The Steering Group

by M. J. Laurence

  Getting back to the UK from Canada was a cruise – we had to take in just a few port visits and some fucking around on the ship whilst being sheep-dipped one last time by the Steering Group before we could all be finally released. It was all a welcome change of pace. Some of the SF guys flew off at Gibraltar for leave after the Atlantic crossing ahead of the ship but would re-join us later. I flew off by helo separately and then homeward bound, transiting Madrid for some leave, a break to seek that reassurance from Anna that nothing really changes much when you go away. I had only been away maybe five months, in which time it had taken just under a month’s work to complete the op with Keith. Remarkable when I think about it and look back. It all felt so unreal and distant so soon after getting home. The drug of being active wears off quickly, and there is no substitute drug for that heightened activity in the area of the brain that processes the fear – the amygdala – it lasts for a while then dissipates. However, I think the team and I were now beginning to see the adverse and long-term effects of our work, and that drug we all loved so much wasn’t the same, it was mutating. It wouldn’t dissipate so quickly anymore and was bringing a new and more complex fight to each of us, in our private lives and when we were alone.

  I spent time at home with Anna. We had a great time, trying to put all things military behind me before we took off for an amazing holiday to the Seychelles. It was what we needed, to escape life for a short while and explore some beautiful islands, a break in the routine for the pair of us. We flew direct on Monarch I think, fucking shit, and the hotel wasn’t much better. Well, it was okay, a three-star hotel on the beach. We hired a car and toured the main island before getting bored and started venturing further afield. We visited an island called Moyenne owned by a crazy guy named Brendon Grimshaw, a former newspaper editor from Dewsbury. He actually died in 2012 so I’m pleased to have met him. He had a great story to tell. He had travelled the world and ended up buying this island believing he would find pirate treasure with his friend ‘Man Friday’ – you might recognise that name. So, rather than follow all the other tourists wandering around the island like sheep, I grabbed Anna and we banged on the door to his shack. He welcomed us in and signed a copy of his book over a pleasant conversation and a cup of tea.

  This holiday, although really great, would be the last time I did anything less than five star. Both Anna and I were getting a taste for travel and the good life. I’d become a fucking snob really. I had programmed my mind that if I were to continue doing this work for the Steering Group until my time was spent in the military, then I would afford myself every luxury I could. I spent my money, the bank’s money and loaded up the credit cards. Fuck saving, I might never see retirement, a thought that was massively reinforced after the death of my parents. I didn’t give a fuck anyway, I had developed a need and a taste to live more in this life. I think I started to believe I was on someone else’s list, and it would only be a matter of time. I still look out the window to this day at 3am, down the street looking for strange cars, anything amiss. Constantly on watch all day every day. Looking over my shoulder for any sign that I may be a target. Ridiculous really because I know they will never be that clumsy.

  Back home I got drunk a few times and just enjoyed being at home in Anna’s company. It was strange to be at home doing relatively nothing and attending to domestic stuff – it makes you feel like you’ve suddenly been made redundant, sacked, out of work, or just useless. This then grows until it makes you apprehensive or anxious about getting back to work. From nowhere weird thoughts enter your mind with a need to prove to yourself that you’re still capable of making it at work. I began doubting my own abilities and fearing the possibility I’d become subjected to an inevitable skill fade eroding my abilities. The longer I remained on leave the less use I would be to the team on my return. It ate away at me as I slowly yearned to get back to the team and the job, yet at the same time I wanted leave to last forever and just be fucking lazy, to stay in bed and mope about the house. But no matter what I did, I always reverted to thoughts about getting back out and amongst it. What a mindfuck. So I had to keep busy, anything to stop my mind wandering off.

  I occupied my time with Anna and did shit like decorate the house and do the garden, go out on trips and explore Cornwall. I loved to organise everything, then that became briefings to the wife, and then all excursions executed like a fucking op, insisting on everything being done to a timeframe, always early for everything and impatient to get things done or organised. Packing to go away for the weekend was like an equipment check, everything packed perfectly and even lists made. Then the itinerary became a tight schedule that couldn’t be broken, destroying any chance of enjoying a journey or holiday. For fuck’s sake, the military routines changed every aspect of my life and metastasised its way into everything I did on the outside. It becomes so fucking annoying to yourself and those close to you. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been in the military who turns up 10 minutes early for every appointment and sets off with three possible routes and a backup plan for any eventuality, and that’s just to get the weekly shop.

  However, I found time on leave to focus on a trip for my dad to come out to the ship, to fly out and meet me aboard the Cavalier in Stavanger, Norway. He was going to accompany me back on a ‘Dads at Sea’ thing the navy does occasionally. It turned out to be the best thing I had ever done for my father. He flew out and spent nearly a week with me aboard the Cavalier before going home and finding out less than a year later that he had terminal cancer.

  What a fucking bummer. Sometimes success is completely blotted out by tragedy when you least expect it.

