doodads here and there to let him know if be had any unwanted visitors.
Luis Camacho stood in the door and carefully examined the interior- It looked precisely as he remembered it, exactly the way he had seen it for years. He stepped inside, eased the door shut and listened.
Albright’s house was similar to his, one of four variations on the same basic floor plan the tract builder had used in half the houses in this subdivision. Other than minor interior adjustments, most of the differences were in the front facades.
As he stood there the faint hum of the refrigerator shut off. Albright’s fridge was quieter than his. Probably newer too. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to shut out the faint sound of a car passing on the side street. Only a few creaks and groans as the house continued to warm in the early afternoon sun.
He moved slowly through the kitchen and into the family room. A bachelor, Albright spent his evenings here, watching TV or reading. Camacho moved slowly, checking the walls and looking behind pictures — O’Keeffe prints — and tugging at the carpet edges. He inspected the books in the built-in bookcase, then randomly removed a few and checked the integrity of the wall behind by rapping with a knuckle. He didn’t know what he hoped to find, but he would recognize it when he saw it. If there was anything to find, which was doubtful.
The garage was next, then the basement. It was still unfinished, no ceiling or drywall to cover the unpainted cinder blocks. Damp. Only two naked bulbs overhead, plus.the one on the stairs. He glanced at the accumulated junk and the layers of dust and grime, and decided Albright cleaned his basement on the same schedule used by every other bachelor who owned one — never. There were some tools piled carelessly in one corner: a drill, a saber saw, a hammer, a box of hand tools. They were covered with the same thickness of dirt that covered everything else. Some cans of paint that looked like they had never been opened. Perhaps he had had a fit of enthusiasm which had waned on the way home from the hardware store. Camacho went back upstairs, consciously re- minding himself to flip off the light switch at the head of the stairs.
He stopped dead in the kitchen. He turned and went back to the basement door. He opened it. Light switch on. What was that? Was it a noise? Lights off. Yes, there was a noise, some kind of faint grinding, just for a half second or so. He repeated the procedure. He wasn’t imagining things. He could hear something.
In the slanted ceiling of the stairway, down about three feet from the bulb, was a dusty screen. Several of the strands had been pushed aside, perhaps by a careless jab from a broom handle, leav- ing a hole. He flipped the light several more times. He could just barely hear it, the most minute of noises, hard to recognize.
The screen was held on with four screws. Bare metal could be seen on the screw slots. When he got them out and lowered the screen he could see the camera lens. Rubber padding held on with rubber bands covered the camera body. A wire led to it He stood on the stairs and examined it with his flashlight, then reached up and removed the camera, excess wire following along.
The wire was connected to a gadget on top with a small alligator clip. With the stairwell light off, he undipped it and carried the camera to the kitchen table. Unwrapping the rubber padding with gloves on was difficult, so he took them off.
The gadget on top was some kind of an electromagnetic doo- hickey with a lever. When the current was turned on by flipping the light switch, the magnet was energized and caused this steel pin to push the camera shutter button, tripping the shutter. When the current ceased, a spring reset the lever, which released the shutter button and allowed the film to be automatically advanced by the camera.
It was a nice camera, a Canon. The little window said that it was on its ninth exposure. How many times had he turned that light on and off. He tried to count them. Six. No, five. So the film counter should be on four.
He opened the camera and removed the film, then pulled the celluloid completely from its cartridge and held it up to the win- dow. Rewinding the film back onto the cartridge was a chore, but he managed, and after wiping the cartridge carefully, he reinstalled it in the camera. He used a dry dishcloth on the camera and wrapped it carefully. Working by feel with the overhead stair light off, he returned the device to its hole and screwed the screen back on. He nipped the light switch three times and was rewarded each time with that faint noise.
There were three bedrooms upstairs, exactly the same floor plan here as in his house next door, but only two of them were fur- nished. The largest was obviously lived in, but the middle-sized room was ready for a guest. Luis Camacho tried to remember if Harlan Albright had ever had an overnight guest that he knew about. No.
He checked the carpet. Albright might have some kind of pres- sure device under there, or perhaps heat- sensitive paper. Nope. Another camera? Apparently not.
There was a little trapdoor in the hall ceiling that led to the unfinished attic. An upholstered chair sat just inside the guest bed- room. He put his nose almost to the seat and scrutinized it care- fully. Yes, a few smudges of dirt were visible.
Luis Camacho pulled the chair under the trapdoor, took his shoes off and stood on it. He eased the door up. It was dark up there. A few flakes of dust drifted down. He stood on tiptoe and used the flash. He felt between the joists.
Several items. One was a soft leather bagtike thing, a zippered pistol rug. The other was a large, heavy metal toolbox that just fit through the trapdoor. He almost dropped the toolbox getting it down.
The pistol rug contained a Ruger.22 autopistol with black plastic grips and a partially full box of Remington ammunition. Bluing was worn off the pistol in places. The front sight and its sleeve were amputated, and threads were machined into the out- side of the barrel to take the silencer, which was also in the rug. This was strictly a close-range weapon: with no front sight, it would be useless at any distance.
He sniffed the barrel of the pistol. Cleaned since last use. He pushed the catch and the magazine dropped out of the grip into his hand. It was full. He shoved it back in until it clicked. No doubt the cleaning rod and patches and gun oil were up there in the joists somewhere. He replaced the items in the rug and zipped it closed.
The toolbox wasn’t locked. Neatly packed in and padded to prevent damage were fuses, a roll of wire and a two-channel Futaba radio transmitter for radio-controlled models. Lots of servos, ten of them. A little bag containing crystals to change the frequency of the transmitter. Four miniature radio receivers, also made by Futaba. A bunch of nickel-cadmium batteries and a charging unit. Four six-cell batteries wrapped with black plastic. There was even a manual alarm clock.
But the piece de resistance, the item that impressed Luis Cama- cho, was a radio receiver with a frequency- adjustment knob, vol- ume knob, earpiece and spike meter. This device would allow the careful craftsman to check for possible radio interference in the area in which he intended to do his bit to improve the human species, before he armed his own device. Better safe than sorry.
All in all, it was an impressive kit. Everything recommended by Gentleman’s Quarterly for the well-heeled professional bomber was in there, including a case containing a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers and wrenches.
Camacho repacked the items carefully, trying to put everything back exactly as he found it. After much straining he got the tool- box back through the trapdoor into the attic.
He checked carefully in the joists as far as he could reach and see, then replaced the pistol rug. He was meticulous in restoring everything to its proper place, wiping a few flecks of dust from the chair arms and retrieving a larger piece from the carpet. When he had given everything a last look, he went down to the kitchen and seated himself at the table.
Where was the plastique? It had to be here someplace. Using his flashlight, he descended again to the basement and examined the paint cans. He hefted them, shook them gently. They contained something, but it probably wasn’t paint. Oh well.
He locked the kitchen door behind him and crossed through the back gate to his own yard.
Standing in his own kitchen with a pot of coffee dripping through the filter, he thought about Albright’s treasure as he ma- neuvered a cup under the black coffee basket to fill it. With the Pyrex pot back in place, he sipped on the hot liquid as he dialed the phone.
After talking to three people, he was connected with the man he wanted, an explosives expert. “Well, the material’s ability to resist the effects of heat and cold and humidity depends on just what kind of stuff it is. Semtex is a brand real popular right now, made in Czechoslovakia. Heat won’t do it any good, but if the heat is not too severe or prolonged, it shouldn’t take much of its punch away.”
“How about storage in an uninsulated attic?”
“Here, in this climate?”
“Yes.”
“Not recommended. Best would be a place slightly below room temperature, a place where the temp stays pretty constant.”
