The Zero Hour (6 page)

Sarah, for her part, had found her own ticket out, or at least up. A good informant boosted your stock immeasurably, but an informant like Val, with access to some of the high and mighty, the high rollers and the mafiosi, was truly a prized commodity.

Now her prized racehorse was dead, and something about the murder didn’t make sense. Prostitutes were more prone to be victims of violence, even of murder, than the run of society. But the circumstances didn’t indicate she’d been killed in the line of her particular kind of duty. It was unlikely that rough trade had been involved.

The cash Valerie had hidden behind the dummy medicine cabinet—the almost five thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills, cut in half—was persuasive evidence that Val had done a job for someone.

But for whom? If it was Mafia-related, why had the money been left there? Wouldn’t whoever killed her have known about the cash and taken it back? If she’d been killed by elements of organized crime because they’d discovered she was informing for the FBI, where had the money come from? Had she been killed because she’d been an informant?

The FBI normally doesn’t concern itself with homicide, but a case that involved the murder of an FBI informant was a clear-cut exception.

Peter Cronin hadn’t called his ex-wife to the crime scene just to identify a body, and certainly not out of generosity. Well, informants weren’t the only ones who did horse-trading. If Peter wanted access to the FBI’s databases, he’d have to pony up some pieces of evidence himself, like the Rolodex and the address book. He’d deal; he had little choice.

At two in the morning, Sarah climbed the stairs to her third-floor bedroom, got into the extra-long T-shirt she liked to sleep in, and got into bed. Visions of the crime scene flashed in her mind like a gruesome slide show, with snatches of remembered conversation as a disjointed sound track, and not before a good hour of tossing and turning was she able to fall into a fitful, troubled sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Seven kilometers outside of Geneva, Switzerland, at a few minutes before noon, a late-model, cobalt-blue Rolls-Royce limousine pulled off a small, tree-shaded road not far from Lac Léman and came to a halt at a high wrought-iron gate. Embedded in a stone pillar before the gate was a keypad and speaker. The driver punched in several numbers, and when a voice came over the intercom he identified himself. The iron gate swung slowly inward, and the limousine maneuvered along a macadam-paved access road, through a narrow
allée
of apple trees that went on as far as the eye could see. At once, the magnificent grounds of an enormous, secluded estate came into view.

The vehicle’s sole passenger was Baumann, dressed impeccably, yet casually, in a tweedy sport coat of black-and-white Prince of Wales plaid over a navy-blue crewneck sweater and white shirt. He had shaved off his beard, and his dark wavy hair was combed straight back, which gave him the appearance of a prosperous young Genevois banker on holiday. He seemed quite relaxed.

Late the previous evening he had been flown into a small, unmarked airstrip outside Geneva. He had journeyed from Cape Town without having legally crossed a single national border—and, therefore, without a trace in any computer records anywhere.

In Geneva he stayed at the Ambassador Hotel, on the Quai des Bergues on the Rive Droite, overlooking the crystal-clear waters of the Rhône and the Pont de la Machine. A suite had already been reserved for him, in the name of a British merchant banker, whose passport he was also given. As soon as he had entered the room, he had jerry-rigged the door to ensure that no one could enter uninvited without enormous commotion. Then he took a long hot shower, and passed out. Late in the morning he was awakened by a call from the concierge, who told him his car was waiting.

Now, languidly staring out the window of the Rolls, he took in the manicured grounds. Hundreds of perfectly trimmed golden yew hedges stretched before him. The grounds, which seemed to go on forever, occupied some fifty acres of prime Lac Léman real estate.

From this distance, he could just make out the thirteenth-century castle that belonged to his host. The castle (restored and renovated most recently in the late 1980s) was said to have once been the home of Napoleon III.

The present owner and occupant of this enormous estate, another sort of Napoleon entirely, was a man named Malcolm Dyson, an American expatriate financier, a billionaire, about whom the world knew very little.

In the last few months, however, Baumann had steadily put together a sketchy portrait of the legendary, reclusive Malcolm Dyson. The confines of Pollsmoor Prison had given him unlimited time for his research, and the prison library had yielded a small amount of public-record information. But the best network of resources by far had been the prison’s inmates, the petty crooks, the smugglers, the shady dealers.

