Chapter 9

The remainder of his time in Paris Andrew played tourist. He did a lot of people watching from little cafes. But he used that time to think about his final year project. He had started to look at pressure waves from explosives, ways to disrupt them, absorb them, re-direct them. It is stupid little moments that can set your mind off on these paths. He had seen an advert on German television for an airbag. He had worked late, and as a result was sitting having a late dinner and there on a TV in the corner of the café he saw a Mercedes-Benz commercial. And for the first time Andrew saw a crash test dummy demonstration of an airbag. But he sat and stared at the television for a long time afterwards. The forces and the purpose were completely different but it got him thinking about what sounds like the most ridiculous thing. His very first thought was of airbags for buildings. It was not like that at all but that was the original thought, the original concept. Protecting the building somehow, in the same way that an airbag protected the occupants of the car. So he spent most of the two days in Paris sitting and thinking, watching the world go by, but often imagining how to defeat the power of explosives. Another of his mental doodles that weekend was about spaceflight. When a rocket lifts off from the ground, the exhaust gases, the huge column of flame, at the point of ignition are drawn away through underground chambers and tunnels. Hell they have been the plot of several Bond movies. He thought about applying some kind of design concept for buildings as well. The time and the mental freedom to let his mind spin off in crazy and ridiculous ways, Andrew needed that.

Term was only eight weeks away and he needed to start getting some ideas down on paper to show Professor Upshaw. Andrew planned to demonstrate AIMS on the following Tuesday or Wednesday when he returned to West Berlin. If the demonstration was a success and Carlisle was either interested or impressed then the work Andrew had previously being doing in the evening would be done during the day. And if he was outraged and told Andrew to uninstall the program and delete all the data then he would no longer be working on it in the evening. Either way he would have free time to sit and concentrate on his project going forward.

Flying back into West Berlin he felt better and was happy with the decision to fly to Paris. He had not expected to model but it was not a big deal. It had just been nice to reconnect with people. Just as two weeks previously he started work in the file room upon his return to Stadium Barracks. There was plenty of work to do and Andrew was not sure he would get all of the files finished before his return to Britain. He tuned the world out and sat quietly working away. It was late in the afternoon when Carlisle put his head round the door.

“Oh you are back. Why did you not let me know?”

“How?”

Andrew was kept away from the rest of the BRIXMIS group so had checked in with the guards at the entrance to the Block before coming up to work. Carlisle would check in on Andrew but it was one way, Andrew didn’t even know where Carlisle’s office or desk were. His one word response had stymied Carlisle. It was their security that was keeping him at arm’s length.

“When did you get here?”

“I signed in at 12.55 downstairs, so 1.00. I will work late to get caught up. Do you have some time tomorrow? I would like to show you something.”

“Do you want to show me tonight? I have time right now.”

“I would prefer to show you in the morning.”

“Fine.”

With that Carlisle left and Andrew was again working away on his own. He used the time that night to make sure that he had the demonstration ready. Andrew had found two things that he thought would demonstrate the value of AIMS. There was one facility, a cement factory, that had not been updated in three years. Unless the report had been misfiled this was an oversight. And the other thing was that there appeared to be an expansion of a specialty steel mill that had not been commented on. The notes in the file talked about this steel plant as producing military grade steel and it had been expanded. There may be reasons for nothing being said or done about it in the file, he was not going to be categorical about any of this, but the AIMS reports highlighted things very nicely. The following morning Andrew swam hard to burn off some of his nervous energy. When Carlisle turned up at 9.45 he was going to be lauded or fired. He didn’t think there was going to be a middle ground.

“I have been using the computer that I repaired.”

“Why? Have you been playing games on it?”

“No nothing like that. I have been running business software on it. A program called AIMS.”

Carlisle looked at him curiously but said nothing.

“I have used the program to summarise the key points from these files.”

“What. These are classified.”

“I know. That is why I am using government software on a government computer.”

Carlisle stood up and paced back and forth, a reaction Andrew was familiar with given he did the same thing at times.

“McLeod, you are a summer student that we are stuck with. What the fuck are you doing with these files. You will get fired and maybe arrested.”

Well this was going well. Andrew had thought about the firing but arrested?

“Hang on, what do you mean government software? How do you have government software? I don’t know what is and is not government software and I don’t know where to go to ask to get it even if I wanted it.”

“Everything I am about to tell you is all true and has been verified by the vetting officers as well as the Ministry of Defence Police.”

That got his attention.

“I know this is government software because I designed the software with two friends. And the company that we formed sold it to the government.”

