The Zero Hour

“Sure.” Sarah got up, went to the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil. As she waited, she mentally listed the airports in the United States and Canada. Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington (both National and Dulles), LAX… The list went on and on, and she began to lose track. And what if Baumann hadn’t entered the country by air? It was maddening, hopeless.

She returned to the living room and put down a mug of instant coffee and one of Earl Grey tea. “Let’s say he hasn’t arrived in New York yet, hasn’t even arrived in the country. In that case, we should contact Interpol and have them put out an International Red Notice.” A Red Notice is an international lookout for a fugitive based on an outstanding arrest warrant for the purpose of extradition, sort of an all-points bulletin issued by Interpol’s General Secretariat to the border lookout systems of all member countries. “Result, we’ll get nothing and just end up alerting Baumann.”

“Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Maybe that’ll scare him, make him call it off.”

“Not likely.”

“No,” Pappas conceded. “Not likely.”

“I suppose we could blanket the city with a description. Damn, I wish we could find a photo! But even if we could, the word would be out about our existence, and the city’ll go crazy.”

“Not if we do it through the New York office and say we’re on the trail of some guy who’s wanted for some brutal crime in Europe or something.”

She nodded. “All right, let’s focus on the passport issue. Say for the sake of argument he entered the U.S. directly, but not on his own passport. What are the search options there?”

“Quite a few,” Pappas said. “Can I smoke?”

“I’d rather you didn’t, not with Jared so close by.”

“You’re no fun.” He sighed, stretched his legs, took another sip of coffee. “We went through this drill in TRADEBOM,” he said. “When we searched the apartments of some of the suspects, we found Nicaraguan passports-real, legitimate Nicaraguan passports.”

“How’d they get them?”

“Who knows? Some corrupt Nicaraguan official sold blanks to the Sandinistas, who sold them, or gave them, to ideological soulmates. This stuff happens all the time, all over the world.”

She thought for a moment. “So, what, we have our foreign legats talk to all their counterparts and local liaison?”

Pappas nodded.

She went on, “Ask every country we have dealings with to check whether a passport was issued to this guy. Maybe even ask them to do a complete records check, if they’re so inclined.”

“But without a photo, we’ll get squat. And not every country will comply. They’d be more likely to help out if they believe our guy forged one of their passports. But a lot of countries won’t give us the time of day.”

“Seems pointless.”

“That’s right. The thing we have going for us is, it’s not likely-probabilities, again-that he’d use a foreign passport.”

“Why not, if it’s so easy to get one?”

“Because that entails going through both customs and immigration in most U.S. airports and having officials take a nice, hard look, and who needs all that? Certainly not our Prince of Darkness.”

In her peripheral vision she saw that Jared was standing before them in his Lion King pajamas, squinting, hair mussed from sleep. “Could you guys keep it down?” he said grumpily.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Sarah said.

“Sorry,” Pappas said. “We’ll be quieter. Hey, buddy, do you mind if I smoke in here?”

“No, Alex, it’s okay. You can.”

Sarah got up, gave Pappas a black look, and kissed Jared on the forehead. She took him back to bed. When she returned, they resumed in much lower tones.

“Okay, so he’s got to get his hands on a U.S. passport,” she said. “How does he do that?”

Pappas exhaled delicately out of one side of his mouth, ostentatiously keeping the smoke away from Jared’s direction. “A number of ways. There’s the classic method of going to a cemetery, copying down the name of someone who died in infancy who’s also around your age, getting his birth certificate, then applying for a passport. Easier said than done; it’s awfully labor-intensive, and more and more often birth and death records are collated, so you can’t pull a fast one. No, he’d have to steal one or acquire a forged one.”

“It’s not so easy to forge a U.S. passport anymore.”

“No, it isn’t. Though admittedly not impossible if you hire someone really skilled. But that’s a limited pool of talent.”

“And if he does hire someone good?”

“If it’s a top-flight forgery, we’re not going to catch it anyway.”

“Oh, come on, Alex, isn’t there a computer network linking all border entry points? Called something like IBIS, for Inter-Interagency Border Inspection System? Correct?”

“Correct, but-”

“As I recall from New Agents training, we used to post watch lists and photographs of fugitives at border entry points, and the customs agent would consult his lookout lists either alphabetically or by passport number.”

Pappas nodded and fished out another cigarette from the pack.