The Big Breach (10 page)

One such was PERFECT PASSENGER, which was intended to take the lessons learnt in PERFECT STRANGER a step further and test our ability to cultivate a target. Often MI6 use the confines of public transport - especially aeroplanes - to cultivate a target, because he or she cannot escape. In this exercise we were told that MI6 had intelligence that a South African diplomat, who was vulnerable because of financial problems, was returning from Portsmouth to London one Friday evening by train. Our assignment was to take the same train, find him amongst the other passengers, engage him in conversation and cultivate him so that he would agree to have a drink on arrival at Waterloo station. Ball showed us a surveillance shot of our target, but our only other information was that he had radical pro-apartheid views and that he always carried
The Economist
, which would help us identify him in the crowded train.

I was lucky and found my target alone in a compartment. The `South African diplomat' was easy-going and affable, and I arranged a follow-up drink at Waterloo without problem. For Barking the exercise was less straightforward. He found his target without much difficulty and engaged him in conversation. Talk soon turned to apartheid politics when Barking, posing as a politics student, `discovered' that the role-player was a South African diplomat. Barking decided that the best way to persuade the target to come for a drink was to appear amenable and politically like-minded so he pretended to be a racist apartheid apologist. Soon the two were enthusiastically discussing the merits of racially segregated education, the unacceptability of mixed marriages and the impossibility of allowing non-whites to vote. Concentrating on the assignment and enjoying the sympathetic response his extremist views were eliciting from the play-acting South African, Barking paid little attention when two other men sporting beards and tweed jackets entered the compartment, and didn't notice that his conversation agitated them. Eventually the two men, left-wing politics lecturers at Portsmouth Polytechnic, could no longer stomach Barking's racist bluster and they furiously joined in the argument. Unfortunately, Barking, mindful of the `party' a few weeks earlier, presumed that they were MI5 role-players sent to see how he would handle the situation and grade his performance. He refused to back down and the exercise degenerated from a quiet attempt to gain the supposed diplomat's confidence into a four-way shouting match that ended only when the train arrived at Waterloo.

We had a busy schedule down at the Fort the following fortnight learning the `tradecraft' of spying. Tradecraft is the term used to describe the practical skills that enable a spy to meet or communicate with an agent without arousing the suspicion of the counter-intelligence opposition. It covers such skills as surveillance, antisurveillance, counter-surveillance, brush contacts and loading and clearing dead letter boxes. All require guile, cunning, a degree of acting ability, but most of all, careful planning and preparation.

An intelligence officer cannot go to a clandestine meeting with an informer without first ensuring that he is not being followed by counter-surveillance; but he must not make it obvious that he is looking out for watchers. Nervous glances over the shoulder or frequent stops to tie shoelaces would clearly signal to the surveillance that the target was up to mischief. The skill in anti-surveillance is therefore to appear an innocent diplomat, yet still identify any followers. This involves walking or driving, under the guise of an innocuous cover activity such as a shopping trip, a planned route which contains `surveillance traps'. For example, the escalators in many department stores are arranged in a switchback cascade, so from the second escalator it is often possible to check the first without appearing suspicious. A full anti-surveillance route may have dozens of such surveillance traps and may take many hours to complete. At every one of the surveillance traps the officer must make a mental note of everybody who is behind. Most of them will be innocent shoppers, but amongst them may be surveillance operatives. Ball taught us that in order to firmly identify surveillance, we must note the same face at least three times.

Surveillance teams try to make themselves difficult to positively identify, in part by using nondescript `grey men' as watchers - not too tall, not too short, unremarkable clothes - so that there is nothing that draws attention to them in a crowd. The more sophisticated surveillance teams like the Russians use tricks like reversible clothing and disguise, making repeat sightings difficult. In Moscow, strict rules about anti-surveillance drills are followed and `dry-cleaning' may mean spending a whole day `shopping' with wife and kids in tow. `Moscow rules' are also used in Iran and in South Africa because their counter-intelligence services are skilful. In contrast, in most South American countries, anti-surveillance is easy as the watchers seem to have learnt their trade from
Starsky and Hutch
and sport leather jackets, large moustaches and dark glasses.

