The Big Breach (47 page)

The helicopter surveillance that afternoon made me realise that MI6 were serious about keeping me under watch and persuaded me that it would be prudent not to play around any more. That evening I posted my passport to the New Zealand High Commission on Haymarket. A few months later, a probation officer told me that SB, under instructions from MI6, put in a warrant to re-arrest me after I failed to post it on Saturday morning. The magistrate threw out the application, pointing out that warrants for breach of probation must be requested by the probation service and not the police. MI6 were not deterred and on Monday morning ordered probation to put in another application. But by then my passport was safely in the post and they couldn't justify an arrest.

After my New Zealand passport was out of my hands there was no more obvious physical surveillance. But MI6 were tapping my home and mobile phones and it was irksome knowing that people I knew in UKZ would be listening to me. Whenever I heard a good joke down the pub, I rang my home ansaphone and repeated it so the transcribers would at least have something to liven up their day. I confirmed that my mail was under surveillance by posting a couple of letters to myself, building into them the anti-tamper tricks we learnt on the IONEC. Any letters posted at the nearest postbox to my house on Richborne Terrace were also intercepted.

In early June I saw a television documentary about the death of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed in the Alma tunnel in Paris in August of the previous year. It revealed that the chauffeur, Henri Paul, who also died, worked normally as the Ritz security manager. Mysteriously, a large sum of cash was found on his body. It dawned on me that he was the same Ritz security manager I had come across while reading BATTLE's file in SOV/OPS section in 1992. Realising that this information would be important to the imminent inquest into the deaths, but knowing that going to the British police would see me immediately re-arrested, I wrote to the father of Dodi Al Fayed, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store. There was no reply from Harrods, so, presuming that he was not interested in the information, I thought nothing more of it. Six months later, after casually mentioning this to a journalist who immediately recognised its significance, a representative of Mr Al Fayed contacted me. He assured me categorically that the letter had never arrived.

Getting out of jail was a relief, but living in the real world meant working to pay for a roof over my head. My flat was mortgaged commensurate with my MI6 salary, so a new job would have to be as well paid if I wanted to stay there. My experience in MI6 had already proven difficult to market, and to add to my difficulties MI6 said that they would not use their contacts to help me. I didn't want another soul-destroying descent into debt, so I chose to sell my flat. It was in central London, had a small but well-kept garden, a garage and was in good condition, so it sold quickly. It was gut-wrenching to move out for the last time in mid-June and load up my possessions for the drive up the motorway to my parents' home in Cumbria, where I could stay until the probation was over. When my travel restrictions were lifted, I planned to move to Australia or New Zealand where it would be easier to start afresh at the bottom of a new career without the millstone of a mortgage. I bought a laptop computer and hooked up the internet so I could research job opportunities there. It was in direct breach of my probation conditions, but MI6 would have to admit that they were tapping my parents' telephone if they wanted to re-arrest me. In any case, it gave me pleasure to break an absurd and technophobic condition. The internet proved fruitful and soon my Psion was filling with contacts in Auckland and Sydney. One career that interested me was telejournalism and I made contacts with TV companies in both cities. Among them was Australia's Channel 9 TV and their young London correspondent, Kathryn Bonella, met me a couple of times in London. These meetings had to be discreet, because although I was just looking for a job, MI6 would view them as a breach of probation and would try to have me re-arrested.

As the end of my probation neared, I started to fear that MI6's reluctance to provide any resettlement help was an ominous sign. If they believed that I was such a threat that it was necessary to confiscate my passports, ban me from the internet, prevent me talking to journalists and oblige me to rigidly check in with a probation officer every week until 31 July, how were they planning to control me from 1 August? From that date onwards, I would be legally free to talk to journalists, use the internet and travel abroad. It was too suspicious that they would use the stick until the end of probation but then not offer even a whiff of a carrot thereafter.

