The Steering Group

by M. J. Laurence

  Last-minute preparations for the wedding needed to be finalised and I was thrown into all the frenzy and chaos of it all. But John (Anna’s dad) came to the rescue on many occasions to support and help pay for a huge chunk of the entire day. Anna had done really well; she had saved up heaps. She had booked us to go to Bali for our honeymoon, only because it was one of the few places left on the planet I hadn’t actually visited. Between all the preparations, I needed to get fit, so I did a lot of running out to the second village from our home, about 15 miles, and practised the BFTs and all that meathead stuff. I never really liked the fitness side of the job and usually only managed to stay just within the requirements, no wasted effort. I had to pass the BFTs (Battle Fitness Tests) and the leadership courses, which were all lined up for my return after my honeymoon, which wasn’t great planning if all you intend to do is eat, drink and have sex. Poor timing but necessary. Promotion was waiting in both camps. I would soon hold SNCO rank in the navy and in return gain combat commander status in N1. You never hold the same rank in the regular service as you do in Intelligence; you go to the bottom and start again; it doesn’t matter if you’re an officer in the regulars, you’re nothing when you step over. It’s a different world, which can really piss people off. You can literally have your commanding officer beneath you when you switch over into the underworld of N1, or indeed the UKSF Intelligence division. I had eight months of courses to complete ahead of me – leadership, command training, engineering and personal development within the Steering Group. I put it all to one side as we headed off to be married and then take off into the sunshine, newlyweds away on our honeymoon.

  The wedding was fantastic, the happiest day of my life. We, or should I say Anna, had organised everything beautifully. Both our families came, with the exception of my younger brother. I hadn’t expected his attendance. Families are unreliable. Perhaps all the medals scared him off. The wedding was in my old church in defiance of my childhood. A proclamation to the world that I would move on from my childhood was to be sealed in joy through my marriage with Anna. The old phoenix was rising from the ashes to be remade, a deliberate movement, a shamanic journey further strengthening my love for Anna, affirming my resolve for life, and like a penicillin for a diseased soul I received the belonging I had always searched for in the sharing of two rings and two hearts. This union was beyond the control of the Steering Group. I was in control now.

  Like a renegade I was accessing new resilience in order to be a better man, a reason to pick up my courage from where I had left it, freeing my mind from the strands of life’s complex webs holding me back from mental freedom. I had found love, but more importantly a real tangible reason to do well in life. I had found a person so precious that the responsibility to protect her was crushingly beautiful. Such love diminishes all other past thoughts and failures, but above all the weight of loneliness and rejection that once was and had always been buried in my heart was now overthrown. I didn’t need the military to feel I belonged anymore. I now needed the military to provide for the one who had chosen me above the military. This was a fundamental shift in my mind, a change not only in the way I thought and processed decisions but my entire outlook on life. I think I had finally acquired something I never wanted to lose. It was worth fighting for. Anna gave me new reasons to succeed and be fucking determined at work to see it all through.

  The wedding day was perfect: good food, good wine, Anna and I had champagne on our top table, it was perfect. Some of the lads from the Eagle came up to participate in the drinking, as well as a watchful eye up from the circus. It went unnoticed as it should. We floated through the day then consummated our marriage in the afternoon in the Dukeries Suite of the hotel. I know the suite was amazing but I don’t remember anything other than being with Anna that afternoon. It was the most important moment of my life and I wanted it to be perfect. And it was. I truly felt like a new man. Then I donned my James Bond outfit for the evening reception, a white tuxedo jacket and bow tie – the real 007, stand up! Haaa, it’s not anything like that, it’s dark and lonely and there’s no glory or reward in any of it. I hate discos and all that shit, but I danced my heart out that evening with my new wife and still look at the photo each night as I go to bed and inwardly allow myself a little smile. I was truly happy that day, beyond question. Everything was in balance, if only for a short while.