Sometimes the only means to communicate with an agent may be by `brush contact' or a `dead letter box'. A brush contact is a fleeting meeting with the agent, transferring information or instructions in the process. It relies on careful co-ordination ensuring that both parties arrive at the same place at the same time so that it is possible to carry out a brush contact even when under surveillance. The followers cannot get too close, otherwise they make themselves too obvious. This gives an opportunity to brush an agent in `dead ground', for example a dogleg in a corridor or passage. We were taught to watch the agent approach the dead ground from an observation post, say a table in a caf‚. Having previously timed to the second how long it would take him to reach the dead ground and knowing how long our own trip would be, it was in theory possible to meet at the correct point, unobserved by surveillance. In reality, brush contacts are difficult to pull off reliably and we practised them assiduously.

Most of the exercises took place in Portsmouth and we took turns playing the roles of officer or agent. The `officer' found a suitable brush-contact site and then, back at the Fort, wrote instructions for the `agent' on its location. We were usually under surveillance from teams from MI5, the Portsmouth SB, Customs and Excise, or the army Intelligence Corps, so we would have to `dry-clean' before attempting the brush - sometimes identifying the surveillance, sometimes not. On one exercise, it was Spencer's turn to play the agent and I carefully planned a brush contact with him on the back stairs coming down from the public library in Portsmouth town hall. I spotted surveillance on my way to the library, but calculating that they would not follow me closely enough on the deserted stairs to see the brush contact, I did not abort. However, instead of the usual film canister or brown envelope, Spencer handed me an extravagant ice-cream, complete with chocolate flake, just before I emerged from the stairs into the street below, on a cold December's day. The surveillance team noted my bizarre acquisition and reported it to the DS.

Every evening after a day of lectures or foot-slogging around Portsmouth practising our anti-surveillance skills, we listened to a lecture from a guest speaker, usually a member of the service, who would describe a real-life operation in which they had taken part so that we could see how our new skills could be applied. One evening, Ball announced that we had a special guest who should be treated with the utmost respect. Oleg Gordievsky, the so-called `jewel in the crown' of MI6's Russian defectors, told us the story of his defection to Britain, as he does to every IONEC, providing a dramatic account of tradecraft in action.

Gordievsky first made contact with MI6 in 1974 while working as a KGB officer in Copenhagen under cover as the press attach‚ in the Russian embassy. He was cultivated over a series of badminton games and was eventually recruited by Colin Figures, who later became Chief. For the next 11 years Gordievsky provided MI6 with a treasure trove of information from the heart of the KGB. Gordievsky was run with such secrecy that only a handful of officers knew of his existence and, rather than risk widening the indoctrination circle, many non-indoctrinated officers were allowed to pursue futile operations which were known from Gordievsky to be compromised. But despite the care taken to keep his existence secret, it was inevitable that Gordievsky would eventually fall under suspicion from his masters in Moscow. During a period of home leave, he was arrested and interrogated. He was eventually released, but was suspended from work and his passport confiscated while the KGB conducted further enquiries. He managed to get word of his plight to the station in Moscow, where a mid-career officer, the Honourable Raymond Horner, was the number two. Every station has on its standing orders at least one plan for exfiltration of defectors in such emergencies. The exfiltration plan in Moscow was to smuggle the agent over the Russian border into neutral Finland. A route from Moscow had already been reconnoitred, and Horner had a Saab 90 as his official car, which in 1985 was the only car with a large enough boot to comfortably hold a grown man. This upmarket foreign car had caused some resentment amongst Horner's FCO colleagues, as they were forced to drive inferior British models and assumed that the Honourable Horner had been exempted from this rule because he held a title. Every evening Gordievsky took a stroll in Gorky Park, followed closely by his round-the-clock surveillance team. Horner identified a patch of dead ground where Gordievsky would be momentarily out of sight of his followers, meaning the pickup had to be made with split second precision, and spent the day driving around Moscow ostensibly on `errands', in reality doing thorough anti-surveillance. With military precision, he arrived at the designated spot at exactly the same time as Gordievsky, who leaped into the Saab's capacious boot, under the soon-to-be-disjointed noses of his surveillance. Horner drove out of Moscow and started the long and nerve-jangling ride to the Finnish border. Horner could not be sure that his car was not bugged, so dared not communicate with his hidden passenger. Even when over the border, it was too risky to speak out, though he must have been stifling a shout of jubilation. To let his passenger know he was safe, he played Gordievsky's favourite piece of music over the car stereo. To this day, Gordievsky is referred to in MI6 by the code name OVATION, a reference to this piece of music.

