by Tom Marcus
Dedicated to the families who suffered unimaginable loss.
We stand with you.
Saffie Rose Roussos
John Atkinson
Megan Hurley
Olivia Campbell-Hardy
Alison Howe
Lisa Lees
Angelika Klis
Marcin Klis
Martyn Hett
Kelly Brewster
Jane Tweddle
Nell Jones
Michelle Kiss
Sorrell Leczkowski
Liam Curry
Chloe Rutherford
Elaine McIver
Wendy Fawell
Eilidh MacLeod
Courtney Boyle
Philip Tron
Georgina Callander
CONTENTS
Prologue
1 Training to Kill
2 Survival Instinct
3 Stand and Fight
4 The Follow
5 Operation STARLING
6 Hiding in Plain Sight
7 Find, Stop, Repeat
8 The Best Spies in the World
9 Dead Drop
10 Gone to Ground
11 Night Vision
12 Taking a Beating
13 Serving His Country
14 Hard Stop
15 Lucy’s Story
16 Starting Again
Epilogue: Once a Spy . . .
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
It’s the screams you hear first. There are men and women everywhere, from all walks of life, running, hiding, some frozen into petrified stillness. This isn’t a normal scene in London, but it’s one that is fast becoming anticipated.
Zero Six.
More carnage, as I see glimpses of bodies, the walking wounded and those who have already lost the fight. One or two people are recording what they can on their phones, handsets shaking uncontrollably. There’s a flash of the three targets, wearing what look like very crude suicide vests, stalking more prey. The armed police close in, running fearlessly towards the fight.
Zero Six.
Right now, I know that MI5 officers will be reacting to a protocol designed to put every conceivable asset on the ground within minutes. Surveillance teams already on the ground will be re-deployed. Those who had just finished and were at home with their families, or somewhere desperately trying to switch off, will be in their cars and with the teams immediately. The intelligence officers would be briefing the teams live on the radios, no time to bring them in. The operators in the teams, not just surveillance but the technical attack teams, the office geeks within Thames House, our cousins in Vauxhall Cross and the wobbly heads in Cheltenham would be working together with one goal in mind: to stop the killers.
Zero Six, roger, en route.
The first shots ring out, and I know from the controlled manner this is almost certainly the police firearms officers. Over the past few years, due to the huge spike in the scale of terrorist activity and their capability, the Counter Terrorism Unit is now without question the best trained police force in the world. Tonight, just south of London Bridge, they are proving it, as the echoes of gunfire continue to bounce around the buildings, a brutal counterpoint to the screams.
My lungs spasm, gasping for air, as I realize I am frozen with my phone to my ear, waiting for an update from my team leader or the operations officer back at base.
‘Breaking news here on Sky, as what’s being described as a terrorist attack in the heart of London . . .’
Lowering my phone, I look at the blank black screen. No call. No messages. No longer frozen, I take a step back, soaking in my surroundings. Fuck. The TV is on, this is on the news. I’m not on the ground. I’m no longer in MI5. I’m not hearing my radio. It was an auditory hallucination. I’ve relapsed. Get out, get out NOW!
It’s late at night and everyone in the house is asleep. I grab the door keys and leave, my legs instantly propelling me into a run I didn’t know I needed. Moving faster and faster, I cover the couple of miles to a large wood.
I’m brought up short after vaulting a dry-stone wall that acts as a land boundary to a farm. It’s dark around here – the immediate area is almost pitch black thanks to the looming treeline.
As my heart and lungs struggle to replace the oxygen my muscles have burned through, I find myself sitting on this low wall looking towards a break in the trees through which I can see a valley and hills in the distance.
Zero Six.
FUCK OFF, THAT’S NOT ME ANYMORE!
I’m not MI5 anymore but I always will be. I’m no longer part of my team, but I can always hear them. I’m no longer hunting the most dangerous terrorists in the world, but every day I’m watching and waiting for them.
Even moving back along this dark muddy track I’m trying to pick out a route in the shadows that will take me home a completely different way. Some call it paranoia; even the doctors I’ve dealt with in the past would classify my day-to-day behaviour as paranoid. PTSD or not, the curse engrained into me also keeps me alive.
Spotting a different route to take, I cut across an open field, dark silhouettes of cows moving slowly in the distance. I’m walking rather than running, giving myself time to face the demons I had convinced myself were gone. My mind is calmer by the time I creep back into the house. Resisting the urge to turn the news on, I strip out of my wet clothes and sit on the sofa thinking about the team. They’ll be on the ground right now, helping to hunt down anyone associated with the London Bridge targets, anyone who could be waiting for the right time to launch their own attack.
I can imagine the speed at which the intelligence officers on the desk would be shifting through terabytes of live data, creating a triage of threats from thousands of targets.
