I enjoyed my remaining time in Moscow – it was free from all the worries of my deployment, there was no need to panic or transmit anything with only a few months to go. I would go back with all the photographs and information needed by the Steering Group to keep them busy for probably years. The finale of my time in Moscow culminated in the witnessing of the Moscow Summit, a meeting between US Pres. Ronald Reagan and the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. This saw a treaty for intermediate nuclear weapons finalised between the two countries.
All this news and other gentle press releases interlinked and confirmed all my intel and two years of observations, bringing together Rashid Asadi, Nasser Tamei and Alexander. Asadi, wanted by the West’s security organisations as an arms procurement frontman for Middle Eastern supported terrorist organisations, was now firmly linked to Nasser, his mirror from Yugoslavia – both seen meeting Alex at the Lubyanka to discuss arms deals to the Middle East and Yugoslavia, all confirmed first-hand at the Pavlovich household in overheard private meetings, discussions and occasional drunken parties. This was clean intel and first-hand, all following that simple innocent meet on the Metro, which then later witnessed Mohammed Al Zidjali, a nuclear scientist and engineer for Syria and Iran, attend the family holiday with Asadi and Nasser before attending the summit unofficially, but officially confirming there was a link to both nuclear technology trading and arms trading, with all the funding coming from the Middle East and all carefully arranged and orchestrated through the family and approved through the side entrances of the Soviet regime.
I returned to the UK that summer. It was a very emotional departure for me and Anatoly. It was simply amazing to have had my two years at DECAF given back to me in a way that I couldn’t possibly have imagined. Family, friends, fun, adventure and brotherhood. I miss them all to this day, the love they showed, the memories and times we shared.
I took leave before being summoned back to the Steering Group. I had some time to reflect on the two years of being a Russian student in Moscow. It would be a hard adjustment going back to the MOB. What the fuck was I going back to? The urge to go back to Moscow was huge. I hated the idea of going back into the navy, back into the circus of the Steering Group and that fucked-up training camp in Wales. Life was to change again after that summer, my fun was over, the game at an end, back to reality and one I wasn’t too bothered about returning to.
The Steering Group
Chapter 5
Metamorphosis
Returning from Moscow had me severely depressed and that soon became very obvious to the training teams in Wales. My decompression and debriefing were scheduled over the early summer of my return and it hadn’t gotten off to a good start by any stretch of the imagination. I had found leave boring and had become disconnected with home, feeling anything but part of the family, my real family that is. I think the adrenaline, the excitement and the adventure of being an operative away from a normal home at such an early stage in my life gave me a hunger that couldn’t be satisfied by anything other than being actively deployed. Being someone else for a long time and living the tightrope of deception in order to avoid discovery is a major rush, a drug, and it’s addictive no matter how significant or insignificant my role may or may not have been.
Looking back of course, it had all inevitably spilled over into my private life. My mind has gradually become like an endless water feature with the thoughts and memories of the years of deception pouring back into the source pool of my mind, then mixed up with part realities and brought back to life by being pumped endlessly back into the everyday of here and now, devouring and twisting my real life into a distorted reality. It did and still continues to slowly eat away at my sanity and tolerance of those who are pleasantly oblivious to my previous hidden life and the torment it brings with each drop my memory feeds me. Every smell, noise, sight and feeling can be linked back to an event or time in Moscow.
The past realities of those situations I faced and the memories I continue to live with are all-consuming in every way. It can take days, even weeks, to convince myself no one is coming, no one is watching, there is no mirror agent watching me. The madness, the paranoia, will go with me all the way to the grave, occasionally stopping for visits with alcohol, depression, anger, insomnia, or any combination. The mixed cocktail of PTSD from live ops and false or induced hysteria becomes a hell in which your mind is imprisoned and tricked into a delusional nightmare which becomes a battlefield of the mind on a daily basis, always fighting to make it through back to a stable reality. I had yet to find a solid link back to my reality.
