The paper said, country of origin : Malaysia.
As Sean requested the forwarding agent to open up the container. His heart was pounding with excitement.
Being a amplifier geek himself. This is the first time on the job to see a precious consignment of tube amplifier under his approval.
Within his power he picked out one box to see the content. Part of custom protocol at the port of entry into Ireland. He just wanted to have closer look at the 8,000 pound a piece quality amplifier.
Out of curiosity, he told the forwarding agent to power on a unit. He just love the sight of vacuum tube lights up and the request was done out of hobbyist intend. Not part of the protocol.
No suspecting anything unusual, the forwarding agent yanked out the extension cord to a vacuum cleaner and plugged in the amplifier. A brand new amplifier and nothing happen.
“What the hell is going on ? Shipping out a thousand pounds non working equipment ?” Sean asked.
“I hadn’t any clue” Said Jerry, the forwarding agent.
“Go and get another unit. I want to see it light up” Sean requested.
Another unit was found to be not working too.
“Ok, just put them back and I am not here for quality control.” Sean said with a bit disappointment. He counted all the units to tally the quantity declared for Tax purposes.
Disappointed and back to his office. Vacuum tube Amplifier was really an obsession to Sean, it produces the best and most original sound one can ever get due to its low distortion. But suddenly he jumped off the chair.
He called up the team the did the X-Ray backscatter scanning works. X-Ray backscattering is normally used to image potential smuggling of drugs or human within consignment of perfectly legal stuff. It can pretty much see through visually opaque container box.
“Siobhan , What did you see in there ?” Sean asked.
“Nothing much just some tubes , but the tubes seemed to have false positive.” Siobhan said.
“What did you see ?” Sean asked again.
“We took it out and it had some silvery coating. We thought the coating gave us false positive.” Siobhan said.
Without wasting a minute, Sean radio the quarantine security to block the release of the consignment.
Next morning newspaper headlines,
The largest ever drug bust happened in port of Ireland. Drug filled vacuum tube was concealed as vacuum tube for high quality audio amplifier. The glass vacuum sealing had eluded sniffing dog and X-ray, but a curious junior customer officer with a hobby for tube amplifier discovered a consignment of non-functioning unit led to the bust ….
