Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [22]
I checked all the other images I’d taken to try and spot any other cameras. I looked at all the hard sites like railings, posts and buildings. Even the artillery pieces and the big stand-alone trees that dotted the hillside above The QuarterMaster Store. I had one possible hit.
Behind the store on the steep hillside there was an outdoor display showing how heavy cannon barrels were hoisted up the slope to the top of the fort. Beyond that there was an object sitting in the crook of a tree branch. This was little more than just another bulge where possibly one should not be. It was green and brown and matched the colour of the tree. However, the green lump had a circular black centre. Under maximum magnification, the pixels onscreen were almost the size of bricks and they all but destroyed the image, but I was prepared to bet that, yes, it was a camera. If I was right, positioned where it was it would cover the back of The QuarterMaster Store building and any approaches up the roadway from the main gate below.
With a transmitting range of several kilometres, our adversary’s screen-watchers could be in the jungle, in a vehicle parked somewhere on the island or even sitting in the harbour basin in a launch. They could even be across the harbour in an apartment for that matter. However, I figured that wherever they were, they would have people within easy reach of the surrender rooms and whatever Stanley Loh had secreted there.
The watchers had one big advantage. Because the fort is situated at the narrow end of the island, anyone attempting to leave and reach the train, bus, car, cab or whatever had to pass through the concourse outside the aquarium. I was sure that the guys using the cameras had people stationed right there to intercept their target if anyone made the pick-up and tried to get away.
I switched to the images of the two surrender rooms. I’d photographed the panels to the right of the door over a smiling Simone’s shoulder. There were five boxes in all. One was a black-fronted keyed unit, below that a standard digital alarm box. To the right a small keyed box, a faceless panel, possibly hiding fuses. There was a red box below that, a fire alarm control box, I had to assume.
I was figuring there was a general sensor movement system for the entire floor as a whole. That theory matched the sensors I’d spotted. The second alarm system was probably the infrared trip alarm around the displays. Fire alarm and fuse box aside, the remaining two boxes probably related to the air conditioning and the lights. Short of actually getting right up close and personal with them that was my best guess.
I skipped through the images in the Allied surrender room and started in-depth in the Japanese room, looking at everything in high resolution. As with my study of the exterior shots, it took time. I ordered a pot of coffee and a sandwich and smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes before I finished.
Whatever Stanley had hidden in the room, I didn’t find it on my image search. All I found were a lot of waxy faces of various shades of the rainbow attached to stiff mannequins dressed in the ill-fitting uniforms of a dozen countries and services. Apart from the glazed-over eyes, nothing leapt out at me and said, “This is it!”
It was after midday when I finally shut down the computer. My own eyes were glazed and red from the strain of trying to rearrange millions of pixels into some sort of meaningful order. I stood at the suite window and watched the world roll by below. The day outside looked like another