Chapter 55: A Buggy Mission Part 2

At the NSA the agents were down to meet us quickly with none of the hassles at the CIA. They led us through more gates where we had to have the scanner x-rayed again and use our top secret badges to go any further. Upstairs we went through what one of the men called a dead man's gate. He joked that we were to be weighed to make sure we weighed the same going in as coming out, and vise-versa.

Looking at Paula he quipped, "Miss you need not be concerned. The scale only interfaces with a computer system. All data is triple encrypted. No demographic data is used, just the badge number. We only keep weight data onsite for forty-eight hours. After that time it is archived offsite."

"Each of the conference rooms have been scanned by a different security company's device. All bugs they detected have been removed. When you have completed your sweep, we will be waiting to review the results," he told us.

Taking a breath, I made myself see only energy leaving the room that was not air. I saw so many that I almost forgot to pick up the bug scanner. The nearest one to me was a different form of energy than the ones at the CIA. Not wanting to trip over anything, I had my eyes also see the objects in the room, since these rooms were really cluttered compared to the very rigid setup of the CIA secure conference room.

I went right over to the first one to find that it was actually inside a lamp.

"Paula, this one is in the bulb itself," I told her.

Using a stack of paper towels, Paula removed the bulb from the lamp. We both looked at it closely. While Paula went back to look the lamp and base over, I told my eyes to see inside the bulb.

To me it looked like one of the new LED bulbs everyone was using to replace the fluorescent twist bulbs. There was a lot of electronics in it, but all of the LED bulbs had those. Paula had me check the lamp again with the bulb in and out to be sure. I only saw the energy coming out of the bulb when it was on.

Paula asked me, "Are you sure it is not just something related to being an LED bulb?"

"I am seeing the energy signals going right out of the walls and not being absorbed like heat. The signal from your cell phone is being absorbed by the walls," I told her back and hoped she understood.

Taking the scanner, she opened the programming panel, hit some buttons and then I saw the screen sweeping back and forth. I saw her point to her cell phone signal trying to get out, but then she frowned when it did not show a signal for the energy I had found. She did some more work on the touchscreen, but still did to get the signal she said she wanted. I jumped back from her when she grabbed the LED bulb, wrapped it in paper towels and then stomped on it.

Carefully unrolling the paper towels, so shook off the broken glass to start looking closer at the insides of the bulb. Using a magnifying glass from the scanner case, she really went over the bulb before pulling the stuff loose from it. In a few minutes lots of different parts were spread out on the table. The only ones I recognized were the LED light bars and some wires. I did see that the LED bars were covered in that green paint while the other boards were covered in blue or red. She soon found what she was looking for and then started digging through the scanner case.

In the blink of an eye she had the scanner pulled apart and was taking apart circuit boards. I am glad she knew what she was doing because all I was able to do to help her was make sure she did not knock over the stand holding the magnifying class and really bright light. Right in front of me she was hacking away on a circuit board and then doing something with a small, mostly metal covered circuit board for the light bulb. With ease she put the scanner back together, fired it up and started to do the sweep like before.

"As I guessed," she whispered. "It is operating the sub-millimeter wavelength, terahertz frequency range. Basically between microwaves and infrared light. It cannot get through metals David. I am not sure how you see it leaving this room."

I shrugged. I know what I was seeing.

Picking up the scanner, Paula started using it to sweep the room while I went back to walking with her looking for energy leaving the room.

Whatever she did to the scanner, it led her right to the other light bulbs using the same sort of energy. She removed them and that made me see that almost all of the outlets had the transmitters using the ground and neutral wires like at the CIA. I told myself not see those signals either. We continued to sweep through until I noticed energy waves going down by the refrigerator. I thought it was something hidden inside there, so I went to get a soda. Instead the sound was coming from somewhere else. Paula had me bang around in the kitchen area as she moved the fridge out of the way a bit. Right there behind the fridge was what looked like a water pipe with a valve on it, just like the one my parents had connected to our ice maker.

