The Zero Hour

Shortly after midnight Baumann left Sarah’s apartment. The street was empty, chilly, lit by soft oblique early-morning sunlight. As he walked, he became aware of someone following him.

He turned around and saw Sarah’s ex-husband, Peter Cronin.

“Oh, hello,” he said.

Cronin held his face a few inches from Baumann’s. He shoved Baumann into the mouth of a narrow alley a few feet away and began moving closer, his breath hot against Baumann’s face. He placed a large hand on Baumann’s shoulder and flattened him against the brick wall. Baumann looked around: there was no one in sight. They were alone. No one was passing by.

“Let me be really clear with you, Brian. I’m a cop. I got resources you wouldn’t believe. I’m going to look into your past, find out all about you. You wouldn’t believe the shit I can find out about you, you asshole. The shit I can do to you. I can get you deported, motherfucker.”

“All right, enough,” Baumann said quietly.

“Enough, motherfucker? Enough? I got news for you, fucker. I did a little checking on you, big guy. There’s no record of any ‘Brian Lamoreaux’ entering the country. Either you’re here illegally or you aren’t who you say you are.”

“Oh, is that right?” Baumann said phlegmatically.

“That’s right, buddy. I’m going to turn your whole life inside out, you little shithead. I’m going to make your life a living nightmare, and then I’m going to-”

There was a loud snap, the unmistakable sound of bone cracking, and now Peter’s head was turned around almost 180 degrees. He seemed to have turned to look at the opposite wall; but, his spinal column having been severed, his head was grotesquely out of position. His eyes glared angrily, his mouth gaping in midsentence, frozen in death.

Baumann eased the body to the ground, then took out an alcohol wipe from his pocket and cleaned the prints from Peter Cronin’s neck and face, and in a matter of seconds he was out of the alley and on his way.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

At two o’clock in the morning, Henrik Baumann and Leo Krasner were slogging through the tunnels beneath the Wall Street area of New York City. Though burdened as before with backpacks and air tanks, they moved more quickly this time, finding their destination without pedometer, compass, or map.

They arrived at the central switching area and removed their breathing apparatus. Krasner, angry at having to do this menial task, took out his tools in silence.

Then he turned around and, short of breath, fixed Baumann with a menacing glare. “Before I do jack shit, you listen to me.”

Baumann’s stomach tightened.

“I’m not as stupid as you seem to think,” Leo said. “This whole ridiculous idea of making me go back down here in this fucking cesspool and fix the splice-let’s just say I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We both know you could have left the box here and no one would ever have detected it. Just coming back down here again is a bigger risk than leaving the breakout box on the line. So why would you want to take a chance like that?”

Baumann furrowed his brow. “I don’t want-”

“No, I’m not done, dude. If you have some idea about wasting me down here, you can forget about it. I taped our first meeting. If I’m not home in a couple of hours, a phone call is going to be made.”

“What is this?” Baumann said darkly. At their first meeting, Baumann had carried a small, concealed near-field detector that would have detected a running tape recorder. He was sure Krasner was bluffing.

“It’s my life insurance policy,” the cracker said. “I’ve dealt with assholes like you before. I know the sort of shit you guys sometimes try.”

“This is a business deal,” Baumann said quietly, almost sadly. “I certainly have no intention of killing you. Why should I? We are both professionals. You do the work I’ve asked you to do, you get paid-rather generously, yes?-and then we never see each other again. For me to do anything else would be insane.”

Krasner stared at him for a few seconds longer, then turned back to the wires. “Just as long as we’re totally clear on that,” he said, as he removed the breakout box and respliced the copper cable on which Manhattan Bank’s encrypted financial transactions traveled.

When he had finished his work, he turned around and smiled at Baumann. “And that, dude-”

Baumann reached out his hands with lightning speed and swiveled the computer wizard’s head until the vertebrae cracked audibly. The mouth was open in a half-smile, half-grimace; the eyes stared dully. The large body sagged.

It required considerable effort, but Baumann was strong. He hoisted the dead body and carried it to a blind end of the tunnel, where he deposited it in a crumpled heap. With alcohol wipes, he removed any fingerprints from Krasner’s face and neck.

In this section of the tunnel, there was a good chance that the body would remain undiscovered for weeks, if not longer, and by then it would make no difference anyway.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE