They reached around for the silicone mouthpieces, pulled them up, and bit into the nubs that held them in place. Baumann switched on Krasner’s air tank, then Krasner did the same for him. With loud hisses, they began inhaling the tanked air. Krasner took several deep, grateful breaths.
Despite the stench, they were standing not in sewage but in a few inches of runoff water from storm drains, which ran through miles of tunnels beneath the streets of New York. The oval concrete tube was seven feet or so high and about five feet wide, and it seemed to go on forever. These drainage tunnels served a dual function: along the top and the upper sides of the tunnel ran many cables for power and telecommunication links.
“We can leave the crowbar here or take it with us,” Leo said.
“Take it,” said Baumann. “Let’s move quickly.”
There was a splash, and a rat the size of a small dog ran by.
“Shit!” exclaimed Leo with a shudder.
Baumann pulled a caver’s headlamp from his backpack and put it on. He checked the reading on his compass and zeroed his pedometer, then waited patiently for Leo to do the same. He did, and consulted a map that had been compiled by a group of crackers he knew who liked to do nefarious deeds in the city.
For almost a quarter of a mile they slogged through the tunnels, guided through the maze by their compasses, pedometers, and the surprisingly detailed map of the underground tunnels. A more direct route would have meant entering via a manhole on a much more visible major street, which was out of the question.
They came to a juncture between two tunnels whose curved walls were covered with a profusion of large oblong boxes connected to thick wire casings. Each removed his mouthpiece, then switched off the other’s air tank. The air here was much better.
This was, Leo explained, one of the many central switching areas in which repairmen from NYNEX could access telephone lines. To Baumann’s untrained eye, it appeared to be a forest of wires in maddening disarray.
“Each one is labeled with a tag,” Krasner said, panting. “Series of numbers and letters. By customer account number. Fear not, I know the one we want.”
Two, then three rats scurried by underfoot. One of them stopped to sniff something in the cloudy gray water, then moved on.
After a few minutes of searching, Leo located the right cable.
“Coax,” he announced. “Just like they told me.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s coaxial cable—copper wire. Hell of a lot easier to splice.”
“What if it had been fiber-optic cable?”
Krasner shook his head in disbelief at Baumann’s ignorance. “I brought every tool we’d need, whether it was copper or fiber.” With a pair of wire cutters he snipped the copper line and proceeded to strip it. “Problem with fiber is, they could tell if there’s a tap on the line. The coefficient of the material you use to connect the two cut ends of the fiber will always change the characteristics of the light pulse. So it’s going to be obvious to a monitor that there’s a new material conducting the light pulse. It would be detected instantly, soon as they’re on line.”
He fed both ends of the copper wire into a square “breakout box,” which was, he explained, made by a company named Black Box. This was a tap, a sophisticated, undetectable, high-impedance parallel tap for computers, often used for diagnostic purposes.
Then Krasner carefully removed from his backpack an NEC UltraLite Versa notebook computer no bigger than a hardcover book. He connected the breakout box to the serial port in the notebook computer.
“This baby’s modified so it’s got a gigabyte of storage capacity,” he said. He set the computer down on a small shelf that jutted out from the wall. “All right, it’s ten after six o’clock. We can’t do anything till nine A.M., and all we really need to capture is maybe an hour’s worth of traffic. In the meantime, I’m going to take a nap. The Manhattan Bank doesn’t open for business for another, oh, three hours.”
* * *
While Leo Krasner slept, Baumann sat next to him, thinking. He thought about his time in prison, about his childhood, about a woman at university with whom he had had a long and ardent relationship. He thought, too, about Sarah Cahill and the game of deception he was playing with her. If she had been distrustful of “Brian,” she was quickly becoming less so. Already he had successfully invaded her life, and soon, very soon, there would be many more opportunities to do so.
Then Leo Krasner’s Casio alarm watch finally beeped, jolting him awake. “Whoa,” Krasner said through a yawn. His breath was fermented, noxious. “All right now, we should have some action in just about three minutes. Let’s boot ’er up.”
A little over an hour later, he had a sizable amount of captured traffic outgoing from Manhattan Bank, all stored on his computer. “We got a shitload of information here,” he said. “Pattern of transaction, transaction length, destination code. Everything. Now it’s a simple matter to mimic the transactions and get inside.” He pulled the connector out of the computer’s serial port. “I’m going to leave the breakout box here.”
“Won’t it be detected?”
“Nah. The fuck you want, you want me to yank this thing off right now and interrupt the line? Then we’d really be screwed.”
“No,” Baumann said patiently. “The breakout box can’t be removed until after transmissions have stopped, which means after banking hours. And yes, I most certainly want it removed. I can’t risk having a piece of evidence here for longer than a day.”
“You want to repair the patch, you do it,” Krasner said.
“I’d be glad to do it, if I could be certain of my ability to do it perfectly. But I can’t. So we both must return here. Tonight?”
Krasner scowled. “Hey, man, I happen to have a life.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice,” Baumann explained. “Your payment depends upon satisfactory completion of all aspects of the job.”
