‘Damned little, practically speaking nothing. Nobody’s ever heard of these SPECTRE people. We know there’s some kind of independent unit working in Europe – we’ve bought some stuff from them, so have the Americans, and Mathis admits now that Goltz, that French heavy-water scientist who went over last year, was assassinated by them, for big money, as a result of an offer he got out of the blue. No names were mentioned. It was all done on the radio, the same 16 megacycles that’s mentioned in the letter. To the Deuxième Communications section. Mathis accepted on the off-chance. They did a neat job. Mathis paid up – a suitcase full of money left at a Michelin road sign on N1. But no one can tie them in with these SPECTRE people. When we and the Americans dealt, there were endless cutouts, really professional ones, and anyway we were more interested in the end product than the people involved. We both paid a lot of money, but it was worth it. If it’s the same group working this, they’re a serious outfit and I’ve told the P.M. so. But that’s not the point. The plane is missing and the two bombs, just as the letter says. All details exactly correct. The Vindicator was on a N.A.T.O. training flight south of Ireland and out into the Atlantic.’ M. reached for a bulky folder and turned over some pages. He found what he wanted. ‘Yes, it was to be a six-hour flight leaving Boscombe Down at eight p.m. and due back at two a.m. There was an R.A.F. crew of five and a N.A.T.O. observer, an Italian, man called Petacchi, Giuseppi Petacchi, squadron leader in the Italian Air Force, seconded to N.A.T.O. Fine flyer, apparently, but they’re checking on his background now. He was sent over here on a normal tour of duty. The top pilots from N.A.T.O. have been coming over for months to get used to the Vindicator and the bomb-release routines. This plane’s apparently going to be used for the N.A.T.O. long range striking force. Anyway,’ M. turned over a page, ‘the plane was watched on the screen as usual and all went well until it was west of Ireland at about 40,000 feet. Then, contrary to the drill, it came down to around 30,000 and got lost in the transatlantic air traffic. Bomber Command tried to get in touch, but the radio couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. The immediate reaction was that the Vindicator had hit one of the transatlantic planes and there was something of a panic. But none of the companies reported any trouble or even a sighting.’ M. looked across at Bond. ‘And that was the end of it. The plane just vanished.’
Bond said, ‘Did the American D.E.W. line pick it up – their Defence Early Warning system?’
‘There’s a query on that. The only grain of evidence we’ve got. Apparently about five hundred miles east of Boston there was some evidence that a plane had peeled off the inward route to Idlewild and turned south. But that’s another big traffic lane – for the northern traffic from Montreal and Gander down to Bermuda and the Bahamas and South America. So these D.E.W. operators just put it down as a B.O.A.C. or Trans-Canada plane.’
‘It certainly sounds as if they’ve got the whole thing worked out pretty well, hiding in these traffic lanes. Could the plane have turned northwards in the middle of the Atlantic and made for Russia?’
‘Yes, or southwards. There’s a big block of space about 500 miles out from both shores that’s out of radar range. Better still, it could have turned on its tracks and come back in to Europe on any of two or three air-lanes. In fact it could be almost anywhere in the world by now. That’s the point.’
‘But it’s a huge plane. It must need special runways and so on. It must have come down somewhere. You can’t hide a plane of that size.’
‘Just so. All these things are obvious. By midnight last night the R.A.F. had checked with every single airport, every one in the world, that could have taken it. Negative. But the C.A.S. says of course it could be crash-landed in the Sahara for instance, or on some other desert, or in the sea, in shallow water.’
‘Wouldn’t that explode the bombs?’
‘No. They’re absolutely safe until they’re armed. Apparently even a direct drop, like that one from the B-47 over North Carolina in 1958, would only explode the T.N.T. trigger to the thing. Not the plutonium.’
‘How are these SPECTRE people going to explode them then?’
M. spread his hands. ‘They explained all this at the War Cabinet meeting. I don’t understand it all, but apparently an atomic bomb looks just like any other bomb. The way it works is that the nose is full of ordinary T.N.T. with the plutonium in the tail. Between the two there’s a hole into which you screw some sort of detonator, a kind of plug. When the bomb hits, the T.N.T. ignites the detonator and the detonator sets off the plutonium.’
‘So these people would have to drop the bomb to set it off?’
