The Big Breach (15 page)

I was in a large high-ceilinged room, big enough to be a school dining-hall or army drill-hall. Twenty feet or so in front of me three interrogators sat behind a long desk on a low stage. In the middle was an athletic-looking man in his early 40s, whose groomed jet-black hair and perfectly symmetrical handlebar moustache suggested that he spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. To his right sat the captain who had interviewed me earlier in the carabinieri station. To his left sat a dark-haired woman, whose heavy wrinkles on a once-attractive face were explained by the foul-smelling cigarette she was holding. The three stared at me impassively and disdainfully and it felt like several minutes before the moustache spoke.

`So, Dr Noonan,' he began imperiously. `I understand from my colleague that you are a historian, visiting our town of Velletri.' He paused for effect. `Let me tell you. We don't believe your story. We have intelligence that you are involved in an operation to smuggle weapons from Sicily to the IRA. What have you got to say for yourself?'

`Rubbish!' I replied with convincing irritation. `Your intelligence is wrong and you've arrested the wrong person.'

The moustache questioned me for 20 minutes or so, cross-examining me on details of my cover - my fictitious date of birth, address, where I worked, how long I had worked there, names of members of my family. The only thing he didn't ask was the name of my dog.

Then it was the wrinkly's turn to question me. `Who is this woman, Maria Vialli? Where did you meet her?' she asked cattily, holding her business card.

`Why not ring her up and ask her,' I replied. `Better still,' I added, `why not ring Monsignor Berlingieri, the priest at the church of Mary Magdalene?' My interrogators looked at each other, seeking inspiration. It was not going well for them.

The moustache snapped his fingers and the guards behind me sprung forward, blindfolded me and dragged me back to my cell. They gave me a glass of water and slice of bread before shackling me on to the bed again. It seemed like four or five hours before they took me back before my interrogators where they asked me the same questions again, only this time more impatiently. `We have interviewed your companion, with whom you were arrested,' snapped the moustache. `So tell me, Dr Noonan, where did you meet him?' Hoping that APOCALYPSE had stuck to the agreed cover story, I explained that he had seen me reading
The Economist
in a cafe‚ and had introduced himself as a fellow Brit. APOCALYPSE must have remembered, because the moustache seemed satisfied with my explanation. He changed tack. `Do you know who I am?' Without waiting for a reply, he continued. `I am Major Claudio Pagalucca, of the airborne carabinieri.' He puffed out his chest with pride. `I have three medals, won for bravery. Do you know what that means?'

I was tempted to reply flippantly but bit my lip. `No, I've not a clue. I'm just an academic - that sort of thing's got nothing to do with me.'

Pagalucca looked deflated. The airborne carabinieri are Italy's equivalent of the SAS. Their role is to work against the mafia and they are parachute-trained in order to launch surprise attacks against mafia hideouts in Sicilian valleys. When asked the same question in his interrogation, Hare had been unable to resist a jibe at Pagalucca's vanity. `Some sort of parachuting aerial traffic warden, is it?' he replied flippantly. Pagalucca held him in detention for four hours longer than the rest of us.

Between interrogation sessions, the only discomfort was boredom, and there was no physical hardship. The resistance to interrogation exercise I had done in the TA was tougher physically. But whereas on the SAS exercise the actual interrogation interview was easy - we just had to ensure that we did not give away any more than our name, rank, date of birth and army number - here the difficulty was keeping every detail of our cover story entirely consistent between interrogation sessions. One little slip would be spotted and exploited ruthlessly and once the cover story started unravelling, it would be very difficult to retract the damage. But by my third session, some four or five hours later, my interrogators had not prised open my story. Pagalucca gave up and only the wrinkly asked a few easy questions. The session lasted less than ten minutes, so I guessed that they were close to releasing me.

I had not been in my cell for long when the door opened again. The guards pulled off my blindfold, released my handcuffs and handed over the bag containing my clothes. I fumbled for my watch. It showed 5 p.m., just over 24 hours since the arrest. Once I was dressed, the guards led me out into the evening darkness over to another building up a short flight of steps and, with a friendly smile and a handshake, indicated that I should go inside.