Andrew waited for the ritual protestation of bullshit but Carlisle was silent for a moment.

“You know I am going to have to check but I also know that it will be true. Go on.”

“When I started here I recognised quite quickly that the program that I helped create would be very useful for managing these files. Not all the backup, the maps, the photos, but creating a summary would allow you to see changes and know when something needed to be revisited. Let me show you.”

Andrew spent the following 30 minutes going through the files he had entered already. Carlisle was not overtly hostile and sat silently beside Andrew as he went through the demonstration. But it was the two anomalies that finally got a reaction.

“Shit. How has nobody spotted this?”

He was back to pacing.

“Fuck it. Stay put. I will be back shortly.”

Nothing would ever top the tension of January 26^th 1979 but the next 12 minutes were the most tense Andrew had been since then. He had no idea if Carlisle was planning to return with the police, armed guards, his imagination did not let him down in imagining all sorts of terrible outcomes. When Carlisle did return Andrew didn’t expect the Brigadier who had spoken to him on his first day, or a RAF Group Captain. It was only later that he found out these were the two senior officers.

“Tell them what you told me. Then run the demonstration.”

Carlisle had obviously given them a heads up because Andrew was not interrupted or threatened with arrest. Neither of them looked very happy at what he had done but when he went through the demonstration they followed along and when, at the end of the demo, he showed them the two things he had discovered they were unhappy. At the situation, not at Andrew. Andrew instinctively knew that without finding these two issues he would have been in a lot of trouble for what he had done. But he had highlighted two things that had been missed and they were now more concerned with that.

“Do you know what we do here McLeod?”

“I was given a briefing but it was only very high level, no detail.”

“Regardless of what we do, and how we do it, we are a field force. We discover things that the Soviets do not want us to, we are conducting reconnaissance in enemy territory, constantly looking to discover their intentions. We do this at the direction of the Ministry and the Defence Intelligence Staff. All these files contain duplicates of reports sent back to London. And we have received no instructions on follow up visits on either of these facilities. Have you gone through everything?”

“No. I have only been here four weeks, and I only installed AIMS two weeks ago. I have checked that there are no outstanding reports for either of these two places. There are none here but I wouldn’t know if they had been misfiled or are somewhere else.”

“And you did this on your own initiative, your own volition?”

“I did. Mr. Carlisle knew nothing about it until an hour ago.”

“Why did you do it?”

The question at the heart of the matter.

“The government spent £25,000 four years ago buying 1,000 copies of this program. They only used it once and they misused it in a way it was never designed for. When I started sorting out these files it was obvious to me that AIMS could help. I suppose to be honest I figured doing it this way I could show you whereas if I asked for permission I would just be ignored.”

“How do you have a copy of government software.”

Ah.

“This is my own copy. The software is in a Department of Industry warehouse in Wolverhampton and you can request copies this week.”

“You used your own copy?”

“Yes.”

“Christ, you must have broken a thousand regulations. Probably more.”

Best to be silent at that point. The brigadier turned to Carlisle.

“Will it help on the big map?”

Carlisle looked startled but recovered quickly.

“These summaries are really good. They help identify patterns. I think if we used the it on the regular runs things would stand out. I don’t know for sure but if you had asked me if all of these were accurate and up to date I would have said yes. We won’t know until we try.”

Brigadier looked at Andrew appraisingly before turning back to Carlisle.

“Okay. Take McLeod through to the section proper. We will give him a list of reports to start summarising and let’s see what he finds.”

He turned back to Andrew.

“You were lucky here McLeod. You have shown us something that has been missed or overlooked and even with that I am tempted to send you back to Britain and have your clearance revoked. By the book for the rest of your time here. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

His scowl faded.

“Well done. This work needs instinct and you have it.”

The three of them left and Andrew slumped down on his chair. He had been lucky as the Brigadier had said, but he was even more pleased that software they had written for one purpose was working on a completely different purpose. Andrew figured, rightly as it turned out, that Carlisle would be getting a lot of instructions so just carried on working. About an hour later Carlisle came back into the file room and sat down.

“The boss doesn’t know whether to be mad and throw the book at you or recommend you for something, promotion, medal, bonus, who the hell knows. I have to ask this but none of this has left this room has it?”

“No. I do all the work in here, shut the computer off at night and lock the door. My bag is also randomly checked, just like everyone else, by the guards. I did it all in this room.”

