The Zero Hour

The forger’s laughing fit immediately ceased. “Mr Lerner, what you ask is absolutely unrealistic,” he said quickly. “Impossible. You will find this no matter who you talk to. Unless you have the misfortune of hooking up with some small-time fraud who does the shoddiest work that will have the American or the British authorities on your ass in seconds. I am a craftsman, Mr. Lerner. The work I do is absolutely top-notch, of the highest quality.” With another feral smile, he added: “Better, I may say, than the real thing.”

Baumann sat down again. “Then how much time do you require?”

“It depends upon what you want exactly. The British documents are no problem whatsoever. The American ones, on the other hand-well, this can be a major challenge.”

“So I understand.”

“In April of 1993,” Bones explained, “the U.S. government began issuing new passports marked with what is called a kinegram, which looks like a hologram, if you know what that is.”

Baumann nodded impatiently, closing his eyes.

“It’s part of the laminate on the identity page. When you hold it up to the light, it changes between two different images. We still have not devised a satisfactory method to copy that, although in a short time I have no doubt we will. Fortunately, the older-style American passports are still valid and in use. Those are much easier to reproduce. Though still quite difficult. To forge a new passport requires access to the paper, or better still, to the actual passport books that the government uses. It also requires the proper equipment, which is strictly controlled, difficult to obtain, and extremely expensive-”

“And time-consuming, I imagine.”

“Very much so. Because of your time constraints, forgery is out. The only possibility is to acquire a valid passport and alter it.”

“I’m familiar with how it’s done,” Baumann said, smiling thinly. He produced Sumner Robinson’s passport, opened it to the identity page, and showed it to the forger, covering the name with his thumb.

“You hired an amateur,” the forger said disapprovingly.

Baumann nodded.

“This was crudely done.” He shook his head. “If you used this and were not caught-well, you were lucky. You must not use this again.”

Baumann took the insult to his craftsmanship in stride. “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “I have no doubt you will do a superior job. But how can you ensure that a stolen passport will not be reported as missing or stolen, and placed on the look-out list on the computers at all American ports of entry? The only way I can think of is to take a passport that belongs to someone who never uses it, and therefore wouldn’t notice its absence.”

“Exactly, Mr. Lerner. The network at my disposal has the names and addresses of Americans living abroad, in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and other places. Americans who have passports but rarely if ever travel.”

“Good,” Baumann said.

The two men negotiated a price-a stiff one, as it turned out, because of the number of personnel, including a small ring of petty break-and-enter specialists, who’d require a cut.

As he was about to leave, Baumann added, as if in afterthought: “Oh, and while your people are at it, have them get me an assortment of credit cards. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and whatnot.”

“Credit cards?” Van den Vondel replied dubiously. “Passports that are seldom used are one thing. But credit cards-they’re almost always noticed missing. They’d be canceled immediately.”

“Quite right,” Baumann said. “But that makes no difference to me.” He extended his hand; the forger gave a moist, oily squeeze. “Until tomorrow night, then.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Once Baumann concluded his business with the forger, he took a taxi to Schiphol Airport, rented a Mercedes at an all-night car-rental agency, and set out toward the Belgian border. He was bone-tired and in need of a good night’s sleep, but there was, to be fair, a certain logic to his middle-of-the-night journey. The distance between Amsterdam and Liège, Belgium, is 120 miles, a drive of only a few hours. In the hours after midnight, the roads were empty and the drive went quickly. Motoring was far less time-consuming than flying to Brussels, then driving to Liège. And Baumann wanted to arrive in the early morning.

There was a black-market armaments dealer who for years had lived and conducted his trade in a village just south of Liège, Baumann had ascertained after a few calls to underground armaments shippers at the Port of Antwerp. Baumann’s sources indicated that this dealer, a man named Charreyron, could do the job Baumann needed done.

Historically, Belgium has always been Europe’s most notorious, most active arms manufacturer and dealer. It exports 90 percent of the weapons it produces. And the capital of the Belgian arms industry since the Middle Ages has been Liège, at the junction of the Meuse and the Ourthe rivers: the heart of the Belgian steel industry and Europe’s third-largest inland port.