Remote control, p.20
Remote Control, page 20
‘OK.’ Thumbs up.
‘See that thing up there? If that sees you, it’ll go whoa-whoa and there’ll be lights and all sorts, and then we’ve lost. So you must never go the other side of that bag, OK?’ I pointed.
‘OK.’ We gave each other another thumbs up.
I repositioned the pallets and showed her what I wanted her to do. I could hear her making little grunts. She had started leaning as I’d shown her and probably thought she had to make noises, doing manual work and all.
I unzipped the bag, pulled out the clock and egg box and slipped the minute hand into its Sellotape sleeve. I gently squeezed the tape and it held nice and firm.
Kelly was still pushing and I told her to rest. At least she was keen. She was watching me as I put the clock and egg box on the floor and placed two elastic bands around my wrist.
‘It’s magic. Watch me!’
She nodded, probably still trying to work out how I’d stopped the remote control from operating the TV.
‘You ready, Kelly?’
‘Ready.’
‘Let’s go!’
I climbed up slowly, trying to give the least weight and movement for Kelly to have to handle.
Once up, and about an arm’s length from one side of the detector, I got my wrist resting on my chest so that I had a good firm support. I turned the egg box so that its long edge was horizontal with the ground. Then I moved it gently towards and about six inches below the motion detector, but not going any further than its front. Once there, I rested my back against the wall and my wrists on my chest. I’d have to stay like that for about fifteen minutes.
I was waiting for the egg box to move up slowly and gently against the face of the motion detector, the movement so imperceptible that the detector wasn’t sensitive enough to register it – otherwise it would have triggered every time a spider walked across its face. I just hoped Kelly didn’t give up. I would find out soon.
Now and again I looked down and winked at her. ‘Good this, isn’t it?’ She looked back at me with a big smile – or so I assumed, because all I could see was an inside-out coat, a hood and a cloud of breath.
As we both waited for the minute hand to become vertical, all of a sudden there was a single whoa! of a dying police siren.
Shit! Shit!
It was on the road on the other side of the building. It couldn’t have anything to do with us. Otherwise why just one unit, and why use the siren anyway?
I couldn’t move. If I did it would trip the device – and what for? I hadn’t even seen torchlight yet.
‘Nick, Nick, did you hear that?’
‘It’s OK, Kelly. Just keep on pushing. It’s OK, I can hear them.’
What could I do? I told myself not to flap, to stay calm and think.
A shout echoed around the car park. It had come from Ball Street, but a bit of a distance away. Other voices joined in. An argument had broken out. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but there were car doors being slammed and words exchanged, then the sound of a car starting up. All I could think of was that someone had parked up while I fetched Kelly – possibly one of the couples I’d seen from Pat’s car – they’d been busy getting the windows steamed up and had got caught by the police. It sounded plausible; I just made myself believe it.
The egg box was close to vertical. I held my breath. This wasn’t a science; we had a fifty–fifty chance of success, no more. If it pinged us, we’d have to fuck off quick-style and take our chances.
At last the box obscured the detector. No lights came on. With my teeth, I pulled the two thin elastic bands off my wrist; I got the first one over the top of the egg box and around the motion detector, then pulled the back of it tight, twisted it and wound round another loop of the band. I put the other band round to make it even tighter. The motion detector was defeated.
I slipped the clock off the box and put it in one of the deep pockets at the front of my coveralls. I clambered down and rubbed Kelly’s shoulders. ‘Good work!’
She gave me a huge smile, still not too sure what it was all about – but, hey, this was what Daddy did.
24
THE NEXT THING to attack was the alarms, which would mean neutralizing the telephone lines. One of Pat’s presents was a disruption device, a black box of computer technology about eight inches by six inches; coming out of it were six different-coloured leads with crocodile grips at the end, a combination of which I’d attach to the telephone line. When the intruder alarm inside the building was tripped, a signal should, in theory, be sent to the monitor station or the police; however, it wouldn’t get there because the disruption device would have engaged all the lines.
I got close to Kelly’s ear and said, ‘You can help me even more now.’ I put the clock back into the bag, picked it up and walked past the fire-exit doors to the utilities bank.
From the bag I pulled out another item from Pat’s shopping list, a 2-metre square of thick blackout material, the sort photographers use.
I winked at Kelly. ‘More magic,’ I said, ‘and I’ll need you to tell me if it works.’ I was talking in a very low tone; at night, whispering can sometimes be heard as far away as normal speech. I came right up to her ear again and said, ‘We’ve got to be really quiet, OK? If you want to talk to me, just tap me on the shoulder, and then I’ll look at you and you can talk in my ear. Do you understand?’
She spoke into my ear. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s great, because that’s what spies do.’ I put on my rubber gloves.
She stood there with an earnest expression on her face, but looking quite stupid with her coat inside out and the hood up.
I said, ‘If you see any of the light coming out, I also want you to tap me on the shoulder, OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK, stand there against the wall.’ I moved her into position, looking out towards the fences and bushes.
‘I want you to stand very still. If you see or hear anything, you tap me on the shoulder. OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Even if there’s only a little bit of light coming from me, tap me on the shoulder. OK?’
