The Cummings Report

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  Sam spoke without turning round from his work. “Don’t say you’re inventing television all over again,” he said drily. “Baird did that quite some time ago.”

  Brian looked at him blankly. “What do you mean,television? I’ve just speeded up a recording of something we picked up on the radio. We’ve been trying to break it down — it’s some kind of code.”

  Sam put down the screwdriver slowly. “Mr. Mockridge, are you telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about? What you have got on that tape is the vision signal of a television programme.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look,” said Sam patiently, “it may be the middle of the night but I’m not absolutely asleep. If you connected the signal, that normally goes to the screen of a TV set, to a loudspeaker instead, that is the noise you would get.”

  “Television eh? Slowed down and used as a jamming signal. By jove, it’s possible. Tell me, Sam; if I connected this tape to a TV set, would it give me a picture?”

  Sam pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Very unlikely. Limited bandwidth. It needs very special apparatus to record a television picture on tape.”

  “But would I get any sort of pictureat all? Enough to recognize what programme it was?”

  Sam stared hard at him: “Well, I don’t know what all this is about. But if you were very lucky you might get something.”

  Brian snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute, though. This originated from America. They don’t use the same system as we do, do they?”

  “No. We use a 405-line system; theirs is 525.”

  “Could you modify an English set?Now.Tonight?’

  Sam nearly dropped the chassis of the oscilloscope that he was holding in his hands. “Now Iknow you’re crazy!”

  “Well, how long would it take?”

  “A couple of days, by the time you’d got it lined up.”

  Mockridge fingered his chins. “That’s not good enough. We’ve got to get hold of an American set. Now where the hell would we find one?”

  “You won’t get hold of one this side of the Atlantic,” said Sam, convinced that the notoriously eccentric cipher research specialist had finally gone off his head.

  “Not this side of the Atlantic,” repeated Brian thoughtfully. Then he had an inspiration. “Not this side of the Atlantic! By jingo! What we need is the transatlantic telephone — they have a direct recording of the original; it will be of much better quality than ours. That way we won’t be bothered by the problems of fading and so on. If we can find out what the picture is the two should cancel out pretty well.”

  “Of course,” said Sam, “it’s plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Mockridge. And the answer is — ‘What was the name of the engine driver?’”

  “Here you are,” said Miles, entering with a tray, “enough eggs and bacon to feed the fleet.”

  “Miles! We’vegotit — Sam and me! That noise we picked up was the sound a television picture would make if you heard thepicture instead of the sound.”

  “Just how,” demanded Miles, “can youhear a picture?”

  “Because it’s made up of a number of rapid electrical impulses, just like anything else carried over the radio waves. But don’t let’s waste time on that now,” protested Brian wheezily. “Can you raise your friends in New York, or Washington, or wherever it is? Because what they’ve got to do is to speed up this tape recording and play it into one of their TV sets. They should get a picture, with luck. Not a very good picture, but enough to see what the programme was.”

  “Why can’t we do that here?” Miles was now completely alert.

  “Because this must have been an American programme, and they use a different system.”

  “Supposing you do get a picture, what then?”

  Brian jabbed a fork into a fat-sodden egg. It protested effectively by squirting some of the yoke on to his (formerly) green shirt. This did not deter him, and his mouth was soon full of the well-tried formula for night-work. “Thanks,” he said, only just decipherably, “just what I needed, old boy!” He chewed until the obstruction in his mouth was at least partially cleared. ‘Ifwe get a picture,” he said at length, “it must be one that is available elsewhere. That would be essential at the receiving end. In other words, if I am right about the principle they are using, it must originally have been afilmedortele-recorded programme. The method of receiving the scrambled signals is then quite simple. At the far end, they re-televise the same film, slow it down, and put the result on tape. That takes the place of machine number two in our little experiment earlier on — remember it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember, we played both machines at once, and that made it possible to hear the concealed voice —your voice, with some insulting comment or other — over the din of the ‘jamming’. So ...”

