I Spy

by Tom Marcus

  ‘How long you been here?’

  ‘This is my first week. I’m just trying to help, it wouldn’t take much effort and it would be better for everyone.’ I said it with the best humble smile I could muster.

  It was met with eye rolling and a hand from both my line manager and her boss. ‘Your job is to answer the phones. Leave the important stuff to us.’

  They walked right past me like my opinion no longer mattered. That was the end of that.

  Important stuff? You’ve no fucking idea what important is, I thought.

  When I got home, Lucy could tell how pissed off I was. I just couldn’t understand the mentality of people working in the same company either not giving a shit about the work they did, or treating fellow employees like dogs. Listen, obey, but don’t step out of line or get ahead of yourself.

  We made the decision that night to look for something else, another career path with some progression. Thankfully being in employment makes it easier to find another job. I made contact with a recruitment company that specializes in placing ex-military personnel in suitable roles. Speaking to them on my dinner break the following Monday, I started the process for a fast-track management programme for a fast food restaurant. It was not my thing at all, but I could see the potential and the recruitment guy was actually very honest. ‘You’ll hate it for a couple of years but at the end of it you’re looking at becoming a manager with great prospects afterwards.’

  So I took the job and started on the scheme two weeks later. As with any fast-track management programme, you learn the job from the ground up, which meant flipping burgers and dipping a basket of fries into the huge cooking vats. Everyone in the restaurant knew I was ex-military, I just made sure no one ever found out exactly what I did.

  I’d get a whole host of the typical questions you’d expect from teenagers talking to an ex-soldier in a work environment: ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ ‘Did you go to Iraq and Afghanistan?’ ‘Why did you quit?’

  The last question always drove me nuts. Soldiers don’t leave the forces by ‘quitting’. Quitting is when someone stops going to the gym after three days, having signed up in the new year vowing to get fit for the summer.

  I stuck to the standard line that I was in the engineers, and that I didn’t see any combat because I was part of a regiment that repaired the older vehicles so the lads could use them overseas. A very busy but rewarding job, knowing that the kit is going to help the guys out. It sounded plausible and entirely boring, which made the questions stop. In reality I had no fucking idea if a unit like that even existed.

  I spent months pretending I enjoyed learning how the kitchen worked, what sauces and dressing went on which burgers and how to run the drive-through window, which in fairness to the staff there does take some degree of multi-tasking. I also realized that the fast-track management scheme was in reality a smokescreen to bring in management without giving them the same pay.

  Despite not coming from a catering background at all, I could see there were obvious savings to be made. One example of that was the ice cream machine. Customers could ask for a variety of different toppings. The staff, under the pressure of getting orders fulfilled quickly, would always put at least twice as much topping on the ice cream as they were supposed to and would spill even more, which in the summer in a busy restaurant would be lost profits.

  I suggested to the manager that a quick fix would be to have a dispensing machine that would deposit the exact amount of topping, with no mess. The cost would be around £250, but that piece of equipment would be paid for by increased profits in about six hours on a busy day.

  I was met with an unwavering, ‘We can’t afford any new equipment right now.’ A restaurant that turns over £4 million a year can’t afford £250 to make a hundred times that in its first year? I put a lot of similar suggestions forward to increase profits while reducing the stress on the staff, but in the end it all came down to empire building. People crushing others just to stay one step ahead. I hated this environment but it was one I quickly realized is fairly common in the wider world.

  I stayed at the drive-through, flipping burgers, while searching for a new job. I didn’t feel superior to anyone there, that’s not who I am. I just wanted more. I needed higher targets to achieve. It would have been easy to slip into resentment and anger but I had confidence this job wouldn’t be forever. There was an opportunity out there and I would find it.

  EPILOGUE

  ONCE A SPY . . .

  It wasn’t my idea to be a writer – I bumped into someone from my old life who was having a meeting with his literary agent.

  ‘Tom, you should write a book,’ he said. The agent looked interested.

  ‘Yeah, I could do that,’ I replied confidently. I am dyslexic and actually doubted I could write a chapter let alone an entire book but I wasn’t going to admit to that. I’d figure it out later.

  I believe we make our own luck and this was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. As a way of earning a living it is a big improvement on flipping burgers or working in a call centre. In almost every way it has been incredibly positive. The only negative is that coming forward has meant there has to be an increased level of security around my identity. I would make an attractive target for hostile intelligence agencies. Nothing is more important than keeping my family safe.

  On the school run, I always take note of the cars behind me, paying particular attention to the vehicles two or three back. Are they moving naturally with the traffic or anticipating my next change in direction? Taking the turn for my street, I keep an eye on my mirrors, not to watch for any vehicle coming with me, but to watch the heads of the people inside the cars. Is anyone looking down the street as they drive past the end of my road and are they talking? Either could mean they were giving others a change of direction. A classic telltale sign you’re being followed.

