The Zero Hour

by Joseph Finder

  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?”

  Pappas shrugged.

  “And as if that weren’t bad enough, I’m supposed to have people search entry records in every port of entry in the U.S. Why the hell aren’t they all together in one place, in some kind of centralized data bank?”

  “Because they aren’t. Someday they will be, but for now all the searching has got to be done by hand. Could I trouble you for another cup of instant?”

  “Sure.” Sarah got up, went to the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil. As she waited, she mentally listed the airports in the United States and Canada. Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington (both National and Dulles), LAX … The list went on and on, and she began to lose track. And what if Baumann hadn’t entered the country by air? It was maddening, hopeless.

  She returned to the living room and put down a mug of instant coffee and one of Earl Grey tea. “Let’s say he hasn’t arrived in New York yet, hasn’t even arrived in the country. In that case, we should contact Interpol and have them put out an International Red Notice.” A Red Notice is an international lookout for a fugitive based on an outstanding arrest warrant for the purpose of extradition, sort of an all-points bulletin issued by Interpol’s General Secretariat to the border lookout systems of all member countries. “Result, we’ll get nothing and just end up alerting Baumann.”

  “Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Maybe that’ll scare him, make him call it off.”

  “Not likely.”

  “No,” Pappas conceded. “Not likely.”

  “I suppose we could blanket the city with a description. Damn, I wish we could find a photo! But even if we could, the word would be out about our existence, and the city’ll go crazy.”

  “Not if we do it through the New York office and say we’re on the trail of some guy who’s wanted for some brutal crime in Europe or something.”

  She nodded. “All right, let’s focus on the passport issue. Say for the sake of argument he entered the U.S. directly, but not on his own passport. What are the search options there?”

  “Quite a few,” Pappas said. “Can I smoke?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, not with Jared so close by.”

  “You’re no fun.” He sighed, stretched his legs, took another sip of coffee. “We went through this drill in TRADEBOM,” he said. “When we searched the apartments of some of the suspects, we found Nicaraguan passports—real, legitimate Nicaraguan passports.”

  “How’d they get them?”

  “Who knows? Some corrupt Nicaraguan official sold blanks to the Sandinistas, who sold them, or gave them, to ideological soulmates. This stuff happens all the time, all over the world.”

  She thought for a moment. “So, what, we have our foreign legats talk to all their counterparts and local liaison?”

  Pappas nodded.

  She went on, “Ask every country we have dealings with to check whether a passport was issued to this guy. Maybe even ask them to do a complete records check, if they’re so inclined.”

  “But without a photo, we’ll get squat. And not every country will comply. They’d be more likely to help out if they believe our guy forged one of their passports. But a lot of countries won’t give us the time of day.”

  “Seems pointless.”

  “That’s right. The thing we have going for us is, it’s not likely—probabilities, again—that he’d use a foreign passport.”

  “Why not, if it’s so easy to get one?”

  “Because that entails going through both customs and immigration in most U.S. airports and having officials take a nice, hard look, and who needs all that? Certainly not our Prince of Darkness.”

  In her peripheral vision she saw that Jared was standing before them in his Lion King pajamas, squinting, hair mussed from sleep. “Could you guys keep it down?” he said grumpily.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Sarah said.

  “Sorry,” Pappas said. “We’ll be quieter. Hey, buddy, do you mind if I smoke in here?”

  “No, Alex, it’s okay. You can.”

  Sarah got up, gave Pappas a black look, and kissed Jared on the forehead. She took him back to bed. When she returned, they resumed in much lower tones.

  “Okay, so he’s got to get his hands on a U.S. passport,” she said. “How does he do that?”

  Pappas exhaled delicately out of one side of his mouth, ostentatiously keeping the smoke away from Jared’s direction. “A number of ways. There’s the classic method of going to a cemetery, copying down the name of someone who died in infancy who’s also around your age, getting his birth certificate, then applying for a passport. Easier said than done; it’s awfully labor-intensive, and more and more often birth and death records are collated, so you can’t pull a fast one. No, he’d have to steal one or acquire a forged one.”

  “It’s not so easy to forge a U.S. passport anymore.”

  “No, it isn’t. Though admittedly not impossible if you hire someone really skilled. But that’s a limited pool of talent.”

  “And if he does hire someone good?”

  “If it’s a top-flight forgery, we’re not going to catch it anyway.”

  “Oh, come on, Alex, isn’t there a computer network linking all border entry points? Called something like IBIS, for Inter—Interagency Border Inspection System? Correct?”

  “Correct, but—”

  “As I recall from New Agents training, we used to post watch lists and photographs of fugitives at border entry points, and the customs agent would consult his lookout lists either alphabetically or by passport number.”

