The Big Breach (32 page)

Under the terms of the 1975 IOCA (Interception of Communications Act) a warrant should be given only if the target is breaking UK law or if the interception yields intelligence. Under these terms, I felt no compunction about reading the transcripts of an Iranian terrorist or a Russian intelligence officer. But we had many intercepts running which did not fall into either category. Even our intercepts on Kiddie and Constantine were not within its spirit - they would break UK law only if they exported proliferation material from the country, and never once did we issue a CX report as a result of one of their telephone transcriptions. Perhaps what they were doing was slightly amoral but it was not our job to pass judgement on that. Unlike every other country in the western world, warrants for telephone intercepts in Britain are signed not by a judge but by the Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary, explaining why the intelligence services could obtain so many warrants.

MI6 abused the privilege of the IOCA in other ways too. The transcribers in VBR were supposed to ignore personal chit-chat and condense only relevant operational intelligence into the pink FLORIDA reports for distribution to Vauxhall Cross. This obligation enabled MI6 successfully to persuade the Treasury that it was necessary to keep the transcribers isolated in VBR, rather than incorporating them into the new building. Nevertheless, one day a colleague threw a pink FLORIDA report on my desk, chuckling, `Have a good laugh at this!' The target was a transvestite in his spare time and the FLORIDA reported his intimate conversation, line by line, with his boyfriend. Admittedly, it was an amusing document but it added nothing to our understanding of the operation and was a clear breach of the act.

Meanwhile BELLHOP had just taken a new and interesting twist. Badger, as overall head of the operation, was responsible for its coordination with foreign liaison services. The extent to which information on the operation was shared depended on the perceived trustworthiness of the other intelligence service and the extent to which they could bring to the table useful intelligence of their own. MI6 were always warm and cordial with CIA liaison because the Americans had such fabulous resources. Badger's relationship with the DST on BELLHOP was also good and they cooperated energetically if they were asked to help out. But Badger could never establish the same level of easy cooperation with Mossad. It was always a puzzle why they were so uncooperative, for we expected them to be keenly interested in penetrating the attempts of Iran, their most feared enemy, to obtain chemical weapons. But meetings with them were tense affairs, with little given away by either side. The section suspected that Mossad had another hidden agenda that we were not privy to. This suspicion was reinforced when Badger showed them copies of the weapons plant that we had obtained from the search of Kiddie at Stansted. They feigned interest, but it was not convincing and Badger came away suspicious that the Israelis already had their own copies.

Further clues came from the Warsaw station. Examination of the plans by MOD experts established that the plant was an old Polish design, a relic from their Cold War chemical weapons programme. Badger asked H/WAR to find out how the plans could have fallen into Manbar's hands. The Polish intelligence service was restructuring from a KGB-like secret police into a western-leaning European-style intelligence service, but the rebuilding was not complete. Many old-guard officers were too steeped in the Cold War to trust western intelligence officers and H/WAR had a rocky relationship with them at best. They would not even admit that the plans were of Polish origin, despite H/WAR's assurances that acknowledgement of a defunct chemical weapons programme would not be used as political ammunition by the West.

Polish intelligence did, however, provide an important clue. They made available their surveillance reports on a Polish-Jewish businessman, known to have Mossad links, who had cultivated a close relationship with the senior civil servant in charge of Poland's `chemical defence programme', double-speak for their chemical weapons programme. Reading between the lines, the implication was that the plans for the plant had been passed from the official to the Jewish businessman, and then to Mossad, with the tacit compliance of Polish intelligence. Now the reason for Mossad's less-than-enthusiastic reception of our copies of the plans was clear. As Badger had suspected, they already had them.