  Miles silenced him with a protesting hand. “Save it, Brian. I don’t understand a word. You’re too blasted technical. But I get the gist of what you want me to do. I’ll get Colonel Frean on the phone, and you can explain it all to him. If you’re right, he’ll be standing me a slap-up meal atThe White Tower before long ...”

  *

  “Let me know the moment you have that tape machine rigged up to a TV set,” commanded Colonel Frean to his assistant.

  It was now just after 8 p.m. in Washington — and 1 a.m. in London. This difference of five hours was to make a great deal of difference to the course of events in the immediate future.

  Frean walked down the brightly lit corridor to the hall at the end, where the sergeant on duty sat at a desk. He showed the man a buff envelope, marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL:IMMEDIATE.’

  “When did this note arrive from Major Russell’s office?” he snapped.

  “Why, I don’t know, sir,” said the sergeant. “I’ve not been on duty long.”

  “It wasn’t you that left it in my office?”

  “Well, yes, sir, it was. I found it on the desk here.”

  “On thedesk? Well, you get on the phone to the signal office and find out why it wasn’t given to me personally.” The man jumped to it. “Yes,sir,” he said, dialling the number. He looked up at the Colonel. “Maybe they thought you’d gone home, sir.”

  “Are you not aware,” said the Colonel, “that I am the Duty Staff Officer for the night?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Holy mackerel! What a way to run an army! You should have a copy of the duty rota ...”

  “... excuse me, sir ... Hallo, signal office? I got a package here addressed to Colonel Frean. Serial 507 stroke 1900. Colonel wants to know why it was not delivered direct to him ... Sure, he’s the duty officer tonight ... Okay, I’ll wait; better make it fast.”

  Frean leant over the desk, supporting his weight on his clenched fists. “Give me the other phone, sergeant ... thank you.” He waggled the receiver-rest impatiently. “I want the transport company, please.Transport company!” he repeated, his suddenly raised voice making the desk-sergeant jump. “Yeah, that’s right. Hallo ... transport officer? Good. This is Colonel Frean. I want to know if your office provided transport for Major Russell this evening ... you did? Where to? Uhuh! Where was he heading for, do you know?Pittsburgh? Did he say on whose authority, by any chance? No, certainly not mine, Captain ... No, of course not, it’s not your duty to query a staff officer’s reasons for travelling to Mars, if he wants to I suppose. Did he say why he was going? ... didn’t he sayanything? ... No, if he had told me I wouldn’t be asking you. All I got was a note saying he was going away until tomorrow, which was remarkably kind of him! Thanks, Captain.”

  “Signal officer says there was an error on somebody’s part,” said the sergeant, replacing the instrument. “He’s on his way up.”

  “All right, Sergeant,” said Frean. “And next time you are on duty here, make sure you know who the duty officer is. And if there are signals lying about markedImmediate, don’t just pretend they aren’t there, or I’ll plant an atom bomb in the sergeant’s quarters that will make Hiroshima seem l
ike a pop-gun.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Frean turned on his heel and walked back to the Secret Section, past the special guards, and through the door markedCipher Investigation. Through another swing door and he was in his own private office. Almost immediately the buzzer went. Frean clicked up the intercom, switch.

  “Frean speaking.”

  “Guard here, sir. Captain Powell to see you.”

  “Is he the signal officer on duty? Then ask him to come in.”

  The young officer came in and saluted. “Sorry about the slip,” he said. “I’m afraid it was entirely my fault, sir.”

  “Good,” said Frean. “That takes care of that. Sit down, Powell. Smoke if you want to.” They lit their cigarettes.

  “Tell me; are you on all night?” asked Frean.

  “We’re on shift,” said Powell. “Come off duty at 0200.”

  “Roger. Well, I have a feeling we may be having a busy night, so keep them alive down there!”