  Pappas nodded and fished out another cigarette from the pack.

  “But now we’ve got automatic document readers at most major ports, right? They optically scan the coded information at the bottom of the passport, and they’re programmed to look for variances and patterns to make sure a passport is valid. So if our guy flashes a forged passport, isn’t he going to be caught instantly?”

  “If it’s a lousy forgery, sure. But not if it’s any good. You’re dreaming if you think the system is set up to catch fakes. It’s not.”


  “But if the number of a fake passport doesn’t match existing passport numbers, won’t it be flagged?”

  “Wrong. More techno-lust. Little-known fact: the system doesn’t notice passport numbers that don’t exist.”

  “Jesus Christ. But surely lost or stolen passports are logged onto the system. Otherwise, what the hell is it good for?”

  “Yes, lost or stolen passports are entered into the computer, so if someone tries to use one, a ‘red flag’ goes up—an alert message or whatever it is. That’s how we caught those terrorists who stole all those U.S. passports a couple of years back.”

  He was referring to a recent incident, which the FBI has never made public, in which a terrorist group seized fifteen hundred valid U.S. passports. But the FBI had each of the passports flagged on the INS computer system and thereby caught any terrorist who tried to use one.

  “Which means,” Sarah said, “Baumann’s not going to use a stolen passport.”

  “Well, no, not necessarily. There’s always a delay between the moment he, or someone else, steals a passport and the moment it goes onto the on-line lookout list. Maybe the guy he lifted it from doesn’t notice for a couple of days. Or maybe the lady whose job it is to enter passport data into IBIS took the week off to visit Disney World with her kids.”

  “So he can use a stolen passport.”

  “Correct.”

  “Shit. All right, I’ve got it. We do a cross-check.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Okay, so we know the automated, optically scanning document readers at all ports of entry store all information on who’s entered the country, at what time, on what day and on what flight and where, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s all on an immense database at State. And we cross-check that list against a list of all passports reported lost or stolen within the last month. So in effect, what we’re coming up with is a list of all lost or stolen passports that’ve been used since they were reported lost or stolen.”

  Pappas chuckled. “More of your beloved technology.”

  “Of course, it won’t work if the passport Baumann used to get into the country was never reported. But say it was. Then we’ve got a list of all illegal entries, and we filter out that list, and we’ve got him.”

  “Can’t be done,” Pappas said flatly. “These are two separate, discrete databases. Sad, but true. We’re not set up to do something like that. Sounds good in theory, but you’d have to check a list of thousands of stolen or lost passports against millions of people who’ve come into the U.S. recently—and do it by hand. It would take forever. Tedious, mind-numbing, and frankly impossible.”

  “That’s why God invented computers.”

  “Listen, Sarah. For as long as I’ve been in the Bureau, that’s never been done. Never. There’s a reason for that.”

  “Yeah. They didn’t have Ken Alton, computer wizard. I’ll give him a call. He’s probably just booted up his computer for the night.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, kid. And don’t forget, even if you somehow find out what passport he used, he’s already in the country.”

  “Shame on you, Alex. Then we’ve got us a trail.”

  “Hardly a trail.”

  “Oh, come on,” Sarah upbraided him. “Then we’ve got us a damn good start.”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes you’ve got to count on a little luck. Think positive.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  In a great city like New York, Henrik Baumann was in his element. He disappeared easily into crowds, his appearance always changing; he made his arrangements, established his contacts, bought what he needed in absolute anonymity.

  In the beginning he took a one-bedroom suite on the forty-first floor of the New York Hilton, in what they called the Executive Tower. There were less expensive rooms, and nicer hotels, but it was height he was after most of all.

  He set up the MLink-5000 satellite telephone on the sill of an east-facing window and opened its lid to aim the flat-plate array antenna, checked the signal-strength meter, and readjusted the angle of elevation. Rather than use the handset, he plugged into the phone’s modular port a small fax machine he had purchased on Forty-seventh Street. On a table nearby he placed the cheap electronic typewriter he had bought at the same place, and several preprinted invoice forms.

  For the first time he felt anxiety. The situation had changed.

  He’d never intended to kill the FBI executive in charge of finding him, but the fellow had made it unavoidable. Baumann had done what he could to make the death look like a random act of violence. He had stolen Taylor’s wallet and with a silencer-equipped pistol had fired two bullets into Taylor’s head and throat. He had also removed from the briefcase the Airtel that listed members of the top-secret task force, but he took nothing else. Those investigating Taylor’s death would, he hoped, think that Taylor’s killer had not even gone into the trunk of the car. Even if they did suspect Baumann, they wouldn’t know that he had found the list of task force members.

