The focus had shifted within the intelligence services from the lessons learnt in the oil fields of Kuwait to the oil platforms and the tanker traffic in the Gulf which were all still operating in fear of future attack. Politically, there remained little appreciation of the serious threat posed by the Iraqi military machine to the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf and to the Saudi and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ports on its south shore, a threat which remained relatively unaddressed and one my team seemed to be gearing up for. The whole assemblage of issues was entwined not only in politics in the Middle East but with global developments, especially within the former Yugoslavia, which was all interlinked into a bigger power struggle evolving out of the Middle East, i.e. Saudi Arabia, and Russia, which appeared to be planning a shift in power, opposite to the desires of the USA and the Western world. Russia was supporting Serbia whilst turning a political blind eye to the Iraq arms build-up, and secretly supplying technical papers (albeit intercepted by our good selves) to Iran in support of Saudi which wanted to see a power shift from Israel to an Arab alliance, with Iran being the major benefactor. This went against a main thread of intelligence and indeed Middle Eastern history in general that had Saudi deeply opposed to Iran because of the whole religious divide between the Iranian Islamic Shia regime and the Saudi Sunni monarchy, and of course all the energy disputes.
I’m pleased to say I was able to stay away from the command and government politics which no one really understood, as our opinions and politics as a fighting unit were much simpler. We were just the pawns in the big games of deception and didn’t really give a shit to be honest. Once that first bullet spirals at velocity out of the breach then they’re all the enemy to me and the team.
It was whilst I was studying NBCD that the tensions in the former Yugoslavia rose significantly and the conflict became extremely complex. Muslims and Serbs formed an alliance against Croats in Herzegovina, rival Muslim forces fought each other in north-west Bosnia, Croats and Serbs were fighting against Muslims in central Bosnia, and all I could do was watch from a distance gaining a greater realisation that there was stronger and stronger support coming out of Russia for Serbia. The Russian foreign policy language on the former Yugoslavia at this time was neutral and simply called for Russia to cooperate with the UN in peacemaking efforts and to use its influence in the former Yugoslavia to encourage a peaceful settlement.
Russia was between a rock and a hard place as Serbia had always been a long-time ally. Later, in 1993, Russia, hoping to maintain its image with the West as a useful mediator in a thoroughly frustrating conflict, caused some tensions with the United States and its Western allies, who had hoped for straightforward Russian support of UN-sanctioned military actions against Serbian aggression instead of fence sitting throughout the whole ordeal. Russia was simply not helping, it was quietly supporting the Serbs whilst condemning them publicly, and this was where the arms were being syphoned off to and funded by Saudi Arabia which was diverting attention away from Iraq and the Iranian nuclear programme. The pressure on the family to keep the lanes open was now secretly sanctioned in the Lubyanka and the Kremlin. I had no idea what was actually going on in Russia at the higher levels but could see the turmoil in Anatoly’s letters as illegitimate sidelines were being further explored by Alex for the kind of financial gain Moscow would never allow, and the words ‘terrorist groups’ were mentioned many times in briefing papers and indicated that a ‘sweep and clear’ policy would be sanctioned if substantial evidence could be gained by intelligence operatives to support such claims.
It was absolutely crazy to think that whilst the world was engaged in this silent turmoil and ready to implode once again, I was introduced by way of letter to Anna (who would later become my wife). Working at the NBCD school, and well away from any Bosnian nightmares or issues from Russia or the Middle East, a mate of mine Tom and I took Pete and Jackie out to a pub in Bursledon called The Jolly Sailor (Howards’ Way on TV) for a meal and a few pints of real ale, Speckled Hen or Tanglefoot. Tom and I had often enjoyed going to Old Portsmouth for real ale evenings at The Dolphin pub and were always keen to explore further afield for the more genuine pub experience, including a medieval night out at the Fox & Hounds, not far from The Jolly Sailor. We had gone by train and were absolutely smashed out of our faces enjoying one of the most amazing evenings of my time in Portsmouth. The pub was by the side of the River Hamble next to the Elephant Boatyard. It was beautifully maintained and gave a warm welcome and old-fashioned feel, with the interior comparable to a hobbit’s house, with old stone-flagged floors, oak beams and matching curved supporting structures. The whole interior was fitted out with traditional old wooden furniture and maritime memorabilia, with low ceilings and a warm hearth in winter. I remember the main drunken laughing point that evening being something to do with a gorilla shitting in your mouth whilst you were asleep after a night out – Jackie really thought we had been shit on by a gorilla and missed the joke completely, making her the target of fun for the rest of the evening.