  At the time he didn’t know, either that or he knew but didn’t let on, because he threw himself into that short trip to Norway and the return voyage home like nothing he’d done before. I think it was like he was living his childhood dream of joining the navy or something. One dream come true to be at sea on a warship. To live a little dream before he died. He became part of the crew. I got him some navy uniforms, overalls and No. 8s to fit him so he could blend in with everyone. He fucking loved it. He kept watches in the SCC (ship’s control centre), fired the ship’s guns, took helicopter rides and threw himself into getting fucking shitfaced in the SNCOs’ mess in the evenings (which was the best mess on board). The mess had an amazing bar built by the Tetley Brewery, and it was like being in a floating local pub. My dad was at that bar every night after scran for G&Ts. He loved all the bar and mess games and wasn’t shy in doing all that was asked of him by the mess members. A sort of military initiation took place on the first night, making Dad so happy. I’d never seen my dad that fucking happy ever. He suffered every night from indigestion and heartburn something terrible, but got up and had a full English every morning and did it all again the next day. I think he ate about a kilo of Rennie tablets to keep it all down. He was the ‘Daddy’ and everyone loved having him aboard because he mucked in. He helped the crew clean the ship, run watches, operate machinery, steer the ship, help the chefs peel spuds, and got involved with everything. It was as though he knew this was his last ever chance to have a bit of fun and be truly free. I think he had a strength in him I will never have. Brave bastard, I think he knew he was dead but decided to laugh death in the face and have another fucking cigarette.

  We spent a lot of time smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee in my office and in the chippy’s shop (shipwright’s shop) during that time together. He never asked any direct questions but I know he knew I was different now. His boy was all grown up and firmly tied in to the military. The guys spent time with him both individually and as a group. I let him draw his own conclusions from all the attention he received from the team, plus all the additional activities he was allowed to participate in that weren’t really for family members. Even the captain sent tea and cakes to the workshop and joined us for a natter one afternoon. Fuck, he had a great time. I only wish I could have told him all the things I had achieved, my time in Moscow and all that shit. The
Anatoly assignment success had got me my next promotion, but he never got to see me awarded this, he never got to know all the things I had done, good or bad. I wanted, and still want, him to know I made it to the top twice, in military intelligence and again in civilian life after the service.

  After that trip back from Norway with my dad, life was a mess. I was based in the nuclear repair facility workshops in Plymouth, working towards a qualification in nuclear welding, and a G35 course, something to do with specialist pipework manufacture. I was occasionally accompanied by Anatoly in the workshops as he was wanting to experiment with different manufacturing processes and manipulation techniques. It was very strained at first because he wasn’t allowed to spend too much time with me in Plymouth and was always taken away after a few hours, leaving me to guess exactly what he was trying to achieve. Occasionally I would go and spend time with him at the weekends, but it wasn’t as often as he needed. He was being kept under a very tight regime, limiting his freedom and what he could do in his spare time. Sometimes Keith would ride along with me to see him at his quarters, and we always ended up in the pub despite Anatoly being under what was effectively house arrest. I think Anatoly was kicking up a fuss to fully oversee and work with myself and the engineers in the nuclear repair facility on the construction of a high-pressure cooling system for one of his projects. It wouldn’t be too much longer before we were back together full-time, but I understood his impatience; he was getting upset at being isolated, and the Steering Group was not giving much leeway. The flipside of the coin was that I got to spend my weekends with Anna, which more than compensated.

  Despite all the strain, Anatoly had been working well with the teams from the Steering Group, both in Wales and at the doughnut. Eventually we got to spend more and more time together. It wasn’t long before we both endured that special but inevitable time in conversation together coming to terms with the realities of what had passed before us, between us, and to what all his family had done to destroy itself by delving so deep into the world of arms trading and the abuse of his position in Sarov. But the sword went deeper, deep into our relationship, deep into the realms of betrayal and sacrifice and all the pain that it brought to us both. We had known each other a lot longer than just the defection assignment; we had used each other, one for a mission, the other to escape. He admitted he had worked on plans to relocate to the UK, so he had used me and his family as much as I had exploited him. The more we discussed things the clearer it became, the more transparent it was that we were both very alike and had in fact become closer than family because of what we had endured from when we were both just boys out for some adventure. How fucked up all that innocence felt now.

  From those first days when I had arrived in Moscow and explained my hardships to him and Evgeny regarding my childhood, we became bonded together; he knew what it was like to be abandoned and traded over. He too had seen a friend kill himself because of the pressure or the shame and guilt life trades with us. Anatoly understood the torment of being sent away from family so early in life and then to see what remained removed from his life prematurely. His childhood had been an abandonment of love to the requirements of the state, discarded only to become a human investment for future profit and gain disguised as an education spawned out of love. Even those who loved him had not seen his pain at being separated, and that was enough for Anatoly to have no feeling towards those who may remain alive behind the curtain. We both shared this pain of separation and loneliness. We were both sure that his mother was no longer alive. We had no proof or evidence but both knew how the authorities operated, and after the Bosnia shooting there would have been a clean-up, especially after his disappearance.

