They played the tape through to the point where Schoelen had called his mother. “This is it, from here on,” said Howard. “There’s some noise in the background as if he had the radio or TV on. Can you bring that up for me?”
“No problem,” said Wyman. “Compared with what we do with video, this is Stone Age stuff.” He looked over at McDowall, who was biting a thumbnail. “Bill, can you digitise this for me?”
“Sure thing,” said McDowall, who sat down at a computer. He pecked at a few keys. “Okay, run it,” he said.
Wyman pressed the play button and the conversation was replayed over a loudspeaker. When it had finished, McDowall gave Wyman a thumbs-up. “Got it,” he said. He hit more keys and the conversation played over the speaker again. “This is in the computer, not on tape,” Wyman said to Howard.
Wyman pulled a chair over next to McDowall and sat down. The two men talked together in rapid jargon, leaving Howard in the dark as to what they were doing. For all he knew, they could be speaking another language. McDowall’s fingers played across the keyboard, with Wyman offering advice, and lines of numbers scrolled across the screen. After ten minutes, Wyman nodded and sat back, a big grin splitting his face. “Try it,” he said. McDowall pressed a key and the speaker crackled into life. This time there were no voices. There were some musical notes, then a burst of what could have been static, then muffled voices.
“Sounds like TV, for sure,” said Wyman.
“Can you enhance the voices?” Howard asked.
“We can take out the higher frequencies, that should take the edge off it,” said McDowall. He bent over the keyboard, his hair swinging forward, and his head moved in time with the pecking of his fingers like a small boy during a piano lesson. When he replayed it, there was a noticeable improvement, though Howard still couldn’t work out what was being said.
“Keep playing it,” he said.
“Put it in a loop,” suggested Wyman.
McDowall pressed more keys and the section was repeated over and over as the three men listened.
“That sound, the electronic noise, it’s sort of familiar,” mused Wyman.
“I’ll try to enhance it,” said McDowall. “I’ll mute the lower frequencies first, see if that helps.”
The three men listened as McDowall played on the computer keyboard. It came to Howard in a burst of inspiration, and he laughed out loud. “It’s a phaser!” he cried.
“Man, you’re right,” said McDowall.
“Beam me up, Scottie!” cheered Wyman.
“Guys, I can’t thank you enough,” said Howard. He took the tape and headed back to the office. On the way out, Wyman pointed out that phasers were used both in Star Trek and its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
When he arrived back at FBI headquarters, there was a third message from Sheldon on the desk, a note saying that Bill McDowall had called, and a series of faxes from the State Department listing overseas VIPs who were due to visit the United States in the coming months. As he called McDowall, he screwed up both notes and lobbed them through the air and into his wastepaper basket. McDowall answered, and gleefully told Howard that he had done some further work on the end of the phone call, which was still stored in their computer, and that they were reasonably sure that they could pick out Spock’s voice — it was Star Trek and not its successor. Howard thanked him. Knowing that Star Trek had been on television when Schoelen made his phone call was a major step forward. At first he’d planned to ring around all the television stations but on the drive back to his office he’d had a brainwave and instead he rang the publishers of TV Guide, the weekly magazine which published television programme listings throughout the country. He found a co-operative editor there who took only a few minutes to identify those stations which had been playing the science fiction show. There were six in all. The phone company gave him the numbers of the stations, and he called them one at a time, identifying himself as an FBI agent and asking for the programme controller. In each case he asked if they would run the tape of the show broadcast the previous evening and see if a phaser had been fired at about twenty past the hour, the time of the call. Most thought at first he was joking, but Howard gave them the number of FBI headquarters in Phoenix so that they could call back and check that his request was genuine.
Eventually he had arranged with all six stations to check their shows and call him back. The first two calls reported no phasers at the time Howard was interested in, but he struck gold with the third. Captain Kirk had indeed fired his weapon, and seconds later he’d had a conversation with Spock before beaming up to their starship. The station was WDCA-TV which served the Baltimore-Washington area. Howard smiled as he hung up. He had a good feeling about the way things were going. The remaining three stations rang back within ten minutes of the WDCA-TV call and all were negative. Howard was elated. He finished his coffee and then called up to Jake Sheldon’s office. Sheldon’s secretary told him to go right up.
Sheldon raised one eyebrow when Howard entered his office. “Been out of the office, Cole?” he asked softly.
“Yeah, sorry about that, but I was chasing up the Lou Schoelen telephone tap,” he said, dropping into the chair opposite Sheldon’s desk. “I didn’t get your message until a few minutes ago.”
Sheldon adjusted the cuffs of his immaculate blue suit. “I understood that Kelly was chasing up that lead,” he said.
“I’m not convinced that the call came from Long Beach,” said Howard. He noticed that there were three files on Sheldon’s desk. He tried to read the names on them but they were obscured by the man’s arms.
“According to Kelly, the call was made from a public phone there. Several of the Barrett rifles which were sold through West Coast dealers are still unaccounted for, and the President is going to be in LA for the anniversary of the 1992 riots. The evidence seems pretty strong to me.” He linked his fingers on the desk and waited for Howard to reply.
Howard smiled thinly. Kelly hadn’t mentioned that she’d heard back from the gun dealers. Yet another secret she’d kept from him. “Lou Schoelen was a telephone hacker,” said Howard. “He was almost busted by AT amp; T while he was a SEAL for using and selling black boxes, the gizmos that get you long-distance and international calls for free. He’s perfectly capable of rerouting his calls and sending us on a wild goose chase.”
Sheldon frowned. “Did you tell Kelly this?”
“I didn’t get the chance,” Howard replied. He told the director about the analysis of the tape and how he’d identified the television station on the East Coast.
“So you’re saying that Schoelen made the call from the Baltimore-Washington area?”
“Seems that way,” agreed Howard. “And from what he said to his mother, whatever it is they have planned is going to take place within the next two weeks. I think I should go to Washington.”
Sheldon nodded. “It’s worth a try. You should speak to Bob Sanger while you’re there.” He ran a hand through his pure white hair. “There’s something else you should know,” he said. “I had a call from the director of the Counter-Terrorism office in New York while you were out. His name’s Ed Mulholland. Seems they’ve identified three of the photographs you sent to them. One is Mary Hennessy, an IRA activist who is on the run from the British. One of the men is Matthew Bailey, another member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He’s been responsible for the deaths of four policemen in Northern Ireland.” Sheldon passed over two of the three files. Howard opened the top one. It contained a handful of faxes, including a file photograph of Bailey which was a close match of the ones generated by Theodore Clayton’s computer experts.
“He’s a sniper?” asked Howard as he flicked through the faxes.
“He’s used a Kalashnikov in Belfast, but more as an assault weapon than sniping,” said Sheldon. “He uses explosives, mainly.”