Zero Hour

Then Tony’s eyes landed on the final piece in the column and widened with agitated dismay. He gasped in a sharp, sudden breath, almost choking as some of the half-chewed food his mouth went down his windpipe.

The single-paragraph bulletin read: Police are asking for help locating Corinna Banks, a 31-year-old, 120- pound woman with blond hair who was last seen at 3:30 P.M. Monday dropping off her daughter, Andrea, age 4, at an indoor playspace known as GoKids on Fifth Avenue and E. 22nd Street. Ms. Banks is said to have been wearing a black beret, a dark wool scarf, a yellow ski coat with black trim, and leather knee boots. It is thought she returned to her apartment at 333 E. 19th Street (between First and Second avenues) after leaving the playspace. Anyone with information of her whereabouts is asked to call the NYPD TIPS hotline provided at the bottom of this column, or contact Detective Ismael Ruiz, 10th Precinct, at (212) 555-4682. You will not have to reveal your identity.

Tony grabbed the napkin spread open on his desk, hacking up chunks of blueberry muffin.

“Jesus Christ,” he said shakily to himself. “Oh my fucking God.”

He was still trying to catch his breath as he reached for the telephone.

* * *

A yarmulke on his head, dressed in a black suit and overcoat, and carrying a hardshell black leather briefcase, Delano Malisse felt like a gross fraud as he stepped into the DDC building minutes behind Hoffman. It was not posing as one of Jewish faith that gave him, the experienced undercover investigator, a sense that he was a blatant masquerader, but rather being disguised as a person of any religious persuasion. He had seen too much human baseness to believe in a guiding hand on high, an almighty being in whose image the species had been molded… unless, perhaps, God was an ogre who enjoyed peeking down at the world between his spread, hairy toes and having himself a good belly laugh at all its warts and vulgar messes. By and large, the human species uglied things up with degenerate behavior, which wasn’t to say it lacked qualities Malisse thought worth preservation. Man had proven capable of making tasty food, building durable and attractive structures, drawing some pretty pictures, spinning an occasional clever tale, and stringing musical notes together in a pleasant fashion — although at least three of the four were faded, irreclaimable skills in this day and age.

Malisse, however, had other pressing concerns right now.

He strode up to where Jeffreys sat on the guard platform, hoping his fellow dramatic player had rehearsed their little scene.

“Hello,” Malisse said. “I’m Mr. Friedman, here to see Norman Green.”

“Got your name right here, sir.” A mediocre actor at best, Jeffreys had glanced at his guest book a touch too quickly, looking uncomfortable, betraying anticipation of his lines. Still, he was new to the craft, and his stiffening informant’s guilt could have been expected to keep him out of the moment. “Go straight on up to the tenth floor. I’ll buzz upstairs so he can meet you.”

Malisse thanked him and exited stage left via the elevator. It had been a clumsy transition but would serve its purpose.

Green was waiting outside the car as its doors opened. His resemblance to Lembock, his first cousin, was strikingly noticeable. Ancient, bone-thin, and snowy-haired, he wore a dark pinstriped suit with a white breast- pocket handkerchief, and gold-framed pince-nez glasses on the bridge of his sharply downcurved nose. His knitted yarmulke was black with a blue trim pattern, held firmly in place with a solid gold clip.

Malisse extended his hand to Green and smiled, appreciating his lenses and careful, elegant dress as reminders of an old-world refinement that many would consider quaint. How had so much been lost nowadays? he wondered.

“You’re looking well, Duvi,” Green said in Flemish. Although the two had never before laid eyes on each other, he stood pumping Malisse’s arm as if they were the fondest of friends. Here, now, was a fine, seasoned performer. “How was your flight in?”

“A success.” Malisse shrugged. “I landed alive.”

Green chuckled, put a hand across his shoulders, steered him around toward the turnstiles.

“Come, Duvi, I’ll show you where to hang your overcoat.” And then, dropping his voice to a bare whisper: “As well as where Hoffman has left his coat and attache case while he prays.”

* * *

It was a quarter past noon in San Jose as Pete Nimec stood looking out at Rosita Avenue through the window beside Megan’s desk. If he’d leaned his cheek flat against the pane, bent back on his knees, and cranked his neck a bit to the right, he might have seen the very edge of Mount Hamilton’s eastern flank overlooking the city skyline to the northeast. From where he stood, however, the view was fairly restricted. This had taken some getting used to, and with understandable reason. Megan’s office at UpLink SanJo was catercorner to the boss’s far plusher suite next door — which Gordian only visited three or four times a month, max, since his stepdown — and the great rugged heave of the slope had always seemed to smack right up against your eyes through its floor-to-ceiling window.

“How did things go with Ricci?” Megan asked now, drawing his attention from the office towers across the street.

“I haven’t spoken to him,” Nimec said. “Plan to do that in about an hour.”

Megan shot him a glance.

“The conference he conveniently skipped out on was yesterday,” she said.

“Meg, he accounted for—”

“I want him leaving for New York tomorrow, the next day at the latest.”

“I know.”

“So why haven’t you already had your talk?”

“WOW,” Nimec said.

Megan looked confused.

“Wow?” she said.

“WOW, capital letters, right,” Nimec said. “It’s short for Women Opposed to War.”

Megan’s puzzled expression had deepened.

“Are we participants in the same conversation here?” she said. “Because I’m having a tough time following it, Pete.”

Nimec stepped away from the window and sat down opposite her.

“WOW’s a group based in San Fran, claims to have maybe five thousand members all told. There’s an Internet site for it, natch,” he said. “The organizers are big into peace, and lately they’ve had it in for us.”

“By ‘us’… you mean UpLink.”

Nimec gave her a nod.

“They’ve posted all kinds of negative stuff,” he said. “From their standpoint, we’re belligerent global agitators.”

“You’re joking.”

Nimec shook his head.

“It’s a free country,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what they believe.”

“Because we’re a DoD contractor?”

“Designing the mechanisms of carnage, right,” Nimec said. “And because of the security forces… they call them quasi-militaristic units… we put at our foreign stations.”

Megan gave him a look.

“You are kidding me,” she said.

Nimec reached out and tapped the back of her computer screen.

“You want to log on to their home page?” he said. “I did it last night. What’s on there comes from open sources. Newspaper reports, politicians, even our own press releases… the facts are accurate, but they know how to cut and paste them in ways that hurt.”

Megan frowned thoughtfully.

“Context is everything,” she said. “Can you give me examples?”

“Sure,” Nimec said. “They’re critical of how we handled our run-in with those rogue paramilitaries in Gabon last year. They say we violated Brazil’s national sovereignty that time we fought off the sabotage team in Mato Grosso. The same for when terrorists came after our satcom ground station in Russia—”

Nimec saw Megan’s eyes widen.

“I lived through that one and we were almost massacred there, Pete,” she said.