“Apart from my F.1250 I don’t have anything,” said Andy, “although I’m sure Mr Hamilton will have briefed you about me.”
“He certainly did. Let’s hope we can do this one quietly,” said Douglas with a smile.
“I’ll be putting in some false data which could be of interest to the other side,” said Andy. “We will need to track who gets that information and what they do with it. I would expect either Griffiths or Emerson to query it but they may not. The figures will not tally with their records. I will include some technical information to answer any query satisfactorily. That should entice someone to pass that information on. The question is — which one of them will do it.”
Douglas then said, “Let’s get a report to Emerson tomorrow afternoon showing this information and make a copy for Griffiths. We will need to have some way to identify the different copies because I suspect it will be photocopied and the photocopy passed on. I’ll arrange for additional persons to help us to follow our suspects. I think we need to work in pairs for safety.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Andy, “so let’s get back and get cracking.” The two of them finished off their lunch, disposed of the cups and wrappers and headed back to the office. All that afternoon and the next morning the two men laboured over the parts lists and preparing an interim report. The afternoon was spent in preparing graphs and typing up the report. Given the nature of the information, the typing did not go to the typing pool and the two men took turns in typing up the report. A fairly new Imperial typewriter was available and the keys were not as heavy to hit and the stroke showed well through the carbon copies. The report was in the form of a covering memorandum and tables attached. When the report was finished, they typed a letter on each page of each set of the report. It was ‘O’ for ‘original’, ‘D’ for duplicate and so on. There were four carbon copies and the original for the memorandum but the tables were typed separately. Part of the strategy was to vary the information in each copy of the tables. An emphasis was placed on the radar unit and its parts with explanatory notes that made it of interest to other parties. By 16.00 hours, all was ready for distribution. The original was given to Griffiths, the duplicate to Emerson, a copy to be sent to the JSTU and a working copy each for Douglas and Hill. The last three copies had the correct figures in the tables. To avoid problems between Griffiths and Emerson, Douglas took the original to Griffiths’ office at the same time that Hill took a copy to Emerson. The two men went back to their desks and waited. Half-an-hour later Emerson called to Douglas and Hill to go over to him and answer some queries. He pointed to the difference in figures between Air Ministry records and Hill’s projections. Corporal Hill pointed out that a number of the cards in the radar had the newly invented transistors fitted and these tended to blow when there was a power surge. This had not shown up in factory trials but had when power supply was from a field generator. In contrast, the breakdown rate of the control unit boards appeared to have reduced substantially. Emerson said that he found that difficult to believe since all the parts were from the same factory. Corporal Hill again suggested that the continuous operation instead of the ‘start-stop’ approach of factory trials had proved beneficial, hence the reduced need for those spare parts. Corporal Hill produced some graphs and tables to support the conclusions. Emerson conceded and said that he would approve the report and arrange parts orders accordingly. Douglas and Corporal Hill thanked him and went back to their desks. Ten minutes later, Emerson buzzed for Miss St John to see him. Both Douglas and Hill watched covertly from their desks. Emerson put their report in a folder and gave it to Miss St John. He spoke quietly and the two watchers couldn’t hear or lip-read what he was saying. Miss St John stood with her back to them and they could only see a nod of her head. She went back to her desk and then went in to see Griffiths. Coming out from his office, she went out of the room carrying three folders.
Corporal Hill said to Douglas, “I’m just going to the men’s room,” at the same time giving Douglas a meaningful look. Douglas just nodded his understanding. As he walked down the corridor, Andy Hill noticed that Miss St John was in the general office and giving the photocopying clerk instructions on papers to be photocopied. Hill noticed that the machine was something that he had not seen before. He went on to the men’s room and on the way back he turned into the general office. Miss. St John had already left and so Hill walked across to the photocopy clerk and asked about the photocopy machine. The young male clerk asked who he was and Corporal Hill explained. He said he was curious about such a large machine because on the RAF unit their copier used a chemical process and sat on a bench. The clerk positively preened himself as he said, “Oh, this is one of the new Xerox machines. It doesn’t use a chemical process but works on an electrostatic principle and uses heat to fuse the copy.”
“Could you show me?” asked Corporal Hill. “Certainly,” came the reply. The clerk took a sheet out of the top folder and as he
