The Zero Hour by Joseph Finder

Author:Joseph Finder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

In a great city like New York, Henrik Baumann was in his element. He disappeared easily into crowds, his appearance always changing; he made his arrangements, established his contacts, bought what he needed in absolute anonymity.

In the beginning he took a one-bedroom suite on the forty-first floor of the New York Hilton, in what they called the Executive Tower. There were less expensive rooms, and nicer hotels, but it was height he was after most of all.

He set up the MLink-5000 satellite telephone on the sill of an east-facing window and opened its lid to aim the flat-plate array antenna, checked the signal-strength meter, and readjusted the angle of elevation. Rather than use the handset, he plugged into the phone’s modular port a small fax machine he had purchased on Forty-seventh Street. On a table nearby he placed the cheap electronic typewriter he had bought at the same place, and several preprinted invoice forms.

For the first time he felt anxiety. The situation had changed.

He’d never intended to kill the FBI executive in charge of finding him, but the fellow had made it unavoidable. Baumann had done what he could to make the death look like a random act of violence. He had stolen Taylor’s wallet and with a silencer-equipped pistol had fired two bullets into Taylor’s head and throat. He had also removed from the briefcase the Airtel that listed members of the top-secret task force, but he took nothing else. Those investigating Taylor’s death would, he hoped, think that Taylor’s killer had not even gone into the trunk of the car. Even if they did suspect Baumann, they wouldn’t know that he had found the list of task force members.

In any case, the FBI had learned enough of his undertaking to form an investigative body to look into it. This was serious. There was now a possibility that the mission would be blown, that he would be caught. And for the first time he wondered whether he should go through with it.

He had already received a good chunk of Dyson’s money, and he knew he could disappear now if he had to and never be found. But he had never aborted a mission before, except on orders from above; men behind desks tended to be cautious, even fearful, by nature. He felt as if his work had barely begun. And he prided himself on his dexterity and cunning, his talent at remaining elusive.

The truth was, despite all the danger he felt sure he could forge ahead and not be caught. He had been hired to do a job—the largest, most ambitious undertaking of his lifetime—and he was going to do it. He knew he was the best at what he did; pride would not let him give up now.

So he turned his attention to where the leak might have come from. There were loose ends—there were always loose ends, you could not work in a vacuum—but he thought it unlikely the leak had come from his end. True,

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