The cracker was silent, sullen, for a moment. “Tonight I’ll be analyzing the traffic and writing code. I don’t have time to slog around the sewers tonight. It can wait.”
“All right,” Baumann said. “It will wait.”
“Hey, and speaking of analyzing the traffic, I can’t do shit without the key. You got it with you? If you forgot to bring it—”
“No,” Baumann said, “I didn’t forget.” He handed the cracker a shiny gold disk, the CD-ROM Dyson had given him. It had been stolen—Dyson did not say how he had arranged this—from a high-ranking officer of the bank. “Here’s the key,” he said.
“How new is this? Passwords still valid?”
“I’m sure the passwords have been changed by now, but that’s insignificant. The cryptographic software is unchanged, and it’s all here.”
“Fine,” Krasner said. “No problem.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Malcolm Dyson switched off CNN and pressed the button to close the sliding panel on the armoire. He had been watching a business report on the computer industry and could think about nothing except the plan.
The soft underbelly of capitalism, he knew, was the computer. And not just the computer in general, the computer as an abstract concept, but one specific collection of computers, in one specific building in lower Manhattan.
Its location is kept secret, yet when you know the right people, you can find out. Bankers and money men occasionally talk about the Network over drinks late at night, speculating about what might happen if … and, with a shudder, dismiss the thought.
Great catastrophes can happen at any moment, but we don’t think about them. Most of us don’t give much thought to the possibility of a gigantic meteor colliding with our planet and extinguishing all life. With the end of the Cold War we less and less often think about what might happen if an all-out nuclear war were to erupt.
The destruction of the Network is every banker’s nightmare. It would plunge America into a second Great Depression that would make the 1930s seem like a time of prosperity. This poss
ibility is, fortunately, kept hidden from the ordinary citizen.
It is, however, very real.
Dyson had come up with the idea, originally, and Martin Lomax had provided the spadework, which he had presented to his boss six months ago—almost six months after Dyson was paralyzed and his wife and daughter were killed.
The report Lomax had written now lay in a concealed drawer in the desk in Dyson’s library. Dyson had read it countless times since then. It gave him strength, got him through the days, diverted his pain, both physical and psychic. It began:
FROM: R. MARTIN LOMAX
TO: MALCOLM DYSON
First, a brief history.
In the years immediately after the California Gold Rush of 1848, the American banking system became increasingly chaotic. Banks would send payments to other banks by dispatching porters with bags of gold coins. Errors and confusion were rampant. In 1853, the fifty-two major banks in New York established the New York Settlement Association in the basement of 14 Wall Street to provide some coordination in the exchange of payments. On its very first day, the Association cleared 22.6 million dollars.
By 1968, this antiquated system began to break down. It was virtually impossible to get anything done. The era of teletype technology in the 1950s gave way to that of the computer in the 1960s. By 1970 the advent of the computer allowed the Association to be replaced by the Network, shorthand for the National Electronic Transfer Facility.
The Network began with one computer connected to a telephone. The newfangled system was at first distrusted by the world’s banks, but confidence began to grow. Banks began to accept wire payments. Gradually, every major bank in the world sought to join the Network.
Today, over a trillion dollars moves through the Network each day—90 percent of the dollars used anywhere on earth. Since virtually all Eurodollar and foreign exchange trading is conducted in dollars, and the world’s flow of money is centered in New York, the Network, and its Unisys A-15J dual processor, has become the very nerve center of the world’s financial system.
How fragile is the Network?
A brief case history will illustrate. At the close of business on June 26, 1974, German banking authorities closed the Bankhaus Herstatt in Cologne, a major player in foreign exchange trading. At the end of the German banking day it was still noon in New York, where banks suddenly found themselves out hundreds of millions of dollars. By the next day, the world banking system had gone into shock. Only quick action by Walter Wriston of Citicorp averted a global crash. As president of the Network at the time, he ordered the Network to stay open through the weekend until all payments were worked out. Any bank that refused to honor payment orders was thrown out of the Network.
A direct terrorist strike on the Network’s Water Street facility would trigger worldwide havoc. It would so seriously disrupt the U.S. stock market, Eurodollar payments, and virtually all foreign exchange and foreign trade payments that the world payments system would collapse at once.
The destruction of the Network would topple the business world and plunge America and the world into a massive depression. The U.S. economy would be obliterated, and with it that of the world. America’s reign as a global power would be ended, as the country and much of the world returned to an economic Dark Ages.
It is only a matter of luck—or maybe ignorance of how the capitalist world works—that no terrorist has so far targeted the Network.
But if we could locate a masterful, experienced professional terrorist with a strong motivation—financial or otherwise—to accomplish the task, it is my strong belief that no more effective revenge could ever be wrought on the United States.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Now there was a name, the alias Baumann had used to enter the United States. In some ways it was a major victory; in some ways it was dust.
“He may never use it again,” Roth said.
Sarah nodded. “If so, the lead’s useless.”
“Why would he use the name again, anyway? If he checks into a hotel, he does it under some fake name.”
“Credit cards?”
“Does he have this guy Moffatt’s credit cards too?”
