A SECURITY guard involved in moving material from the country home of former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks used a line from the movie Where Eagles Dare as a codeword, the Old Bailey has been told.
The unnamed man lifted the words "Broadsword calling Danny Boy" from the 1960s war epic starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood to let another guard know he had completed the operation, jurors in the phone hacking trial were told.
It allegedly involved hiding a bin bag of property near Mrs Brooks's London flat under the guise of delivering a pizza, the prosecution told jurors yesterday.
It cropped up in conversation with another guard during the operation, with the first guard adding, the jury heard: "Pizza delivered and the chicken's in the pot." The other guard described his efforts as amateurish.
The prosecution led by Andrew Edis, QC, has alleged that it was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence by Mrs Brooks, 45, who lived at the properties with her husband racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. The company's former head of security Mark Hanna was also allegedly involved.
Mr Edis, QC, told the court that security staff agreed to log the hours for the car park drop-off as "pizza delivery", because "you cannot log the hours as 'perverting the course of justice'."
It is claimed that while former News of the World and Sun editor Brooks was being questioned by police over the voicemail allegations her husband and Mr Hanna tried to hide evidence.
Jurors heard security staff picked up a bin bag of material from the couple's home in Churchill, Oxfordshire, before it could be searched on the day of Mrs Brooks's arrest, and that this was hidden near bins at the couple's flat in Chelsea Harbour.
However before the bag could be recovered it was found by a cleaner and handed to police, the jury was told.
Mr Edis said: "The prosecution say that this whole exercise was quite complicated and quite risky and liable to go wrong, as it did.
"You only contemplate doing it for a real purpose, otherwise you are just attracting suspicion.
"The only rational explanation was to hide material so police can't get it. Sometimes plans of that kind succeed. They must have been trying to hide something, otherwise they would have been behaving completely irrationally."
Rebekah Brooks, 45, is accused of two counts of perverting the course of justice, one with Mr Hanna and her husband, and the second with her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter.
It is claimed that she instructed Ms Carter to remove seven boxes of notebooks, said to be Mrs Brooks's dating from 1995 to 2007, from the company's archive that have "never been seen again".
Mr Edis told the jury: "Nothing like that has ever been recovered in the course of this inquiry."
The court heard that in 2011 the situation for News International became "more fevered" as the firm came under investigation by police after it handed over three emails linked to phone hacking and payment claims. Mr Edis said: "You can imagine the extremely anxious, if not panic-stricken approach to what was going on."
Closing the prosecution opening statements, Mr Edis said: "It is obvious that the purpose of all this activity can only have been to hide something significant. What on earth were they doing?
"We say it is inconceivable that anyone would have been doing anything to hide any of her property or to interfere with the police investigation without her knowledge, agreement or consent.
"To do otherwise would simply be to court suspicion when none should be there at all."
Rebekah Brooks, Mr Coulson, 45, the now defunct Sunday's tabloid's head of news Ian Edmondson, 44, and the tabloid's ex-managing editor Stuart Kuttner, 73, all deny conspiring with others to hack phones between October 3, 2000, and August 9, 2006.
Former editor Mrs Brooks is also accused of two counts of conspiring with others to commit misconduct in public office - one with Carter, 49, and a second with her husband.
Mr Coulson is alleged to have conspired with former royal editor Clive Goodman, 56, and other unknown people to commit misconduct in public office.
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