by Jason Elliot
At first we carry no weapons and agree only to observe the plight of our hosts. Then one night, by moonlight, we join a team of thirty-five men who steal towards an enemy position in the hope of shooting it into submission. It’s a mud-walled fortified house with two small watchtowers, manned by Afghan army conscripts under Soviet command. Ten yards short of the perimeter fence an explosion sends our commander flying into the air, his leg severed at the knee by a powerful anti-personnel mine. Manny is behind him, his face blasted by flying grit from the explosion, but he manages to drag the commander into cover. We withdraw in chaos as the incandescent threads of tracer rounds tear into the darkness around us. One of our party is shot cleanly through his hand, and another has a miraculous escape as a bullet lodges in the rifle which he’s slung over his back. We walk for several hours to reach our headquarters, which comprises a network of caves carved into an escarpment beneath a village. At dawn, with the name of God on his lips, our commander dies.
It’s not our war. But Manny puts forward the idea that with some explosives and a few more fighters we can take the enemy post, and he begs the deputy commander to request additional forces for a follow-up attack. Unprompted, he ignites the promise of retribution in the grief-stricken minds of our group. He has a natural authority and confidence that fascinates the Afghans, and in the days following the commander’s burial on the hillside above our cave, there are long discussions.
A daylight reconnaissance of the building lends force to his argument. We study it from half a mile away through an ancient pair of binoculars and discover the shape of a bricked-up arched doorway in its rear wall. This is likely to be the weakest point and it’s here that Manny suggests we attack. He makes an earth model of the fort and rings it with tiny pebbles to indicate the minefield that surrounds it. In the dust he draws the fields of fire, the points at which the men are to position themselves, and where to put the cut-off groups which will deal with any attempted counter-attack. All this he communicates in the small but forceful vocabulary of Persian he has taught himself over the course of a couple of weeks, and I’m jealous not only of his grasp of tactics but also of his precocious talent with a foreign language. It’s a powerful combination. A few days later, a dozen more fighters, dark-skinned, bearded and draped with bandoliers of ammunition and automatic weapons, appear at the entrance of our cave, asking for the Christian mujahid.
It’s a daring plan, refined over the course of several evenings. A lead man will prod his way through the mined perimeter, allowing Manny to advance to the rear of the building. An explosive charge, cast from the melted TNT of anti-tank mines, will destroy the wall, allowing entry to a storming party. The fort’s towers, which contain light machine guns, will be attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. Three Soviet parachute flares will illuminate the attack. Manny drives home the importance of timing and coordination, and the disciplined use of directed fire. The men are entranced.
And incredibly, it works. There is no need for the storming party. The rear wall is thinner than we calculate, and the explosive charge tears open a hole the size of a garage door. Our light machine guns pour fire into the breached wall, and we wait for the signal to move. But within seconds the terrified occupants are already pouring out, caught in the eerie artificial sun of the hissing flare overhead. Two members of the dreaded KHAD, the Afghan secret service, are betrayed by the surrendering men, and are killed resisting capture inside the building. The attack is a textbook success, and the hated post has fallen.
When Manny starts showing signs of a violent fever a few days later I’m secretly relieved. News of the Christian commander’s victory has spread with electrical speed, and we both know that before long the Afghan secret police will hear of it and report the presence of a foreign mercenary to their Soviet masters. The risks of staying are too great both for ourselves and our hosts, and the decision is made for us to return to Pakistan to recuperate. On the day of our departure I witness the incongruous sight of tears in the eyes of several of the men, warriors we imagined were impervious to pain.
I have no doubts about what would have happened to us had we stayed on. Manny possesses a combination of daring and ambition which, in a war as unpredictable and brutal as Afghanistan’s, will eventually end in a tragedy I don’t want to witness. Two weeks later we’re in England, shocked and depressed at how unreal everything seems. We long, silently, to return at once to Afghanistan and to the danger and the beauty of the place that has made us feel so very alive. We have shared in the thrill of near-death and in the agony of a nation torn apart by conflict: we are modern-day blood brothers. The prospect of ordinary life among people who care nothing for the privileges of peacetime yet whose lives are filled with a thousand petty worries, seems like a prison sentence to us both.
Manny emerges from Sandhurst to join a cavalry regiment with a reputation for dash and courage. I visit him for the occasional party at the officers’ mess, where the spirit of romance is kept alive among fit and idealistic young men in red jackets and gold piping. The dinners are pleasantly rowdy and fuelled by a generous flow of wine. At one I embarrass myself by not passing the port along. Later, I watch Manny attempt a ritual capture of the commanding officer’s spurs, by crawling beneath the long tables decorated with regimental silver ornaments from Balaclava. At another, the evening culminates in a fire-extinguisher fight in the corridors of the mess.
