by Tom Marcus
First, we all acknowledged we had heard the call on the radio.
Second, we all moved to get out of the area without making the targets aware. No wheel spinning, no sudden sprints, nothing to draw someone’s eye to us. London is perfect for this, offering large groups of people you can move with and plenty of traffic.
I was already driving out of my parked position while the rest of the team were replying to say they had heard the protocol. It doesn’t matter if you are in control of the most dangerous threat to this country, if the senior officers of Thames House give you this message – and this would have likely come from Assistant Director of A Branch or perhaps Director A themselves – you drop everything and covertly leave.
I knew if I headed roughly south I could get across the River Thames through Putney and keep driving towards the M25.
The adrenaline fuels you on calls like this, and you know the decision wouldn’t have been taken lightly. Still scanning my mirrors, I drove away.
A couple of hours later I made it to a small but smart looking B & B in a village. After slowly creeping into the car park, I secured all my kit in the boot then took out some emergency cash. It’s nothing like Hollywood – I wasn’t picking up thousands of pounds in a variety of British and foreign notes. I also didn’t have a stash of passports surrounded by wigs and prosthetic noses.
No, this was real life. I had £200 in notes for a place to stay, fuel and food, secured in a plastic waterproof pouch in a compartment within the boot. The cover story and your survival is all down to you.
I hadn’t decided on my cover yet, I would have to wing it depending on who was in charge of bookings. Thankfully, as I made my way inside the warm building, which looked like a converted pub, I could see a makeshift reception desk and a woman behind it in her fifties, who instantly turned a concerned face towards me as I gently closed the door.
‘Can I help you?’ she said softly. ‘Are you OK?’
Bingo, I thought. This is my route in. I won’t have any problems here.
‘I’m really sorry to bother you, I haven’t booked a room but I was hoping you have something available, just for a night?’
‘Yes of course, we have two rooms. Would you like to sit down?’
This lady had something I missed in life: humanity. That naturally occurring need to do the right, decent thing. It seemed ironic that I’d be reminded of the reason I did my job, to protect people like her, at the very moment I was running away from it.
She had clearly noticed I was looking the worse for wear. There were scratches on my hands and marks on my face from a few glancing blows that had landed during the melee at Stamford Bridge. Making my tone slightly softer and assuming a sadder posture I gave my cover story. ‘I’m OK, thank you. I won’t be any trouble, honestly. I just need to book a room for a night and I’ll be away tomorrow.’
‘Of course, it’s ninety pounds for the night and breakfast is an extra ten pounds.’
‘Perfect, thank you. Is cash OK, I forgot my wallet in the rush?’
Giving out little chunks of information helps support my current picture. Don’t unload it all at once.
‘Absolutely fine, can you just fill these details in please.’
Pulling out a booking form, she turned to get a room key for me as I took some cash out of my pocket, having left the waterproof pouch in the boot of the car.
‘There you go, a hundred pounds. What time is breakfast?’ As I was filling in the form with my cover name and address, I added, ‘Oh, I have my car here, do I need to pay parking for that too?’
‘No love, we don’t charge for parking around here! Breakfast is between seven and nine and we’ll also be serving food tonight, starting at six.’ Leaning in with a smile, she passed me my key and said, ‘Steak is really good here!’
It was like her words connected to my stomach, instantly making me hungry. I only had an hour to wait before I could sample this steak, just enough time to get sorted out.
She said one last thing to me before I made my way up the stairs. ‘Are you OK? Do you need any plasters or paracetamol?’
I gave her a bit more of the cover story.
‘It’s really good of you, thank you. I should be OK, nothing some alcohol and food won’t fix! My partner kicked me out of our flat this morning. I’ve been driving for hours not knowing what to do.’
‘Oh dear, do you need any fresh clothes or anything like that?’
This is how I imagine my mum should have been, but wasn’t. The compassion the receptionist was showing to me, despite me lying through my teeth, gave me hope I was doing the right thing sacrificing time with my family to fight alongside my team.
