The Zero Hour (25 page)

*   *   *

Perry Taylor’s telephone number and address were listed in the Washington metropolitan telephone book, in Alexandria.

Baumann rented a car, a black Ford Mustang, from Hertz, using one of the false U.S. driver’s licenses, this one belonging to a Connecticut driver named Carl Fournier. Then he made the short drive to Alexandria and located 3425 Potomac Drive, a contemporary brick ranch fronted in weathered shingles.

Passing by at moderate speed, he saw that the front lawn was an immaculate bottle-green carpet, a veritable putting green. The only car in the recently blacktopped driveway was a hunter-green Jeep Grand Cherokee, Limited Edition, of recent vintage. The family car.

He returned to Washington and spent the day making various purchases at an electronics shop, a pet shop, and a sporting-goods store. He rose early the next morning and was in Alexandria by about five o’clock.

It was still dark, the sky streaked faintly with pink traces of the rising sun. A second car was now in the driveway, next to the Jeep: a metallic-blue late-model Oldsmobile. No lights were on in the house yet.

Baumann did not slow the car as he passed. The neighborhood was upper-middle-class, and a car that slowed or stopped would be noticed. Neighbors here, like neighbors everywhere, could be counted on not to mind their own business. They eavesdropped on domestic quarrels, noticed new cars, watched yard work (approvingly or not). The houses were set far apart; property lines were neatly marked by tall picket fences or short split-log ones, but there was little privacy. There would always be an early riser next door or across the broad suburban street, peering out as he or she arose.

He parked the car a few blocks away in the mostly deserted lot of a Mobil station and walked back to Perry Taylor’s house. He was wearing a sporty cardigan sweater, a pair of Dockers khaki pants, new white Nikes. He belonged.

In one hand was a bright-red dog’s leash, which jingled as he walked; in the other was an aluminum device the pet shop called a “Pooper-Scooper,” used to clean up after your dog. He whistled low as he approached the house, softly calling: “Tiger! Come on, boy! Come on back, Tiger!”

As he walked up Taylor’s driveway, he saw with relief that the house was still dark. He continued to call out quietly, looking back and forth across the immaculate lawn for his errant pet. Finally he came up behind the Oldsmobile and quickly knelt down.

If Taylor or a neighbor chanced to catch him there, in this position, he had a ready excuse. Still, his heart thudded rapidly. Taylor was an FBI man involved in counterterrorism and had to be cautious.

In a few seconds, he slipped a tiny, rectangular object, a flat metal box no bigger than an inch a side, under the rear bumper of the Olds. The powerful magnet locked on instantly.

“Where are you, Tiger, old boy?” he called out in a stage whisper as he got to his feet.

There was some information he wanted to get from this car, but it would require him to switch on his Maglite. The pencil flashlight’s beam was small but powerful, not worth the risk.

A light went on in a second-story window next door. Baumann casually strolled down the driveway, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head in resignation, for the sake of the neighbor who, he assumed, was watching him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The finest houses in all of Amsterdam are located on the Herengracht canal, in a long row of facades built in varying stunning styles and known as the Golden Bend.

One of the grandest of the houses, built in Louis XIV style, with a double staircase running through its magnificent entrance and frescoed ceilings, belonged to an American man in his early forties who had married an extremely wealthy Dutch woman and ran her family’s banking concern.

Early in the morning, the telephone rang in the man’s enormous, light-filled master bedroom, waking both the American and his beautiful blond wife. The man picked up the handset, listened, said a few words, and then hung up.

He began weeping.

“What is it?” his wife asked.

“It’s Jason,” he replied. “He’s dying.”

The man had been estranged from his younger brother, who lived in Chula Vista, California, for some five years. Five years earlier, the younger brother had announced that he was gay, news that had torn this conservative Republican family apart.

In the ensuing battle, the two brothers had fought, and years of simmering resentments and rivalries had boiled over. They had not spoken since.

Now came the news that Jason, Thomas’s only sibling, had an advanced, full-blown case of AIDS. According to his physicians, he might live for another week, no more.

