“Typically? What do you mean by that?”
“With a lot of bad luck, they might be in just the wrong position as the error occurs. At night, for instance, very low, fast, in a tight bank or maybe they’re not monitoring the flight at the time, but…”
“But what?”
Stafford took a seat on the other side of Kilton’s desk. “I don’t think we have a choice here, Mark. As I told you yesterday, we saw this in the lab, early on. The laser itself fluctuated briefly, but minutely. They called it a flutter. As we designed and built the full scale versions, the magnitude of the flutter stayed the same and so became insignificant. And we thought it had just gone, refined away by a better build. But apparently not. The problem, Mark, is that we don’t know what causes it. Our best option is to redesign the programme that sits between the laser and the autopilot to tell false readings from real ones. At the moment, how to do that is beyond us. And even if we did redesign it, that would mean starting again on the flying trials. High altitude, not connected to the autopilot while we build up the readings. All those hours flown again. To get back to where we are now, from my experience of how long it took to get here, I’d say we’ll need six to nine months in the workshop, and another six to nine of early airborne trials.”
“A year and a half? Out of the question.”
“Then, you carry on.” Stafford lowered his voice. “Nothing’s without risk, Mark.”
Kilton propped his elbows on the desk and interlocked his fingers.
“We pause now, Stafford, we lose it. The Yanks will have their breakthrough soon enough, and when they do, they’ll drop the order.”
“That would finish us. We’ve sunk too much into this.”
“That’s not my problem, Stafford. You made your decisions.”
“Wouldn’t it finish TFU, too? You don’t exactly bask in the support of your superiors. I think a lot of them would love to topple this secret empire you’re building. On the other hand, you deliver a multi-million pound contract for the government…”
Kilton picked up the piece of paper and looked at the handwritten numbers. He turned it over in his hand for a few moments.
“The point is, Guiding Light gives us an advantage over the Soviets. You heard Leivers. It could end the Cold War, and then how many lives are saved? Millions.” He stood up. “Let’s not get bogged down by the risk to a few unlucky crews.” He screwed the square of paper into a tight ball and pushed it deep into his trouser pocket. “How many people know about this… flutter?”
“The team are aware it exists, but they believe it’s insignificant. Only me and a junior technician know the truth, and he won’t be a problem. We’ll incinerate the printouts and demagnetise the tapes. There’s hardly anyone working at Cambridge, anyway. I’ve moved the annual shutdown forward to accommodate the production. The mainframe goes into maintenance tomorrow.” Stafford got to his feet and picked up his briefcase. “Of course, Mark, there’s your crew here. Not much gets past Millie.”
“Leave him to me.”
“Just like the old days at Tangmere, the troops always feared you. I feared you, come to that.”
Kilton smiled. “Just like Tangmere, Stafford, we’re at war. The only people who need to be scared are the enemy. And those who get in the way.”
MILLIE SAT down at his favourite admin desk underneath the clock. Staring at the wall, he allowed the adrenaline from the meeting to subside.
After a few minutes, the admin officer appeared.
“Audit?”
Millie nodded and followed him over to the secure cabinets for the weekly check.
“Shouldn’t take long,” Millie said, looking at the bare shelves.
He noted the two tapes from yesterday’s flight and checked the paperwork against the list. Everything had to be accounted for.
The only contents of the cabinet they didn’t count were the number of blank tapes.
He crouched down to check the bottom shelf. Only about twenty left. They would need more.
The junior officer locked the cabinets and Millie called the department at DF Blackton from his desk.
As the call connected, he had a thought and quickly glanced around the office. No-one was nearby.
“Yes, hello, it’s Squadron Leader Milford. RAF West Porton.”
“Hello.”
“Yes, ah, a quick one. We sent over about one hundred and seventy hours of records on magnetic tape yesterday, I believe?”
“Yes, that’s right. We ran them through the computer until the small hours.”
“So I understand. I haven’t actually seen the results, and as the project leader I would like to study them if possible. Would you be able to send them over?”
The man at the other end laughed.
“The results are about two yards high. Not sure we could easily send them anywhere.”
“I see. But were there any conclusions?”
“Let me check, one of my junior colleagues stayed late. Hold on a mo.”
The phone handset clunked down onto a hard surface.
Ewan Stafford appeared out of Kilton’s office.
Millie placed a hand over the receiver and watched as Stafford headed to the door, his path taking him just behind his desk.
Jean came running out of the office.
“Mr Stafford, can I get your travel receipts?”
Just two yards behind him, Stafford and the secretary got involved in a discussion about petrol prices.
“Squadron Leader Milford?”
“Hello, yes?” Millie turned toward the wall in front of him and leaned over the desk, desperately trying to put some distance between him and the Blackton MD.
“It’s David Richards here. I’m the manager of the computer room. I understand your enquiry, but you will have to speak directly to Mr Stafford.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother him. I was just after the results from last night.”
“Mr Stafford has them and I understand he reported to you this morning. If there’s anything else, you will have to take it up with Mr Stafford directly. I’m sorry I cannot be of any more help.”
The phone line went dead.
To his left, Stafford disappeared through the swing doors toward the car park.
Slowly, Millie replaced the receiver.
For two full minutes he barely moved, one finger lightly tapping the desk.
The admin officer interrupted him again. “When are they coming?”
“Pardon?”
“The blanks? You ordered them?”
“Oh, no. Sorry, Peter. I’ll do it now.” Peter shot him a quizzical look. “That was another call I was on. I’ll phone Blackton straight away.”
He jotted down some numbers. The last hundred hours covered just over three hundred and twenty-one tapes, about twenty minutes per reel.
They had another hundred hours to go.
Another three hundred and thirty tapes should cover it. He underlined the number.
“But then, what’s the point?” he muttered quietly to himself.
He looked across to Mark Kilton’s office in time to see Rob and Speedy going in. Scanning the rest of the office he saw Jock MacLeish, Red Brunson and others, all in flying gear, ready to go.
Millie looked back down at his notes.
One hundred hours.
Three hundred and thirty reels.
He called up the Blackton computer department again, and ordered four hundred and fifty blank reels.
THE AFTERNOON MEETINGS WERE A DISTRACTION, as he and a small team went through future projects: a stronger braking parachute for the Vulcan, rough landing trials for the Argosy, a larger fin for the Blue Steel missile.