‘No, it’s fine, I managed to get a bag of clothes before he started throwing things at me. He wants me to give up my final year of medicine at university to get a “proper” job.’ Shrugging my shoulders pitifully, I started to move away. ‘I think I had a lucky escape from that one!’
‘You really did. Go and get cleaned up, I’ll have a steak dinner ready for you at six o’clock. OK love?’
‘Thank you, I’ll be down soon! I’m starving!’
As soon as I got into the small but warm and comfortable room, I took a quick look around – shower, bed, kettle, perfect. Before I could settle, though, I needed to get my kit bags out of the car and up here. I quickly jogged back downstairs and out of the side door leading directly onto the car park. It gave me a chance to look at the other cars here, at the B & B’s surroundings, and to check if the atmosphere felt wrong.
Opening the boot, I put my camera bag inside my larger grab bag then moved back towards my room.
I knew the tortuous line of endless questions about the operation would be filling my head soon as well as the guilt from not being able to contact my wife.
Back in my room, door locked and chair against the back of it, I placed my grab bag on the soft, pale-blue blanket covering the bed, taking my black Leatherman Wave multi-tool out and placing it in my pocket. That would be my only weapon.
Then I stripped off to take stock of my injuries. I needed to wash and clean up.
10
GONE TO GROUND
I felt a million times better once I was showered, in fresh clothes, with a well-done steak and chips in front of me. Tucking into the first thing I’d eaten in hours, I absorbed the room. Who’s here, how are they sitting, where are my exits and what do they lead to, what’s the biggest threat to me here?
That last one was easy to answer. My own mind was the threat. As I inhaled the food in front of me with the speed of a prisoner of war, my mind was running through an endless loop of different scenarios. I focused on the final minutes before we dropped MAGENTA STOAT and LAST DAWN.
The napkin placed on the coffee counter by LAST DAWN only had a stone wrapped inside, which would suggest this was a dummy dead-drop run. Dead drops are a favourite with foreign spies, a way of passing intelligence material, equipment, instructions or money to an asset or another spy – but only when they believe it’s secure to do so, i.e. when they aren’t being watched by MI5, so they’ll do a practice run first.
If this was a practice dead drop, then they would have likely had at least one or two more people inside the park helping them spot any potential surveillance.
That didn’t explain the reasoning behind the decision to pull out of the area like we did. Had I missed something? Had we been compromised? As the lady from reception took my plate away with a kind smile, then returned with a bowl of extra chips and a wink that said, ‘you look like you need this!’, I continued to work it through.
OK, so we have MAGENTA STOAT, one of our highest priorities, at a football ground. I see him shake hands with the man in the red coat with the fur hood who we now know as LAST DAWN.
Hmm, LAST DAWN. I remembered the older female voice back at Thames House identifying him over the net from my video surveillance in the park. The team leader questioned Base straight away as he thought LAST DAWN was dead. I’d never h
eard of LAST DAWN but Graeme had been with the teams for years, nearly thirty to be exact. He would have been involved in operations way before my time.
I ploughed through the fresh bowl of thick-cut chips and downed another pint of water. I was desperate not to fall into the abyss of my mind. I was already struggling to sleep and the nightmares were getting worse, sometimes ambushing my sleep every night. I was longing to contact my family but if I was somehow found here by a hostile force, I couldn’t have an electronic link to my home.
Leaving some cash on the table for my meal, I thanked the lady and made my way quietly to my room, where I had a decision to make.
All our technical kit is either encrypted or protected, including the memory storage for our cameras. I had about a minute’s worth of video footage from moving into position at the park and then of LAST DAWN while I was getting coffee. Should I delete it? I knew the live feed sent to Thames House would have been recorded too, but just in case it wasn’t, I was potentially running the risk of destroying intelligence that could be vital.
