Skydancer by Geoffrey Archer Page B

‘We’ll press the call button if we want anything.’
    The engineer and steward returned to their posts.
    Peter drew across the blue curtain which shut off each end of their ‘suite’ from the rest of the aircraft.
    â€˜Right, Jill. Now with luck we won’t be disturbed.’
    They sat down opposite one another at theirkeyboards. Peter fumbled in a jacket pocket for the spectacles he wore for reading, and placed the tortoiseshell half-moon frames on the end of his nose. They gave him a somewhat bookish appearance, slightly at odds with his square features.
    â€˜I finalised the parameters in the car on my way to Brize Norton,’ he declared, passing a sheet of paper across the table to his junior. ‘It’s only a compromise. We could have made Skydancer turn cartwheels, and that would really upset Moscow; but we can’t be too clever or they’ll realise it’s an expensive leg-pull. I think I’ve got it right,’ he continued, pointing to the paper which the girl was now studying. ‘But if you don’t think so, for God’s sake say so now. If you can work on the programme for the manoeuvring, I’ll get on with the ejection routine.’
    The operation of the missile was controlled by computer software; a variety of programmes could be selected, containing subtle differences to enable the warheads to cope with both short and long ranges. Completely changing the character of the missile would require a massive rewriting of the programmes, to be fed into the missile’s control system when they went on board the submarine in Florida.
    Peter could not help feeling apprehensive about what he was doing. Having spent most of the past two years refining and perfecting a complex electro-mechanical device, he was now about to sabotage its first operational test. Instead of demonstrating to himself and the keepers of the public purse that the money had been well spent, he was about to obfuscate the issue, possibly for ever.
    Sitting in that aircraft, with the blinds drawn so the afternoon sun would not reflect from the computer screens, Peter found it difficult to get started. An imageof ‘the Russian’ was firmly fixed in one corner of his brain, as if the man was peering over his shoulder at the keyboard. The face of Mary Maclean filled another corner, provoking in him a deep sense of guilt.
    At the end of his second full day of enquiries into the nuclear secrets case, John Black had decided the whole business stank. British agents in Moscow had not been able to detect any KGB or GRU activity over the missile plans; and GCHQ had not intercepted a single communication between the Soviet Embassy and Moscow that seemed to relate to it. Nothing but routine reporting back to the Kremlin on what the newspapers were saying.
    Yet somebody was definitely up to something, that much was clear. It either meant the Russians were being unusually cunning, and exceptionally clever at concealing their activities, or else that all this had nothing to do with Moscow at all. He had a strong suspicion that the missile document had been deliberately dumped in that rubbish bin for the express purpose of being found. Some mysterious person had certainly made sure that the world got to know about it by tipping off the
Daily Express
.
    Thanks to the carelessness of Mary Maclean in leaving that vital key in her desk drawer, up to about thirty people within the Defence Ministry with access to the secrets room could have ‘borrowed’ her key to the nuclear weapons filing-cabinet, and copied those papers. If he had to check all thirty of them, it would make his investigation long and tedious, but he somehow felt that would not be necessary. His instinct told him that the culprit was someone who knew precisely what the papers were about – and what a stir itwould cause if one of them was found in the wrong place.
    On his desk lay the personal security files of three people.