The Big Breach (29 page)

In February 1994 an uneasy ceasefire was brokered by UNPROFOR between the warring factions and the Bosnian Serbs paused their indiscriminate shelling and sniping of the city. Sarajevo was temporarily more or less safe and, coincidentally, I had a rush of requests to visit me, amongst them String Vest. `I'd love to have come out earlier, and accompanied you on one of your up-country trips,' he told me over dinner in a comfortable Split restaurant, `but I was just far too busy.'

Shortly after String Vest had returned to London, Head Office took the decision to close BAP. Now that Bosnia had been recognised as an independent state and Sarajevo was returning to some semblance of normality, the FCO opened an embassy, incongruously over a mafia- run casino, and had established diplomatic relations. It was the right time to run MI6 operations out of the embassy under diplomatic cover and end the charade of my `civil adviser' fig-leaf. Personnel had already selected a suitable H/SAR, and she was nearing the end of her language training.

I was relieved when the telegram arrived in mid-April 1994 announcing that the new H/SAR would be flying out to Sarajevo in early May. SBO/1 recommended that her diplomatic cover not be tainted through direct contact with me, as he rightly suspected that I was well-blown to the Bosnian secret police, so I was not required to show her around her new patch.

My only task therefore was to oversee with Jon the closure of the station in the Divulje barracks in the first week of May. String Vest suggested that I drive the Discovery and small station items back to London overland rather than incur the expense of sending out the S&D C-130 to pick it up; 602 troop stayed behind for a few more days to pack up the two remaining vehicles, the original comms-wagon now repaired, and they followed with the KALEX's and other gear.

Although I enjoyed aspects of the posting, particularly working with 602 troop, the lack of guidance from a more experienced hand made it frustrating. I needed a break from the constant proximity of bombs, bullets and blood, and I was looking forward to a holiday with Sarah. She had had a cancer scare a few months earlier, though fortunately she was by now out of hospital.

Driving up the spectacular cliff-top road that runs up the Dalmation coast from Split to Trieste on the first leg of my return home, I stopped off at the top of one of the highest cliffs just as the sun was spectacularly setting over the sea. There was still one more task remaining to complete the station closure; reaching into the back of the Discovery, I pulled out Roberts's gun collection and hand-grenade and threw them as far as possible into the deep water of the Adriatic.

10. CHEMICAL THERAPY

MONDAY, 6 JUNE 1994

85 ALBERT EMBANKMENT, LONDON

O
n my return the office had moved from the dim and anonymous Century House to spectacular new premises on the Albert Embankment. The state-of-the-art Terry Farrell-designed office block occupied a prime site in central London on the south bank of the Thames, facing Westminster Palace and Whitehall, and its siting and architecture presented a radically revamped image for the service. Gigantic shoulders towering over a glowering head in the form of its central gazebo, it was like a Terminator, belligerently daring anybody to challenge its authority. It was supposedly built to an official budget of œ85 million, but everybody in the office knew that in reality it had cost nearly three times as much. We were warned in the weekly newsletter that discussion of the cost over-run would be considered a serious breach of the OSA and would be dealt with accordingly.

The aggressive facade was appropriate, for MI6 was facing the most serious threats to its hitherto unchallenged autonomy since its inception. It had recently been `avowed', or publicly acknowledged to exist, by the Queen at her speech opening the new session of Parliament in October 1993. New legislation came into effect in December 1994 bringing a modicum of accountability to the service. A select group of MPs won limited powers to scrutinise the budget and objectives of the service, but were not allowed to investigate MI6 operations, examine paperwork or cross-examine officers. The changes yielded a token of public accountability to the reluctant service, but nothing like the oversight exercised by the US Congress over American intelligence agenices, or even by the Russian parliament over their services. The Treasury was also for the first time allowed to make basic investigations into the service's efficiency and had wielded its knife, forcing the service to make hitherto unheard-of redundancies.

Many familiar faces departed the service during my absence. Even the Chief, Sir Colin McColl was ejected, along with the clubbable but lethargic old-guard directors. They had been jostling for the top job and the office rumour was that one had burst into tears when he learned that he would not inherit the post. Instead, a new, younger breed of managers was appointed, headed by David Spedding as Chief. A pushy Middle East specialist, at 49 he was the youngest-ever officer to reach the top. He forged his reputation during the Gulf War which broke out when he was deputy head of the Middle East controllerate. The controller refused to return from holiday when the war started, and Spedding siezed the opportunity to grab the reins of power, leaving an indelible impression on Whitehall. He promoted an equally thrusting bunch to senior management positions.

The new leadership reflected the new building - younger, meaner, more aggressive. Perhaps it was a necessary change to combat the financial challenges and intensified public scrutiny of the new service, but would it be wise in the people-business of spying? It was with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation that I walked the mile from my home to Vauxhall Cross to start my first day in the new building on a drizzly June morning.

Personnel department gave me ten days off after returning from Bosnia, happily spent sorting out my garden which had fallen into bedraggled despair during my absence. The experience in Bosnia left me feeling remote from the egotistical and brazen hurly-burly of London and I had not felt inclined to socialise much except with Sarah. My solitude was disturbed only by a brief visit from Fowlecrooke to inform me of my next job. He offered me an undercover slot with the UN weapon inspection teams in Iraq, but I wanted my next overseas post to be a normal one, so until something came up he offered me a Head Office slot in the PTCP (Production-Targeting Counter-Proliferation) department. The section gathered intelligence on and disrupted the attempts of pariah nations - mainly Iran, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan - to obtain biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. I wanted to go to the department immediately after the IONEC, but the job had gone to Bart. It was pleasing to now get an opportunity there, and to get out of the East European controllerate.

