John Weisman - Direct Action

Reuven unlocked the Eurec van. Inside, taped to the equipment locker, was a brown manila envelope. Reuven slit the thick paper seal and extracted a compact disk. He eased out of the truck, went to the office, inserted the disk in the graphite-gray computer, and waited until it booted up.

Six minutes later, he was back, a sheaf of papers in his right hand. He whistled at Tom, who was scanning the wall sections in the scenery bays. “Take a look,” he shouted, waving the target-assessment photos in the American’s direction. “Nothing too complicated. We should have the mock-up put together within a couple of hours.”

11:14A.M. Tom went into the office and entered a six-number combination into a large safe that had been lag-bolted into the concrete floor. When he heard the electronic lock release, he punched a second six-number combination, which rendered the thermite explosive charges inside the safe inert. He pulled the double doors open.

From the top shelf of the safe he extracted a gray, injection-molded, HPX high-performance resin-shell Storm Case slightly larger than a commercial attaché. He sat the case on the floor, opened the twin combination padlocks then the twin latches, and flipped the waterproof lid up. Inside, protected by black plastic foam, were six pinhole audio/video cameras, each one two and a half inches in length. The battery compartment was just over seven thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter-roughly the same as a cut-down rollerball cartridge. And like a rollerball cartridge, the unit tapered into a slender shaft ending with the lens, which was about the same size as the head of a pin. Even so, the field of view was wide-angle, covering more than 106 degrees.

Both audio and video were transmitted to a repeater unit, also in the Storm Case, which amplified the signal before sending it on to the receiver, which could be as much as five miles away. There, the high-resolution digital pictures could be shown on a single television screen-much the same way that multiple security camera images are displayed. Simultaneously, the images were stored on a miniature flash ROM unit for instantaneous playback or transfer into single-frame photographs. The cameras themselves were self-powered by miniature lithium batteries that had a hour life. Once activated, they’d transmit 22

months.

Tom closed the Storm Case and carried it over to where Reuven squatted inside the van, rummaging through a tool chest. “You have the drill?”

Without turning, Reuven gave Tom an upturned thumb. “And the paint. And the Spackle. And the tool kit.” He reached inside his pocket and brought out a small leather case. “What do you think? I go out with just lock picks?”

Although paint, Spackle, and a sixteen-ounce hammer might appear on the surface to be incongruous with the art of spying, intelligence-gathering tradecraft sometimes requires more than SDRs and cleaning routes, spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting; polygraphs, rabbit holes, or writing the endless series of postrendezvous reports that disappear into the black hole of Langley. Spying is more than flaps and seals-the art of clandestinely opening other people’s mail. It is more than disguise-the ability to change your appearance in plain sight. It is more than microdots and burst transmitters, spy dust, lock-picking, and all the other technically oriented, nimble-fingered sleight-of-hand arcanum arcanorum normally associated with the practice of espionage.

Tradecraft is sometimes dependent on nuts-and-bolts basic handyman skills-a lot more This Old House or Trading Spaces than “Bond-James Bond.” Sewing, photography, carpentry, electrical work, auto mechanics, and painting-they’re all integral to tradecraft, too.

Indeed, a Russian operation against the State Department’s headquarters had provided Tom with an interesting case study in the manual-trades necessities of spycraft.

In 1998, Boris Grumov, a case officer from SVR (the Russian foreign intelligence service) working under embassy cover in Washington, managed to plant an audio transmitter listening device inside a conference room belonging to the Bureau of Oceans and Environmental and Scientific Policy, or OES, on the seventh floor of the Harry S. Truman Building, the two-square-block main State headquarters that sits between Twenty-first and Twenty-third and C and D Streets, Northwest, in Washington, D.C.

In Hollywood movies, bugs are cavalierly applied to the bottoms of tables and chairs or easily screwed into chandeliers or floor lamps. In real life? Not likely, bub.

At the State Department, for example, offices and conference rooms are regularly inspected by Bureau of Diplomatic Security special agents augmented by spit-and-polish U.S. Marines, who look underneath desks, tables, and chairs and inside all the lighting fixtures, make sure that classified materials are properly stored in document safes, and check to see that the removable hard drives from every computer linked to State’s classified network have been locked in special safes. Every night. Violations are taken seriously.

So the Russians got erudite. They installed their listening device by planting it inside the chair molding that ran along the perimeter of room 7835.

Talk about a complicated and sophisticated operation. After all, SVR had had to:

• Take photos and measurements of the chair molding so it could be purchased and matched exactly to the molding in 7835.

• Get a paint sample so the paint could be copied, right down to the patina, nicks, and smudges.

• Cut a section of molding out and replace it with the new section containing the listening device.

• Camouflage the seams between the old and the new molding to make them invisible.

And finally, accomplish all the work during the hours when the room was not being used by the OES staff.

Intelligence and law enforcement services maintain huge technical departments and break-and-enter specialists to perform such work. But if time and limited access are factors-which they often are-then much of the work has to be done by the case officer him/herself. In this operation, even though the SVR rezident (station chief) in the Russians’ Washington embassy had a five-man technical section at his disposal, the on-site work at State had to be performed either by Grumov or an American agent because penetrating a team of hostile technicians clandestinely inside HST is exponentially more difficult than getting one hostile case officer with diplomatic immunity through the C Street turnstiles. After all, hostile case officers with diplomatic immunity go through those turnstiles all the time. It made one wonder.

Tom examined the wall section Reuven had attached to the forklift truck. On one side, it was stucco-finish plaster about a quarter of an inch thick, set into lath that was fastened to masonry and sheathed in stone. The opposite surface had crown molding made of poplar wood, behind which was lath and plaster, then another layer of masonry and the common stone sheathing. The total width of the two facing walls was just over sixteen inches.

The Israeli stood with his hands on his hips. “Which one do you want to try first?”

Tom pointed to the stucco. “Back side.”

“From the back, you’ll want to drill high-into the crown molding.”

“Then we’ll need a ladder?”

“Of course.” Reuven ambled off toward the scenery bay. Thirty seconds later, he was back with a trifolded aluminum multipurpose ladder, the tips of its rails sheathed in soft plastic. “Your wish, Stafford Pasha…”

“Let’s go, Reuven.” Tom was getting impatient.

The Israeli set the ladder down next to Tom, hoisted himself aboard the forklift, and turned on the engine. He reached for the lift control. The wall section rose slowly. Reuven eyeballed the height. “We want three meters. I think that’s close. You measure.”