"I wonder why Ham hasn't retrieved the phone yet?"
"There's something else," Harry said.
"What?"
"While my van was out there working to set up the portable cell, a car drove past twice, with three men in it. My people got a photograph through a window in the van." He shoved a color print across the table.
Holly picked it up. "That's Ham in the back seat," she said, "and John in the front passenger seat. I can't see the driver's face."
"You're right," Harry said. "But why are they cruising up and down the highway while my van is out there?"
Holly looked at the photograph more closely. "John is holding something in his hand, and Ham seems to be looking at it."
Harry looked at the photograph again. "Could be a cell phone," he said.
"Oh, shit," Eddie chipped in. "They were reading signal strength."
"Now, why the hell would they do that?" Harry asked.
Everybody was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe their weak signal strength out there suddenly got too good," Holly said. "Maybe they were suspicious of that."
"It's John," Harry said. "That son of a bitch is smart"
"Is there equipment out there where you can see it?" Holly asked.
"Just a whip antenna on a power pole. The van is parked a couple of miles away."
"But John saw the van there."
"Yeah."
"Eddie," Harry said, "if you were John and you thought it was strange that your cell phone signal strength had improved, what would you do about it?"
Eddie frowned.
"From a technical point of view, I mean."
"I guess I'd try to find out if somebody was using a cell phone in the compound. I'd run a scanner and see if it picked up anything."
"John could actually overhear calls, if a cell phone were being used out there?"
"He could if he has a scanner. You can buy them at Radio Shack and modify them to pick up cell phone frequencies."
"But it wouldn't pick up Ham's scrambled phone."
"No, and if it did, it would only get static."
"So if Ham got the phone out of the lake, he could use it without being caught."
"Without being caught electronically," Eddie corrected.
"If you're right about John catching on," Holly said, "then Ham would know about it, because he was in the car. Maybe that's why he's not using the phone."
"But he was here when I explained how the scrambled phone walked," Eddie said. "He heard me say that it would be undetectable."
"That's right," Harry said. "If Ham remembers."