The Big Breach (8 page)

Bart was next to speak. He had only just graduated from Oxford with a first-class physics degree and had not much other experience, but spoke at length about himself. Like me, he had been recruited as part of MI6's drive to attract more officers with scientific and technical degrees to work in weapons counter-proliferation.

Martin Richards was the eldest on the course, in his mid-40s. He was talent-spotted while an undergraduate at Oxford but declined to join the service immediately. Instead, he joined Shell Oil and spent most of his career working in the Middle East. Like many other Shell employees, he remained in contact with MI6, and 22 years after his first approach he took up the offer to start a second career. Because of his age he would not have the same opportunities as us, and had been earmarked to become a specialist officer concentrating on the Middle East oil industry.

Castle was next. Speaking concisely in an upper class accent, he described his education at Eton, then Magdalen College, Oxford. Twenty-eight and recently married, Castle had worked in the city for a few years where he was a successful merchant banker and took a hefty pay cut to join MI6. He later made no secret of his intention to only in the service for only a few years because he regarded the salary as inadequate stay. Based on his militaristic bearing and spotless pinstripe suit, it seemed he must be the former Scots Guard. Since Castle made no mention of a military career I assumed he was too modest to mention it.

We turned expectantly to Spencer, the next student in line. He was staring dreamily out of the window, paying little attention to the proceedings. `Sorry, where were we?' he laughed, only mildly embarrassed to be caught napping. He stood up and began telling us his background. `Yeah, I flunked around at St Andrews University, Scotland, couldn't make my mind up what subject to read and took a long time to graduate. When I left, still wasn't sure what to do, so I sort of drifted into the army, hoping it would sort me out. It didn't really, so I ended up here.' We laughed at his self-deprecation.

Hare couldn't imagine Spencer serving in the army. `Which regiment were you in?' he asked, sceptically.

`Oh, I was in the Scots Guards for a few years,' Spencer replied. Spencer was actually a fairly adventurous sort despite his muddled dreaminess. He was an accomplished climber and mountaineer and had worked for a while in Afghanistan with a mine-clearing charity called the Halo Trust, clearing Russian minefields. He was recruited by an MI6 officer then serving in Kabul who had contacts with the Halo Trust.

The DS spoke briefly about themselves. Ball had been posted to both Czechoslovakia and East Germany in the 1970s but became disillusioned with the service in the early 1980s and left to spend ten years in Control Risks, a private security company. That career ground to a halt, so he rejoined MI6 in the mid-'80s. At the time, redundancy or dismissal from MI6 was unheard of and it was not difficult or unusual to rejoin MI6 after a lengthy gap in another career. Long explained how he joined the service directly from Oxford, had been posted to Uruguay shortly after the outbreak of the Falklands war, then went to New York to work in the British mission to the United Nations.

Looking around the table, I realised the new recruits were all from similar backgrounds. All were white, male, conventional and middle class. All of us were university graduates, mostly from Oxford or Cambridge. It was pretty much the background of all MI6 officers. The service's recruitment figures refute its claims to be an equal opportunity employer: only about 10 per cent of the officers were female, there were no black officers whatsoever, only one of mixed Asian parentage, and there were no disabled officers, even though there were plenty of suitable opportunities. These issues gave me no concern at the time, though. I was deeply enthusiastic about my new career and could hardly wait to get started on the training.

4. INDOCTRINATION

MONDAY, 9 DECEMBER 1991

PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND

T
he nine of us, crammed into the Bedford minibus, were silent and tense as we drove through the darkness and driving rain towards the centre of Portsmouth. It was 8.30 p.m. and the streets were almost empty. Only a few stragglers, huddled under umbrellas, were scurrying to the pubs. Ball drove, with Long silently alongside. One by one, they dropped us off in dark side streets or deserted parking lots to merge into the night. Castle went first, striding confidently towards his target, dressed in his suit with a Barbour jacket to protect himself against the elements. Spencer followed, sheepishly scuttling into the darkness under a Burberry umbrella. My turn was next and Markham wished me luck as I slipped out of the back door of the minibus and orientated myself towards my target.

