Zero Hour

yesterday, that was — his hair had been thick and brown as a mink’s. It had since thinned appreciably and faded to the color of rustspeckled tin… yet only three or four years had passed between their meetings. At fifty-three, Malisse could not help but wonder if he showed comparable signs of aging, or if his wise departure from the Surete had slowed down his own physical subtractions.

But right now there were other subjects to occupy his thoughts. What had been Duncan’s last comment? Ah, yes.

“To me, favors are the pollen of generosity, allowing sweet fruits to spring forth from friendship’s fertile soil,” Malisse replied belatedly. He drank some of his coffee, then lowered his voice to avoid being overheard by passersby. “Have I told you, for instance, what I take as my greatest and richest reward from the case we worked together?”

“You don’t have to go through this again, Delano—”

“My greatest, richest, most heartfelt reward has been the knowledge that furnishing you with the names of those sellers of blood diamonds from Sierra Leone — and a list of complicit money launderers in Europe and the States — has aided your efforts to dismantle their network…”

“Delano—”

“… taken tens of millions of dollars from the hands of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah murderers who would have used them to purchase guns, explosives, possibly even weapons of mass destruction…”

“Delano, enough—”

“… weapons that could have caused incalculable suffering to American, British, and Israeli civilians—”

“Delano, I promised I’d help you, so cut the shit before I change my mind.” Duncan paused. “You brought what I need?”

Malisse nodded, dabbed his chocolate-smudged fingertips clean on a napkin, and reached into his open overcoat for the memory stick he’d popped from his digital camera. He gave the stick to Duncan and then started on a macadamia biscotti, his eyes wandering back to the chessmen.

Their board was still crowded, the match in its preliminary stages. No doubt they were skillful to a high degree… how to otherwise explain the rapt interest of their watchers?

For his part, Malisse was ignorant of the game beyond the basic movement of its pieces, and had never desired to learn its rules and strategies. It took enough sweat to plot his moves through the twists and turns of reality’s difficult corridors, trying to keep a step or two ahead of the ignoble creatures he meant to bag, laying snares for them along the way.

“Delano, I give you credit.” Duncan had snapped the memory stick into a compact aluminum-clad case and pocketed it. “You’ve got balls.”

“For taking the photos?”

“In the schul at the DDC,” Duncan said in hushed voice. He shook his head with appreciation. “Monster fucking balls.”

Malisse absorbed the praise with what he hoped was a semblance of grace, if not humility.

“I did what you asked,” he said. “There are shots of the briefcase. The hat. And many of the coat. Its lining, seams, designer and dry cleaner’s tags. Closeups of every pull or flaw I noticed in its fabric. Even the lint on its sleeves.”

“Buttons?”

“Front, pocket, cuff. Inside and out,” Malisse said. “You stressed that would be important, did you not?”

Duncan nodded in the affirmative

“We have to decide where to put multiple power sources and signal boosters. Get some lithium microbatteries in the buttons. I figure it might be a solution to the first hurdle.”

“And the second?”

“I want to try out some ideas,” Duncan said. “Whether they can be practically applied depends on what the pictures show.”

Malisse looked at him.

“I can’t settle for trying,” he said. “I need success.”

Duncan sat a moment, then leaned forward on his elbows. “Exactly how much do you know about GPS systems?”

“They use satellites,” Malisse said. His face was blank. “And signals from space, no?”

Duncan studied him as if trying to decide whether or not he was joking.

“Okay, pay attention,” he said. “Bottom-of-the-line units lock on to three sats and provide a two-dimensional fix on position — latitude and longitude. The coordinates are arrived at by simple triangulation… the travel time of the satellite signals beamed to the receiver times the speed of light. If we mount a GPS tracker underneath a vehicle, that would be all we’d need to follow it from place to place in a surveillance.” He paused, dropped his voice another notch. “If you want to trace a person with a GPS device, it’s different. Especially in a city. Two-D doesn’t calculate up and down. And New Yorkers live and work in multistory buildings, not straw huts. The second your man starts climbing a flight of stairs or steps into the elevator of a seventy-floor high-rise, you’re going to lose him.”

Malisse nodded.

“Thank you for the technical instruction,” he said. “I might now await the ‘unless,’ were it not for the great lengths to which I was put photographing my man’s coat. Or did I somehow mistake your reasons for wanting that done?”

Duncan gave him another look.

“Pinpoint homing calls for a three-dimensional GPS receiver that acquires a fourth satellite to add altitude to the calculation,” he said. “And that’s at minimum. The more extra channels your unit picks up, the more data from other satellites it can use to refine the accuracy of its positional fix, or back up any or all of the four primary sats if communications get interrupted.” He shrugged. “This isn’t spy science. Anybody can buy ninety-five-percent- accurate three-D street-point navigators for a few hundred bucks. They weigh a pound, maybe a pound and a half, and are about the size of cordless phones… compact, but too large and heavy to fit in Max Smart’s heel.”

Malisse was puzzled. “Whose?”

“Never mind,” Duncan said. He leaned closer to him. “Here’s your unless, Delano. Once more, so I know you understand. The only way I see putting a hidden three-D GPS monitor on somebody with available tech is to integrate its hardware into his clothes, turn his whole dress ensemble into a receiver. It’s the same concept as smart suits, e-wear, whatever the term du jour might be.”

Malisse felt a coil of impatience in his belly. Or were his ulcers simply aggravated? He crunched into another biscotti, hopeful its honeyed coating would act as a balm in either case.

“This you indeed told me yesterday… to my thorough comprehension,” he said, swallowing. “Now tell me how fast you can do the job.”

Duncan looked at him, but didn’t answer at once.

Malisse waited. His stomach remained troublesome in spite of his attempted remedy, but nothing more could be done to settle it without a cigarette — and that was denied him. The smoke police could be anywhere about, waiting to pounce at the snap of the lighter’s lid, the flick of a spark off its flint. While Malisse might have fantasized about letting himself be nabbed just so he could fire up in a jail cell — a warm, indoor place, after all — Jeffreys had informed him the citywide ban extended even to penal institutions, public workplaces that they were. Woe to the convicted felon who dared a puff of tobacco!

He looked across the table, turning his thoughts back to business. Duncan had stalled him long enough.

“The job,” he repeated. “How fast?”

Duncan sighed. “Banking on the premise that it works, I’d estimate—”

Malisse shook his head.

“As I often told my pupils, we mustn’t skewer ourselves on the redundant,” he said, his tone short. “I ask you to reach deep into your black bag and make it work.”

Duncan released another breath.

“Give me a week,” he said.

Malisse shook his head.

“No good,” he said. “It has to be sooner.”

“How much sooner are you talking?”