The Zero Hour

“Uh, how long is this ‘special working group’ supposed to go on for?” asked Lieutenant Roth. He gave “special working group” a heavy ironic emphasis. Sarah’s heart sank at the thought of working with him.

“The director has approved a preliminary inquiry,” Whitman said. “That means it’s good for a hundred and twenty days. Theoretically, if there’s good reason, it can be renewed for another ninety days. But I’d like to get this thing wrapped up way before that.”

“Who wouldn’t?” one of the agents mumbled.

“What do you mean, ‘theoretically’?” Pappas asked.

“I mean, in our case Washington’s giving us all of two weeks.”

He was interrupted by a chorus of protests, whistles, catcalls. “You gotta be kidding,” Christine Vigiani said.

“No, I’m not kidding. Two weeks, and then the search is shut down. And we don’t even get a full-field. Now, for those of you new to the game, the main difference between a preliminary inquiry and a full-field inquiry is what you can’t do. No wiretap. No surveillance. No trash cover.”

“Can we ask people questions?” Roth said. “If we ask nice?”

Whitman ignored him. “Look, I know a task force of ten people is nothing. Some of you guys remember back in 1982 when they found cyanide in Tylenol, and this guy was extorting a million bucks from Johnson & Johnson. The New York office put three hundred agents on the search, from Criminal and Counterintelligence. I think a ten-man force is bullshit, but I guess Washington’s trying out a small, flexible task force that’s not as hamstrung by red tape and all that.” He shrugged. “I don’t make policy.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Lieutenant Roth said mordantly, “but would it be accurate to say that we don’t have jack shit on this guy? I mean, we don’t even have this guy’s name.”

“Not quite,” Sarah said. The others turned around to face her. She explained what they’d just received from Johannesburg.

Instead of the outburst of excitement or appreciation that she expected, there was a beat of silence, and then Agent Vigiani spoke.

“This guy escaped from prison in South Africa more than two weeks ago and we never heard about it?” she asked bitterly. “They didn’t send out a heads-up, didn’t alert Interpol, nothing? I don’t get it.”

“I doubt it was deliberate,” Sarah said. “South Africa’s been an outcast for so long that they’re not used to sharing their internal problems with the international authorities. They haven’t exactly gotten their act together.”

“Oh, well, this is quite a relief,” said Lieutenant George Roth. “Now we have a name. All we have to do is ask around-if we’re permitted to do that-to see if anyone happens to know a terrorist named Henrik Baumann. Makes our job so much easier.”

“A lead’s a lead,” Sarah said irritably.

“Your job is just about impossible,” Whitman agreed. “Yes, we have a name, and we’ll soon have prints, maybe even a photo. But we’re still searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“A needle in a haystack?” Lieutenant Roth replied. “More like trying to find a short shaft of wheat in a field that might be anywhere in Nebraska.”

“We’ll never find the guy with that attitude,” Harry Whitman said. “You’ve got to believe the guy’s out there. Each of you has to think of yourself as the fugitive. What he’s doing, what he’s planning, what he might have to buy, where he might be living. And everyone makes mistakes.”

“From what you’re telling me,” Lieutenant Roth said, “this guy doesn’t.”

Sarah spoke without looking up. “No. He’ll make a mistake. We just have to catch him at it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

During the lunch hour on February 26, 1993, at 12:18 p.m., a bomb concealed in a rented yellow Ryder truck exploded in level B-2 of the parking garage of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. An estimated fifty thousand people were inside the 110-story skyscraper, one of the World Trade Center’s seven buildings, at the time. Tens of thousands were stranded in offices, stairwells, and elevators as a result of the explosion, including seventeen kindergartners from P.S. 95 in Brooklyn, who were trapped in an elevator. A thousand people were injured, mostly from smoke inhalation, and six were killed. One of the great symbols of New York City sustained almost a billion dollars’ worth of damage.

After a painstaking investigation, eight men were subsequently arrested, of whom four were convicted of the bombing after an extraordinary five-month trial during which 207 witnesses were called, ten thousand pages of evidence amassed. The four men, all Arab immigrants, were followers of a blind Muslim cleric in a New Jersey mosque.

This was the worst act of terrorism ever to hit the United States up till that point. The bomb, which was built by amateurs, consisted of twelve hundred pounds of explosive material and three cylinders of hydrogen gas. It cost less than four hundred dollars to make.