THE CURSE OF THE NUMBER STATIONS |
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| Features - Life | |||
 Illustration by Si Scott You might think that between them Bond, Bourne and Bauer have got the spy scene all sewn up. Think again. Tune your radio dial late at night and a whole new world of espionage, cryptology and addiction awaits. 24 has nothing on this… Words by Clare Howdle (First published in Stranger 13, February 2007) It’s the dead of night. The normal incessant pulse of London traffic has slowed to a dull, sporadic drone. Alone in his flat, a weather enthusiast tunes his radio dial in search of long range forecasts to record in his logbook. As he searches, he picks up something he has never heard before. Penetrating through the white noise with stark clarity comes a small child’s voice shouting “Achtung, Achtung”, and then chanting a sequence of seemingly random numbers, over and over. So starts the story of Akin Fernandez and the curse of the number stations. A self-confessed ‘geeky radio type,’ Akin Fernandez first started listening to shortwave in 1992 to decode satellite images. Little did he know where it would lead. “As I was tuning around I started to find these other stations, they were female, male, children’s voices, reading out numbers. My immediate reaction was ‘What the fuck was that?’, because something that opens with a glockenspiel then a little German girl’s voice reading out numbers – that’s very startling. It peaked my interest.” Akin started looking into these strange broadcasts to find out what they were, but nowhere seemed to have any answers. “I bought a shortwave frequency manual to see what it said, but there was no mention of them even though every single weather station was listed. The British Library has no record of them despite having catalogued almost every other sound on the planet…it was as if these broadcasts didn’t even exist, and yet I could hear them clear as day on my radio.”  Illustration by Si Scott Number stations, as they have been termed by enthusiasts, refer to the eerie number recitals broadcast on hundreds of different frequencies that can be picked up by anyone with a shortwave radio. The theory is that these stations are spies communicating with each other, conveying information covertly, which can only be interpreted by someone in possession of the code cracking details. No one has ever confirmed or denied this theory, but Akin is adamant that it’s true: “I have listened to literally thousands of these broadcasts since 1992 and there is no doubt in my mind that they are linked to espionage.” The need to understand more about these stations drew Akin into listening to them night after night, “I am the sort of person that can’t allow a mystery to exist, I have to know what it is,” he explains. “So I stopped logging weather forecasts and concentrated solely on number stations.” It was compelling. “I literally became addicted,” admits Akin, “I spent three years recording number stations and burnt myself out logging and monitoring all the broadcasts I could find – it was like cataloguing a previously unknown species.” This catalogue of recordings became the Conet Project, a four disc CD produced on his own label, Irdial Records, which has since been sampled by hundreds of artists and opened up the bizarre world of number stations for thousands of others. “Releasing the Conet Project was definitely a cathartic manoeuvre,” he continues, “it was a way of getting it out there, of trying to uncover the mystery that surrounded these things and getting people talking about them. I was trying to free myself from it.” But it didn’t quite work. The astounding interest that the Conet Project generated propelled Akin into a whole new level of number stations obsession, as other interested parties and journalists contacted him, and further developments pulled him right back into it. “One of the most interesting things that happened after the release of the Conet Project was that I got a call from a magazine in which I had placed an advert for the CD,” Akin explains. “The guy there told me that he had received an order from the Government Communications HQ for a copy of it for their records. Why would the Government be interested in it unless it was information that they didn’t really want to be out in the public domain?”  Illustration by Si Scott Akin is desperate to get in touch with someone who has been involved in number stations because he still has so much he needs answering. “The people behind them, did they understand what they were doing? Why on earth did they design them with strange music and intonation rather than in simple, plain voices? What was the purpose of it?” – the questions keep on coming. In an attempt to reach someone who might have some answers, Akin embarked on an information-gathering project. “We printed and sent out over 2000 postcards to people that had bought the Conet Project, asking them to send the cards on to someone that might be interested so that, by the laws of probability, we should have received at least a couple of leads.” To date no-one has been in touch. “I just cannot accept that nobody who has been involved in number stations is available to speak to. With the former KGB and all these people writing their memoirs and making money from it, it seems extraordinary to me that there is no one out there who is willing to admit their involvement with these stations.” It does seem curious that in an age when spies are falling over each other to sell their stories no one has, as yet, shed any light on this supposed espionage broadcasting phenomenon. “It’s very, very odd” Akin continues, “I’m not a paranoid kind of guy, but not one reply? You have to wonder.”
Jochen’s addiction manifests itself in a need to monitor, log and catalogue all he noises he heard. Sounds have always interested him and in number stations he has found a bizarre collection worthy of his time. Lots of his time. “It’s the mix of tones, numbers and letters that fascinates me,” he explains. “On one particular West German station the signals changed in 1978/79 and again in 1988/9 – the voices and tones were different but the ‘callsign’ remained the same – it was so amazing that I still work on those stations today.” The detail of Jochen’s knowledge certainly indicates an interest which borders on obsession, but this is something he vehemently denies. However, Jochen heads up the German division of ENIGMA, the European Number Information Gathering and Monitoring Association (which has over 700 members), listens to stations every day, and is the self titled ‘Kopf’ of the German number stations movement – if not an obsession, his hobby is certainly a very, very intense one. This is a story with no conclusion; there are no answers and no solid facts to go on. Just broadcasts, “7, 12, 15, 15, 15…” day in day out, which, once you’ve heard you can never forget. Whether it’s their origin, the sounds within them or the patterns they create that intrigue you, one thing is for sure – you won’t just listen to one. They’ll hook you in. In Akin’s words, “if you’ve got the mind for it, you can lose yourself in them.” Dare to listen? Be warned, once you listen, there is no way out... http://www.archive.org/details/ird059 We recommend 01.Swedish Rhapsody, 06.The Lincolnshire Poacher, 034. Strict Lady, and 69 Strict_English for extra chill factor. To order a copy of the Conet Project go to:
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