  On this particular afternoon only one car in the line of traffic stood out, a red Ford Fiesta driven by a woman with shoulder-length brown hair who was looking down my street as she drove past. Her car had been three behind me for a mile or so, since the last roundabout. Her lips were moving as she drove past. Not concrete evidence I was being watched, but enough to heighten my awareness.

  Pulling up outside the house, I knew it was important to keep my body language the same as it always would be. Smoke and mirrors. I got out of the car and walked around to my son’s side to unclip him out of his booster seat. Using the natural look through the window, I could keep an eye on the top of the street for anyone on foot or for vehicles that were standing out. The red Fiesta had put me on alert. I just wasn’t sure if it was valid or if my PTSD was making a comeback.

  I paused slightly to talk to my son as I pretended to be distracted while getting the house key into the lock. I used the split second to listen to my environment before walking through the safety of the door. Any changes in engine noises, slowing down or speeding up, engines being switched off or doors opening, footsteps. Anything that I could latch onto.

  I needed to make sure my family was safe. If we were being watched I had to get them out of here and quickly. But first I had to identify if there was a threat and how big it was.

  ‘Can you watch little legs for a minute?’

  While Lucy took his rucksack, I made my way to the back door, pausing briefly to take my grab bag, which was tucked away underneath the kitchen sink. It contained everything I needed to help me identify if we were under surveillance, and crucially, the items we needed to disappear. I knew my bag was complete, having checked it religiously just two days earlier.

  ‘Tom, everything OK?’ Lucy knew the hidden bags were only to be used in certain situations.

  ‘I’m just going to check something, I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m sure it’s fine though. Can you lock the doors and switch the lights on? If I’m not back in ten minutes, go straight to Big Blue.’

  Lucy has been through my therapy with me. She knows the triggers and signs of hyper-v
igilance but also knows what I used to do. From her perspective, it must be a difficult balance to find – should she try to stop me if the danger could be real?

  Taking one of the emergency tops next to my small bag, I changed the colour of my profile. Then I moved towards the bottom of the garden and vaulted the fence to cut through onto the road behind our street. I needed to identify anyone who was watching the front of our house or our car. Squeezing through the gap between two houses, I made it onto the road and joined several people at the bus stop. Thankfully, this was a busy route. Staying close to the group, I boarded the next bus, which went further down the street and close to the bottom edge of the road my house is on.

  It was only a short journey, less than a minute, but absolutely vital as it gave me a protected view of what might be going on in my area. At first I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The people on the bus were minding their own business, pedestrians on the street were moving normally. I even recognized the drunk locals returning from the shop with that afternoon’s super-strength lager.

  Getting ready to leave the bus at the next stop, I stood just behind the driver’s shoulder. That’s when I saw the car parked at the end of my road, two men inside. When a group of people came to the front ready to get off, I tucked myself in the middle of them, hood up to make it look like I was protecting myself from the rain that had just started to come down.

  Making the turn towards my street, I knew I was about three minutes’ walk away from my front door. In those three minutes I had to decide whether or not this was a situation I needed to get my family out of.

  Keep moving, get home.

  The driver of the stationary car was switched on and saw me approaching, cracking his window down to speak to me.

  ‘All right mate, you live around here?’

  Nodding back, I put my arm over the top of the door onto the roof, keeping my right knee further back from my left just in case things went wrong quickly and he tried to get out.

  ‘Seen any mopeds around?’ the driver asked. Now I was close I could recognize the outline of a Kevlar vest underneath a waterproof jacket. He wasn’t interested in me, and I could see from the equipment within the car that they were plain-clothes police officers. The passenger was on the phone back to command by the sounds of it.

  ‘I haven’t, is that what you’re here for?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve seen a few come towards this area so we are talking to the locals and seeing if they can help us. But we’re trying to keep a low profile so we don’t scare them off.’

  Now I knew my family was safe, I needed to get back to them before Lucy left for our pre-arranged emergency location.

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t seen any today.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  As I walked away, I could hear the unmarked police car leaving. Two minutes to get home before Lucy would be out of the door, protecting our family.

  Arriving at the front door, the house looked busy – lights on, no sign of Lucy about to bolt to safety. I gave a knock she’d recognize before I unlocked the door. In the hall, I saw her with our son and our larger grab bags. Instantly, she relaxed.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Local police, just needed to make sure.’

  Trying to instantly get back to normality, I was not aware of the damage I was doing until Lucy grabbed my arm to stop me walking away. ‘Are you OK?’

  The concern on her face stopped me in my tracks. Was I spiralling or did I react rationally to the picture in front of me, before ruling out a potential threat? I knew I was struggling to adjust to civilian life. Normality was something I had craved for years, but now it was here I didn’t know what to do with it. Good mental health takes the same care as physical health – you have to take daily preventative measures to make sure you stay fit. But it’s hard not to lapse into a hyper-viligant state when I’ve spent a decade hunting down some of the most dangerous people in the country. I can’t unlearn what I know.