For now, I decided not to hard-delete the recording. It was encrypted, and I was fairly secure, I hoped.
During our training for an event like this, we are taught to use the time to think, plan and refuel. If this has happened you’re likely about to have a massive fight on your hands. Switching the TV on, I tuned straight into Sky News for any breaking stories that could be relevant to our team. Nothing seemed to fit, leaving me still in the dark.
It took a bit more effort to remove my hoody than it had to put it on an hour ago. I was starting to stiffen up and now that my body had had an extra hour to lick its wounds the bruises and cuts were really starting to show. I was fairly sure I hadn’t broken any bones and was relieved it was nothing too serious, otherwise Lucy would worry when I got home.
All in all, it could have been worse and it would all heal. Physically anyway.
After packing up my grab bag and checking the windows were secure for the third time, I put the chair up against the back of the door. A metal teaspoon inside an empty glass, placed on the arm of the chair, acted as an extra warning system. I was sure I’d got away cleanly, but it was not something I could take for granted.
The last thing I wanted to do right now was succumb to the inevitability of sleep.
When you’re asleep, you’re not in control. More than anything, this frightened the fuck out of me. I was desperately trying to block as much as I could out of my mind. I’d learned to compartmentalize as a kid but now, after years on the frontline of a secret war to keep the country safe, my experiences were refusing to be boxed away. Even in this dark, small room, quiet apart from the odd plane flying overhead, I knew as soon as I drifted off I’d be reliving my worst memories.
Moving onto the floor, I leaned my back up against the wall, wrapping the quilt around me to keep warm and switching the small lamp on above me. No darkness. In this position I was less likely to fall into a deep sleep, and that would keep the nightmares away. I hoped. Unable to fight my eyelids any longer, I drifted off.
Gasping a lungful of air, disorientated, my arms sprang up to protect my face, sending the quilt flying up towards the lamp above me. Nightmare. Another one. My heart was racing as I struggled to focus on my surroundings. I couldn’t remember what I had been dreaming about.
Checking my watch, I saw it was just after midnight. I knew from experience this was going to be a long night of horrific nightmares. It’s the one thing operators in MI5 are fucking shit at, switching off! We can’t do it. I haven’t met anyone who works on the ground who can switch it on and off. We are recruited because we are highly observant and we’re trained to take this to an obsessive level. We aren’t given the tools to be able to control it. And now I was thinking about my family again. The merry-go-round of torture continued well into the early hours.
At 7 a.m., when I went downstairs for breakfast, I felt like a zombie: sleep deprived, aching where I’d been battered the day before and now stiff from my stupid anti-nightmare sleeping position on the floor. At least I had the room to myself, none of the other guests being up so early.
I wasn’t sure when I would get chance to eat again so I forced down an extra round of toast and kept drinking water to hydrate. I’d be setting off soon to do what we call a fire route: an extremely long anti- and counter-surveillance route to make sure no one is following us before we arrive at our meeting point.
Wiping the breakfast from my beard and downing the last of the water, I headed back to my room and grabbed my kit before getting into the car. I had enough money to give me two full tanks of fuel and I’d probably need most of it.
Switching the car engine on, I did a quick map study. I needed to get across the south of England into the heart of Wales, west from here. But I couldn’t take an obvious, direct route. I decided to drive up to Leeds via the M25 and then the M1. It would be extremely difficult for me to spot if I was being tracked on a motorway, but once I got up to the north of England I could gradually make my way towards Manchester then drop down into Chester, using the changes from fast roads to slower pedestrianized areas to try and identify any surveillance.
Traffic was light when I set off, but got heavier as the hours ticked by. I couldn’t see anything suspicious but it didn’t mean I was safe. Leaving Chester, I took the small ring road around the outskirts to double back on myself then drove in towards the centre near the shops again, trying to drag any hostile surveillance through with me from the fast, straight roads into slow streets surrounded by glass-fronted shops.
