by Tom Marcus
‘TC, everything OK on the ground?’
I knew what the team leader was asking without asking it, he wanted to make sure I hadn’t done anything crazy. I got results for the team, but he thought I was a bit of a loose cannon, like throwing a lit firework.
‘Yeah, yeah, fine. Police got mega rowdy though, starting throwing their shields about. Some of the locals gave me and Danny a Quran and we got out of there before the police pinned us all in. We stumbled into the crowd looking for the target before we knew it, hundreds of extremists around us and same amount of police in front of us.’
‘OK, mate, no worries. We’ll keep you away from getting out on foot again on this one. How did Danny do?’
I was torn here, I was loyal to my team – having the back of the operator next to you is ingrained into us – but if something like this shook him up that badly the team leader should know. The fact Danny showed emotion was a good thing, maybe. Fuck knows, it wasn’t my call to make and I wasn’t about to dump him in the shit.
‘All good, mate, lived his cover and moved quickly, no dramas. We stopped for food on the way to his car, I needed a coffee.’
‘Great, thanks, mate. Right, I’ll let you get off, we’ve got Base searching for leads on the target so just sit tight for now.’
An hour went by with no updates at all as the operations officers desperately searched for leads on RUBBER PASSPORT. He was born in Syria and moved over with his parents when he was an infant. A fairly successful architect, he became self-radicalized over the course of a year shortly after his wife died giving birth to his first child. Neither survived, and apparently he blamed the NHS nurses for their deaths. The problem we had was, being involved in the building trade, his brother-in-law was involved in building demolitions, which gave him access to explosives. The working theory was RUBBER PASSPORT was going to try to blow up a significant building in London, potentially a power station. To make matters worse, we had no clue if he had managed to acquire any explosives or detonators prior to going completely off grid. No phone movements, nothing from his associate contacts, no business contacts, nothing.
‘From Base, an address maybe worth checking is an internet café next to Edgware Central Mosque.’
‘Roger that, thank you. Charlie Six Two, can you?’
‘Yes. Yes, on route.’
The ops officers would have had to do some major digging to get a vague address like this as a lead. Usually every single detail, no matter how loosely connected to our operation, is available within seconds on the grid, so the fact that this address took over an hour to find was probably down to the fact the intelligence officers were called and asked for more information that wasn’t officially available. Usually this means the intelligence has come directly from agent handlers who have contacted their agents to help locate the target.
‘Charlie Six Two, can you deploy, please?’
‘Yes.’
‘Specifically, if the target isn’t in the café, can you sweep, and any local vehicles too?’
‘Roger that.’
‘Stations, update to follow.’
OK, this was shaping up to indicate the intelligence was coming from covert sources, or CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Sources).
‘Stations, I’ve asked if we can check if there are any traces of explosives in the internet café or vehicles outside that could indicate that RUBBER PASSPORT has been inside or using one of the vehicles nearby. Charlie Six Two, roger so far?’
‘So far.’
‘Source reporting indicates a potential attack in East London, likely to be a power station. So locating him is a priority.’
If RUBBER PASSPORT had acquired any demolitions and managed to gain access to a power station, London could be plunged into darkness. Over the years we’d discussed high value ‘soft targets’: sites that weren’t military installations that boasted low-level security but if taken out would cripple the country. This particular power station was one of them; if it was taken off-line the majority of London would be without power for around eight months and rationed for another year after that.
I had my doubts whether or not RUBBER PASSPORT actually had the right access to the power plant’s crucial structures. He obviously had access to industrial levels of explosives and being an architect would know exactly where to place them with maximum effect, but he’d need a lot of logistics help, which would slow him down and more importantly help us find him. People always fuck up, and when they do we are there to exploit it.
‘From Charlie Six Two, I’m in the area and have driven past the internet café, no sign of RUBBER PASSPORT.’
‘Roger, thank you, stations, radio silence while Anna is checking.’
MI5 has recruited female operators for years. They have a few tools for changing their profile that aren’t available to their male colleagues: hair, make-up, even pretending to be heavily pregnant. And add to that a woman’s natural ability to prioritize and remember details.
‘From Six Three, that’s me in towards the internet café now, I’ll keep the radio on.’
‘Great, thanks. Charlie Seven One Zero direct of the vehicle please, radio silence while Anna is inside.’
Getting a camera direct on this suspicious Avensis would let us get imagery of anyone who had anything to do with the car; hopefully RUBBER PASSPORT would come to it and we’d get control of him. If nothing else, it meant Anna had some close-in support if the shit hit the fan.
When Charlie Seven One Zero got into position so it could see the green Avensis, it had a perfect view of Anna inside. Roughly thirty minutes went by before Anna left the internet café and shouted up on the net again.
‘From Six Three, that’s me walking out of the area now towards Charlie Six Two. No sign of RUBBER PASSPORT.’
‘Great work, Anna, thank you. Base, acknowledge.’
‘Roger that, making arrangements now.’
