MEMORANDUM A Wireless Ghost Story

FROM: Deputy Director (Operations)
TO: Head, Northern Signals Desk
DATE: 12 March 1987
SUBJECT: Recurring transmission, 4613 kHz
REF: OP/13/001

Blacked-out passages are redacted. Hover, tap, or focus to reveal.

1. At 02:13 local on each of the last eleven nights, listening post DRIFTWOOD has logged the same transmission on 4613 kHz: a tuning tone, a woman’s voice reading thirteen five-figure groups, twice through, then carrier off. No station identifier. No traffic before, no traffic after.

2. The format matches nothing on the current registers. The desk’s first assessment — “hobbyist or hoax” — would satisfy me entirely, if the preliminary bearings did not put the transmitter on our side of the water.

3. You will open a file under the designation OPERATION 13 and assign an analyst to characterise the signal. Assign someone junior. This is a wireless ghost story, and I want it buried by April.

4. One further instruction, which is not to be discussed or interpreted: should the format resolve into anything predating 1975, the product comes to this office directly, and to no other office, register, or committee. No exceptions.

D. HALSTEAD
Deputy Director (Operations)

Desk annotation, in pencil: “Assigned — E. Marlowe, Analyst II. She won’t thank me. — C.N.”