"It's simple enough," said Swanson. "He came in low. Two or three minutes in from the coast he started taking pictures. He hoped to make two runs, but by the time he had gotten over once, the whole Siberian sky was full of ack-ack and aircraft. He ran for the Korean border. He went faster than they thought he could, but then a couple of new models showed up on their side and they ran faster than we thought they could. We couldn't have fighter aircraft waiting to escort him in, but we did have some L-5's just accidentally scouting around. We also had a lot of jeeps, both Korean and American, out on a sort of Boy Scout hike.
"But just as he touched the line, one of the Soviet planes stopped in mid-air. At least, it looked like that to the Air Force colonel who told me about it — stopping for a fifth of a second. Must have just about killed the Soviet pilot inside. Something came out of that Russian plane. It overtook our man at top speed—"
"Overtook him?" asked Sarah. "It must have been a guided missile?"
Swanson smashed the fist of his left hand into the palm of his right, "Like that. Tracked him. Overtook him. Killed him. Down came the plane. Two miles our side of the line. But it was near a highway and the Russians' Koreans got there before our people could make it. Close to battalion strength. Border guards, I suppose. It shows that they have good staff work and high readiness. They stood our people off with guns. Fired a few shots."
"Nobody hurt?" said Dugan. "It wasn't in the papers and none of the Japanese I know mentioned it."
"Nobody hurt," said Swanson. His light eyes looked dreadfully earnest. He ran his hand over his forehead; he was half-bald and the gesture made him look like a cartoon of the typical scientist. "I don't know how much longer we can go on trading passes. They didn't want publicity because they didn't know how much we had gotten. Besides, they were invading us. We didn't want publicity because we had these—" He gestured at the photos.
"Why did they leave these pictures?" asked Sarah. "Wasn't there something about a concealed camera?"
Swanson gave her a bleak smile. "I helped design it before he went. Good thing, too. Some Russian officer showed up and stripped the plane. They had the wreckage for two hours before we got enough force and enough brass to move in. Our people didn't even meet a Russian officer. Just some of the Communist Koreans. The body was stripped naked. All the instruments were gone from the plane. All the cameras. Even the pilot's personal papers and dogtags. But they missed one camera. It didn't look like a camera."
"Where was it?" said Sarah.
"It was built to be missed," Swanson declared in warning tone.