The Zero Hour

“Sorry to hear that, sir. I assume you don’t have a spare set-?”

“I’m embarrassed to say it, but my wife has the spare, and she’s in Miami Beach visiting the in-laws. Pretty swift of me, huh?”

“Mr. Taylor, I’m going to have to ask you for your VIN number, which is located on the car or in your paperwork. Do you think you can find that for me?”

“No problem, I got that.”

“Great,” the young man said. “Otherwise we would have a problem.” Baumann gave him the VIN number. “Okay, now hold on a moment while I pull your file.”

When he returned to the phone a few minutes later, the serviceman said, “I’m going to give you a number now, Mr. Taylor.” He spoke as if Mr. Taylor were a simpleton, which was probably a fair assumption given the circumstances. He gave Baumann the number. “You bring that number-it’s your key code, okay?-to any locksmith, and they can make you a new one. All right?”

“All right, great,” Baumann said. “Thanks so much.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The next afternoon, unfortunately, Perry Taylor drove home from work without stopping. Baumann placed a call to the auto dealership, asked for Kevin, the young man who had helped him, and thanked him for his help. It would not do at all to have Kevin call Taylor to make sure everything turned out all right.

The next morning, Taylor made his regular delicatessen stop, but that was too short a time to do anything.

That evening after work, Taylor made a stop at a Giant Foods supermarket a few miles from his home, part of a strip mall containing a People’s Drug, a Crown Books, and a variety of smaller shops.

Baumann pulled into the lot just in time to see Taylor get out of the car.

The opportunity had come.

Taylor locked his briefcase in the trunk of the car. Baumann waited for him to enter the store before he went up to the Oldsmobile.

He had left the car alarm off again. Baumann nonchalantly inserted the trunk key in the lock and popped it open. Taylor kept his trunk immaculate-no debris, no old newspapers or rags or dog-eared magazines. There was only an unopened can of tennis balls and the gray Samsonite briefcase. He lifted it out, shut the trunk, and returned to his own, rented car.

Although the briefcase had a locking mechanism beneath its handle, three numbered dials, Taylor had not locked it, and why would he? It was safe in his trunk.

In one of the pockets there was a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, Model 1006, which took 10mm rounds. There was also a datebook and a thick sheaf of file folders. As he went through the datebook and the files, wearing latex gloves, Baumann began to sweat. He turned the car on to get the air-conditioning going, but it did a feeble job. The car had to be in drive for the air-conditioning to really kick in.

Taylor was not holding a shopping list, so it was possible that he was only making a quick stop, in which case Baumann had to get through these files in a matter of minutes and return the briefcase to the trunk. Taylor must not know anyone had been in his car. Fortunately, Taylor had parked his Olds in a remote corner of the lot, where there was little foot traffic.

There were a lot of documents, many of them marked “Confidential” or “Secret,” but that was meaningless. No one paid any attention to any document that wasn’t marked at least “Top Secret.” Baumann knew that in the U.S. government there are three levels of secrecy: confidential, secret, and top secret. Top secret is the highest level of secrecy; despite what is commonly believed, there is none higher.

But there do exist more than thirty subsets of classification, known as compartments. A person in the government may be granted access to one or more compartments, yet not for others.

Then Baumann found a document that was of interest, one he hadn’t expected to find. Hadn’t hoped to find, in fact.

It was a sheet of green paper marked AIRTEL.

Baumann knew enough about the workings of the FBI to realize that there were three categories of communications sent between headquarters and field offices. A routine communication was called a Letter and was printed on white paper. One level of urgency up from Letter was an Airtel, printed on green paper. At least, at headquarters it was green; the field offices got blue copies. In the old days, an Airtel was sent by airmail, although that distinction had long since become meaningless. Now Airtels (also known as “greenies”) were either faxed or sent by courier. The highest level of urgency was a Teletype, on manila paper, which was once sent by Teletype and now faxed or couriered. The only operative difference between the two was the heading.