The Big Breach (13 page)

Ball briefed us that we were to imagine that we were employed in UKB, the section which works against IRA operations outside the UK. An intelligence report from GCHQ had revealed that the IRA were cooperating with the Italian mafia to smuggle Chinese-made SA-14 hand-held anti-aircraft missiles into Sicily where they would be clandestinely shipped to Northern Ireland for use against British army helicopters. Our imaginary mission was to go to Italy and debrief APOCALYPSE, a mole within the IRA. We were to write up the CX, then pass it in a brush contact to `Eric', a courier who would hand us `further instructions'. We were issued with Pentels for secret- writing and developer fluid disguised as aftershave, but had to plan the rest of the operation ourselves over the next fortnight. We were all now wise to the trickery of the DS and did not expect an easy time.

5. FIRST SOLO

SUNDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 1992

HEATHROW AIRPORT

`
J
ust my luck,' I thought, as the tall, well-dressed blonde sat down in the aisle seat. For the first time in my life I get to sit next to somebody interesting on the plane, and I'm stuck with an alias name and fictional background. Probably a trick anyway - Ball and Long had no doubt arranged for attractive undercover women to sit next to all of us on our flights, hoping that one of us would accidentally drop our cover and let something about our real lives slip out. Ball warned us in the SOLO briefing that one trainee once fell for such a trick. He was at Manchester airport, waiting in the departure lounge for his flight to Amsterdam, when an attractive woman sat down next to him. She started chatting to him and he responded, at first sticking to his cover story; but, becoming increasingly attracted, he wanted to get in touch after the exercise and crassly told her that he was an undercover MI6 officer and gave her his real home phone number. At the post-exercise debrief, his newly acquired `girlfriend' strolled in and revealed that she was an undercover customs officer. Needless to say, he was never allowed to undertake any real natural cover work. There was no way that Ball was going to dupe me into the same error during our two-hour flight from Heathrow to Rome's Fiumicino airport.

The girl turned towards me, smiling. `Hi, I'm Rebecca. Are you staying long in Rome?'

The DS would expect me at least to give out part of my cover story. I was posing as a nerdy academic, so hopefully it would put her off. `I'm Dan. I'm just off to Velletri for a week.'

`Oh really?' she replied. `What are you doing there?'

`I'm a historian, writing a post-doctoral thesis on the contrasting approaches to urban reconstruction after the Second World War in the UK and Italy.' To my relief, her friendly smile waned. Pulling out a weighty academic book on post-war urban redevelopment in Italy, borrowed from London University library, I started to study earnestly. With a shrug of her shoulders, she reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out
Hello
magazine. We sat in silence for the rest of the flight.

Velletri in February was not an enticing place and it had not been easy to devise a plausible cover story for visiting such an unremarkable town in the depths of winter. It had no industry of note, ruling out business cover. Journalism, the other mainstay cover for MI6 officers, was also not easy as I discovered in my research through the library archives that little of note ever happened in Velletri. Indeed, the only reference to the town in the Italian tourist office in London was that it had been heavily bombed by the American air force during the last days of the Second World War as they drove the retreating German army northwards. In the absence of anything more plausible, this bombing campaign would have to form the basis of my cover for the visit.

In my spare time in the fortnight preceding EXERCISE SOLO I carefully built up a thick file of notes, photocopies and cuttings about Velletri. The archives of the Imperial War Museum, fortuitously only a stone's throw from Century House, furnished a wealth of detail on the wartime events in the town. Noticing one day an advertisement in the education supplement of
The Guardian
for a vacant post-doctoral urban-redevelopment teaching post at University College, London, I applied using an alias and false academic qualifications, forged by TOS. An invitation to interview arrived shortly afterwards. I would not attend, of course, but the letter slipped into my briefcase would add credibility. Every other piece of paper in my briefcase, every dry-cleaning slip or receipt in my wallet, every item of clothing, would have to match the legend that I was a Daniel Noonan, a post-doctoral history student.