‘Charlie Seven One Zero, stay in position, please. Everyone else quiet while we get Six Two back in her vehicle.’
It took Anna about three or four minutes to get back into her car.
‘Charlie Six Two, complete.’
‘Roger, thank you. Base, go ahead with your message.’
The operations officers had obviously given the team leader the heads-up on what was about to happen.
‘RUBBER PASSPORT has gone to ground and hasn’t been seen for at least twenty-four hours, source reporting suggests he’s connected to this internet café, and the vehicle isn’t known to us. With that in mind, we’ve asked local Special Branch to shut down the café while they conduct a search and remove the Avensis for further examination.’
‘Roger, thank you, Base. Charlie Seven One Zero, stay in position until target vehicle is removed. All stations cease and withdraw back to the debrief room and acknowledge down the list.’
I hated it when targets managed to get away. It hardly ever happened but when it did we could usually pinpoint how, but this guy had virtually disappeared off the face of the earth. We weren’t even sure at this stage if the source reporting that linked the internet café to him had actually seen RUBBER PASSPORT enter or not, never mind use this Avensis.
As the team waited in the debrief room for Charlie Seven One Zero to return, we got an unofficial update from the operations officer.
‘OK, we think RUBBER PASSPORT has fled the country with help. The Avensis has been recovered and industrial demolition equipment has been found in the boot, and swab results of the internet café have proved positive for explosives. The site target for the attack is still unknown. However, we still think it was a power station.’
‘Did we get all the explosives?’
The team was anxious. We still didn’t know where RUBBER PASSPORT was and if we had let anything slip through our fingers, we didn’t want to be the ones responsible for leaving London without power.
‘The brother-in-law has been arrested. Special Branch found a trade purchase slip that indicates all the detonators and explo
sives recovered in the car was everything.’
‘How good is the source reporting?’
The ops officer paused when I asked this. The team knew it was a question we would never ask; they would always question the reliability of the agent handlers’ sources, but we would usually operate on a need to know basis. Given the scale of this attack my inquisitive nature overruled my ability to keep my fucking mouth shut.
‘Source reporting is solid.’
And with that he let our team leader run the tactics debrief to see if there was anything we could improve on for next time. I’d obviously hit a nerve with my question; my guess is we had someone alongside RUBBER PASSPORT who had gone to ground, fearing for his life after feeding us the information that stopped this attack. That, or RUBBER PASSPORT was in some way part of a bigger operation and was in fact himself the source.
You can never tell with operations like this. As operators we go out and hunt the people we are given pictures of, we identify everything they do and everyone they speak to. Intelligence officers disseminate the information we give them, combining it with the electronic eavesdropping intelligence they get from A2. But when it comes to agent handlers, they live a fine line between passing on intelligence and protecting their assets.
The bottom line is, we stopped the attack. I didn’t really give a fuck how we did it. Driving home that night, weaving my way through the traffic in the dismal British weather, I thought about Danny. He was clever, a member of Mensa and articulate. But I couldn’t help thinking he should be in Thames House as an intelligence officer rather than on the ground, in the gutters, with people like me. It wasn’t down to me to suggest what path people should take in their own careers, but it felt like the team needed operators from a stronger background. We were already incredibly diverse in terms of racial profiles and heritage, but a posh cunt is still a posh cunt no matter what they look like.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The official line of Her Majesty’s Government was that we never deal with terrorists, which was utter bollocks, but unless you saw it happening on a day-to-day basis you’d believe the UK’s standpoint; after all, why would we deal with or fund terrorism? Because it stops bigger attacks, that’s why.
We’d been funding the Irish paramilitaries for years. The IRA and their splinter cells, the UDA and associated Loyalists, all at some point received money, equipment or intelligence from us.
Most conspiracy theorists would have blamed the intelligence world for Princess Di’s death and the Twin Towers on 9/11, which is obviously ridiculous, but in reality we sometimes fund and deal with bad people to prevent the worst atrocities from happening. You can’t do good without doing a little bit of bad.
We’d known about this doctor in Birmingham for years. He was, until recently, always low level on the grid. Working as a GP in the local doctors’ surgery. He would appear completely normal and mundane to the public, but he was in fact hell-bent on killing a lot of people in the UK, while helping his ‘brothers’ in Syria.
He was a short little fucker, which actually made following him in busy areas hard because you couldn’t see him among the vast majority of normal-height humans. As I walked in the security tubes at the Operations Centre I thought about the doctor, where he was currently, what eavesdropping intelligence we had on him, how far along was he in the attack-planning phase; the thought of him actually made me laugh when I punched my personal numbers into the key pad to open the tubes, as it had just occurred to me that the doctor wouldn’t actually be able to reach this keypad, due to its height.
Walking towards the stairs I saw Dave – he was on the same surveillance course as me. A great guy, funny and intelligent, and despite coming from an amateur dramatics background he had a real ability to work in hard areas. Plus he was the only one in our team that smoked, which was really handy sometimes. He was waiting for the lift until I convinced him to take the stairs with me: ‘You’ll get fat like those cunts on the desk, you know.’
