Red Hawk Rising

knew whom it was from. Tilting the envelope, he allowed the photos to slide out onto his desk. There were four photos. He pulled a file from his desk drawer and opened it up. In it was a chart showing the different RAF personnel that had been through Argonaut Industries with their rank and classification by where they had worked in the Argonaut complex. He picked up the first photo, looked at the face and rank and then turned it over, making notes in the file. Garasov repeated the process for the second photograph, paused for a sip of tea and then picked up the third photo. He looked at the face and gave a loud hiss as he drew in breath. Turning the photo over he looked at the information written on the reverse. It said, ‘Corporal William A. Hill’ — Project Co-ordination Office. He turned back to the face in the photo and cursed, waving his arm and accidently knocking over the glass of tea. Garasov had a slight limp as a result of an injury sustained in an encounter with an RAF man in Scotland two years ago on a previous assignment. He had never forgotten that face. He had sworn to kill him back then and now Garasov felt that here was his opportunity for revenge. Besides, he owed that RAF man something for the pain he had suffered. He picked up the telephone on his desk.
At 11.00 hours, Squadron Leader Fraser was in telephone conversation with Hamilton of MI5 and the managing director of Argonaut Industries. He had been briefed by Hamilton of MI5 about the incident involving Corporal Hill. The two men were in an inner office which was known to be a secure office and therefore there was no risk of their conversation being heard by others, nor was it bugged. The managing director’s name was David Richardson. He was briefed on the events of the previous evening and Richardson was shocked at what he was told. Turning to Hamilton, he asked, “What now?”
“We are checking on the security officers and the cleaning contractor at this moment. They obviously passed security screening before, so we need to ‘dig deeper’ to find out how they passed screening and who they are linked to. We don’t want to scare them off. It’s easier to keep tabs on known agents than have to be hunting for the ones we don’t know. What I want to know is whether it would be possible to feed false information to them using the existing procedures. We could cut off the source of information but that would immediately put them on the alert. I want to lull them into a false sense of security until we have the information that we want.” Hamilton then said to Fraser, “Could we doctor the progress reports and slip in false information?”
Fraser nodded. “Subject to Air Vice-Marshal Denby agreeing to this.” Richardson said that they would need to type up some dummy reports and get the carbons into office waste bins.
“If we select key areas, such as the computer development and the guidance system, we don’t need to involve all the departments at one time. The project co-ordination office will need to be part of this daily routine since it brings all the reports together. The key will be in changing the carbons without arousing suspicion by staff or cleaners. We will need to arrange to use a typist with high security clearance and have her working in a secure area. That I can arrange.” Following Richardson’s suggestion, they started working out the details.
Meanwhile, Andy Hill was in the missile assembly area talking with the team there and making notes. He was particularly interested in the sequencing of the assembly and what it would mean for routine maintenance at the operational stage. Andy thought that by lunch-time he would have completed most of what he had to do and should be finished by the end of the day. Progress on the missile and the control unit seemed to be going well. The design hiccup on the warhead would not stop the field trials from going ahead. So far, the only weakness he had found in the procedures was the issue relating to the disposal of carbons from the multi-part sets of daily reports. All files were locked away at night and all blackboards in the laboratories and offices were cleaned off each afternoon. The cleaners didn’t come in until after 18.00 hours. By lunchtime, Andy headed down to the project co-ordination office and caught up with Ken Davidson. They headed down to the canteen together for lunch. The canteen was not a secure area and was used by employees not on the Red Hawk project. Over lunch, they talked generalities and discussed soccer. While eating, Andy overheard some of the conversation at the table behind him. The men there were discussing their work on the rocket motor and fuel mixes. Getting up for coffee, he was relieved to note that they were civilians and not RAF personnel. At the same time, it was a security weakness. He made a mental note to report it.
Following lunch, Andy telephoned Corporal ‘Mike’ Armstrong and asked him to arrange a rail warrant to Newcastle for the morrow. Since it would be Saturday (24th), he could try and visit his parents over the weekend instead of spending it at Handwell. After visiting the radar factory in Newcastle, he would head down to Luton and then up to Coventry before going back to RAF West Sanby. Mike suggested that they go out for a meal that evening and Andy could meet his girlfriend. Andy agreed.
***
Off the coast of Lincolnshire, the crew of the Penny Jane had finished their fishing and were listening in to their radio programme from Moscow. Walmar was writing down the key words as Berin called them out. Berin had already studied the layout of RAF West Sanby from