Other interesting parts of a giant jigsaw puzzle were starting to fall into place. We had never been sure where Manbar had obtained the equipment list for the plant - it might have come from Fahd, but transcripts of Manbar's conversations with Fahd suggested that Manbar had them before Fahd. As they used veiled conversation, codewords, and spoke in Farsi, we couldn't be completely sure. At around the same time, Manbar had several discreet meetings with Mossad officers in the Israeli embassy in Paris. The only theory that stitched all the pieces together was that Mossad were, for motives not yet clear to us, using Manbar to deal indirectly with the Iranians. The key to pinning down what was going on was Manbar and we needed to find out a lot more about his movements and activities than we could get from the transcripts provided by the DST.

Badger decided to target Andrea, Manbar's personal secretary. She was an attractive 40-year-old German divorcee who had worked for Manbar for four or five years, and Badger asked the DST to try to recruit her. She was on their territory, so it would be rude not to let them have first crack. MI6 avoids honey-trap approaches, recognising that sexual attraction is too complex to predict or control, but the DST were not so subtle. Andrea had lunch every day in the same bistro, so they sent down a male officer to try to pick her up. That night's telephone transcripts were of her complaining to her mother in Germany about an over-perfumed Frenchman who seemed to think that he was god's gift to women pestering her over lunch. The embarrassed DST gigolo claimed lamely in his contact report that she must be a lesbian.

Meanwhile, I was labouring in my cover job as a clerical worker in the offices of Bari Trading. The work was stifling but my cultivation of Constantine was progressing. Over cups of tea in the office, a lunch or two at the nearby Hilton and the occasional pint, he accepted and trusted me. Nibbling at the bait, at each meeting he asked more and more questions about the extent of my knowledge of chemicals equipment.

We knew from telephone transcripts that Constantine kept a copy of the plans in the locked top drawer of his desk. Once I saw him take them out and refer to them in a conversation with Kiddie. Later that evening, back in the office, I read the transcript and learned that they were trying to figure out the specifications of a glass valve, whose number was obscured on the plans. MOD experts in chemical weapons helped me work out the exact specifications of the part and tracked down the companies - one in Germany and two in Switzerland - that could supply it.

A few days later, doing my best to appear interested in a thick sheaf of bills of lading, I was straining to listen in to a Constantine phone conversation with Kiddie. She was doing most of the talking and when Constantine could get in a word edgeways it was to apologise for the slow progress. Eventually, Constantine blurted out `Listen Joyce, I've really done my best on the project but I'm stuck. I know somebody who can help us though, and he's sitting right here in this office.' They conferred for a while longer and after he hung up Constantine called me across. `Hey, Alex, I've a problem you could perhaps help me with.'

`Really?' I replied, trying to sound laconic, and ambled over to his desk where he had laid out the plans.

`What do you make of this?' Constantine asked, eying me hopefully.

They were intimately familiar to me, so I had to feign puzzlement, studying them for a few minutes. `Seems like they're the plans for some kind of chemicals plant. Something corrosive, because of all the glassware. I'd guess it's for something like an aspirin plant,' I proferred.

Constantine looked delighted. `Spot on, but do you know what that part is?' he asked, pointing to the mystery valve. I rattled back its specifications and where it could be sourcd. `You really do know your stuff, don't you?' replied Constantine. `Listen, I've got a friend who needs some help with this project. Would you like to give her a hand?'

`Sure,' I replied, trying my best to hide my glee.

Within minutes Constantine had rung Kiddie back and introduced me over the phone. After a brief chat she invited me to go up to visit her in Girton.

Walking back into the office later that evening, Badger gave me the thumbs up, having already seen the transcript. `Good stuff,' he grinned. `We need to plan the next phase - let's pop out for a breath of fresh air.' This was Badger's euphemism for a cigarette. Smoking was banned in the new office, so smokers were limited to the bar or the fire stairwells.

`If you must,' I sighed with mock exasperation, contemplating the cold, drafty stairwell.

As Badger lit up, we went over the progress made so far. We already had a good idea of what to expect in meeting Kiddie, as we'd been reading her telephone conversations for the past three months and Cambridgeshire SB, one of whose officers was a close friend of her second husband Len Ingles, had provided a helpful report. `Kiddie really depends on Len,' Badger said. `She never does anything without first discussing it with him. If you want to win her trust, you'll also have to win his. Build something into your cover story that will pull him in.'

