The Joint Terrorism Task Force numbered no more than six cops and six agents in 1985. During the Gulf War the commitment increased to about a hundred agents and a hundred detectives. By 1994-after the Trade Center bomb-it had shrunk to thirty agents and thirty detectives. There was even talk at One Police Plaza and 26 Federal Plaza about disbanding the force entirely.
After all, TRADEBOM was an isolated event, was it not? And what were the odds, when you came right down to it, of such a thing ever happening again?
But then came Oklahoma City, and then it seemed that America would never be safe from terrorism again.
At three-thirty in the afternoon, Baumann arrived at Dulles International Airport, outside of Washington. An hour and a half later, he carried his baggage through the terminal’s Eero Saarinen-designed interior and got a cab to Washington. In his leather carry-on satchel, in several neat bundles, were Thomas Cook traveler’s checks in various denominations totaling several hundred thousand dollars, payable to a fictitious corporation. Baumann knew that the Central Intelligence Agency uses unsigned Thomas Cook traveler’s checks to pay its contract agents (often diverted from funds earmarked for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations). That way, there’s no paper trail. Had the customs inspector opened his satchel and discovered the checks-which did not happen-there would have been no problem: such checks are nonnegotiable currency and cannot be taxed by U.S. Customs.
Baumann stayed at the Jefferson, because he had heard it was a comfortable and elegant hotel, and because it happened to have a room available for a harried businessman who’d just missed his plane.
It was too late in the day, by the time he arrived at the hotel, to make any calls, so he ordered a cheeseburger from room service, took a steaming-hot bath, and slept off his exhaustion. In the morning, refreshed and prosperous-looking in one of his businessman’s suits, he devoured a large room-service breakfast, read The Washington Post, and set off for a walk.
When you call the FBI’s general number, you do not hear the periodic beeping that signifies you are being recorded. But Baumann assumed the FBI did record all incoming calls, legally or not. The real problem, though, was not whether his voice might be taped. Had he called the FBI from his hotel room, a record would be made at the Bureau of the number from which he called. That would not do at all.
So he found a pay phone in the atrium of an office building from which he could call without too much background noise.
“I’d like to speak to Agent Taylor in Counterterrorism, please,” he said. Someone named Taylor, from Bureau headquarters, was the authorizing official on the request to the South African Department of Customs for a copy of his passport application. That didn’t mean Taylor was the investigator, just that he was the responsible authority. And it was a very good start.
“Mr. Taylor’s office,” came a friendly woman’s voice.
“Yes, I’m looking for Agent Frank Taylor, please,” he said.
“I’m sorry, this is Perry Taylor’s office-”
“But this is Counterterrorism, right?”
“Yes, it is, sir, but there’s no Frank Taylor-”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, this must be the right Agent Taylor. I’m Paul Tannen from the Baltimore Sun, and I’m copyediting and fact-checking a piece on the battle against terrorism. The reporter mentions-well, it’s got to be Agent Perry Taylor, and quite favorably, I should say, but you know how lazy journalists are these days, what with computers and everything.”
The woman’s voice brightened. “Yes, sir, that’s sure the truth.”
“I mean, you got spell-checks and word-processing programs and all that stuff. Good golly, a newspaperman doesn’t even have to write anymore.”
She laughed pleasantly, a high, musical, laugh. “Did you want to talk to Agent Taylor?”
“Golly, I can’t be bothering him with proofreading queries, no ma’am, but thanks anyway. Well, thanks a lot, and-oh, right, one more thing. Our reporter talked to Agent Taylor at home. I assume he did, anyway. He lives in Washington, right?”
“Alexandria, actually.”
Baumann gave a big, exasperated sigh. “You see what I mean?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“As the case agent on the original investigation that led to all of us being here,” Whitman said, “Ms. Cahill will be lead investigator, in charge of day-to-day operations.”
Sarah cleared her throat and launched into a summary of the information they had so far and read aloud from a paraphrased summary of the NSA intel intercepts. Annoyingly enough, she explained, she couldn’t give copies of the actual intercepts to them, since none of them had been cleared, though she was working on getting at least one of them cleared to act as liaison with NSA from now on. She didn’t explain-no reason for them to know-that CIA and FBI were now at each other’s throats over the leak of the NSA intercept to the FBI. But the two agencies were always skirmishing, and it would blow over. She explained about the CD-ROM that had been stolen from Warren Elkind and copied, and then returned to him.
“Has anyone talked to this Elkind guy?” asked Lieutenant George Roth, who then popped a breath mint into his mouth.
“Not yet,” Sarah said. “The New York office sent a couple of agents to talk to him. They briefed him about the threat, but he seemed fairly unconcerned, said he gets threats all the time. Which is true-his security people are always handling one threat or another. But he won’t talk, won’t submit to questioning. His attorney was with him, wouldn’t let him answer anything.”
“Prick,” said Roth. “We should just let the fuckers bomb the bank, or zap Elkind, or whatever they want to do. Serve him right.”
“It’s his right not to talk to us,” Sarah said.
Pappas said, “We should try again. Maybe you should try talking to him.”
“I’m working on it,” Sarah said. “In my own way. He’ll talk, I promise you. One of the main things we want to find out is what was on the CD-ROM in question. Ken, why would a terrorist want a CD-ROM?”
“The possibilities are endless,” Ken said. “My guess is that the CD contains something that would allow the bad guys to penetrate the bank’s security. Passwords, keys, that sort of thing.”
“How easy is it to copy a CD-ROM? Is it tough?”
“Oh, God, no way. Shit, it’s practically like photocopying the thing. For a couple thousand bucks you can get a CD-ROM player that has a writable CD-ROM drive in it. Pinnacle Microsystems makes one; so does Sony.”
“All right. Russell, have you reached the Israelis, and are they being helpful?”
“Yes to the first, no to the second,” Ullman replied. “The Mossad is one tight-lipped bunch. They wouldn’t confirm that Elkind is one of their, what you call, sayans. Wouldn’t even say if anyone in Mossad had ever been in touch with the guy. Off the record they confirm they know about Elkind’s kinky side, mostly because he’s a big contributor to Israel and all that, and they like to be informed. They say they don’t know anything about terrorism and any connection to Elkind, but they might just be playing it close to the vest.”
“Anything from flight records?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing from any of the major carriers, or even the minor ones,” Christine Vigiani said. “But I wouldn’t expect to find anything unless he’s traveling under his real name or a known alias, and he wouldn’t do that if he’s got any smarts.”
“Sarah,” Pappas put in, “we might want to contact every intelligence service we have ties to-the British SIS, both MI6 and MI5, the French SDECE, the Spanish, the Germans. The Russians may well have something in their archives from Soviet times.”