Dave had always relied on me to be honest with him during his probation period; every time he had a follow or deployed a new bit of technical kit, even taking photographs, he’d ask my opinion: could it be done better, was it done quick enough? The truth is he was a natural operator. He lacked a bit of conviction sometimes, but that also played to his strengths of being able to assess the situation and prevent getting blinkered like most new operators. This time, though, he was coming to me for an entirely different reason.
‘Dude, you’re making me look like a rock star at the minute.’
‘What do you mean?’
Dave was trying to soften the blow here, but I knew he was talking about the lack of team confidence in me.
‘You go off reservation a bit. Now, mate, I love you and you get fucking brilliant results, but …’
He was struggling to be diplomatic and stopped talking while we walked past one of the cleaners. It gave me time to think about my response, because my initial reaction was to tell the team to go and fuck themselves, which I knew deep down I didn’t mean. Putting the door code in for the deployment room, we both walked in and checked the intelligence boards for today’s job.
‘Dave, don’t worry, mate, I’m good. Yeah, sometimes I step outside the team, but it’s to get things done. Team leader knows that, mate. It’s all good, but if I make you look good then surely that’s a good thing, right?’
Dave knew I was trying to make light of the situation and started laughing as I patted him on his back, walking towards the trauma bags on the other side of the room.
‘After all, you need all the fucking help you can get!’
Being one of the trauma medics on the team, I would carry extra kit in my car on top of the normal first aid bags everyone carried. We were trained to deal with the common injuries operators are likely to treat or be subject to. Gunshot and stab wounds, crush injuries from car crashes and, perhaps most importantly, how to save our biker should he come off. Things like removing his helmet, cutting through his leathers and radio kit. I’d done a lot of medical training with the military, but the Security Service training for operators is intense but highly specific. We didn’t worry about how to create a sling out of a bandage, any of that shit. Our medical training was how to stop people dying when they were losing massive amounts of blood, plain and simple.
The job today was actually incredibly straightforward; all we had to do was keep control of the doctor and two other ‘key holders’ while a technical attack team entered his house to install eavesdropping devices.
Zipping the trauma bag up and slinging it on to my shoulder, I picked the oxygen bottle up and walked towards the door. Dave had gone into the briefing room with the rest of the team. I couldn’t shake what he said to me; was I really going about things the wrong way? We are the world’s best surveillance operators in the world’s best intelligence agency and yet I was having another mental battle over whether it was the team being too soft or me stretching the limits of what’s acceptable and legal.
Pushing the handle down on the briefing room door, the group leader stopped me. He was my team leader’s boss, two levels below A Branch Director.
‘TC, can I have a word?’
‘Yeah, sure, boss, what’s up?’
‘Everything is fine, don’t worry. As you know, every five years you have a DV review to assess whether your vetting is still OK and valid. Yours has come in early, but it’s nothing to worry about, it really isn’t.’
I knew the group leader must have been told the real reason behind my early review, but I had no clue.
‘She’s in the imagery suite round the corner. Sorry it has to be now. I’ll take the kit off you and hand it over to your team. You go and get it sorted out and then get yourself home.’
Fuck’s sake, If I was about to lose my vetting I would be fucked. I already needed the money, I couldn’t afford to be sacked. Right, time to live my cover and play the game. Vetting knew everything about every single Security Service employee: our ph
one records, emails, social media accounts of us and our families, everything. If we were about to have an affair or buy a house, Vetting would know about it first.
‘Hi, Tom, please sit down.’
Shit, formal names. At least she didn’t full-name me; that’s a positive. Sitting down, I remained relaxed, keeping my body positioning open and non-combative. I knew Vetting studied body behaviour so I had to get her on side quickly. I had no idea what she was about to say, so anything that could sway some friendly feelings towards me would help, otherwise I was about to try to scramble out of the lion’s den.
‘OK, your DV review isn’t due till next year and I know you’ve held this level of vetting for a long time now, so this isn’t anything to worry about, but a few things have been highlighted and we want to make sure you’re OK.’
‘Yeah, yeah, fine, what sort of things?’
‘Tom, I know you’re struggling financially. Being financially vulnerable makes you a target for foreign intelligence agencies unless we know about it. We can and do help a lot of employees. Let’s just go through your debts and some of your recent investments.’
This was humiliating. Now I knew my group leader knew I was skint. That was the look on his face when he took the trauma bag off me: it was pity. I could feel my blood boiling and my core temperature increasing fast. I didn’t feel angry though. I felt embarrassed.
‘So first let’s talk about the limited companies you’ve invested in and then we’ll go on to your credit cards and how we can solve those issues.’
I bowed my head like a schoolboy who’d been told he’s letting himself down by not washing and doing his homework, but she lowered her body to catch my gaze.
