The Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page A

to use the jack failure to his own advantage and take a break. At last he strode toward the ramp, muttering to himself and kicking at a loose stone.
    When he was gone, the man at the winch spat into the shaft.
    Glass took Leonard’s elbow. “They’ve been on the job since last August, eight-hour shifts around the clock.”
    They walked to the administration building by way of a connecting corridor. Glass stopped by a window and once more pointed out the observation post beyond the perimeter wire. “I want to show you how far we’ve got. See, behind the Vopos there’s a cemetery. Right behind that there are military vehicles. They’re parked on the main road, the Schönefelder Chaussee. We’re right under them, about to cross the road.”
    The East German trucks were about three hundred yards away. Leonard could make out traffic on the road. Glass walked on, and for the first time Leonard felt irritation at his methods.
    “Mr. Glass—”
    “Bob, please.”
    “Are you going to tell me what this is all for?”
    “Sure. It’s what concerns you most. On the far side of that road, buried in a ditch, are Soviet landlines that link with their high command in Moscow. All communications between East European capitals get routed into Berlin and out again. It’s a legacy of the old imperial control. Your job is to dig upward and lay the taps. We’re doing the rest.” Glass was pressing on, through a set of swing doors into a reception area where there was fluorescent light, a Coca-Cola machine and the sound of typing.
    Leonard caught hold of Glass’s sleeve. “Look, Bob. I don’t know anything about digging, and as for actually laying the … as for the rest of it …”
    Glass whooped with glee. He had taken out a key. “Very funny. I meant the British, you idiot. This in here is your job.” He unlocked the door, reached in and turned on the light and allowed Leonard to enter first.
    It was a large, windowless room. Two trestle tables had beenpushed against one wall. On them was some basic circuit-testing equipment and a soldering iron. The rest of the space was taken up by identical cardboard boxes piled right to the ceiling, ten deep.
    Glass gave the nearest a gentle kick. “One hundred and fifty Ampex tape recorders. Your first job is to unpack them and dispose of the boxes. There’s an incinerator out back. That’ll take you two or three days. Next, every machine has to have a plug, then it has to be tested. I’ll show you how to order spare parts. You know about signal activation? Good. They’ve all got to be adapted. That’ll take you a while. After that you might be helping with the circuits down to the amplifiers. Then the installation. We’re still digging, so take your time. We’d like to see these rolling by April.”
    Leonard felt unaccountably happy. He picked up an ohm-meter. It was of German make, encased in brown bakelite. “I’ll need a finer instrument than this for low resistances. And ventilation. Condensation could be a problem in here.”
    Glass raised his beard, as though in tribute, and gave Leonard a gentle thump on the back. “That’s the spirit. Be outrageously demanding. We’ll all respect you for it.”
    Leonard looked up to gauge Glass’s expression for irony, but he had turned off the light and was holding the door open.
    “Start tomorrow, 0900 hours. Now, the tour continues.”
    Leonard was shown only the canteen, where hot food was brought in from a nearby barracks, Glass’s own office and finally the shower room and lavatories. The American’s pleasure in revealing these amenities was no less intense. He warned solemnly of the ease with which the toilets became blocked.
    They remained standing across from the urinals while he told a story, which faded skillfully into small talk on the two occasions someone came in. Aerial reconnaissance had shown that the best-drained land, and therefore the best land for tunneling, lay through the cemetery on the eastern side.