Although Thomas was an American citizen, he had not left the country in more than two years, for a brief, unavoidable meeting in London. He despised traveling, and until this morning had intended never to leave Amsterdam again.

He got up and went downstairs, drank a cup of
koffie verkeerd
(coffee with hot milk) prepared by their housekeeper, and booked the earliest possible flight to San Diego for him and his wife. Then he went to the marble-topped bureau in his study, where he kept all of his important papers, to get his passport.

It was not there.

This was odd, because he had seen it there just two or three days ago, when he had to make a photocopy of his birth certificate. He searched the drawer again, then pulled the drawer out and looked in the space behind it to see whether it might have somehow slid out of the drawer.

But it was not there.

The cleaning lady who came in every other day had just neatened up his study a few days ago, but she would certainly never move it. Thomas doubted she’d ever opened this drawer.

By late morning, Thomas and his wife and the housekeeper had searched the house high and low, but to no avail. The passport was missing.

“Just call the embassy and tell them it’s lost,” his wife said impatiently. “You can get a replacement right away. We can’t look anymore if we’re going to catch the afternoon flight, Thomas.”

He called the American consulate, on Museumplein, and reported his passport missing. After the typical runaround, he was told to come in and fill out some papers.

“Let me have your name again, sir,” the woman on the other end of the line said.

He responded with great annoyance, because he had given this dull-witted woman his name no fewer than three times. He had even spelled it out, as if to an idiot.

“Moffatt,” he said. “Thomas Allen Moffatt.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The Mobil lot was too exposed, so Baumann found a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts, which was open, casting a sulfurous fluorescent light on the cars parked in the small lot in front. He parked and went inside for a cup of coffee. The server was a small young woman with frosted blond hair. She handed him a large cup, black, and a plain doughnut, and cheerily wished him a good morning. From the vending machine at the entrance he bought an early edition of the
Post.

In the car, he draped the newspaper over the steering wheel and perused it as he sipped his coffee. From under the front passenger’s seat he slid the receiver, plugged it into the cigar lighter, and adjusted the antenna. Any passerby would think he was studying the paper, though he was actually examining the LCD readout. A flashing red dot told him that the “bumper beeper,” or Hound Dog, he had placed on the Oldsmobile’s bumper was transmitting a signal, and that the car hadn’t moved.

The device emitted an RF signal. Some Hound Dogs trailed a black wire antenna almost a foot long, but not this. Not on the car of an FBI man. This particular solid-state model had a stubby antenna that wouldn’t easily be detected.

The scope, beside him on the front seat, told him where the transmitter was and where he was relative to it. This would enable him to tail the FBI man without being detected. Even deputy assistant directors had once gone through training and knew to look for certain signs of surveillance.

There was a risk that the FBI did regular RF sweeps on Taylor’s car, in which case the Hound Dog would be discovered; but they would not do them daily. In any case, he would have to move quickly.

By his second cup of coffee, at 7:50
A.M.
, the flashing red dot began to move.

He followed the FBI man from as much as half a mile behind. Only once did he come close enough to see Taylor. This was at a large intersection just outside the District. Taylor was in the right lane, near the entrance to a shopping center. Baumann entered the shopping center’s lot and drove within line of sight.

With his Nikon 7 × 50 binoculars he was able to scrutinize Perry Taylor; because Baumann’s rental car had tinted windows, Taylor could not see Baumann, even if he happened to look. Taylor looked to be in his late forties, perhaps fifty, of medium build. His gray hair was neatly cut, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He wore an olive poplin suit with a white shirt and a gold-striped tie: the consummate government bureaucrat.

An ID badge was attached to the breast pocket of Taylor’s suit jacket by means of an alligator clip, which told Baumann that Perry usually kept his jacket on during the day. Whenever an FBI employee was in FBI space he was required to wear his ID badge.

Baumann let the metallic-blue Oldsmobile get a good distance ahead, and he followed carefully. Since he didn’t know the streets of Washington, he made a few wrong turns and was stymied by a one-way street, but that was inevitable.

