The Zero Hour

A receptionist sat at a desk, Whitman explained, monitoring video cameras mounted in the hallways and fire stairs and buzzing in authorized visitors through the electronically controlled inner door. A volumetric alarm system was set up in the reception area; the rest of the space was alarmed with volumetric, passive infrared, and active point-to-point infrared systems. To allow people to work through the night in various parts of the offices, the alarm system was zoned. The safes were in one room, separately alarmed.

“Secure communications links,” Whitman said as they entered what was once a showroom, now clearly the main command center. “This place cost us serious big bucks to set up, I might add, so I’m glad we’re reusing it.” He gave her a sidelong glance as if she were to blame. “Secure fax, secure computer terminal links, a line to the Watch Center at Langley, even a couple of Stus thrown in just for fun.” “Stu” is intelligence-community lingo for STU, a secure telephone unit. In a separate room, also alarmed, were two STU-III secure telephones-black lines, as they are called, for calls up to the classification of top secret.

Several people Sarah didn’t know were there, drinking coffee and reading the Daily News and the New York Post. The rest she recognized. Alex Pappas was engaged in animated, friendly conversation with Christine Vigiani from Counterterrorism in Washington. Both of them were smoking furiously. Russell Ullman from Washington was doing a crossword puzzle. Ken Alton was off by himself reading a book entitled Schrödinger’s Cat, which she assumed was science fiction.

“All right,” Whitman announced loudly, his hands thrust high in the air, waving for attention. “I assume everyone here has been detailed to the special working group of the Joint Terrorist Task Force. If you’re not, you know too much already and I’m going to have to have you killed.”

Polite chuckles all around. Whitman introduced himself and then everyone else to one another. Everyone in the room, Bureau or not, was wearing the FBI-regulation ID card, either clipped to a shirt or breast pocket or hanging from a metal chain around the neck. The FBI men were all wearing laminated dog tags and, so it seemed, Rockports.

Every FBI agent in the Joint Terrorist Task Force is paired with a New York City policeman. Sarah’s partner was a paunchy, moon-faced police detective lieutenant named George Roth, who had a receding hairline, deep acne pits on identical spots on each cheek, broken capillaries spread across a bulbous nose, and a strong Brooklyn accent. He barely acknowledged her. He gave her an imperceptible nod and didn’t shake her hand. He took a Breath Saver from a roll in his shirt pocket, popped it into his mouth, and lodged it against his left cheek.

Great to meet you too, Sarah thought.

Whitman sat on the edge of a desk and shoved aside an ancient-looking cup of coffee with a cigarette butt floating in it. “Okay, now, all of you were handpicked for this special group, but I’ve gotta lay down the law about secrecy right here and now. I can’t stress enough how important secrecy is. A couple of you are from out of town, so you might not know what kind of shit will go down in this city if the word gets out that a major Wall Street bank might get hit with a major act of terrorism in two weeks. Panic like you’ve never seen. Those of you on the job know what that means.

“If you have to reach out to other departments in the city, don’t tell ’em you’re doing work on terrorism. You’re looking for a fugitive, okay? And not a fucking word to the press, understood?”

There were nods, clearing of throats.

“When we were working on TRADEBOM, someone on the task force had a drinking buddy, a reporter for Newsday. Couldn’t help blabbing. So what happens? Newsday runs an article about one of the terrorists we were going to arrest when we were good and ready, but no, now we had to swoop in on the guy way too early. Which screwed things up really bad. Now, that leak came from the full task force, which is big. There’s only ten of you, so if there’s a leak, you better believe I’m going to track it down. If any of you have drinking buddies in the press, I’d go on the wagon till this inquiry is completed.”

The task force, he said, was code-named Operation MINOTAUR. He explained that the Minotaur was a mythological monster, ferociously strong, with the head of a bull and the body of a human. The Minotaur-he didn’t bother to explain whether this was supposed to represent the terrorist they were after-fed exclusively on human flesh. It was perhaps an overly optimistic code name, for according to Greek mythology, the Minotaur was trapped in a place (the Labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus) from which it could not escape.