The Steering Group
Chapter 11
Defection
The entire team assembled in MHQ Mount Wise Plymouth some months later, I think around June 1998. MHQ (Maritime Headquarters) was a mainly disused building at the time. However, despite its state of semi dereliction here we were for our planning meetings. MHQ consisted of a complicated nine-sided two-level bunker, built half submerged into the ground to afford some sort of protection from air raids I imagine. Behind MHQ and beneath the lawn of Admiralty House is a network of underground tunnels called the Plymouth Underground Extension which connects MHQ to Admiralty House. The rooms we occupied had been stripped bare apart from a number of whiteboards, wiped clean of previous ops long since completed or abandoned. On the entrance door a simple sign saying ‘DCSA Communications Centre Plymouth’ hid our gathering (DCSA – Defence Communication Services Agency).
We assembled in the heart of the bunker at the joint operations room which was two storeys high with a number of different rooms on each level. We had been split into three teams, and some cross-pollinating between teams and rooms was expected during all the briefings and discussions to find a way forward. I was with the Steering Group in the main planning and coordination room; the SF team was in another room and would oversee all the dramatics where the metal meets the meat, the false death and the defection; and the third team consisted of the dustmen and their various support teams.
David Crowl, Ben Martin and Anderson Chaplow were overseeing every move, decision and idea, sometimes abandoning us in the main meeting room to throw ideas into the other meetings. It all seemed a bit of a non-event in our separate briefing rooms when I compared it to seeing Marcus Branford with his own personal team assembled in a locked room. Marcus looked older than before, holding up his heavy head in his hands, no doubt troubled with the demands of Government and the doughnut to remove the mole, eliminate this new sleeper cell and pull the whole thing off. Marcus was the upper tier of the political/non-political commanders and sat both with and above the Steering Group. He was a true polycephalic (a creature with two heads), smiling with the politicians in polite and comfortable surroundings, but then devouring any enemy discovered amongst the many briefing notes and files fed to him by the Steering Group teams. His teams were only ever assembled in order to execute the Crown’s will, whatever the cost, no matter what. He had been given quite some mandate. He needed a plan to take forward to be quietly approved higher up the food chain.
The planning and briefings that go into some ops are nothing short of remarkable, the attention to detail has to be perfect, there are no second chances. We would always remind ourselves of the six Ps: ‘Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance’. It’s this attention to detail that was the very real difference between success and failure in the intelligence world and probably more so for the boys from the boats squadron, who were and remain the true epitome of military perfection. Not actually knowing exactly how we would execute the extraction opened up a lot of discussion. To plan for the unplannable, that’s what we did. We had an objective and had to find as many ways as possible to achieve it, maintaining the ability to adapt as nothing can be too rigid – shit on the ground changes by the minute. We needed cover stories, for both myself entering the Soviet Union as well as the team, that were plausible yet unremarkable. Transport methods, equipment for the team and the dustmen, insertion and extraction points. Safe houses, alternative routes, the list goes on.
I’m very proud to have been able to know all the support team members for those short times we actually worked together in the field. It’s true that in my many years of service the actual time spent on ops was actually very short indeed. So much of my time was spent patiently waiting, planning and training, which can be tedious and sometimes very dull, just like life sometimes is. This patience is required in order for the other side to lose their patience or to start their game prematurely, believing you’re not waiting or watching. Your adversary’s conscience will eventually take its leave and seek an audience with those faithful to the inevitability of conflict brought on by the needs of powerful men and their desire to dominate. We wait because we are not in possession of an order, and are patient because we are trained to be prepared for the right time to strike, when the enemy least expects it.
Time on ops is like a flash of lightning in a very long, wet and miserable storm as you seek passage to the silence and peace of the shores beyond, a flash of light and excitement that although very powerful only lasts for the briefest of moments in time before it’s gone and committed to your eternal memory. There it stays, patiently waiting for the thunderous outcomes of your actions to be fully realised and then played back to you at the most inopportune times. I grew a taste for those brief moments of excitement because they truly reminded me of my time in Moscow when every day was ‘active’. Each day had made me feel alive in Moscow and I missed it very much. Although bizarrely back then, the family and the life I lived so easily felt like a pleasant reality at the time, not a mission in any way shape or form – a delusion of peace. It was a false security in which I was a stranger in my own life; that is until much later when a trigger had to be pulled and when fate would catch up with the temper and strength of those against me and the organisation. Time always rushes to reveal the real world, for just the briefest of moments, when decisions become very real actions.
It was cold, damp and musty down those old echoing corridors. The smell of old stale air mixed with the corrosion of obsolete equipment left to the decay of time and wary memories. Each corridor and room was tired and overpainted, the walls flaky and chalk-like to the touch. The air was perfumed with the scent of gun oil soaked into those little red-lined cloths littering the old armoury floor, entwined with the echoes of old secrets that cannot be discussed by anyone. It’s a smell that can only be remembered by men who have spent time in such dark places, cleaning and preparing their weapons, arming themselves ready to perform the quietly whispered orders from the people occupying those dark rooms, sending them to unnamed locations.