  “Yessir! What’s the panic?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know. But there’s one thing you can do right now. Find out if Major Russell got any long-distance phone calls this afternoon. If necessary, send out some men in cars to pick up the operators who would have been on duty at that time. I’m particularly interested in a call from Pittsburgh, but get anything you can. Then get on to the Officers’ Messes and find out if Major Russell talked to anyone before he left.”

  “What time did he go?”

  “A couple of hours ago. Took a transport company’s car to the airport.”

  The Captain got up. “Maybe he’s got a woman in Pittsburgh!” he observed.

  Frean looked up grimly. “For his sake, I hope he has. Major Russell was suspended from duty on my orders today; so he has no authority whatever for travelling anywhere on military duty.”

  Powell gave a low whistle. “Wasn’t he the guy who got that scientist indicted?”

  “It’s precisely because of that that I have recommended his transfer from this headquarters,” said Frean. “I will not say more than that, except that I have recently had cause to re-examine the evidence. For according to my information it seems that Buche (he was the scientist concerned) was, as we found, quite innocentbefore Major Russell’s ‘investigation’ — but evidently decided that he might as well get something for his money. He is now involved in something a great deal more factual than the figments of the zealous Major’s imagination led us to believe.”

  Powell said: “Where did this Buche go to after leaving here? Wasn’t it Chicago?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Well, couldn’t the call have come from there?”

  “It could.”

  “But why should Buche ...”

  “... call up Major Russell? Was that what you were going to say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Frean tapped the desk with a paper-weight, fashioned out of the nose of a ballistic shell. Then he stopped it in mid-air. “Well,” he said expressionlessly, “we don’t know that hedid yet, do we? After all, Russell’s gone to Pittsburgh.”

  “Which happens to be a stop on the railroad between here and Chicago.”

  “Check. Tell you what, Captain. When you’ve set your wheels in motion, get hold of Buche’s number in Chicago and try and get his wife on the telephone.”

  “And when Mrs. Buche nearly has a heart attack ... ?”

  “... we’ll know part of the reason why Major Russell went to Pittsburgh! That’s right.”

  “May I ask you, sir, why you are so sure that Buche is involved?”

  Colonel Frean paused a moment. Then he said: “I may as well take you into my confidence, Captain. It was a small thing — such a small thing. It nearly always is.” Frean polished the shell-nose absently on the lapel of his jacket. “Well, I ran into Buche at a Scientists’ Convention a few weeks ago. You know, one of those slap-up, three-day balls they have at theRoosevelt Hotel, New York. Everybody comes to town, ostensibly to exchange thoughts and ideas, but a good many go for the Broadway shows. It’s a funny thing, but the busiest department in the organization of that outfit seems to be the one that deals in advance booking of theatre tickets — however, that’s all beside the point.

  “I was surprised to find Victor there; Russell and his buddies had made such mud out of the poor guy’s name that I didn’t think he would show his face. We got into conversation at the bar. I happened to have a copy of a magazine calledPeriscope — it’s just a small-time periodical my old university publish. There was an interesting little piece about Ben Hogan. I knew Buche used to be quite interested in the game, and I wanted to break the ice somehow — I think I was the only person who seemed prepared to speak to him at all.

  “Anyway, I turned to him and said: ‘Have you seen this thing inPeriscope?’ or something like that.

  “Well, he jumped about a half a mile and went as white as the Governor of Arkansas, until I gently explained what I meant. He tried to cover up his indiscretion, and I made it look easy for him. I didn’t want him to believe I suspected anything. You know about PERISCOPE of course, don’t you?”

  “Just that it’s a code word, sir. If anything comes in from the cipher office marked in that way we have to treat it better than top-secret.”

  “Yes, well, that’s all you’re supposed to know. And Buche isn’t even meant to know as much as that. And yet, when he thought I was referring to it he revealed in that moment that PERISCOPE meant a great deal to him.

  “Very reluctantly, I decided to have him watched. I liked the guy, but I have always stuck by Mr. Coward’s maxim, who warns against the moment when

  ...Once you begin

  To let sentiment in ...

  though he didn’t mean it quite in that context.

