The Zero Hour

“Uh huh,” DeVore said, doodling on his pink “While You Were Out” telephone message pad. He flashed on a mental image of himself and Deb last night and wondered if it was true that men think about sex every five minutes.

The Metrodyne vendor went on, with increasing enthusiasm: “Every time you save a file it’s automatically encrypted on your Novell network, and every time you open the file it’s decrypted. It’s really great. Just like the way a file is compressed and decompressed automatically, without the user even being aware of it. I think every Novell user should have it. I was wondering if you’d have some time for me to come by and talk to you about-”

“Gee, that sounds cool,” DeVore said sincerely, “but you know, we don’t use Novell anymore. We just switched to NT Advanced Server.” This was Microsoft’s networking software. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no, that’s great,” said the salesman. “We’ve got a version that runs on NT too-we really want to address the variety of the marketplace. Do you mind if I ask, what are you currently using for security?”

“Well, I-”

“I mean, are you relying on what comes out of the box for security? Because we’ve engineered our product to make up for the weaknesses in NT’s security. As you know, NT doesn’t even do encryption, you’ve got to encrypt everything separately. But ours does across-the-board encryption-”

“Listen,” Rick DeVore said, shifting into terminate-call mode, “I’ve pretty much said all I can responsibly tell you. Sorry. I’m really not at liberty to talk about this stuff. But if you’d like to send me a demo of your product I’d be happy to take a look at it. Okay?”

When he’d taken a mailing address and a contact name, Leo Krasner hung up the phone and turned to his SPARC-20 workstation.

He’d learned all he had to about what software the bank used.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

The Technical Services analyst, on the secure direct line to the Hoover Building, sounded as young as an adolescent. His high-pitched voice actually cracked several times as he spoke.

“Agent Cahill, I’m Ted Grabowski,” he said tentatively. “I’ve been assigned to work on the piece of equipment, the fusing mechanism.”

“Mmm-hmm?” she said distractedly.

“Remember you asked me to check out whether there was any kind of signature on this here-”

“I certainly do remember.” Identifying tool marks is one of the FBI’s forensic strengths, and though it often requires painstaking effort, it is the most reliable “fingerprint” a bomb can provide. It is also admissible in court.

“All right, well, it’s sort of confusing,” Grabowski said. “Not really a coherent signature.”

“The soldering?”

“The soldering joints are neat, maybe too neat. But it’s the knots that got me.”

“How so?”

“They’re Western Union splices. Really nice work.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“They first used the Western Union splice with telegraph wire, in the old days, because those wires were subject to a lot of pulling, and you had to have a knot that could withstand a good yank. You sort of take the bare ends of two lengths of wire, set them down in opposition to each other, twist them, then raise the ends and twist them again, at a ninety-degree angle. Sort of forms a triangle, and you wrap some tape around it-”

“So what does this tell you?”

He paused. “It tells me-this is only speculation, ma’am-but it tells me the guy who made this was trained at Indian Head.”

Indian Head was the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal School at Indian Head, Maryland, where all U.S. military bomb experts-“explosive ordnance disposal specialists,” as they’re called in military and intelligence circles-are trained. Although the CIA does have the facilities to train its own bomb experts, most of its people are trained at Indian Head as well.

“You’re telling me this was made by an American?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not. You may not know this, but the Naval EOD trains some foreigners, too. One section at Indian Head is the course on improvised explosive devices-I know, because I took it. I’m just saying that whoever made this neat little fusing mechanism, it sure as hell wasn’t a Libyan.”

***

Christine Vigiani, smoking furiously, stood at the threshold to Sarah’s office until Sarah looked up.

“Yes, Chris?”

Vigiani coughed, cleared her throat. “Came up with something you might want to take a look at.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, it was really just a matter of putting two and two together. Our guy did Carrero Blanco, right? Hired by the Basques?”

“Okay…?”

“So I got onto CACTIS and cross-referenced the Carrero Blanco murder, trying to find any other connections.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “So come to find out, CIA has some excellent sources that say whoever it was who was hired by the Basques was hired soon afterward by the IRA.”

Sarah sat up, her attention riveted.

“So I got in touch with Scotland Yard Special Operations. And there’s solid evidence that our man also did the assassination of the British ambassador to Northern Ireland in the mid-seventies-you remember that?”