  The honeymoon followed immediately and was equally as awesome with all the right mixture of romance, excitement, exploring and adventure. We stayed in a beautiful hotel outside Gatwick, Langshott Manor, which set us up for the start of our trip. A five-star luxury hotel, very English and very proper. Garuda, Indonesia made for a long ride out via Bangkok and Jakarta from Gatwick to Bali. You were still allowed to smoke in the back six rows of the aircraft, which seems so bizarre now writing about it. Bali is life, full of colour, noise and new smells. Anna was initially shocked by all the street and beach hawkers, which were overwhelming for her, but she has since become a veteran of British tourism. The hawking and bartering dialogue soon transformed from a simple ‘No thank you’ all the way down to a firm ‘Fuck off’ which did the trick. I found it amusing as we walked the beaches and the town, but I had experienced it all before in Africa. We spent long days by the pool as well as long days out exploring, driving around the countryside trying to cram in every tourist site listed in our little guidebook. We explored everything from temples to monkey forests and were exhausted at the end of each day. It was great that we loved spending all our time together and we were both drawn closer still by all the adventure and exploration. I think for Anna it opened a new portal to the world of travel; it wasn’t just about sitting on a beach and sleeping in till late afternoon after a heavy night. Indeed, we would go off and explore many other countries in the years to come, from America to the Gambia, Kenya, Seychelles, Singapore and Hong Kong, Dubai, Australia and New Zealand, the list is almost endless.

  I remember we would often sit at the swim-up bar and character assassinate the other guests as an amusing pastime. One hot afternoon we sat at the swim-up bar in the pool together taking the piss out of a woman who was the spitting image of Margarita Pracatan, an older woman who sat at the bar on the terrace with every inch of her skin covered in makeup and overloaded with fake jewellery. She was funny, drank neat brandy and went to bed at about three in the afternoon each day. This was after demolishing an entire bottle of Hennessy and embarrassing herself endlessly, especially the lower the brandy got in the bottle. Our time in Bali came to an end atop the Satay terrace where we watched a perfect sunset and ate far too many chicken satay skewers, drinking fine wine to the sound of the ocean breeze through the palm trees. Gosh, it was a wonderful trip.

  As with all good things it came to an end too soon. The flight back was a disaster, cancelled and then reassigned to another flight, like escaping Vietnam at the start of the war! Some 40 odd hours later we found ourselves back home in the snow and had a dreadful drive north from our hotel near Gatwick all the way to Nottinghamshire. I had a few short days to prep for my courses. This wasn’t a particularly exciting time for me or Anna. We started the military married life together being mostly apart from each other as all military families experience. I travelled at weekends, every weekend I could, and officially joined the weekend warrior exodus on Fridays. I travelled as often as I could whilst undergoing all the compulsory promotional courses, each course presenting its own challenges but nothing to match the challenges and courses I had already passed with the guys from Poole, or indeed the Steering Group courses and training in Wales. By comparison it was all rather dull, with the exception of the engineering courses that seriously challenged my intellect and my ability to maintain focus. I’m not really a very good engineer, I sort of just got dragged along in it all over the years, especially the more the group learned of Anatoly’s talents and made their plans to use them.

  Engineering training was shit at first because, as always, I just couldn’t find the reasons behind wh
at I was supposed to be learning and it was all starting to feel pointless. Why and how all this was of any relevance to the next mission was escaping me. But I remembered how Captain Pies had changed how I had thought that day when I was a boy on board the Atlantic Star, how he’d shown me how to navigate and how that useless maths lesson years before at school could be used for something purposeful. Those memories reminded me that all things fit into the jigsaw puzzle if you allow the pieces to be placed on the table. Trouble was, I never had enough patience to wait and see what was unfolding.