Another common tradecraft technique we learned was the `dead letter box' or DLB. This technique involves clandestinely hiding a message where it can later be picked up by the other party. Usually the message is put in a small container such as a film canister and the hiding spot is chosen so that it can be posted or cleared even when under surveillance. DLB sites are much easier to find than brush contact sites - and we were expected to find one in less than an hour in an unfamiliar environment - behind a loose brick in a wall, in an old tree stump, tucked into a crevice of a prominent rock. The disadvantage of DLBs is that they are occasionally discovered accidentally by the public - usually by small children - who may inform the local police. It is thus risky clearing a DLB, as the opposition may be lying in wait.

I got my revenge on Spencer a few days later on a DLB exercise. In Winchester Cathedral there is a small statue of St Jude next to the fourth pew from the back on the west wall. Sitting in the pew, on the pretence of praying or meditating, it is possible for one to grope round the back of the legs of the statue without being observed. I chose it as a DLB site, but instead of a film canister I left a loaded mouse-trap for him. Poor Hare fared even worse. Against Ball's advice, Barking loaded a DLB for him in the toilet cistern of the gents in the Mr Pickwick pub in Portsmouth. The cistern was set high on the wall and Hare had to climb up on the toilet seat to reach it. Unfortunately, the gentleman in the next door cubicle took exception to Hare's activities and, in a rage, called the police. Hare was interviewed and, unable to explain the truth, he was forced to admit to cottaging and was fortunate to be let off with only a caution.

The requirement for these old-fashioned tradecraft skills is not as great for the modern spy as in the days of the Cold War. These days, electronics and computers have simplified agent communications and it is often easier to communicate with encrypted e-mail. Traditional tradecraft was emphasised on our course partly because Ball was an enthusiast and deeply inured with the techniques, but partly because the discipline and nerve required to plan and execute such operations was greater than simply clicking the `send' button on a computer, instilling better tradecraft discipline. Practising these old-fashioned techniques was also better for morale and team-bonding than sitting in front of a computer screen, and we thoroughly enjoyed the exercises. One exception, however, was Martin Richards, the eldest student on the course. A quiet, academic man, he found the exercises rather silly. One afternoon, he failed to return to the Fort and eventually rang the DS to say that he could go on no longer. He was forced to resign from MI6 and they resettled him with Shell Oil, his old company.

Secret Writing (SW), the grown-ups' term for schoolboys' `invisible ink', still plays a role in spying, but modern techniques are more sophisticated than the lemon-juice-in-a-fountain-pen familiar from
Boys' Own
magazine. There is a three-man joint MI5/MI6 section known as TS/SW which is responsible for research and training in the latest SW techniques. TS/SW has several different SW techniques, but the method we were taught on the IONEC and which is used ubiquitously by MI6 oficers in the field is the miraculously simple `offset' method. Like many great inventions, it was discovered by accident.

The problem with early invisible inks was that the writer could not see what he had just written. A visible ink which faded shortly after it dried was developed but that was not perfect because the indentation made by the pen could be detected and the possession of the peculiar ink itself could be compromising.