The Big Breach

by Richard Tomlinson

  `What, are you suggesting I join the Foreign Legion?' I asked.

  `No, no,' spluttered Timpson. `I was merely trying to say that things could turn out for you OK in the end.' We spoke for an hour about the outplacement help MI6 could offer but Timpson was as barren of ideas as I was. At least he did not suggest the City. `I've never had to give career advice to somebody like you who obviously does not want to leave - most people whom personnel department fire are happy to go,' he said.

  `That's the first sensible comment I've heard from personnel,' I replied. `But listen, I need to get some sort of employment urgently. I've been unemployed for months, I'm heavily in debt and can't pay my mortgage next month. If you can't help me find something, even temporarily, can the office help me out with a loan?' Dimmock had implied to Badger that he thought I was a potential security risk: if that's what he thought when I had a regular salary and an interesting job, then surely he would help me stay in my home so I would have a stable base from which to job-search?

  `I understand your financial difficulty,' Timpson replied sympathetically, `but it's out of the question. Julian Dimmock specifically told me that it was not an option to give you a loan. But I will write up your concerns when I get back to the office. Personnel department have obviously made some serious errors of judgement here,' he said cautiously. `But I have to be frank, I very much doubt they will do anything. They've taken their decision now and it would be too embarrassing to reverse it and admit their mistakes.' All Timpson could do for me was to put me in touch with an external careers adviser who had been vetted by the office.

  Walking back to my flat, I reflected on Timpson's advice. Joining the French Foreign Legion was not an option, but the second idea started to grow on me. How about writing a book? It would be totally illegal - even disclosing the colour of the carpets in MI6's headquarters would be a breach of the OSA. But a cloak of secrecy effectively shielded the service from accountability, creating a climate in which arrogant disregard for my rights, as well as those of countless other employees, came naturally. I was coming to believe that these traits tainted MI6's interactions with society at large. What else could I do? If I just forgot the incident, MI6 would carry on mismanaging their people in exactly the same way as they had mismanaged me. There had been victims before me and there would be victims in the future.

  The urge to tell my side of the story publicly welled up more firmly in the following weeks. The news of my dispute with MI6 had diffused through Whitehall, and MI6 had covertly used their influence to blacken me and justify their decision. Some friends in Vauxhall Cross had remained in surreptitious contact and they told me that personnel was putting about rumours that they had `done everything they could' for me. Also, after some of the broadsheets had reported the use of a PII certificate to block my tribunal, the internal weekly newsletter claimed that newspapers had mis-reported the story and that they had been forced to obtain the PII certificate because I was a `publicity seeker who would use the opportunity of an employment tribunal to blacken the service'. Prior to my dismissal, the idea of breaking ranks with the service and seeking publicity was anathema, but now their actions were driving me into a corner, mentally and financially, and writing a book was looking like my only way out.

  Robin Ludlow, the vetted external career counseller, explained how he had spent most of his career in the army, then worked as a personnel officer before becoming an outplacement adviser. His antecedents were not that different from Dimmock and Fowlecrooke, and he seemed to have been briefed by them too. `You need to think about a career in the City more positively. With your talents you'd soon be earning a fortune.'

  `They wouldn't have to pay me a fortune, they'd have to nail my hands to the bloody desk,' I replied. `I liked my job in MI6 because of the mental stimulation of working on complex team projects with stimulating, intelligent colleagues, because of the opportunity to live and work abroad, learning the languages and immersing myself in the culture of the host country, because of the fascinating and varied people that I would meet, because of the unpredicatbility and variety in the career and because of the fulfilment of working in public service to my country. Now tell me where I'd find any of that in the bloody City?' Ludlow looked baffled. These criteria were out of his scope. `Listen,' I said, `this isn't going to be easy for you, but at the very least can you help get me something temporary and urgently? I am really up the wall financially and am about to default on my mortgage.'

  Ludlow thought for a moment. `How about driving minicabs?' he suggested. `Sign on the dole and get your mortgage paid by the social security, then work as a minicab driver to pay your groceries.' I got up and left. Ludlow's recommendation was illegal; I would end up in prison if caught fiddling social security benefits.

  There was one last recourse against MI6. Strictly it would be a breach of the OSA to tell my MP that I was a former MI6 employee, let alone explain the dispute and ask for help to find a resolution. In practice it would be very difficult for MI6 to press charges. A quick phone call from a public callbox to the constituency office of Labour backbencher Kate Hoey established the times and dates of her surgery.

  Hoey's offices were just a few streets away from my home but I took my motorbike as Shaggy and Winston wanted me to go rollerblading on Trafalgar Square later that evening. Drawing up outside her surgery, I saw that she was scurrying down the steps towards her car. `Miss Hoey?' I called, dismounting my motorbike to pursue her on foot. She stopped and turned to face me. `Could I have a word?' I asked politely and keeping my distance, aware that she might feel intimidated by a six-foot-four man in black motorcycle gear on a dark evening in a dodgy part of London.

  `I am terribly sorry, but I am in a real rush to get to an official function - could you see one of my assistants in the surgery?' she replied helpfully.