  On my engineering courses I covered everything from thermodynamics, electrotechnology, gas turbine theory, hull and construction, naval architecture, power and distribution, ship’s systems, reverse osmosis and evaporators, refrigeration and air conditioning, nuclear theory, welding (to nuclear standards), TIG MIG and gas to fabrication, design drawing, including CAD, and everything else I’ve not used for years! The engineering training was eventually unveiled as being of significant importance, with the need to be able to understand and converse with Anatoly more in his conversations regarding the projects being lined up for him. I needed to be able to support and encourage him. Also, there was the underlying fact that my promotions depended on me having the trade and a core rank. I knew Anatoly was going to be working with me on a project in the future, it was all lining up, I could feel it; my grooming hadn’t been completed yet and I was aware of this and the fact that Anatoly was going to be utilised in ways I had yet to fully understand. As usual, don’t ask too many questions and you won’t get told any lies.

  I do recall being overconfident for the leadership and command course held at HMS Royal Arthur. A young lieutenant as green as grass opened the course with self intros, etc., etc. and we all had to follow his lead by way of answering a set of pre-determined questions on a board. Apart from all the usual shit like name, family and all the usual bullshit, in response to the question:

  “What do you expect to get from this course?” I simply responded: “Nothing.”

  Enraged by my negativity I was hauled in to see the commanding officer of the Leadership and Command School and invited to explain myself. Quite simply, I responded with the truth.

  “If you can get a group of men to do a job they don’t want to do, and get them to do it well, that’s leadership, and I can already do that, so what the fuck are you going to teach me about leadership?”

  There was a look of disgust and my comments were met with distaste but also some interest. What followed was basically an attempt to make things very difficult for me over the four-week course. For me I found the whole thing amusing and relayed my thoughts back to Cdr Brown on how best this course should be changed to meet the leadership needs of the future and how we could use this course to spot potential candidates for the group. It wasn’t anything close to the all-arms course or the field training I had done with the boys. I just found it amusing how hard a lot of the trainees worked at getting off the course rather than focusing on completing it. Complaining of injuries like twists and sprains instead of just fucking getting the course done. They were not like the team at Poole whose attitude was very, very different – it was do it or fuck off, no giving up.

  Nothing ever came of my suggestions, I just had to get on with it and tick the damn box. To be fair, most of the guys on the course were great and I was lucky enough to have a relatively solid core group of high-performing and high-morale guys. We ploughed through the eight weeks and completed our training, ending with the 54-mile yomp over the Black Mountains in the pissing rain. It was easy. As a final insult I got to play the lead role in the course play as King Arthur – what a load of shit. Anna even got me a McDonald’s crown for the big show! At the end of it all I think Anna liked my new uniform better so there was at least one plus. She found the new uniform much sexier!

  Now, some eight months later I eventually found myself back under the command of the Steering Group. Seconded back to the group I was drafted into submarine projects. This was the journeyman’s time in which I needed to get under the skin and become familiar with all things nuclear and all things submarine. A more than deliberate move to prepare me for the defection of Anatoly, I needed to be submarine savvy and get ready to be deployed again with the boys. I was drafted to HMS Drake and immediately put to work within the nuclear site at Devonport docks. My education was to begin in more ways than one, and it started with a meeting with Ben Martin (US Ops) and my old friend Paul Seely from those early Moscow days. He was back in play for the next step after the defection, which was to get Anatoly involved in the new sub project being undertaken by the navy for the RN/USA joint projects utilising possible stolen Soviet technology and inside information yet to be extracted from Anatoly.

  He would be working with me on a submarine build project upon his defection. There were some high-value assets who would be ready for any design changes or reworks in order to be one step ahead in the arms race. I wasn’t exactly fully in the picture as to what the team wanted Anatoly to assist with, but from all the hype I was guessing they knew more than me as to how Anatoly would be employed upon defection and I was key to ensuring my friend cooperated in every way, to make sure the investment of the Crown paid off. Nothing to do with me, you must understand, I was only important in so much as I needed to be there to keep my old friend Anatoly engaged and useful, keep him happy. I suppose you could say he needed to pay for his defection in this manner. I didn’t give a shit, I just wanted him alive and happy in England if that was at all possible.

