joseph Finder

  Several mornings he slept late. He saw movies, enjoyed expensive restaurants. Several afternoons he spent studying maps of New York City. He took in a few topless bars around Rembrandtsplein and, in the red-light district, bought himself an hour of pleasure with a young prostitute. One night he went to a popular nightclub called Odeon, where he picked up a comely young woman and took her back to his hotel. She was about as randy as he was; they spent most of the night having sex, until each collapsed in happy exhaustion. In the morning, she wanted to stay, or at least to see him again that evening. He was tempted—during his years in Pollsmoor he had almost forgotten how pleasurable sex could be—but knew it was a bad idea to become too familiar to anyone here. He told her he had, regrettably, to catch a return flight that afternoon.

  Amsterdam, like New York and San Francisco, is world-renowned as a gathering place for computer enthusiasts, or “hackers.” Although Baumann had been in prison too long to be conversant in the latest technology, he knew where to find someone who was. He contacted a member of the Amsterdam-based Dutch organization Hacktic, which publishes a magazine for computer hackers, and arranged a meeting. He described the sort of person he was looking for: a hacker based in New York, without a criminal past.

  “No,” he was told, “you are looking for a cracker—not a hacker. A hacker makes it his mission to understand, shall we say, undocumented technology, so that the government doesn’t enslave us, and to make the world a better place. A cracker has the same skills but uses them, so to speak, to break into your house, often for mercenary purposes.”

  “All right, then, a cracker,” Baumann said.

  “I have a name for you,” his contact said. “But he will only take on your project, whatever it is, if he finds it of interest—and enormously lucrative.”

  “Oh, that he will,” said Baumann. “He will find it both.”

  On his second-to-last morning in Amsterdam, he purchased a small device at a large electronics supply house for one thousand guilders, which was then equivalent to six hundred dollars. It was an “ATM Junior,” used by banks to encode magnetic strips on bank and credit cards. With this device he recoded the magnetic strips on each stolen credit card.

  When a credit card is used at a retail establishment, it is usually swiped through a transponder, which reads the CVC number at the head of the magnetic stripe and immediately sends it over a telephone line to the credit card company’s central data-processing facility. The computers there check whether the card in question is expired, overextended, or stolen. If it is not, the computers send back an approval code within a second or two. (American Express uses two-digit approval codes, while Visa and MasterCard use four- or five-digit ones.)

  Baumann had little doubt that most if not all of these credit cards had already been reported as stolen. If they hadn’t yet, it was simply a matter of time.

  But he had circumvented that process. Each credit card now had an approval code of the appropriate number of digits encoded in its magnetic stripe. Whenever a merchant swiped one of these cards through the transponder, the approval code would instantly appear on the transponder’s readout. The machine would read the code—not send it out.

  It was highly unlikely the merchant would wonder why the telephone hadn’t dialed, why several seconds hadn’t elapsed before the approval code came in. And if that happened, why, Baumann would remark that the magnetic stripe on the back of the card must have worn out. Too bad. And that would be the end of that. An excellent chance of success, with virtually no risk.

  In his remaining time, Baumann ordered several sets of letterhead stationery for several notional, amorphous firms—an import-export company, a law firm, a storage facility.

  And he reserved a seat on a Sabena flight from Brussels to London under a false name for which he had no documentation, knowing that, so long as he traveled within the European Commonwealth, he would not be required to show a passport. Then he booked a coach seat from London to New York under the name of one of his newly acquired American passports, that of a businessman and entrepreneur named Thomas Allen Moffatt.

  * * *

  Etienne Charreyron had arranged to use a deserted horse barn on the outskirts of Huy that belonged to a business associate who was in Brussels for the entire month. The associate had recently liquidated all of his family’s livestock at auction.

  The barn still smelled strongly of horse manure and damp hay and machine oil. The lighting was barely adequate. In the dim, dank interior, Charreyron opened a battered leather suitcase and gingerly removed three black plastic utility boxes the size of shoeboxes. The lid of each was a plate of brushed aluminum, and on this plate were three tiny bulbs, light-emitting diodes.

  “This light tells you that the pocket pager is on and functioning,” Charreyron explained to Baumann. “This one tells you that the battery is emitting power. And this one indicates that the timer is functioning.”

  Charreyron slid the aluminum plate off one of the fusing mechanisms. “I’ve set up two separate systems on opposite sides, for redundancy. Two nine-volt batteries, two sets of two screw posts each to connect to the blasting caps. Two timers, two pager-receivers set to the same frequency, two relays. Even two ferrite bars for antennae.” He looked up. “It will beat the bomb-disposal people. Doubles the chances of the thing working, hmm?”

  “And one microwave sensor.”

  “That’s all there’s room for, and certainly all you’ll need.”

  “Shall we test one of them?”

  “Yes, of course.” Charreyron lifted one of the black boxes.

  “Actually,” Baumann said, grabbing another, “let’s try this one.”

  Charreyron smiled slyly, seeming to enjoy the sport. “Whatever you like.”

