Copyright 2012 by madengineer3
My name is John. If I hadn't been up late one night I would have been oblivious to the danger that I was in. I had just bought the latest of Dan Moore's "Meridian's Shadow", science fiction series. My wife must have thought that I had gone to bed early. I normally like to be in bed by ten p.m. (22:00hrs) and she likes to stay up and watch the late night t.v. shows. However, I had started this book, "Nixie's Rise" and I couldn't put it down.
Our t.v. is in the living room. The living room is on the ground floor and our bedroom is on the second floor and to the back of the house. As a net result neither of us can easily hear the other.
When the phone rang at 11:30 (23:30hrs) I instinctively reached for it. As I picked it up I was startled by what I was hearing. My wife, Jane, was speaking in a quiet, almost conspiratorial, voice to a man who's voice I did not recognize.
"...yes, he's asleep and dead to the world. It's safe to talk."
"Well, in a few weeks he will really be dead to the world, right?"
"You've got that right, Brad. I just need time to make sure that the latest insurance policy I took out on him is fully in effect before he has his 'accident'."
"How much insurance have you got on him now?"
"A bit more than 1.8 million dollars. That plus his portfolio of investments and patents should see us happy to a ripe old age."
"Well, don't make any moves that will tip him off. We don't want this chance to escape us."
"Don't worry. A month and a half from now he's planning on flying his stupid plane across country to see his parents. You know what will happen. It'll go down in flames and he'll go with it."
At that point I quietly put the phone back on the receiver and quickly got into bed. I didn't want Jane to have any idea that I might have heard her conversation. I had trouble believing what I'd heard. I thought our marriage was in good shape. Yeah, the sex has slowed down a bit but we've been married twenty years and things change over time. I guess they changed more than I had realized.
I faked sleep as well as I could until Jane was in bed, and obviously asleep. Then I quietly got up and retrieved my pistol from the night stand. I took the pistol down to the basement where my bullet reloading equipment is set up. I took enough empty shell casings as it would take to fill the pistol's magazine and proceeded to put new caps in them and then seat new bullets in the brass cases. Note that I did not say that I put any powder in them What I filled them with was abrasive for my vibratory cleaner that I use to clean used shell casings. The weight of the cartridges was identical to stock cartridges as far as my hands could tell. I reloaded the pistol with the "dud" ammunition, went up to the bathroom and flushed the toilet so that my wife, if she was awake, would assume that I had gotten up to use the toilet. When I got back to the room she appeared to still be sleeping. I lay down and waited for about half an hour. Then I slipped the pistol back in the bedside table where it had been kept for the last fifteen years or so.
In the morning I got ready to go to my office. My office and laboratory space were in a small building about five miles from our house. I told Jane that I had an early meeting and would catch a quick breakfast on the way to work.
Since I own my own consulting firm I had no problems clearing my calendar for a day or two. My first call was to Bob, an old college buddy who runs a detective/security business about thirty miles from my office. I asked him to come to my office, with his anti-bugging equipment, at his earliest convenience. He asked my why and I said it was a secret matter that could not be discussed on the phone. Since he knows that I have done work for parts of the department of defense he took it at that and told me that he'd be over in about an hour.
While waiting for him I went over my office looking for bugs. I didn't find any.
He arrived about forty minutes later. Before we started to talk he put a small tape recorder on my offices table and turned it on. The noise was bizarre. It hissed and chirped, warbled and wailed. While this cacophony was going on he walked around the room with a funny looking gadget. He asked me to pick up my phone and moved the gadget around my phone and phone lines. Then, he turned off the noise and made the same measurements again.
Without speaking, he indicated that we should go outside. We climbed into his car before he said anything.
"John, at first glance I can tell you that you have three bugs in your office. They are good ones. They only come on and transmit when there is sound in the room or speaking on the phone. These are not the normal cheap "hobby spy" type bugs, these are mid to high end units."
"Your kidding, right? I thought I looked for bugs and couldn't see anything suspicious."