  Of course, I feared that all the secrets of how he was targeted by me and the Steering Group would eventually enter his mind for a showdown, and I needed to stop any repercussions that might arise. He had been granted a chance for a new life, and I needed to remind him that there were a great many people and organisations that had the polar opposite in their minds, especially as the list hadn’t been completed yet. Word would get out very quickly of his disappearance from Russia. I was going to be his only link to any sort of a life and a future with his new identity, but also I needed to ensure he gave me every link his family had with the Middle East, once he was safe in England, as every link needed to be severed.

  I was eventually summoned to a meeting with the Steering Group in London. All the players were there ready to unveil the defection plan. Whenever I went to London it always felt like a family reunion. Walking down those echoing halls again reminded me of the first meeting I’d had all those years ago at the beginning of it all. The meeting room still looked like a fine dining room, the oval walnut table looking more worn from endless meetings of heavy files being pushed over its once smooth highly polished surface, it too now showing the scars of the last few years. The carpet had started looking tired and darkened by the heavy steps of those carrying the weight of their responsibilities, creating distinct carriageways trodden in the once vibrant pile. The same simple water jugs and glasses placed at convenient points between the 16 chairs, some now creaky and unstable. A few pictures were now on the walls, and some very poignant to me. There was one picture that I stood and stared at for some time – it was of me on the ice at the Pole. HMS Triton and USS Portland had rendezvoused at the North Pole back in 1991. Shit, it was a good picture. I thought briefly about stealing it…

  The entire team was assembled, Cdr Brown, Anderson Chaplow, Marcus Branford, Paul Seely, David Crowle, Ben Martin and all the boys, Cheesy, Pierre, Smudge, Phil, Hugh and Baz. We were joined by the captain of the Cavalier, and the captain of HMS sub Triton who walked over and joined me for a cigarette, staring into the picture with me. The reflection in the glass betrayed his true feelings. He was uncomfortable in this room, unprepared for this kind of meeting, or perhaps unnerved by the sheer informality of the gathering. Perhaps he felt a lack of respect. Our meetings were, by comparison to naval high brass meetings, a bit of a disorganised argument and debate with no real solid agenda. I looked into the glass of the picture and caught his attention and his displeasure. I think he was jus
t pissed about being roped into a role he felt really uncomfortable with.

  I suppose he had a right to be pissed as everything was getting complicated, but there’s really no point having such a negative agenda at these kind of meetings as everyone brings issues to be table-topped that outweigh personal agendas. Besides, with so many possible scenario outcomes at the start of such meetings we could all fret and worry about it and achieve absolutely nothing. Everything is a moving feast, it’s all fluid and it’s all a game. I don’t think anyone really has a plan in these situations, we all just get together in the hope that someone will dream some shit up over coffee that sounds half doable, then we make it happen. It’s funny because all the things that would trouble my mind would be calmed by being in that same old room with the team. Everything was made to sound simple and less complicated than when you’re left to try and pull things together in your own mind. The meeting rambled around all the usual logistical issues, the insertion and extraction options, support teams, etc., etc. Then heavy discussions on how best to meet with Anatoly, where, day or night, time to transport the package to the extraction point, plan B, plan C; every possible option was to be explored in-depth and either considered further or quickly dismissed.

  The really big shit sandwich that needed to be devoured undoubtedly fell to my old friend David Crowle, MI5, political division. This would be where the hammer would hit hardest should the whole thing fall apart – the political and public fallout would be of biblical proportions. How the fuck to play down any known UK involvement? The minister wanted assurances that no one political would ever be found to have had anything to do with Anatoly, his defection or indeed anything else that might be of public interest or embarrassment. Of course, a pre-rehearsed script of political bullshit needed to be broadcast should we be caught, and what backdoor settlement, if any, could be negotiated quietly in the House to appease any Russian backlash. There needed to be a peace offering in place should it all go politically sour, and the excuse book needed to be fully loaded for rapid deployment to the press.