The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ edge of the board (he could draw any shape, this boy). Inside the rectangle he wrote ‘SVMF’. ‘Here there is the Super Volt Micro Flash mechanism, the SUVOM which for a millionth of a microsecond builds up enough voltage to trip the mechanism. Now as you see, this power is taken into the bomb,’ he drew a long squeaky chalkline joining the bomb to the mechanism, ‘by the umbilical cord. Without the A-bomb trigger there will be no fallout. This will be the first entirely clean bomb. OK?’

The major carefully picked himself a fresh piece of chalk and I sneaked a look at my watch. It was 6.10 P.M. ‘Size,’ he said. ‘What size bomb is this one we have here? This is a fifty-megaton bomb.² In terms of the destructive area, this is a bomb that would take out a whole city and make the “thin man” look like a dud. We expect Type 2 destruction – that is to say everything flammable gone and severe damage to metal and brick across a thirty-five-mile radius.’ Someone at the other end of the table said, ‘Diameter,’ and Humpty Dumpty said, ‘No; radius!’ There was a low whistle. I guessed that the officer who said diameter had been asked to do so, but it was quite a statement just the same. The major pressed on. ‘In terms of territory it means that a bomb in Bernalillo brings Type 2 as far as Santa Fé and Los Lunas (these were towns in New Mexico near Los Alamos which almost everyone knew in terms of flesh, food, and furlough). There were more exclamations. ‘Or to take another example, from Sacramento right the way down to Redwood City, and that includes the Sheraton Palace.’ It was a private joke and someone laughed at it. The little major was quite enjoying his lecture now, what with everyone being awake and all. ‘For the sake of our guests, I’ll give you another demonstration that may help. Think of Type 2 from Southend to Reading.’ He pronounced it Reeding. He looked at me and I said, ‘If it’s all the same to you I’ll think of it from Santa Fé to Los Lunas.’

      The little major gave me a millionth of a microsecond smile and said, ‘Yes – sir, we had to select a jumbo size atoll for this baby. We’re not commuting between here and the shot island every day for the ride. OK?’ I said it was OK, by me.

      Next, Battersby stood up and the little major collected his notes together, lit up a two-bit cigar and sat down while a provost lieutenant came in with a little compressed air machine and sprayed water over the blackboard before giving it a thorough cleaning. Other officers told of detection methods used to judge the size and positions of explosions, and how they intended to jam the Russian detection devices like the radar that detects changes in the electric charges in the ionosphere, and the recording barometers that record air and sound waves and produce microbarographs, and the radio signals that are picked up from the release of radio energy at the time of the explosion. The standard and most reliable detection system of analysing fallout residue to find the substances from which the bomb had been constructed was ruled out in this case because it was to be a ‘clean’ bomb.

      Battersby told us the structure of the security arrangements, the echelon of command, the dates the firing was likely to take place, and showed us some beautiful diagrams. Then the meeting broke up into sub-meetings. I was to go off with Skip Henderson and a Lt Dolobowski and Jean, while Dalby went into secret session with Battersby’s assistant. Skip said that we may as well go across to his quarters where the fans worked properly and there was a bottle of Scotch. A few of the eager beavers down the other end of the table were destroying notes they had made, by burning them with Messrs Pestpruf’s matches.

      Skip had a comfortable little den in the section of camp that came nearest to the sea. A tin cupboard held his uniforms, and an old air-conditioning unit sat astride the window-sill beating the air cold. On the army table were a few books; German grammar; Trial by Ordeal, by Caryl Chessman; two paperback westerns, Furnace Installation – a Guide, and A Century of Ribald Stories. On the window-sill was a bottle of Scotch, gin, some assorted mixes, a glass containing a dozen sharpened pencils, and an electric razor.

      From the window I could see a mile or so up the beach one way, and nearly half a mile the other. In both directions the beach was still encrusted with debris, and a flimsy jetty limped painfully into the water. The sun was a dark red fireball, just like the one we were trying to create on tower island a few miles north.

      Skip poured us all a generous shot of Black Label, and even remembered to leave the ice out of mine.

      ‘So that’s the way it is,’ he said. ‘You and this young lady here decide to catch a little sunshine at John Government’s expense?’ He waited for me to speak.

      I spoke. ‘It’s just that I have so many unsolved crimes on my hands that I have become the unsolved crime expert – anyone with an unsolved crime on their hands, they send for me.’

      ‘And you solve it?’

      ‘No, only file it.’

      Skip poured me another drink, looked at the dark-eyed little lieutenant, and said, ‘I hope you’ve got a large family economy size file with you this trip.’ He sat down on the bed and unlocked his brief-case. I noticed the steel liner inside it. ‘No one can tell you the whole picture because we haven’t put it together yet. But we are in a spot; the stuff we are getting back from EW 192 is verbatim stuff we are putting in our files. Verbatim. No sooner is a discovery made in our labs than it is broadcast to the other side of the world.’

      The CIA numbers its rooms with a prefix telling which wing it’s situated in. Room 192 in the East Wing is really a large suite of rooms and its job is relaying information from the heart of foreign governments. It deals only with agents getting stuff from sacrosanct crevices available to highest-level foreign officials. It would certainly be the best possible way of checking the US’s loss of its own information.

      ‘It’s from labs? It’s strictly scientific information then?’

      Skip pinched his nostrils. ‘Seems to be at present.’

      Jean had made herself comfortable in the nonarmy-style wicker chair. She had that quiet, composed, rather stupid look that I had noticed before. It meant she was committing the bulk of the conversation to memory. She came back slowly to life now.

      ‘You said “at present”. I take it the volume of this stuff is increasing. How fast?’

      ‘It’s increasing, and fast enough for the whole department to be very worried – can I leave it at that?’ It was a rhetorical question.

      Jean asked, ‘When did you first suspect there was a multiple leak? It is a multiple?’

      ‘A multiple? I’ll say it is – it’s a multiple multiple. It’s from a range of subjects so vast there isn’t one college, let alone one lab, that could have access to it.’

      The dark-eyed Dolobowski went for some more ice from the fridge. Skip produced one of those vast cartons of cigarettes and talked Jean into trying a Lucky. He lit his own and Jean’s, and the dark-eyed one gave us more ice and Scotch all round.

      ‘The first leaks,’ Skip mused. ‘Yes.’

      Dolobowski sat himself back in the chair and it was suddenly clear to me that he had some sort of authority over Skip. That was why he’d said nothing while the dark-eyed one was out of the room. He was here to make sure that Jean and I came away with just the amount of information we were allowed. I didn’t blame anyone for this, after all we hadn’t told the Americans that we were having the same problem. In fact, goodness knows what cock-and-bull story Dalby had cooked up to get along here. Skip was staring defensively into space and blowing gently on the ember of his cigarette.

      ‘With these international conferences it’s difficult,’ the dark-eyed one had decided to answer. His voice, СКАЧАТЬ