“I don’t know.”
“And if he does?”
“Bing, we get him,” Sarah said. “Pops up right away, and he’s nabbed.”
“He’s not stupid. He’s not going to use stolen credit cards. Anyway, the scummiest little dirtbag knows you gotta test out the card first—you know, drive into a self-serve gas station and try the card on one of those credit card thingos there, and if it’s rejected, you know it’s no good. Real easy.”
“He may have to rent a car or a van.”
“Right,” Roth said. “But he’ll need a driver’s license to do that.”
“He’s got Thomas Moffatt’s driver’s license.”
“Well, there you go. So what are you suggesting?”
“This is a specific terrorist threat on U.S. soil. It’s a full-field investigation. That means we can task a hell of a lot of manpower if we want. This monster has already killed two FBI agents.”
“You’re not talking about sending a hundred guys around to every car- and truck-rental place in New York City, are you?”
“And neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Hey, don’t forget, we caught the World Trade Center bombers through Mohammed Salameh’s driver’s license, which he used to rent the van.”
“Well, you’re the boss,” Roth said dubiously.
“I don’t mean to be a killjoy,” Christine Vigiani said, the standard gambit of every killjoy, “but the only reason everyone seems so sure Baumann used Thomas Moffatt’s passport is the timing. Pretty slender evidence.”
“Whoever used the stolen Moffatt passport entered the country twelve days ago,” Pappas argued, “which is eight days after he broke out of Pollsmoor prison. The fit is too good. Plus all the other factors—”
“Chris,” Sarah said, “there’s no point in talking any further. We have a team on it in D.C. already, so we’ll have our answer soon.”
* * *
In fact, at that very moment, there were several FBI teams in Washington searching for Baumann.
One of the flight attendants had been located, at her apartment near Dupont Circle, and had actually laughed when the FBI agent asked her if she remembered the passenger in seat 17-C. The customs agent who had processed Baumann/Moffatt’s entry was similarly incredulous. “You gotta be kidding,” he said. “You know how many hundreds of people I processed that day?” FBI street agents were unable to turn up any cab drivers at Dulles who remembered taking a fare that resembled the sketch of Baumann’s face.
Another FBI team was poring over the flight manifest that United Airlines had just faxed over. They were fortunate to be dealing with an American carrier, because foreign ones tended to be recalcitrant. Some airlines would not turn over their flight manifests without a criminal subpoena—difficult to get, because Baumann was not being sought in a criminal matter. Or they’d request a “national security letter,” a classified document that must adhere to the attorney general’s stringent guidelines on foreign counterintelligence.
Thank God for American multinational conglomerates. In a few minutes, the FBI team knew Baumann had purchased his tickets in London, with cash, an open return. They were also able to study the I-94 form that all arriving passengers are required to fill out. The address Baumann had given was false, as they expected it to be—no such street existed in the town of Buffalo, New York.
More important, they now knew which seat Baumann had sat in, which meant they knew the name of the passenger who sat next to him. Baumann had sat on the aisle, but on his right had sat a woman named Hilda Guinzburg. An FBI team visited Mrs. Guinzburg, a feisty seventy-four-year-old, at her Reston, Virginia, home and showed her a copy of Thomas Allen Moffatt’s passport photograph from the State Department archives.
Mrs. Guinzburg shook her he
ad. This was definitely not the man she had sat next to on her flight from London, she insisted. This confirmed that Moffatt’s passport photograph had been doctored and used by someone else.
And the I-94 form was then sent to the FBI’s ID section to test for latent fingerprints.
* * *
After changing out of his filthy clothes and showering, Leo Krasner went for a walk.
When he reached the burnished silver Manhattan Bank building, he strolled into the atrium as casually as he could and took the elevator to the twenty-third floor. The employee cafeteria was on this floor, so there was no security.
He found a bulletin board and posted a notice, then posted the identical notice on a board in an employee lounge. He posted several other copies on other bulletin boards on the floor.
Then he returned to his apartment and went to work.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
This is New York, where no one knows his neighbors, Baumann reflected as he turned the last key in Sarah Cahill’s triple-locked door.
He was out of breath and soaking wet. It was half past noon, but the sky was dark, and torrential rain was coming down with a Biblical vengeance. He wore a raincoat, the sort of tan belted topcoat just about every man in the city was wearing right now, although he had bought his in Paris from Charvet.
He had heard that when it rains in Manhattan the city comes to a halt and it becomes impossible to get a taxi, and it was true. It had taken him a long while to find a cab, which had then become stuck in the midday rush-hour traffic, exacerbated by the weather.
Sarah would not be home for hours, and Jared was still at the YMCA. True, there might have been problems if Sarah’s neighbors were home during the day (which they were not) or if one of them chanced to see him entering her apartment and mentioned it to her.
But this is New York. Strangers exhibit certain predictable behavior. Like women and their handbags. When a woman does not know you, she clutches her handbag as if it contained her life’s savings, though in fact rarely does it hold anything besides lipstick, compact, keys, grocery receipts, dry-cleaning slips, a scrawled note, and keys.
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