I kept on talking, giving them blocks of three with my head against the set and my nerves getting tight because it was going to be a fifteen-minute exchange of signals and I hadn't even raised an acknowledgement yet and as soon as anyone came down one of those ladder the whole mission was blown.
Treble two thrice.
All right, I was in the middle of seven thousand tons of steel girders waving a six-foot aerial around and trying to hit the ether with it while half a dozen diesel generators were pushing out enough electrostatic squelch to jam any transceiver within ten miles of here.
222 — 222
The riveter stopped and I hit the volume control in case Swordfish came through too strongly. The squirt of the welders kept up a low background so I thought I'd try it and spoke right against the mike, treble two, three blocks. Why the hell didn't those bastards -
345 — 345–345.
Swordfish.
Very faint. I acknowledged and turned up the volume a few degrees and waited. They were going to get Ferris. He wouldn't be far away. He'd give me fives: that was Mandarin. Sweat stinging my eyes. Nobody on the ladders. Oh for Christ sake come on, we're -
555 — 555–555.
Mandarin.
I went straight into the spiel.
We'd been Control-briefed to exchange signals totally in cypher when we were using the Swordfish radio, without any speech-code thrown in to expedite the transmission. The Admiralty was a bit edgy about having spooks on board one of Her Majesty's ships and they'd obviously told London that if we wanted to use the sparks we'd have to do it in strict hush. That was fair enough: they weren't used to having a couple of torn-arsed mudlarks playing about with their sub and the kind of stuff we'd be sending was pretty strong compared with the day-to-day signals normally going out — Have polished anchor — Please send buns for captain's birthday — so forth.
489 — 356–181.
Ferris was asking how I was and I told him to shut up and listen because I wanted to give him the whole picture before anyone came down here and stopped me.
389–376 — 210… Extending and reversing, leaving some of the transfers the right way round whenever they could stand in as a contraction… This isn't an oil rig it's a missile base… thinking up non-standard contractions when I thought Ferris would get it first go without risking delay while he queried it… No well-head and false flare stack and crude reservoirs… image from air would be perfect… basic armament for defence: six eight-inch naval guns camouflaged as lean gas coolers… main structure under modification… electronic and telemetric installations not yet completed… assume Tewson involved as technician or supervisor.
'Him and his slide-rule,' Nora had said.
Ferris shot me a couple of queries about crew strength and the type of missile and I told him I thought there was only a skeleton unit on board while the boffins sorted out the stuff for the console. I couldn't tell him anything about the actual missile except that I hadn't seen any exhaust ducts or heat shields. There might be Then the riveter started banging again and I nearly fell off the bloody girder and Ferris began complaining about the interference: the generators had been bad enough but this din was affecting the air acoustics as well as the signal and I was getting fed up.
209 — 376–177 — 286–164 — 1.
It threw me and then I got it: I'd read US print Polaris for US Sprint Polaris. Both missiles had a compressed gas launcher giving them a super-fast initial ascent with virtually no heat involved and getting them out of sight almost immediately and this could be the same type, which would explain why I couldn't see any exhaust ducts or shields.
He was asking me more about the camouflage but when I started off he cut in at the first interval and said he couldn't hear me through the jam so I told him to stand by and we sweated it out for twelve minutes till the riveter stopped and by that time I was right on the edge of my nerves because the logical time for a daily inspection of the minefield below me was first thing in the morning.
I turned down the volume for receive while Ferris put specific questions and then raised it for transmission and spoke close to the mike with the welders for background cover… configuration on both planes perfectly consistent with oil rig… telemetry requirements identical in many respects… giving similar installation images…
While I was filling in the picture it occurred to me that it made a certain amount of sense to build a missile base right on the doorstep of a UK possession and call it an oil rig. The Chinese Republic had silos all over the mainland for reaction-take-off missiles but they were being photographed regularly by the American SR71 from eighty thousand feet and by the Soviet Turo-9 from somewhere just under that altitude: it wasn't possible to hide things any more. Aerial surveillance by high-altitude plane and satellite units had been jacked up to the point where you couldn't plant a row of beans without getting a call the next morning from the CIA or the KGB to say that according to their photographs you'd put them in upside down.
There were immense problems involved in building a conventional-take-off missile base on the continental shelf in terms of getting the exhaust gas away but if you first thought of an oil rig as a disguise and then considered the similarities between an oil rig and a submarine and used compressed gas to pop the missile up the tube as they did with the Sprint and the Polaris then you'd build one of these things.
Question: how far was George Henry Tewson from the design concept of Polaris?
'He was with the Ministry of Defence,' she'd said grandly, high on bubbly, then she'd remembered they told her not to say things like that, 'actually his work wasn't important, to tell you the truth,' poor little bitch, out of her depth.
287 — 387–498 — 190 — 54…
He was on mission factors now: how long did I think I could stay on board the rig with any security? What was my life-support status in terms of rations, air, essential rig-to-island gear? How long would the radio stand up in these conditions?
Necessary to leave rig immediately exchange concluded. Fair chance of returning at nightfall but -
Bloody riveter began banging away and I called a 20–20 into the mike for stand-by and cut it dead to save the batteries and started to sweat it out again, watching the iron ladders and trying to think what I could do if Ferris asked me to keep station while he got into signals with London. That'd take up to an hour in cypher and I couldn't wait that long: I couldn't wait another two seconds with any security and he knew that because I'd told him.
Banging away, the whole of the superstructure vibrating, the rivets going into my head.
09.37.
If they just found me clinging to the girder looking dead beat the cover story might hold up long enough for me to try some kind of a get-out but if they found me with a radio it wouldn't hold up at all. There wasn't anything I could do about that: the instant I saw them on the ladder I could knock the Hammerlund into the sea behind the pontoon leg but they'd hear the splash and investigate and find the rest of the stuff. No go.
09.40.
There had to be a limit and in five minutes I'd open up the set and keep sending fifteens: Situation contained but leaving station. London was in a panic or they wouldn't have pushed me into this kind of position but if I could get out to Heng-kang Chou and delay the action for eight or nine hours till nightfall and take it up again from there they'd still have a live executive in the field and total security in the target zone. If I gave it more than another five minutes on board this rig they'd have a dead duck.