The Zero Hour

Early the next morning, Christine Vigiani was informed that there was a call for her on the STU-III secure phone. She went into the secure communications area, lighting a cigarette as she walked, and picked it up. “Vigiani,” she said.

“This is Larry Lindsay at NSA.”

Vigiani was silent for a beat too long, so he went on, “Your liaison, remember?”

“Oh, right. What’s up?”

“Let’s go secure,” he said. “This is sensitive.”

***

Vigiani called Sarah’s apartment. Sarah answered on the first ring.

“Hope I’m not waking you,” Vigiani said.

“Nope, I’m just having my coffee. What’s up?”

“I think I have your deadline.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The deadline. The day the attack’s going to take place. I think I have the date.”

“Oh?”

“GCHQ picked up another piece of an encrypted phone conversation from the same microwave relay station the last intercept came from.”

Sarah sat up straight.

“They were targeting Geneva North microwave relay station, listening on a number of specified frequencies, when they came across a signal that wouldn’t decrypt. They pulled it down and put it through the Cray. And lo and behold, it turns out to be the exact same encryption scheme as the first one.”

“What’s in the conversation? More about Baumann?”

“No, it was some guy-the same guy as in the last intercept-calling a banker in Panama, authorizing a payment. He was very detailed about it. He wanted to make sure one-third of ‘the money’ had been paid out at the beginning, and then another third last week, and then the final payment three days from now. June 26. He said a major ‘incident’ was going to take place in the United States on June 26, and only once that ‘incident’ took place was the money to be released. He wasn’t more specific than that.”

“Three days from now…” Sarah mused aloud. “You’re right. That’s the target date. That’s when the bomb’s going off.”

She hung up and turned to Jared. “I want you to take my cellular phone. Put it in your backpack.”

“Wow,” Jared said.

“This is no game, Jared. You are not to use it. Don’t show it around, don’t play games with it, you hear me? It’s only if I have to reach you.”

“What are you going to use?”

“We have other cell phones at work I can use.”

“Cool,” Jared said.

***

In the very small, unfurnished apartment a block away, Baumann put down the phone, pursed his lips, shook his head slowly.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

When Leo Krasner bragged to Baumann that he’d “taped” their first meeting, he hadn’t been bluffing. But he hadn’t been so foolhardy as to conceal a tape recorder on his person, because he knew there were devices that could detect such things-portable, hand-held bias-oscillator detectors or metal detectors, that sort of thing.

No, he had done something far more effective.

After Baumann had first called, Krasner had insisted they meet at a brightly lit restaurant, not in some dingy pub. He had enlisted the help of a friend, a fellow hacker and cracker, who showed up at the restaurant with a gym bag.

The gym bag, set down on a table near where Baumann and Krasner were meeting, had black nylon mesh at either end to provide ventilation for sweaty gym clothes. But the mesh served another purpose as well. A video camera could clandestinely film through it quite well-and did.

While the video camera ran, Krasner’s friend read a book. He sat for a good long while, and then left.

Thus Krasner had a clear videotape of his meeting with Baumann, whose name he of course didn’t know, from which he had chosen several excellent still frames of the man who had hired him. Using his Xerox color scanner for maximum resolution, he had scanned the clearest black-and-white image into one of his computers.

The man could track him down, could find his apartment, could find the video and the stack of black-and-white glossies. But only someone a good deal more computer-adept than that guy would realize that his photo was hidden in a silicon chip.

Neither was Leo Krasner lying about a phone call being made if he did not return to his apartment by a certain time. Using the same simple technology employed in burglar alarms that automatically telephone the police when they’re tripped, he connected an autodialer to a timer and an answering machine on which one outgoing message had been recorded.

At exactly nine o’clock in the morning following Krasner’s last trip through the underground tunnels, the autodialer called 911 and played the message.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

At nine in the morning exactly, a call was answered by one of the sixty-three 911 operators at work in one large room at One Police Plaza. “New York Police 911,” she said into her headset. “Your call is being recorded.”

She was met by silence, and was about to disconnect when she heard the whine of a tape recorder, and then a male voice began to speak.