CHAPTER 5
Nolan’s team covering Kleppe followed him to Kennedy and waited to check that he actually boarded the plane and that the plane took off. They checked his booking with SAS. It was a direct flight, non-stop to London, leaving London an hour later for Copenhagen and Stockholm. Kleppe was booked through to Copenhagen under the name of Greenbaum.
Just before ten o’clock they went up the fire-escape stairs at the back of the block and the team put the big rubber suction pads on one of the windows, holding the glass in place while the glazier cut the glass at the edges of the frame.
As the team leader moved the long, thin, electronic lance across the floor of the apartment Nolan looked around the room from the window area. The walls were all panelled in a reddish-coloured wood and the floor was of oak parquet blocks. On a long shelf on the right-hand wall was an array of hi-fi equipment, and some sort of control panel. Across the space in front of the window was a long polished table with eight chairs spaced round it. There were no pictures, and no books. The team leader’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“It’s OK, Mr. Nolan, but you’ll have to keep to the white tapes, there are weight switches under the parquet blocks.”
“Can you check the walls for me?”
“You betcha.”
Nolan looked at the hi-fi without touching. There were two Sony 7055As. Two Sony cassette recorders, two big Revox tape-recorders and the control panel. He counted the square heat-switches. There were too many just to control the hi-fi. Some of them probably controlled the elaborate electronic security devices. But even with that there were too many. He leaned over to look at the connections on the backs of the receivers. Plugs and wires linked the recorders and there were four sets of leads from the speaker sockets into the control panel. Both receivers had leads from the antenna sockets to the panel. Nolan straightened up and beckoned the radio expert.
“Can you trace where the antenna wire goes to without touching the equipment?”
“Sure we can. I can use the cable tracer.”
The antenna lead went under the shelf panel, behind the wall panelling, and was lost at ceiling level.
They found the access to the roof void in the ceiling of a broom cupboard. They checked for electronics and found an elaborate circuit that would trip if the cover was lifted. One of the team took instrument readings and another pressed buttons on a pocket calculator. A long wire was fastened to a pipe with a crocodile clip, and the other end of the wire was taped to a corner of the access cover.
Nolan lifted the cover gingerly as he stood on the middle rung of an aluminium ladder. It was dark, and he peered over the edge of the flooring as he slowly swung the torch. It was a big area, and empty except for three standard water tanks. And it was clean. Far too clean. He went up on his elbows, swung up a knee and stood up. He called down for the radio man, who came up the ladder with his black leather case.
“Show me where the antennae are, and tell me about them.”
He shone his torch on the far wall as they walked over carefully. The man clamped a fork-like instrument on the first cable and then the second.
“They’re both normal 75 ohms jobs.”
“What about the third one?”
“That doesn’t go down into the room, it ends at the floor here.”
“What is it?”
The man took Nolan’s torch and followed the wire upwards and across and then round the timbers on the loft.
“It’s a short-wave aerial, Mr. Nolan.”
“Receiving or transmitting?”
“It’s OK for both. It’s got remote controlled cut-offs for various wave-lengths. The first one’s about twenty metres operation. Round about fourteen megahertz.”
“Was there anything downstairs that could use it?”
“No they’re FM and AM. No short-wave stuff.”
Nolan knelt down and shouted through the opening.
“Rod, are there any electronics in the ceiling area of the flat?”
“No. We checked before you went up. Just the access panel, that’s all.”
Nolan walked across the whole of the floor area running the torch light along each plank of the flooring. It took ten minutes but there was nothing.
He took the plyboard covers off the water tanks and shone his torch into the water. In the second tank he saw the black plastic bags. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. When the bags came out of the water he let them drain off. He untied one bag and lifted out the book. As he turned the pages he saw that it was all handwritten.
He lowered them down to the team below.
“Photograph them now, both sides of each page, and let me have them back.”
As he was straightening up he saw the socket on the wall by the antenna wires. He shone his torch upwards. It was in a wooden, bracket-like box right in the corner, and as the radio man unscrewed the front panel he guessed what it would be.
They lowered it carefully to the floor. It was in a dark green metal housing and the radio man whistled softly as they looked at it.
“It’s the latest they’ve got. I’ve never seen one before but we’ve got photographs and an operation manual for it.”
“What’s it do?”
“It’s a top-grade receiver-transmitter. It puts out very high-speed morse. You could transmit four thousand characters at least in half a second. That’s probably why he’s got two Revoxes. Uses them to gear up the speeds. The boys will go crazy when they see this.”
Nolan
