Spycraft - Melton [127]
Just as the target’s wife saw the damage to her car, the lamp salesman quickly approached her offering profuse apologies. He explained that he waited for fear that somebody might have seen the accident and taken down his license number. Then, building a tale of woe, he confessed that if he reported another accident to his insurance company they would surely cancel his policy. Pressing far more money than required to fix the damage into the wife’s hand, he implored her to accept the settlement and not report the incident.
The woman, sensing a good deal, accepted the money and, in a final gesture of gratitude, the lamp salesman urged her to select any lamp from the stock in his van. The diplomat’s wife chose what appeared to be the most expensive lamp and the officer carefully loaded the gift in her car, making sure to activate the audio “on” switch.
Later that night, the tech and the case officer met at the listening post and with amusement heard the diplomat’s wife relate the story of how she had “screwed over this poor American.” The audio stayed on the air for about two months until the couple decided they liked the lamp so much that it should grace their second residence in the mountains, far out of the transmitter’s range.
In another operation, two techs disguised themselves as local painters to gain entry to a diplomatic facility being readied for new occupants. Their job was to find places to install bugs. As the techs studied areas where audio might be best installed, their attention fell on two large ornately carved wooden doors piled among other materials. The doors, the techs learned, would eventually hang between two of the mission’s conference rooms. The techs reasoned that by placing mics on either side of the doors a single transmitter could pick up and relay conversations from both rooms. As an added operational bonus, the huge doors could accommodate dozens of batteries, extending the life of the operation far into the future.
The techs had only a few days to work and the presence of construction crews limited their access to the facility. The techs needed to get the doors to their shop to plant the devices. Noticing the entire construction site was a mess, with scraps of wood, fixtures, cement blocks, flooring, and other debris laying around, one of the techs said, “Let’s clean this place up. They’ll be happy that we got rid of the trash.”
The techs went to work, piling whatever construction trash they could find on the doors and carried them out like stretchers. Several stretcher loads went out and other materials were carried in. Eventually the doors went into the techs’ waiting truck and returned a couple of days later loaded with mics, batteries, and transmitters. “Everything just went fine,” remembered one of the trash haulers. “We got the audio in and no one ever suspected a thing.”
However, sound plans did not always go smoothly and some were just victims of bad luck, falling into the category of “technical success, operational failure.” In one memorable instance, the Soviet Ambassador in a European capital ordered a custom table for his home. The CIA got wind of the order and recruited the furniture maker, who agreed that the techs could put an audio device in the piece.
The operation had every earmark of success as the techs, observing from a safe house, watched the table as it was carefully carried up the steps to the Ambassador’s residence. The tech and the case officer exchanged smiles and shook hands, but before they could pour the victory toast, the deliverymen appeared again. This time they carried the table