I decide to follow suit, and join my father’s regiment after being awarded a short-service commission. In the dreary lecture rooms that huddle behind the grand facades at Sandhurst I plough through Clausewitz and the grand concepts of attrition and manoeuvre. My knowledge of Middle Eastern languages has not gone unnoticed, and takes me to the army language school in Beaconsfield and to Ashford to spend time with the Green Team, better known as the Intelligence Corps. In my private life, by a cruel coincidence, Manny and I fall for the same woman, with whom we both spend, at different times, our every spare moment. For a year we are in a bittersweet competition for her favour, and our friendship is heavily strained by rivalry. When the woman we are in love with finally abandons both of us, our friendship is restored, almost magically intact.
Meanwhile, in the affairs of the greater world, there’s a kind of watershed. After a brutal ten-year occupation, the Soviets make their ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, and their empire unravels. The Red Army’s venture in Afghanistan is over, and I can’t help feeling that the world’s last good war has come to an end. Manny feels the same.
I have known the Baroness, or imagine I’ve known her, since her appearance in my childhood home as my father’s guest and old friend. Her precise connection with my father is never explained and it doesn’t occur to me to ask. She’s an academic of the old school, and has written a book about her adventurous travels in the Middle East. I think her husband was a diplomat. She is courteous to a fault, and a woman of poise and genuine charm. I’ve never seen her not wearing her most formal clothes.
Of all the adults who crossed the horizon of my youth, it’s the Baroness who stands out. It is to her that I owe my stock of stories about Africa and the Middle East, as well as my decision to study Middle Eastern languages at university. I introduce Manny to her not long after our first return from Afghanistan, and she takes a kindly, godmotherish interest in our future careers, going to the trouble of sending us newspaper clippings or alerting us to films or documentaries on subjects which she thinks will interest us.
One day she calls to invite us to her London home in Little Venice. We join her for dinner, and when the subject of Afghanistan comes up, as it always does, Manny surprises us both by delivering a passionate attack on the immorality of the Western powers who have abandoned the country and are doing nothing to help rebuild a nation in whose destruction they have participated.
The Baroness listens attentively. Then, in a tone of seriousness to which we’re unaccustomed, she extends the argument in a direction that leaves us dumbfounded. Until this moment she’s seem
ed to us a refined and kindly old lady.
‘Have you thought,’ she asks, ‘of the wider consequences of the war in Afghanistan and how much we will all be affected by it? You are both seeking something out of the ordinary. Perhaps today is the day to explore it.’
We are entering a new era, she says, in which the real threat facing the West is not a military one. The Western powers will no longer fight conventional wars because the enemy of the future will be more diffuse. It will, in part, grow out of the disaffected peoples of the Islamic world, she tells us. We have meddled in and manipulated their countries for far too long. Now Afghanistan has shown that a poor but determined people can successfully resist impossible odds, and the ten-year-long war against the Soviets has served as a rallying call throughout the Muslim world. But the Afghans’ hard-fought victory is being exploited by extremists, who have begun to gather in the country with the intention of spreading their violent agendas ever further afield. It is from these loosely allied militant groups that the threat is really incubating, she says, and there is a small organisation, to which the Baroness belongs, that takes an interest in such things. If we agree to speak nothing of it, she will tell us more. Manny and I are spellbound.
She calls it only the Network, and says she was introduced through a friend and former SOE agent called Freya. The Network’s original goal was to establish a structure, to be activated in times of need, to penetrate key groups relevant to British interests in the Middle East and gather information on their activities. It operated independently of the more conventional intelligence services, with which its relationship was collaborative when necessary, but for the sake of secrecy never shared operational details. Being much smaller, and not limited by the approval of ministers or the political agendas of the time, it functioned with both greater freedom and greater risk. It was successfully brought into play several times over the past few decades, but the loss of British influence in Middle Eastern affairs led to its suspension.
Now the world is again facing a crisis of new proportions, and the Network has been resurrected across several continents. The Baroness’s role is to address the emerging need for intelligence from Afghanistan, and this, she confesses, is why she has chosen to speak to us on the matter.
Napoleon’s dictum that a single spy in the enemy’s camp is more valuable than a thousand soldiers on the battlefield is more pertinent than ever, she tells us. It is not so difficult, she goes on, for someone with the relevant talents to infiltrate a group of potential terrorists. What is difficult is to gather useful information about their activities over a long period and communicate this to one’s allies. The ideal structure for such a task is a pair of individuals. One disappears from sight of the world and leads a secret life inside the target’s camp. The other follows at a distance, receiving and transmitting signals like the polished mirror of a telescope.
‘It is the work of years, rather than weeks or months,’ she says, ‘and the very practice that the ordinary intelligence services have abandoned. We like to think of it as directed towards obtaining higher intelligence. The Service addresses the changing affairs of the day. We march to a different drum. By its nature it involves a fateful commitment and the sacrifice of all lesser ambitions. Above all, this task must be secret and known only to the smallest possible number of people. As long as the Network exists, its work cannot be spoken about to outsiders.’
It is for this reason, she adds, that its members are painstakingly recruited from the families of trusted friends who have demonstrated what she calls the ‘appropriate spirit’.
