back?”
“No,” Hersch lied. “It probably wasn’t very important.”
“Then I’d better get started. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Didier Savelkoul looked furtively at his watch, pinched his lips once again and left Hersch’s office, chewing on the stumps of his fingers, his shoulders hunched like an old man.
Once he was alone, Paul Hersch’s broad face took on a curious, almost frosty appearance. He decided it was time to practise his “serpent’s stare”, something he did on a daily basis. It inspired such loyalty among his student informants - his “key boys” - that they were simply incapable of withholding information after a couple of “practice sessions”. He fixed his eyes on the plain cross on the opposite wall and altered the field and angle of his vision by focusing on an unspecified point in the distance. When one of his informants was in his office, the laws of optics prevented the boy from detecting this procedure, because the focal point of Hersch’s gaze was somewhere behind him. It was also important to look over the key boy’s head using the periscope principle, which eliminates any possibility of eye contact because the other is literally overlooked. The eyes appear to be directed at a far-distant object, or perhaps some thought in the depths of the boy’s mind, which he is diligently trying to keep to himself because it signals the suppression of some sordid passion. Dialogue is pointless in such a situation, and the key boy, driven by an overwhelming sense of superfluity, is left with only one option: get out of the office on the double. But departure is impossible without the permission of numerary Paul Hersch, who at a certain moment will look the key boy straight in the eye, as a snake does when it closes in on a rabbit. And how does the rabbit react? It stands still and starts to tremble from fear. Then comes the miserable moment at which Paul Hersch puts his fundamental principle into practice: if you stick your nose in far enough, you’re sure to smell something rotten.
7
At around nine o’clock in the evening, a dark-blue Mercedes delivery van belonging to Bineco Sanitary Installations Ltd, with its offices in Vilvoorde near Brussels, pulled up diagonally opposite house number 124A on the eastbound carriageway of Antwerp’s Amerikalei, not far from the European University. The distance between the delivery van and the house was roughly seventy yards. Not the best position, but there was no alternative. Traffic sped in both directions along the four-lane, sycamore-lined carriageway. It was mild and calm and the pavements were deserted. The delivery van, a so-called decoy vehicle, was fitted with advanced observation hardware: a digital infrared camera, an Electronic Number Interceptor 421 telephone and mobile number interceptor (prohibited by Belgian law), an American-made gadget not even the police or the CID could lay their hands on. To round things off, there was a container with the equipment necessary for planting miniature bugging devices, including a hyper-sensitive high-grade steel nail that, when fired into a brick or concrete wall, could pick up everything going on inside.
The Marlowe & Co. team commenced their observations ten minutes after they arrived, having transmitted their position to their Brussels headquarters, where the video screen of a Central Travel Pilot was placed on stand-by. The team consisted of two men, both young, competent, ambitious and well paid. They were wearing dark-green Gore Tex overalls and trainers. They had disabled the Mercedes’s suspension to allow them to move about without rocking the vehicle. They adjusted the back, neck and foot supports of two chairs, readying them for hours of comfort. Their first job was to enter the target’s telephone and mobile numbers into the ENI 421, to ensure that any incoming or outgoing calls would be registered on the screen. Four one-way glass windows allowed for 180-degree observation
“No,” Hersch lied. “It probably wasn’t very important.”
“Then I’d better get started. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Didier Savelkoul looked furtively at his watch, pinched his lips once again and left Hersch’s office, chewing on the stumps of his fingers, his shoulders hunched like an old man.
Once he was alone, Paul Hersch’s broad face took on a curious, almost frosty appearance. He decided it was time to practise his “serpent’s stare”, something he did on a daily basis. It inspired such loyalty among his student informants - his “key boys” - that they were simply incapable of withholding information after a couple of “practice sessions”. He fixed his eyes on the plain cross on the opposite wall and altered the field and angle of his vision by focusing on an unspecified point in the distance. When one of his informants was in his office, the laws of optics prevented the boy from detecting this procedure, because the focal point of Hersch’s gaze was somewhere behind him. It was also important to look over the key boy’s head using the periscope principle, which eliminates any possibility of eye contact because the other is literally overlooked. The eyes appear to be directed at a far-distant object, or perhaps some thought in the depths of the boy’s mind, which he is diligently trying to keep to himself because it signals the suppression of some sordid passion. Dialogue is pointless in such a situation, and the key boy, driven by an overwhelming sense of superfluity, is left with only one option: get out of the office on the double. But departure is impossible without the permission of numerary Paul Hersch, who at a certain moment will look the key boy straight in the eye, as a snake does when it closes in on a rabbit. And how does the rabbit react? It stands still and starts to tremble from fear. Then comes the miserable moment at which Paul Hersch puts his fundamental principle into practice: if you stick your nose in far enough, you’re sure to smell something rotten.
7
At around nine o’clock in the evening, a dark-blue Mercedes delivery van belonging to Bineco Sanitary Installations Ltd, with its offices in Vilvoorde near Brussels, pulled up diagonally opposite house number 124A on the eastbound carriageway of Antwerp’s Amerikalei, not far from the European University. The distance between the delivery van and the house was roughly seventy yards. Not the best position, but there was no alternative. Traffic sped in both directions along the four-lane, sycamore-lined carriageway. It was mild and calm and the pavements were deserted. The delivery van, a so-called decoy vehicle, was fitted with advanced observation hardware: a digital infrared camera, an Electronic Number Interceptor 421 telephone and mobile number interceptor (prohibited by Belgian law), an American-made gadget not even the police or the CID could lay their hands on. To round things off, there was a container with the equipment necessary for planting miniature bugging devices, including a hyper-sensitive high-grade steel nail that, when fired into a brick or concrete wall, could pick up everything going on inside.
The Marlowe & Co. team commenced their observations ten minutes after they arrived, having transmitted their position to their Brussels headquarters, where the video screen of a Central Travel Pilot was placed on stand-by. The team consisted of two men, both young, competent, ambitious and well paid. They were wearing dark-green Gore Tex overalls and trainers. They had disabled the Mercedes’s suspension to allow them to move about without rocking the vehicle. They adjusted the back, neck and foot supports of two chairs, readying them for hours of comfort. Their first job was to enter the target’s telephone and mobile numbers into the ENI 421, to ensure that any incoming or outgoing calls would be registered on the screen. Four one-way glass windows allowed for 180-degree observation
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