Pete knew Anna through his wife – Jackie and Anna had attended a nursing course together previously – and went on to explain in great detail how amazing Anna was and how well suited they thought we would be. He had caught my attention and, after gaining Anna’s address, I wrote a letter introducing myself. She drove down to Portsmouth a short time later and met me with Pete and Jackie in a pub called The Mermaid. I remember it well – I had been out in town and bought a completely new outfit from a clothes store in the city, seeking the shop assistant’s opinion on everything from the shoes to the tie on suitability for a first date. Anna had a fucking Fiat Panda and drove that heap of shit all the way to Portsmouth to see me on a blind date. Now, I remember seeing her for the first time and nearly shitting myself. Pete was right, she was stunning, the kind of woman you just can’t take your eyes off. Amazing. Anna went to the bathroom and, as soon as she had disappeared out of sight, Pete and Jackie demanded to know what I thought of her.
Now, I know it’s a cliché but it really was love at first sight. I just didn’t know how to handle a real woman, never really had to before this point. Life had just suddenly become massively complicated. We enjoyed our short time together and soon made plans for a second date to the cinema before she left to go back up north to Tadcaster. Having never been accountable in this way before and never having had a third party in my life, I must have fucked up a million protocols with the Steering Group whilst I sought approval to continue with this new adventure in my life. Anna and her entire family were undoubtedly screened for any possible connection to terrorists, foreign intelligence organisations, Russian and Middle Eastern contacts, through emails, internet activity, phones, etc., etc., whilst counter-espionage, counter-insurgency and MI5 (home security) made my life a nightmare. All Anna had to do was make me a sausage casserole and a birthday cake at her place and I was putty in her hands.
I actually had the minerals to introduce Anna to my parents and, more to the point, to my mother quite early on in our relationship. She was a hit at first, especially with my dad who gave his approval almost immediately. We had afternoon tea with my mother and it was a little strained to say the least but a pleasant enough afternoon with Anna looking all virgin-like in a white dress. I knew there would be a fight for this relationship, remembering the lengths my mum went to in order to try and dissuade my older brother from his previous girlfriend when their relationship appeared to be approaching marriage. It ended in tears. I would have a fight at both ends, and it got heated to say the least. It was worse than dealing with the Russians!
Anna and I enjoyed only the briefest of times together but I knew when we were together how much chemistry there was between us. I loved being in her company, and I remember our first dinner together at her home. She lived in a tiny terraced house in Tadcaster. She had made this little place home and on a tight budget. To be able to put everything together she must have had to work long hours. But as all young people are, she was
desperate for her own space, her own freedom. She cooked me a sausage casserole and it won me over straight away. She often cooked for me and I always had to rush off, either to work or to my parents’ house, as a curfew was always in place. Some fucked-up control my mother held over me whilst I stayed at home. If only she had known what I got up to in my spare time or in the service. Mothers! You can’t control them. I often had to race my Jaguar down the motorway to meet the demands of my mother. There were many arguments. Love prevailed. Love conquers all and I was not gonna allow my mother to come between us.