The tension and intensity of the planning were enough to bring the old rooms back to life. Like a re-powering of an old factory, life was temporarily breathed back into the old lungs of the bunker that day. This increasing hum of activity joined with the uneasy movements of commandos drawn in from the local citadel, unsure of what exactly they were hiding or protecting. It all added to the heightened sense of expectation as they nervously asked for identification at the many checkpoints along the corridors and rooms. No doubt the wall maps, one of the entire Soviet Union, the Middle East and a more detailed map and satellite imagery of Sarov, made for rumour amongst the security teams. For me it was more than exciting, it was up a level from anything I had done previously, like coming out of hibernation as it all came alive around me. It was all much bigger now, the fear and the excitement very real. I was more aware now than ever before of what we were setting out to achieve, what the Steering Group had been engineering and dovetailing over years and years of planning. Who knows how many other operatives had been involved or been simply transient to the needs of the Steering Group? The curtains were set to go up.
Things had grown out of my control, nothing like back in the Moscow days; I no longer had control of what information flowed into the machine. It was self-sustaining now, feeding itself, growing significantly bigger and bigger. I was truly becoming nervous, afraid, and for the first time, in a way I hadn’t felt before, unsure of my own abilities, or perhaps I had become afraid of what I had created, unable to stop its progression. I was truly a castaway in my own creation.
It’s like when you tell a lie, you have to remember the lie and then tell lies to hide the lie and on it goes, you can’t control it. It sort of took my breath away as it eroded my inner independence as an N1 operative. The thought of losing total oversight and control of it all freaked me out. It fed paranoia and gave rise to a quiet mental rumour. I had begun to feel vulnerable and alone in it all a
s though the teams were working to find a mistake in my work. I was secretly pleased to have the team with me; like a safety net of reassurance they made light of all the heavy briefings and reminded me that no matter what the top brass decided, once the first bullet left its chamber out there in the real world it would all be back down to me and the oppos next to me, just me and my brothers. Forget the politics, concentrate on my job and the safety of the man next to me.
It was knowing this that allowed me to focus and put doubt and fear in a box for a much later discussion with myself. I think it was about this time that I realised I wasn’t really a big team member or player, I worked better alone, more of a lone operator when it really came to it. I could feel the unease growing in me as the realisation that working as a solo operator might be at an end. I didn’t like it. I would have preferred to have kept it more personal. The family was mine. I would see their end and save my friend Anatoly. That was the glitch, the chink in my armour – I had become friends with the very people I was sent to bring down. Maybe they had all been right to question my loyalty, or was I just being fucking human? Round and round the thoughts would go, betrayal, loyalty, duty, honour, guilt and confusion, all equally malleable on the anvil of destiny before me. What was I to forge from my assignments now?
I don’t think I really knew anything other than I wanted to save a friend and go back home to Anna. Everything else seemed like white noise now. I couldn’t fully engage with it all. In my mind I had my own mission, and it wasn’t too far away from what was happening around me. I just wanted to feel valued, to be in the middle of it all. It took me back to my childhood, the detention centre, the thought of wanting to be recognised and be a key player, the incessant need to feel valued and to belong, not discarded. Old demons were playing with my mind, when in fact I was the centre of the entire gathering. To be surrounded by people who are all working because of you and for you but feeling alone and isolated is like being an animal in a zoo – very interesting and valuable but still caged. Looking back, maybe it was because I did feel a deep belonging and loyalty to my friend Anatoly. The whole deal was a complete mindfuck.
In a separate room, I joined the support team briefings, much more relaxed yet at the same time focused. Being with the team always reminded me of my place in the world. I belonged to these guys and felt very attached to them, always the best place to be when I had doubts or messed-up thoughts. The plan was to extract Anatoly as he made his way on a pre-planned holiday from his workplace (the Russian Scientific Research Institute for Experimental Physics (VNIIEF)) in Sarov to Yaroslavl, the holiday home where we stayed all those years ago with all the family. This holiday had been in Anatoly’s calendar for a long time, and I think only Cdr Brown, Marcus and I knew the actual dates. All correspondence I had seen from Russia had the dates removed in all briefing papers, orders and the like. Where does all that correspondence end up? I remember thinking. In the hands of a fuckwit FBI agent or discarded in the CIA’s in-tray. Being old-fashioned in some things, like sending teams away on ships to see what follows them or stops following them and destroying shit immediately after a briefing, was the norm for the Steering Group.
Computers, they’re our weakest asset. There’s a lot to be said for disappearing off grid into a bunker and writing shit down on paper then burning it all on completion after it’s all committed to memory. You can’t hack ash! Seriously, every fuck-up I ever heard of in the intelligence world involved a human, a computer or a telephone. They are all dangerous. Yes, Big Brother is watching us all, every day and every night, through our new smartphones, smart TVs and the incredible global CCTV network and internet. The system knows everything about you – who you spend time with, talk to, what shit you watch on TV, your favourite takeaway, how long it takes you to get to work and how you got there, even what you bought at the supermarket and how you paid for it.
