Abrahams nodded. ‘Understood. I’ve reserved you a room at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square, but I can book you into one of the local hotels if you’d prefer.’
‘No, the Embassy’s fine.’ Westwood paused for a moment. ‘Time’s short on this one,’ he said, ‘so I’d like to get started as soon as possible. We’ll need to use a secure briefing room, and I want to talk to you alone first.’
Abrahams nodded. ‘No problem. Do you want to sleep or eat first?’
‘No, I slept on the plane and I’m not hungry. Just a pot of coffee will do.’
‘Right.’
The two cars sped on, mingling with the London-bound traffic on the M4 motorway.
Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre, RAF Brampton, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Richter followed Kemp down a short passage which ended in a closed door bearing the legends ‘Classified area. No unauthorized personnel permitted beyond this point.’ Kemp stopped at a small window in the right-hand wall and addressed it. ‘Squadron Leader Kemp. I’d like a visitor’s pass for Commander Richter.’ He beckoned Richter to the window. ‘Sign here, please, and put your name and rank in these columns.’
Richter complied, after which he received a bright red card, plastic covered, bearing a large black letter ‘V’ and a rather smaller ‘4’ in exchange for his Navy ID card. The door was secured by an electric lock actuated from the other side of the window; it clicked open and Richter followed Kemp through.
In the windowless Viewing Room, Kemp picked up a telephone and dialled a number. ‘Squadron Leader Kemp. Commander Richter is with me in the Viewing Room, and we’d like to run the Blackbird films as soon as possible. I’d also like the principal PI officers who’ve worked on the films to attend. Oh, and rustle up some coffee while you’re at it.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘It’ll take about ten minutes or so to set up the projectors with the films, so I’ll start off by giving you a general briefing on what you’ll be seeing.’
‘Thanks,’ Richter replied. ‘One question before you start: I guessed from your office door label that you’re the Section Security Officer – SSyO – but you seem quite familiar with these films and how the RAF got hold of them. Are you a PI as well?’
Kemp walked to a lectern at the end of the room and leaned on it. ‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘Virtually everyone here is Photographic Interpretation trained; Section Security Officer is very much a secondary duty. I spend most of my time peering through a shifty-scope or staring at a computer monitor.’
‘What the hell’s a shifty-scope?’ Richter asked.
‘Sorry, RAF slang,’ Kemp said, grinning. ‘It’s a series of stacking magnifying lenses that you place on a photograph or negative on an illuminated table. To increase the magnification you add another lens, and then another and so on. It can be used in both PI and photogrammetrical analysis – that’s the use of photographs in survey work. Actually, these days we usually employ computers to analyse images. You’ll be pleased to hear that you won’t have to use either. We’ve had everything transferred onto a thirty-five millimetre fine-grain filmstrip which we can run through a high-resolution projector, and that’s what you’ll be seeing.’
He opened his notebook while Richter looked around. The room was arranged like a grown-up corridor, long and narrow, about forty feet by fifteen. At the far end, beyond the lectern, was a projection screen, with a series of long narrow ceiling-mounted boxes directly in front of it, which presumably held maps or other visual displays.
Kemp took a short stick with a hook on its end and pulled one down, confirming Richter’s deduction when a map of north-western Russia unfurled on a kind of roller blind. Richter was sitting in the front row of six rows of seats, with five seats in each. The room’s illumination was supplied by fluorescent tube lighting on the ceiling. The wall behind the seats had three small square glass windows through which films could be projected.
‘Before I begin,’ Kemp asked, ‘please state your security clearance.’
‘CTS – Cosmic Top Secret.’
Kemp nodded. ‘Fine. The majority of this briefing is classified Secret, but there are certain aspects of it that are graded Top Secret, and the caveat UK Eyes Only applies to the whole. Would you please confirm that you understand that?’
‘Understood,’ Richter replied.
