The Zero Hour

“What about the hired gun who took care of the whore in Boston?”

“Died in an unfortunate car accident near his native Coventry, England.”

Dyson gave one of his enigmatic smiles and reached for a Macanudo, whose end he snipped as meticulously as a surgeon. He lighted it with a gold lighter and turned toward the window. Martin Lomax stood in silence, knowing better than to interrupt one of his boss’s reveries, which were more and more frequent of late.

***

Dyson found himself recalling the incident once again, for what seemed the millionth time. It had not made any of the newspapers, which indicated to Dyson that the U.S. government and its allies had pulled in a lot of chits. It had been a botch, all round, and the less known publicly the better.

Dyson had always feared the bounty hunters, but he had not counted on a bounty hunter working on contract for the U.S. government, a higher level of bounty hunter with the best intelligence.

Washington had obviously given up. All legal channels had been exhausted. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs had passed on to State its request to extradite. State had sent it to the Swiss embassy. No dice. The Alien Fugitive Division of Interpol’s U.S. National Central Bureau had been enlisted, to no effect.

Then someone at Justice, clearly frustrated beyond rational thinking, had come up with the idea: Screw the federal marshals. Send a contract employee to Monaco, where Dyson and his wife went twice a month. Grab the fucker. Just go in there and grab him and bring him back to the States, back to justice and Justice. Sort out the niceties later.

The attempted grab happened on a dark pathway near the casino. Two armed bounty hunters, actually. Taking on two of Dyson’s personal bodyguards.

A full moon, a bright crystalline night sky. The twenty-sixth of June. Malcolm and Alexandra Dyson had just come from a night of baccarat, accompanied by their thirty-one-year-old daughter, Pandora, a delicately beautiful woman, their only child, visiting from Paris.

The ringing of Pandora’s delighted laughter, the clove notes of Alexandra’s perfume.

A scuff on the pavement, a rustling.

Dimly glimpsed out of the corner of an eye: a silhouette, a darting figure.

Dyson, always watching, always suspicious, felt his stomach constrict before his mind knew anything.

The sudden intrusion of a raspy male voice: “Freeze.”

Bertrand, Dyson’s senior bodyguard, drew his pistol first, and the bounty hunters swiftly returned fire.

A sudden explosion, a series of rapid pops, the flashes of orange fire, the acrid smell of cordite. A woman’s scream, which was really the terrified scream of two women. The flash of moonlight reflected in Pandora’s earrings, a cough.

Bertrand saved Dyson’s life, though not his legs, and died in the process. Both Dyson’s wife and daughter were killed instantly. Dyson, paralyzed from the waist down, squirmed over to his dying wife and child and threw his arms around them both, half protecting, half embracing.

Malcolm and Alexandra Dyson’s marriage had long cooled, but she had given birth to Pandora, and Pandora was Malcolm Dyson’s whole world, the center of his life. He loved his daughter as much as any father had ever loved a daughter. He was obsessed with his Pandora; he could not talk about her without lighting up, without a smile or a glow.

Malcolm Dyson was a paraplegic now who carried his anger around in his motorized chair. Once he had lived for fortune; now he lived for revenge. I’ll never walk again, he had once thundered at Lomax, but with Pandora gone, why in the world would I ever want to?

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Early Monday morning, Sarah arrived at headquarters, walking stiffly from the previous day’s attack. She had placed Band-Aids over the cuts on her neck and the side of her face. There was a large bruise on her right cheek that had turned blue, another one on her forearm, and a particularly nasty one under her rib cage.

“What the hell happened to you?” Pappas asked.

She recounted the incident, assured Pappas that Jared was fine.

“Eight-year-old boys,” Pappas said, “are a unique species. They’re easily frightened and just as easily soothed. Plus, their wounds somehow seem to heal almost overnight-it’s one of their chief physical properties.”

Christine Vigiani approached, waited for Pappas to finish talking. In one hand was a curling sheet of slick fax paper; in the other was a cigarette, pluming smoke.

She said: “We got a photo.”

Sarah whirled around. “Thank God. How?”

“I’ve been putting out intelligence feelers to all friendly contacts, as you asked me to do. I was sort of dubious, I’ll admit it. But then all of a sudden, Mossad finally came through.” The Mossad is world-renowned for its extensive photographic archives, some of which are stored on CD-ROM.

Sarah took the fax. “What is this?” she asked.