‘Yeah.’
I went over to the bank of utilities, put the material over my shoulders, turned on the Maglite with a red filter and got to work.
I’d used disruption devices many times. I worked with the torch in my mouth and was soon dribbling. I attached the clips to the telephone line in a variety of combinations; as they bit in, a row of lights came on, and the aim was to get all six red lights up. When that happened, the lines were engaged. Ten minutes was all it took.
I rested the box in between the electricity and the gas meters. I only hoped there wasn’t an audio alarm as well as a telephoned warning. I doubted it somehow, seeing as the budget had only stretched to one external detector.
I took off the blanket, wrapped it up into a bundle and handed it to Kelly. ‘You’ve got to hold that for me, because I’m going to need it again in a minute. This is fun, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But I’m cold.’
‘We’ll be inside in a minute and it’ll be all nice and warm. Don’t you worry about that.’
I stopped, looked, listened, then moved over to the door. The next thing was making entry.
The Americans are into pin tumbler locks in a big way. There are three main ways to defeat them. The first, and easiest, is just to get a duplicate key. The second is called hard keying. You get a titanium key the size of the lock, and the key has a bolthead that you whack with a mallet; the titanium key hammers in and gouges out all the soft steel. You then fit a special bar onto the bolthead, pull down and it rips out the whole of the cylinder. Hard keying was no good for me tonight because I wanted to be in and out without anybody knowing. I’d have to use the third option.
A lock-pick gun is a metal lock-picking device in the configuration of a small pistol. It has both straight and offset pick options to accommodate different locks and keyways. The ‘trigger’ of the gun is spring-loaded; you squeeze it rapidly, and this trigger movement causes the pick to snap upwards within the lock and transfers the striking force to the pins that work the lock mechanism. When the pins are properly aligned, you use a separate tension wrench to turn the lock cylinder. Bad news for people with pin tumblers, but a lock-pick gun can open most of them in under a minute.
With the blanket over me I turned on the Maglite and put it in my mouth. I inserted the tension wrench into the bottom of the keyway opposite the pins, and applied light pressure anti-clockwise, in the direction I expected the lock to turn. I then inserted the pick that protruded from the front of the lock-pick gun. Once the gun and tension wrench were in place, I started squeezing the trigger rapidly. I gave it five shots, but the lock didn’t open, so I increased the tension adjustment and tried again. I could hear it go clink, clink, clink as I squeezed; again I turned the tension adjustment so that the needle would strike the pins with just enough force. One by one I heard the pins drop and eventually the tumbler turned. I held the small tension wrench in the lock and pulled the door to take the pressure off the lock itself, because I didn’t want to have too much torque on the wrench and bust it, leaving the tell-tale bit of metal stuck inside. I pulled the door and felt it give.
I opened it a fraction, half-expecting the sound of an alarm. Nothing. I grinned at Kelly, who was right up against the wall with me, very excited. I closed the door again to keep the light in. ‘When we get in you mustn’t touch anything unless I tell you, OK?’ She nodded.
There’s a world outside which is full of mud and shit, and there’s a world inside which is clean, and if you don’t want to be compromised you don’t combine the two. I took off the coveralls, turned them inside out and put them in the bag. I then took off my shoes and they also went in the bag. I put on a pair of trainers, which meant that, not only could I move quickly and silently inside, but also I wouldn’t be leaving a trail of mud everywhere.
We were nearly compromised ‘withdrawing’ documents from the offices of BCCI in London in 1991. We’d been sent into the bank ten hours before the Serious Fraud Office were due to arrive to close the bank down and Price Waterhouse came to sort out the books. The job was so rushed that the ‘expert’, a small, bald weasel of a man, had to come with us to look at the documents. He turned up totally unprepared. We had him walking in his socks. He left a trail of sweat stains along the polished floors that even Kelly could have interpreted. The four of us had spent more time clearing up after him than stopping the information becoming public.
No problem tonight: the floor was carpeted. I took off her coat, put it on the right way round, and got her to take off her shoes and put them in the bag.
I had one last check around the area to make sure I hadn’t left anything. ‘We’re going to go inside now, Kelly. This is the first time a little girl has done spying like this – ever, ever, ever. But you must do what I say, OK?’
She accepted the mission.
I picked up the bag and we moved over to the left-hand side of the door. ‘When I open this just walk in a couple of steps and give me enough room to come in behind you, OK?’
‘OK.’
I didn’t want to tell her what to do if anything went wrong, because I didn’t want to get her frightened. I wanted to make it sound as if everything I did was going to work.
‘After three – one, two, three.’ I opened the door halfway and she was straight in. I followed, closed the door and put the lock back on. Done. We were inside.
We followed the corridor, looking now for the staircase to the second floor. I had the bag on my left shoulder. Through glass doors at the end of the corridor I could see the front part of the building. It was a large, open-plan office area with everything I’d have expected to see. Desks, filing cabinets and rubber plants with name tags. To the left and right of us there were other offices and a photocopy room. The air-conditioning was still on.
I found the stairs, behind unlocked swing doors on the left of the corridor. Gently, so that it didn’t squeak, I pulled one of the doors open and let Kelly through. There was no light in the stairwell. I switched on the Maglite and played the beam on to the stairs. We climbed slowly.