  In any case, the FBI had learned enough of his undertaking to form an investigative body to look into it. This was serious. There was now a possibility that the mission would be blown, that he would be caught. And for the first time he wondered whether he should go through with it.

  He had already received a good chunk of Dyson’s money, and he knew he could disappear now if he had to and never be found. But he had never aborted a mission before, except on orders from above; men behind desks tended to be cautious, even fearful, by nature. He felt as if his work had barely begun. And he prided himself on his dexterity and cunning, his talent at remaining elusive.

  The truth was, despite all the danger he felt sure he could forge ahead and not be caught. He had been hired to do a job—the largest, most ambitious undertaking of his lifetime—and he was going to do it. He knew he was the best at what he did; pride would not let him give up now.

  So he turned his attention to where the leak might have come from. There were loose ends—there were always loose ends, you could not work in a vacuum—but he thought it unlikely the leak had come from his end. True, the bomb-disposal expert in Liège was aware of a small part of his operation, the nature and operation of the bomb. But he knew very little—and certainly not enough to have been the FBI’s source.

  No, the leak had to have come from Malcolm Dyson’s team. The question was whether someone of Dyson’s associates had been bent, or their security had been compromised.

  Assuming the first possibility—that one of Dyson’s people had talked—then the operation was as good as over. Godammit to hell, that was exactly why Baumann didn’t trust groups! If this was correct, then Baumann would know soon enough. He would proceed as planned, but with even greater caution, and prepare to abort the mission if need be.

  But what if the leak had not been human but mechanical, technical? A tapped fax or phone call, a bug in Dyson’s offices? The Russians, the British, and the Americans all had the facilities to listen in on telephone conversations by means of satellites. But Dyson and his people would never talk on open lines; Baumann had specifically instructed them on this point. Yet what if Dyson’s people had spoken openly over amateur equipment, encrypting telephones bought on the commercial market?

  This was possible.

  It was utterly inconceivable that his one, brief satellite communication with Dyson had been the source of the leak, since he had said only a few words and had not been at all explicit. Yes, the CIA and the NSA and GCHQ had the ability to use a spectrum analyzer to pick up this SATCOM’s characteristic signal. But why would anyone be so motivated?

  Baumann had learned through bitter experience how dangerous it was to communicate by even “secure” communications, and he tried to keep doing it to a minimum. When the Libyans had hired him to bomb the La Belle disco in West Berlin in 1986, they had been foolish enough to send a “secure” message from Tripoli to East Berlin predicting a “joyous event�
� to take place at a club in Berlin. The Americans had intercepted the message and had frantically tried to close down clubs in Berlin, but didn’t know which one was to be hit. The operation was almost blown, and Baumann was furious. Since then, the Libyans communicate only through couriers, human-to-human contact, the only safe way.

  To use the SATCOM again was a risk, but a small one. Still, he would have to take extra precautions now. This would be his last telephone call to Dyson, unless there was a great emergency.

  Hence the secure fax machine.

  Baumann placed a secure call to the bank in Panama City, which confirmed that the second 3.3 million had been wired to his Liechtenstein account. Excellent; exactly one week remained until the strike date. Dyson had not been tardy with the money. Then again, 3.3 million dollars here and there was pocket change to Malcolm Dyson.

  He then called the Liechtenstein bank and purchased slightly less than 6.6 million U.S. dollars’ worth of gold bullion. He lost a few thousand dollars in the transaction, but it would be worth it in the long run.

  Then he wrote out a message, which began: LEAK YOUR END. AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE PARTIALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE. THOROUGHLY SWEEP HOME, OFFICES, COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT, CHECK PERSONNEL. DON’T USE TELEPHONE. I WILL BE OUT OF CONTACT. He ended it: HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT SECOND PAYMENT.

  Using the red-plastic-bound Webster’s pocket dictionary he’d bought in Paris, a twin of which Dyson had, he encrypted the message by means of a simple substitution cipher and typed it out on one of the preprinted forms. The text appeared to be an authentic-looking invoice requesting prices on a list of things—item #101.15, item #13.03, and on and on. Dyson alone knew this referred to page 101 in the dictionary, fifteen major words down on the page, etc. This simple cipher was almost unbreakable.

  Baumann had set a five-minute window for Dyson to fax a similarly encoded reply. He ordered a room-service lunch, took a brief nap, and once again set up the MLink-5000.

  Precisely as the five-minute window began, his SATCOM blinked to indicate an incoming signal, then the fax machine warbled and out came Dyson’s reply.