‘How many drawings will you be sending us?’
‘Roughly three tonnes. About six hundred five-kilo parcels per set of drawings over the next few months. And we’re giving you two sets.’
The registration officer looked depressed. ‘They’ll have to give us more staff,’ he complained.
It took a few minutes to load the twenty parcels on to a trolley and transfer them to stores. Hundreds of other parcels stacked on steel shelves suggested that the registration officer’s complaints about being understaffed were fully justified. He locked the storeroom door and signed and stamped Albert’s clipboard, giving the papers only a perfunctory glance. Had he checked the receipts he might have noticed that he had received only one set of parcels. ‘Happy new year, Mr Heinken,’ he said morosely as Albert returned to his car.
Another heavy fall of snow began as Albert drove back to Winterthur. He would have to drive very carefully and stick to main roads where the snow ploughs were operating. After all, the elderly Peugeot was still carrying something of a load: namely fifteen parcels of Mirage drawings crammed into the boot, which tended to make the steering much lighter than usual. This would be the last winter he would have to endure in his native country. He thought about burning white beaches, warm sun all the year round .... And watching two girls on a divan whom he had paid to make love to each other. He began whistling a tune ....
Blue Skies are Round the Corner ...
13
WINTERTHUR
Daniel slipped out of the back door of the bar at 11.30pm when the crowd of regulars was thinning out. He crunched across the fresh snow that was drifting against the stacked crates in the yard and opened the back gate. His Mini-Cooper, which he hardly ever used now, was already hidden under a layer of frost-hardened snow.
The watcher in the alleyway heard the sounds of the bar’s back gate opening. He quickly toed out his cigarette and flattened himself into the shadows.
Daniel pulled the rickety gate open and peered out. Albert’s car was parked nearby, tight against the fence. There was no one about. He swept the loose snow off the boot and unlocked it. Inside were fifteen heavy brown paper parcels. Transferring them to the garage like a furtive Santa Claus took him ten minutes. Only when he had locked the boot of Albert’s car and shut the car garage doors did he dare turn on the light. He had stacked the parcels against the side of his Volkswagen van. His hands were trembling slightly as he cut the string binding the top parcel. A strong smell of ammonia pervaded the garage and stung his eyes as he unfolded the top drawing. It was a D-size assembly print of an instrument panel - hardware only - no instruments. Inside the drawing were several sheets of parts lists - the numbered entries of which referred to all the piece parts of the items bubbled on the main drawing: angle brackets, small struts, bracing members - everything - right down to the instrument panel’s mounting brackets. He quickly examined a few smaller drawings and discovered that they were production shop drawings of the piece parts themselves. Nothing was omitted. Sweet mother - someone had gone to a lot of trouble making up just this one parcel. But of all the information on the prints, nothing made his heart quicken as much as the one magic word that was carefully lettered in its own box at the foot of each drawing.
Mirage.
Three hundred yards away, the watcher returned to his parked Citroën DS and lit a cigarette before starting the engine. He inhaled slowly and reflected that his patience was paying off.
After closing time, Raquel helped Daniel carry the parcels up to the spare bedroom. They spent an hour checking off the drawings against their related parts lists. The size of the parcels was no indication of the number of drawings they contained because some of the prints covered half the bedroom’s floor area when Raquel unfolded them.
‘Daniel - about how many drawings are there altogether?’
‘As far as I can remember, about three hundred thousand. But I’ll check with Albert.’
‘Three hundred thousand!’ Raquel echoed, shocked. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘I am. Why?’
Raquel looked dejectedly at the parcels she had unwrapped. ‘Daniel,’ she said slowly, ‘if that’s correct, going on the average contents of this lot, we’re going to be on the receiving end of another six hundred parcels like these. Six hundred!'
Daniel pressed his lips together and nodded in agreement. ‘I knew it would be a problem that would crop up eventually,’ he admitted. ‘I thought we’d worry about it when we came to it.’
