we’re playing with monopoly money, but the clients out there have the real stuff on their minds.’
‘We really only wanted to see if anyone had an advanced scientific calculator.’ Brokenclaw sounded almost apologetic.
‘I’ve got a Texas Instruments calculator. You want to borrow it?’ from one of the controllers.
Chi-Chi replied, saying she would only need it for a short time, and the small calculator was handed back towards her.
As they left, one of the other controllers was saying, ‘Watch it thirty-two, your gilt-edged are starting to drop. Buy up all you can get your hands on. Do it now, quickly. We can dump them again later; they’ll begin to rise as you buy, then we sell and the bottom’ll drop out for a while.’
‘They seem very efficient.’ Chi-Chi managed to remain composed during the return to the study.
‘They’re well trained. They’ve all worked on the stock market, and I had them recruited for their skill.’ Brokenclaw gave a sinister little chuckle. ‘They also have motivation. Everyone in that lab has a reason for hating the Stock Exchange. They’ll shout with joy when Wall Street comes tumbling down.’
‘I bet they will,’ muttered Chi-Chi.
Lee left them together in his study, saying that when they were finished with the Black Magic material one of them should just press six on the telephone and they would be put straight through to him.
They sat, side by side, the Black Magic papers between them, and the pads and pens which had appeared during their absence, directly in front of them.
Chi-Chi glanced through the first five sheets lying open between the leaves of the leather folder, then wrote quickly on her pad, ‘What in hell’s going on?’
Bond also riffled through the first five sheets, looked at what she had written and added—
Operation Jericho was not supposed to be even on the cards yet. It’s a long term plan for tapping into the New York Stock Exchange and causing an unnatural economic disaster over a period of days or weeks. It is aimed at bringing about a complete collapse of the dollar which will in turn hit most of the world’s other major currencies. The Japanese thought of it first, but it seems One-Eye plus our man are going to do it quite soon.
She nodded, passed over some of the other documents from the file, jotting down—
What are we going to do?
Bond scribbled in reply—
Stay cool. Pretend to go through this stuff, but don’t spin it out. The sooner you start making these pages into microdots the sooner I get out of here and bring in the Fifth Cavalry.
Bending over the pile of Black Magic pages, they went through the motions of working, making occasional notes, muttering to each other, Chi-Chi doing imaginary calculations and Bond occasionally calling her attention to points of interest.
There was little doubt that Brokenclaw had gathered together a gold mine from the five kidnapped Navy men, though Black Magic contained scientific data much too advanced for either of them. Bond already knew some words and phrases from the little he had learned of Stealth Technology, and these cropped up between lengthy mathematical equations. The words Radar Cross Section, Visual and Acoustic Signature Reduction, Frequency Emission and Leakage, Laser Enhanced Sonic Signal and the like were familiar, though he could not have written a report on what he read.
They worked on Black Magic for just over an hour.
The helicopter made wearisome passes across the wide search area, and Ed Rushia was pleased to get out and stretch his legs on the two occasions they had landed for refuelling. Now, having drawn a complete blank on picking up any of the homer signals, they circled over the Big Sur area. Still no joy. The instruments remained silent and the earphones picked up no beeps.
They were at the end of the search, having flown back and forth for nearly three hours.
‘Negative, Commander?’ the helicopter pilot asked on the internal RT.
‘Blank.’ Rushia’s weariness penetrated his voice. ‘Let’s move up the coast towards Monterey.’
‘Not in our search area.’
‘No, but it’s a quick way home.’
The helicopter turned north. Below, the bleak and rocky terrain looked endless but for the ribbon of the Pacific Coast Highway.
Suddenly Rushia strained his hearing. The noise had been only a tiny peep, but the DF needle had swung a fraction to the east. ‘Go East,’ he commanded. ‘Gently. Cut back speed.’
Two minutes later the signal returned, very weak, hardly audible, but nevertheless there. He looked forward. Tucked into the foot of a rocky outcrop there were trees, a small secondary road, and a house, big, solid and set plumb on a grassy slope. He could see a couple of cars parked openly on a turning circle at the front which faced East, and another drawn up near a big clump of trees on the southern side. Obviously a lot of work had gone into building and landscaping this house, hemmed in by rocks and bleak terrain. As they did the final pass, he even saw what appeared to be a dog pound on the other side of the trees to the south of the house.
The DF needle quivered, and the little red ‘guide light’ weakly winked on and off while there was an unmistakable morse J & K – the two homer call signs – faint in the headphones.
‘Photographs!’ Rushia ordered. ‘Photographs. Then let’s get the hell out of here.’ He had found them, but heaven knew what was shielding the signals. They sounded, he thought, as though they were being transmitted from the centre of the earth.
Rushia made contact with base, being the carrier with the
Within fifteen minutes of Rushia’s report reaching the carrier, a piston-engined Lockheed SA 2–37A quiet reconnaissance aircraft lifted off from Moffet Field – the centre for much secret aerial and electronic ‘watch and listen’ work – heading for the co-ordinates Rushia had given. The SA 2–37A is younger brother to the old YO-3A which was used extensively by the US Army, CIA and NASA for some time during the Vietnam War and proved invaluable for gathering information on enemy troop movements. There are not many of them left in service but the SA 2–37A looks like an ordinary, small, one-engined private airplane, yet is fitted with high-definition cameras, and all the sensor and heat-seeking photographic equipment you will find in larger, high-fly reconnaissance aircraft.
The SA 2–37A did its work quickly. Its two crew members, seated side by side, were both experienced men and within two hours, M, Grant, Tanner and Franks were looking at the resultant photographs with the help of a Recce Pix expert. The various colourings showed clearly that this was no ordinary house, for the various strata of different temperatures picked out the long, symmetrical underground areas.
‘They’ve got a whole, well-organised bunker down there,’ Grant said, running his finger along the pink and red areas.
‘And on the blow-ups you can see they have an exit near this dog pound thing.’ Tanner circled the area south of the copse which they had already realised was a cleverly camouflaged helicopter pad.
They found another exit to the north, between two rocky mounds.
‘What’s the drill on getting a full-scale raid on this place underway?’ M’s face had taken on the colour of granite.
‘We can risk an unofficial assault, using only my people.’ Grant’s brow furrowed. ‘But it’d be easier to make it a Special Forces deal.’
‘You think Comrade Lee’s got the Naval people down there as well as Bond and the girl?’ M’s eyes did not leave the various photographs spread out on the desk.
‘There’s room here for some kind of security area, and the heat signatures look like five, maybe six, people.’ Grant again traced his finger round the underground area. ‘Or this one here, though I don’t understand it. If the heat signatures – the red dots – are correct, there seem to be around thirty or forty people, plus a lot of electronic . . . Oh, God!’
‘Yes?’ M answered abruptly.
‘
