The Zero Hour

The man had been estranged from his younger brother, who lived in Chula Vista, California, for some five years. Five years earlier, the younger brother had announced that he was gay, news that had torn this conservative Republican family apart.

In the ensuing battle, the two brothers had fought, and years of simmering resentments and rivalries had boiled over. They had not spoken since.

Now came the news that Jason, Thomas’s only sibling, had an advanced, full-blown case of AIDS. According to his physicians, he might live for another week, no more.

Although Thomas was an American citizen, he had not left the country in more than two years, for a brief, unavoidable meeting in London. He despised traveling, and until this morning had intended never to leave Amsterdam again.

He got up and went downstairs, drank a cup of koffie verkeerd (coffee with hot milk) prepared by their housekeeper, and booked the earliest possible flight to San Diego for him and his wife. Then he went to the marble-topped bureau in his study, where he kept all of his important papers, to get his passport.

It was not there.

This was odd, because he had seen it there just two or three days ago, when he had to make a photocopy of his birth certificate. He searched the drawer again, then pulled the drawer out and looked in the space behind it to see whether it might have somehow slid out of the drawer.

But it was not there.

The cleaning lady who came in every other day had just neatened up his study a few days ago, but she would certainly never move it. Thomas doubted she’d ever opened this drawer.

By late morning, Thomas and his wife and the housekeeper had searched the house high and low, but to no avail. The passport was missing.

“Just call the embassy and tell them it’s lost,” his wife said impatiently. “You can get a replacement right away. We can’t look anymore if we’re going to catch the afternoon flight, Thomas.”

He called the American consulate, on Museumplein, and reported his passport missing. After the typical runaround, he was told to come in and fill out some papers.

“Let me have your name again, sir,” the woman on the other end of the line said.

He responded with great annoyance, because he had given this dull-witted woman his name no fewer than three times. He had even spelled it out, as if to an idiot.

“Moffatt,” he said. “Thomas Allen Moffatt.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The Mobil lot was too exposed, so Baumann found a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts, which was open, casting a sulfurous fluorescent light on the cars parked in the small lot in front. He parked and went inside for a cup of coffee. The server was a small young woman with frosted blond hair. She handed him a large cup, black, and a plain doughnut, and cheerily wished him a good morning. From the vending machine at the entrance he bought an early edition of the Post.

In the car, he draped the newspaper over the steering wheel and perused it as he sipped his coffee. From under the front passenger’s seat he slid the receiver, plugged it into the cigar lighter, and adjusted the antenna. Any passerby would think he was studying the paper, though he was actually examining the LCD readout. A flashing red dot told him that the “bumper beeper,” or Hound Dog, he had placed on the Oldsmobile’s bumper was transmitting a signal, and that the car hadn’t moved.

The device emitted an RF signal. Some Hound Dogs trailed a black wire antenna almost a foot long, but not this. Not on the car of an FBI man. This particular solid-state model had a stubby antenna that wouldn’t easily be detected.

The scope, beside him on the front seat, told him where the transmitter was and where he was relative to it. This would enable him to tail the FBI man without being detected. Even deputy assistant directors had once gone through training and knew to look for certain signs of surveillance.

There was a risk that the FBI did regular RF sweeps on Taylor’s car, in which case the Hound Dog would be discovered; but they would not do them daily. In any case, he would have to move quickly.

By his second cup of coffee, at 7:50 A.M., the flashing red dot began to move.

He followed the FBI man from as much as half a mile behind. Only once did he come close enough to see Taylor. This was at a large intersection just outside the District. Taylor was in the right lane, near the entrance to a shopping center. Baumann entered the shopping center’s lot and drove within line of sight.

With his Nikon 7 × 50 binoculars he was able to scrutinize Perry Taylor; because Baumann’s rental car had tinted windows, Taylor could not see Baumann, even if he happened to look. Taylor looked to be in his late forties, perhaps fifty, of medium build. His gray hair was neatly cut, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He wore an olive poplin suit with a white shirt and a gold-striped tie: the consummate government bureaucrat.