  Whenever I enter a building for a meeting, I still naturally pay attention to the numbers people are putting into keypads, the processes on reception, if there’s a back door. When I meet people from a similar background in a restaurant or bar there’s always a fight to grab the seats that allow the best view of the room, to the point we’re nearly sitting on each other’s laps sometimes. If I’m walking around in London, I choose the side of the road facing oncoming traffic so I can see if there’s a moped looking to nick a phone or an extremist in a car looking to kill pedestrians. A few seconds’ warning can make all the difference. I try not to let it take over my life to the point where it’s getting daft, but these small measures give me a sense of a control. So does staying positive and focused on my goals. I don’t spend time on regrets – I survived some rough times as a kid but you can’t let your past dictate your future. I had a job I loved and when that came to an end I kept looking until I found a new purpose.

  And yet . . . even though my life is really busy I still miss everyone in Green Team and the wider teams. To be surrounded by people who can rely on you and who you can rely on in return, without question, without hidden agenda, all pulling together in the same direction, is a rare thing. I have never found that anywhere else and probably never will. I also miss the admin staff who would look after our expenses, hotels and cover ID. I even miss the jobsworth in our stores who would prefer to keep stuff in stock rather than hand it out, ‘just in case someone needs it!’

  But I never doubt that everyone is doing their best to protect us, and they are the best in the fucking world!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I want to thank:

  My wife for always being my one true constant. Without you I’d have been lost a long time ago.

  Luigi and Ingrid for having incredible patience and faith during the clearance process and supporting me throughout.

  Everyone in the Security Service, especially the ones in my team for giving me help when I needed it.

  And Paul, my brother, for recognizing my value and giving me an opportunity no one else would.

  Turn the page to read an extract from

  Tom Marcus’ action-packed thriller featuring

  tortured MI5 operative Matt Logan.

  PROLOGUE

  Standing in the doorway of my flat, I take one last look. It’s clean and orderly, the home of a righteous man. And yet, beneath the surface, I know it could be defiled. There may be bugs hidden somewhere, spies listening to my every word. Well, if so, they will have heard many prayers, but not our plans. I put my phone on the shelf by the door before walking out onto the landing. With your phone, they can track you wherever you go. And of course, they can record what you say. Which is why Mohammed and I never communicate electronically. If we need to meet, we fix the place the night before, during last prayers at the mosque. Only the two of us know the plan. We never meet in the same place twice and never inside a building or an open space like a park. Following these rules keeps us alive, and lets us hope we may, in the future, live in a different world from this corrupted one.

  I walk down the stairwell and leave my block of flats, walking calmly but purposefully, watching for anyone who looks out of place or who is paying too much attention to me. I see no spies, but I have to be sure. Before crossing the street, I wait at the traffic lights, looking both ways. The light changes to green, but I don’t cross yet, instead I wait for cars or people to react to me, stopping suddenly or changing direction. Still no sign of anyone.

  Moving onto the other side of the road lets me look up and down the street, checking for anyone hiding in their cars. There’s a phone shop on the corner and I check that the owner is alone before entering. He nods to me as I walk past the counter and out of the side door into a narrow alley, which leads to the back of the houses behind. If anyone follows me down here, I will know they are spies.

  The alley is dark. I put my hood up and look back onto the street. In the darkness I am like a ghost; no one can see me. But the end of the
alley is lit up like a TV. Anyone looking down here to try and see me would stand out.

  Still clean. I turn and walk to the other end of the alley, away from the lights of the main road, until I reach the bottom of a grimy stairwell. I can see the silhouette of Mo’s bulky frame, ambling towards the same pre-arranged spot from the opposite direction, I greet him.

  ‘As-salãmu ’alaykum.’

  ‘Wa’alaykumu s-salãm.’ Mo replies as we keep our voices to a whisper. No one could be listening to us here. But there’s a reason neither of us has ever been arrested or even spoken to by the police. We are always careful, always following the rules we have made for ourselves.

  ‘Mo, the two brothers I told you about yesterday, I believe they are ready. It is time.’

  ‘And we trust them? We must assume they are being followed.’

  ‘I gave instructions to them at first prayers this morning how to disappear. They’ve been trained well.’

  ‘And you’re sure they are capable of executing the plan?’

  ‘I’m controlling what they do at each stage. Only we know the full plan. But they will do their part. Then we can move to the caliphate.’

  ‘Then proceed, brother.’

  I embrace Mohammed quickly before we go our separate ways. Our meeting has lasted less than a minute. Now I need to get to work, to fulfil my part in society, hiding in plain sight. It’s only a two-minute walk from here, but I don’t take the fastest route. Instead I start off in the opposite direction, turning back on myself to make sure I am still not being followed. Finally, I see my place of work, shining brightly, a picture of Western opulence.