The Zero Hour

“No. One-third up front, one-third a week before the strike date, and the final third immediately upon completion. And before I do anything, the money must begin to move.”

“I don’t have ten million dollars in cash sitting around, stashed in my mattress or something. You make a withdrawal of that magnitude, you’re inviting all kinds of scrutiny,” Dyson objected.

“The last thing I want is wads of cash,” Baumann said. “Much too easily traceable. And I don’t want you to be able to grab my money.”

“If you set up an account in Geneva or Zurich-”

“The Swiss are not reliable. I don’t want my funds impounded. I know for sure that at some point in the future, some small part of this will come out. I need plausible deniability.”

“Caymans?”

“I don’t trust bankers,” Baumann said with a grim smile. “I have dealt with far too many of them.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“The payment must be put in the hands of someone we both trust to serve as a go-between.”

“Such as?”

“There is a gentleman we both have met in the Panamanian intelligence service G-2.” Baumann spoke his name. “As you may or may not know, during the American invasion of Panama, Operation JUST CAUSE, his family was inadvertently killed.”

Dyson nodded.

“He was always anti-American,” Baumann went on, “but since then, you’d be hard pressed to find someone with a greater hatred for America. He has a motive to cooperate with both of us.”

“All right.”

“He will act as our executive agent, our go-between. You will issue him a letter of credit. He’ll be unable to touch the money himself but he’ll be authorized to release it according to a schedule we work out. He approves the transfer of funds, and the Panamanian bank disburses them. That way, he can’t abscond with the money, and neither can I. And you’ll be unable to withhold it from me.”

For a long while, Malcolm Dyson examined his manicured fingernails. Then he looked up. “Agreed,” he said. “A very intelligent plan. Your knowledge of the financial world is impressive.”

Baumann nodded modestly and said, “Thank you.”

Dyson extended his hand. “So when can you begin?”

“I’ll begin my preparations as soon as I have received my first installment of the funds, my three point three million dollars,” Baumann said. He took Dyson’s hand and shook it firmly. “I’m glad we were able to come to an agreement. Enjoy your dinner party.”

Part 2: CIPHERS

All warfare is based on deception.

– Sun-tzu, The Art of War

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The largest intelligence organization in the world also happens to be the most secretive. It is the U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA-which is sometimes archly said to stand for either “No Such Agency” or “Never Say Anything.”

The NSA, which occupies a sprawling, thousand-acre compound at Fort Meade, Maryland, is in charge of America’s SIGINT, or signals intelligence. This includes communications intelligence (COMINT), radar, telemetry, laser, and nonimagery infrared intelligence. It has been described as an immense vacuum cleaner, sucking up electronic intelligence the world over and, if necessary, decrypting it.

Crudely put, the NSA has the ability, among quite a few other abilities, to eavesdrop electronically on most telephone conversations throughout the world.

Under the provisions of two laws-Executive Order 12333, Section 2.5, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Section 101/F-1-the NSA cannot target the telephone conversations of any U.S. citizen without a warrant from the attorney general of the United States, based on probable cause that the individual is an agent of a foreign power.

The operative word here is target. The law doesn’t apply to communications that the NSA’s satellites happen to pick up as they rummage through the international telecommunications network.

Not only is the law full of loopholes and clever wording, but all of the NSA’s targeting requests are approved by a top-secret rubber-stamp court. And in any case, if the NSA’s satellites intercept a phone call between London and Moscow, there’s simply no way to tell whether the caller is a United States citizen.

So, in effect, the NSA has the ability to intercept any telephone call coming into or out of the United States as well as any telex, cable, or fax anywhere in the world, by means of microwave interception. The agency is believed to sift through millions of telephone calls daily.

In order to make such a vast undertaking remotely manageable, the NSA programs its supercomputers’ scan guides with highly classified watch lists of certain “trigger words,” including word groups, names, and telephone numbers. Thus, any telephone conversation or fax, for instance, that contains a reference to “nuclear weapons” or “terrorism” or “plutonium” or “Muammar Qaddafi,” or to names of terrorist training camps or code names of certain secret weapons, may be flagged for further analysis.