It wasn’t too long before I booked our first romantic weekend away to a hotel called The Montagu Arms in the New Forest. I remember driving Anna there from Portsmouth, with her continually saying that she really didn’t want to stay in a hotel where we had to share a bathroom; she really preferred an en-suite room. The Montagu was a five-star hotel (it came in at around £350 a night – remember, this was the 1990s) and I had a four-poster room booked; it was the best money could buy and I had scouted it out a few weeks prior. The Montagu Arms Hotel was privately owned at the time and was the epitome of luxurious British country hotels. Set in a beautiful location with extensive grounds and gardens almost attached to the foliage that covered the old brick building’s exterior, sympathetically hiding her age, it welcomed you through solid wooden doors to the smell of last night’s extinguished coal fires and the sound of a ticking grandfather clock. A genuine welcoming smile greeted you as you stood on the homely rugs listening to the chinking of china plates from the dining room while you checked in, your mind leaving the big wide world at the door.
Immediately the hotel was a hit. We rushed up to the room eager to experience our first time together. Anna had forgotten something and I had to rush back out to the car to get it, and fell down the stairs – all of them! Landing at reception in a heap, I damn near broke my ankle. Fucking thing swelled up like a balloon. With a swollen painful ankle, bruised beyond belief, I managed to hobble back upstairs where Anna was waiting. She then put her nursing skills into action by putting a cold flannel on the offending ankle, swearing she hoped it wasn’t broken as she didn’t want to have to take me to A&E and ruin the entire weekend. She elevated my leg on a pillow and laughed at me.
We made love and I was nervous as hell that first time. I lay with Anna in that big four-poster bed in a land so far from my troubles, in the quiet of the New Forest. We slowly undressed each other and kissed slowly and softly at first but then more deeply as we became lost in our passion, and I was allowed to forget who I was and become just a normal guy with a girl making love together. I had not had sex with her during the months leading up to this intimate time together, some sort of honour code or respect for a person I genuinely wanted to treat well. Trembling, my smile became a grin as our journey climaxed into a magical collaboration of need satisfying need. I felt more of a man that day than I ever had in my entire life. I guess a man needs to know he is at least capable of being able to satisfy a woman sexually. It was a completeness that allowed a transition away from my childhood, and a short moment in time when I was mentally free from the past and the world I was living in.
The romance was quickly destroyed by my father ringing the hotel and being put through to our room. It was classic – asking what on earth I was doing in a hotel (like he didn’t know). This had all arisen because my parents had received a bloody booking confirmation letter for our stay, sent to my home address! I couldn’t believe it. I asked my dad, “What the hell do you think I am doing?” It was like I was a teenager or something, totally bizarre. I could hear my mother in the background screaming her condemnation through the 300 miles of telephone wire. I think you could say that was the start of all the disapproval and negativity my mother showed towards Anna over the coming years before we got married. The turmoil included excommunication, fights and arguments, a curfew when I stayed at my parents’ house and just about every disapproving gesture aimed to try and end our relationship prematurely. I’m pleased to say our love endured and we are still together to this very day despite these and many other obstacles.
Dinner that evening in the hotel was simply one of the most memorable occasions for us during our early relationship. It was sheer class and couldn’t have been more perfect. It was indeed a grand affair. Just to get the accompanying bread was a display of amazing etiquette: you chose a type of bread from the bread trolley which was transferred to a carving board, then a slice was cut and placed on a serving plate prior to being finally transferred to your side plate. We giggled like schoolchildren and enjoyed the meal immensely, washing it down with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. I had tried to set the tone for the kind of future I wanted with this amazing woman, who I would eventually take to stay in some of the very best hotels in the world, including The Peninsula in Hong Kong and Raffles in Singapore. I wanted her to experience the finest life had to offer. I knew what the opposite was like being in a war zone. It was going to be the challenge of my life to keep my work and my private life both functioning alongside each other. But I felt and still do feel that the two had to be kept separate because of the very nature of what I was involved in.