Arriving at Velletri's small railway station on a cool Monday morning, I felt comfortable in my alias identity and well prepared for the exercise. After checking into the Pensione Arena, a tiny bed and breakfast tucked away on the Via Cannetoli, I spent the rest of the evening exploring the narrow cobbled streets and winding alleys of the hilltop medieval town. First I recced the Caf‚ Leoni on the Corso della Repubblica, just off Piazza Cairoli, where a meeting was scheduled with Eric, and then found the Bar Venezia on Via Lata where I was to meet APOCALYPSE.

Ball told us that we would be under surveillance throughout the exercise by Italian teams. He was probably bluffing, as the Italians would probably not divert their limited surveillance resources to our exercise, but taking no chances I mentally noted useful antisurveillance traps. At the same time, I tried to immerse myself completely in my false identity, mentally rehearsing every small detail of my cover, trying to think and act just like a real historian would do on a research trip. I stopped to examine and photograph any buildings which were of pre-war origin - all the churches, the town halls - and my research had revealed where some of the USAF bombs had landed, so I inspected the repairs and reconstruction. Everything was noted in copious detail in notebooks, building up documentation to support my cover story.

That evening was spent eating a simple meal of pizza and chianti at the Bar Centrale on the main town piazza. There did not seem to be much nightlife in Velletri, so I went to bed early in the low budget pensione. There was a long day ahead of me on the morrow, and I would need a good night's sleep.

On Tuesday I arrived at Bar Venezia at 10.50 a.m., ten minutes before APOCALYPSE was due, ordered a cappuccino, and sat down at the table furthest from the bar, my back to the wall so that the quiet street outside was visible. The five or six other tables were deserted; the only other customer, an old man, sipped a brandy at the bar. He wore a faded black beret and a padded jacket with one pocket nearly torn off. Two fingers were missing from his calloused right hand and an old sheepdog lay dozing under his stool. Not the sort that even the Italians would use for surveillance. I pulled out a copy of
The Economist
from my shoulder bag and laid it on the table in front of me. It was the all-clear sign for APOCALYPSE.

I spotted him out on the street just before he entered the caf‚. In his mid-40s, thickset, neat short hair, dressed in fleece jacket, jeans and Timberland boots - the clothing gave him away as a Brit. He didn't acknowledge me but went straight to the counter and ordered an expresso. The sheepdog sniffed the air, growled softly and went back to sleep.

APOCALYPSE brought his coffee over to my table. `Do you mind if I take a seat?' he greeted me cautiously.

I didn't stand up to greet him - that would disclose to an observer that we were expecting each other - but indicated for him to sit down and, following Ball's briefing introduced myself as successor to `Peter', APOCALYPSE's former case officer. I established a cover story for our meeting as quickly as possible, as we had been trained. `If anybody should ask how we met, you should simply say that you walked into the caf‚, saw me reading
The Economist
, and went up to speak to me as a fellow Brit.' APOCALYPSE nodded, but he still seemed cautious. Ball had trained us on the IONEC to build a rapport with an agent to ease nerves or suspicion. `Nice boots,' I commented, nodding at his new Timberlands. `Did you buy them here?'

Soldiers love talking about boots and APOCALYPSE was no exception. `Aye, excellent piece of kit, these, can't fault 'em.' APOCALYPSE started to open up and once the rapport was established it was time to start the debrief. APOCALYPSE briefed me that he was in Italy to meet a contact in the Italian mafia who had access to Soviet weaponry by virtue of their links with the Libyan government. APOCALYPSE had negotiated the purchase of 20 SA-14 anti-aircraft missiles. The consignment would be shipped from Tripoli in a tramp steamer to the Irish coast, where, under cover of darkness, it would be unloaded into rigid hull inflatables. Once landed, the missiles would be driven overnight to an IRA safe house near the border.

