FBI Special Agent and counterterrorism expert Sarah Cahill doesn't know the man she's tracking. But the so-called "Prince of Darkness" knows her-intimately. So when Sarah is summoned to Wall Street to investigate, little does she know that "she's" the one under surveillance... until the terrorist infiltrates himself into the deepest, most desperate corners of her life.
Soon Sarah is plunged into a deep labyrinth of intrigue and catastrophe as she races to uncover a diabolically clever conspiracy...before time runs out...and the clock strikes "THE ZERO HOUR."
Joseph Finder is the author of several "New York Times" bestselling thrillers, including "Buried Secrets, High Crimes, Paranoia" and the first Nick Heller novel, "Vanished." "Killer Instinct" won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Thriller, and "Company Man" won the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller. "High Crimes" was the basis of the Morgan Freeman/Ashley Judd movie, and both "Paranoia "and "Killer Instinct" are in development as major motion pictures. Born in Chicago, Finder studied Russian at Yale and Harvard. He was recruited by the CIA, but decided he preferred writing fiction. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association for Former Intelligence Officers, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Read an Excerpt
PART 1
TRICKS
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. -Sun-tzu, The Art of War
Prisoner number 322t88-he was known to the prison authorities as Baumann, though that was not his name at birth-had been planning this day with meticulous precision for quite some time.
He rose from bed very early and, as he did every morning, peered through the narrow barred window at the verdant mountainside that glittered emerald in the strong South African sunlight. Turning his gaze, he located the tiny, shimmering patch of ocean, just barely visible. He took in the distant caw of the seagulls. He could hear the jingling of chains worn by the most dangerous convicts as they tossed and turned in their sleep, and the barking of the Alsatians in the kennels next to the prison building.
Dropping to the cold concrete floor, he began his morning ritual: a series of limbering stretches, one hundred push ups, one hundred sit-ups. Then, his blood pumping vigorously, he showered.
By the standards of the outside world, Baumann's solitary cell was cramped and narrow. But it had its own shower and toilet, a bed, a table, and a chair.
He was in his early forties, but might have been taken for a decade younger. And he was strikingly handsome. His hair was full, black, and wavy, only slightly sprinkled with gray. His closely trimmed beard accentuated a jaw that was strong and sharp; his nose was prominent but aquiline, beneath a heavy brow; his complexion was the olive so prevalent in Mediterranean countries.
Baumann might have been mistaken for a southern Italian or a Greek were it not for his eyes, which were a brilliant, clear, and penetrating blue, fringed by longeyelashes. When he smiled, which was rarely and only when he wanted to charm, his grin was radiant, his teeth perfect and brilliantly white.
In his six years in Pollsmoor Prison he'd been able to achieve a level of physical training he could never have otherwise. He had always been remarkably fit, but now his physique was powerful, even magnificent. For when he wasn't reading there was little else to do but calisthenics and hwa rang do, the little-known Korean martial art he had spent years perfecting.
He changed into his blue prison uniform, which, like everything he wore, was stenciled with the number 4, indicating that it was property of his section of Pollsmoor Prison. Then, making his bed as usual, he began what he knew would be a long day.