`I'll go up on a motorbike then,' I suggested. `Len's passionate about bikes: if I turn up on one he'll immediately take an interest.'

My own motorbike: a battered high-mileage Honda Africa Twin, was ruled out by SBO5 as it was registered in my own name, so a few days later I hired a powerful Honda Fireblade from Metropolitan Motorcycles, a dealer opposite Vauxhall Cross in one of the railway viaduct arches that lie under the main south-west line. It was a clear, brisk but sunny February day, and perfect for motorcycling. Speeding up the M11 to Girton, I thought to myself how lucky I was to have such a great job. BELLHOP was going well, Badger was a good boss and the atmosphere in the section was cheerful and friendly, unlike the mistrusting environment of the secretive East European controllerate. The problems in Bosnia were forgotten and I was enjoying socialising more.

Kiddie's personal file was stuffed with SB photographs of her house, so it was easy to find in the pretty village of Girton. She heard my powerful motorbike pull up on her gravel drive and came out of the house to greet me with a friendly handshake. A slightly plump, middle-aged woman, dressed in tight leggings that did not do much for her, she was not a likely person to be the centre of a complicated secret service operation. `I am so glad you've come up, Alex,' she exhorted jollily, `Albert has told me all about you! We've been struggling for months on this project.' Her appearance and voice were so familiar from the file and telephone intercepts that it felt strange to meet her personally, like meeting a famous film star. She ushered me into her study and, over a mug of Nesquick, explained her project. The details were intimately familiar, so I had to fake curiosity and surprise as the story unfolded.

Kiddie moved on to her meeting earlier in the year with Fahd in Amsterdam. `It was so funny, I arrived at the hotel and it was all closed down for cleaning!' she giggled. `I had to go into the closed off area to wait for Mr Fahd!' She even remembered the inconvenient hold up at Stansted airport on her return. `They went through all my knickers, the little perverts. But apparently they were only looking for drugs,' she added obliviously. She was completely unsuspicious of me; as we had hoped, Constantine's recommendation was sufficient for her to trust me. And as we suspected from the telephone transcripts, she was unaware that she was being manipulated by Fahd and Manbar into illegal dealings.

Only half an hour or so into the meeting, Kiddie suggested that I should meet Fahd. `I've been struggling for months with this project, getting nowhere,' she continued. `I'm also really busy with my charity work and I've had enough of travelling. It would be great if you could help out.'

`Sure,' I replied, trying to sound cautiously enthusiastic. `How should we proceed?'

`If you like,' Kiddie replied, `I'll ring him right now and you can talk to him - he told me he would be in Tehran this week.' She reached up to a bookshelf above her desk, pulled out the project file, found Fahd's Tehran number and dialled him up. Unbeknown to her, she was dialling not into Fahd's purported company in Tehran but straight into the headquarters of the Iranian intelligence service, and I couldn't wait to get on the line. Disappointingly, he was not at the office and she just got his ansaphone. `Never mind, we'll call him next time you're up.'

Kiddie talked enthusiastically about her charitable work. She ran a thrift shop in Cambridge and some of the proceeds went to a project to provide schoolbooks to impoverished children in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. I had been planning a trip to Brazil for some time because PTCP section had an Argentine nuclear scientist on the books, codenamed GELATO, who was overdue for his annual debriefing. Her charity work there presented an opportunity to ingratiate myself further with Kiddie: `I'm going out to Rio in a couple weeks on business. Is there anything I could do for your project while I am out there?'

`Sure,' she replied, `there are always things to do.' She described the project enthusiastically and detailed how I could be of assistance. The conversation was interrupted by a popping splutter as an old motorbike pull up outside. `Ah, that must be my husband, Len. Would you like to meet him?'