If you’re one of the millions who have Facebook, they now know almost every detail about you, your friends’ details and their friends, and their friends’ friends, and the terrorist group sitting in London watching you and your friends through your new iPhone camera. Before you know it their friends have befriended you, or someone you know, and are now piggy-backing your accounts from Kazakhstan, then they’re hacking your work computer or emptying your bank account because you have told them everything – indirectly and innocently of course. Happy birthday! Now I know your date of birth, your name and I’m almost ready to get a mortgage in your name.
The intelligence service and the terrorist especially like all the photos the public like to post online, it’s a great help to both sides. We know who to target and what you look like, and best of all where you’re gonna be. They know everything about you, exactly where you are and how to get hold of you and, if they do, so do all the other intelligence services around the world and the bad people we don’t talk about. It’s called the internet and it’s the most used item in the intelligence services toolkit. We use it way, way before we redeploy a fucking satellite or something that might cost hard cash. That’s why it’s so fucking great, because it’s free.
It was a 572km drive to reach Yaroslavl from Sarov, a journey during which the team would engineer a disaster for Anatoly, avoiding the whole unpleasant defection issue. There was plenty of open country to find a suitable stage upon which to create a masterpiece of illusion. A performance worthy of an Oscar is what was needed. It was widely agreed the accident needed to take place somewhere remote but not inaccessible. Route 72 was the preferred road from Sarov to Yaroslavl and the ideal point would be a river crossing on the Murom Bridge over the Oka River north of Murom. We all pulled our seats in close around the table as maps were pulled out of the files. We needed an exit route, a sea exit north of Yaroslavl/Lyubim.
We looked at the possible routes for Anatoly to take. Our main issues were the distances involved and the precarious proximity of Moscow just to the west of all our plans. We needed to conduct the accident and head in a direction that would be unexpected, a harder route than anyone would think of if planning this operation from the other side. There were only a few options: go south to Kazakhstan, an immense distance of 1,422km to Atyrau; or go west into the Ukraine and on to Mariupol, some 1,311km, where we could pick up a sub or small coaster in the Black Sea and exit out through to the Mediterranean via the Sea of Marmara, a tricky manoeuvre to go unnoticed in such a busy sea lane.
The captain of the Triton exhaled a sigh and muttered, “What an impossible task.” He wasn’t fully submerged in the briefing. He was disengaged from the meeting, probably feeling as though he would only be used as a stealth taxi should the need arise. His mutterings were silenced by Cdr Brown.
“Nonsense! Let me remind you of Gallipoli. The success of the Turks in frustrating the Allies in Gallipoli overshadowed a very little unknown fact and an aspect of that campaign that was a complete success for the Allies.”
Brown had everyone’s attention.
“Sir Winston Churchill saw the penetration of British submarines into the Sea of Marmara by daring and brave submariners navigating the narrow strait that connects the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, with depths as shallow as 200ft, and managed to safely navigate and cope with complex and unpredictable currents.”
Everyone was scouring the charts and maps, smoke rising, blowing ash off the charts and intently listening to Cdr Brown at the same time. It was like a bedtime success story or a rousing speech, and to be fair we were all totally immersed in listening to a success story. I had been daydreaming of a more simplistic approach.
“Also! Let me remind you of Lt Cdr Holbrook who took the first British submarine B-11 some 12 miles up those straits and through the minefields to sink the Turkish battleship Mesudiye. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, gentlemen. It is totally possible to extract our man out through Turkey.”
There was a lot of laughing, desk banging and cheering as though we were celebrating being fucking British, a boyish bravado to compensate for the difficu
lties that needed to be overcome by the team once a course of action had actually been decided upon. Brown was just wanting to open everyone’s minds, clear the air, get the guys pumped up or something. There had been without doubt a room full of blank minds hiding behind eager faces, but this was how ideas were brought into play for the team, put them out there to see if there was any merit in your thoughts; if there wasn’t, they just got laughed off. Insertion through Europe and extraction with Anatoly through Turkey was possible… I think, however, the guys preferred the Kazakhstan route. The final decisions would be made by Marcus, and however fucked up it all looked or however difficult it was being perceived a way had to be found. I guess Brown wanted the mood lifting or was getting tired by it all so late in the day.
The briefings and discussions were wound up and brought to a close late in the evening. Each segment of the orange remained separated, only Marcus knowing which to use in order to create the final plan. Marcus would decide what orders were issued and when. The guys at the doughnut would be charged with placing only the most relevant of articles on record for a trickle effect to our man in the US, Guy Mitchell, and then hopefully on to the Middle Eastern/Arab contingency and with a bit of luck the sleeper cell here in the UK. I guess the Steering Group wanted to sit back and watch where all the information went, and what came of it. Of greatest concern was how it looped back through the FBI into Russia and the Middle East. It would be a perfect opportunity to see what colour the chameleon would turn back into in the US and how big the mess really was. Allow him the opportunity to get the Arabs right next to Anatoly and take the package in either direction, to the Russians, to the Arabs, or would he come running home to Mama?
The Steering Group Page 37