I was driving within the speed limit at all times, using my mirrors, making the odd stop to visit random shops, doing anything I could to blend into normal life while trying to identify those who could be hunting us.
I’d covered hundreds of miles so far and still needed to make my way into the centre of Wales. I was trying to ignore the ache I had to get home, or at least speak to my wife. Block it out, stay on task.
Driving away from Chester towards a small airport just over the Welsh border, I started to make my final run. Wales is almost the perfect environment to employ counter-surveillance techniques. Lots of single-lane roads running high in the hills, easy to spot if you’re being followed or about to be ambushed. I remembered my last trip here, hunting extremists at their training camp. Now I was in these mountains employing the very tactics a target might use to try to evade my team. The hunter had become the hunted.
Slowly, the light started to change, the sun creeping back down below the horizon. Apart from a low-flying RAF jet screaming overhead, presumably on a training run, I hadn’t come across anything that suggested I was about to get hit. So far, so good. I turned onto a narrow track, recognizing the gate towards the end. I hadn’t been here since the A4 training course, but I remembered the instructor’s words as I got closer: ‘Always come just after first light or just before night. That way the locals don’t see a massive amount of car headlights suddenly arriving in the middle of nowhere.’
I swung in and stopped by a metal gate that was surrounded by thick evergreen trees and anti-social thorn bushes. I tapped my pass against the keypad then entered a code that was unique to me. A small green LED signalled that the gate was about to draw back and let me in. I followed the driveway around a series of corners and into an old-looking warehouse which hid the ramp down to the garage underneath.
Hitting the bottom of the ramp and swinging the car around the corner, I saw that most of Blue and Green Team had already arrived. Everyone looked relaxed and was mingling. Although there is a healthy rivalry between the teams, A4 is easily the tightest department within the Security Service. Operators are told from day one that we won’t be promoted. We are expected to be career operators. As such, you don’t get any empire building from people, no stabbing each other in the back to get a promotion. Team leaders, and above them group leaders, were hand-picked on merit and qualifications. A4 is the weirdest but strongest family in existence.
But r
ight now, in this underground garage in the middle of nowhere, we are under attack. Now is the time to regroup and get back out there.
A couple more cars arrived and the group leader stepped out of one alongside Alison, the briefing officer who had obviously come up from Thames House to update us all.
‘Right guys, close in please so we don’t have to shout,’ the group leader said.
Operationally, the team leader is responsible for their team on the ground. The group leader had oversight and control of two teams and would also be on the ground but in more of a management role, coordinating big Executive Action strikes and other operations that could take priority in a matter of seconds. Essentially they play chess with us operators on the ground. They are the best of the best and most experienced by far.
My group leader, Derek, was someone I had huge respect for. An unassuming, balding man in his late fifties, he’d been with A4 since his early twenties. He’d seen and done it all. He’d forgotten more about surveillance than I was ever likely to learn. Between being recruited by Ian Grey in Northern Ireland and coming into a team belonging to Derek’s group, I had followed the holy path of surveillance operators.
What I really liked about Derek was his inability to keep his thoughts to himself. He would regularly tell young intelligence officers to fuck off if he thought the teams were being asked to do something which was a waste of our time. It was probably the main reason he wasn’t an Assistant Director. I also looked up to him for his incredible memory and the fact that, no matter what happened, he never panicked.
As we closed in like a group of children listening to their teachers on a school trip, the cold night air whistled down the ramp, trying to find a way into our bones.
‘Right guys, hand up if you didn’t make it?’ Derek started, getting a low rumble of laughter from both teams. ‘We’ve checked you all off the list, everyone is here safe and sound.’
Derek knew this was a serious event, we all did. But what we needed right now, and he knew this as he sat on the bonnet of his car, was unflappable leadership. ‘Look, you all have questions about what happened yesterday and we’ll get to it so just listen for now. OK, Alison, all yours.’
