‘Here we have a small spur formation, in Hotel Seven, and a similar formation up here in Papa Eighteen. Now, the hill is quite clearly visible here on the left-hand frame.’ The pointer traced a dark area more or less in the centre of the frame. Richter looked over to the other picture, and he could see that there was no dark area in the corresponding grid squares – there was, in fact, a lighter patch in about the same position. Penny continued. ‘On the Blackbird frame, the hill has vanished, and there appears to be a slight depression in the same position.’
Kemp interrupted. ‘For Mr Simpson’s benefit, could you indicate the size of the hill.’
‘Certainly. To an error factor of plus or minus fifteen per cent, it is – or rather was – around two hundred feet high, five hundred feet in diameter, more or less circular, and in cross-section similar in shape to an inverted bowl.’
Kemp got up, walked to the screen and studied the two frames intently.
Simpson turned to Penny. ‘Richter tells me that you detected an unusual number of vehicles in one location in these films. Is that location anywhere near this hill?’
‘Yes, sir. They were about a mile away, down to the south-east.’
‘Anything unusual about any of the vehicles or the loads they were carrying?’
‘Nothing really, sir. As I told Commander Richter last time he was here, there were a couple of low loaders carrying a bulldozer and a digger, but all the other vehicles had rigid cargo areas. In one of the shots the civilian lorry had its rear doors open, and it looked as if it might have been carrying a small satellite dish as part of its load, but that’s all.’
‘Satellite dish? Are you sure?’
‘Frankly, sir, no. That shot was taken on a sunny day and even though the rear doors were open, the interior of the vehicle was in deep shadow. What I saw was a light-coloured disk about one metre in diameter. It looked like a satellite dish, but it could have been a small picnic table or even a big drum for all I know.’
Kemp interrupted. ‘I can’t see any evidence of tracks that would have been left by heavy wheeled vehicles in either frame, and if the hill had been flattened immediately after the satellite snap, there should still be clear traces in this frame of the presence of the machinery they used.’ He looked again at the screen. ‘What I can see, though, are some tyre marks close to the hill in the KH–12 frame. They look as if they’ve been made by a medium truck – say about a three-tonner.’
Kemp tapped the left-hand picture and addressed the room. ‘It takes a lot of very heavy-duty gear to shift something that size, you know. A hill like that isn’t like a sand castle on the beach that you can just kick over. Even using demolition charges – and they would have had to – it would have taken at least a month to shift the earth and debris. Doing a rough mental calculation, we’re talking about over one and a half million cubic metres of earth. Which is another point – where did they put it?’
‘Perhaps they dug a hole and buried it,’ Richter said. Penny giggled, and Simpson flashed him a look that could have fried an egg.
Simpson got up, walked over to the screen and looked at both pictures. ‘We aren’t, I suppose,’ he asked, after a moment or two, ‘looking at a nuclear weapon test site?’
There was a brief silence before Kemp replied. ‘Not if it was any kind of a conventional nuclear weapon, no. Underground tests always leave a depression, like these pictures show, but they also leave a telltale circular perimeter of disturbed earth some distance from the epicentre. There is no sign of such a perimeter in these pictures.’
‘What about an above-ground test?’
Kemp shook his head. ‘The Russians almost always conduct underground tests. The few above-ground tests they have done have always followed the same pattern – they build a tower around a hundred feet high and detonate the weapon at the top of it. There was no evidence of a tower in any of the Keyhole pictures.’
He looked over at Penny, who shook her head decisively. ‘Definitely not,’ she said. ‘The towers are quite unmistakable.’
‘Plus,’ Kemp went on, ‘above-ground tests show distinctive after-traces, and we haven’t seen anything like that in the Blackbird films.’
‘What about a surface detonation?’ Richter asked.
‘Sorry? What do you mean?’ Kemp looked puzzled.
‘Suppose the Russians didn’t bother erecting a tower, but just stuck a weapon on the ground or maybe just below the surface, lit the blue touch-paper and walked away?’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Richter replied. ‘I’m just offering a suggestion. Suppose that’s what they did. What evidence would you expect to see on the ground afterwards?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kemp said slowly. ‘If the hill was at the centre of the detonation it would presumably be vaporized, but I would still expect to see other traces, like disturbed earth further out.’ He shook his head. ‘I may be wrong, but I don’t think a nuclear device did this. It would be worth checking the seismic records, though, just to make sure.’ Kemp paused, and then made another suggestion. ‘I suppose we are looking at this from the right angle?’
‘What do you mean?’ Simpson asked, looking puzzled.
‘Well, we have two photographs here, one showing a fairly substantial hill, and the second one, taken two months later, showing no hill and no indication as to how it was removed. We are assuming – or at least I’ve been assuming – that the hill has been levelled for some sort of installation which will be built in the future. But suppose we’ve got it backwards, and that what we are seeing is not the site of a future installation, but the site of a past one.
‘Suppose the hill wasn’t a hill. Suppose it was simply a camouflaged structure housing some sort of installation that the Russians have had up there for years. That could have been removed without the use of the heavy equipment needed for earth moving, couldn’t it? And it would also provide the answer to the question I asked earlier, about where they put the earth.’
Simpson looked interested, glanced again at the pictures, then over at Richter, who shook his head. ‘My informant stressed the fact that the artefact removed was completely worthless and old – very old. He said it was pre-Christian, and I don’t think he was joking. I don’t believe he just meant something like a pre-war bunker. I think he did mean something hundreds or thousands of years old – I think the hill was just a hill.
‘And,’ Richter continued, ‘if it was artificial, what sort of installation could it have been? Bear in mind that if it was manned the people there would need food, changes of personnel, replacement equipment and spare parts. Even if it was purely some sort of monitoring station it would still need periodic checking and, presumably, repairs at odd intervals. There would have to be some evidence of transport to and from the area, even if it was only an occasional helicopter, and if there has been, I presume you haven’t seen it.’ He paused. ‘I suppose you would have seen it?’
‘I would say yes,’ Kemp replied. ‘We get a regular sighting of KH–12 and other surveillance satellite films, courtesy of the NSA and CIA, and even if there’s too much cloud cover for normal films to show much, the infra- red detectors would easily pick up anything the size of a man in the area. A helicopter would stand out like – if you’ll pardon the expression, Penny – a dog’s balls.’
Richter had a thought. ‘Are there any UK surveillance satellites covering that area?’
Kemp laughed. ‘There wasn’t any need to add the last three words. Apart from communications satellites and the geo-stationary type used by Rupert Murdoch to beam Sky television at us, the only stuff we’ve got going round this planet is scientific, and I mean really scientific, not Russian scientific. We measure cosmic radiation, take pictures of stars and listen for the extraterrestrial babblings of bug-eyed monsters, from what I can gather. What we don’t do is take pictures of Mother Russia, or anywhere else.’
‘I see. So we are totally dependent on the Americans for pictures of this area?’
‘In a word, yes.’
Richter beat Simpson to the obvious question by about half a second. ‘Have there been any significant gaps in the supply of films? I mean, any break of more than, say, a week?’
Kemp thought for a moment, then stood up. ‘Lights, please. I can’t recall any breaks, but I’ll just go and make sure. Excuse me.’
He left and Richter put his coffee mug down. Penny walked over and sat down beside him. Simpson looked at him disapprovingly. ‘What are you driving at, sir?’
‘I’m not sure I know at the moment,’ Richter replied. ‘We’re definitely missing something, and I don’t know
