Nash returned the next day, was sarcastically congratulated by Benford on having resisted using his phallus in the Hong Kong operations, and was briefed on the mole hunt. Hearsey came to Benford’s office and nodded to the officers in the room. Definitely channeling Gary Cooper, thought Nate, noticing his tall man’s habit of instinctively ducking slightly under the door frame. Hearsey wore a soft sports jacket over a pinstripe shirt with khaki trousers, and was carrying a silver ZERO Halliburton attaché case. Behind him, dragging a large black plastic Pelican footlocker, was another tech introduced as Frank Mendelsohn, who was short, slight, dark, shy, and twitchy, about whom Benford whispered, “the guy you don’t want assembling the bomb in the basement.”
Hearsey nodded to Nate. The ops officers had worked with Hearsey before; he’d broken into a German factory with Gable to sabotage centrifuge parts destined for Iran, and he had trained Nate’s friend Hannah Archer before she was assigned to Moscow. Hearsey was what they called an operational tech, a trained engineer who knew you couldn’t sneak a listening device into an office if it came in twelve pieces and weighed six hundred pounds. He understood operations, and his technical solutions reflected that understanding, a rare bird.
As he did typically, Benford had bypassed the orotund Director of OTS and confidentially asked Hearsey to consider solutions to DIVA’s communication problem now that she was to be Director of SVR. He asked the rangy tech to think out of the box, and come up with an answer. It was a little risky for Hearsey to accept and work on a bootleg project for Benford without his own chief’s knowledge, but he couldn’t abide his boss, a nontechnical outsider whom he called a seagull manager. “Swoops in, starts screaming, shits on everything, then flies away,” Hearsey had told Benford.
Hearsey sat on the couch, his knees coming even with his stomach. “I assume it’s okay to talk details in front of everyone,” he said. Benford nodded. “I had the beginning of an idea, so I asked NGA, that’s the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—the people who fly the satellites—to image SVR headquarters in Yasenevo. They did an ELINT shot, which reads electronic emissions, then the next pass was a MASINT shot, which measures energy. I was looking for two things: that the main buildings radiate electric energy to the outside; and that there is only one main transformer—step-down transformers block energy—in a separate power plant.”
“How’d you do?” said Forsyth.
“Two out of two,” said Hearsey. “The buildings radiate, so there must be miles of wiring inside the walls, and the transformers are in a dedicated power plant on the other side of the compound.”
“My pulse is racing, but what exactly are you telling us?” said Benford.
Hearsey smiled. “You’re going to like this, Simon. The Russians hardened their headquarters on the inside against external eavesdropping, but didn’t think about energy leaking through the wires outside to the surrounding pine forest. The bottom line is that the two main buildings of SVR headquarters in Moscow are in essence a big honking antenna,” he said. “Even the shapes of the two buildings—a fifteen-floor tower connected to a five-floor wing shaped like a Y—act like a Yagi directional antenna.”
“I will not ask what a Yogi antenna is. But how does that help us?” said Benford.
“That’s Yagi, and it’s just what we need.” Hearsey turned to Mendelsohn, who opened the locker and took out a sleek desk lamp composed of a large ebony base, a stainless-steel, L-shaped arm, and a broad black shade. Hearsey smiled and put the lamp on the arm of the couch.
“Stick this lamp on your agent’s desk and plug it into the wall. That’s it. She can dictate, record, or type messages to Simon through this lamp, using the building’s electrical wires as a carrier, even with people present in the agent’s office,” said Hearsey. “Another feature: align documents along the base under the shade and you can photograph them, even while signing them, right in front of a secretary looking over your shoulder. And the lamp will tell her when an incoming message from Simon is waiting for her.”
“How’s it do that?” said Nate.
“An air vortex ring,” said Hearsey.
“What does that mean?” said Forsyth.
“It’ll blow in her ear,” said Hearsey.
“That can’t be a bad thing,” said Westfall.
* * *
* * *
Hearsey left after two hours, having demonstrated the functions of the desk lamp concealment for DIVA’s covert communications equipment. Hearsey told them the system was encrypted BOLERO, which crypt Simon found fatuous. Nevertheless, he was pleased. Hearsey had outdone himself, supported by the engineering brilliance of Frank Mendelsohn, whose nickname in the office, inexplicably, was Money Shot. The BOLERO transmitter/receiver was interactive, multifunctional, and protected from tampering by retinal-scan permissive-action link. Messages or images that Dominika loaded into the device would be stored until it detected the authentication code from the BATTLEFAT telemetry satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the Arctic Circle. In 3.5 seconds, Dominika’s stored messages would flood through the building’s electrical grid to the satellite, and simultaneous incoming messages would be read by the BOLERO lamp at the other end of the wall plug in DIVA’s office.
“Will these transmissions be detectable inside the building?” Nate asked. “Is it safe?”
“SVR comsec experts solved that problem for us,” said Hearsey. “They shielded the building against external eavesdropping, so our communications don’t emanate inside. We got lucky.”
“I have a question,” said Westfall, ever the analyst. “I understand that transmissions to satellites are vulnerable to radio intercept or direction finding.”
“You mean triangulation,” said Hearsey. “Not with this system. The power is low, like with your SRAC equipment, but, more important, transmissions are diffused. It’s the difference between tracing back a beam in the night sky to find the searchlight, and stuffing fog into a gunny sack.” Benford grunted approvingly at that, a metaphor he could understand.
Frank Mendelsohn then had explained principles of haptic (tactile) communication, organic user interface, and flexible display with bend interactions until Benford began going purple in the face. The not-insignificant consideration of getting the desk lamp into SVR headquarters without arousing suspicion appeared to be a problem until Nate said Dominika could carry it in herself as she moved into the Director’s office and chose new furnishings. The lamp would be cached to her by Moscow Station. Risky but doable. And once the lamp was on her desk, she needn’t step foot on the street to meet a case officer—personal meets would be reserved for when DIVA traveled outside Russia. Benford said they should deploy BOLERO as soon as possible.
DIVA would once more be online, and Benford could begin reading other gentlemen’s mail again, with the exception of the messages to and from MAGNIT. And that was the problem.
CIA’S EGG-DROP SOUP
Heat chicken stock and use a little to mix with cornstarch into a slurry. In the remaining stock add ginger, soy sauce, diced scallions, thin-sliced mushrooms, white pepper, and bring to a boil. Add cornstarch slurry, stir well, and simmer. Beat eggs vigorously in a separate bowl and slowly pour them into the soup while stirring the stock, so that the eggs cook and spread out in ribbons. An optional ingredient is kernel (or creamed) corn. Garnish with additional chopped scallions and serve immediately.
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Snaggletooth