  `I would really rather talk to you directly - it concerns the Official Secrets Act and I'm not sure that I'm allowed to speak legally to one of your assistants.'

  `It's OK, go and see one of my assistants,' she insisted. She was pressed, and it would be rude to push.

  `OK, I'm sorry to bother you,' I replied with a smile.

  Back in her surgery there was a lengthy queue awaiting attention, so I sat down in one of the plastic seats to wait. When my turn came up, the young assistant invited me into an interview cubicle and asked me to explain my problem. `I have a dispute that I would like Miss Hoey's assistance to resolve. But it would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act if I were to tell you anything more. Would it be possible to make an appointment to see Miss Hoey herself?' I asked.

  `Well, this is very unusual,' the assistant replied sceptically, probably wondering why he got all the nutters. `I think it best that you write to her,' he continued. `Here's her address.' He gave me a business card with the constituency address and telephone numbers, smiled and indicated that I should leave.

  Hoey replied commendably quickly with the news that she had written to the Chief, David Spedding, and that he had invited her out to lunch to discuss the problem. Vauxhall Cross was in her parliamentary constituency, as was Century House, so she had often met the various Chiefs. Spedding even had his London flat just a few houses away from me on Richborne Terrace, so he perhaps he was also a constituent. But my optimism that Hoey might mediate successfully was short-lived. A few days later, she wrote to me again and told me that over lunch Spedding had assured her that I had `been fairly treated' and that personnel department had `done everything they could'.

  A few weeks later, my ever-expanding overdraft forced me to pack up and vacate my flat. The rental income would be enough to pay the monthly mortgage arrears. After a brief visit to my parents, I loaded up my trusty Honda with as many of my possessions as it could carry and set off for the channel ports. I had no specific destination in mind, I just wanted to go somewhere warm and cheap.

  As far as Customs and Excise were concerned, Richard Tomlinson was nowhere in sight as I entered the docks at Portsmouth, glared over th
e pier at the Fort and handed them the well-worn passport bearing my picture and Alex Huntley's name. I'd been sacked so abruptly after arriving from Rio that there had been no opportunity to return the alias passport, driving licence and other documents to CF. If their absence hadn't been noted yet, it probably never would.

  Living under alias would give me the opportunity to write with less possibility of intervention by MI6. Although I'd left the UK countless times using fake identification, this time was different. I hadn't yet violated the OSA since leaving the service but handing over Huntley's passport was crossing the line. Living on fraudulent documentation could be problematic, so as a safeguard before leaving Cumbria I curled up my real passport, driving licence and some money, stuck them in an empty shampoo bottle, weighted it with some old fishing-line weights and slipped it through the filling aperture of the Africa Twin's petrol tank. Even if the Customs officers searched my bike on entry to the ferry, they would be unlikely to find it.

  The next two weeks were spent meandering down the back roads of France, camping in coppices and by mountain streams with my bivvy-bag and poncho. Every few days, when I felt the need for a shower and a comfortable bed or had received a soaking from the spring showers, I stopped in a cheap hostel. There was no fixed destination - my turns took me down country roads that looked interesting and avoided those leading to ominous clouds. The random route took me from Calais to the industrial city of Le Mans, down to Poitiers, across the Massif Central to Marseilles, through the Languedoc, then over the Pyrennees into Spain. There the language was easier and it rained less. After drifting down the Mediterranean coast, my journey was brought to a halt in the Andalucian coastal town of Fuengirola when the drive chain jumped the sprocket. The local Honda dealer said it would take several days for a replacement to arrive.

  I was as worn out by the long ride as the motorcycle, so when a time-share hustler on the town promenade said he knew of somebody with a flat to rent until the tourist season started, it seemed the right place to stop. On 15 April I moved into the small bedsit, unpacked my few belongings and settled in. The money hidden in the petrol tank was enough to live on frugally for about four months and, if it became necessary, selling the Honda could extend my sojourn. This should be long enough to draft a book. I set up my old laptop and started typing. The injustice of being forced out of my home, and the loss of my steady income and comfortable lifestyle rankled hard: it felt good to start putting the story on paper at last.

  Within a week of my disappearance, MI6 started looking for me, alerted by the silence on my telephone. Unaware that I was now Alex Huntley, they looked fruitlessly for Richard Tomlinson. My bank account in the UK was examined by Cumbria SB but yielded no clues because I had paid cash throughout the journey. Tapping my parents' telephone yielded nothing because I rang home using a GSM mobile phone with disposable SIM card, making it impossible to pin me down. Soon friends in London received a phone call from a `Mr Sturton' of the FCO, MI6 having obtained their names and telephone numbers from intercepts of my home phone. Feigning compassion, `Sturton' claimed the FCO wished to assure itself of my wellbeing, fearing that I was suicidal. They were na‹ve to imagine that my friends would fall for the despicable pretence. Without exception, they phoned me to report the approach. Even Shaggy told me he'd been rung up by a `toff'; he just offered to sell him some dope.

  One afternoon, without the courtesy of making an appointment, two female MI6 officers arrived in Cumbria, having travelled from London that morning. My parents were too polite to turn them away after their journey and invited them in for tea. They stayed for over two hours, pretending to be concerned for my safety and trying to trick my parents into revealing my whereabouts. It was a futile exercise. My parents were completely behind me, and the officers left empty-handed.

