props buzzsawing, and rises ponderously into the air. The landing-gear folds neatly away, the aircraft banks gently to the right and heads north for Rochester, New York, where the Eastman Kodak film processing centre is ready to recover whatever imagery is possible from the film stacks.
Speed is of the essence as no one is sure what is happening to the film in the surface-pressure cold water in the shipping container. After all, the bucket has been on the bottom for over a month, where the pressure is four tons per square inch. The C-130 gets a priority slot in the Greater Rochester Airport landing pattern, and as soon as it is on the ground, it taxies towards the military terminal in the south quarter of the field. The rear ramp lowers and the refrigerator is pushed out by the cargo master while the two spooks stand by and watch. An unmarked civilian Ford C-600 box truck drives up, followed by a forklift, the refrigerator is loaded into the back of the truck, which leaves the airport, takes Route 47 into Rochester, and then Route 104 into the city centre and the Eastman Kodak film processing plant beside the Genesee River.
Inside the centre, the film stacks are transferred to a refrigerated tank of water prepared weeks before. The remains of the bucket are carefully removed, and the stacks are opened and the film strips examined. Sea water has caused the emulsion gelatin to expand, and this has kept the centre of the rolls of film sealed. Technicians carefully despool the film and those sections of it with recoverable images are dried and then developed. Of the 52,000 feet of film, roughly one tenth has survived and is capable of being processed. The rest is unusable.
The two CIA men oversee the development process, and when the first 8 by 12 photograph slides out of the film processing machine, one of the spooks steps forward and grabs it. He passes it to his colleague, and they both shrug in puzzlement. The photograph appears to show a vast army base outside a city, but neither of them recognise the city or the base. It is certainly not in the US.
The final set of developed photographs and fixed negatives are packed into a secure briefcase. A Ford Galaxie sedan takes the CIA men back to Greater Rochester Airport, where a civilian Bell 205 waits for them on the apron. They clamber into its passenger compartment and buckle themselves onto the bench seat. The pilot turns round and gestures at his headphones. The spooks take the headphones hanging on hooks beside their seats and fit them over their heads.
After one of the spooks has slid the door shut, the helicopter takes to the air and flies south. The CIA headquarters are 293 miles away, a two-hour flight. One of the CIA men clutches the briefcase containing the photographs from the sunken bucket on his lap, the other stares out of the window at the passing countryside. Neither talks, nor pays much attention to the voice of the pilot and various air flight controllers in their headphones.
The heliport at CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, has the FAA code 84VA, it is one hundred feet by one hundred feet. The Bell 205 settles squarely in its centre and before the rotor has even stopped turning, the CIA men have jumped out and are running bowed toward a black Dodge Polara sedan waiting at the edge of the pad. The car takes them to the entrance to the headquarters, where they are met and escorted to a photographic analysis office. There is a palpable air of urgency—before leaving Rochester, one of the spooks called his supervisor and told him what the photographs showed.
It takes a team of analysts only thirty minutes to identify the city in the photographs as Shenyang in north-east China, 100 miles from the North Korean border. According to present intelligence reports, there is only a typical military presence in the city, but the photographs from the spy satellite say otherwise. Worse, at least half of the military vehicles assembled at the base do not display the
Speed is of the essence as no one is sure what is happening to the film in the surface-pressure cold water in the shipping container. After all, the bucket has been on the bottom for over a month, where the pressure is four tons per square inch. The C-130 gets a priority slot in the Greater Rochester Airport landing pattern, and as soon as it is on the ground, it taxies towards the military terminal in the south quarter of the field. The rear ramp lowers and the refrigerator is pushed out by the cargo master while the two spooks stand by and watch. An unmarked civilian Ford C-600 box truck drives up, followed by a forklift, the refrigerator is loaded into the back of the truck, which leaves the airport, takes Route 47 into Rochester, and then Route 104 into the city centre and the Eastman Kodak film processing plant beside the Genesee River.
Inside the centre, the film stacks are transferred to a refrigerated tank of water prepared weeks before. The remains of the bucket are carefully removed, and the stacks are opened and the film strips examined. Sea water has caused the emulsion gelatin to expand, and this has kept the centre of the rolls of film sealed. Technicians carefully despool the film and those sections of it with recoverable images are dried and then developed. Of the 52,000 feet of film, roughly one tenth has survived and is capable of being processed. The rest is unusable.
The two CIA men oversee the development process, and when the first 8 by 12 photograph slides out of the film processing machine, one of the spooks steps forward and grabs it. He passes it to his colleague, and they both shrug in puzzlement. The photograph appears to show a vast army base outside a city, but neither of them recognise the city or the base. It is certainly not in the US.
The final set of developed photographs and fixed negatives are packed into a secure briefcase. A Ford Galaxie sedan takes the CIA men back to Greater Rochester Airport, where a civilian Bell 205 waits for them on the apron. They clamber into its passenger compartment and buckle themselves onto the bench seat. The pilot turns round and gestures at his headphones. The spooks take the headphones hanging on hooks beside their seats and fit them over their heads.
After one of the spooks has slid the door shut, the helicopter takes to the air and flies south. The CIA headquarters are 293 miles away, a two-hour flight. One of the CIA men clutches the briefcase containing the photographs from the sunken bucket on his lap, the other stares out of the window at the passing countryside. Neither talks, nor pays much attention to the voice of the pilot and various air flight controllers in their headphones.
The heliport at CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, has the FAA code 84VA, it is one hundred feet by one hundred feet. The Bell 205 settles squarely in its centre and before the rotor has even stopped turning, the CIA men have jumped out and are running bowed toward a black Dodge Polara sedan waiting at the edge of the pad. The car takes them to the entrance to the headquarters, where they are met and escorted to a photographic analysis office. There is a palpable air of urgency—before leaving Rochester, one of the spooks called his supervisor and told him what the photographs showed.
It takes a team of analysts only thirty minutes to identify the city in the photographs as Shenyang in north-east China, 100 miles from the North Korean border. According to present intelligence reports, there is only a typical military presence in the city, but the photographs from the spy satellite say otherwise. Worse, at least half of the military vehicles assembled at the base do not display the
Similar Books