When the flashing red dot came to a stop once again, Baumann pulled up several car lengths away, and could see that Taylor had pulled into a small parking lot off a commercial stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue. Baumann double-parked half a block up the street and watched through the binoculars.

Perry Taylor got out of the car, placed a coin in the parking meter, and entered a delicatessen that advertised breakfast specials and takeout meals. Was he having breakfast? If so, this was a golden opportunity.

With some trepidation, Baumann left his car double-parked, strolled past the metallic-blue Oldsmobile, and quickly made a few mental notes.

One, there was an FBI parking garage pass on the dashboard. No surprise here; all employees who worked at FBI headquarters had the right to park in its garage. Unfortunately, the garage was well guarded and difficult to enter.

Two, if Taylor had set the car alarm, there was no visible sign of it. Likely he had not.

And three, there was a briefcase on the front seat, a gray Samsonite. This was most interesting, but how to get to it? It was possible, though not likely, that Taylor had left the car unlocked. Baumann passed by the car again, pretending to be looking for a street number, and with his glove-clad hands tried the driver’s-side door. It was locked.

Then he noticed a small plate screwed onto the dash where it met the windscreen. Yes, of course. Engraved on the plate was the VIN, the vehicle identification number. Baumann drew close and copied down the long series of numbers and letters, and just then he saw Taylor emerge from the delicatessen, carrying a white paper bag—his breakfast? his lunch? Baumann kept walking toward the rented Mustang and got back into the car. He took note of the name of the auto dealership where Taylor had probably purchased the car: it was emblazoned on the bracket that held the license plate. Then Baumann pulled into traffic and proceeded down the street and out of sight.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Sarah and Pappas were not the first to arrive at Operation MINOTAUR’s headquarters. By seven-fifteen, everyone had arrived except Ken Alton, who’d been at work into the early morning, rigging up in record time a local-area network, or LAN. Since each member of the task force had a computer terminal, this would allow everyone to gain access to files and records in the most efficient way possible. Ken had explained to Sarah that he wasn’t particularly concerned about what he called interior defense, because every task force member had been thoroughly screened and vetted. Had there been more time, he would set up an adequate perimeter defense, with a “firewall” security system. But Ken was a perfectionist in everything except his grooming, and Sarah told him to leave things as they were. No time for anything elaborate.

The group broke up into teams and dispersed for the day, all of them equipped with a beeper in case Sarah needed to reach them suddenly. She and Lieutenant Roth moved to the office she had claimed as her own. Probably it had once belonged to the display company’s president. For all the high-tech security that had been set up on the floor, many of the offices had been left untouched. A ratty abandoned desk-and-chair set dwarfed the room, with its breathtaking view of the city. From up here it looked clean and galvanized and full of promise. The desk’s surface was wood-grain Formica, patched at one corner with mismatched wood-grain contact paper. The high-backed chair was upholstered in mustard-yellow vinyl, with white cotton tufts sprouting through gaping holes in the seat. No wonder the furnishings had been left behind. The only official-looking thing in the room was the FBI-approved safe, a four-drawer Mosler combination safe, concrete-and-steel, good for material up to top secret.

“So, Lieutenant Roth, my sources tell me you’re one of the best cops on the force, you were considered a genius when you were on the Fugitive Squad, you tracked down twelve fugitives in a year and half, you’re great at passports and credit cards, and you’ve got some sort of unbelievable gift at finding people, some kind of sixth sense. I hope my sources are right.”

Roth popped a Breath Saver. “They exaggerate,” he said. “I’ll do my best, all I can say.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

“Okay,” he said, as Sarah prepared to take notes. “There’s an organization that might help called APPLE, for the Area Police Private Security Liaison program. I guess the S is silent. The members are the security directors of nine hundred buildings and companies in the city. Mostly they’re involved with break-ins and domestic crime. They spend their time thinking about public toilets and loading docks and service entrances, but since the World Trade Center they’ve gotten pretty concerned about terrorism. The program coordinator is a buddy of mine. I’ll give him a call.”