  He brought the box over to an empty fifty-five-gallon steel drum at the far end of the barn and put it on a narrow wooden plank that had been placed across the open top of the barrel. He attached two blasting caps to it, then walked to the other side of the barn.

  “First test,” the Belgian said, “is for radio control.”

  He took a small cellular phone from his breast pocket, opened it, and dialed a number. As soon as he had done so, he looked at his watch. Baumann did the same.

  The two men waited in silence.

  Forty-five seconds later the barn echoed with the sound of a gunshot. The blasting caps that dangled from the fusing mechanism had detonated, giving off fragments that were contained by the steel barrel.

  “A long delay,” Baumann observed.

  “It varies.”

  “Yes.” The detonator that set off the blasting caps had been armed by a circuit that closed when the built-in pager received a signal sent by satellite. Depending on how much satellite traffic there was at any given moment, the page signal could be received in a few seconds or a few minutes. “What about the microwave sensor?”

  “Certainly.” Charreyron walked across the barn to the steel barrel and attached a fresh set of blasting caps to the fusing mechanism. He rearmed it and pushed a button to activate a time-delay switch.

  “As soon as the timer runs down, the microwave sensor is armed. You can set the time delay for as short as ten seconds.”

  “And as long as—?”

  “Seventy-two hours. But if you need a longer delay, I can easily replace it.”

  “No, that’ll do.”

  “Good. I’ve set this for ten seconds. And now, the microwave—yes.” From across the dim expanse, Baumann could see a red light wink on. “It’s armed now. Would you like to…?”

  “Distance?”

  “Twenty-five feet, but that too can be adjusted.”

  Baumann walked slowly toward the steel drum, then stopped approximately thirty feet from it. Then he approached step by step, until he was startled by the loud explosion of the blasting caps.

  “Very precise,” he said.

  “It’s top-quality,” Charreyron said, permitting himself a proud smile.

  “You do good work.
But what about the signature, as we discussed?”

  “That took me quite some time to research. But I came up with a rather convincing Libyan signature.”

  Most explosive devices leave “signatures” that permit an investigator to determine who originated them. They might be how the knots are tied, how connections are soldered, how wires are cut.

  The Provisional Irish Republican Army, for instance, makes its bomb fuses in lots of a hundred or so. A number of PIRA technicians get together in a warehouse or barn and work without stop for a few days, making identical fuses, which are then parceled out. This has been confirmed both by intelligence and by inspecting the fusing mechanisms of unexploded PIRA bombs: one can tell from the identical, if minuscule, markings that every wire has been cut with the same pair of wirecutters. Some terrorist groups leave a signature unintentionally, out of sloppiness, because they have always constructed a bomb in a certain way. Some, however, do so deliberately, as a subtle way to claim credit.

  “Now, as for shipping,” the Belgian said. “You’re certainly welcome to take them with you, but I assume you don’t want to take that risk.”

  Baumann gave a small snort of derision.

  “I didn’t think so. The entire assembly can be broken down into its components, which all clip rather neatly into place. I’ll go over it with you. That makes it easy to ship.”

  “But you won’t ship them from Liège.”

  “That would not be discreet,” Charreyron said, “given what Liège is known for. No, I will send them from Brussels. Concealed, let’s say, in some harmless electronic thing like a radio. Overnight express, if you like. You simply give me an address.”

  “Fine.”

  “And—uh—there’s the matter of payment. The pagers cost a bit more than I calculated.”

  Baumann removed an envelope of bills and counted out the amount Charreyron asked for. It was a reasonable sum—about 30 percent more than his original estimate. The Belgian was not trying to pull a fast one.

  “Excellent,” Charreyron said, as he pocketed the money.

  “Well, then,” Baumann said heartily, “please give my best to your lovely wife, Marie. Isn’t she a curator at the Curtius Museum?”

  Charreyron stared dully.

  “And little Berthe—six years old and a student at the école normale, is that right? You must be proud.”

  “What the hell are you hinting at?”

  “Just this, my friend. I know the address of your apartment on Rue Saint-Gilles. I know where your daughter is at this very moment, where your wife is. Remember what I said: if the slightest detail of our dealings is made known to anyone, the consequences for you and your family will be unimaginable. I will stop at nothing.”

  “Oh, please, not another word,” said the Belgian, ashen-faced. “That is understood.”

  As they strolled out of the barn and into the blindingly bright afternoon daylight, Baumann considered whether to kill the man. There was a mild, cool breeze and the pleasant smell of newly mown grass.

  Life is a series of gambles, Baumann reflected. Charreyron would not benefit in any way from turning in a South African mercenary whose name he didn’t even know, and would certainly not wish to let the authorities know of his own past involvement in Luanda. And the threat to his family’s well-being would be persuasive.

  No, Charreyron would live. Baumann shook his hand cordially, got into his rented car, and drove off. Doing business with someone he knew from another life was an enormous risk—but so too had been his escape from Pollsmoor. He could not proceed with this undertaking until he knew for certain whether his whereabouts remained unknown.