‘First, the basic route. As I presume you’ve already been briefed on this I won’t go into too much detail, just remind you of the salient points.’ Kemp took a collapsible pointing stick from the lectern, extended it and pointed to the top centre of the map. ‘The Blackbird crossed the Russian border about here at Amderma and, from the route details supplied by the USAFE, the filming started here at Vorkuta and the cameras operated until the aircraft reached this point here at Shenkursk, almost due south of Arkhangel’sk.’
Kemp traced the route across the map with the pointer. ‘There don’t seem to be any particularly good reasons for doing a surveillance run over that region – I can think of lots of bits of Russia I would far rather see in glorious black and white under my shifty-scope – so our first thought was that maybe the Americans were trying to sell us a pup by giving us incorrect route details. However, even a cursory examination of the films ruled that one out. There are numerous points of agreement between the films and the topography of the area, and we’re satisfied that the route specified is that actually flown by the Blackbird.
‘We also considered the possibility that the aircraft was off-route, but that is so unlikely as to be ridiculous. Apart from the Aurora, the SR–71A is the most advanced surveillance aircraft in the world, and all Blackbird crews are highly experienced. If they photographed this bit of Russia, then this bit of Russia is the bit they wanted to photograph. The final possibility, that of a substitution of films, we also ruled out, as the films were removed from the cameras and developed under JARIC supervision. So, we know that the films show whatever the Americans were looking for. Assuming it’s there, of course.
‘Total filming time was a little under twenty-three minutes, which gave us a good deal of film to work on. We assumed that the Americans would have started the cameras well before their objective, and stopped them a reasonable distance after the aircraft had passed over it, so we’ve been concentrating on the central portion of the film, after a preliminary survey of the entire route.
‘Four cameras were used by the Americans, of two different types. The two main cameras were the normal high-resolution models as used in most aircraft of this type, similar to those used in the so-called spy satellites. The two in the Blackbird were of a very advanced design, particularly in the optical set-up, and from an examination of them and the films we have assessed that these cameras approach the theoretical maximum possible resolution.’
‘Which is?’ Richter interrupted.
‘It’s determined by the laws of physics and the height of the platform. For a satellite at normal orbital elevation, it’s just under four inches. The Blackbird flies a lot lower, of course, so the maximum resolution is greater – in this case, a little under two inches. To put that into slightly more comprehensible terminology, if you were sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper and one of these cameras took a photograph of you from fifteen miles up, an analyst would not quite be able to read the headlines in your paper, but he would almost certainly be able to identify what newspaper it was.’
‘That,’ said Richter, ‘is very impressive.’
‘You’d be surprised at what the eye in the sky can see, and has been able to see for some time, actually. Those cameras were working independently, taking one frame every half second, one using a very high-speed monochrome film and the other high-speed colour, and covering a narrow strip of territory. The other two cameras were of a much less sophisticated design, and were working together, exposing one frame simultaneously every two seconds. They were obviously intended to supply stereoscopic photographs of the whole area that the Blackbird was flying over.’
As Kemp paused
there was a knock at the door, so coincidentally timed that Richter knew whoever it was had waited until Kemp had stopped talking before knocking. The door opened and two men and a girl filed in. Richter looked at her first, because he always looked at women first. She was wearing the uniform of a sub lieutenant WRNS – what used to be third officer in the old days before the Navy began taking women to sea – and Richter was surprised to see her. Not her personally, but a Wren in a highly restricted RAF establishment. She had piercing blue eyes and a mass of blonde hair presently tightly constrained in the regulation bun on the back of her head, but which Richter had no doubt would tumble free as soon as she was off duty. The two RAF officers, in contrast, paled into insignificance. Kemp ushered them all in and made the introductions.
‘Lieutenant Commander Richter, let me introduce the team which has been burning the midnight oil over these films since Sunday evening. First of all, Sub Lieutenant Penny Walters, who is here on exchange from the Royal Navy.’
She smiled at Richter. He gave her his nice smile and turned to Kemp. ‘I don’t know what you exchanged her for, but I think you got the better end of the deal.’
Kemp laughed and she blushed slightly.