There was no friendly guard waiting in the entry lobby to greet staff and check photo IDs as in Century House. Security checking was done electronically and to enter the main building, we had to pass through a row of six perspex, time-locked security doors, stacked like the eggs of a giant insect. A small queue stretched behind them. When my turn came, a swipe of my card through the slot and the entry of my personal code, six-nine-two-one, illuminated a small green light by the slot, and the perspex door slid open with a
Star Trek
- like swish. I stepped into the narrow capsule, my shoulders brushing the sides. A pressure pad on the floor established that there was only one occupant, the door swished shut behind me, then the door in front opened, releasing me into the inner lobby.

Like Century House, the interior of the new building felt like a hotel but the shabby Intourist style had been discarded in favour of flashy American Marriott decor. Soft fluorescent light from recessed port-holes in the high ceiling illuminated a hard-wearing ivory marble floor, set off by the matt grey slate of the walls. Two giant columns dominated the hall, containing banks of rapid modern lifts. There would be no more impatient, muttering queues waiting for under-sized lifts in this building. Around the edge of the columns were inset comfortable black leather bench seats. To the right, natural light filtered from a small atrium that opened, by a tall light well, to the sky above. It was filled with large and garish plastic imitations of sub-tropical trees. Several marbled hallways led off from the sides of the central atrium. I was 20 minutes early for the appointment with my new line manager, so I set off to explore.

A few steps down the first hallway revealed the new library. The Century House library was a dismal affair, consisting of metal racks filled with ancient books and ragged filing boxes full of magazines. The new version was much smarter and brighter, with expensive-looking reading tables and swish sliding book racks. Jenny, the cheerful librarian, smiled a welcome from behind her desk. `How are you?' she greeted me enthusiastically. `How was Bosnia?' She explained that she had been promoted to chief librarian at the time of the move but Sandra, her older and therefore more expensive superior, was made redundant. `I felt so sorry for her,' murmured Jenny. `Twenty years in Century House, and personnel department wouldn't even give her a visitor's pass so that she could see inside the new building. She was dreadfully upset.'

Jenny stamped the distribution list on the morning's newspapers. `And have you seen what they did to the cleaners?' Jenny asked. She showed me a recent article in the
Mirror
. In a cynical attempt to save money, personnel sacked the 47 cleaning staff employed in Century House, then re-employed them on a lower-paid contract basis at Vauxhall Cross. In an unprecedented move, the justifiably furious cleaners took MI6 to an employment tribunal with the help of their local MP, Labour back-bencher Kate Hoey. MI6 used every trick in the book to deny them this basic human right, claiming that even the identities of cleaning staff were too secret to be made public in a court hearing. Eventually, after a long and expensive legal battle, they were granted access to a tribunal, and the
Mirror
showed a comical photograph of the cleaning ladies taking their stand, only a row of sensible shoes visible beneath the screen which they were forced to stand behind. They quickly won the case, compensation and their jobs back. It was an embarrassing setback for the new directors of MI6, not only publicly but also in terms of their standing within the service. They embarked on a damage-limitation exercise, complaining in the internal weekly newsletter and in public comments that the Treasury had forced the cuts `upon them'. It never crossed their minds to admit that they had simply ignored basic employment law and used the OSA to cover up their mismanagement.

Walking back across the lobby to the lifts, I spied my old IONEC colleague Bart entering the building, carrying a squash racket in one hand and using the other to push the remnants of a bun into his mouth. `'Allo, mate,' he grinned, flicking away with the back of his hand a currant which had adhered to the side of his mouth. `You've been in Bosnia,' he continued, unabashed.

I pointed to his squash racket. `This exercise business, is this some cover job?'

`Nah, I've really taken up some sport - have you seen the squash court?' Bart showed me through a steel door next to the library exit and through to a small grey-carpeted gymnasium with rowing machines and weights. A portable CD player was thumping out dance music and a large, plump-thighed woman dressed in a too-small, polka-dot leotard was sweating away in time to it on an exercise bike, the seat of which was set several notches too low. `Phwoar,' murmured Bart, without a trace of sarcasm, `not bad eh?'

Bart showed me around the rest of the sports complex. The building's architect originally envisaged using the space for a swimming pool, but the directors decided that the extravagance would attract adverse publicity. Some ex-military officers lobbied hard for an indoor pistol range, but eventually commonsense prevailed and the space was used for an indoor five-a-side soccer and badminton sports hall.

I had already spent too long looking around the new facilities and it was time to be getting upstairs to meet my new section. `So what's PTCP like?' I asked Bart, knowing that he had just departed the section to start pre-posting training for an assignment to Hungary.

`You'll be working for Badger. He likes a few beers.' Bart patted his stomach knowledgeably, his erudite praise reassuring me that I would be joining a happy section. I left Bart to get on with his squash match and made my way over to the lifts.

The refreshingly fast lift sped me up to the fourth floor and the doors opened on to a small lobby with corporate grey carpet tiles and bare white walls, like a 1980s merchant bank. For a second or two I studied the small coloured floor plan conveniently placed by the lift exit, then set off down the labyrinth of corridors to my designated room.

The open-plan PTCP office overlooked the building's spacious open-air terrace and the Thames, and accommodated half a dozen officers and secretaries. A few looked up inquisitively at the newcomer, while others kept their heads down in their files or computer screens. The officer nearest the door stood up and stretched out his hand. `Hello, you must be Richard Tomlinson,' he said. His tightly curling grey-blond hair was thinning savagely at the temples but still grew thickly on the forehead and at the sides, creating three broad stripes of fur-like hair. I presumed that he must be Badger. `Sit yourself down. I'll explain what you'll be doing.'