‘Well we’ve come to it now. Daniel - we can’t possibly cope. I mean - look at them all. Jesus Christ - this is only fifteen parcels!’ ‘Maybe we could photograph the drawings? You know - microfilm them on to thirty-five millimetre film and then burn them. I used to take close-up pictures of my model aeroplanes when I was a kid.’
Raquel eyed the parcels with misgivings. ‘Well, it always looks easy in movies.’
14
For several decades real spies have been jealous of the ability of their fictional counterparts in cloak-and-dagger movies to sneak into a gloomily-lit room, open a massive safe with the aid of nothing more complicated than a stethoscope, photograph sensitive documents with a miniature camera such as a Minox - usually with a shaking hand - and then steal away into the night with the enemy’s vital secrets captured on film. In reality, photographing documents is a precise science involving the use of carefully-positioned lamps to avoid bouncing light into the camera’s lens, and the camera itself has to be mounted on a tripod. A close-up lens has to be employed which means that the focusing is very critical. The technique Daniel employed was suggested by Albert and took place in the spare bedroom over the bar. It involved taping the drawings to be photographed one at a time to the wall between two table lamps. The camera was a single lens reflex Leica fitted with an enlarged cassette that held enough film to photograph 100 prints. Progress was painfully slow. It took Daniel and Raquel an average of two hours to run off two rolls of film - a mere 200 drawings photographed at the end of each day when they were both tired and liable to make mistakes - especially when mixing chemicals and loading the film into a daylight developing tank.
Of the Mirage-5’s 300,000 drawings, approximately two-thirds were photographable A-size prints - mostly parts lists and piece part drawings of small components. The problem arose with the larger drawings. The only way Daniel could fit them into the viewfinder was by moving the camera away from the wall. At a distance of two metres a C-size drawing filled the view-finder comfortably but the resulting definition on the negative was poor: many critical dimensions were unreadable.
‘Not even a Hasselblad will give you the resolution you need,’ was Albert’s comment when he examined a developed roll of film with a magnifying glass. ‘The only way you’re going to copy the larger prints is with an industrial microfilm system such as a Kodak Recordak.’
Daniel snorted. ‘Costing several thousand dollars and taking up the whole room?’
Albert pondered the problem for some moments. ‘You’ll have to photograph the A-size drawings and find a way of shipping out the larger drawings as they are.’
Daniel muttered an expletive. Albert looked sharply at him. ‘Surely you had a plan in mind? You must have known what you’d be up against before you went into this?’
Daniel stared glumly at the parcels stacked against the wall of the spare bedroom. They were only the first batch and yet, according to the drawing lists, they contained 10,000 prints. 10,000 out of 300,000! A flea-bite! The most he and Raquel could manage after a day’s work was three rolls - about three hundred prints. Each one had to be taped to the wall individually. After that the rolls had to be developed - another hour messing about with the developing tank and chemicals. Only when Daniel was satisfied that he had good negatives of all the night’s run of prints could he risk feeding them through the shredding machine. The previous night they had inadvertently shredded a hundred drawings from a heap that hadn’t been photographed. Luckily they hadn’t been
important prints, but the episode brought home to Daniel that the sheer logistics of the operation were going to defeat him. There were other problems: he could not buy large quantities of film from local sources. Sooner or later someone was bound to get suspicious. Also there was the problem of burning the shredded paper on the bedroom’s open fireplace. The flames roared fiercely up the chimney. If that caught fire and the local fire service was called out... well - they could kiss the whole operation goodbye and maybe their freedom as well. But the biggest problem of all was exhaustion. They could not hope to keep up working for up to three hours each night after closing time.
If only there was someone he could turn to with the problem. If ony he could fly home and be certain of getting help from his father - demand to be taken to see the head of Mossad. But that was out of the question. Despair was turning his bitterness towards his father into hate.
15
‘That’s a beautiful Earth out there. Waters all sorts of royal blue, clouds of course are quite bright, and the reflection of the Earth is much greater than the Moon. The land areas are generally a brownish, sort of dark brownish to light brown in texture. That sure is a beautiful, beautiful Earth out there ...’