‘The home team consists of Flight Lieutenant Keith George and Flying Officer Dick Tracey. Dick’s real name is William, but he’s been known as Dick since the day he arrived at Cranwell, and I think he’s finally started to get used to it.’
Richter said he was pleased to meet them all, and got a chorus of ‘Good morning, sir’ in return. Kemp announced that he had almost finished the general briefing, and invited the three of them to take seats while he wrapped up the loose ends.
‘What you will see,’ Kemp continued, ‘is an unusual presentation of the photographs we received. As I said, we invariably view stills taken from a picture sequence on an illuminated table through a shifty-scope or on a computer monitor. You’re not PI-trained, and we didn’t think you would be able to learn anything that way, so we decided to radically change the presentation.
‘There was also the problem of the vast amount of material we had available. As you will appreciate, with the cameras taking one frame every half second, the total mass of the film is huge, almost three thousand frames. What we’ve done is effectively condense it by photographing the frames with a thirty-five millimetre cine camera – video doesn’t have the definition we need – and then we can project it as a movie film. The effect you’ll see is as if you were actually in the moving aircraft, looking downwards through a very good pair of binoculars at the landscape underneath you.’
Kemp tugged at the base of the map of Russia and it rattled back into its box, then he pressed a button on the lectern and spoke into the microphone. ‘Are you ready, projectionist?’ There was a muffled grunt from a speaker on the rear wall, and Kemp sat down beside Richter. The lights dimmed – the projectionist obviously had a rheostat control – and the screen at the end of the room was suddenly brilliantly illuminated by white light. A few flickers, then the title sequence ran. The screen went dark and Richter leaned forward.
Less than a minute later he leaned back again. He didn’t know exactly what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t the incomprehensible melange of blacks, whites and various shades of grey that were moving jerkily across the screen. It made absolutely no sense to him, and he said as much to Kemp.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Kemp replied. ‘PI is definitely an acquired art.’ He went to the lectern and spoke into the microphone. ‘Freeze it.’ The film flickered for a second or two, then stopped. Kemp pointed at the screen. ‘Can you identify anything on that?’
Richter studied it carefully. It looked to him more like a surrealist painting than anything else. A bad surrealist painting, possibly hanging upside down. He shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘Penny, would you mind?’
‘Not at all, sir.’ Penny Walters got up and walked forward to the lectern. Taking another pointing stick, this one with a tiny light in the end, she turned to the screen.
Among the blacks, whites and greys on the photograph Richter could pick out three definable features; a meandering line running more or less north-west, assuming that the top of the screen was north which, on reflection, he decided it probably wasn’t. There was a small squarish grey blob in the bottom right-hand corner, and a larger, darker oblong patch just above the blob. It was all as clear as gravy as far as he was concerned. Sub Lieutenant Walters, however, seemed unperturbed.
‘This was taken early in the run, a few miles to the south-west of Vorkuta. The diagonal line here is the course of a river, and if you look here and here you can clearly see two feeder streams. The river was fairly dry when this film was taken. This is shown by the irregular outline of the banks and the colour changes – the dark in the centre is fairly shallow water while the slightly lighter outline is drying mud. The much lighter area is the riverbank.’
She moved the illuminated pointer down a little. ‘This square structure is the remains of a large hut, possibly originally used as a barn or byre. There isn’t sufficient left standing to clearly indicate its original purpose, but its size – about fifty feet by thirty – would suggest that it was probably a small barn. The very large dark oblong patch adjacent to the remains is a once-cultivated but now overgrown field. The darker colour is caused by the increased weed and grass growth after the fertilization of the soil that would have taken place during cultivation. There is little else of note on the frame – just fairly typical early summer tundra.’
Richter couldn’t think of anything remotely sensible to say, so he didn’t. Penny Walters smiled at him. ‘That may seem like magic, sir, but I’m very familiar with this film, and I’ve had the benefit of studying it frame by frame under high magnification.’
