The Zero Hour

Lomax led Baumann through this meticulously tended garden and through another opening in the winding hedge, then stopped. There were faint sounds of gurgling, plashing water. Baumann’s curiosity was piqued. He took a few steps forward and entered the verdant, shaded stillness of another garden. At the exact center of this garden was a swimming pool, an irregular oval of smooth rocks that looked almost natural.

In a wheelchair nearby, next to an ancient, crumbling sundial, sat Malcolm Dyson, speaking on a cellular telephone. He was a small, rumpled man, almost rotund. His head was round and almost completely bald. There were dark liver spots at his temples and on the backs of his gnarled hands. He was wearing a loose, open-necked white muslin shirt that resembled a tunic. His legs were covered by a plaid wool blanket; his shoes were comfortable Italian leather loafers.

Whoever Dyson was speaking with was obviously making him angry. He concluded the conversation abruptly by flipping the phone closed. Then he looked straight across the garden at Baumann and gave a warm, engaging smile.

“So at last I meet the famous Prince of Darkness,” Dyson said. His voice was high, throaty, adenoidal. Only his eyes, steely gray, did not smile.

There was a high mechanical whine as Dyson urged his electric wheelchair closer to Baumann, but it was only a symbolic gesture; he stopped after a few feet.

Baumann approached, and Dyson extended a round, speckled hand. “Mr. Baumann,” he announced with a chuckle and a dip of his head. “I assume you know who I am.”

Baumann shook his hand and nodded. “Certainly, Mr. Dyson,” he said. “I do know a bit about you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I’ve recently had some spare time to do a little research.”

Dyson chortled, as if to share Baumann’s joke, but Baumann was not smiling. “Do you know why you’re here?” Dyson asked.

“No,” Baumann admitted. “I know that I’m not sitting in Cell Block Nineteen in Pollsmoor Prison. And I know that you made the arrangements for my jailbreak. But to be entirely honest, I have no idea why.”

“Ah,” Dyson said, arching his brows as if the matter hadn’t before occurred to him. “Right. Well, I hoped we might have a little talk, you and I. I have sort of a business proposition for you.”

“Yes,” Baumann said mildly, and then gave one of his brilliant smiles. “I didn’t think it would take you long to get around to that.”

CHAPTER NINE

Early the next morning, Sarah arrived at the FBI Boston field office and took the photocopies of Valerie Santoro’s handwritten Rolodex cards to the counter where the computer searches were done. A young Latino clerk-trainee named Hector took the sheets and squinted at Sarah amiably. “You want these run through NCIC?”

The FBI’s computerized National Crime Information Center database is used by police whenever they stop a motorist, to check for stolen vehicles, cash, and guns, as well as fugitives, missing children, and missing adults. It would also tell her which of Val’s clients had criminal records or warrants outstanding.

“Right,” she replied. “And Intelligence and Criminal. And of course FOIMS. See if we get a hit.” FOIMS, the Field Office Information Management System, was the FBI’s main database.

The Boston office of the FBI occupies four floors of an enormous curved modern building called One Center Plaza. Sarah’s cubicle was located on the building’s fifth floor, where the Organized Crime and drug squads shared space. The vast expanse of floor was covered in tan wall-to-wall carpeting. Long blue partitions separated small office areas known as pods, two or three desks equipped with telephones, walkie-talkie radios, and, on some desks but not all, computer terminals. The younger agents tended to be computer-literate, unlike their older colleagues, who left the computer-search headaches to the folks in Indices, at the other end of the floor. Next to her desk was a paper shredder.

Apart from the usual equipment, Sarah’s desk held her Sig-Sauer pistol in its holster in a small green canvas bag (a pistol was standard issue in both drugs and OC), her pager, and a few personalizing touches: a framed photograph of her parents sitting on the couch at home in Bellingham, Washington, and a framed snapshot of Jared in his hockey uniform, holding a stick, smiling broadly, displaying his two large front teeth.

The atmosphere was quiet, yet bustling. It could have been any private corporation in the country. The FBI had moved here a few years ago from the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building across the street, where the whole Boston office had been crowded onto one big open floor, noisy and boisterous and gregarious, and you could hear what everyone else was doing at every moment.

She returned to her desk, gazed for a moment out at the Suffolk County Courthouse, leafed through the photocopies of Val’s appointment book that Peter had had made.