The IONEC was designed to train a recruit to a level of proficiency to step into a junior desk job in MI6. Approximately half of the course was spent in the classroom, learning the administration of the service, the theory of how to cultivate, recruit, handle and debrief agents, listening to case histories and receiving presentations from the different sections of the service. The remainder was spent in exercises, and we were on PERFECT STRANGER, the first of many increasingly complicated tests that were to form the backbone of the course.

Our brief was simple but a little nerve-racking for novice spies. We were each assigned a pub in downtown Portsmouth in which we had to approach a member of the public and, using whatever cunning ruse we could invent, extract their name, address, date of birth, occupation and passport number. We were given an alias, but had to use our initiative to invent the rest of our fictional personality.

Ball explained that the purpose of the exercise was three-fold. First, it was a gentle introduction to using and maintaining an alias identity in a live situation, an essential skill for an intelligence officer. Second, it would test our initiative and cunning in devising a credible plan to achieve the objective. Third, it would illustrate the workings and immense size of MI6's central computer index, or CCI. This is a mammoth computerised databank containing records of everybody with whom any member of MI6 has come into contact operationally since the start of record-keeping in 1945. The biographical details of our random victims were to be fed into this computer to see what, if anything, would be unearthed. The size of the database was such, Ball explained, that it was rare for an IONEC not to chance upon at least one individual with a mention in the CCI on a random trawl of the pubs of Portsmouth,

Pushing open the heavy mock-Victorian door of my designated pub, the Hole In The Wall on Great Southsea Street, I felt apprehensive. Although a simple exercise, it was our first test and I wanted to get off to a good start. We'd been given an œ8.50 advance to buy ourselves and targets a couple of drinks, so I made for the bar intending to make the most of it. Scanning the room for potential targets I was alarmed to find the pub empty. Ordering a pint of Guinness, I dismissed the barman as a potential prey. Old, fat and surly, there was little chance of getting him to talk. I sat down in a red-velveted alcove with a view of the entrance and waited for better prospects.

Time slipped by with the Guinness. I was starting on my second pint before the first customers, a smooching couple, straggled in. They would not welcome the approach of a stranger. Then a rowdy bunch of youths marched in to play pool. It would be difficult to mix with them and single one out for inquisition. A glance at my watch showed only 20 minutes before the minibus would return to pick me up. The exercise was getting awkward.

At last my luck changed as two girls wandered in. I watched as they bought drinks and settled into an alcove. In their 20s, they were casually dressed, one pretty, the other less so and a bit overweight. Probably flatmates out for a quiet drink. I had to act quickly - not only because time was running out, but also because the pool players had noticed the girls and were egging each other on to make a move.

Swearing I would never do this again, I picked up my Guinness, walked over and asked if I could join them. To my relief they agreed. `You're not from round here, are you?' the fat one asked as soon as I was seated.

`What makes you think that?' I asked.

`Your accent. You're from up north,' she volunteered. `What are you doing here?'

Her curiosity was encouraging and an opportunity to implement my plan. `I'm a yacht skipper and I'm delivering a Contessa down from Scotland to Cherbourg.' The girls listened with interest to my brazen lying. `But my mate just got ill and went home. I've called in to Portsmouth to find a new hand and restock.'

We chatted about the boat, the voyage, my apocryphal crewman, how I had got into the job. I fabricated everything on the spot, drawing on my limited sailing experience. Just like talking to the soldiers in the bar in Belgium, it was alarming that the art of deception came so easily and surprising how gullible strangers could be. They told me they were nurses and had only recently moved to Portsmouth. Encouragingly, they had done some sailing and were keen to continue now that they were living on the coast.

`Do you know anybody who might be interested in helping this weekend?' I asked. The girls glanced at each other, checking whether the other was thinking the same. `Perhaps yourselves?' I pressed home.

