The Zero Hour (31 page)

The sudden intrusion of a raspy male voice: “
Freeze.
”

Bertrand, Dyson’s senior bodyguard, drew his pistol first, and the bounty hunters swiftly returned fire.

A sudden explosion, a series of rapid pops, the flashes of orange fire, the acrid smell of cordite. A woman’s scream, which was really the terrified scream of two women. The flash of moonlight reflected in Pandora’s earrings, a cough.

Bertrand saved Dyson’s life, though not his legs, and died in the process. Both Dyson’s wife and daughter were killed instantly. Dyson, paralyzed from the waist down, squirmed over to his dying wife and child and threw his arms around them both, half protecting, half embracing.

Malcolm and Alexandra Dyson’s marriage had long cooled, but she had given birth to Pandora, and Pandora was Malcolm Dyson’s whole world, the center of his life. He loved his daughter as much as any father had ever loved a daughter. He was obsessed with his Pandora; he could not talk about her without lighting up, without a smile or a glow.

Malcolm Dyson was a paraplegic now who carried his anger around in his motorized chair. Once he had lived for fortune; now he lived for revenge.
I’ll never walk again
, he had once thundered at Lomax,
but with Pandora gone, why in the world would I ever want to?

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Early Monday morning, Sarah arrived at headquarters, walking stiffly from the previous day’s attack. She had placed Band-Aids over the cuts on her neck and the side of her face. There was a large bruise on her right cheek that had turned blue, another one on her forearm, and a particularly nasty one under her rib cage.

“What the hell happened to you?” Pappas asked.

She recounted the incident, assured Pappas that Jared was fine.

“Eight-year-old boys,” Pappas said, “are a unique species. They’re easily frightened and just as easily soothed. Plus, their wounds somehow seem to heal almost overnight—it’s one of their chief physical properties.”

Christine Vigiani approached, waited for Pappas to finish talking. In one hand was a curling sheet of slick fax paper; in the other was a cigarette, pluming smoke.

She said: “We got a photo.”

Sarah whirled around. “Thank God. How?”

“I’ve been putting out intelligence feelers to all friendly contacts, as you asked me to do. I was sort of dubious, I’ll admit it. But then all of a sudden, Mossad finally came through.” The Mossad is world-renowned for its extensive photographic archives, some of which are stored on CD-ROM.

Sarah took the fax. “What is this?” she asked.

“An enlargement of a video image taken from a moving car in Johannesburg—a group of BOSS officers exiting a restaurant.”

“This came over the high-res fax?” Sarah asked, plainly crestfallen. “This is it?”

“It’s all they had, and since it comes from a single video frame—”

“Is this supposed to be a face? It looks more like a smudged thumbprint!” It was totally useless.

Vigiani took a drag from her cigarette, narrowed her eyes in silence.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Sarah said. “Nice try anyway, but this isn’t going to do us any good.”

When the group had assembled for the morning meeting, Sarah announced: “A few hundred copies of a South African computer Identi-Kit drawing of our good Prince are available up front, along with a spec sheet. Flash them around, or leave a copy if you think there’s a chance he might come into an establishment. We’ve got to check as many hotels as we can, which means we’ll have to call in some reinforcements from the PD and the Bureau. Remember, we’re looking for a fugitive implicated in a murder. That’s the public line.”

“That’s what he is,” mumbled one of the cops.

“Do you know how many hotels there are in the city?” asked another one of the cops, a tall, thin, sandy-haired fellow named Ranahan.

“No,” said Roth, holding a commuter’s mug of coffee. He turned around to stare directly at him. “Exactly how many hotels are there in the city? I’d be interested to learn the number.”

Ranahan coughed nervously. “How the hell do I know? A shitload.”

Roth nodded meaningfully. “‘A shitload.’
I
see. Is that privileged information, or can I leak that to the press?”

“Baumann is known to travel first-class,” Sarah interrupted, “and to prefer first-class accommodations, so we should make sure to check all the top hotels, but also the bottom rung, the flophouses and boardinghouses. Those are the best places to ensure anonymity, better than the middle-level ones.”

“I’ll do the Plaza and the Carlyle,” Ranahan volunteered. “George, there’s a bunch of crack hotels in Harlem got your name on them.”

