receiver, but he doubted if the Italians were likely to send anything up after him.
Richter didn’t know exactly where the
‘Homer, this is Tiger Two.’ For a few seconds there was no reply, and Richter repeated the call. ‘Homer, Homer, this is Tiger Two.’
With no planned flying, the Operations Room was almost deserted. Lieutenant John Moore, one of the two Air Traffic Control officers on board, was sitting in his usual seat, but with his feet up on the swivel chair next to him and reading a book. His headset was draped over the top of the console, and the Homer and Guard frequencies were being relayed through a speaker. The delay in replying was caused simply by the time it took Moore to put down his book and don his headset.
‘Tiger Two, this is Homer. Good afternoon, Spook.’
‘Good to hear your voice, John. OK, Tiger Two is at Flight Level three five zero, heading one six zero magnetic and approximately twenty-five miles south-east of Lecce in Italy. Request ship’s position and pigeons. Note that my NAVHARS is non-functional and I’m using only the E2B magnetic compass.’
‘Roger, Tiger Two,’ Moore replied, looking up at the RDF display, which shows the direction from which a radio transmission has come. ‘Steer one five five magnetic for Mother. Understand your NAVHARS is unserviceable?’
‘Negative,’ Richter responded. ‘It’s working, but I had to leave Italy in a bit of a hurry and I didn’t have time to set it up.’
The Sea Harrier’s inertial navigation system – the NAVHARS – requires the pilot to input both an accurate geographical start position and the aircraft’s heading to enable it to function correctly. Without accurate start data, it’s virtually useless. Richter hadn’t had time to do anything with the system when he left Brindisi – he’d had other things on his mind.
‘Roger,’ Moore replied. ‘Ship’s position is forty miles due west of Cape Matapan, which gives you, ah, wait one –’ Moore fumbled with an en-route chart and roughly measured distances using his chinagraph pencil ‘– about a three-hundred-nautical-mile transit from Lecce. Say your endurance.’
‘I was tanks full at Brindisi,’ Richter replied, ‘so well over one hour. I should reach you in about thirty minutes.’
‘Roger that.’ Moore released the transmit key and pressed the intercom button to Flyco.
On the port side of the bridge, with a clear and unobstructed view of the whole of the Flight Deck, is Flyco, the Flying Control Position. Manned by Lieutenant Commander (Flying), the second-in-command of the Air Department, or his deputy, the Air Staff Officer, Flyco controls all take-offs and landings, and all flying operations within the visual circuit of the ship.
Roger Black, Lieutenant Commander (Flying), known as ‘Little F’, was sitting in his usual seat, a month-old magazine in front of him, dividing his attention between that and the Flight Deck below him, where a single Merlin helicopter was lashed down on two spot, carrying out an engine run. As the intercom buzzed he pressed a key. ‘Flyco.’
‘Flyco, Homer. I’ve just had a call from Tiger Two. He’s on recovery now, estimating about a half-hour transit from Brindisi.’
‘Excellent. I’ll get the deck cleared.’ Black selected the deck broadcast and leaned close to the microphone. ‘Flight Deck, Flyco. We have one Harrier on recovery. Estimate for landing is thirty minutes. Ensure two spot is clear by then.’
On the steel deck below, the Flight Deck Officer raised an arm in acknowledgement.
Once the three-man team was on its way to Crete to try to recover whatever the meddling diver had found, and with firm instructions to bury whatever evidence there was of the thirty-year-old plane wreck, John Nicholson had completed the first phase of the recovery operation.
McCready – who knew nothing more than the brief outline provided by Nicholson – had given Krywald the most specific instructions: the plane was to be totally destroyed and the diver silenced one way or another. The only thing Nicholson expected the team to recover from the wreck was the steel case and its contents, and that was to be returned to Langley as quickly as possible.
But his work was far from finished. The men he had dispatched were en route but, without the proper equipment and support on Crete, their mission was doomed to failure from the start. Nicholson ordered a pot of coffee from the kitchen, pulled out a dark blue file from his briefcase, opened it and began making notes. Then he reached for the phone – the number of which was not listed in any directory, anywhere, and that was checked at least once every two days to ensure there were no taps on it – and began making calls.
Just over an hour later he drank the last of the coffee and leaned back. Through a series of cut-outs, Agency sleepers and even some legitimate channels, he had arranged everything he thought the team would need: the hire of a boat, the provision of a quantity of plastic explosive and under-water detonators, a complete set of diving equipment including extra compressed-air tanks, a hire car, hotel accommodation, press credentials – ostensibly the three men were travel reporters – and personal weapons.
His final task was handling Krywald and Stein once they had completed their part of the mission: McCready had already issued instructions to Krywald about Elias.
Nicholson was fighting a rearguard action, protecting the Company, but also his career and everything he had worked for over the last forty or so years. All other considerations, in his opinion, were secondary, and all the assets he employed were ultimately expendable. He had made plans to ensure the permanent silence of the only three surviving former CIA officers who had been deeply involved in Operation CAIP thirty years earlier, and McCready’s usefulness was already over.
What he couldn’t and wouldn’t permit was any hint of his activities leaking out. That meant no loose talk, and that in turn meant that all three of the men even then approaching Crete at around five hundred miles an hour were expendable too.
And even before he’d started arranging the overt and covert support they would need on Crete, he’d made one other, very short, phone call.
Twenty minutes after Richter’s initial call, and with his radar selected to a one hundred mile radius, John Moore noticed a contact that could be the returning Sea Harrier, close to the edge of the screen and heading directly towards the ship.
‘Tiger Two, Homer. Transmit for bearing,’ Moore requested.
‘Homer, this is Tiger Two, transmitting for bearing.’
With no flying operations under way, the Ops Room had retained skeleton manning only, but the Air Picture Compiler (APC) on watch had already allocated the label ‘I2’ – Interceptor Two – to this return, based on secondary surveillance radar interrogation, and the RDF bearing confirmed that identification.
Moore depressed the transmit switch again. ‘Tiger Two is identified. Pigeons one six zero at ninety miles. Flying course will probably be due west, and we have no circuit traffic at present.’
At six hundred and thirty knots, it doesn’t take long to cover ninety miles. When the return on his radar set reached twenty-five miles, John Moore made a slight adjustment to Richter’s heading and instructed him to descend to two thousand feet, and advise when visual with the ship.
Moore leaned forward and selected an intercom line. ‘Flyco, Homer.’
‘Flyco.’
‘Tiger Two is on recovery just inside twenty-five miles.’
‘Thank you, Homer.’
Close liaison between Flyco and the Officer of the Watch on the bridge is essential, for both Sea Harriers and helicopters require very specific wind speed and direction for take-off and landing, and the ship has to manoeuvre quickly and accurately to achieve this.