When she looked at it closely with her magnifying glass, she had me follow her out into the main room.

"I can see why no one found that one. It has no external wires, they are all setup inside the pipe itself, along with the expected water supply. The shutoff valve is a highly sensitive pair of microphones. If one of dad's companies did not make them I would have missed it," she told me in a whisper before we started scanning again.

After one full sweep, I had found dozens of fake bugs and a handful of ones where the batteries had died.

We took a quick break to have sodas and then Paula went around turning things off to see if that caused any more bugs to show up. While not finding anymore, I did notice that when Paula got near this one bookcase, the energy in it turned off until she moved away. I told her and we moved over to both take a closer look. She soon found three books with small holes just big enough to have microphones. Another book had a really shiny spot right in the dot in the letter i. I started to pull one out when she stopped my hand.

"If I was building this I would make sure to booby trap it to destroy everything. This is not part of our contacted engagement David. Let the spooks take the risk," she told me as we moved away.

Paula packed up the scanner as I went out to get the NSA agents waiting for our results.

Oddly they did not seem surprised at all about the ones in the light bulbs. In fact one of the agents quickly replaced the light bulb Paula had smashed with one just like it. Paula gave me a look for me to not ask.

They did get really upset about the pipe in the kitchen. One agent talked into his earwig radio as we continued to show them the rest of the bugs we found. Again they did not seem surprised by those. The bookshelf was another matter altogether. In a few minutes there were a bunch of people wearing really thick padded suits that were looking over the bookcase. We were escorted outside the room and the doors were closed.

No one said anything to me and Paula was not where she could say anything that may make them question my fake job at the bogus company. Paula just went into highly technical talking mode with one of the agents about how the scanner was able to pick up the light bulbs bugs. He did not look happy, but very interested in the mods she did to the scanner. When the question of why I was not making the changes, instead of her, she told him that she had steadier hands. He tried to get specific details on the scanner, but Paula said that was all locked up inside my head. It would take them years to be able get me to be comfortable around them to even begin translating "Jacob speak" to get the technical details worked out. By then whatever they found out would be worthless anyway.

I heard everything but was staring off into space feigning ignoring them, just as I had all during middle school. It worked perfectly! They talked about me and how I as some super genius, but not really in the regular world most of the time. I closed my eyes to scan around out here while we waited. It was not long before they took us back into the suite.

There were two dozen books spread out on top of the table.

"It is very fortunate you did not attempt to remove this very elaborate recording setup. It was booby-trapped with C4, sulfuric acid and phosphorus incendiary charges," one of the bomb techs explained as he pointed to twenty-two of the books. "All were designed to protect the hidden microphones and camera. Initial analysis shows it incorporated motion sensors to power down to a standby state when anyone was within ten feet. The entire recording subsystem is completely solid state and uses a pair of 1 TB SSD drives. It is very elaborate without any RF emissions to make it detectable."

A carbon fiber over metal briefcase was brought in to hold all of the bugs, except the light bulbs. I was made to sign a form showing they had transferred the case full of bugs to me and then handcuffed it to my wrist. We were told there was only one group that had the key to remove it from my arm. Instead of going back through the dead man security hallway to the elevators, we were taken into a small office.

"Everything you require has been provided in this office. Please call extension 969 if you need any assistance," one of the agents told us before locking us in the office.

He had not been gone two seconds and the phone rang. All I heard was "Moby Dick" and the line went dead.

Just like something out of the old spy movies, Paula found a copy of Moby Dick in a bookcase off on the side wall. When she tried to pull it out, there was a click and then it swung open. Behind it was a security pad with no lights or anything. Paula used the all access security badge over it and closed the bookcase. Unexpectedly there was the slightest sound of scraping behind us before the distinctive ding of an elevator. When we turned, we saw a wall section had swiveled out the way of the waiting elevator.