“Good. I thought so but had to check. So let’s talk about what BRIXMIS is really like, not this glorified cupboard you have been working in. The original agreement was for 31 troops on both sides, us and the Russians. We have a base in Potsdam just beyond the wall, that is the official base, but this is the real base. There are probably 70 people in total, Army, RAF and civilian like us. The 31 that have passes are part of that number, the rest of us provide support. The missions are tasked from the Defence Intelligence Staff and everything is reported to them and on up to Head Office. There are three key things that we focus on. The ORBAT, who is where, who is training, any sign of additional units; new kit, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, fighters, helicopters, anything and everything; and most importantly we check on readiness. Are they doing anything out of the ordinary? Is regularly scheduled training being suddenly extended? Is more equipment than normal coming in on the trains from Russia? Are they trying to keep us out of certain areas? 101 little things. This is the 40^th year of the agreement and there has been at least one team out every single day for all 40 years. The fundamental thing we do is look for signs that they are preparing for war.

“There is a huge map on the wall next door and it is the marked up with the latest estimation of which units are where. There is a reason that all this stuff in here is overlooked. We only check on these things when the training cycles are over and there is not something more urgent. You will be working at a desk beside me and I want you to start using this AIMS program and see if there is anything from the reports that we are missing. I would doubt there is, but you found this so you get the chance to do it again.”

When Carlisle took Andrew through to the main BRIXMIS support area his world changed. Everything was Top Secret and there was a heightened sense of importance to everything. The Soviet Forces in Germany were enormous. They had five full armies crammed into East Germany. It was a long laundry list of all the equipment they had, there was a lot. And BRIXMIS got to drive round two thirds of East Germany, the other one third was permanently restricted. If the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact decided to invade the west, it was these troops stationed in East Germany that would be right at the forefront of the fighting. The volume of material was daunting. But Andrew sat and looked through the reports for one of the five armies, the 3^rd Shock Army stationed opposite the British Army of the Rhine. And that was to be his job for the remaining five weeks of his assignment. He would not be doing any spying, he wouldn’t meet an agent in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Andrew was going to sit at a desk in front of a computer and analyse reports prepared by the 31 men on tour in East Germany.

It was a grind but the people were decent. Once again, Andrew was the ‘kid’ or ‘Jock’, the unit was 90% military after all, with a mixed bag of units represented, including a couple of Sappers. Just as with the previous two summers he was greeted with skepticism and that he was using a computer was treated even more suspiciously. Once again everyone was 10 years older than him, there were experience requirements before you could even apply for this posting and then training took another two years. So he was the 21 year old civilian ‘kid’ dealing with 30 something and 40 something officers and men. There wasn’t a lot of social chit chat, at first he was ignored more than anything. But he plugged away and every day showed Carlisle the summaries he was producing. And slowly, like any situation, things got a little easier.

The first thing Carlisle had done was ordered five copies of the software so that they were using software that was officially bought and paid for. After that Andrew sat with two of the other civilians and showed them what he was doing. Some of what they were trying to summarise did not map to AIMS very well. They kept a note of fields that would be useful to have but did not let that stop them. After more than a week of entering data and summarising reports Andrew sat with Carlisle and the other two staff and they went through the reports.

And that was when he had his first taste of intelligence work. Andrew sat quietly as the three of them reviewed the reports from the system. There was a lot of checking to make sure that they had entered data correctly, at least at first, but as it became clear that they had been accurate the questions started. And that was when Andrew got to sit in with serving soldiers and air-crew who were out on tour preparing these reports. They didn’t find a new tank or the latest Soviet helicopter that everyone else had missed, it was all much more subtle and incremental than that. Over the five weeks they identified 10 small things just from this one area around the 3^rd Shock Army. One was a better place to observe the enemy movements, it had been used once but it had not been used since, and no one knew why. Several of the others were patterns, if one thing happened then two more would follow. Again most of them were known but they found the pattern for several that were not. It was a lot of work and there was no eureka moment but it demonstrated to the whole organisation the value of computers and the value of the work they were doing. Even more, it increased the value of that work. At the end of the day their job was to give as much advance notice as possible of a Warsaw Pact invasion of the west. The importance of their work could not be overstated.

Andrew got engrossed in the work and the days passed quickly. It wasn’t glamorous or exciting, it was computer data entry into a new system for the very first time. Lots of checking, lots of explaining, everything took time. The three of them over the five weeks had summaries from all the recent reports in the area around where the 3^rd Shock Army was garrisoned. And they used both American and French reports as well. There were equivalent organisations within those countries and the three western allies rotated areas of operations and shared the intelligence. It was a very accurate indication of what intelligence work was really like. Long hours, lots of detail and an endless search for patterns.