The Network serves an idea, not an authority. It has no overt hierarchy. Even the Baroness has her teachers, she says. The role of its members is to understand a given target, to deepen their understanding and to transmit this to those who can hear. Their ambition is not to change the world, but to influence it, for lasting change is brought about by understanding rather than the application of external force. Advancement in the Network is acquired on the basis of understanding alone.
We will never know its exact numbers, the Baroness tells us, because no such information exists and its members never gather in a single place. They collaborate when necessary, but not for gain or advancement. There are Network members in government, in the military, in commerce and academia; others serve in more dangerous roles. They are content for their work to be invisible and for the most part lead ordinary lives, incorporating, without any outward show, their hidden task into the fabric of their daily responsibilities.
Such a possibility, if we wish to reflect on it, now exists for us.
She gives us time to think, but we don’t need long. We are young and keen, and we accept. Nothing changes for us on the surface of things, but in our spare time we meet the Baroness whenever our duties allow, and begin our secret course of study.
There are some things you learn which, when you first encounter them, make each day seem like a gift beyond value. Our first few sessions have this quality. The fact that what we’re learning must be kept secret adds a further, intoxicating aspect to our work, which is why the protocols for secrecy are drummed into us from the start.
The success of all our future work is founded on the twin arts of observation and clandestine communication – essential practices, the Baroness tells us, which have not changed since men first learned to spy on one another, and which require nothing of technology. We learn first to see and hear through a new version of our senses, as if an extra dimension has been added to their habitual function. Our task is to act at all times on the assumption that we are being observed, and to see ourselves through the eyes of our observers. We learn to watch and follow a human target, to note and then predict his actions. Then, by inverting the same skills, to evade a follower and to conceal our own telltale gestures of impatience, anxiety or relief. We must be able, the Baroness endlessly reminds us, to transmit the signals of whatever emotion we choose to whoever is watching, as well as to draw the attention of others in whatever direction we wish.
To sharpen our skills of observation, she invites us to assign a portion of our attention to something going on around us, and then points out when our attention has faltered. Our ordinary power of attention must acquire a second track, she reminds us. At meetings in restaurants she challenges us to describe the faces we have seen at the tables on our way in and to recall the numbers of buses or taxis we’ve used on the way. She explains how to use mental mnemonics to remember lists of things or names. We must learn these skills, she says, practise them in small ways every day, and live them until they become instinctively natural, betraying no trace of our ulterior agendas.
A large part of our time is devoted to arranging and conducting meetings. For secret information to pass between two parties, there must be a moment of contact, and this is the most perilous moment of all. A ‘chance’ meeting, which has in fact been arranged in advance, may be best when the exchange must be verbal. When information can be passed on without the need for a conversation, a brush contact may be best, involving a fleeting and wordless exchange of secret material. An innocent third party, or cut-out, may be another solution. Each has its advantages and corresponding risks. Brush contacts must be arranged carefully in advance and executed with precise timing; a cut-out may be unreliable and describe both parties if interrogated; and a chance meeting must stand up to intense scrutiny if suspected. But a meeting can also be arranged remotely, by an advertisement in a paper, a phone call with a disguised message, or take the form of a ‘dead letter box’ at an agreed location, visited by both parties at different times, perhaps days apart. The Baroness’s preferred method for transmitting short messages is an ‘innocent’ letter, in which an ordinary text disguises a broken-up message, previously enciphered by means of a key known only to the recipient. To this end we practise a variety of codes and ciphers that can be created in the field without potentially incriminating aids such as printed one-time pads or code books, and study the theories of fractionation and homop
hony, and the various ways to combine codes that will render them impenetrable in the short term.
We learn of famous historical double agents and illegals and of their successes and failures. We study the career of one of the CIA’s greatest spies, the Soviet GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky, and are invited to decide whether he was a triple agent or not. We learn too of the quiet English mother of three to whose children Penkovsky passed microfilm-stuffed sweets in public parks and on trains, trained by the SIS for the purpose but never caught. We are told of the reckless extravagance of Aldrich Ames, whose tailored suits, bought with KGB dollars, went unnoticed while he betrayed hundreds of CIA assets abroad. We consider the long successes of illegals with carefully constructed legends such as Rudolph Abel and Konon Molody. Abel lived in New York as a retired photofinisher; Molody in London as a bubblegum-machine salesman. Both masterminded spy rings, both were eventually caught and given long prison sentences, and both were later exchanged for Western spies captured in the Soviet Union.
We are on one occasion delivered a fascinating lecture analysing the daring escape from Moscow, organised by his SIS handlers, of the KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky. The lecture is given by a middle-aged man with a serious-looking face, straw-coloured hair and a distinct Slavic accent, on loan to us for the day with the approval of his agent resettlement officer from the Firm. Afterwards, I confess how impressed I’ve been by the speaker.
‘It is the lessons of tradecraft you are being asked to consider on such occasions,’ she says, ‘not the personalities involved.’ The Baroness lets this sink in. ‘Look more closely, and you will see the cold-hearted pride and ruthless vanity from which such people suffer.’