Of course, some of the memories I tried to either forget or re-live were mostly good memories spent amongst ‘friends’ to whom I had perhaps allowed myself to become too attached, which I hadn’t anticipated. What a mindfuck. I guess in the early days it was all too easy to think I could get away scar free, but this beast waits until it’s all but over, the actual events long passed into history, and then creeps back into your mind just when you thought it was safe, and like a time machine transports you back just to fuck you up. The path of the operative always crosses the path of time, memories like oil always float to the surface and the results are incredibly hard to disguise or hide from those closest to you. Indeed, it is only those precious few who get pushed away never knowing the reasons that sit behind your irrational behaviour.
I was between HMS Deptford and Wales with no firm affiliation to either for some time, travelling home sometimes at the weekends. Alcohol played its part, which pissed my mother off no end whilst I was on leave, and I’d come home with both my mum and dad waiting up to see if I returned okay as if I were some out-of-control teenager still at school. Being pissed out of my face all the time on leave didn’t help much to ease any of the situations that developed at home, and my mother and I argued bitterly each and every time I came home, usually over nothing. Each time I left home to go back to the circus meant leaving my father to pick up the mess after the usual whirlwind 48-hour visit. All this shit after two years away in Moscow working and living a fast-paced and adrenaline-fuelled double life of uni and being a Moscow operative to now dealing with this domestic crap – what had gone wrong? It wasn’t working and each weekend presented new challenges that made me even more frustrated and angry. The visits became less frequent over time as I sought to become more detached from life in order to pursue the challenges of the service.
My parents were actually amazing and of course they had no idea what I was involved with and so never understood my situation. How could they?! I was never able to tell them what an amazing job I had been doing. I guess I wanted some recognition from someone, but couldn’t get it where I needed it most. It felt like I had received a lot more support from my surrogate family in Moscow when I was supposedly studying. How fucked up it all seems now that the enemy was providing the support for me to achieve my goals. It was a twisted wreckage of loyalties and truths. But I craved and needed more of the adrenaline, the drug of all drugs, back into my life to straighten some or all this shit out, and soon. Being out of Russia made me feel empty.
I continued, persevered and tried to lead a normal life, if there is such a thing. I continued to travel home over leave, and on the weekends I had to conclude my draft to the Deptford, decompress and get off the grid, out of the way, a safehouse to ensure no tail had grown. I spent a short while day-running out of Plymouth, which was easy shit. I was enjoying being back with the lads, going out at night doing the same old routine of getting pissed, taking a curry back to the ship and then nursing a baggy head till lunchtime before a few pints and an oggy (Cornish pasty) in the all-ranks bar in the dockyard. Breathe and repeat. It was a good distraction. I had used the compassionate paperclip for the lads and no one fucking cared really, life goes on I guess, and the lads just accepted me back into the fold as though nothing had happened. We spent some time away at sea and this allowed me to further adjust and get a disconnection from everything
and realign my thoughts. Looking back, the safe house of the navy was a real retreat and a place to be truly lost from the world of the Steering Group; it’s like being in a safe deposit box within a vault hidden behind an allegory of combinations, locks and walls. The service knew how to hide its operatives and keep them well looked after and, probably more importantly, on a leash whilst readjustments were allowed to be unveiled and managed in a controlled environment. I remember throwing myself back into the whole navy thing and enjoying the simplicity immensely. It’s the routine that brings balance back to the mind, and the navy loves routine.
Life on board was always routine and I had some good downtime away from all the complexities of the Steering Group and Wales, albeit sometimes interrupted by the occasional communiqué from London via the captain direct. Routine is boring but it’s reliable and safe, and that’s the key and answer to it all. I would have the same day at sea again and again like groundhog day, all contained within a cold grey steel box. It’s like a self-functioning independent satellite that is completely free except from the orbital path around the parent planet which occasionally reminds you there is a god and he gives orders. I worked a watch routine that made the routine more routine, and I conducted the ritual well and had fun with the other lads who had chosen this ridiculous life at sea away from anything green or solid.