Quiet as we were, the stairwell was an echo chamber, and to Kelly the red light must have made everything look scary. She said, ‘Nick, I don’t like this!’
‘Shhh! It’s OK, don’t worry about it; me and your dad used to do this all the time.’ I grabbed her hand and we carried on.
We got to the door. It would open towards us because it was a fire exit. I put down the bag, put my lips to Kelly’s ear and went, ‘Shhh,’ trying to make it all exciting.
I slowly eased the door open an inch and looked out into the corridor. Same as downstairs, the lights were on and everything seemed deserted. I listened, opened the door a little more to let Kelly through, and pointed where I wanted her to go and stand. She was a lot happier to be in the light.
I put the bag down next to her. ‘Wait there a minute.’ I turned right, past the toilets and a room without a door that housed the Coke, water and coffee machines. Next was a photocopy room. I went to the fire-escape door, pulled it towards me, undid the latch and checked that it would open. I already knew there was nothing the other side to obstruct it, because I’d just been fucking about below it. If there was a drama, we had an escape route.
I picked up the bag again and we started to walk along the corridor towards the front of the building. We came to the same sort of glass doors as on the floor below, which opened up into the open-plan area. I could see all the workstations, and around the edge there were other offices, all glass-fronted. Obviously the managers liked to keep an eye on everyone.
The windows that fronted the office block were maybe fifty feet away. Light from the street and the corridor gave the whole area an eerie glow. To the right there was another glass door that led into another corridor.
I knew what I was looking for, but I didn’t know where I’d find it; all I knew was that it certainly wouldn’t be in this part of the building.
I looked down and smiled at Kelly. She was happy as Larry, just as her dad would have been. Keeping well away from the windows, we walked to the other side of the open-plan area towards the glass door.
There was all the normal office stuff, a noticeboard with targets to be reached, pictures of salesman of the year and a thank-you card from somebody who’d just had a baby. Most desks had a small frame with pictures of the family, and everywhere I looked there were motivation posters, shit like ‘Winners never quit, Quitters never win’ or ‘You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore’. I had to stop and read them. The only one I’d ever seen was of a big pen of sheep all closed up together, and it said, ‘Either lead, follow, or get out of the way’. It was on the wall of the HQ of the SAS and had been there for years. It seemed to me to be the only one you needed.
We went through the glass doors. The corridor was about ten feet wide, with plain white walls and not a poster or pot plant in sight, just a large fire extinguisher near the door. The sudden brightness of the strip lighting made me close my eyes until they adjusted. There were no more doors, but about thirty feet further down was a T-junction. I could see offices. As we walked towards them, I put the bag down and motioned Kelly to stay with it. ‘Remember, don’t touch a thing!’
The handle on the door of each office was a large metal knob with a pin tumbler lock in the middle. I tested each one in turn, pulling the handle towards me so as not to make any noise, then gently trying to turn it. There were seven offices in this corridor area and all of them were locked. That was nothing special in itself, it just meant that I’d have to use the lock-pick gun on each one in turn.
I went back to the bag. Kelly was standing beside it, desperate for a job. I said, ‘Kelly, you’ve really got to help me now. I want you to stand where I tell you, and you’ve got to tell me if anyone’s coming, all right? I’ve got to do exactly what I did outside, and I still need your help, OK?’
I was getting nod after nod. I carried on, ‘It’s really important; it’s the most important job tonight. And we’ve both got to be really, really quiet, OK?’
Another nod. I moved her into position. ‘Your job is also to look after that bag, because there’s a lot of important stuff in it. If you see anything, just tap me on the shoulder like before.’
She nodded and I got out the lock-pick gun.
I got to the first door and started to squeeze. I opened it with the tension wrench and popped my head in, made sure I couldn’t see any windows and turned on the light. It was basically just one office, quite large, about twenty feet by fifteen feet, a couple of telephones, a picture of the worker’s wife, a couple of filing cabinets, very basic furniture. Nothing resembling what I was looking for. I didn’t check the filing cabinets; the first look is nothing more than a once-over; you don’t want to spend ages in one location only to find out that what you want is sitting on a desk in the room next door.
I didn’t relock the door because I might have to go back in. Leaving it ajar, I looked at Kelly, still at her post; I put my thumb up and she grinned. She had a big job to do.
I made entry into office number two. Exactly the same normal office shit: the year planner with different-coloured bits of tape on, signs stating that there was a strict no-smoking policy and individual mugs for coffee. People’s offices are a reflection of themselves; that’s why on a job like this it’s so important that nothing is left out of place. They would notice.
I carried on down the corridor and went to number three. The same. Four: the same. I was starting to feel like I was on a wild-goose chase.
Now for the other three offices; I crossed over the T, and as I passed Kelly she tried to look even more hard-working. I gave her another thumbs up and went to number five.
It was a much bigger office. There were two settees facing each other, with a coffee table in between and a neat scattering of magazines; a wooden drinks cabinet, smart wooden filing cabinets, framed diplomas and all sorts on the wall. But nothing that resembled the sort of thing I was looking for.
