‘Perhaps we should adjourn downstairs,’ Holland said as he rubbed his glasses with a small square of chamois.
White ignored the thinly veiled criticism and continued tinkering with the set. A moment later the static on the screen cleared, revealing a baseball game in mid-play. Jokes rippled round the room. Had so much effort gone into the first-ever live transatlantic broadcast just to subject Europe to America’s bastardised version of cricket?
After a full minute of play and accompanying witticisms, the screen switched to reveal Richard Dimbleby, the BBC journalist, in crisp black and white. He explained that most of the historic broadcast between America and Europe that was about to begin would be taken up by President Kennedy’s weekly press conference, transmitted live outside America for the first time.
‘But, before that remarkable event,’ he said in his clipped, received-pronunciation voice, ‘viewers on both sides of the Atlantic will be given a glimpse inside the control room that is in charge of transmitting the president’s words to the Telstar 1 satellite, which is travelling high above the ocean in its orbit as I speak, and which will in turn relay the broadcast signal to antenna stations in Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall and Pleumeur-Bodou in France.’
Telstar 1 had been launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral ten days earlier. It was the result of a joint initiative that involved AT&T, Bell Labs and NASA in America, the Post Office in Britain, and its French equivalent, PTT. It was a revolutionary piece of technology, and the kind of potent statement that many in the West were keen to make about the power of cooperation between governments and private industry.
At the heart of the satellite was a unique transponder that could capture and retransmit television and phone signals from one point on the planet to another. It took two and a half hours for Telstar 1 to orbit the planet, and for twenty minutes of every cycle it came within range of the American and European antenna stations. For that short window it could relay real-time signals between the two continents.
The camera began to pan across the control room in Cape Canaveral. Walter Cronkite, the CBS journalist who had taken over presenting duties from Dimbleby when the live feed switched to America, listed some of the more notable members of the NASA team who were appearing on screen.
‘There we can see John Robinson Pierce, the leader of the project,’ Cronkite said in his sonorous, southern drawl, as a tall, thin man in heavy glasses stalked across the frame, flanked by people carrying clipboards.
Then the camera settled on two more middle-aged men talking to each other. ‘And I believe that’s James M. Early, the man who designed the satellite’s transistors and solar panels, and Rudy Kompfner, the physicist who invented the travelling wave tube amplifier on which Telstar 1’s advanced transponder is based.’
Several of the people watching in Holland’s office started to lose interest and chat among themselves. They wanted to see Kennedy, not a bunch of technicians. Knox, White, and Holland, however, kept their attention firmly on the screen.
Holland was watching out for any high-ranking officials the camera might catch. White was soaking up as much information as he could from the control boards the camera drifted over – he wondered how much of the technological spectacle was for show, a flickering metal curtain hiding a hundred invisible mathematicians frantically crunching numbers. And Knox was looking for one person in particular. Then for one brief moment he saw her.
Irina Valera. The woman who had almost killed him twelve months ago was standing at the back of the room, staring up at something Knox couldn’t see. She looked calm. Her face was unreadable – if she felt anything about what was happening in front of her, she wasn’t showing it. A phantom pang of pain shot through his chest.
Knox also recognised the man standing next to Valera. It was Dixon, the head of the Corona project and one of the two men who had persuaded Valera to get on a plane to America a year ago. He thought about Bennett, and if she was watching the broadcast somewhere, maybe crammed into a room as full as Holland’s office with her fellow trainee CIA field agents.
The camera only lingered on Valera and Dixon for a few seconds before it cut away again, this time to the White House and an empty dais bearing the presidential seal and flanked by American flags. The big moment had finally come. Kennedy walked into shot and Holland’s office fell silent again.
He took to the stage and immediately began his address, his speech punctuated with his trademark ‘err’s and pauses.
‘I understand that part of today’s press conference is being relayed by the Telstar communications satellite to viewers across the Atlantic,’ he said. ‘And this is another indication of the extraordinary world in which we live.’ Mocked-up footage of the satellite spinning in space then came on the screen. ‘The satellite must be high enough to carry messages from both sides of the world, which is of course a very essential requirement for peace,’ he continued, as the camera switched back to him. ‘And I think this understanding which will inevitably come from these speedier communications is bound to increase the well-being and security of all people, here and those across the oceans.’
It was a casual, relaxed performance but the words had been very carefully chosen, and Kennedy’s message was clear.
He went on to talk about the price of the American dollar, which had been a rumbling news story across Europe for the last few weeks. However, Knox didn’t hear any of that. He was too busy thinking about the president’s opening remarks and the presence of Irina Valera at the heart of the Telstar project.
Telstar had been pitched as the newest triumph of innovation driven by America’s dual belief in itself and limitless budgets. But as far as Knox was concerned, that’s not what Telstar was at all. It was a public relations exercise, a dazzling piece of propaganda beamed directly into millions of households up and down Britain, and even more across Europe and America. He wondered what Khrushchev would have said if he was the one behind the podium, being broadcast to the world.
Telstar was something for the public to be wowed by and for governments and intelligence agencies to pay close attention to. It was also a cover. Kennedy’s comments about international security and seeing Valera at Cape Canaveral had given it away. Even with an unlimited budget there was no way the US would have invested millions in breaching the atmospheric barrier for a relay satellite that worked for less than three hours a day.
Knox was willing to bet that the next generation of Corona satellites was already in orbit, sending everything they spotted straight to the watchful eyes of the CIA. Some people in Holland’s office would probably think that was a good thing. Knox wasn’t so sure.
At the end of the broadcast the collected department heads started to chat again, alternating between how impressed or underwhelmed they were seeing America’s greatest living orator speak live for the first time. Knox, White, and Holland, who had all paid closer attention to what the president had actually said, remained silent.
After a few minutes, Holland sat down at his expansive and fastidiously clear desk, signalling that it was time for everyone to get out.
‘Did you notice?’ Knox asked Holland after everyone except he and White had left.
‘We shouldn’t be too surprised,’ Holland responded. ‘And now at least we know for certain.’
‘What can we do?’
‘We can do nothing.’ Holland turned to White. ‘Though it might perhaps be time to bring Six in on Pipistrelle and see what they come up with.’