The simple words were being spoken by Frank Borman: uttered with the emotion of a man barely comprehending that he was a quarter of a million miles from home.
It was Christmas Eve. Outside Cinderella’s a freezing east wind was blasting snow across an already white landscape. In Switzerland the locals were probably a disappointment to Irving Berlin because they tended to dream of grey Christmases. Inside the bar the normal hubbub of lunchtime conversation had ceased. All eyes were watching the television pictures of Earth that were being beamed from Apollo 8. The three astronauts were now approaching the moon. The pictures they were sending were hazy and yet electrifying: for the first time in history virtually the entire population of the Earth was united in a single act - contemplation of their home planet drifting and alone in the magnificent desolation of space.
Daniel was strangely subdued an hour later as he and Raquel cleared up after closing time.
Raquel watched him noisily crating empty bottles. ‘What’s the matter, Daniel?’
He paused. ‘Nothing. Everything. Hell - I don’t know.’
‘I think I can guess.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay. So guess.’
Raquel gestured to the television set’s now grey screen. ‘That broadcast from the Moon. It got to me. I think it got to everyone.’
Daniel nodded and sat down. ‘Seeing the Earth like that, Rac. I mean - you’ve always known it was just a ball in space. But seeing it for the first time .... It brings it home to you just how bloody stupid and small-minded national boundaries and wars are. We’re a speck of nothingness. We’ve got one tiny planet and all we can do is fight over it and poison it. There’s nothing else we can live on for billions and billions of miles, and only a four-mile layer of the Earth can support us. That’s from sea-level to a height of twenty-thousand feet. Just four miles. Think what a four-mile drive is, Rac - from here to the outside of town. A million years of human history acted out in a microscopic four-mile wide belt - the same one that we’ve got to use for our future ... assuming we’ve got one.’
Raquel had sat opposite Daniel during his outburst. She studied him intently, her eyes large and serious. ‘Do you want to stop this business? Because if you do, I’d be happy to as well.’
‘I thought you liked adventure and excitement?’
‘There’s precious little adventure and excitement in what we’re doing, Daniel. I like running this place because I’m with you. That’s all that matters to me now, Daniel - being with you - doing what you want.’
He shook his head, undecided. ‘Right now I don’t know what I want, Rac.’
‘If you want to carry on, you’ve got to tell them at home what you’re doing. We can’t carry on alone and you know we can’t.’ Daniel smiled and drew Raquel on to his lap. ‘I had a crazy dream of returning home with all the drawings.’
‘And be hailed as your country’s saviour?’
He looked shamefaced. ‘I suppose so ... I suppose the whole thing has been one big ego trip to make up for letting them down by smashing up myself and a Mirage.’
‘There’s also the problem of Albert,’ Raquel pointed out. ‘He hasn’t mentioned the money but that’s why he’s involved.’
Daniel brightened. ‘I could at least fly home with about two thousand prints on film.’
The remark annoyed Raquel. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake - getting this far with the operation has proved something. You can’t risk Customs at Zurich wanting to know what you’re doing with twenty rolls of film in your baggage. You’ve got to call in the Israelis now. We can’t cope any more and you know damn well we can’t.’
There was a sudden pounding on the floor that turned their breakfasts to balls of barbed wire. That was another problem: living on their nerves - their guilty consciences twanging them to the ceiling whenever they had a visitor outside normal opening hours.
The knocking was too insistent to be Albert. This time it had to be the police. Daniel shot upstairs to hide the drawings as best he could while Raquel approached the front door. She was a better talker than Daniel; she could delay a thirsty bull elephant on its way to a waterhole. She parted the net curtain and could make out someone standing on the other side of the frosted glass. One person - probably a woman. She slid the bolts, fixed a warm smile in place, and opened the door.
‘I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t open until eleven. So if you’d like ...’ Surprise killed the sentence dead. She tried not to goggle.