  There were ways to find out. He had been driving through the Meuse Valley, along the Sambre River, which meets the Meuse River at Namur. This stretch of the road was breathtakingly beautiful, with high cliffs and canals, farmhouses and the ruins of ancient brick buildings. After he’d passed through Andenne, and before he’d reached Namur, he pulled off the road and drove around until he located a long stretch of woods, a line of trees beside a clearing. There he switched off the engine.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Of the fifty-six FBI field offices and four hundred resident agencies throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, the New York office is generally considered both the best assignment and the worst. From the ABSCAM convictions against members of Congress for taking bribes, to the siege against the five major Mafia families, to the bombing of the World Trade Center, New York has always had the sexiest cases.

  New York is the largest of the field offices, with some twelve hundred agents. It occupies eight floors of the Jacob J. Javits Federal Building, at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. Unlike all the other field offices, New York is headed not by a special agent in charge but by an assistant FBI director, because it is both bigger and more important than the others.

  Sarah had always found the Javits building gloomy. Tall and plain, with a facing of black stone alternating with sandstone, it is set in the middle of a forlorn cement “park” studded with concrete planters holding marigolds, ferns, and petunias—some landscape designer’s valiant attempt to make the setting cheery. Pigeons skitter across the broad granite ledges around a reflecting pool.

  On her first morning, she arrived before eight, already perspiring from the heat. The one-bedroom furnished apartment she was subletting was on West Seventy-first Street near Columbus Avenue, very close to the subway stop, a Gray’s Papaya, several decent pizza places, and a Greek coffee shop. For the first couple of days, she had lived on nothing but Greek salads and slices of pizza. What else could you ask for?

  Daylight, perhaps? Somehow, by some ingenious stroke of architecture, all of the apartment windows gave onto shadowed air shafts. It was always midnight in her small bedroom, in the cheaply furnished living/dining room, dark enough to grow mushrooms.

  For the first time in years, Sarah was living alone. It was disorienting, at times lonely, but not entirely unpleasant. She’d stayed up late the night before, reading in the tub and drinking wine. She played a recording of the Beethoven late quartets she’d picked up at Tower Records and listened to it until it began to sound like Philip Glass.

  Jared was away at camp in upstate New York. For months he’d demanded to go to summer sleep-over camp, and she had kept refusing. The money was too tight these days, she’d explained; he could go to day camp near Boston.

  But with the sudden transfer to New York, and the wrench that threw into her son’s life, she had to scrape together the money. The new assignment brought with it an increase in salary, which made paying for camp feasible. Anyway, it was certainly better for him to spend a couple of weeks in camp (though he’d wanted a month) than to live in New York City, not a place for eight-year-old boys, she thought.

  The lobby of 26 Federal Plaza was cavernous, with high marble walls, several long elevator banks, cash machines. She felt small. She presented her credentials at the reception desk, and was directed to Counterterrorism, in a corner of the twenty-third floor.

  A very tall, thin, good-looking man of forty introduced himself as Harry Whitman, the chief of the Joint Terrorist Task Force. He wore a khaki summer-weight suit with a standard-issue white shirt and, the one grace note, a bright turquoise tie.

  “So, you’re Sarah Cahill,” he said. “Welcome.”

  “Thanks.”

  His office was sparsely decorated with a small, autographed photo of Hoover—not a good sign, Sarah mused—and, for some reason, a large official photo of George Bush in a fake-gilt frame, propped on its side against the side of his desk. Bush had been out of office for years. Definitely not a good sign.

  “You and the rest of the special task force will be located off-site,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to the others in a couple of minutes, and explain how the joint task force operates. You’re in charge of a code-name operation. But first things first. I guess Perry Taylor in D.C. liked you, but he likes you even more now.”

  “Why
?”

  “Thanks to your suggestion, Perry shook the bushes in South Africa for a lead on your terrorist.”

  “And?”

  “We’ve got a name. By tomorrow morning we should have a face.”

  She felt her heart start to thud. “A name…?”

  “His name is Henrik Baumann.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Baumann hiked around the perimeter of the clearing, satisfied no one was around, that no one could come upon him unexpectedly. From the truck he pulled out the MLink-5000, the satellite telephone that resembled a metal briefcase. He placed it on the roof of the car and unfolded it. The top, which flipped open like a book, was the flat-plate antenna. It was much less conspicuous than the older models whose antennas were large dishes.

  Since the transmitter’s beam width was much broader than that of the older models, aiming accuracy was much less crucial. As he adjusted the angle of elevation, he studied the little boxes on the LCD readout that indicated signal strength. When he had maximum signal strength, he turned the thumbscrews on the back panel and removed the handset.

  Then he placed a telephone call.

  From his years in South African intelligence, he knew the workings of the government of South Africa. He knew that any search for his whereabouts would move in one of two directions. It would either be instigated by South Africa and reach outward, or it would be instigated by another country and be directed toward South Africa.

  The first direction—a request coming from South Africa and going to security and law-enforcement services around the world—was by far the more likely. A former member of BOSS had broken out of prison, had likely left the country: the South Africans would request help.

  Less likely, but far more worrisome, was the second possibility—that some law-enforcement or intelligence agency had learned something about him and had turned to South Africa for help. This would most certainly indicate a leak in Dyson’s coterie.