There was only one conclusion to draw. MI6 must have an elaborate, possibly sinister, plan in place, to control me after 31 July. I feared that they planned to frame me for a crime with a lengthy prison sentence. They had examples of my fingerprints and genetic signature and it would not be difficult to use this as evidence in, say, a drug-smuggling prosecution. I concluded that it was better not to stay in the UK to find out. It would mean going before the end of my probation and without a passport. But how? Luckily there was my training in HMP Belmarsh to fall back on.

Dobson advised me that one way to slip out was to take a ferry from Liverpool to Belfast, then the train to Dublin. A passport was not required to travel to Northern Ireland because it was part of the United Kingdom, nor was one required to travel between the two Irish capitals because that would antagonise the Irish Republicans. Once in Dublin, I could apply for another New Zealand passport from the High Commission and fly out. But the security forces had such an obvious loophole swamped with surveillance, including CCTV cameras that could identify a face in a crowded station, and it was ground I did not know. Dobson also gave me some of his Dover tobacco-smuggling contacts who had fast boats. But getting caught up in a smuggling racket would play into MI6's hands. After reviewing the options, the best was the most brazen - just blag my way on to one of the cross-channel ferries to France. Dobson told me he had succeeded a couple of times when the check-in staff were too busy with other passengers to pay him much attention.

I chose Monday, 27 July for my abscondment because it was the school holiday season, so the ports would be busier than usual. MI6 would be particularly vigilant during the last week of my probation, meaning subterfuge was needed. On 12 July I telephoned a travel agent and booked a Qantas flight from Manchester airport to Sydney for 2 August, the day after the end of my probation and just when MI6 would anticipate my departure. Friends who rang me were informed that the last week in July was to be spent on a cycling tour of Scotland. This would all be picked up by the UKZ telephone transcribers and relayed through the corridors of Vauxhall Cross.

On 22 July an unexpected visit forced me to bring my plans forward. At about 11 a.m., as I was upstairs in my bedroom working on the internet, I heard the crunch of two sets of heavy footsteps on the gravel drive. Spying from behind a curtain, their odd and inappropriate clothing revealed they were from SB. The elder was in a dark pin-stripe suit and heavy brogues, the younger in jeans and a blue fleece top; they looked like
The Professionals
with Bodie off sick.

Presumably they wanted to question me, though about what I didn't know. I had not committed any new offence and SB had no business inquiring about breaches of my probation conditions. I paid no attention when they rang the front door bell and ignored their banging on the back door. They must have known I was at home through surveillance, for they did not give up easily and rang and banged until Jesse, now nearly stone deaf, heard the noise and started barking. Luckily I had locked all the doors so they could not enter without using force. They would have brought a bigger team if they had a warrant, so as long as I lay low, they would give up and go away. After a poke around the garden and outbuildings, as if recceing the lie of the land for a later arrest, they trudged back up the drive some 40 minutes after their arrival.

They would be back with a warrant and a bigger team, so there was no choice but to leave. It took half an hour to pack. I had time for a quick lunch once my parents were back, said a fond goodbye to Jesse, knowing that I would never see her again, and put my two cases on the back seat of my mother's Saab. In case SB had posted surveillance, I hid in the boot like Gordievsky until clear of the village. We arrived 20 minutes later at Penrith railway station, from where the picturesque west country line took me to the southern port city of Poole.

The morning of 24 July broke cloudy and dull, like so many others during the summer of 1998. As planned, the terminal was thronging with families and children, off to France on the first day of the school holidays. Flourishing my birth certificate, driving licence and credit cards at the harassed check-in girl at the `Truckline' counter, I explained that my passport had been stolen a few days earlier and, after some cursory questioning and a quick but nerve-wracking phone call to her superior, she issued a boarding pass for the 1245 Cherbourg ferry.

