Today would be the major test to see if all this work had been worth the effort. He had prepared the program of requests at home and had it with him now. The morning tea break was on and most of the lab workers were away from their positions. Jan had diagrams displayed on four screens. And he was unobserved. He took out a small cigar — part of this ruse involved his taking up smoking again after a gap of almost eight years — then extracted the glow lighter from his pocket to light it with. The element went white hot in an instant and he puffed out a cloud of smoke. And put the lighter on the bench before him. Centered over the apparently accidental ink mark on the surface, that in reality had been very carefully positioned.
He cleared the small screen closest to him and asked it if it was ready to read information. It was — which meant the lighter was in the correct position over the wires in the bench. He hit the return key and the screen said ready. The program was now in the computer. The lighter went back into his pocket, along with the 64K magnetic bubble memory he had built inside it, in the space left when he had replaced the large battery with the smaller one.
The moment of truth. If he had written the program well it should extract the information he needed without leaving any trace of his request. Even if the alarms did go off he was sure they couldn’t track him easily. For as soon as the Edinburgh computer had the information it would transmit it to Balliol. Then, without waiting for verification of receipt, it would wipe all of its memories clean of the program, the request, the transmission, and the address. Balliol would do the same as soon as it had passed on the information to him in the lab. If the information were not transmitted correctly it would mean laboriously building up the sequence of circuits again. It would be worth the effort. No effort was too large if it prevented his being traced.
Jan shook the ash from his cigar into the ashtray and saw that no one was even looking in his direction; no one could possibly see what he was doing. His actions were completely normal. He typed the code word ISRAEL onto the screen. Then typed RUN and hit the return key.
Seconds moved by. Slowly. Five, ten, fifteen. He knew that it would take time to get through to the memory, to penetrate the coded blocks, to seek out the right reference, and then to transmit it. Through tests he had run with nonclassified material from the same source he had found that eighteen seconds was the maximum time he had ever had to wait. He was allowing twenty seconds this time and no more. Now his finger was poised over the switch that would break the connection. Eighteen seconds. Nineteen.
He was about to bring it down when the screen cleared and read PROGRAM COMPLETE.
Perhaps he had something — and perhaps he didn’t. But he was not going to take a chance to find out now. Grinding out the half-smoked cigar he took a fresh one from the package and lit it. And placed the lighter on the bench. It was in the right position.
It took only a few seconds to transfer the contents of the computer’s memory to the bubble memory in the lighter. Once it was safely back in his pocket he cleared all traces of what he had done from the terminal’s memory, put a diagram back on the screen, and went to get his tea.
Jan did not want to do anything out of the ordinary this day so he immersed himself in the satellite studies. Once it had captured his attention he forgot all about the contents of the lighter in the intricacy of the circuit design. At the end of the day. he was not the first one to leave — nor the last. In the security of his own apartment he threw down his coat and locked the door. And checked the burglar alarms he had installed. The answer was negative and it appeared that no one had been in the apartment since he had left.
The memory dumped from the core in the lighter into his computer. There was something there all right, but there was only one way to find out if his plan had succeeded. He typed RUN and hit return.
It was there. Pages and pages of it. The history of the State of Israel from biblical times to the present. With no gaps or fictitious accounts of UN enclaves. And it appeared to be just as Sara had told him, though in greater detail. The point of view was certainly different, but essentially what she had told him was the truth. Which made it fairly certain that everything else she had said was true as well. Was he a slave master? It would take more digging to find out what she meant by that remark and about democracy. Meanwhile he read with growing interest a history that was completely different from the one he had learned in school.
But it was not complete. In fact the record broke off suddenly in mid-line. Could this have been an accident? A glitch somewhere in the complex program that he had set up? It could be — but he did not think so. In fact he had better consider it as deliberate and rethink his whole plan. If he had missed some keying code in his gaining access to the information an alarm could have been sounded. The running program would have been cut in just this way. And traced.
There was a cold chill on the back of his neck, even though the room was warm. Now he was being foolish; the Security forces could ndt be that efficient. Yet — why shouldn’t they be? It was always a strong possibility. He shrugged off the thought for the moment and went and took dinner from the deep freeze and put it into the microwave.
After eating he read through the material again, turning back quickly when he came to the truncated end. After that he scrolled through one more time, stopping to read the more relevant parts, then typed SCR, and cleared it all away, returning intelligence to random electrons at the touch of a button. And the lighter memory as well. He passed the lighter through the strong magnetic field of the eraser — then stopped. Not good enough. It took only a few minutes to remove the bubble memory from the lighter and drop it into his spare parts box. The original battery went back in and all evidence was removed. It might be stupid, but he felt relieved after it was done.
On the way to the lab in the morning he passed the library, usually deserted at this time of day, and a familiar voice called out to him.
“Jan, you’re being the early bird.”
His brother-in-law waved casually from the doorway.
“Smitty! What on earth are you doing here? Didn’t know you cared about satellites.”
“I care about everything. Give me a moment, will you. Come in and close the door.”
“We’re being mysterious this morning. Did you come to hear my discovery that we are still building satellites with circuitry dating back to the last century?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
“But that’s not why you are here, is it?”
Thurgood-Smythe shook his head, expression as gloomy as a hound dog. “No. It’s more serious than that. There’s some hanky-panky going on here and I prefer to have you out of the way while we track it down.”
“Hanky-panky? Is that all you’re going to tell me?”
“For the moment. Elizabeth has another girl she wants to hurl at your head. This one is an heiress, which she thinks might attract you.
“Poor Liz. She never stops trying. Tell her that I’m really a homosexual and have finally come out of the closet.”