The Zero Hour

“A guy named Martin Lomax, who’s apparently a close associate of Malcolm Dyson’s, and someone named Johann Kinzel, who’s Dyson’s money man.”

“Great work. I think we just locked this up. We’ve got a prosecutable case now. Bravo.”

Pappas knocked on the door and said, “Sarah, we need to talk.”

She knew Pappas’s face well, knew it was serious. “What is it?”

“There’s been another murder,” he said. “There was a body found in an alley in your neighborhood. The report just came in.”

“Whose?”

“Sarah,” Pappas said, putting his arm around her, “it’s Peter.”

***

Hunched over the toilet, vomiting.

Bitter tears burning her nostrils. She wanted to call Jared, wanted to go get him now, didn’t know what to do. There was a right time, a right way, to tell an eight-year-old something so wrenching.

Then she remembered she had given him her cellular phone this morning to keep in his backpack, in case she needed to reach him. In case of emergency.

But no. She couldn’t call him. It had to be done in person.

It would be harder because of Jared’s anger toward his father. The wounds were already open; the pain would be unbearable.

She needed to go for a walk.

***

Roth called headquarters, asked for Sarah. Pappas answered. “She’s not here,” he said. “I don’t know where she is. I just gave her the bad news about her ex-husband. She left about fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’ll try her at home,” Roth said. “If you see her, tell her we got our guy.”

“What do you-”

“I mean, we got a picture-a photo of Baumann.”

“What are you talking about?”

But Roth hung up, and then dialed Sarah’s apartment. He got the machine, calculated she might be on the way home, maybe to get her kid, so he left a message.

In a coffee shop across the street from headquarters, Sarah sat, red-eyed, dazed.

Peter was dead.

How could it possibly be a coincidence? What if Baumann had meant to get her, and had got to Peter instead-Peter, who was in town and might well have tried to go to her apartment…

Jared. Was Jared next?

She had to get back to work immediately, today of all days, but somebody had to get Jared out of YMCA day camp. Pappas couldn’t do it. She needed him at headquarters.

At a pay phone on the street, she called Brea, the babysitter, then hung up before the phone began to ring. Brea was at her parents’ house in Albany, upstate. The fall-back sitter, Catherine, was in classes all day.

Then she dialed Brian’s number.

***

In the small, unfurnished apartment, Baumann listened to the message Lieutenant George Roth was leaving on Sarah’s answering machine.

Leo Krasner hadn’t been bluffing. A phone call would be made, he said. He had a photograph, he said.

Frozen, Baumann sat with his mind racing. Tomorrow was the 26th, the anniversary of the day on which U.S. federal marshals had killed Malcolm Dyson’s wife and daughter, the day Dyson wanted it all to happen.

But now they had a photograph.

They had his face.

Sarah would recognize the face. He hadn’t counted on that.

Well, the bomb was already in place. Waiting until tomorrow meant the entire mission might be sabotaged.

He could not take that chance. He would have to move things up. Dyson would certainly understand.

He would have to move now.

Then suddenly another phone rang. This call was being forwarded from his display apartment, the one where he took Sarah. Baumann could tell by the ring.

It was Sarah.

“Brian, please,” she said, her voice verging on the hysterical. “I need to ask you a favor.”

***

Roth slammed down the phone in Leo Krasner’s apartment.

“Shit,” he said. “Where the hell is Sarah?” Then he said loudly, to the apartment in general, “You think this guy maybe has a fax around here somewhere?”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

Outside the YMCA on West Sixty-third Street, Henrik Baumann stood, dressed in a blue polo shirt and chinos and sunglasses.

Jared emerged, looking disoriented. He smiled when he saw Baumann, came up to him and gave him a high-five.

Baumann flagged a cab. They got in, and he directed the driver to head toward Wall Street.

“Where are we going?” Jared asked.

“Your mom wanted us to go for a little outing.”

“But the camp director said you were going to take me home because my mom couldn’t get off from work.”

Baumann shook his head absently.

“The director said Mom wanted you to take me right home,” Jared said, puzzled, “’cause something important was going on.”

“We’re going on a little outing,” Baumann said quietly.

It was a few minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon, still the lunch hour, so the streets bustled despite the weather. Although he was moving the operation up by an entire day, the timing was still good, because it was the middle of the day, when the Network operated at maximum capacity.

When the cab reached Moore Street, it pulled up before the new twenty-story building that housed the Network’s computer facilities. Baumann got out with Jared.

“What’s this, Brian?” Jared asked. “Where are we?”

“It’s a surprise,” Baumann said.