The cracker’s name was Leo Krasner. He did work for businessmen who didn’t like their credit ratings and wanted them repaired; for private investigators; for news reporters. He would work for any organization that interested him, except the government.
Krasner’s fame had spread in the underworld of computer crackers early in 1991. It is a matter of record that during the Persian Gulf War of that year, the Cable News Network hired a number of computer hackers, crackers, and phreakers to circumvent the U.S. government’s onerous press restrictions. These computer wizards were paid to intercept transmissions to and from military satellites and decrypt them. Krasner was heavily relied upon by CNN and other television networks, as well as by investors who wanted to know what was going on.
Baumann arranged to meet Krasner in a brightly lit but shabby little restaurant on the far West Side whose smeared plate-glass windows looked out onto the verminous street.
Leo Krasner was short, not much over five feet, and enormously obese. His doughy face was framed by immense porkchop sideburns. His unwashed hair spilled over his collar. He wore tinted aviator-frame glasses.
Baumann introduced himself, using an American alias and legend. Krasner offered a damp, pudgy hand to shake. After a minute or so of chitchat that was clearly going nowhere, Baumann came right to the point and told him what he wanted.
Krasner, who had been cupping his mouth in his small, round fist, looked up at Baumann slowly and gave a cryptic half-smile. A man sat down at a nearby table, set down a gym bag, and began to read a crummy paperback of Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet. “This is some very high-profile shit,” Krasner said. “It’s going to bring down an enormous amount of heat. I may not be able to work for a very, very long time.”
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no.”
“I assume you’re talking some very, very big bucks.”
“A six-figure payment for a few days’ work,” Baumann said.
“Six-figure?” Krasner snorted. “Go find a high school kid. You gotta be kidding.”
“Do you want to suggest a fee? You’re the subcontractor, after all. Give me a bid.”
“My bid is a million dollars, take it or leave it.”
“I don’t have anywhere near that kind of money,” Baumann said.
“Then what kind of serious offer will you make?”
“If I really scrape and borrow and beg, I can come up with half that. But it will take enormous effort to scrape together.”
“In gold. Currency’s going to take a serious beating after this goes down.”
“Done. Are you at all familiar with the systems used by the Manhattan Bank?”
“Sure, I know the Manhattan Bank. A little background work, a little calling around, and I’m all set.” He extended his moist hand to shake. “No problem.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Over coffee half an hour later, Pappas said: “They were right, Sarah. Had you given up that fusing device, you’d not only have lost an incredibly valuable mass of information, but you’d have risked losing a crucial piece of evidence.”
“The idea wasn’t to throw the thing away,” Sarah said, exasperated because she knew Pappas was right. “It was to keep everything intact so as not to alert Baumann, and…” Her voice faded. “All right, I was wrong. I’ll admit it.”
Pappas nodded once. “Ah, well. To err is human, to forgive is not Bureau policy. Water under the bridge. Mail Boxes opens in, what, fifteen minutes or so? Hours are nine to seven, weekdays. You got a team in place?”
“Uniforms, but supposed to be some of New York’s finest, whatever that means. They’re already there, watching. What do you think about this Libyan timer?”
“Ed Wilson sold a bunch of timers to the Libyans, but who knows where they all ended up. By now, those timers have gone through a bunch of hands.”
She nodded. “Arab hands.”
“Odds are, yes.”
“But I don’t believe the Libyans are behind this thing.”
“Why not?”
“The Libyans and the Iranians have a whole catalog of suicide bombers who can’t wait to die for the greater glory of Allah. They don’t need to hire him.”
“He’s the best.”
“They don’t need the best.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what Baumann is up to.”
“That’s not my point. You hire the best to make sure you don’t get caught, that the incident isn’t traced back to you. The Libyans usually don’t care if it is or not. If it is traced back to them, it makes them more formidable. They like that.”
Pappas was silent, waiting for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he said: “You might have a point.”
At the same time, a DHL delivery truck was pulling up to Mail Boxes Etc. at 2840 Broadway, between 110th and 111th streets, next door to Columbia Bagels and not far from Columbia University. It was a legitimate DHL truck, making the first overnight deliveries of the day. Double-parked in front of the Mail Boxes store, the driver took out three express packages.
Two new employees were working the counter that morning at Mail Boxes Etc. One was a dark-haired man in his twenties, busy shelving boxes. The other, a pretty young blond woman, appeared to be a trainee working with a more experienced, though younger, woman. The blonde’s hair was long and full, and it nicely concealed the tiny earphone she was wearing.
On Broadway, in front of the storefront, idled a yellow taxi, its roof light indicating it was out of service. The driver, a pudgy and balding man in a cheap-looking leather jacket and a frayed denim shirt, was examining the Daily Racing Form. Since he was far from the precinct in which he had once worked, he doubted any passerby would recognize him as Lieutenant George Roth of the New York Police Department.
The yellow cab-a real New York City cab that had been seized by the FBI in a drug raid-was the mobile command post. From there, Roth could communicate by radio with the two policemen inside who had been detailed to the working group on temporary assignment.
The eight members of the surveillance team had been fully briefed and outfitted with appropriate disguises and communications equipment. Wireless microphones were worn inside shirts or sweaters; earphones were concealed under wigs, baseball caps, or hats.
On the bustling stretch of Broadway in front of the storefront, an FBI agent in a spandex jogging suit was trying to change the right rear tire on his silver Corvette, another seized vehicle. A young Hispanic-looking man sat behind the wheel of a parked pizza delivery van. A hobbled old homeless woman pushed a grocery cart full of aluminum cans.
Another agent kept a lookout from the third-floor window of the office building across the street. Another, in a Con Ed uniform and hard hat, seemed to be inspecting a faulty electrical meter in an alley about thirty feet from the Mail Boxes storefront.
In the movies and on television, a telephone call can be traced in a matter of seconds. The reality, unfortunately, is far less impressive. A trap-and-trace, as it’s called, can take five, ten, even fifteen minutes or longer, and quite often several separate attempts.
It is true that a service known as Caller ID is available in many areas of the United States, which allows you to learn the number of an incoming call even before the phone rings. But this service works only in telephone exchanges that use the fully computerized technology called SS7, for System Signaling Group 7.
And many telephone exchanges remain antiquated, particularly in larger cities. NYNEX, the company that services Manhattan as well as much of New York State and New England, has been one of the slowest Baby Bells to update its technology.
Another problem with Caller ID is that it doesn’t work on trunking systems, PBX systems, which are used in office buildings. Also, any subscriber can have the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) signal blocked, rendering Caller ID useless.