  He became even closer to me as a friend whilst I endured the three months of hell watching my father die from oesophageal cancer and then my mother just a few months later. My mother was riddled with so much cancer the doctors couldn’t determine the primary source. She had been dying slowly but unknowingly of cancer for years, but more acutely whilst she had attended to her husband’s suffering with the same fucked-up sneaky bastard disease. Anatoly, having lost his own family, understood all my pain but allowed me the guilt of it, and to remind me my parents had died naturally, not by the bullet. To share pain is to share life and that is what we had always done, even when we sat together all those years ago in Moscow knowing what the future would bring.

  Anatoly and I were both truly lost in our own worlds and now both orphans to its malice.

  My family totally imploded after my parents’ deaths. Fascinating now, looking back, because so much time has passed and the pain has numbed. The story, very briefly, is that my father’s aunt was a wealthy woman, and she died and left all the money and her entire estate to him, or should I say he was the only relative, so inherited it all. He was given eight weeks to live literally about 24 hours after finding out that for the first time in his life he had some money coming his way. I remember his reaction: “I’ll be the richest man in the fucking graveyard!” He never got to see a penny of that money. Fucking bummer. He’d never really had any money, never been on an overseas holiday with the family, always struggling to put food on the table and always scraping up fag butts to make a smoke. But whatever he did have he gave to his children.

  There were a few very amusing incidents in the midst of all the suffering. Anna, my sister, brothers and I had to go to my father’s aunt’s house to clear out all the valuables before the house clearance people came in and got the property ready to be sold. We hired a long-wheelbase Ford Transit van and zoomed up the motorway to the property. It was a very large old Victorian house with big old gates that opened up onto a long sweeping driveway around a pond to the front entrance. It was quite a grand old house, in which my father’s aunt only really occupied a few rooms upstairs in a kind of apartment-like arrangement, leaving many rooms in a kind of historical stasis. We plundered each room like thieves who had been let loose in a bank vault. Every drawer and item of clothing had money in it and there were hidden treasures in just about every room. We filled that Transit van to the point where the wheels were scraping the arches, bags of swag in the back and cries of laughter all the way back to our parents’ bungalow where we took stock of our fortunes like pirates returning to their lair. I think we needed to find a release amongst all the pain we had endured.

  Now, whilst all this shit was going on, we, the siblings, had to try and get time away from work, etc. to be with Mum and Dad, look after them whilst they remained alive and see it all through to the eventual funerals. The pressure was immense. The pain was sheer torment, for all of us. My sister nearly gave up her job to live with our parents whilst my older brother and I exhausted all the goodwill of the armed forces’ compassionate systems getting time off. Whilst I, and no doubt he, was endlessly being recalled to go out to the Middle East on ops, in the middle was my younger brother, poor bastard, who was trying to organise his wedding… fucking ridiculous, but that’s life and cancer, they don’t mix no matter how hard you try to shake it up.

  A number of times Anna came up from Cornwall and stayed with me at my parents’ place whilst I took my turn looking after Dad. I saw him go from about 12 stone to 5 stone, the cancer eating him whilst it suffocated and starved him at the same time. I remember carrying him upstairs to bed in my arms one night, just a shell of a body, lighter than a small child, whilst I on the other hand felt so heavy with sorrow. He eventually ended up on a morphine pump, which our local GP turned up a few notches just before he passed. It was a merciful act. My poor mother ended up in a hospice just weeks after the funeral. She died alone and I’ll never forgive myself for not being there no matter how volatile our relationship had been. I was fucking working, conforming to the fucking machine of life, busy ensuring the end of a stranger’s life in a foreign land whilst my own life was in ruin and my loving mother passed away alone and I never got to say goodbye.

  My younger brother’s wedding took place shortly after it had all concluded. It
was more of a wake than a wedding. Miserable affair, no one to blame or anything. It was all done really well, but I think we were all still in shock, and to not have our parents at the church was just a big fat reminder that they were dead. There remains a lot of tension between me and my siblings, but after carefully examining the past none of us have truly allowed ourselves the time to grieve. We have never talked about our loss, let alone about the actual events, or the lives we have been left with or the secrets of our inner struggles. We remain in pain and all alone in it. We should have come closer together after all the shit we went through; maybe we will in time or maybe we will each take our sorrows to the grave ourselves.

  I received my share of the inheritance a short time later thanks to the efforts of my sister, who we all hassled to death to speed up the process of probate. We just didn’t care, we wanted our money; yeah, we all got greedy, not understanding how painful it must have been for her to deal with all the legalities whilst the three of us were asking every week how much longer it would take. To be fair, the money passed relatively quickly from my dad to my mum and within six months on to us, the four children – my two brothers, my sister and me. Money in the bank – fucking dangerous, it wouldn’t stay there for long.