James Barrington - Foxbat

‘I’ve got them right here,’ Richter said, touching his briefcase, ‘together with our analysts’ best guesses about the aircraft they’ve spotted on the films. I’ve also got JARIC and N-PIC analysts standing by to talk to your people if necessary.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But first I have a question. In fact, I’ve got two. If somebody’s buying or stealing Foxbats, that’s only half the equation. Without munitions, spares, maintenance people and, obviously, pilots, the aircraft’s just a thirty-ton paperweight. Are you missing any pilots or maintainers as well?’

Bykov nodded. ‘I don’t have exact figures, but I understand that a number of qualified Air Force personnel cannot currently be located. And your other question?’

‘Why are you bothered? So what if some nation wants to beg, borrow or steal a handful of obsolete interceptors? Remember, the MiG-25’s a forty-year-old design. If somebody had walked off with a dozen of your latest air-superiority fighters I could understand your concern. After all, you sell fighter aircraft around the world, and you’ve supplied that aircraft to a lot of countries – off the top of my head Algeria, Iraq and Syria to name but three – so what’s so special about these sixteen antiquated Foxbats?’

‘Let me ask you a question,’ Bykov responded. ‘Why did we build the MiG-25?’

For a few moments Richter just stared at the Russian. ‘I don’t see where you’re going with this, Viktor.’

‘It’s crucial. When you know why we built the aircraft, you’ll know why we’re so worried about who’s got them now.’

Richter nodded. ‘OK, I’ll play the game. We believe you originally designed the Foxbat to counter the American XB-70 Valkyrie Mach three bomber.’

‘That wasn’t in fact the case, but even if it was, the XB-70 project was cancelled well before the first prototype MiG-25 flew. We knew that the Americans had no other supersonic bombers planned, so why did we continue developing the aircraft?’

‘Probably to counter the SR-71A Blackbird spy-plane. To catch it you’d have needed a Mach three interceptor.’

‘Wrong again,’ Viktor Bykov said. ‘The Blackbird was never a real threat to us. That aircraft carried no weapons: all it could do was take pictures, obtain radar images and measure radiation.’

‘So why did you build the Foxbat?’ Richter demanded.

‘Let me ask you another question,’ Bykov said, clearly determined to spin this out. ‘In September 1976 a renegade pilot called Viktor Belenko defected to the West from our airfield at Chuguyevka in a MiG-25 and landed it at Hakodate airport in Japan. The American Central Intelligence Agency and the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson took the aircraft totally to pieces before giving it back to us. You heard about that, no doubt?’

‘It was before my time, but I’ve read some reports,’ Richter replied cautiously.

‘Do you remember what those reports said about the avionics and radar fit?’

Richter shook his head. ‘Not in any detail.’

‘Let me refresh your memory, then, though I didn’t read the same reports that you did.’

‘I’m certainly glad to hear that,’ Richter murmured grimly.

Bykov smiled, then continued. ‘The reports probably highlighted the lack of solid-state electronics in the avionics. Everything was old-style, with valve-driven circuits and equipment, and a massively powerful radar. I’m sure there was a certain amount of self-satisfied chuckling in the corridors of Whitehall and the Pentagon at the poor old Russians and their old-fashioned fighter.’

Richter shifted slightly in his seat. What Bykov was saying was indeed a fairly accurate paraphrasing of the classified analyses that had circulated in Western intelligence services following the examination of the misappropriated Foxbat by American technical experts.

‘It apparently never occurred to anybody to ask why . Why had we used valves instead of printed-circuit boards and transistors? After all, in our other fighter aircraft we used similar technology to the latest American fighters. In fact,’ Bykov added with a chuckle, ‘some of the avionics we used were actually stolen from the Americans.

‘Long before we built the MiG-25, we’d perfected solid-state electronics, and we had off-the-shelf components that we could have used in the aircraft, but we didn’t. We took a step backwards and fitted valves, and all that other old-fashioned equipment. So I ask you again – why?’

‘Viktor, I have no idea. The Foxbat was your front-line interceptor and—’

‘Exactly,’ Bykov interrupted. ‘But what was it intended to intercept? That’s the crucial question.’

‘American bombers? B-1s and B-52s, I suppose?’

Bykov shook his head. ‘To intercept those lumbering giants we would hardly have needed a Mach three fighter, and certainly not a fighter that can reach a ceiling of over thirty thousand metres. Let me give you a clue – EMP.’

‘EMP? You mean electromagnetic pulse?’ Richter frowned.

‘Exactly. Add EMP to valve-based avionics and a Mach three interceptor with a thirty-kilometre ceiling, and what do you get?’

For a moment, Richter said nothing, his mind making connections that looked less and less attractive the more he thought about them. Then he looked back at Bykov.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

‘“Oh, shit” is right,’ Bykov agreed. ‘The Foxbat was built for one role only. It was designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles in their terminal phase – that’s why it’s so fast and flies so high – after detonation of one or more nuclear weapons. The EMP from a nuclear blast will fry solid-state electronics, but it has no effect on valve-based systems, and that’s precisely why we fitted them. The Foxbat was designed as a post-nuclear exchange survivor . So the obvious conclusion is—’

‘The obvious conclusion,’ Richter interrupted, ‘is that whoever’s got your aircraft is planning on an exchange of nuclear weapons, and is intending to survive that exchange by using your Foxbats to take out the inevitable retaliatory nuclear strike in its terminal phase.’

Tuesday

T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea

‘Is this all he had on him?’ Pak Je-San demanded, staring down at the collection of objects arranged on a wooden table in front of him. He’d already looked with displeasure at Yi Min-Ho’s bullet-riddled body in the mortuary next door.

‘Yes, sir. We thoroughly checked the ledge he was using as an observation point, and there was nothing else there. We also surveyed the entire surrounding area, including the spot where the spy was killed, and found nothing further.’

Pak picked up the notebook and read the entries carefully: all related to a handful of F-5 fighters. That was exactly what he’d expected, for as soon as he’d heard about the possible landing of a spy near Suri-bong he’d ordered all operations involving the MiG-25 interceptors to cease. Opening the hangar doors to attract the South Korean agent’s attention while the patrol ambushed him had been, he thought, a master-stroke. But he hadn’t anticipated the Kyocera satellite phone, and that was a worry because it meant that the spy might possibly have disclosed what he’d seen emerging from the secure hangar.

But Pak doubted if the intruder had enough time. He’d spoken to the chung-wi who’d led the patrol, and then to all of his men individually, about the exact sequence of events, and the timing didn’t seem to work. He knew exactly when the hangar doors had opened, and when the lieutenant had ordered his men forward. There would then have been a short delay while the tractor was hitched to the aircraft, and another before any part of the MiG-25 could have been visible from the hillside opposite. Then the spy would have had to first identify what he was seeing, switch on the Kyocera, wait until it had locked on to a satellite, enter the number, and then wait for his contact in South Korea to answer.