Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

Whitlock had arrived by bus, which he believed was still the best way to travel when a low profile was important. He had entered the van by walking through the bus station from front to back and climbing in as if he owned the vehicle. He sat now on a tiny swivel stool at the opposite end of the van from Grundy. Both sides of the interior were packed with electronic equipment. Where Grundy sat was a small bench with tuning gear, speakers, tape machines and headphones.

‘I’m really grateful to you and Mr Philpott for this little diversion, C.W.’

‘Glad we can all help each other. How are you working this surveillance, exactly?’

‘Most of it’s way beyond you – no offence – but putting it simply, I’m aligned with a tight information band set up between this van and the target. The ventilators out on the roof are my focusing receivers. This baby,’ he patted an oblong black-and-red box beside him, ‘collects and co-ordinates. It picks up from two bugs in Chadwick’s house, and a third one in his office, another mile out beyond the house. So far, he hasn’t been near the office.’

‘How did you get the bugs in place?’

‘Respect my secrets, C.W., and that way I’ll respect yours.’

‘You remembered it’s telephone calls we’re interested in?’

‘Of course I did. So that we don’t have to record every sound that gets made in the place every minute of the day, the recording equipment is triggered by the first dialling tone each time a call is made, and it switches off again when the line-cancel tone sounds. This is really sensitive equipment, C.W.’

‘Can you tell what numbers are being called?’

Grundy put on a pitying face. ‘I could do that before any of this stuff was invented. Some guys can do it just by listening near the phone. The tones tell you the country and area codes, and the numbers. They get logged separately.’ He pointed to a cassette deck. ‘Chadwick’s dialled quite a few in the last, ah…’ he looked at his watch, ‘nine hours.’

‘Can you transcribe them for me?’

‘Sure. This thing makes a printout.’ Grundy flipped a switch on the front panel. A moment later a strip of cash-register paper began to appear from under the machine. ‘How long have you got, C.W.?’

‘I get a return trip on the same bus I came in on. A couple of hours yet.’

‘You’ll have time to listen to some of this.’ Grundy put a small DAT tape player in front of Whitlock and inserted a tape. ‘Plug in the headphones at the side.’

Whitlock listened. For a time it was fascinating, hearing Chadwick in his own home, believing he was alone, talking business on the telephone. But it was dull stuff, business talk of a kind that conveyed nothing beyond its own narrow content. After twenty minutes Whitlock decided he would switch off, make his apologies and leave with the tape player and the other three tapes. Then the tape suddenly began to hiss and squeak. He put the machine on pause and pulled off the headphones.

‘It’s gone strange,’ he told Grundy.

‘Let me listen.’

Grundy squeezed his way along the van, wedging himself in beside Whitlock. He put on the headphones, activated the tape and sat frowning. Then he paused the tape again.

‘Son of a gun,’ he said. ‘He’s masking the call.’

‘Masking it?’

‘The old-fashioned way. Running water. He probably took the phone into the bathroom and turned on the taps.’

‘You think he knows about the bugs?’

‘No. He’s just leery, like every sharp crook that ever was. They don’t trust their own shadows.’

‘So we don’t get to know why he thought this call important enough to screen?’

‘Who says?’

Grundy removed the tape from the player and took it to the other end of the van. He put it into an elaborate-looking cassette deck with six circular dials above the tape compartment. He rewound a few inches of tape, played it, and made adjustments to scales underneath the dials.

‘I’m screening out the frequency of running water, which should leave only the voice sounds.’

He rewound the tape again, adjusted three of the six scales, and switched on. The tape went through the machine silently.

‘Why can’t we hear anything?’ Whitlock said.

‘I’m in scouring mode. You’ll hear it in a minute. The rig knows now what to listen for, so it’ll stop the tape automatically at the end of the overlay sound.’

After a timed three minutes and forty seconds the tape stopped. Grundy rewound it to the point where the hissing noise had started.

‘Now listen to the difference.’

He switched on. Music poured from the speaker. It was an instrumental of ‘Fool on the Hill’.

Grundy slapped his forehead.

‘He used music, too?’ Whitlock said.

‘Yep. This Chadwick isn’t your average paranoiac, C.W. He’s up there with the wild-eyed conspiracy-theory crowd.’

‘Can you eliminate the music?’

‘Yes,’ Grundy said.

Whitlock looked at him. ‘But?’

‘But the speech could disappear with it. It depends how much variance there is between Chadwick’s voice and the notes and harmonic combinations that make up the music.’ Grundy looked at his watch. ‘This could be a long job, without any guarantee of success.’

‘How long?’

‘Well, with music I have to do things manually, grading out the music by fine stages until I get down to the vocal range. And I’ll have to work from copies, because the technique rules out error-free procedure. Two hours, maybe.’

Whitlock sighed. ‘OK. Go ahead. I’ll wait.’

‘Remember, no guarantees. I may come up with nothing.’

‘We’ll get nothing unless you try.’

That evening Whitlock called Philpott on the scrambler line. He explained about the masked recording.

‘It took two and a half hours to clear off the music.’

‘What did it leave?’

‘Chadwick calling an architect in Berlin. Viktor Kretzer.’

‘Really? Kretzer’s on Emily’s list.’

‘I know. We have a clear recording of Chadwick telling Kretzer not to communicate until further notice.’

‘Marvellous.’

‘But better still,’ Whitlock said, ‘we have a little nugget at the end of the call. Chadwick tells Kretzer that some armaments are due to complete the round trip and come back to Germany, where they were born. The consignment is one item short of the batch Mr Gibson originally purchased, he says, because the Arab was given the gun to use on the job in London. How’s that for serendipity?’

‘To quote the psalmist,’ Philpott said, ‘my cup runneth over. You realize that apart from this being Grade A evidence, it means I won’t have to do any blind bluffing with Chadwick and Pearce?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll pass on my thanks to Grundy in person. Meantime I’ve skulduggery to get on with. And, indeed, so have you.’ He laughed softly. ‘Don’t you just love it, C.W., when fate takes its foot off your neck and lets you score the occasional goal?’

Chadwick had reserved a table at the Casa de Oro at Fairmont in North-west Dallas. When Philpott arrived, Chadwick and Pearce were already seated. He saw them watch him as he came across the blue-and-amber-lit dining room. There was tension in the way they sat, square-shouldered, necks stiff.

‘Gentlemen…’ They stood and Philpott shook their hands. ‘I hope I’m not late.’

‘Not at all.’ Chadwick waved to the chair opposite. ‘Sit down, Mr Beamish.’

‘Derek.’

‘Derek. Sit down and we’ll get you a drink. I hope you like Tex-Mex cooking.’

‘I adore it,’ Philpott lied, smiling. He reached for the leather-covered menu. ‘I wonder, do they do blue corn enchiladas?’

‘Why, yes, I believe they do,’ Pearce said. ‘You’ve some experience of this kind of food?’