had over-flown the target area. These were superficially very similar.
Close to the centre of each frame was the unmistakable shape of the same open boat – N-PIC had measured its length at just over eighteen feet – with a small wheelhouse at its stern.
The CIA officer wasn’t Photographic Interpretation trained, so each picture had been annotated by the N-PIC analysts at his request. Most of the labels were self-evident –
wheelhouse, ropes, cleats, radar reflector, tyres acting as fenders, and so on – but he was going to have to accept their word that the vague oblong shapes visible along both sides of the
boat towards the stern were aqualung racks, one with a set still in place.
In the first two pictures, the single occupant of the boat was leaning over the side, reaching down for something, or hauling something in. Until he’d studied the third picture, the CIA
officer had wondered briefly if perhaps this was all a false alarm, and that what he was looking at was nothing more than a fisherman hauling up a lobster pot. Then he’d checked a
Mediterranean chart and realized that the water there was far too deep for any lobster fisherman to foolishly try to catch anything.
And, anyway, in the third photograph the shape of an aqualung tank was clearly visible beside the man in the boat, even without the N-PIC label, so the analysts had been right about the type of
boat, although they hadn’t been able to identify it by a name or a number.
The fourth picture showed three aqualung tanks resting beside the anonymous figure in the diving boat, but it was one N-PIC label in the fifth and final photograph that had caused the CIA
officer most concern.
The major difference between this picture and the preceding four was that the figure was no longer bending over the side of the boat. Instead, the KH-12 camera had caught him just entering
– or perhaps standing beside – the wheelhouse. For at least the sixth time, the CIA officer leaned forward over the last photograph and stared intently at one tiny section of it through
his desk magnifying glass.
Clearly visible on the side of the boat, where the man had been bending over earlier, was a very slight protuberance. Next to that was an inked line joining it to the N-PIC label, that simply
stated ‘ROPE IN WATER AND CLEATED TO GUNWALE’.
And that meant, or it could mean, that there was something at the submerged end of the rope.
Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy
‘Where did you spot him?’ Richter asked. It was late evening and he and Simpson were sitting in a military briefing-room at the Brindisi-Casale air base.
Brindisi is a small airport, just outside the town of that name, handling a couple of dozen civilian flights a day to and from Rome, Milan and Venice. It is home to 9 Brigata Aerea of 15 Stormo,
which flies Sikorsky HH-3F Search and Rescue helicopters, and also to the United Nations Logistic Base, which supports humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations.
Rather than go to Rome or to any other location where the Italian Secret Service maintained a presence, they had decided it was both safer and easier to brief Richter within the confines of the
airfield. He was, after all, the only member of any Western Intelligence service who could positively identify Lomas/Lomosolov. Even Simpson had wanted reassurance on that point.
‘You can do it, Richter?’ he had asked.
Richter thought back to that hotel in West London, and to the image of Lomas’s smiling face staring at him from the doorway of the room. It was an image that he knew, without a shadow of a
doubt, would be with him for the rest of his days, no matter what happened now in Italy.
‘No problem,’ he had confirmed. ‘I’ll know him.’
‘Lomas – or the man we believe is Lomas – was spotted eight days ago by a covert operative, one of our watchers, at Rome’s Fiumicino airport,’ explained Giancarlo
Perini, a senior operational agent of the SISDE
Close to the centre of each frame was the unmistakable shape of the same open boat – N-PIC had measured its length at just over eighteen feet – with a small wheelhouse at its stern.
The CIA officer wasn’t Photographic Interpretation trained, so each picture had been annotated by the N-PIC analysts at his request. Most of the labels were self-evident –
wheelhouse, ropes, cleats, radar reflector, tyres acting as fenders, and so on – but he was going to have to accept their word that the vague oblong shapes visible along both sides of the
boat towards the stern were aqualung racks, one with a set still in place.
In the first two pictures, the single occupant of the boat was leaning over the side, reaching down for something, or hauling something in. Until he’d studied the third picture, the CIA
officer had wondered briefly if perhaps this was all a false alarm, and that what he was looking at was nothing more than a fisherman hauling up a lobster pot. Then he’d checked a
Mediterranean chart and realized that the water there was far too deep for any lobster fisherman to foolishly try to catch anything.
And, anyway, in the third photograph the shape of an aqualung tank was clearly visible beside the man in the boat, even without the N-PIC label, so the analysts had been right about the type of
boat, although they hadn’t been able to identify it by a name or a number.
The fourth picture showed three aqualung tanks resting beside the anonymous figure in the diving boat, but it was one N-PIC label in the fifth and final photograph that had caused the CIA
officer most concern.
The major difference between this picture and the preceding four was that the figure was no longer bending over the side of the boat. Instead, the KH-12 camera had caught him just entering
– or perhaps standing beside – the wheelhouse. For at least the sixth time, the CIA officer leaned forward over the last photograph and stared intently at one tiny section of it through
his desk magnifying glass.
Clearly visible on the side of the boat, where the man had been bending over earlier, was a very slight protuberance. Next to that was an inked line joining it to the N-PIC label, that simply
stated ‘ROPE IN WATER AND CLEATED TO GUNWALE’.
And that meant, or it could mean, that there was something at the submerged end of the rope.
Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy
‘Where did you spot him?’ Richter asked. It was late evening and he and Simpson were sitting in a military briefing-room at the Brindisi-Casale air base.
Brindisi is a small airport, just outside the town of that name, handling a couple of dozen civilian flights a day to and from Rome, Milan and Venice. It is home to 9 Brigata Aerea of 15 Stormo,
which flies Sikorsky HH-3F Search and Rescue helicopters, and also to the United Nations Logistic Base, which supports humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations.
Rather than go to Rome or to any other location where the Italian Secret Service maintained a presence, they had decided it was both safer and easier to brief Richter within the confines of the
airfield. He was, after all, the only member of any Western Intelligence service who could positively identify Lomas/Lomosolov. Even Simpson had wanted reassurance on that point.
‘You can do it, Richter?’ he had asked.
Richter thought back to that hotel in West London, and to the image of Lomas’s smiling face staring at him from the doorway of the room. It was an image that he knew, without a shadow of a
doubt, would be with him for the rest of his days, no matter what happened now in Italy.
‘No problem,’ he had confirmed. ‘I’ll know him.’
‘Lomas – or the man we believe is Lomas – was spotted eight days ago by a covert operative, one of our watchers, at Rome’s Fiumicino airport,’ explained Giancarlo
Perini, a senior operational agent of the SISDE
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