With my luggage stowed, I went up on the promenade deck to catch my last view of England and watched the myriad windsurfers and jetskiers flitting across our bows as we pulled out of Poole harbour. Just as when I left the country two years earlier on my way to Spain, it gave me no jubilation or triumph to slip from under the nose of MI6, just sadness that the dispute had ever arisen and that it was still not resolved.

I hung back from the other foot-passengers as we disembarked at Cherbourg and joined the back of the queue, thinking that if the French customs officers stopped me it would be better not to hold up a line of grumbling holidaymakers. My caution was prudent because French customs were having one of their periodic clampdowns. As soon as I presented my limited documentation and caught the sceptical glare of the French Douane, it was evident that getting into France without a passport would be harder than getting out of England. In rusty French, I explained to the first Douane my cover story; I had left my New Zealand passport in Paris and travelled to England on my British passport, which had subsequently been stolen, and so needed to get back to Paris to pick up the New Zealand one. He called his boss over, who asked me to explain again. We were then joined by a third officer and my cover story was starting to sound very thin even to my own ears. `C'est impossible,' the first Douane told me repeatedly. `You must go back on the next boat.' But after much discussion, grumbling and criticism of the English authorities for permitting me to travel, the senior officer allowed me to proceed. Grabbing my bags, I made a dash for the Cherbourg train station, eager to get away before they changed their minds. By 11 p.m., I was lodged in a cheap hotel on the Rue d'Amsterdam by the Gare St Lazare in Paris. The first part of my return to New Zealand had gone reasonably smoothly. Now, all that remained was to persuade the New Zealand High Commission in London to send my passport to Paris.

The switchboards of the New Zealand embassy in Paris opened at 9 a.m. on the Monday morning and the receptionist put me through to Kevin Bonici, the second secretary in the consular section. He agreed to ring the High Commission in London and request that my passport be sent over in the next diplomatic bag. It was a relief that he saw no objection to returning it immediately. `Sure you can have it back. You've broken no New Zealand law, and no French law,' he assured me. This sensible attitude was encouraging, but a couple of hours later he rang me back again. `We have new instructions from Wellington not to return your passport until the expiry of your licence on 1 August,' he explained. It was astonishing that Wellington had taken an interest in such a trivial incident - the MI6 liaison officer there must have swung his axe. Was not New Zealand a sovereign country with complete independence from the United Kingdom? Wellington had no legal justification to refuse to return my passport, as my breach of the OSA was not illegal in New Zealand or France. Guessing that Wellington's capitulation to pressure from MI6 would be of interest to the New Zealand media, I rang a few journalists there.

Their inquiries must have caused a bit of uneasiness in Wellington, for the following morning, shortly after 10 a.m., Mary Oliver, the consul in Paris and Kevin Bonici's boss rang me. `Sure you can have your passport back,' she enthused. `Wellington have now issued a fresh instruction. You can collect it as soon as it arrives from London on Friday morning. Come round here at noon. I look forward to meeting you.'

I spent the next two days enjoying Paris in glorious weather, though fears about MI6's next move were never far from my mind. Drinking a beer on the Champs Elys‚e in the summer evening sunshine, the possibility that the French police would arrest me at the request of MI6 seemed mere fantasy. MI6 would be reluctant to give the DST the opportunity to question me about their operations against France. Even if they did arrest me, what would be the charge? Skipping a few days of probation was not an extraditable offence. But that gnawing feeling that re-arrest was imminent never totally disappeared. Realising that the best defence against MI6's excesses was to ally myself with journalists, I rang the
Sunday Times
, and told them the story of my abscondment. David Leppard of their `Insight' team was already in Paris covering another story and we arranged to go together to the New Zealand embassy.

The following morning was warm and humid, and it was a relief to step into the air-conditioned lobby of Leppard's hotel on Avenue Lafayette. After a couple of calls to his room from reception, Leppard ambled down. `Bloody phone's playing up. I'm sure it's bugged.' I let his comment pass. It amused me that even experienced journalists imagined that a few crackles on the line were signs that their telephone was intercepted.