Spycraft - Melton [129]
“I asked the maid for one and she got it,” the transcriber responded, a little puzzled. The maid who serviced the listening post apartment also cleaned the Soviet’s room. A couple of days earlier she had pulled the bed away from the wall to vacuum and saw the three-way plug. Concluding it was not being used, she put it in her pocket. Later, when the post’s keeper asked for a plug for his tape recorders, receiver, and other equipment, she just happened to have one handy.
The tech’s next call went to the chief who suggested that everyone meet for a three-hour, three-martini lunch. As the first round of drink arrived, the chief offered a toast: “Remember, ‘Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and you shall find.’ Look it up. Matthew 7:7.”
A legendary audio semi-success occurred when a South American dictator discovered a transmitter in a wood block attached to a piece of furniture in his office. Those in the listening post recorded the dictator’s outrage. Then, in dramatic fashion, he drew his pistol and fired several rounds into the device while denouncing the CIA and America to his staff. Satisfied his marksmanship had killed the device, he tossed the bullet-riddled trophy carelessly on top of a file cabinet.
Back at the post, the recorders continued to roll while the device kept transmitting. The bullets had shattered the block and struck a battery, but only wounded, not killed the device. Within the heart of the woodblock enough power still flowed to the undamaged transmitter that every word uttered in the office was heard for several more weeks until the remaining batteries eventually died.
Retrieving bugs could be as hazardous as installing them and just as critical to an operation’s success. Spy gear abandoned in place poses the risk of later detection by the local service or, depending on future occupants, by another foreign government. Any piece of equipment discovered, even years after the operation, could reveal technology and tradecraft to the opposition. It is one of espionage’s ironies that the very equipment used to acquire intelligence, once discovered by an adversary, becomes a valuable source of intelligence. Surveillance gear in the hands of a hostile security service could yield vital information for creating countermeasures, point to an agent, or expose concealment methods.
Lady Luck did not smile on a retrieval operation in Western Europe in the late 1970s. A long-running successful audio operation concluded when the targets moved out of their residence and the techs received orders to return to the now empty apartment and retrieve the four bugs installed in the attic. It was a typical nighttime operation that demanded stealth and sure-footedness for the techs to make their away across the building’s narrow rafters. The summer night was hot and the attic increasingly uncomfortable for the techs who, after finding the first three devices, were having difficulty locating the fourth. “My partner was swearing like crazy and I’m tiptoeing across these little rafters looking for the fourth when one the rafters breaks,” said one of the techs, remembering the incident. “The next thing I know, I’m hanging by one arm, looking down at a very expensive terrazzo floor.”
With the crash echoing in the middle of the night and the dust settling, the tech’s radio came to life. The lookout had heard the noise and anxiously asked what was happening in the house. “I said, ‘As you can probably surmise, we’ve got a little problem in here. That was me, going through the ceiling.’” Then the fourth audio bug fell to the floor.
Rather than retrace their steps over the now suspect rafters, the two techs dropped down through the hole. Fortunately, since the apartment had been vacated, they had time to clean up the mess and repair the ceiling. “Afterward, we just told everybody we had set the Guinness record for the world’s biggest pinhole,” the tech joked years later. “A six foot by six foot pinhole will give you the best audio you ever heard. God, that made a lot of