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Authors: James Barrington
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Compact, unimaginative and basic.
There was little stamp of personality. There were a few pictures on the walls, quite possibly supplied with the apartment; the carpets were uniform shades, matching the sitting-room furniture,
and the few books were a catholic mixture of reference works and a selection of paperbacks, mainly westerns and thrillers.
Richter took the notebook from his pocket and found the right page, then glanced round the sitting room hopefully. There was a small writing desk in one corner, fitted with a drop-down flap,
which was up, and locked. On the desk was another picture of a lady of middle years, similar to the one Richter had already removed from Newman’s office, so he took that. He looked closely at
the lock on the writing desk, but there was no evidence of forced entry. That didn’t mean it hadn’t already been searched. It isn’t necessary to leave convenient telltale
scratches on a lock when probing with a pick or skeleton key. In fact, if the metal of the lock is of reasonable quality, it’s difficult to mark it at all.
Erroll produced the key, unlocked the desk and dropped the flap. There were six vertical slots inside, three each side of a central section of two drawers. The top drawer produced assorted
cuff-links, paper-clips, drawing pins and an elderly bow tie – the elasticized sort, which caused Erroll to sneer slightly – while the second contained about fifty pounds sterling value
in roubles. The slots held an insurance policy, which Richter added to his pile, and a group of letters with a Northumberland postmark. He glanced through two or three, and then put them with the
photograph.
Fifteen minutes later, having briefly checked every drawer in the flat and the interior of the wardrobe, Richter had finished. He wrote out a detailed list of all the items he had removed,
duplicated it, and then he and Erroll signed each copy. Erroll kept one, and the second went into Richter’s briefcase. ‘That’s it. Thank you very much for your
co-operation.’
‘Not at all, old boy.’
Richter glanced at his watch. ‘How long to the airport?’
‘It’s about twenty miles, so say thirty-five minutes, at this time of day.’
Aspen Three Four
There are slow descents, there are cruise descents and there are fast descents. What Frank Roberts was doing could perhaps have been best described as a plunge descent,
with the aircraft losing in excess of twenty thousand feet a minute. The one thing he could not do was to overshoot the field, because they certainly wouldn’t have the fuel to get back to it,
and he knew the USAF would be really pissed if he dumped the Blackbird down on some Scottish hillside instead of a concrete runway.
At twenty-five thousand feet the sky was clear, but the cloud that the Distress and Diversion Cell Controller had reported over Lossiemouth actually blanketed most of the United Kingdom. It
looked like dirty grey soup, and the Blackbird plunged into it twenty-seven miles east of the airfield. The world outside the cockpit immediately went black with zero visibility, but Frank Roberts
was already flying solely on instruments.
He was twenty-two miles out when he raised Lossiemouth. ‘Lossiemouth Director, this is Pan aircraft Aspen Three Four squawking Emergency. We’re IMC in thick cloud, passing Flight
Level one two zero in a fast descent on a heading of two eight five, and requesting a straight-in approach to a priority landing.’
RAF Lossiemouth, Grampian, Scotland
In the Approach Room at Lossiemouth the Director, a young flight lieutenant, had been watching the rapid movement of the 7700 Emergency squawk across his screen. The
Emergency Services were standing by, fire engines and ambulances waiting on the airfield, engines running, fully manned.
‘Aspen Three Four, Lossiemouth Director, all copied. You are identified with nineteen miles to run to the field. Maintain your present heading and continue descent to two thousand feet on
There was little stamp of personality. There were a few pictures on the walls, quite possibly supplied with the apartment; the carpets were uniform shades, matching the sitting-room furniture,
and the few books were a catholic mixture of reference works and a selection of paperbacks, mainly westerns and thrillers.
Richter took the notebook from his pocket and found the right page, then glanced round the sitting room hopefully. There was a small writing desk in one corner, fitted with a drop-down flap,
which was up, and locked. On the desk was another picture of a lady of middle years, similar to the one Richter had already removed from Newman’s office, so he took that. He looked closely at
the lock on the writing desk, but there was no evidence of forced entry. That didn’t mean it hadn’t already been searched. It isn’t necessary to leave convenient telltale
scratches on a lock when probing with a pick or skeleton key. In fact, if the metal of the lock is of reasonable quality, it’s difficult to mark it at all.
Erroll produced the key, unlocked the desk and dropped the flap. There were six vertical slots inside, three each side of a central section of two drawers. The top drawer produced assorted
cuff-links, paper-clips, drawing pins and an elderly bow tie – the elasticized sort, which caused Erroll to sneer slightly – while the second contained about fifty pounds sterling value
in roubles. The slots held an insurance policy, which Richter added to his pile, and a group of letters with a Northumberland postmark. He glanced through two or three, and then put them with the
photograph.
Fifteen minutes later, having briefly checked every drawer in the flat and the interior of the wardrobe, Richter had finished. He wrote out a detailed list of all the items he had removed,
duplicated it, and then he and Erroll signed each copy. Erroll kept one, and the second went into Richter’s briefcase. ‘That’s it. Thank you very much for your
co-operation.’
‘Not at all, old boy.’
Richter glanced at his watch. ‘How long to the airport?’
‘It’s about twenty miles, so say thirty-five minutes, at this time of day.’
Aspen Three Four
There are slow descents, there are cruise descents and there are fast descents. What Frank Roberts was doing could perhaps have been best described as a plunge descent,
with the aircraft losing in excess of twenty thousand feet a minute. The one thing he could not do was to overshoot the field, because they certainly wouldn’t have the fuel to get back to it,
and he knew the USAF would be really pissed if he dumped the Blackbird down on some Scottish hillside instead of a concrete runway.
At twenty-five thousand feet the sky was clear, but the cloud that the Distress and Diversion Cell Controller had reported over Lossiemouth actually blanketed most of the United Kingdom. It
looked like dirty grey soup, and the Blackbird plunged into it twenty-seven miles east of the airfield. The world outside the cockpit immediately went black with zero visibility, but Frank Roberts
was already flying solely on instruments.
He was twenty-two miles out when he raised Lossiemouth. ‘Lossiemouth Director, this is Pan aircraft Aspen Three Four squawking Emergency. We’re IMC in thick cloud, passing Flight
Level one two zero in a fast descent on a heading of two eight five, and requesting a straight-in approach to a priority landing.’
RAF Lossiemouth, Grampian, Scotland
In the Approach Room at Lossiemouth the Director, a young flight lieutenant, had been watching the rapid movement of the 7700 Emergency squawk across his screen. The
Emergency Services were standing by, fire engines and ambulances waiting on the airfield, engines running, fully manned.
‘Aspen Three Four, Lossiemouth Director, all copied. You are identified with nineteen miles to run to the field. Maintain your present heading and continue descent to two thousand feet on
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