I could see the elation in Section Chief Chen’s face and I shared it. Not only had Abing listened to all eight boxes of audio tapes and identified seventy-nine specific operators, but for each one he had recorded their specific ‘calling card’, as it were. For instance:

Operator one: When 3 and 7 crop up together, likes to join them up.

Operator two: When 5 and 4 come together, often makes a mistake, and this should be corrected.

Operator three: The first ‘dot’ is always quick and fast.

Operator four: A highly accomplished technique, very fluent.

Operator five: When signing off, this operator has a very distinct and eccentric habit; likes to transmit ‘GB’ as ‘GP’.

And so on, and so forth.

In sum, Abing had identified for each of the seventy-nine different operators a distinguishing characteristic – a shortcoming, if you will – that we could exploit. While there was no way for the rest of us to actually verify if Abing’s findings were true and correct, one thing we could be sure of was this: the number of operators identified, these seventy-nine different people, seemed about right. That’s because in general, with each station broadcasting day and night, a total of six operators would be needed: three for the day shift, three for the night; 6 × 12 = 72. Taking into account that at certain times operators would go on leave and need to be replaced, a total number of seventy-nine operators seemed quite logical. Of course, Abing was unaware of this fact, so we could be sure that he wasn’t just making a wild guess.

I turned to Abing and said, ‘Let’s go and get some breakfast – and after we’ve eaten, Abing, let’s go and find those seventy-nine operators!’

I was deliberate in telling him that we were going to hunt down these ‘operators’ in order to stress to him that the work yet to be done was somewhat different from what he had already completed. Now he would be looking for the ‘fingerprints’ of the operators and not the ‘tone’ of the broadcast. Of course, distinguishing between the audio qualities of the broadcasts and differentiating the ‘fingerprints’ left by the operators were just different ways to achieve the same objective: identifying the enemy radio stations.

16

Abing’s initial success had already surprised and shocked everyone. His second was even more amazing. Identifying ‘tonal variations’ is one thing; listening for an operator’s ‘fingerprints’ is something else entirely. Increasing the speed at which an operator controls the equipment doesn’t really alter the tonal qualities: it still sounds the same. But ‘fingerprints’ – well, how could you even talk of ‘fingerprints’? As a result, this time we would have to proceed slowly: carefully turning the dials, and listening intently. Abing, however, had other ideas: he requested that we bring in another set of radio equipment so that he might listen to two broadcasts simultaneously.

Two broadcasts at the same time just wouldn’t work.

Three would be even worse!