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The encoded message carrying reports on Sorge's (and his co-spies') activities were sent regularly, although at different, previously agreed upon, times. Max Klausen was the telegraphist (and only the telegraphist). Sorge trusted his blunt ignorance and his ("almost admirable") lack of will. The radio operated from Voukelitch's home in the Bunka apartment complex, across from a rather malodorous canal, named Chanomizu -- "honourable tea-water"; or from Klausen's apartment, in the Akasaka district, with the windows perennially behind curtains of drying bed sheets and underwear; or, almost never, from Sorge's place (No. 30 Nagasaka-cho) in Azabu, an affluent part of the city. The book used for coding messages was an edition of the Complete Shakespeare, probably one of the Cambridge editions from the late twenties. Max Klausen: "We would send the number of the play in the book (we called it the Book), then the number of the act, then the number of the scene upon which the scramble-code would be based. I had never read Shakespeare and found it quite boring, but Sorge was able to quote lengthy passages from any play. I remember once we used a passage, I forgot from which play, where there was a phrase 'God's spies.' Sorge recited the whole passage (I also remember butterflies in that passage) and then said: 'We're God's spies, except there's no God,' and we got a kick out of that and laughed like mad."
(The passage that Klausen alludes to is from The History of King Lear and goes as follows:
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