It was important information, but APOCALYPSE didn't know the sort of detail which would enable Head Office to act on the intelligence. They would want the name of the tramp steamer, its departure date, the exact date it would arrive in Ireland. APOCALYPSE promised that he could get the answers from his fictional contact. We arranged to meet again two days later, this time in a different caf‚, the Bar di Poniente on the west side of the town. I reminded APOCALYPSE of our cover story for the meeting and left.

I scurried back to the Pensione Arena, locked the door of the simple room and, using the Pentel pen provided by TOS/SW, wrote up the intelligence in block capitals in the standard format of a CX report. At the top, a brief one-line summary of the intelligence. Next, the date of the meeting at which the information had been acquired. Then a brief description of the source - `An excellent source with direct access, who has reported reliably in the past,' I wrote. Then the text of the intelligence. It all fitted on to one page of A4 paper from my pad of water-soluble paper. Putting the sheet face-up on the bedside locker, I laid a sheet of ordinary A4 over it, then on top of them both
The Theory of Postwar Urban Redevelopment
. Five minutes was enough for the imprint transfer to the ordinary A4. The sheet of water soluble paper went into the toilet bowl and in seconds all that was left was a translucent scum on the surface of the water which was flushed away. Back in the bedroom I took the sheet of A4, folded it into a brown manilla envelope and taped it into the inside of a copy of the
Gazzetta dello Sport
. I had to work quickly because there wasn't much time before the 2 p.m. meeting with the Eric.

He was sitting at the Caf‚ Leoni's crowded bar, milling with office workers on their lunchbreak. His dark jacket and red tie, recognition features which Ball had briefed us to look out for, were easy to pick out. In front of him was a nearly finished glass of beer and a folded copy of the
Gazzetta dello Sport
. Squeezing into a gap between him and another customer, I placed my own copy next to his and ordered a coffee. Wordlessly, Eric picked up my paper and left. I enjoyed my coffee, leaving 15 minutes later with Eric's newspaper under my arm. Even if surveillance were watching me, only the most acute observer would have noticed the brush contact.

There was not another meeting scheduled with Eric until the following morning, but there was plenty to keep me occupied for the rest of the afternoon. Ball had told us to do a house recce, as we had learnt on PERFECT NEIGHBOUR. The scenario was the same - it was a suspected IRA safe house and we were to help TOS plan a bugging operation. Number 41 Via Antonio Gruinaci was on the east side of the town. That afternoon, a casual stroll past gave me a first look. A detached three-storey house, probably of post-war construction, it was stuccoed in a creamy colour and set just off the road with a small iron gate leading into the front garden. There was a new and expensive Lancia parked in the drive. I strained to get a better look at the small plaque hanging from the side gate: `Studio di Architectura, M di Rossi, Pietrangelo Di Vito, M Caracci.' I memorised as much detail as I could but no amount of written detail can beat a good photograph. We had not been issued with covert cameras - that would be far too compromising if we were arrested - so I took a photograph openly with my Pentax SLR. If questioned, I would claim that it was part of my research. It would be enough to make a good report for the DS - not as good as on PERFECT NEIGHBOUR, but good enough given the limited time. I stashed the camera away and hurried back to the pension.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing the work a real academic on a research visit might do. Maria Vialli, a pretty assistant clerk in the town hall planning department, provided me with maps of the town before and after the war and photocopies of town records. `You're in luck,' she told me in good English, `the local priest who has lived here all his life is displaying his collection of sketches of the town from 1945 to present - you should go and have a chat with him.' She gave me her business card in case I needed to contact her again. At the gallery, just underneath the town hall, the priest, Monsignor Berlingieri, was hosting the exhibition, humbly showing visitors around his pictures. He was delighted to escort me around the collection and two hours later, the tour finished, I pressed a calling card into his hand to ensure that he would remember my name.

Eric was waiting for me the following morning in a third caf‚, just off the town square. The
Gazzetta dello Sport
swap was two-way this time. My copy contained the write-up of the house recce and a canister containing the undeveloped film and there was a message for me in Eric's copy.