I lost my first life at sea on the Deptford. We had been ‘working up’ and exercising in the Atlantic in the North West Approaches, and the ship had to conduct a RAS (replenishment at sea) for fuel and stores. I had volunteered to help out and was assigned as dump party on the heavy jackstay to receive the supplies from the RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary). I think we were on the edge of the weather envelope, a force 6 gusting 7, but needed the fuel and supplies so there wasn’t much of an option for the old man but to go ahead and take the risk. The sequence of events was simple: the Deptford, being the receiving ship, came alongside the RFA at a distance of approximately 30 yards. A gunline was fired from the RFA, which was then used to pull across a messenger line, distance line, phone line and the transfer rig lines to facilitate the RAS. All was going well until the ships hit an awkward wave whilst making a coordinated 10-degree turn to starboard, increasing the distance between the ships quickly and considerably, stretching the wires to breaking point and then literally pulling the securing points out of the ship’s structure. Needless to say it sounded like an explosion followed by the screaming of twisting metal and gasps of the upper-deck crews. It’s true, wires do sing at a high pitch just before they snap, and they whip like a snake made of chainsaw blades.
As with all fuck-ups it all ran in slow motion. The RAS mast on the forecastle collapsed, and I remember simply standing and watching the mast whip across the deck then crushing three of the crew against the bridge screen. The wires zipped around the deck and grabbed hold of me, dragging me to the guardrail. It was nothing short of bizarre as I went over the rail. I was pulling like fuck on the inflation toggle for my lifejacket, to inflate it well before hitting the water. I remember the faces of the guys on the RFA looking down at me as I descended into the cold black sea; it would have been great to have waved or shouted something cool, but no time to think. I just had that an Oh fuck, this isn’t good thought in my mind as I entered what can only be described as liquid ice. If you’ve ever watched Titanic, the description Leonardo DiCaprio gives of a thousand knives stabbing you all over is a pretty good likeness to what it’s actually like when you hit the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. I couldn’t breathe and was being dragged deeper by the wires. The craziest thing I remember was hearing the propeller blades of both the ships as I raced aft between the two ships wondering if I was gonna drown or be chopped into mincemeat. It’s a really loud thrashing sound, and I felt as though I were in the world’s biggest washing machine as I was tossed and turned, inverted and eventually spat out. What felt like an hour later (probably only 40 seconds) I surfaced, free from the wires, and watched the two ships sailing away into the horizon. It was just good luck that I had been separated from the wires in some way. The only reason I survived is because the ship’s helicopter was already airborne (doing VERTREP operations) and lowered its cargo net into the water for me to swim into. I had a nice bath in the captain’s quarters for my trouble, read some instructions from the Steering Group given to me by the captain, whilst later coping with some mild hypothermia and had a day off work in my bunk. Never went up top to see a RAS ever again after that.
Families Day would conclude my time on board the Deptford and I was excited as my brothers and my dad would be coming to Plymouth to go out to sea for the day and play navy. Dad loved ships, always wanted to be at sea, and so it was to be an awesome day out and one I would remember forever. The navy always liked to take the families of all crew members out to sea and do the whole PR thing, wine and dine all the families. It was a cool thing to do and it was great to share the experience of being at sea with my dad. The ship would show off its manoeuvrability, give free helicopter flights and allow families to have a go on the upper-deck guns and let off a few rounds. It was like a naval theme park but just for the families. Naturally the catering department would demonstrate its true abilities and cook up a great meal for all to enjoy, and the beer was basically on tap in every mess deck. Families Day showcased the navy to all those who came along and actually made parents and the like proud of those who wore the uniform. I would get to do it only one more time before my father died.
