The Zero Hour

“One of the wizards at ID,” Ken went on, “translated his ten-prints into a couple of different formats, NCIC and AFIS, in addition to the Henry system, and secure-faxed them to the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Germans, the Israelis, and the Brits, for starters. A couple of the antiterrorist strike forces were really helpful. The Spanish GEO, the Grupo Especial de Operaciones-Special Operations Group, their antiterrorist group. The French GIGN, the Groupement d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, France’s crack antiterrorist unit. And the German GSG-9. They’re all operational, but they all have direct lines to intelligence.”

“And?” Sarah prompted.

“And we scored a couple interesting hits.”

Several heads turned in his direction.

“In 1985 and ’86 there was a string of fifteen bombings in Paris. Thirteen people were killed, more than two hundred wounded.”

“Iranian, wasn’t it?” Pappas said.

“I don’t know-terrorism isn’t my forte. But I do know that a Tunisian-born Frenchman was arrested and put on trial as the mastermind behind the campaign. He wanted to keep France from sending arms to Iraq during its war with Iran. Well, a big juicy latent thumbprint was found, clear as day, on a piece of duct tape used on one of the packages. The print was never ID’d-it didn’t come from the Tunisian guy.”

“Baumann,” one of the cops said.

“The way it looks,” Ken said. “Our guy gets around, or at least he’s not discriminating about who he works for. And the Spaniards, the GEO, had a fairly good partial from his index finger, taken from the fuel line of a car back in 1973. Apparently our man was wearing latex surgical gloves, but when the latex in the glove is stretched tightly enough, the print comes through.”

“What was the incident?” Pappas asked sharply.

“The assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister of Spain.”

“Jesus, that was the Basques,” Pappas said. “The Basque separatist movement ETA. You know, there was a rumor that they brought in an outsider. Baumann… is that possible?”

“Well, they scored a hit on the prints,” Ken said, “so I guess so.”

“The guy’s not a ghost,” Ullman said. “He does exist.”

“Ken,” Sarah said, “call up whatever you can on those events. I want names, contacts, anything. Have you been in touch with TRAC?” TRAC was the Terrorist Research and Analytical Center at Bureau headquarters in Washington.

“Oh, sure,” Ken said. “I also reached out to INS, to see if they had any matches for the prints. My thinking was, maybe he applied for a U.S. visa under a false name. The answer was no, of course. He’s way too careful a dude.”

“Well, nice try, anyway,” Sarah said. “And what about our cross-check?”

“A primo idea, oh esteemed leader.” He explained to the others Sarah’s idea. “But State is hamstrung by the Privacy Act, which protects passport information so ferociously that you can’t just lump it all together in one nice, handy package.”

Pappas gave Sarah a significant look. Sarah felt uncomfortable. “I like that,” she said. “With all our personal rights to privacy, what about the right not to be blown up in a subway or a skyscraper or something?”

Ken went on: “Ask State a simple question like ‘Can you tell if someone got into the country using a stolen passport?’ and you get a load of bullshit. Like, ‘Oh, we don’t depend on the passport number for enforcement,’ and ‘Oh, there’s lots of security features to prevent fraud, it could never happen.’ Junk like that. But here’s what they don’t want to tell you: they do have a lookout system for lost or stolen passports, so it pops up on the screen at all major ports of entry. It’s called the Consular Lookout and Support System. But it’s not real-time or anywhere close. It’s weeks and weeks behind the time. So you steal a passport from a guy in London-I mean, right out from under his nose, so he sees you doing it-and you can use that passport to get into the U.S., assuming you look enough like the photo on the stolen passport. Because it’s weeks by the time the London embassy sends-I mean, sends by snail-mail-the report of a lost or stolen passport to the U.S. and it’s entered into the system.”

“Can’t you get a list of all passports reported stolen or lost in the last several months?” Sarah asked.

“That’s the other thing. They don’t have a way to do that, to collect the names and passport numbers in one file.”

“You’re kidding me,” Sarah said.

“Unfortunately not. The U.S. State Department issues four million passports a year. And if you look at the figures for passports reported lost or stolen in 1992, for example, there were thirteen thousand, one hundred and one passports reported lost, and fourteen thousand, six hundred and ninety-two reported stolen. Of course, a lot of people who’ve actually lost their passport report it as stolen to save face, seem less clumsy. Yet State can’t do a cross-check for you on stolen passports that were used after they were reported stolen!”

Lieutenant Roth remarked, “Let’s hear it for the feds.”