I can almost hear the radio transmissions, the team leader calling in assets, continuous updates from Thames House, bikers blasting past every operator, all task-focused and doing everything humanly possible to prevent more attacks like this. Unfortunately, you can’t stop every single one, it’s impossible. And we will get hit again. It might be next week, might be next year, but it will happen. The thing to remember is that our intelligence and military is the best fighting force in the world. Like any world champion, some attacks will find a way through our defences, but we can take the blows and keep fighting. Our guard never drops. Together with my team, I helped stop hundreds of attacks over the years. They continue to do so today.
I wrote about some of my experiences as an MI5 officer in Soldier Spy. On the one hand, remembering the past showed me that having PTSD wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t a victim, just someone who got caught out in the open at all the wrong times. Revisiting my career for I Spy has allowed me to describe some of the operations I couldn’t include in the first book and go deeper into the challenges that defined me, and the lessons learned along the way.
The memories of my team are so vivid, they stay with me. To this day I want to be back with them and instantly hate myself for it, because going back would take me away from my family. What I can do is remember them in my writing, and pay tribute to the bravery of the men and women of MI5.
1
TRAINING TO KILL
My lungs were burning, the taste of copper in my mouth as my body screamed for more oxygen to feed my muscles or for me to stop. I can’t stop. No choice but to keep pushing up the side of this mountain no matter what.
The terrorist training camp was around 600 metres away from me, but I needed a higher vantage point to get clear imagery.
From the quick map study I’d done in the car I knew there would be a good position further up ahead and now, as my soaking wet boots desperately tried to keep enough traction to stop me falling, I could just make out the natural dip in the side
of this steep Welsh mountain. From there I’d be able to look directly down on the camp and hopefully have enough cover to enable me to hide.
My eyesight had quickly adjusted to the darkness when I set out but the rocks and bushes around me were becoming clearer now. First light was only minutes away and I had to be in place before all the targets got up for morning prayers.
We’d been investigating them for a year but this was the first time we’d had this entire cell together in one place. It was a perfect opportunity to get some video footage that would quite probably be used at a later date in court.
Come on, keep pushing! Can’t let the team down. I’d been running as hard as I could for a good thirty minutes, leaving the car a couple of miles away and using another valley as cover before starting to run vertically up the mountain.
Fifty metres to go. I stumbled, somehow found my footing again and kept running. Finally at the dip, I dropped down on the dew-covered grass and unzipped my camera bag, which was basically a normal hiker’s rucksack that fitted the environment perfectly. I took the long-lens camera out first; this would be my decoy if anyone did see me tucked away here. The actual camera I was interested in was my video camera. I connected the lead to a screen which stayed in my rucksack to prevent it giving away my position in the low light.
My heart was still racing as my body fought to get the lactic acid out of my muscles. Taking a breath and holding it for a second, I slowed myself down, then tucked the video camera on the other side of the bush, angling it roughly in the direction of the three tents below. The targets wouldn’t be able to see me at this distance or elevation, but I still had to be careful.
My cover story was really simple and effective. If I did get any interest from ramblers or anyone related to our targets, I was birdspotting after hearing from my mates that this was a good place to photograph hawks and other winged things. Taking a few photographs on my digital SLR, adjusting the settings for low level light conditions, I aimed to dispel any doubt about what I was actually here for. I knew I had to be fairly quiet though; even at this distance sound carries. I was banking on the fact these particular targets weren’t that in tune with their surroundings, plus the natural dip I was in and the thick bushes I was hiding behind would dissipate any sound.
We usually found ourselves operating on crime-ridden city streets so being in the Welsh countryside made a nice change of pace, even though a rock was digging into my hip and now I’d stopped sprinting I was cold, my sweat-drenched clothes only making things worse.
Using the touch screen in my rucksack, I zoomed the focus of the digital video camera nice and tight on the tents.
‘Team leader from Zero Six . . .’ I was still gasping for air and had been motoring up there at full tilt for so long that I was nearly sick. No time for that now though. Snatching a breath, I continued to send my message on my covert radio. ‘I have control of the site, can give constant commentary.’
‘Roger that,’ Graeme, our team leader replied. ‘Will you be able to ID them quickly?’
‘Yes yes. I’ll get them face-on while they do morning prayer.’
I knew they would be facing south-east to pray, the direction of Mecca, and my position was chosen to be near perfect for facial recognition. Watching the video screen, I realized I’d made it just in time.
‘From Zero Six, we have movement at the tents, will give targets when I see them properly.’ First prayers, like clockwork – these guys were predictable if nothing else.
‘Roger that, Zero Six. If you can control them within that little area we’ll keep the team out of the valley, ready for a vehicle move.’
Keeping the team away would make the targets feel comfortable.
‘Understood, and that’s a STAND BY STAND BY, we have GREEN ATLANTIC, WHITE KESTREL out of the most northern tent, both dark trousers, dark tops, carrying prayer mats.’
Staying nice and quiet, I continued to whisper into my radio, burying my mouth into the neck of my wet jacket. Everything we do as operators is with our cover in mind. I couldn’t see anyone else around here apart from the tents and two of our targets rolling their prayer mats out, but just because I couldn’t see anyone, that didn’t mean I couldn’t be seen.
