like a persistent flea darting in front of her eyes, it was the inexorable presence of Agent Gabriel Winters. She was not happy when he decided to move into the safe house one week after she did, commandeering the small bedroom on the ground floor for his private office.
She felt his calculating eyes assessing her. His presence haunted her even when he was not on the premises. Like a phantom, she never knew when he would materialize; nevertheless, since she had his scent, she was never taken by surprise.
One evening Mariah entertained her guards with The Puppets from Pluto Theater. The show began with the wedding night of Polly Applebottom and Monsieur Pierre Pareknife. The groom stripped the “clothing” off his new bride while seducing her in a bad Pepé Le Pew French accent. The agents laughed in appreciation as the apple spun in the air, its skin coiling gracefully toward the floor while the white-handled peeler spun in the opposite direction.
Unknowingly, they were witness to the mastering of a new skill: Mariah made two unrelated objects performing different tasks at the same time.
But Winters knew. He was sure nothing she did escaped him now. The surveillance equipment brought all her little tricks into sharp focus.
The infrared cameras with large zoom lenses (monitored by the FBI) were positioned outside. They were weatherproof, able to brighten the night with a seventy degree field of vision and a range of at least one thousand feet. Installed next to the floodlights at the four corners of the house, they were also at the front near the porch lights and in the back in the shrubs under the windows. Since the auto-iris lenses automatically adjusted for light level, they were perfectly functional during the daylight hours as well. Mariah complained of the lights shining in her bedroom window, hoping they would be shut off: Winters countered by covering the windows with blackout curtains.
The CIA’s hidden equipment, however, was even more sophisticated. Their fixed focus lens cameras were hidden in places like picture frames and mirrors. The images they captured were sharply defined whether a few inches or several yards away.
It was the visible light zoom lens cameras with pan and tilt that provided the most flexibility. These little gems were installed in the smoke detectors, one in the upstairs hallway, one in the bedroom, and one in the back door entry to cover any stray movements missed by the cameras in the living room and kitchen.
These highly sophisticated cameras, also equipped with auto-iris lenses, were additionally installed in the burglar alarm system’s motion detectors. The zoom, combined with the three hundred thousand pixels, supplied clear color pictures through the tiny 3.6 mm pinhole lens. Unlike civilian surveillance equipment, all these babies came equipped with microphone pickup integrated into the radio frequency transmitter. Every word, every whisper, was heard with crystal clarity.
The FBI monitored the infrared surveillance equipment installed next to the floodlights. While they scanned the outside of the house with their equipment set up in the family room, the CIA tapped into their signal to make sure the amateurs didn’t miss anything. But the Feds knew nothing of the cameras inside the house. These signals were transmitted to remote receivers located in a dirty green and brown-colored RV, parked behind a knoll on the shoulder of the utility service road, up the hill behind the house, a quarter of a mile away. The knoll hid the lower third of the van; the remainder was hidden by chaparral and trees.
The camouflaged RV was loaded with an array of video and audio monitors, complete with joystick controls that allowed the pan and tilt cameras to be manipulated for optimum viewing. It also provided creature comforts; toilet, shower, microwave oven, and a miniature fridge/freezer unit.
The CIA could see, hear, and record any activity or sound that occurred inside or outside the