Richter turned to Kemp. ‘Perhaps you could talk me through the rest of it. It obviously won’t make a great deal of sense to me, but I’d like to see it anyway.’
‘Certainly. In fact, as Penny is already at the screen, she can supply the running commentary. OK, Penny? Projectionist – run it.’
Ten minutes later lights came on again in the room and Penny returned to her seat. Kemp asked if it had been any help.
‘Well, not really,’ Richter replied honestly. He thought for a few seconds. ‘I suppose you’ve done comparison studies with previous satellite films of the area?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Kemp. ‘There haven’t been many for the last two months or so, because that area has had a fair degree of cloud cover, but there appear to have been no significant changes since the last set of high-level pictures.’
‘OK,’ Richter said, ‘forget about significant changes. Were there any changes at all?’
‘Of course. There are always minor changes, like vehicles parked in different places, houses that sprout sheds or porches, or lose them, but nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I’m aware. Have any of you seen anything that seems unusual?’
The two RAF officers shook their heads, looking slightly bored. Penny Walters didn’t shake her head, which Kemp and Richter both noticed.
‘Penny?’
She grinned, somewhat shyly. ‘Well, there was something, but I’m sure it’s of no real significance.’
She paused, and Kemp prompted her. ‘Trust the blasted Navy to see something that the RAF missed. Come on, Penny, what was it?’
‘Well, it’s not anything that’s on this film,’ she gestured towards the screen at the end of the room. ‘It’s just I noticed on a couple of the most recent satellite films that there had been a number of vehicles in a location close to the centre of the area the Blackbird filmed.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing, really. Just a bunch of vehicles.’ There was a long and slightly prickly silence. Penny Walters apparently felt the need to defend herself. ‘Commander Richter did say he wanted details of any unusual activity.’
‘That’s true,’ Richter said. ‘What sort of vehicles – military or civilian?’
&n
bsp; ‘Both,’ she replied. ‘There was one civilian lorry which appeared in the same place on two successive films, and quite a lot of other trucks, mainly military. Oh, and what looked like construction equipment.’
‘What do you mean “looked like”?’ Kemp asked sharply. ‘Either it was construction equipment or it wasn’t.’
Penny coloured slightly. ‘It was construction equipment – a digger and a bulldozer – and it arrived on two low loaders. What I meant was that it wasn’t used as far as I could see. It stayed loaded on the transporters in all the frames I saw.’
‘Peculiar,’ Richter said. ‘Were there any signs of vehicles – these or any others – in the same area in the Blackbird film?’
‘No, sir. None at all.’
Kemp nodded. ‘I agree. It is peculiar, but it doesn’t sound significant. It could, to offer a realistic and simple explanation, mean that the Russians were thinking about starting a housing project there and changed their minds because of problems with the terrain.’
Penny shook her head decisively. ‘No, sir, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘The location was way out in the tundra, nowhere near any proper roads. If they had been going to do any major construction they would have had to spend millions of roubles on roads.’
Kemp nodded. ‘OK, let’s look at other possibilities. You didn’t see the construction equipment used, so its presence there might be irrelevant. Or, perhaps, the civilian lorries had broken down or got stuck in mud and they used the bulldozer to pull them out.’
‘But,’ Richter interrupted, ‘if the site was so remote, what were civilian lorries doing out there? And Penny said there were several vehicles – some of them military. If it had just been a breakdown, they would only have needed a recovery vehicle, or two at the most.’
‘That’s true,’ Kemp replied. ‘I’m just exploring possibilities. It might be worth looking into, but I don’t think it’s worth running the Blackbird film again. Penny has already said there are no vehicles located in that area, so we wouldn’t see anything. I think the way forward is for us to run detailed comparisons of all available films of that general area and try to deduce what the vehicles were doing there. In fact, as Penny spotted this, she can do it, because I’ve got plenty of other work building up.’ Kemp rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘Well, I think that’s it. Unless you have any other questions, Commander?’ Kemp seemed eager to get back to his ‘In’ tray, or perhaps he just wanted Richter off the premises.
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