The woman standing outside smiled. Raquel had seen her somewhere before. She was a tall, slender blonde with a gathered tress of magnificent hair that was a glorious spill on to the shoulders of her white trouser suit. At first Raquel thought the woman was in her late twenties, but the overall effect of her ageless, aristocratic features, bearing and general elegance conspired to make her look two decades younger than she was. Her white pigskin handbag had a matching companion in a spherical lace-up travelbag that was waiting beside her like a well-trained snowball.
‘Oh - I’m not looking for a drink,’ said the woman, smiling. There was a curious American quality about her accent that belonged to no state that Raquel could identify. Then she realized that it was similar to Daniel’s accent. The woman tried to look beyond Raquel into the bar. ‘What I’m really looking for is Daniel Kalen. Have I come to the right place?’
Raquel’s cheeks dimpled prettily with the confidence of a woman who knows she has the advantage of age when competition drops anchor beside her. Where the hell had she seen that face before? ‘Daniel’s busy at the moment. Can I give him a message?’
‘I’m sure you can give him all his heart desires - but I’d rather see him first.’
Ice daggers appeared in the air between the two women just as Daniel joined Raquel at the door. He blanched and let out a halfstrangled ‘Mother!’
‘Hallo, Daniel,’ said Leonora cheerfully. She entered the bar and gave Daniel a kiss on each cheek. ‘Isn’t this a lovely surprise?’ ‘Mother - what the hell are you doing here?’ Despite his confusion, Daniel made a reasonable job of introducing the two women who were eyeing each other like caged tigresses. Raquel felt at a distinct disadvantage dressed as she was in shabby jeans and a grubby T-shirt.
‘Raquel, my dear,’ said Leonora pleasantly, not taking her kid gloves off to shake Raquel by the fingers. ‘How lovely to meet you in person at last. I’ve heard so little about you in Daniel’s letters.’ ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Kalen,’ Raquel responded. She closed the door while making frantic eye signals at Daniel. ‘Leonora. I insist you call me Leonora.’
‘A drink, mother?’
‘What a good idea. I see you have an excellent selection. A dry sherry would be most welcome.’ Leonora perched like a mannequin on a bar stool and smiled warmly at Raquel. ‘Raquel, I wonder if yo
u’d be an angel and let me have a few words in private with my son?’
Raquel returned Leonora’s dazzling smile with one of her own that could have ground a cutting edge on a length of railway line. ‘Of course, Mrs Kalen. Any mother of Daniel’s is a friend of mine.’ ‘You must call me Leonora.’
‘Of course I must,’ Raquel agreed. ‘I shall go upstairs and rehearse.’ With that she turned on a heel and stomped up the stairs.
‘What a remarkably charming girl,’ Leonora remarked with about as much sincerity as a cat complimenting a canary.
Daniel felt safer behind the bar. He poured Leonora’s drink and watched as she sipped it. ‘You’re looking very glamorous, mother.’
Leonora smiled. ‘I know - all a bit out of character really. But it’s impossible to go shopping in Zurich and not emerge glamorous.’ Her poise deserted her momentarily. ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Daniel. I’ve missed you so much.’
Daniel polished a glass to hide his embarrassment. ‘How’s dad?’
Leonora looked critically at her son.
‘As well as you look. We’ve both been worried sick about you. How’s the foot?’
‘Not too bad. It plays up a bit towards the end of the day.’
From upstairs came the sound of Raquel stamping about. It sounded as if she was indulging in a spot of camel wrestling. Leonora raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘She seems a nice girl,’ she observed cautiously as though she believed she was making a serious error of judgement. ‘Do you both live here?’
Daniel grinned suddenly. He knew, or rather, he thought he knew how to handle his mother. ‘Typical, mother. A few words of greeting and it’s over the side with the fish hooks. Yes - we’re living together. So why are you worried about me? Raquel’s a good cook and I’ve been eating my greens.’
Leonora was not amused. ‘Naturally we’re concerned.’
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