Ball, Long, Eric and APOCALYPSE were all waiting to shake my hand inside the room. `Congratulations,' said Ball. `We had to let you out early. We just couldn't pin anything on you - you did an excellent job.' He ushered me over to a trestle table laden with food, beer and wine. `We'll debrief you properly later. For the moment, get yourself a drink.' Over a beer, Ball explained what was going on. `Some of the others should be along in a while, but they've still got a bit of explaining to do...'

One by one, the other students emerged from their captivity to join us around the buffet table and to tell their stories. Spencer was the next to be released, an hour or so later. He had pretended to be a priest and although the cover story held for a while, it unravelled when he was asked to say a few prayers and had been unable to even recite the Lord's prayer in full. Markham panicked when he saw the roadblock and threw the papers and the thousand pounds out of the window of the moving car, causing chaos on the
autostrada
. Bart had done well. His cover as a scientist was too complicated for Pagalucca to probe with any authority and his prodigious memory had enabled him to maintain a consistent cover story. Castle's suit and business cover was not plausible in his small market town and his story folded. Forton's cover was as a chorister on a tour of churches in Rome and when Pagalucca asked him to prove his singing prowess, Forton started and did not stop, to Pagalucca's irritation.

But there was something else that was still puzzling me about the exercise. Ball was standing on his own in the corner, as ever with a cigarette in one hand and a whisky in the other, rocking gently backwards and forwards with a satisfied smile on his face. `Jonathan,' I asked, `where's that pretty blonde you put next to me on the plane? Is she not coming tonight?'

`What girl?' Ball replied, genuinely bemused.

`Oh come on,' I replied, `the girl you put next to me on the plane to test my cover story.'

`Nothing to do with us!' Ball assured me. `You missed an opportunity there,' he laughed.

We flew back from Rome to Southampton the next morning on the S&D Hercules C-130 at spectacularly low level over the Alps. Arriving back at the Fort that evening we were demob happy. We had spent an intensive six months in each other's company and had got to know each other well. Even Bart and Markham were now mates. Officers on the same IONEC tend to keep in touch throughout their subsequent careers and no doubt we would too, but for the moment we were all keen to get into our new jobs. Our IONEC scores and first Head Office postings were to be announced the following day.

There is a formal performance appraisal system in MI6. Approximately every six months line managers summarise a subordinate's performance on a `Staff Appraisal Form' or SAF. The most important part of the SAF is the overall grading or `box number'. A `Box 3', signifying a satisfactory performance, is the median and the grade most commonly awarded. `Box 1' is outstanding, `Box 2' above average, `Box 4' substandard; `Box 5' indicates a seriously deficient performance and can lead to a rapid exit from the service. Each SAF is sent to personnel department where they play an important role in determining the career structure of each officer, deciding postings and seniority. Ball and Long were responsible for preparing our SAFs on the IONEC and the following day they gave us the morning off while they considered our grades.

While they deliberated, Nixon kept us busy with a shooting competition down on the Fort's outdoor range. We were now moderately proficient and could handle a Browning 9mm safely, which was an improvement on when we started. Most of the time most of us managed to hit the centre of the figure 12 (half-size man) target from ten metres on a fast draw with the Browning, and we were accurate at that range within a few centimetres with the Heckler and Koch MP5. Hare ironically reckoned that he had personally shot more rounds of 9mm during the IONEC than during his entire eight-year army career. Our training was a wasteful extravagance, but one that we all enjoyed. Even the mild-mannered and liberal Forton, who initially regarded guns with distaste, now approached the lessons with relish. One round of Nixon's competition was to knock down empty beer cans against the clock with the Heckler & Koch set on its single-shot setting. Forton won by flicking the sub-machine gun into automatic mode and spraying the row of cans with a full magazine, grinning wildly like a raver on ecstasy.

As the competition progressed, one by one we were called away to see the DS in main wing. Bart went first - he was awarded a Box 2 and was posted to counter-proliferation section, a job I was disappointed not to get myself. Castle got a Box 2 and became a junior R officer in the Middle East controllerate. Markham was posted to a junior P desk in the West European controllerate with a Box 2. Hare was assigned to a joint section with MI5 to work against Middle East terrorists, also with a Box 2. Spencer was relieved to get a Box 2 and went to work as a targeting officer in the East European controllerate. Forton was badly criticised for his performance on Exercise Solo and for annoying the SAS with his Frank Sinatra impression. He was marked down to a Box 3 and posted to an R desk in the Africa controllerate, much to his disappointment. I was called away from the shooting competition just as Forton, chuckling maniacally, was about to demolish an old safe with a Remington Wingmaster repeat-action shotgun, and walked over to see Ball in the west wing.