`Sure,' the pretty one replied hesitantly, then turned to her flatmate as if to speak for her. `Sure, we're free this weekend.'

It was easy once they were baited. In order to get in touch with them again, I asked for their names, addresses and telephone numbers, which they neatly printed in my notebook. On the false pretext that I needed to clear them with Customs in advance of our departure, I asked if they had their passport numbers handy. That too was no problem: the pretty one got up and phoned home to another flatmate and asked her to read the numbers. With only a few minutes to go, all the details required by Ball and Long were in my notebook. With my mission accomplished, I bade the unfortunate pair goodbye, promising that I would soon be in touch.

I climbed into the minibus a few minutes later. It was bursting with animated chatter. The others, some a bit tipsy, were elatedly describing how they conned innocent pub-goers into providing personal details. Markham had affected a silly French accent and pretending to be a student from Paris, claimed that his mother, who worked in the French passport agency, had told him that all British passport numbers ended with the numbers `666'. The incredulous victim rubbished the boast, so Markham bet him five pounds that it was true. The target hurried home to collect his passport, chuffed to be making some easy money out of a stupid Frenchman. Markham noted down the number, equally chuffed.

Castle, reflective of his background in the city, posed as a marketing consultant and distributed to each drinker a questionnaire that he had prepared in advance. The form enquired about the clients' drinking habits, purportedly on behalf of a major brewing company, and at the bottom were spaces to fill in name, address and passport number. Castle sipped orange juice on his own for an hour, pleased that he could pocket the cash advance, and then collected the completed questionnaires.

Hare found an old man drinking on his own, wearing the wartime maroon beret of the Parachute Regiment. The lonely veteran was happy to talk to somebody interested in his army career, and he readily volunteered his army number, as good as a passport number for the CCI.

`Is everyone accounted for?' called Ball from the driving seat, turning to check the rabble behind him. Long read out the roll call, with difficulty against the chatter. Bart, much the worse for drink, replied with a loud belch. All were present except Spencer. We waited a few more minutes before Ball decided that we would have to look for him and drove round to Spencer's watering hole, the Coach & Horses on the London Road, a notably boisterous pub. Spencer was not waiting outside, so Long went to look for him. The MI6 trainee was found, very much the worse for drink, in the midst of a lively party. He had not devised a plan, and unsure what to do with himself, had started playing the fruit machine. On the third pull, accompanied by the clanging of bells, the machine disgorged its contents. A crowd gathered round to witness this good fortune and the easy-going Spencer bought everybody a round. They returned the compliment, one thing lead to another and a party ensued. Spencer became hopelessly drunk and forgot about the boring task of extracting personal details - until Long turned up to drag him back to the minibus.

All were in high spirits that night as we returned to our training base. A strong sense of camaraderie was already developing amongst us, a feeling of being up against a common foe. For a moment, sitting quietly at the back of the bus, I pondered the morality of my actions. The girls might spend the whole week looking forward to a sailing trip that would never happen. Was it right to dupe members of the public so casually? As we drove through the portcullis entry to the `Fort', MI6's discreet training establishment in Portsmouth and our main base for the IONEC, I dismissed such concerns. We were lying for Britain and that was sufficient justification. Unwittingly, I took the first step down the long path of indoctrination towards becoming an MI6 officer.

The largest and best kept of the four coastal forts built by Henry VIII in 1545 to defend the strategically important naval harbour of Portsmouth against the French Navy, Fort Monckton, as it is marked on Ordnance Survey maps, is a dramatic and atmospheric training base for MI6. Situated on the bleak and windswept southern tip of the Gosport peninsula, it is approached by a short, winding track across the tee of the first hole of the Gosport and Stokes Bay golf course. Officially known as `No.1 Military Training Establishment', the Fort was a training base for the Royal Engineer Regiment of the army until 1956. When the Royal Engineers no longer needed it, MI6 discreetly took it over. The takeover was so discreet, in fact, that the Ministry of Defence supply branch continued to pay for its upkeep, unaware that it no longer belonged to them.