"I'm not surprised. Whoever put these in is quite skilled. The only time they turn on is when there is something to listen to. I suspect that they are in your false ceiling and in the body of the phone itself or in the outside junction box for the telephone line. I suggest that you do not remove them. That would tell the person, or persons, that you are on to them. They might be very unpredictable then. Tell me why you suspected a problem."
So, I told him the story.
"Can you tell your wife that you are going to have the office repainted next week. If this is her work they will probably want to remove the bugs before the paint work begins. They won't want them damaged."
"Yeah, I can do that. In the meantime, what do I do?"
"The easiest thing you can do is borrow this CD player and play music you like while you work. Inside the player's case there are a few specialized transmitters. They will transmit "white noise" on the same frequencies that the bugs are operating on. The specialized computer inside the player includes a simple frequency spectrum analyzer. Even if their bugs try to use spread spectrum transmissions this will provide a signal an order of magnitude stronger than their bugs. If asked about the new player, just tell them that you wanted to listen to soothing music while you worked on some tricky problems. Now, what do you want done at your house?"
We continued the discussion and I told him that Jane would be out of the house most of the next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings for a book club she goes to.
"We'll bug your house using the absolute best bugs I have. Some of them use the walls themselves as the diaphragm for the microphone. Others camp on the phone line and load it so slightly that your wife's friend, or fiends, will not detect them unless they have swept the phone line with a time domain reflectometer. These are a generation newer than the old fashioned "loop extenders" used in the past."
"While we are doing that, a good friend of mine will be tailing and documenting what your wife does. We'll all but turn her car into a police "bait car". We won't have remote shutoff but we'll have video and audio as well as gps information. We'll use remote control devices so that the car is electrically silent when it is just sitting there or just idling. That is unless there are two, or more, people in the car then it will remain active.
"Now, what security do you have on your plane?"
"Just the airport personnel who are around most of the time."
"We'll fix that. You are about to have a surprise FAA airframe and engine inspection. While that is being done we'll wire your plane so that any attempt at modifying, adding, or removing anything will be recorded. We'll use third generation image intensifiers so that no infra red source will be there to tip off anyone. Before you leave on your trip, we will know about what has been done and make sure that it won't work."
Bob left and headed back to his office. He would arrange for the "painters" who would repaint my office.
I went back into my office, turned on the CD player, and tried to get some work done. It was a lost cause. I couldn't keep my mind off what I had just been told.
I called my current customers and indicated that I was going to suspend operations for a bit because of some remodeling that had to happen in the office. Fortunately, they understood.
My secretary was overjoyed to find out that she would have a paid week off while the painters were busy.
That night, at the supper table I told Jane about the repainting of my office.
"I've gotten tired of the colors in my office. I have a painting crew coming in next week to repaint everything. I'll work out of my den next week. Maybe we'll be able to spend some quality time together."
"Oh, I wish you had told me earlier John. I have plans next week that will have me out of the house almost every day. Other people are depending on me."
I'll bet they were. I had picked up a "throw away" phone that day so that I could make calls that weren't tapped. I used to love having my wife around, and now it was nerve wracking having her nearby. I had no idea if she and her friend would change their plans and move up the date of my demise.
The next week seemed to go by very slowly. Part way through the "painting" my friend Bob called me and set up a lunch meeting. We sat at a table off by ourselves. He waited until the waitress was no longer near the table before speaking.
"John, I'm a bit more concerned now than last week. The bugs that are above your false sealing are manufactured in a government controlled firm just outside Moscow. They are current generation Russian units. Whoever is in on this job has contacts that I would want to avoid. We're going to have to be very careful. Now, just because they are Russian doesn't mean that the Russians are in on this. However, whoever is using them either has friends over there or friends in a government agency here. Who have you pissed off recently?"
"Well, the only one I can think of is one little firm that was supplying devices to our government. I was asked to look over one of their designs to make sure that it would meet the specifications that they had been given. On paper it looked like it would do the job. However, the way they laid out the circuit board would guarantee that the device would have been detectable. I documented that problem and closed that investigation about nine months ago. Other than that I can't think of anyone who would be mad at me."
"Where is this company located John? What's its name?"
"They're located over in Smithton. They're called Radtel, Inc.."