It only took a few weeks for me to be dumped! I failed to fucking call Anna at specific times, which was damn near impossible being in the service. Failing to be at the end of a telephone every day eventually led to me being binned, and I remember the day because it was a difficult day conducting a disaster exercise at the fire school. I was fucking livid but there was no way of explaining it away; she needed to feel in control, and women, I learnt, want to be called every fucking day. I was shit at relationships really; in my mind when I was away at work I was away at work, and I needed for my state of mind to keep them separate and pigeon-holed. Of course, that was never going to work. I had to integrate my girlfriend more into the military way of thinking. Our relationship was never going to be normal like other regular navy guys who had their families with them all the time, our relationship was going to be much more complex.
The secrecy and difficulties of a double life in order to keep the innocent not only safe but ignorant to the risks at hand were slowly being realised in a world which was only going to become more challenging. I can remember spending some time with Brown on the matter, and the only solutions were to play harder at both ends of the system. He simply wished me luck but casually warned me that any slip in security would result in a very swift departure from the SIS and N1, in fact possibly the military altogether. I had, after all, signed my life away three times to be in the Steering Group’s Russian operative programme. One thing that did stick in my mind was his comment that married men were 60% more likely to return from a war zone than a single man as the married man simply took less risks. It was an interesting thought that I believe I was able to substantiate later in my career.
I sort of introduced Anna to the navy when I joined HMS Eagle in 1994. She drove me to the ship after a weekend together in Cornwall. We had got our relationship back together and had survived a few bumps which were to be expected in any new relationship, but with a new set of guidelines from Anna, including the telephone requirements. I was forever trying to deal with her communication issues – I actually hated phones at this point in my life. Then there were the demands of the Steering Group and the build-up to Operation RIAR, its preparation and training, and of course my mother who was an entire war zone on her own. I think, looking back, the intelligence services were entirely right to have a younger generation driving the Steering Group’s agenda. My relationships, both with Anna and my wider family, all looked incredibly average, normal, messy and unassuming to any outsider. But internally it was all tightly embedded in the absolute grip of secrecy and surveillance by the Steering Group, ensuring everything was kept on track and under perfect cover. It would be fair to say Anna was expendable at this time. She and her family were under surveillance the entire time I was on ops and they probably still are. I didn’t find it difficult in any way to keep the inte
rests of the Steering Group close to my heart. I had no reason to disclose anything as any scenario or situation could always be made accountable to the navy – cover within cover I suppose. It’s easy to hide sand in a sandpit was the expression I learned.
We stayed in a hotel in Cornwall, at Cawsand (same hotel my parents stayed in for my passing out at Raleigh), and had a wonderful weekend together eating and drinking but also enjoying being by the sea. I remember the hotel wasn’t up to much, had a busted shower and a split-level room with a crap bed. It didn’t matter at all as we enjoyed a little restaurant on the seafront with perhaps only five tables. We stayed late into the night sharing candlelight and feelings of love for one another. She took me to join Eagle on the Sunday, and the only way to describe that feeling is if you were to watch We Were Soldiers as Mel Gibson leaves his wife in bed in the early morning to go off to Vietnam. The emptiness, the loss and the immediate detachment from the one you love is instant, like a knife to the heart. I don’t know if Anna ever knew how much I loved her in those early days and it would be easy to just write about it years later as a love story, but those three deployments to the Adriatic made for a melting furnace of every emotion, commitment, loyalty and relationship in my life. It all came close to failing as I was never ever going to be able to keep up with the normal demands of a relationship whilst being deployed and continuing my role within the Steering Group.
There were exceptions. I remember being deployed the first time to the Adriatic and to the Bosnian conflict. HMS Eagle was to berth in Malta for Christmas, so I arranged for Anna to fly out from Gatwick to join me for Christmas and spend a week in a hotel. I had managed to call her from Trieste in Italy after an extended silence (a shitty container port) some months earlier after crossing back over the border from what is now Slovenia following a reconnaissance mission to the Romanian border with my team and prior to the eventual meetings with Evgeny and the new crowd the family were supporting. We were working with local services under the disguise of Wooltech International, a fake company dealing in woollen products from all over the world. It allowed for safe houses and easy transports, crossing borders with little or no interference.
The Steering Group Page 28