  “We found Buche was making regular trips to New York, but we never found out where — except that our man once followed him to a place calledPete’s Diner, in Brooklyn. But Buche just went in, had a snack, and left shortly afterwards, using the back exit. After that we lost him — the exit leads out through a back alley into a neighbouring street and it’s awful dark around there at night.

  “Sometimes he would disappear into the very bowels of New York City for a week at a time, before returning to his wife and family in Chicago. He’s got two lovely kids, by the way.

  “Then suddenly this afternoon, he hops into his car and drives to Union Station, where he boards the 3.10 train for Washington — at least, he buys a ticket through to Washington. Why? He hates Washington. He swore to me, at that convention, that he would never go near the place again. So if he’s not going to Washington, where is he going? Pittsburgh? And so is Major Russell!

  “Now you can see why I wish I had received that message sooner. The very reason I decided Russell must go — and at once — was because Buche has come under suspicion and I know Russell has got his knife right into him. He, more than anyone else, would like to bring in the bacon. But to me he is useless, for reasons that must be obvious to you. At any rate, I can’t discuss them.”

  “I think I can guess, sir. I ...know Major Russell.”

  “Quite.” Frean gazed penetratingly at the young Captain. “Tell me, Powell,” he said, “why do you think I’m telling you all this?”

  Powell grinned. “In anticipation of possible events tonight?”

  “Right! I want you to be thoroughly in the picture. We may have to call the fire engines out tonight, so don’t be caught with your pants down again. BecauseifVictor Buche is mixed up in this business about the theft of the British version of PERISCOPE, andifhe has decided to see Major Russell for the purpose I think he has, that seems to indicate to me that there is about to be what is known asaction, and plenty of it.”

  “You suspect that Buche intends to confess?”

  “Yes. And to his most bloodthirsty executioner. That is just the sort of self-punishment I would have expected Victor to go for. There’s one moreif, too.”

  The gr
in widened on Powell’s face. “Could that be anything to do with your sending for the TV set belonging to our rest room?” he demanded.

  Frean studied the old shell absently. “You know about these intercepts, don’t you?” he asked.

  “That stuff the monitor people picked up and taped?”

  “Yep. Well, believe it or not, it turned out to be a television signal, used for some sort of jamming. So we’re going to have a swell evening watching your TV. You can see that the set is being put to good use! And the bigif is just this: we think that those intercepted signals may directly concern the theft of PERISCOPE. And now I’m sure. You know why?

  “One time Buche suggested to me the idea of using TV signals as a means of scrambling. I said I thought it was impracticable! Well, I bet if we can unravel all that stuff on the tape, we’ll get Victor Buche’s voice, telling us exactly what we want to know.”

  There came a knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  It was the engineer. “We’ve got the apparatus set up, sir,” he said.

  “Do you think we’ll get a picture?”

  “We should get something, sir. The synchronizing pulse is quite clear on the tape recording.”

  “What about the speed of the tape?” asked Frean. “How will you know how fast to run it?”

  “That’s easy! The original signal must have been recorded at 30 inches per second. Our tape is meant to run at 7 1/2. Run it at 30, and we’re at first base. Because those sync, pulses are just four times too slow.”

  Frean turned to the Captain.

  “You get me that dope on Russell. It’s my night for the TV!”

  CHAPTER 19

  A SHORT time after 12.30 a.m. in London (and 7.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), a woman with a mole on her check stepped out of a taxi in a quiet street off Belgrave Square. She paid off the driver, leaving him an abominably small tip, and clacked along the empty road the rest of the way in her high-heeled shoes.

  Arriving at the entrance of a block of flats, she paused in the lighted hallway and fumbled in her bag for a key. She looked around furtively, made sure she was not seen, and entered the automatic lift. She had used it before, so she knew how to operate it. At the third floor the lift stopped. Again, she looked about her carefully. There did not seem to be anyone about. She went to the door of number thirty-three, put the key in the lock and opened it.