Bizarrely, prior to Families Day I learnt that Harry owed my dad a favour following a few jobs done on the side, and as my dad turned down the offer of a free night with two of his girls from the club Harry had agreed to send a couple of his best girls down from his club the night before Families Day as a gift to me! I was instantly popular with the lads that night and remember us all hitting the strip in Guz, going the whole nine yards, the Barbican, Two Twigs, Long Bar, Malthouse, and of course Boobs. It was a crazy night out and the girls played along beautifully with the story that they were both my girlfriends from up north. Thanks, Harry, wherever you are – it was a real cool thing to do and got me a great rep throughout the MOB as a ladies’ man, if only for a short time.
The fun ended too quickly and I found myself back at the training camp, and I managed to get myself into a position of argument with all the team in Wales within the first week. The relationships from Moscow had distorted the reality of the assignment, fouling up the decompression and debrief process simply because it was all too hard to forget all the great people I had spent so much time with, who were not friends, which is how I saw them, but the enemy in the eyes of the Steering Group. This and the Deptford incident had an almost profound effect on my repatriation back into the MOB and its future plans. It was all cocked hat in my mind after such a successful mission, and I found it hard to accept the criticism I was receiving regarding the methodologies I had employed in order to get the results that I believed had been so successful. We had a clear family tree of the organisation operating under Russian, Middle Eastern and European governments, with all the connections to funding and arms trading that were clearly being sanctioned by those governments to achieve political or military advantage. I was never happy being told there was other intel or other avenues of interest that took priority over the evidence I had gathered confirming the involvement of established individuals in clear actions being undertaken that were without doubt in my mind a prelude to war.
It all came to a head I guess after two weeks, and I had been pushing hard against the machine to steer it my way when warnings were issued. I had overstepped the mark; my temper was out of control and I guess it was because I was sick of the team psychobabbling the heck out of everything I did and said. It drove me mad as everything was questioned and re-examined literally to death, making it simply impossible in my mind to reach any sort of logical conclusion to the whole process and move forward. We would go over the same details endlessly day after day after day after day. All the relationships I
had built were dismantled and rebuilt into some sort of collage on the briefing boards, photographed and then stored electronically. Then all my photographs were destroyed and every document removed from my possession as though I had never had anything to do with it. It felt as though I was now the enemy, as though I hadn’t spent two years of my life gathering information for the group. I remember starting to feel a sick resentment toward the team.
It all turned a corner after a guy called Timothy Murphy (Spud to his friends because he was Irish) was assigned to me. Spud was fucking awesome, a short, bearded calm guy who had worked for the Steering Group in Northern Ireland for three years as an IRA member, both as a sole operative and then with UKSF. We hit it off immediately. He was my lifeline back to a normality, back to a mental even keel. He totally understood the whole fucked-up second family attachment issues, the anger of betrayal to those I had lived and worked with and the trough of depression that follows extended periods in theatre. This, coupled with my absolute frustration that the Steering Group didn’t see my work as a priority, and their fixation on disassembling everything I had put together was just normal, old ground to Spud.
Spud had all the answers, he understood, he knew where I was at this point in time; I was young and relatively inexperienced but clay ready for the potter’s wheel. He also knew I was very dangerous. I had a lot of intel that was raw, new, and an incredible skill set which had the Steering Group nervous, especially as I was so young and possibly reckless in their eyes. I had made a huge dive into an ocean they originally thought was a little goldfish bowl, and they didn’t want their little goldfish getting swallowed up by all the sharks – not just yet at least. Spud explained everything beautifully; he had all the same stories and experiences but all set in Ireland instead of Russia. It was just a tonic to know there was someone else the same and the whole process was real, it was necessary and my work wasn’t being dismantled but cut into jigsaw pieces that needed to be placed on the playing board at a higher level and the full picture accurately realised. However, I forced a meeting with the Steering Group in London to sit and go through the Russian trip and my future within the group. I was and still am far too headstrong and determined for my own good. Spud agreed to ride shotgun and come along as my sidekick. I’m sure Spud had a special relationship with the group and our connection was no coincidence. We became friends immediately; and if that was manufactured, I don’t care, Spud saved my ass, I think.
The Steering Group Page 16