'Terrific job,' Politician told her.
'What's next?' she asked.
'Next,' Pol said, 'we move into that office instead of CompuSales. Ti, you've been in there once and know the approximate setup. Go to a prestigious location and rent something that would suit them much better.'
She nodded and waited for the rest of the plan.
'As soon as you have the location, telephone us at the new CompuSales office. Gadgets and I will be there waiting to tell them where they'll be moving to.'
Ti left the booth without another word. Pol and Gadgets started down the block to meet the owners of the new computer business.
A young man in jeans and a T-shirt that read Love Bytes straightened up from the case he was unpacking and stared at Politician.
'You want us to do what?' he asked.
'Move to a better location where you'll have a better chance of making your business really work.'
'We can't afford a better location,' the only other member of the business, a bearded youth, said.
'Wrong. We'll give you the same lease you have here at the same price. We put up the difference, plus the moving costs. You won't be out anything more than the delay of half a day moving.'
'Why this dump?' the youth with the beard asked.
Pol proceeded to feed them a story about how the people they worked for had set their sights on that location, and that no other location would do.
Pol talked to Ti, then to the young businessman. 'How's downtown sound? Same price.'
The two men grinned at each other.
'What are you guys?' the man with the T-shirt asked. 'Tooth fairies?'
'Deal,' said the other.
Able Team was in business.
'Where is this better location?' the youth in the T-shirt asked.
The telephone rang.
'If that's for me, I'll tell you where,' Politician answered.
That night Lao Ti looked around the empty office. 'We could use some furniture,' she commented.
'Order some in the morning,' Gadgets replied. 'In the meantime, what's the first step?'
'The telephones,' she answered. She stooped and rummaged in an open case. 'I brought a switchboard along.'
Gadgets looked at his watch. 'The super and the cleaning staff will be gone by now. Let's get it done.'
There were still people moving around in some of the WAR offices. Otherwise the building was deserted. The trio found the door to the basement. Its lock yielded to Gadgets's hands and a piece of spring wire. Soon they were in the basement, examining the junction boxes and spaghetti that controlled telephone service to the building.
Ti quickly clipped a handset to one pair of wires after another.
'No action on the lines,' she reported. 'We'll have to do something about that. Pol, if you can, find a place where there are five pay phones close together. Go down the line and dial the first six digits of WAR's telephone number. Then go down the line a second time and dial the last digit. That should light up all their lines and speed up the process.'
Gadgets and Ti hurried to connect small light bulbs and circuit testers to the wire sets.
Ten minutes later, lights flashed and needles moved. Both Ti and Gadgets moved quickly, tagging the active lines with bits of tape.
'I've found the trunk,' Ti announced. 'Two of the lines in it didn't light up. I'll bet one of those is hooked up to the computer.'
Half an hour later, the three were back in their new offices. Ti pointed to a compact switchboard that she had just hooked up.
She explained to Politician: 'All their calls go through that board. We can record everything that goes through the lines, but I still want to patch directly into their mainframe. Otherwise someone is bound to notice the increased activity through the modem.'
Pol shook his head. 'We'll never get through that security and back out without them knowing we've been at their computers.'
'So, they'll have to invite us in.'
'Sure.'
'We monitor those two unknown lines until one starts to transmit to the computer. As soon as the transmission starts, whoever's monitoring throws the switch that opens the line, cutting them off in the middle. After that, it should be easy.'
Pol shrugged. 'If you say so.'
They dragged sleeping bags out and settled in on the bare floor. Gadgets took the first four-hour watch on the telephone lines.
Nothing came into the computer modem until shortly after noon the next day. Ti was monitoring at the time. Her hands fluttered over the small switchboard, breaking open telephone lines, routing outgoing calls to the three telephones she had spread around the floor of the empty office. At 12:25, an outgoing call rang one of the telephones. An automatic LED display showed the number that had been dialed.
'This is it,' she said calmly as she picked up the telephone. 'Repair service,' she said into the mouthpiece.
Gadgets came and flipped other circuits to allow the office below them the usual telephone service. The important call had been intercepted. The computer line was left dead.
'Hold on for a moment, please,' Ti told the caller from WAR.
She grinned at Pol and Gadgets, letting the caller wait ninety seconds before going back on the line. 'We have a repairman in the building, now. I've talked to him. He'll look at your problem as soon as he's finished the job he's working on now.'
She hung up.
'You're up next,' Ti told Pol.
He stood and started to change into appropriate clothes.
Twenty minutes later, toolbox in hand, Pol was ushered into the computer room and to the area where the mainframe was hooked into the telephone line. Pol carefully set out his tools and began dissecting the modem. The two men who had ushered him into the computer room sat down to keep an eye on him.
'Before I get too deeply into this I'd better do a line check,' he said when he had the modem into easily reassembled sections.
He pulled a lineman's handset from the toolbox, hooked it up and dialed a seven-digit number. Pol knew that the number did not matter because Ti would intercept the call.
'Yes?' Ti's voice was carefully neutral.
'Just checking on the line. Everything here looks okay. Call me back on...' He paused and raised a gray eyebrow at one of the watchers.
The watcher left and soon returned with a slip of paper on which he had written the computer's unlisted number. Pol relayed it to Ti and hung up.
Twenty seconds later, his handset rang. Pol answered. 'Are you still being carefully watched?' Ti asked.
'That's about it.'
'Gadgets wants to know if some smoke would help.'
'Seems like we should do that,' Pol acknowledged.
'Ten minutes,' Ti told him and hung up.
Pol continued to pretend to work on the computer modem. A few minutes later, he smelled smoke. He kept busy, waiting for someone else to notice it.
By the time someone did, there was a noticeable amount seeping under the door to the hall.
'You smell something?' someone asked.
