The Zero Hour (22 page)

“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.

When governments deal with other governments, they almost always go through established channels. An official request to the South African government for information on one Henrik Baumann might come through diplomatic or intelligence channels; it might be sent to the attorney general, or directly to the South African police. But no matter where it was pointed, it would be funneled to one place. All prisoner records, including court statements, photographs, and the standard fingerprint record, S.A.P. 69, are stored in the centralized records of the South African Criminal Bureau in Pretoria. The Criminal Bureau, however, was a large bureaucracy. A request for records might be handled by any of a dozen or more people.

But a far smaller staff was employed at the Department of Customs and Excise, Baumann knew, processing and handling passport applications. Any thorough search for information on him would include a request for his original passport application. Years ago, there was just one person, a stout Afrikaner whose name Baumann had long since forgotten, who handled requests for copies of these applications.

The clerk in charge was no doubt a different person by now. But there probably was still just one clerk in charge.

By his second call, he had reached the customs clerk in charge of passport application requests, a pleasant-voiced woman.

“This is Gordon Day from Interpol in Lyons. I’m following up on a request…”

“Sorry,” the clerk said politely when Baumann had stated his business. “We’re not supposed to deal directly with outside agencies—”

“Right,” he said, the jolly British civil servant, “but you see, the thing of it is, the request has already been made, and I need to know whether the documents have been
sent
, is all, because there seems to be some foul-up on our end here, at headquarters.”

“I haven’t gotten any request from Interpol concerning a passport of that number,” she said.

“Are you quite sure?” Baumann insisted.

“Yes, Mr. Day, I’m quite sure, but if you send me a fax with—”

“Is there another agency the request might have ended up at?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Oh, dear. Well, is it possible that our request was filed with another country’s, like the French, maybe, or—”

“No, sir. The only request for that application I’ve received came from the American FBI.”

“Ah,” Baumann said triumphantly. “That makes sense. They put in the request to us, as well. Was the requesting officer a Mr.… Mr.… I must have it here somewhere…”

“Taylor, sir, from Counterterrorism?”

“Taylor! Right. Well, that certainly clears
that
up. Thanks so much for your help.”

“Yes, sir, my pleasure.”

Counterterrorism. The FBI. The Americans were on to him. A change in plan was most definitely necessary.

He would not fly to New York. No, that would not do at all. That would be a mistake.

He would fly to Washington.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Twenty years ago or so, Harry Whitman explained, an agent in the Criminal Division had attended the FBI Academy with a South African policeman. The FBI National Academy runs an intensive fifteen-week program at Quantico, Virginia, to train midlevel police officials in the latest investigative techniques. Out of the one hundred law-enforcement officials in each class, fifteen or twenty are foreign.