She continued with more filing, now much more deliberately, and taking regular measurements.
Next, she sawed off the head of the bolt with a hacksaw and cleaned up that rough end with a bastard file.
Over the next hour, she took three more trips back and forth to the generator shed between filing sessions. She now used the tube of blue dykem to mark the taper key so that when she did test fittings, contact with the high spots would become apparent.
The finished taper key was tapered not only from top to bottom, but also along its length to compensate for the worn keyway.
Installing the key took just a few light taps of a brass hammer. The coupling went on with ease. It was a perfect fit. The Allen screws were again cemented with green Loctite—a special formulation that was designed to break loose, when needed. (Standard clear cyanoacrylate glue was unforgiving and all too permanent, for machine screws.)
Wash day began several hours late, but Malorie’s mechanical skills had saved the day. Describing the repair later to Claire, Alan commented, “It was like watching one of the Dutch Masters do an oil painting. That job would have taken me two or three days. We’re very lucky that Malorie came here when she did. Great timing.”
Claire replied, “I don’t believe in happenstance. I believe in divine appointments. God brought Malorie to us for more than one reason. All of those reasons will become clear to us, with time.”
That evening, as they were washing and drying the dinner dishes, Phil said to Malorie, “You really amaze me. You’ve got a lot of hidden talents. Mechanical ability like yours is a rarity in men, and a great rarity in women.”
She blushed slightly, and replied, “I’m sure you have hidden talents, too. I notice that you’ve hardly mentioned what you did when you were working in counterintelligence.”
“Most of that doesn’t have much relevance to our work here. In fact, my knowledge of things like order of battle and terrain analysis date back to when I took my Officer Basic Course rather than my later work in CI.”
“But I’m sure you have some great stories to tell about your cloak-and-dagger days.”
“Nah. It was mostly just pushing paper.”
41
IN A PAST LIFE
The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage.
Phil Adams hoped that the Iranian hadn’t spotted him. If he had, then he might as well as pull the plug on the day’s surveillance.
Phil was fortunate to still be in the loop. Most of his contemporaries disappeared into anonymous and mundane civilian life after their assignments ended and their clearances lapsed. But Phil had made the transition from active-duty military intelligence (MI) into intel contracting almost effortlessly, thanks to the longevity of Task Group Tall Oak, an ongoing DIA (and later DCS) program with proven success. Their specialty was industrial counterintelligence, but to some extent they were capable of “all source” intelligence gathering and analysis.
Phil was a contract case officer specializing in offensive counterintelligence based in the smallest of the five Task Group Tall Oak offices on the West Coast, Tall Oak–Washington. When he mentioned his role to his sister, she said, “Wow, that sounds glamorous.” He quickly explained to her that it was actually a lot of hard work, and much of it involved boring report writing. As was typical in the counterintelligence world, it took hundreds of hours of work to generate a lead, and only a few leads panned out to be solid cases to follow. Their victories were few and infrequent, but each one was relished. Catching a foreign agent red-handed felt very rewarding, but since they were usually operating in the U.S. under diplomatic cover, their immunity protected them from prosecution. They would simply be declared persona non grata, and told that it was time for them to go home. Getting a foreign agent declared persona non grata (PNG or “Ping,” in CI slang) was considered a feather in the cap of any CI agent.
The man Phil was observing now was with the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). For days, they had been trying to catch him in the act of visiting a dead-drop microcache location. The MOIS, also known as VEVAK (Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar), had agents who were some of the CIA’s most challenging opponents. The VEVAK was an outgrowth of the Shah Pahlavi–era SAVAK, and it was widely known that SAVAK got their training from the CIA and the Israeli Mossad during the 1960s. So the tradecraft employed by the Iranian MOIS was excellent.
The MOIS agent stepped into his car with diplomatic plates, and then spent several minutes combing his hair, trimming his fingernails, and checking for specks of food between his teeth using the car’s rearview mirror. Finally, he popped a breath mint in his mouth before starting the car’s engine.
Phil chuckled. This was not the behavior of a man who was afraid of being followed. No, this was the behavior of a man headed to a date. Phil started the engine of his own car and pulled out to follow. He trailed ten car lengths back. Using his hands-free microphone, he radioed in on the DCS Task Group Tall Oak secure network: “Subject in view, and rolling west on East Denny Way. Now crossing Twenty-fifth Avenue. No worries.”
A minute later, Phil heard a tone on his earpiece, indicating that someone had joined the secure “chat.”
Clarence Tang gave his usual “Hul-low there, guys” intro and then said, “I’ve got a situation. Mr. Lo, my former subject and now suspect at the Chinese consulate, just got a so-called secure e-mail asking for a meeting at ‘the usual place’ at noon. Based on his previous movements, I think that means the Main Post Office. Can any of you be there with your badges and credentials before noon?”
Phil chimed in, “I can definitely be there. Let’s say we meet on the roof of the Republic parking garage—the Cobb Garage—on Union Street, at 1140 hours. I think it’s the closest one to the post office.”
“Sounds good. I’ll brief you and show you photos of my two subjects.”
Clarence was there waiting, as expected, sitting in his silver “High-Speed Pursuit” Honda Hybrid, which was often the butt of jokes at the office.
Phil parked nearby and walked over to the Honda. As he slipped into the passenger seat, he could immediately see that Clarence was agitated.
“This could be it, Phil. A face-to-face between Mr. Lo and his corporate mole with Boeing, an engineer named Robert Chan.”
He flipped open his laptop, keyed in a passphrase, and navigated to a file designated “T.O. Case 121—UCAS Follow-On.”
Clarence continued. “What the Chinese are after is some stealth technology from a UAV that is under development by Boeing.” He deftly clicked the computer’s track pad and opened two street-surveillance photos, side-by-side. Pointing, he said, “This is the inscrutable Mr. Lo, and this is Bob Chan. If we catch them passing data, we can arrest Chan, but Lo is beyond our reach since he has diplomatic immunity.”
“But we can Ping him right out of the country.”
“Right!” Tang replied excitedly. “And I brought two body cams to nail their assets.”
“Perfect.”
Phil was wearing black jeans, a polo shirt, and a tan windbreaker. He put the camera recorder in the jacket’s inside pocket. The camera’s tiny lens and microphone head were then pinned directly through the jacket to the recorder lead. The four needle-sharp pins on the back of the camera head served to both hold the camera firmly in place and pass the video and audio signals to the recorder leads. The lens and microphone head were built into a small enameled Ecology pin, effectively camouflaging it to casual observers.