“They have other concerns at the moment,” he said. “Now, what about the equipment I’ve obtained for you?”
Hoover brightened up considerably. He’d been looking forward to it, even sending Oliver several emails demanding to know about progress. “I’d be delighted,” he said, cheerfully. Tolson leaned forward as Oliver pulled out a small briefcase. Hoover’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a bit small, isn’t it?”
“What’s the use of a bug the size of a Smartie?” Oliver asked, and then had to explain what a Smartie was. The United States would be hearing about them soon, along with the other Cadbury products. He opened the briefcase and pulled out a small box, about the size of a matchbox. A tiny silver glint came from the centre of the box.
“That’s impossible,” Tolson declared.
Oliver smiled. “This is a Mark XXI electronic surveillance device,” he said. “In this form, its good to pick up and record conversations for up to five days continuous running, powered by a tiny microprocessor the size of an dot. It’s not very smart, but if you ping it with the correct code, it’ll burst-transmit everything its recorded to you, and then wipe itself. When no one is talking, it powers down and stores energy; it can even draw energy from solar power and heat.”
Hoover picked up the box thoughtfully. “It’s tiny,” he said. “How do you plant them?”
Oliver picked up a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass. Tolson laughed as he held it over the box, showing them the bug in more detail. “Basically, you attach it in a hidden place – I suggest you experiment with them to discover how much use they are – and let it go to work. If you want, you can even attach them to a person, although that has a maximum of seven days as power requirements will exhaust it very quickly.”
Hoover smiled for the first time. “Tell me,” he said. “Can they be detected?”
Oliver nodded. “Yes, and no,” he said. “A powerful ELINT scan will detect them, and an ECM suite will jam them from transmitting – and they’re not bright enough to notice,” he said. “Fortunately, there is no place within the United States – except the Future Embassy – that has such capability. I assume that the British Embassy” – Lord Lothian had passed away over the winter and had been replaced by a future Briton chosen by Hanover – “has the same capability, but I don’t know for certain.”
“Blasted traitors,” Hoover muttered. “None of them will join the FBI; they would sooner stay with the nigger.”
“Converting what they have into a viable technological base for developing these devices is far far beyond what you or I could do, let alone them,” Oliver said. He’d met Ambassador King; he even liked him. “Director, the process that makes that bug so tiny is nearly six decades ahead of America.”
“And they’re useless in Britain itself,” Tolson said, to save his chief from embarrassment. “We can’t place a few in Britain to watch sympathisers.”
“No,” Oliver said sharply. “These things are commercial-grade, not military-grade. Anyone with something to hide will have some counter-measures in place… and MI5 would stop at nothing to find out who’d been trying to bug government offices. It’s not the sort of thing they’d let slip past them; they’re good, tough, and in wartime they have more authority than you do.”
“They still lost a German from the first encounter,” Hoover sneered. Oliver, who’d been a prisoner of the Germans at the time, said nothing. “They might not find my people…”
“They’ll be trying to blend into a culture they won’t understand,” Oliver said. “I strongly advise you not to try.” He closed the briefcase and picked up a second briefcase. “These are webcams,” he said. “They’re basically tiny cinema cameras; your position one somewhere where you want to know who’s going in and out, and then just set it running. Again, it has a limited lifespan, around ten days at the current power reserves.”
He put the webcam down on the table and picked up a second camera. “This is a very tiny camera,” he said. “It works on the same basic principle; you take a picture and it stores it in its memory. When you want to review them, you simply burst-transmit them to a computer – I’ve given you ten of the basic laptop design – and review them there.”
Hoover grinned savagely. “We’ll put them to very good use,” he promised. Neither man mentioned money. “How long does it take to learn how to use them?”
“I’ve attached a book of instructions to the main list,” Oliver said. He smiled; now for the bait. “The main supplies have been moved to a safe house,” he said, and passed over the address. “You can pick them up at your leisure, as no one knows about it.”
He watched Hoover’s smile and frowned inwardly. As he’d suspected, Hoover had raised no objections to the underhandedness of the trade. That was… interesting; Hoover clearly didn’t want anyone to know that he’d gotten the little collection.
“There is one final matter,” Hoover said, as Oliver began packing away the webcams. “We are under threat by subversive movements, attacking the very foundations of American life.”
Oliver nodded impatiently. Hoover’s constant speeches on the matter were unbecoming the head of the counterintelligence service, even though the FBI wasn’t exactly a counterespionage service. Hoover saw… well, reds under the bed; an expression that had really caught on online. Absently, he wondered where McCarthy was; the future senator had drawn one of the darker cards of the verdict of history.
“You have hired thousands of workers, including a number of members of certain unions,” Hoover said. “Many… Unions have relationships with communists, including the NAACP scum and other black unions. Is that safe?”
Oliver nodded. “I have to build as quickly as I can,” he said. “I have no doubts about the loyalty of my people.”
“Many of them… will be getting ideas above their station,” Hoover said, with all the tone of an English aristocrat. “There are plenty of unemployed men who would be glad of the jobs…”
“I have to keep my reputation as a good employer,” Oliver said flatly. “I cannot simply… fire people merely on the grounds of their skin colour. I could be charged under British law for that, which would ruin the company.”
“But some of them might be transmitting information to the subversives,” Hoover protested. “That… secretary of yours might be reporting my presence to anyone!”
“Given that you had an armed escort, everyone who is anyone will know that you came anyway,” Oliver said. “I’m sorry, Edgar, but I can’t do that.”
“Humph,” Hoover said. Without saying goodbye, he stalked out of the room. Oliver watched him go, concealing his real thoughts until Cora had shown the pair out, then he clicked on the laptop. He hadn’t bothered to mention some of the bugs’ other capabilities Hoover; it would only have pointed his suspicions in unprofitable directions.
“That bastard was dictating to you,” Tolson’s voice snapped, clear as a bell. The noise of their car could be heard in the background; audio-discrimination programs began to sweep the background noise out of the transmission. “Edgar, he needs to be taken down a peg or two!”
“For the moment, we need him,” Hoover’s voice said, tired. “We have few sources for advanced technology, and Ambassador King is hardly going to share the pittance he has. With MacArthur involved with us, we need supplies of advanced technology, and Oliver is the best we have.”