Free The Red Horseman by Stephen Coonts Page A

put another music source
near the window, like a portable radio, and complicate
the signal. But I think we should search that office
until we find a bug or can swear there isn’t
one.”
    “Go down to the maintenance office and get tools.
Screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, and a voltage
meter.”
    “Aye aye, sir.”
    “And a pipe wrench.”
    They started on the telephone. They disassembled the
plastic box and tested the microphone in the headset
and com’in the desk unit to see if it really went dead
when the phone was on the hook. It worked as they thought it
should.
    Next the light fixtures were removed
from their sockets and examined, then reinstalled. The
soundproof ceiling tiles were taken down and the overhead
and tile framework examined. They moved the
furniture and rolled back the carpet. Nothing.
    The heating and cooling duct vents were dirty but
innocent.
    Toad pointed toward the polished walnut molding
that framed the door and window and edged the walls.
    Jake examined the trim. He rated it because he
was the deputy director of the DIA. The nails that
held the wood in place were covered with varnish.
    He shook his head at Toad and pointed toward the
radiator.
    The old steam radiator was no longer in use, but
the steam pipes were still installed. They used the pipe
wrench on the ring nuts.
    And there it was.
    With the nuts off the steam intake and outlet pipes,
they wrestled the radiator out a half inch or so, just
enough to reveal the insulated wire that went through the inlet
pipe.

The Red Horseman
    So the whole radiator was a sounding board.
Inside the cast-iron unit there must be a sensing
unit, more likely two or three of them. The
signals went out through the wire to God knows
where, and there the readings were tape recorded. An
analysis of the tape using the known vibration
characteristics of the radiator would produce an
electronic signal that could be Processed
into speech.
    There was nothing for an electronic sweep to find.
‘allyet whoever had installed this unit had merely
to run the signal through his computer to hear everything said
inside the office.
    Jake used the pipe wrench to Pound a hole in the
wall.
    The pipe made a left turn inside the wall.
    “Come on.
    Out in the corridor Toad was ready to pound
another hole in the drywall when Jake stopped
him. “Let’s find the telephone switchboxes.
They probably have it routed through the phone system.
Go call the telephone repair people and get someone
up here on the double.
    The telephone switching boxes were in the basement.
    The system technician opened one of the boxes and
Jake drew back in amazement. Hundreds of
wires. “How do you know which is which?”
    “Well, sir, just tell me the phone number and
I’ll show You the connection.”
    “I don’t know the phone number.”
    well, everything coming into this box has a number.”
    Now Jake understood. Somewhere in the building there
was a tape recorder or recorders-a monitoring
station hooked UP to a telephone. All the
eavesdropper had to do was telephone the proper
number, punch in a code and the monitoring station would
obediently belch forth all its data, which could then be
Processed by a computer into speech.
    The technician was still talking. “dis — – they
built this building during World War II and have been
hooking up telephones ever since. The last big
telephone update we did we added more lines and
used the old ones where we could.
    But there’s no blueprints or diagrams or
anything like that.
    It’s.fucking spaghetti.”
    They could establish what line it was, of course,
by trial and error.
    Some of the lines were undoubtedly not sup posed to be
hooked up. But why bother? “Thanks, anyway,”
Jake said. “I appreciate you showing us this.”
    Back in Jake’s office Toad Tarkington
cut the wire going into the radiator.
    “They know everything,” he said disgustedly.
    “Apparently.”
    “They even got the conversation about binary
chemicals.”
    “Yep. And one of