Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [12]
‘Don’t they have filing where you come from, Captain?’
‘No. We’ve not used paper files for centuries,’ she said casually. She gave one of her rare grins, her teeth so white against her ebony skin. George realized that he was staring at her, and looked away. They had reached the box he was looking for. It was on a high shelf, and together he and Cwej began to ease it down to the ground. They both turned down Forrester’s offer to help. Sure enough, they soon managed to get the box down onto the floor. Now Cwej knelt down and helped Reed look through it. After a couple of fruitless minutes, George looked up.
‘Found it.’
As Roz trudged back to the office behind George and Chris, it occurred to her that this job would be a lot easier with even a rudimentary computer terminal. In her time, police computers could collate all the surveillance and forensic information in a case and seven times out of ten they’d manage to name the culprit from just that. In 1941, and she supposed for a couple of decades still to come, the job still involved some physical effort. Soon this file room would be gone, replaced with one of those big antique processors. George’s successors would simply tap their request into a terminal somewhere and reams of computer paper would spew out. A couple of decades after that, the computers would do most of the analysis, indeed most of the spying, for them. Paper would become a thing of the past and a whole new order of crimes would evolve: computer fraud, hacking, aggravated flaming, narcoware, blackemail, intermeshing.
They had arrived back at their office. Immediately, George moved over to the drinks cabinet and smiled. ‘Too early in the morning for you, Cwej?’
Chris seemed momentarily confused by the question, so Forrester stepped into the breach. ‘He doesn’t drink, Lieutenant. I do, though.’
George handed her the folder, reaching into the drinks cabinet for a narrow-necked bottle.
‘Is it OK if I look at this?’ Forrester asked, resting the folder on her lap.
‘I wouldn’t have handed it to you if it wasn’t.’ George had located a couple of glasses.
Forrester nodded and opened the file. For Chris’s benefit, George recited the details without needing to refer to it: ‘Born June twenty-sixth 1898, his parents were a dentist and the daughter of a prominent industrialist. Served in the Luftwaffe in France during the Great War, then went on the Heidelberg. Worked on the design teams of all the major German automobile companies, was a racing driver from the late twenties until about five years ago. His first love was really aerodynamics — there are over two hundred individual patents in his name covering all aspects of planes: engines, guidance, construction. But the man has a secret.’ He leant over. ‘His grandmother was Jewish. Couple of people from the racing world remember talking to him in the ‘thirties, and they say he’s not that fond of the Nazis. Kendrick reckons, and he’s not usually wrong, that Hartung is ready to defect.’
George handed Roz a generous measure of brandy and took a sip from his own glass. She flipped through the file.
There were a couple of old press clippings, and a more recent photo that had been crudely torn from a newspaper.
The caption said it had been taken at a race meeting in January 1936. Hartung was a handsome devil, thick black hair slicked back, with dark eyes. In this picture he wore a very sharp suit and leather gloves. What remained of the caption read ‘(Photo M. Jarvis: Emil Hartung in Cairo with his latest travelling companion, Miss Bu—’. Miss Bu was missing from the picture, although Roz could make out that there were Arabs in the background.
‘I can see why Scientific Intelligence would be interested,’ she offered.
The Scientific Intelligence