The Zero Hour

He took Jared around to the rear of the building and found the yellow-painted emergency-exit door he’d identified earlier.

He pulled out the key he had made a few days before, unlocked the door, and entered, taking the service stairs to the basement.

***

“Sarah,” Vigiani said as Sarah entered headquarters. “There’s a fax coming in for you. Slow as shit.”

“Who’s it from?”

“Roth. Says he’s got a photograph of Baumann.”

Her heart suddenly hammering, Sarah went over to the fax machine. Now she saw why it was coming through so maddeningly slowly. It was a photograph. The bottom was coming out first, a thick white border, and then a dark area, millimeter by millimeter. This could take forever.

She stood over the fax. The suspense was unbearable. In two minutes, the photograph had come through almost completely.

She looked at the face, felt her insides twist.

She looked again. She felt vertiginous, about to lose consciousness. The face seemed to rush toward her like a speeding train, like some special effect in a movie. She gasped.

Brian.

Part 6: THE HOMING

In difficult ground, press on;

in encircled ground, devise

stratagems; in death ground, fight.

– Sun-tzu, The Art of War

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

Baumann switched on the lights. The basement was low-ceilinged, bare, and quite large, the size of the entire floor above it. He had, of course, been down here several days earlier to survey it, and he knew where the furnace room was, where the supply rooms were, and which part of the basement lay directly beneath the computer facility.

“Why are we here?” asked Jared.

“I told you. I have to do an errand before I take you home.”

Jared shook his head. “Mom’s in trouble or something. She said it’s something serious.” He raised his voice. “I should go home now.”

“Soon. When I’m done with my errands. And please keep your voice down.”

Backpack on his back, hands on his hips, Jared looked at Baumann defiantly. “Hey. Take me home now.”

“I told you, soon.”

“Now.” Jared’s voice echoed.

Baumann moved suddenly, quickly clapping his hand over Jared’s mouth as Jared flailed his arms, kicked, his screams muffled.

***

Sarah could handle a great many things, from threats to the national security to kidnappings to murder; she had acquired an ability to steel herself against fear and great tension; but nothing could shield her against this. Not her years of training, not her professional experience, not the methodical flow charts she’d been taught, the A-then-B-then-C techniques that served so well in emergencies.

But they did not work when your son has been kidnapped by a professional terrorist, and Sarah knew that was in effect what had happened, except that she had voluntarily, unthinkingly, turned her son over to the kidnapper.

She felt sick to her stomach.

Her chest tightened. The blood roared in her ears.

My God oh my God oh my God.

Everything took on a jerky, unreal quality, as if she were in some old newsreel, jumpy and badly spliced.

Years ago, when Jared was eight months old and they were living in Frankfurt while she worked Lockerbie, she was trying to go over some case files while Jared crawled around the apartment floor. There was a spiral staircase in the middle of the living room that she knew was treacherous to a crawling baby. It was steep and made of steel. She shuddered to think of what would happen if the baby ever fell down the stairs. She’d blocked off the landing with an overturned chair.

She must have been too absorbed in a file, because she suddenly heard a crash and then all was quiet. She looked up and saw what had happened. Jared had managed to wriggle beneath the chair and had plummeted down the staircase.

She felt her stomach turn cold. Everything in the world stopped. She found herself standing over the staircase, staring in shock. Her mind was operating in slow motion, but so, thank God, was the rest of the universe. Jared had fallen down half the stairs, his tiny head lodged between the railing and a riser. He was silent.

She was convinced he was dead. She had killed this beautiful little being by looking away for an instant. Her fragile little son, with the winning, gummy smile and his two brand-new teeth, that little kid who had his entire life ahead of him and depended upon her utterly to protect him, was dead.