The American newspapers had christened Malcolm Dyson the “fugitive financier,” a phrase now fastened to his name like a Homeric epithet. He had made a fortune on Wall Street, in bonds and commodities and by playing the stock market brilliantly. In the mid-1980s, Malcolm Dyson was one of Wall Street’s most glittering tycoons.

Then, in 1987, he had been arrested for insider trading, and his vast corporate empire had come tumbling down. All of his U.S. assets had been confiscated.

After his trial, and before he was slated to be sent off to prison, he fled to Switzerland, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. He and his late wife had lived in Switzerland ever since, rebuilding his empire from the ground up. Now, at seventy-two, Dyson was one of the richest men in the world, controlling assets estimated at several hundred billion dollars. Yet he could never return to the United States, nor travel to any country from which he might be extradited, or he would promptly be thrown in prison for the rest of his life. So he remained a prisoner of sorts, but in the most lavishly gilded of cages.

He lived in a Swiss Xanadu, a restored thirteenth-century castle he called Arcadia. More significantly, however, Malcolm Dyson had become a major trader in commodities and the world currency markets. He was widely rumored to have come close to cornering the world’s supply of gold and platinum and to have major holdings in gem diamonds and strategic minerals such as titanium, platinum, and zirconium, which were vital in the defense and space industries. Dyson’s corporate empire, which was sometimes called “the Octopus,” had in the last few years outgrown the other leading diamond and precious-metals firms that made up the cartel whose offices were located in Charterhouse Street in London, just off High Holborn and Farringdon Road. His holdings were by now larger than those of the other precious-metals behemoths, including De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., the Anglo American Corporation, Charter Consolidated, the Mineral and Resources Corporation, and Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd. He was enormously wealthy, but beyond that he was an enigma.

The limousine came to a stop at a tall hedge, into which was carved a topiary gate. Standing in front of the gate was a tall man in his late thirties, with a high forehead and receding hairline, wearing rimless spectacles. He wore a dark-gray sack suit. He was clearly an American.

He approached the limousine and opened the door. “Welcome,” the man said. “I’m Martin Lomax.” He shook hands and ushered Baumann into the dim labyrinth of an English hedge maze. The path wended maddeningly through acute angles and around cul-de-sacs. Baumann permitted himself a smile at Dyson’s affectation. He wondered what other sort of eccentricities Malcolm Dyson would entertain.

Then the tall hedges gave way to an open area of immaculate jade-green lawn, bordered by brightly colored flowers—lavender, nepeta, agapanthus, daylilies, roses, honeysuckle, euphorbia—in wild and lush profusion.

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.

The entries were brief and unrevealing. Val did not record the names of her clients, just times and places. On the night she was murdered, she’d had two appointments, one at eight o’clock at the Four Seasons, the other at eleven o’clock at the Ritz. It wasn’t out of the question that one of these two “clients” had followed her home after an assignation and murdered her. The possibility couldn’t be ruled out.

Had Valerie Santoro been murdered because someone had discovered she was an FBI informant? If so, was it one of her clients? Valerie’s information had helped Sarah make two major OC cases; quite likely she’d been the victim of an organized-crime hit.

Sarah was one of a handful of women in the Boston office, and for some reason she hadn’t become friends with any of the others. Her closest work friend was her partner and podmate, an immense grizzly bear of a man named Kenneth Alton, who was speaking on the telephone. He waved at her as he sat down. A computer junkie who’d gone to MIT, Ken had long hair, hippie wire-rimmed glasses, and a great protuberant belly. He probably weighed over three hundred pounds and was always on a diet, always sipping Ultra Slimfast milk shakes. He wasn’t exactly what the public expected to see in an FBI agent, and he’d never make management. But he was valued for his extraordinary computer skills, and so his idiosyncrasies were tolerated. J. Edgar was probably spinning in his grave.

Sarah had been with the FBI for almost ten years. Her father had been a cop who hated being a cop and had urged his only child to avoid law enforcement if it were the last job on earth. Naturally, she went into law enforcement and married a cop, in that order.