`Congratulations,' Ball announced, shaking my hand. `Your performance throughout the course was outstanding. You never put a foot wrong and we feel we had no other alternative but to award you a Box 1 for your outstanding performance.' Long beamed in the background, as Ball continued. `It is a remarkable achievement. We've checked through personnel department records, and nobody has ever before received a Box 1 on the IONEC.' Ball handed me my SAF and let me read it for a few minutes. It was filled with glowing praise, and I felt justifiably proud. `In view of your grade, we've decided to post you to SOV/OPS department,' Ball announced.

`That's a great post,' Long added, `you'll get lots of travel and will get to work on some really interesting operations. H/SOV/OPS asked for you especially.'

6. TOP SECRET

MONDAY, 30 MARCH 1992

CENTURY HOUSE, LONDON

`
I
nteresting, if true.' The biro had run out of ink at the `f' and the anonymous author had not bothered to get a new pen, scratching the remaining letters into the paper. I was looking at the `customer comments' box at the bottom of my first CX report, which had just come back to my in-tray. I issued it a week earlier after debriefing a small-time British businessman who had just returned from a business trip to the Ural mountains. He'd been shown some industrial diamonds that his Russian contact said were made in a controlled explosion, the same method which I had experimented with unsuccessfully in South Africa. Back in Century House, I mentioned it to H/SOV/OPS. `I'd write that up as a CX report,' he said, holding his head slightly to one side in affected sincerity. I didn't greatly trust Fowlecrooke and suspected that his advice was more to make me feel useful than for any genuine need for such minor intelligence.

I wrote it up as a CX report, classified `TOP SECRET, UK EYES A', and sent it off to R/CEE/D, the requirements officer responsible for issuing technical reports from the East European controllerate. He graded it `two star' and forwarded it to the relevant desk in the DIS. A two-star grading meant that the information was only of minor interest and would be seen only by a junior desk officer; a three-star might influence the thinking of a head of a Foreign Office or Ministry of Defence department; a four-star would perhaps be seen by a permanent secretary of a Whitehall department, and a five-star grading would be seen by the government at cabinet level. Most of MI6's CX output got two-star gradings, and the reports were usually returned by sceptical and largely disinterested customers bearing the `interesting, if true' dismissal. Considerable store was placed on an officer's ability to extract high-grade CX from a source, and every overseas station and head office UK station was given annual CX production targets. Setting targets in this way was open to abuse, since MI6 itself judged the star-grading of each report and its accuracy was dependent on the integrity of the officer who drafted it. As in any walk of life, the scruples of MI6 officers varied. Some had reputations as `CX embellishers' and others pressured R officers to increase the grading of their reports. The problem was widespread, but few cheats were exposed. One who was went down in MI6 folklore.

During the '70s, when Britain was negotiating its entry to the European Common Agricultural Policy, the tactics and negotiating position of the French government were an important requirement. The head of the Paris station, H/PAR, made his number two, PAR/1, responsible for this intelligence and he successfully recruited an agent in the French agricultural ministry. Soon a steady stream of two- and three-star CX started flowing. A few eyebrows were raised in Century House at the financial demands of PAR/1's new informant, but his productivity gave good value for money. Over the next 18 months, this agent became the mainstay of intelligence production by the Paris station. When PAR/1's two-year tour in Paris came to an end, the handover to his successor at first went smoothly. But every time a meeting was arranged to introduce the star agent, PAR/1 would announce some excuse to cancel it. Eventually Head Office became suspicious and an SBO (Security Branch Officer) was sent out to Paris to interview PAR/1. He cracked and confessed to what his colleagues had started to fear. Like Graham Greene's agent in
Our Man In Havana
, he had invented the agent and all the meetings, fabricated the CX and pocketed the agent's salary. He was dismissed from the service, though no charges were brought. Fearing adverse publicity if the fraud was exposed, MI6 bought his silence with a pay-out and used its contacts to arrange a job for him in the Midland Bank. Eventually he rose to become one of the most prominent figures in the City of London.