“Keep the search to Manhattan proper,” Sarah instructed. “White male, forties. Blue eyes, black hair, medium build, no known identifying marks. Bearded, but may be clean-shaven or have a mustache. Probably has a South African accent.”

“What the hell does that sound like?” asked Special Agent Walter Latimer from the New York office.

“No one knows what a South African accent sounds like,” said Ullman. “They might think it’s an English accent, or Australian or Dutch or even German.”

“Right,” Sarah said. “Now, let’s bear in mind that he can’t exist in a vacuum, in isolation. What does he have to do in order to live in the city and make his preparations?”

“Does he have any known accomplices?” asked Vigiani. “Any major act requires some assistants or contacts. He’s not going to just fly in, plant a bomb, and fly out. It doesn’t work that way.”

“He may want to open a bank account,” Vigiani’s police partner said. “Or rent a car or a truck or a van.”

“Like maybe from Ryder Truck Rental in Jersey City,” suggested Lieutenant Roth, a reference to the place where the Trade Center conspirators rented their van.

“He’s a stranger in a strange land,” Sarah said. “That’s why he may call upon old contacts, friends or accomplices or contacts from the South African service or from past jobs. Chris, I’d like you to stay here and work the phones and the fax, see what you can turn up from friendly intelligence services in the way of known contacts. You didn’t turn up anything on the domestic right-wing extremist groups, did you?”

Vigiani shook her head slowly.

“Didn’t think so. Ken, what about the video frame Christine got from Mossad—any luck there?”

“I’ve been trying a bunch of times to enhance the photo using some not-bad photo-enhancement software. Some our own, some commercial ‘paintbrush’ stuff, but it’s hopeless. There’s no face there. I don’t think the Mossad guys even had a lens on their camera.”

“Thanks for trying,” Sarah said. “Have you turned up any of our man’s known relatives, associates, contacts, whatever?”

“Zero,” Ken replied.

“Great,” said one of the cops mordantly. “The guy has no friends.”

“Yeah, well, if your name was the Prince of Darkness,” said Roth, “you wouldn’t exactly be popular either. ‘Hey, hon, I’ve invited the Prince of Darkness over for dinner tonight. There enough lasagna to go around?’”

Sarah smiled politely, and a few cops chuckled appreciatively.

“One of the wizards at ID,” Ken went on, “translated his ten-prints into a couple of different formats, NCIC and AFIS, in addition to the Henry system, and secure-faxed them to the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Germans, the Israelis, and the Brits, for starters. A couple of the antiterrorist strike forces were really helpful. The Spanish GEO, the Grupo Especial de Operaciones—Special Operations Group, their antiterrorist group. The French GIGN, the Groupement d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, France’s crack antiterrorist unit. And the German GSG-9. They’re all operational, but they all have direct lines to intelligence.”

“And?” Sarah prompted.

“And we scored a couple interesting hits.”

Several heads turned in his direction.

“In 1985 and ’86 there was a string of fifteen bombings in Paris. Thirteen people were killed, more than two hundred wounded.”

“Iranian, wasn’t it?” Pappas said.

“I don’t know—terrorism isn’t my forte. But I do know that a Tunisian-born Frenchman was arrested and put on trial as the mastermind behind the campaign. He wanted to keep France from sending arms to Iraq during its war with Iran. Well, a big juicy latent thumbprint was found, clear as day, on a piece of duct tape used on one of the packages. The print was never ID’d—it didn’t come from the Tunisian guy.”

“Baumann,” one of the cops said.

“The way it looks,” Ken said. “Our guy gets around, or at least he’s not discriminating about who he works for. And the Spaniards, the GEO, had a fairly good partial from his index finger, taken from the fuel line of a car back in 1973. Apparently our man was wearing latex surgical gloves, but when the latex in the glove is stretched tightly enough, the print comes through.”

“What was the incident?” Pappas asked sharply.

“The assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister of Spain.”

“Jesus, that was the Basques,” Pappas said. “The Basque separatist movement ETA. You know, there was a rumor that they brought in an outsider. Baumann … is that
possible
?”

“Well, they scored a hit on the prints,” Ken said, “so I guess so.”

“The guy’s not a ghost,” Ullman said. “He does exist.”