As GREEN ATLANTIC and WHITE KESTREL washed their hands and feet prior to prayer, I saw the rest of the cell.
‘And stations that’s RED HARRIER, PACIFIC LION, BLUE TONGA and COLD SAHARA all out in the open now, all dressed in dark clothing top and bottom, carrying prayer mats.’
‘Roger that, Zero Six, thanks.’ The team leader was straight on the net to reply, his voice comforting given that I was alone and isolated.
‘Team leader from Zero Six, while they are praying I’ll keep the commentary to a minimum. Base, this is all recording for your information.’
‘Team Leader, understood.’
‘Base, roger.’
The operations officer back at Thames House was seeing the live feed I was recording so they could analyse it in real time. These officers are highly experienced men and women who feed information to the team leaders, liaise with police and coordinate the teams taking over shifts
The targets hadn’t been here long. This training camp was designed to replicate camps normally seen in Syria or Afghanistan in which recruits would be taught weapons handling, how to strip and fire automatic rifles, run over arduous terrain, build home-made bombs and form a bond with each other. The sort of brotherhood seen in the military, except these guys were hell-bent on blowing themselves up if we let them.
All highly educated with degrees, they were out of their comfort zone roughing it miles from anywhere, but it’s the type of environment that enhances and cements a certain amount of resilience. The problem we’ve got is we just can’t have resilient suicide bombers.
They finished cleansing themselves and, just as planned, faced directly towards me to pray. Sitting down with my digital camera on my lap, I pretended to rummage around in my rucksack. I needed to zoom slightly tighter in on the targets. This was 100 per cent the whole cell. All in one place, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded and in their eyes protected by the rugged terrain.
It was a strange situation to be in, to see these guys praying together, calmly, almost with a gentleness that suited the early morning of the Welsh mountains. It was intimate and humbling to watch them like this. We’d been on this group for a long time, and were well aware of their desire to kill, but as I watched them on my tiny screen I became a little hypnotized by their softer side.
Time for a quick update to my team.
‘Stations from Zero Six, that’s the entire group now finishing their prayers and into the tents.’
‘Team leader, roger.’
Shit! I was straight back on to the radio,
‘All Stations, GREEN ATLANTIC has just given BLUE TONGA a shotgun and a large hunting knife. Ops if you have the live feed can you confirm? I’m not tight enough to be completely sure but it looks like double barrel, wooden stock.’
‘Base roger, and we’ve seen, thanks Zero Six.’
The team leader made sure everyone acknowledged my last transmission. We knew these guys were willing to kill and now we’d confirmed they had the means. The threat to life, immediate to us and imminent to the public, was increased.
Things like this don’t scare us; if anything they make us stronger. This might seem arrogant to some, but think about it. When determined, would-be mass-murdering terrorists are coming to kill you, your family, everyone you care about, who do you want standing in their way? Someone who isn’t entirely confident in their ability to protect you, or people like us?
We’re not superheroes, and we are far from perfect. But right here, right now, there is no one better equipped, both physically and mentally. This whole country is ours, and we protect it day and night.
I was the only operator close to these targets. I was still 600 metres away from them, but in this environment, with the lack of other people around, it was close as I’d da
re get. I knew that we’d be calling in the arrest of these guys soon but we couldn’t blow the operation now by making them nervous. Letting them think they were completely unstoppable was the perfect play right now. Plus, my team was at best twenty to thirty minutes away from me.
If I was too close to them and they found me, I’d have no chance against six blokes. I’d be dead in minutes.
I was expecting all six targets to prepare breakfast and then either do some sort of training where they were or move onto the hills. With previous training camps we’ve seen, they nearly always try to fit some sort of hill walk in, probably because they have seen programmes about the special forces doing their selection course in Wales. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing but had to prepare the team anyway.
‘Stations from Zero Six, just be aware they might be packing up their camp.’
The team leader reacted instantly. ‘Roger that Zero Six, keep commentary coming please. Stations close in now, ready for a vehicle move.’
As I lifted my eyes from the screen hidden inside my bag to take a quick look up at the ridgeline in front of me, the radio transmissions sped up.
‘From Charlie Eight Eight, a grey Toyota Previa drove towards the main [road] about five minutes ago, roughly in the area of the break in the treeline the cell used to walk to their campsite.’
‘Any details?’ The team leader was keen to find out if the car was connected to this group or not. Thankfully, Charlie Eight Eight was in our team camper van, a gleaming VW complete with side awning and bikes on the back. It had everything you’d need for a weekend getaway in the countryside and was the perfect cover for us. No one in their right mind would think it was an MI5 surveillance vehicle. It was no secret everyone in the team wanted to use it in places like this.
‘Negative,’ Charlie Eight Eight replied. ‘Came in from the east, not sure if the west position spotted it leaving?’
‘West, negative.’
Fuck. These guys were about to be picked up. I knew it. We had everyone in place to control them to their next destination but we didn’t know, yet, who the driver of the Toyota people carrier was or where they were going.
