The Zero Hour

“So now we know a lot about the intentions of the terrorist or terrorists,” Sarah said. “Since there’s really no way to shut it off, we know this isn’t meant to be an extortion or blackmail attempt. That explains why we haven’t received any demands, either by phone or by letter. They don’t want anything from us! Unlike the normal terrorist-if there is such a thing-these guys don’t want the United States to release prisoners or pull out of a war or some such thing. They want to cause destruction no matter what.”

“That’s right,” came Massie’s voice after a moment’s hesitation. The tension in the room was electric.

“Uh, Ms. Cahill,” said Alfonse Mitchell of the NYPD, “you’re overlooking the most important thing of all. There isn’t going to be any destruction. We have the goddam fusing mechanism! Without it, our terrorists don’t have a bomb, now do they?”

“Oh, that’s good,” Sarah snapped. “Would you like my group to start packing now, or can we have a couple of days to sort of wind down?”

“Sarah,” Harry Whitman warned.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah apologized. “That’s just a ridiculous, even dangerous, comment to make. How do we know there aren’t a dozen fusing mechanisms just like this one, that have already been sent into the country and have already been picked up? Or, if this really is the one and only, how do we know that my terrorist can’t just pick up the phone and order another one? Have it sent in another way?”

“Right,” said Assistant FBI Director Walsh. “We can’t rule out that possibility.”

Alfonse Mitchell sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee in smoldering silence.

“Agent Massie,” Sarah said, “from what I know about how pagers work, you can’t just buy a pager, you have to lease the telephone service at the same time, isn’t that right?”

“Well, yes and no,” Massie said. “You can buy a pager anywhere. But if you want it to work, you need to lease the service.”

“Well, that’s our lead,” Sarah said, looking around the table with a smile. “We trace the pager to the paging service, and find out who signed on for the service. Even assuming they gave a false name, they have to give so much information when they sign up for a pager that we’ll be able to trace-”

“No,” Massie said. “Not that simple.”

Alfonse Mitchell smiled behind his coffee cup.

“Why not?” asked Sarah.

“First of all, the serial number plate has been removed from the pager. The designer of this thing seems to be fairly slick.”

“But aren’t there other ways-” Sarah began.

“You buy a pager from a paging company,” Harry Whitman said, “and you lease the service, right? Then you buy another pager-just the pager, no service-from a second source. Now, each pager is programmed to respond to a digital code sequence. So all you do is you study the first pager, and alter the second one, so that it responds to the same digital code sequence as the first one-”

“You’re losing us, here,” interrupted Assistant Director Walsh.

“I get it,” Sarah said. “The pager in the fusing mechanism works like the one that came with the leased service, but if we were to try to trace it, we couldn’t. Very clever.”

“You got it,” said Herbert Massie. “But I’ve been trying to get to the main attraction, here. Listen up. Our techs have a theory as to who’s behind all this.”

“Who?” Sarah asked.

“Libya.”

“Jesus!” exploded Harry Whitman.

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

“All right,” Massie said. “Someone in the lab is getting the day off. The timer is one of the ones Ed Wilson sold Libya back in 1976.”

Sarah and some of the other FBI people present knew what Herbert Massie was talking about, but none of the police could possibly have been expected to know. Indeed, the story of Libya and its business dealings with the rogue CIA agent Edwin Wilson has been written about-but not entirely.

It is a matter of public record that Edwin Wilson-a CIA officer who went “off the reservation,” as they say in the intelligence business-and an associate sold Muammar Qaddafi twenty tons of Semtex plastic explosive, which later turned up in numerous terrorist attacks around the world. It is also a matter of public record that Wilson sold the Libyan government three thousand electronic explosives timers.

What is not publicly known is where and how Wilson got them. He got them from the very source that custom-makes them for the CIA. Wilson placed the order for these three thousand timers with a man who lives outside of Washington, D.C., a renowned inventor with over six hundred patents to his name, who has for years constructed high-tech gadgets for the U.S. intelligence community. This man, who once built satellites for the Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base, is widely considered a genius.