“No doubt, during all the time you’ve been studying this matter, you’ve wondered where the microphones are to be placed, and who is to be bugged, and according to what considerations? The Zhongnanhai's answer is quite plain: the qietingqis are to be placed everywhere. Is that clear? Right, now let’s go on. I expect there are some among you who think “everywhere” doesn’t apply to the Party, i.e. to party officials. The Zhongnanhai's answer to this question is equally clear: if any suspicion arises, microphones will be installed anywhere, from the office of the first secretary of the Party committee to the premises of the humblest individual No need to say more on this point. But before! conclude I should like to emphasize three things: first, the Zhongnanhai is subject to no restriction; second, nothing must escape the ears of Chairman Mao; and third, you must keep this operation secret, or pay for it with your lives.”
His audience assiduously wrote down what he said, their heads bowed over their notebooks. Although his message was so daunting, they felt the joy they’d anticipated at the previous meeting beginning to burgeon. They would soon be performing the magical process of listening to what people thought was quite private: outbursts of resentment against the state, gossip, confidences, things people said in their sleep, secret baseness, the things people said when they were making love.
Already the prospect made some of those present feel faint and parched and short of breath. Others thought of the possibilities concerning men they hated or envied, and women they hadn’t been able to attract and so dismissed as frigid or over-sexed. Others again dreamed of unmasking plots, winning medals, and having brilliant careers.
When the meeting was over, director Tchan stayed on alone in his office, staring at the ashtray. The thrill he, like the others, had experienced hadn’t lasted. It had been nipped in the bud by an as yet unspecified fear. Not fear of responsibility, or of uncertainty, or of the jealousy of other officials: no, something more vague than any of those, but which nonetheless made him shudder with apprehension.
He was going to listen to all that was going on in space, to plumb all secrets, go down into the utmost depths of the human heart. But good heavens! — that was like descending into hell, where no one else had ever gone! And if he was going into a forbidden realm, he was probably going to be punished for doing so.
4
The first mikes were put in place at the end of the week. The work started with those that were easiest to instalclass="underline" those destined for some rooms in the town’s main hotel, for certain offices, for the guest-house where foreign delegations were accommodated, and for two or three apartments whose occupants were away on missions.
It was normal to begin like that, without undue pressure, while the workmen involved acquired the necessary experience. But they knew it couldn’t continue indefinitely: they knew they wouldn’t always be able to take down a chandelier or unpick the upholstery of a settee at leisure, and introduce a microphone while a colleague kept watch at the door. They’d soon have to operate in more difficult circumstances, perhaps even in the presence of their victims, who would think they were repairing a switch or a tap.
In fact, by the following week, the number of mikes to be installed had quadrupled. (The operation, like everything else, was being carried out according to a plan.) The technicians, disguised as plumbers, painters or sweeps (what could be easier than to block someone’s chimney if you wanted to plant a’ bug on him?), embarked on a mass campaign. On two occasions they narrowly avoided disaster. The workers in question were almost caught redhanded, but fortunately, remembering their instructions, they pretended to be ordinary criminals and were taken, much to their relief, to the nearest police station.
At the same time as the permanent microphones were being installed, a series of tests was carried out with others operated by remote control But the placing of four small begging devices counted as the triumph of that week’s achievement. There were very few of them, and the workers had been told to handle them with particular care (they trembled at the mere mention of them). Bugs were as difficult to remove as to plant. If they were to accompany the suspect wherever he went, they had to be attached to his clothes. The state had spent a colossal amount of money on miniaturizing them for this purpose, said one of the envoys from the Xhongnanhai, However, unlike a kitchen cabinet, a bed or a W.C., which could be fitted with a mike in their owner’s absence, a person’s clothes were something he carried about with him. The only solution seemed to be to slip the bug into one of his pockets. But then, no matter how absent-minded or easy-going he might be, wasn’t he bound to notice you doing it? And even if you did manage to slip it in somehow, wouldn’t he find it the next time he put his hand in his pocket? And then, even if he was the type who never did put his hands in his pockets, how were you ever going to get the mike back again? (For they did have to be got back again once they’d performed their allotted tasks: first, because the Chinese state would never break the sacred rule of thrift and merely write them off; and second, because they were top-secret equipment, and as such mustn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.)
Oh no, said the envoy, pockets were definitely out. He passed on to the possibilities offered by linings. For this you had to be able to unpick a seam and sew it up again, or else make a small and as near as possible invisible opening in the material. But you couldn’t do this when your man was actually wearing his clothes. So you had to get into his house when he wasn’t there, under the pretext of mending a tap, etc. Your problem was then solved, if the victim owned a spare suit. But most of them didn’t. Then what? You might put the mike in another garment that was just hanging in the wardrobe, waiting for the appropriate season. But that involved the problem of having to keep someone intended as a winter victim under surveillance the previous summer, and vice versa, which would make intelligence gathering impossibly complicated. There was only one solution, said the envoy from the capital, and that was to wait for, and take advantage of, the moment when the suspect took off some garment in a public place. This might be during a morning session of physical exercises, in a theatre or office cloakroom, while he was taking part in the mass cross-country run in spring, or in some private sport or other. You might have to follow him for months before you got a chance to slip him his qietingqi. As for getting it back again, you didn’t wait for him to go to the public baths or for the next spring marathon: yoe just watched till he went home one night, and then faked a burglary,during which you managed for a few moments to get hold of his jacket or trousers or whatever.
But your troubles weren’t 0ver even then, or if — ideally — you got access to the garment in a cloakroom, (By the way, a padded anorak was best for concealing things in.) Not to mention the fact that its owner might leave the meeting or office or factory before you expected him to (there were ways of avoiding this), you needed both skill and sangfroid to remember precisely where you’d placed the bug and extract it neatly without damaging the garment it was in. (This was referred to as “gathering in the fruit”.)
And all the aforementioned precautions had to be multiplied a hundredfold in the case of the rare and costly independent mini-mikes. These had their own recording spool, and were so expensive they’d only been produced in very small numbers so far. Their advocates argued the advantages of a device which could function independently of the listening centre, wherever the suspect happened to go, and which worked continuously day and night until its battery ran out. It was of course especially necessary to recover this type of microphone when its work was done.