“Ken,” Sarah said, “call up whatever you can on those events. I want names, contacts,
anything
. Have you been in touch with TRAC?” TRAC was the Terrorist Research and Analytical Center at Bureau headquarters in Washington.

“Oh, sure,” Ken said. “I also reached out to INS, to see if they had any matches for the prints. My thinking was, maybe he applied for a U.S. visa under a false name. The answer was no, of course. He’s way too careful a dude.”

“Well, nice try, anyway,” Sarah said. “And what about our cross-check?”

“A primo idea, oh esteemed leader.” He explained to the others Sarah’s idea. “But State is hamstrung by the Privacy Act, which protects passport information so ferociously that you can’t just lump it all together in one nice, handy package.”

Pappas gave Sarah a significant look. Sarah felt uncomfortable. “I like that,” she said. “With all our personal rights to privacy, what about the right not to be blown up in a subway or a skyscraper or something?”

Ken went on: “Ask State a simple question like ‘Can you tell if someone got into the country using a stolen passport?’ and you get a load of bullshit. Like, ‘Oh, we don’t depend on the passport number for enforcement,’ and ‘Oh, there’s lots of security features to prevent fraud, it could never happen.’ Junk like that. But here’s what they
don’t
want to tell you: they do have a lookout system for lost or stolen passports, so it pops up on the screen at all major ports of entry. It’s called the Consular Lookout and Support System. But it’s not real-time or anywhere close. It’s weeks and weeks behind the time. So you steal a passport from a guy in London—I mean, right out from under his nose, so he sees you doing it—and you can use that passport to get into the U.S., assuming you look enough like the photo on the stolen passport. Because it’s
weeks
by the time the London embassy sends—I mean, sends by
snail-mail
—the report of a lost or stolen passport to the U.S. and it’s entered into the system.”

“Can’t you get a list of all passports reported stolen or lost in the last several months?” Sarah asked.

“That’s the other thing. They don’t have a way to do that, to collect the names and passport numbers in one file.”

“You’re kidding me,” Sarah said.

“Unfortunately not. The U.S. State Department issues four million passports a year. And if you look at the figures for passports reported lost or stolen in 1992, for example, there were thirteen thousand, one hundred and one passports reported lost, and fourteen thousand, six hundred and ninety-two reported stolen. Of course, a lot of people who’ve actually lost their passport report it as stolen to save face, seem less clumsy. Yet State can’t do a cross-check for you on stolen passports that were used after they were reported stolen!”

Lieutenant Roth remarked, “Let’s hear it for the feds.”

“So now what?” Sarah asked.

“So just because they can’t do it doesn’t mean
I
can’t.”

Sarah smiled wanly.

“Through the Bureau’s link, I tapped into the Consular Lookout and Support System to see what passport numbers have been flagged as lost or stolen. Then simultaneously I went into the INS database that lists everyone who’s entered the country by any port of entry.”

“And if there’s a match,” Vigiani said excitedly, “you’ve got yourself a list of everyone who used a stolen or lost passport to get into the country in the last couple of months.”

“Right,” Ken concluded.

“And?” Sarah said.

“Well, I’m running the cross-check now, and I’ll fill you in as soon as you let me go back to my toys.”

“You did all this over the weekend?” asked one of the cops, a black man named Leon Hoskin, with more contempt than awe.

“Computers never sleep,” Ken explained offhandedly. “Some of these passport numbers will be automatic rule-outs, I suspect. Plus, I can eliminate females, older folks, nonwhites.”

“Don’t,” Sarah said. “Be careful about what you eliminate. A pro like Baumann can look older or younger than he is, can dress like a nun or a wheelchair-bound middle-aged man, for all I know. Don’t be too hasty to rule any of them out.”

For some reason she flashed on an image of Jared curled fetus-like on the ground in Central Park, then saw the wispy goatee of her mugger.

She felt a surge of anger and of protectiveness, and thought of how little progress they’d made, really, since she’d arrived here, how much further there was to go before there was even the remotest chance of stopping the Prince of Darkness.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Warren Elkind, chairman and chief executive officer of the Manhattan Bank, had been under intensive FBI surveillance since Operation MINOTAUR had begun its work. Elkind had been unreceptive to repeated FBI inquiries, and therefore Sarah had ordered the surveillance, knowing in time they would find his weak spot.