The Invisibility Affair - Stratton Thomas - Страница 10

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Brattner parked the car in a small open area at the rear of the alley. "This way, gentlemen," he said, stepping out of the car and leading the way to a dimly-lit door with a rusty-looking padlock above the knob. He fitted a key to the lock, explaining, "During the day, we could get in through the front, but the shop closes at nine o'clock and it's less conspicuous to use the back entrance."

The door creaked open. Stepping through, they found themselves in the rear of a long narrow shop. Light from the street filtered through the unwashed display window and revealed several shelves of records lining one wall. Near the front on the other side was a counter, and at the back, just to their right as they entered, were three listening booths.

Brattner secured the door, then turned to the middle and largest booth. "Just follow me," he said as he pulled open the door and stepped inside. A small but comfortable-looking chair faced the turntable and a pair of bulky hi-fi earphones lay back of the tone arm. Brattner lowered the blind on the door and turned to the turntable controls. He set the turntable speed at 78 rpm, picked up the tone arm, tilted it up and back until something clicked, then gave the turntable a sharp spin backwards. The back wall of the booth slid smoothly up into the ceiling.

Brattner reached around the corner and flipped on a light, revealing a small reception room with a desk, typewriter, and small filing cabinet. He motioned Illya and Napoleon in, then followed. A pushbutton located under the light switch returned the booth wall to its former position. Illya glanced around the room and his eyes halted at the filing cabinet. A dozen hefty record albums were stacked on top of it. Peering at them more closely, Illya said, "Somebody here must like Wagner. I see you have at least two complete recordings of the Ring Cycle."

"Those are our cover," Brattner explained. "While the shop is open, we give one of these to any agent who has to leave through the booth. If anyone wonders why he's been in there so long, the Wagner explains it." He pushed open a door and motioned them into a narrow hallway. "There's nobody here but us, the day shift went off duty at six. Now, you need detectors for those transmitter pills. We have one of the standard models, and I think we still have one of the wrist models that only indicates direction. We're supposed to have two of the wrist models, but George's kids got into one of them. George is a good, dependable agent, but he will leave equipment lying around the house, and those kids of his..."

"I think we'll be all right," Napoleon said, opening his briefcase and rummaging through it. "The Chicago office provided the pills, so presumably they...hmm. Illya would you see if you have a detector in your briefcase?"

Illya's search was equally fruitless. "It would seem," he announced, "that we are destined to get by with one standard and one wrist detector."

"They're in the supply room," Bratner said, pushing open a door and pawing through the crowded metal shelves like a dog after a bone.

"By the way," Napoleon said casually, "we heard from the Chicago office that you were having some unusual problems up here."

Brattner stopped his search long enough to glance balefully over his shoulder, then returned to work. "I suppose you could call it that," he muttered. "If we don't watch out, Thrush may get us evicted for urban renewal this year."

Napoleon and Illya exchanged glances. "I never realized that Thrush was civic minded," Napoleon commented.

Brattner snorted. "These new boys, Forbes and McNulty are quite a pair. They know the general location of headquarters, but they've never been able to pinpoint the building. So McNulty came up with the bright idea of getting the whole area condemned for urban renewal. The new expressway is going to miss us by just a few blocks, a new civic center is being pushed for an area even closer, and urban renewal is cropping up everywhere. You saw what that street outside looked like; it wouldn't take much to get this block included. We kept ahead of them while we had their headquarters bugged, but recently their lobbying has begun to pay off." He backed out of the crowded supply room, holding what looked like a miniature oscilloscope with a three-inch screen. "Here's the big detector," he said, handing it to Illya. "Now to find the wrist model."

"Would it really be such a big job to move?" Napoleon asked/ "It's rather a small operation, compared to, say, the Chicago office."

Brattner snorted as he returned to his rummaging. "Do you realize what the telephone company charges to install all this special equipment? And you know what Mr. Waverly is like when it comes to the budget; why do you think we're in this low-rent area to begin with? Oh, sure, we could move if we had to. But it would cause a lot of problems. Besides, how would it look on my service record? Who's going to promote an agent who got run out of his won headquarters by urban renewal? Somehow we've—ah, here it is!" He emerged from the room with a wristwatch-sized device which he handed to Napoleon as he kicked the door shut.

"Shall we check them out?" asked Illya, wiping a layer of dust from the larger detector's screen.

Brattner nodded and led the way down the hall. "Certainly. I think they're in good shape, but we haven't been able to keep up our periodic checks lately, the way we're undermanned." He pushed open the last door on the left. "Here's our lab."

Illya walked over to the bench full of electronic equipment that lined one wall. He pulled what looked like a small, complicated signal generator to the front of the bench, flipped a switch on its front panel, and expertly plugged a pair of angling leads into the back of the detector. After waiting a few seconds for the transistorized circuits in the tester to stabilize, he began setting the controls. When he was finished, he pressed a final button and watched the detector screen closely.

A second later, a sharp beep sounded and a bright green dot appeared on the crosshatched screen. "Very good," Illya murmured. "It's as close as we can expect with a screen this size." The dot slowly faded until it was barely visible. "Did the wrist model pick it up, too?" he asked, turning to Napoleon.

"The needle flickered," Solo replied, "but it didn't get a chance to home in."

Illya nodded. "I didn't think it would. There isn't much leakage radiation from these testers." He unplugged the larger detector from the tester and held the leads in front of him while he pressed the button on the tester again.

"That got it," Napoleon informed him. "It's pointing at you."

"Fine," Brattner said. "We have two antenna setups for the standard rig—one in our communications center down the hall and one in my car. Which do you want?"

"We'll take the communications center, if it has any comfortable furniture in it," Napoleon decided. "We don't really need a fast getaway; after all, the idea is to trail them at a distance. And I could use some sleep, after the past few days."

"There's a couch," Brattner said, leading the two agents across the hall into a room that was a miniature version of the New York communications center. Illya could recognize among other things, a console that apparently was linked directly to the main data center in New York. He also recognized the couch and headed for it.

"You dozed a few minutes while I was driving up from Chicago," he informed Napoleon, "so I have first rights to the couch."

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