Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

He looked hopefully at his wife, but her freckled, still-pretty face was in deep repose. Outside the dawn had flushed red.

Vogel swung his legs out of bed and made for the bathroom. He contemplated opening the window and breathing deeply of the saline air blowing in from the Pacific but decided that, if he had a fever, it wouldn’t be a good idea. He opened the cabinet, picked up the thermometer, replaced it abruptly in the tumbler of diluted disinfectant.

What upset Vogel most about his weakness was that he knew damn well it was just that, a weakness, because he was a strong, ruddy-faced man of fifty who still scuba dived and played a mean round of golf.

Firmly closing the door of the cabinet, Vogel, wearing old-fashioned striped pyjamas and carpet slippers, walked along the corridor to a door marked PRIVATE NO ADMITTANCE. Not that the notice would deter a determined intruder; but the two Secret Service guards outside the house would. Vogel unlocked the door and went into his private brain centre.

By Vandenberg standards the equipment in the room wasn’t extensive or sophisticated. It consisted of a single-user operating system of the Digital PDP-11 Family. But it was sufficient for Vogel’s needs before he went to the big, humming nerve centre of the Air Force base where he was king.

It was also sufficient to make contact with Massey in Moscow.

But that wasn’t for another six hours.

He activated the equipment. Next to his wife, he liked best to have intercourse with his private computer, to tap the resources of the data banks. The room was lit with soft green light, the screen glowed.

He sat in a chair with a back specially moulded to offset lumbar complications. He would have liked to smoke a cigarette but he had long ago heeded the health warnings.

Into the computer he fed basic details of the planned deception. Finally, he asked the question that had been bothering him all night. Back came the answer: IT IS POSSIBLE.

Vogel sighed. It wasn’t the answer he had hoped for. He switched off the current and, locking the door behind him, returned to the bathroom.

Resistance shattered, he opened the door of the cabinet, took out the thermometer and placed it beneath his tongue. He gave it two minutes in case it was slow in reacting. Fatalistically, he read the level of the mercury. 98.4 F. Normal.

Reynolds’ Boeing YC-14 touched down at Vandenberg airfield to the north of the base at 10.38 a.m., one hour and twenty-two minutes before the Moscow connection was to be made.

Standing on the tarmac, the breeze ruffling his soft silver hair, he gazed around with satisfaction. Not so long ago the coastal scrub had been the habitat of a few farmers and their stock – sea birds, Californian Valley quail and rabbits. Today it was the launch pad to dominance of space. From Space Launch Complex 6, on a plateau above the ocean, military shuttles would soon be launched as regularly as the phases of the moon.

Vogel was waiting for him in his ’79 silver Mercedes. With him was his deputy, Carl Wonner, who had been brought into the deception in case anything happened to Vogel. Wonner was in his early thirties, studious, crew-cut and quiet; the few friends that he possessed reported that he released all his inhibitions watching ball games; he became a man possessed, they said, and figured that he was an athlete born without muscles.

Vogel’s wife was leaving the house as they arrived. Vogel, wearing tartan jacket and grey slacks, led him into the living room and poured coffee. Reynolds thought how fit he looked.

‘Well,’ Reynolds said, sipping his coffee, ‘is it going to work?’

‘No reason why it shouldn’t work this end. The other end? Well, that’s down to Massey.’

‘What do you think?’ Reynolds turned to Wonner who was glancing at a sports magazine lying open at an article about Jack Quinn who had pitched for twenty-three years at the beginning of the century.

‘I reckon it’ll work,’ Wonner said.

According to Vogel, Wonner was a genius, young enough to take full advantage of the exploding age of the computer. Vogel was right – Wonner’s CIA assessment confirmed that – but, Reynolds thought, he didn’t inspire confidence.

Reynolds glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got an hour, let’s run through it.’

Vogel led them into his private brain centre. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so we know that Massey has got access to a terminal. As a matter of fact all he needs is a telephone and a portable digitronics audioverter and a typewriter. But let’s assume that he – and the guy sending the message for him, my counterpart – is working from some sort of conventional terminal. So they connect with my terminal identification number. This is a private thing between me and Massey, remember.’

‘I remember,’ Reynolds said. ‘It was my idea.’

‘Provided they identify themselves correctly – and Massey will be using a different identification each time he makes contact so that he doesn’t become expendable – this box of tricks,’ patting the equipment, ‘will come up with the answers to his questions.’

‘Which will be the terminal identification, key code and minimum access code to the central processer at Vandenberg,’ Wonner said.

‘Or what we want them to think are the codes and identification,’ Vogel corrected him. ‘Okay, so Massey gets his codes for the day, now let’s move to where the action’s going to take place.’

Vogel drove to the NASA complex in the centre of the base. There was considerable activity on the roads. ‘An ICBM test launch down there,’ Wonner explained, pointing towards the launch area at Point Arguello to the south.

‘I know,’ Reynolds said.

Vogel drew up outside a small white-painted building sprouting with aerials. It was guarded by Air Force police. Vogel, Reynolds and Wonner identified themselves and went into the building.

The interior of the building was stacked with computer hardware. Consoles, flickering screens, data files, spools of magnetic tape as big as automobile wheels gently on the move.

Vogel was proud of the real time complex. He was also very apprehensive about it. Because it was fraudulent. ‘The most elaborate fraud ever conceived by an intelligence organisation,’ was how Reynolds described it. With the infinite permutations of facts at its electronic fingertips, it had to be.

Under Vogel and Wonner there was a staff of six. Controller, programmers, engineers. Reynolds went behind the programmers glancing at the flickering digits on their screens. Vogel, he conceded, had performed a miracle in the three months allocated to him.

Into the main store facts about Vandenberg’s role in space, specially tailored for the operation, had been fed. The leeches in Russia bleeding the system would receive a plausible blend of truth (information already known to have been obtained by the KGB), half truths, quarter truths, and downright lies.

Reynolds returned to Vogel who was pacing the floor nervously and said: ‘I don’t profess to know too much about the intricacies of your profession. Am I right in assuming that you’re using the FORTRAN language?’

Vogel said: ‘You know more than most laymen. And you’re right, FORTRAN. Formulatranslation. Input and output inplemented through statements recognising the peripheral unit—’

‘The Russians, of course, are familiar with FORTRAN?’

‘They’ve got to be. They rely on American systems and imitations. So they’ve got to be into all the high level programming languages. FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL and a few others besides.’

It wasn’t until they had returned to his private control centre, ten minutes before Moscow was due to make contact, that Vogel voiced his fears.

He activated the computer and asked: ‘Have you ever wondered, Mr Reynolds, what might happen if there was a traitor with access to Vandenberg’s central processor?’