  Joining MI6 was rather like joining a religious cult. The IONEC was the initiation process. We went in wide-eyed and innocent, a blank sheet on which training department imprinted their ideas. The impression that the work was wholesome and justified was reinforced by the carefully nurtured culture within the service. We were reminded constantly and subtly that we carried special responsibilities and the brainwashing process instilled a deep-grained loyalty. Even after the shoddy treatment from personnel, I felt fealty to MI6. It wasn't the same unquestioning loyalty of before, but the embers were still glowing and could easily have been fully rekindled. If, by some amazing twist of fate, they had rung me up, apologised and offered me my job back, I would have gone.

  This sense of loyalty was strong enough to make me feel uncomfortable about my writing. Some mornings I woke in my bedist burning with anger and the words flew forth. But more often I felt guilty about violating my lingering loyalty to the service and dreaded the confrontation that publishing would provoke. If there were another solution to resolve the dispute, I would embrace it openly. All I wanted was the chance to take them to an employment tribunal and prove to myself, my friends and family, and to the likes of Kate Hoey and Malcolm Rifkind, that my dismissal was unjustified. There was no possibility of getting my job back but at least I would be able to hold my head high at an interview with a future employer and explain that the dismissal had been proven illegal.

  MI6 had the upper hand and felt no pressure to negotiate. They had listened and watched impassively as my personal situation disintegrated in London, so they would not negotiate now. The only way to get them to the table was to switch to terrorist tactics; some juicy titbits in the newspapers would wake them up.

  On 12 May, the Sunday Times published a small piece about MI6's spying operations against the French. Terry Forton had told me one day over lunch in Vauxhall Cross that he was working under cover as a defence journalist to run a French engineer on the Brest naval base. Forton was paying the witless informer to provide information on a secret French technology to track submarines using satellites to spot the tiny surface wake they left, even when submerged. The information I gave the Sunday Times was unsubstantiated and vague, because it had come to me second-hand from Forton, so the newspaper used a bit of journalistic imagination to pad the story. It made a small splash on the back page but no doubt caused a few more ripples in Vauxhall Cross.

  Later that week I rode down the coast to Gibraltar and faxed my mobile phone number to the office, asking them to contact me. MI6 would already know my number from intercepting calls to my parents, but they would not dare ring me on it until they had it `officially' from me.

  MI6 did not contact me over the next two weeks, so I rang the Sunday Times again. They were very interested in the `hot potato' story of possible Bosnian-Serb donations to the Tories. This time they ran the story on the front page, with follow up articles inside. It caused a big rumpus in Fleet Street, with the broadsheets running second-day stories on Monday and follow-ups for most of the week. It must have been embarrassing for the Conservatives and I hoped that angry Tory ministers would force MI6 to take action.

  A few days later, when the media storm had subsided, a grave-sounding message was left on my mobile phone, asking me to ring a London number. My call was answered by Geoff Morrison, a personnel officer I had met briefly. He was on the verge of retirement and presumably was asked to take on this one last job because there was too much animosity between myself and other members of the department. `Would you be prepared to meet me?' Morrison asked.

  `Of course, that is why I got in touch,' I replied, `But I first want your word of honour that you will not arrest me and that you will not use surveillance to establish my whereabouts.' Once my base was known, MI6 might ask the Spanish police either to arrest me for talking to the Sunday Times, or, worse, to frame me for another crime.

  `We will not call the Guardia Civil during the negotiations,' promised Morrison, `but there is no point in entering discussions if there is not good faith on both sides.' I reluctantly accepted Morrison's vague promises - I had striven hard to get this far.

  Morrison insisted that neither John Wadham nor any other lawyer co
uld represent me. `You know we can't possibly let you have a representative,' he said. `It would be gravely prejudicial to national security.' It was utter baloney, but there was little option other than to go along with them. Morrison demanded that the meeting take place in Madrid, to enable him to use the embassy as a base to work from, and offered to pay my expenses from Fuengirola.

  We met for the first time on Thursday, 14 November 1996, in the Hotel Ambassador, a short walk from the embassy. Waiting for them in the lobby with my hand-luggage, I was surprised when Morrison turned up accompanied by a younger officer whose face was familiar. `Hello, Richard,' Morrison greeted me cordially. `This is Andy Watts. I understand you've met briefly before. I've brought him along as we thought it would be better for you to have another two minds to bounce ideas off.' Round two to MI6 - not content with denying me a lawyer, they had stacked the negotiations further in their favour by bringing a two-man team.

  Right from the outset my only request, to be allowed to go to an employment tribunal, was stubbornly rejected by Morrison and Watts. `You know how prejudicial that would be to national security,' Morrison lectured.

  `OK,' I ventured, `You choose the judge at the tribunal, one that you approve of and have vetted. You choose not only your own lawyer but also mine, so that you can pick one you approve of and have positively vetted. We hold the tribunal in camera, at a secret location, and I sign a confidentiality agreement binding me not to talk to the press about the result.'