I recognised the voice at the other end as that of Bill Bravington: I'd spoken to him a couple of times already since our deployment, and had no need to fill him in on background.
"Bill," I said, 'we've hit a problem. The Apple site. The approach is blocked by water.
"Wait one."
I imagined him reaching for a notepad.
"All right," he went.
"Carry on."
"We can't tell if the site itself is flooded. If it is, we'll need an alternative. But even to recce it we need breathing kits, dry-suits and half-hour tanks. Plus some of those Boat Troop rubber bags for the components. And two big underwater torches. Can you organise all that soonest?"
"No problem. How many suits?"
"Two. Correction: three suits and three tanks. Plus rubber bags."
"Number?"
"For three pieces. You know two big, one small. But we'd better have spare small bags as well. Say half a dozen small."
"Got it. Fins?"
"Sorry?"
"Will you want fins?"
"No, thanks. The distance isn't great enough."
"OK'."
"And Bill listen. We need this stuff right away."
"We'll get it all to London tonight, for the next Diplomatic Bag."
People must have pulled their fingers out all along the line, because the kit reached the Embassy on Monday afternoon, less than forty-eight hours after we'd found the water. On Tuesday night Pavarotti and I were back in the tunnel, with the same back-up team on watch above. On a weekday evening there was more traffic along the quay and more pedestrians about, but we made it into the stable undetected, and down below everything was precisely as we'd left it: the marks I'd scraped in the dirt on the floor were still fresh, the surface of the water still one inch below a horizontal line I'd scratched in the slime on the wall.
The discovery of water and the sight of the various falls had led me to change our plan. I reckoned that if we managed to reach our destination on this second recce, we might as well start opening up the site for the CND. My reasons were: first, that the chances of any inspection team coming through the water within the next few days were zero, and second, that even if somebody did come snooping, a hole in the wall wouldn't in itself excite suspicion as there were plenty of other natural cavities already.
So it was that this time we had jemmies and small picks in a bergen. Having zipped each other into dry-suits over our clothes, we fitted our tanks and breathing kits and waded into the inky water. On our outward trip the water was fairly clear, and our torch beams reached a few feet ahead enough for us to spot two submerged heaps of rubble before we blundered into them.
We'd been through all the measurements again, and I'd calculated that the fully flooded section of the tunnel couldn't be more than fifty or sixty metres long. So I wasn't surprised when, after two minutes half-walking, half-swimming, my head broke the surface again. As we continued to advance, an upward slope lifted us steadily clear of the water. Soon we were back on dry land.
The original distances given us by the Firm turned out to be spot-on. A total of 340 metres from the old stable, we came to a circular hole in the roof- the ventilation shaft. When I stood upright with my head in the bottom of it, my helmet lamp revealed that it did not rise vertically, but turned at an angle to my right. I could feel cool air flowing down, so I knew it was open at the top.
"Shit hot," I told Pay. I brought out my tape and held it across.
"Twenty-eight inches. That's easily big enough to accept the SCR and anyone making visual checks down the manhole won't be able to see round this corner. Made to measure.
Five metres beyond it, the tunnel had been sealed with a wall of concrete blocks. Yet providentially, just on our side of the barrier was another big fall.
"Look at that," I said to Pay.
"Made to measure again."
"Yeah and we won't even need to move any spoil. We can just add whatever we bring out to the heap that's here already."
We'd prearranged with Toad that we would stay down for ninety minutes. That gave us an hour of work-time, so we stripped off our dry-suits and took turns to put in concentrated attacks on the clay subsoil. Soon we were both in a muck sweat and having problems with our breathing, perhaps because the air was so damp. None the less, before our hour ran out we had enlarged the cavity to about half the size we needed. We kept the overhanging roof and edges rough, and left a pile of rubble on the base of the hole so that, when we returned to install Apple, all we'd have to do would be to enlarge the hole, clear the bed and lift the components about two feet from the floor before pushing them sideways into their final resting place.
Our return to the surface posed no problems, and once again the pick-up went without a hitch.
"So it's a foot on the brake, is it?" Whinger asked as we drew away.
"What's that?"
"Piece of cake."
"I wouldn't call it that. But it's possible wouldn't you say, Pay?"
"Oh, yeah," he agreed.
"It's definitely on."
So we drove back, feeling quite chuffed.
But as we arrived in camp, the shit hit the fan. We hadn't even drawn up at the back of the accommodation block when Mal came running down the steps to meet us.
"Geordie," he said, "I need to have a word."
"Walk this way, then."
We went a few yards down the track into the woods, and as soon as we were out of earshot Mal said, "Somebody's been tampering with number two lap-top."
"How d'you know?"
"They've killed the disk with the plans on it."
"Killed it?"
"The contents have been wiped. Somebody must have tried to get into it without using the password."
I stopped walking and turned to stare at Mal, who was barely visible in the dark.
"Is it possible the person could have read the contents and then deliberately destroyed them?"
"Not a chance." He sounded fairly confident.
"They tried a wrong password, and that did it."
Jesus, I was thinking. Are we compromised, or what?
"If they'd got into the disk they wouldn't have wiped it," Mal added.
"They'd have left it intact to cover their traces."
"True. But who the hell was messing about in the office?"
My first instinct was to blame Toad, whose duty it was to maintain security. But of course he'd been with us in the city. In his absence, the two scalies, Steve and Terry, should have been in occupation.
"When did this happen?"
"It must have been some time this evening, while everyone was out working."
"So who was in the block?"
"Only the scalies."
"What do they say about it?"
"I haven't asked them yet. I only just discovered it. I tried to boot up the lap-top and found the floppy was still in the slot."
"Grip them, then."
I was enraged. Trust those arse holes of signallers to foul up our entire enterprise.
I rushed into the building and dragged Terry off his pit.
"Dozy wanker!" I yelled.
"Get into the ops room, NOW!"
No. 2 lap-top, a Toshiba, stood open on the ops room table with its screen raised and the floppy disk still in the port on the right-hand side.
"There's been a major breach of security," I started.
"Who used that computer last?"
I glared round, but one by one the lads shook their heads.
None of them had been on the lap-top that day, they declared.
They'd been out of doors, on the ranges, then on a night movement exercise.
"Well then, how the fuck did that programme disk come to be in the port? It should be locked inside the filing cabinet.