The Zero Hour

In the middle of the table was a telephone speaker and a small, furiously percolating Bunn-O-Matic coffeemaker. She poured herself a cup of coffee, smiled at Whitman, and sat down.

“First things first,” said Assistant Director Walsh, addressing Sarah directly. “I don’t know if you’ll take this as good news or bad news, but your investigation has been upgraded to a full-field.”

Sarah nodded, betraying no emotion, certainly not the fear she felt. A full-field? A full-field investigation had to be authorized at the top, by the attorney general, through the FBI director. In order to authorize a full-field, there had to be a prima facie case. Why all of a sudden? What had changed?

He went on: “A component to a serious bomb has been found by United States Customs in a DHL shipment. Herb, can you take over?”

“Sure,” came a voice over the squawk box. It belonged to Herbert Massie, chief of the Technical Section of the FBI’s vaunted Laboratory Division. “Thanks to some thorough work by U.S. Customs at JFK, and some good luck thrown in, an ordinary-looking portable CD player was intercepted on its way from Brussels to Manhattan-actually, to a Mail Boxes Etc. location near Columbia University.” The rustling of paper could be heard. “Inside it was what turned out to be a pretty fancy fusing mechanism.”

“That’s part of a bomb, Sarah,” explained Alfonse Mitchell, the first deputy police commissioner.

Sarah mentally ran through several sharp responses, but merely nodded politely.

Over the speaker, Herb Massie’s voice resumed: “I believe Agent Cahill worked Lockerbie, so she probably knows her bombs. Customs handed it over to ATF, who gave it to us. Well, actually, I had to do some shouting, but our techs got it pretty damned fast.” In nonterrorism cases, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms would normally be the investigating agency. In this case, however, the fusing mechanism was analyzed by Massie’s section of the Crime Labs.

“When did the package come into JFK?” Sarah asked.

“Night before last.”

“So it’s supposed to have arrived at its destination by now.”

“That’s right,” Massie replied. “Inside the shell of the CD player was a box measuring, let’s see, nine point five inches long, five inches wide, and four point five inches high. It’s got some interesting stuff inside. There’s a pocket pager-receiver rigged to the relay.”

“Radio-controlled,” Sarah said. “Go ahead.”

“There’s also an electronic timer, which presumably goes off no matter what, unless it’s deliberately stopped. “And here’s the fiendish thing-it’s got a microwave sensor rigged up in such a way that if anyone comes within twenty-five feet of the bomb, it’ll go off. Talk about belt and suspenders.”

“Agent Massie,” interrupted the chief of detectives, “what have you people concluded about the sort of bomb that this… this fusing mechanism thing gets hooked up to?”

“A number of things. We know it’s probably not meant to go off in an airplane.”

“How do you know that?” asked FBI Assistant Director Walsh.

“It has no barometric capability or impact sensitivity. That means it can’t be set off by a plane’s reaching a certain air pressure, or landing. Also, since that pager inside is meant to receive a radio signal to set off the bomb, we know it’s command-detonated.”

Assistant FBI Director Walsh put in: “If the bomb’s supposed to be detonated by means of a pager, doesn’t that limit where the bomb could go? I mean, the radio signal can’t travel everywhere, can it?”

Sarah nodded; that was a good point.

“Yes,” Massie said. “We can be fairly certain that the bomb is not-was not-meant to go in a tunnel or a subway.”

“Or an underground parking garage,” Harry Whitman said, ever mindful of the World Trade Center bomb.

“Right,” came Massie’s voice. “All of those places are too shielded to allow the signal to reach the pager, at least reliably. You know how it is if you try to use your cellular phone in a parking garage, right?”

Thomas McSweeney, the chief of detectives, leaned forward and interrupted: “Can I go back to this microwave sensor thing? I guess what I’m saying is, why twenty-five feet? Doesn’t that tell us something about where the bomb’s supposed to be placed? If the bomb’s on a street or any place where there’s a crowd, the microwave would go off, right? So it’s got to be placed somewhere where there aren’t a lot of people.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “Or else at night, in a deserted building.”

“Could be,” Massie said.

“There’s another thing,” Sarah said, looking around at the men, and pouring herself a second cup of coffee. “Probably the most important thing. The bomb’s meant to go off no matter what, right? A timer, a microwave sensor, a radio-activated pager-one way or another, the bomb was designed to explode.”

“So?” said Alfonse Mitchell.