Soldier Spy

by Tom Marcus

  ‘Got it. We’ll both do you proud.’

  I knew Emma would have a good degree of driving ability, having been in the military, and she seemed switched on, but that the pressure would be on for me to help the others pass the course.

  Following the instructors to three gleaming white saloon cars, I tried to lighten the mood with my new driving partner, Emma: ‘Hope our team cars don’t look like these police ones!’

  They were a Mercedes C-Class, a VW Golf R and a Jaguar STR with accompanying extra mirrors so the instructors could see all around the cars while sat in the passenger seat with us tearing round the country.

  ‘You’ll be driving these cars and we’ll swap them around every few days so you get used to the different capabilities of each vehicle. They are designed to look like police cars. Remember you’re in training and we have to do this safely. You’ll be driving in excess of 120mph every day across the country, so the more official we look the less likely we’ll get pulled over by the police, giving you more driving time.’

  Walking to the front of the cars, I knew what was coming next because I’d done driver training similar to this with the Special Ops unit in Northern Ireland. The instructors were about to start taking us through ‘first checks’; before you get into that car every day you’re meant to check all the basics – oil, brake fluid, tyre damage, the whole thing. The instructors went into quite a lot of depth initially, though, describing the power to weight ratio of each vehicle; the way the engine was laid out, which gave you a good indication as to which end the drive was directed to, either the front or the back wheels, and so on.

  To be honest with you, all I wanted to do was get in and fucking drive. I loved driving fast safely. It’s a real art to be able to move through traffic and across country at speed without upsetting anyone or over-using your brakes.

  After an hour or so, we had a quick toilet break, and once everyone was back at the cars we were handed our packed lunches in brown paper bags and separated into two teams of two with a one-to-one instructor for one of the guys, who I assumed didn’t have much driving ex-perience. Obviously I was with Emma and the chief instructor.

  ‘Right, TC, you’re going to go first. All I want today is to iron out any bad habits you’ve picked up since your previous training. I don’t want any progressive driving, just pure basics, OK?’

  Nice and relaxed first afternoon of driving, then. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I went through all the adjustments I needed to make – mirrors, seat and steering position – while Emma got into the back and the instructor started filling in his paperwork. He had his own mirrors, one on top of each wing mirror and two rear-view mirrors. One was angled so he could see behind us and another one so he could see my eyes; he needed to know that, if I wasn’t turning my head, I was at least using my eyes to look and maintain observation all around the car at all times.

  As I dipped the clutch and started the engine, I reached for the open door to close it. The instructor stopped his paperwork. ‘Aha, TC, yes, I remember now, your open door policy when starting the engine has just reminded me.’

  Opening the glove box, he pulled out a small roll of Sellotape and a drawing pin. I knew what was coming. ‘Please tell Emma what I’m doing.’

  As he placed the upturned pin on top of the gear stick and put two lengths of tape over the sharp pin, holding it in place, I half-turned to Emma in the back.

  ‘If I get lazy with my control of the car and rest my hand on the gear stick, he’ll hit my hand, slamming it on to the pin. It makes sure I don’t get lazy, but change gear properly and hold the steering wheel with both hands when I’m not changing gear.’

  ‘That’s right, and I know from the training you’ve had previously that you’ll remember how much this hurts, so don’t get lazy.’

  Our Merc was the first vehicle to leave the car park, as the other guys were still receiving instruction. Waiting for the barriers to open to let us out of the rear exit of Thames House, I held the car on the handbrake, playing the game. Usually on a ramp like this I’d hold it with the clutch, but I wanted an easy driving phase so I did exactly what the instructor wanted to see. Out and right on to Horseferry Road and over the bridge, I followed the instructor’s directions through London. He’d only say it once, as we’d be expected to be able to follow simple commands.

  Apart from giving directions, the instructor was completely silent throughout, although he would be watching my eyes in his mirror like a hawk. I knew he was assessing whether I’d seen certain road signs, speed limits, what other vehicles and pedestrians were likely doing around the car and if I was pre-empting light changes, how smooth my braking and accelerating were: in other words, how safe and aware I was. All standard basic stuff you’d expect an advanced driver to be doing.

  After nearly two hours of trouble-free driving and no pin punctures in my left hand it was time to change with Emma. The instructor’s posture and teaching style changed when she got into the driving seat – much softer and calmer, more nurturing – and it was nice to see this side of him.

  ‘Right, let’s get rid of this pin, shall we? I’m sure you won’t be needing this, Emma; we’ll reserve the pain for the army boy in the back seat.’

  Laughing, Emma relaxed a bit. I didn’t mind being made fun of if it lightened the mood in there. As the car began moving back through London again, Emma was driving really well, but cautiously. It was all the instructor was after at this stage. He started to quiz her on the road signs we were passing, and gently guided her out of the bad habits she’d picked up over the years, namely resting her foot on the clutch and wrapping her thumbs around the steering wheel instead of laying them flat. It’s only stuff everyone does but we we’re being trained to a high standard to allow us to move through standstill traffic at high speeds, so all these little things help us be safer and quicker drivers.

  As the weeks progressed, the other candidates’ driving got sharper and smoother, except for one of the guys. He could make ground and drive safely at high speeds but he couldn’t give commentary at the same time. For him the amount of concentration it took to drive at 140mph through Bala in Wales meant he had absolutely no more brain capacity to give a full talking commentary on what he could see and what the vehicle was doing, which for a potential surveillance officer wasn’t good at all. Prior to the final assessment, the instructors, who were desperate to get him to pass, put him in the same car as Emma and me while I was doing my high-speed intercept assessment, which is where we drive as fast as we can from London to Glasgow with the focus on safety.

  If the instructor has to step in at any point to say slow down, speed up, or point anything out regarding safety, then you fail. It’s a long drive and made even more intense by the constant commentary you have to give. ‘I’m travelling north on the Mike One at 135 miles per hour, in lane three of three. The weather is mild and dry with clear skies. White Ford in lane two of three ahead and watching to see if he is looking to move into my lane, covering my horn and lights to act as a hazard warning. Past the white Ford now, accelerating to 140 miles per hour, check of my rear-view mirror and near-side mirror, no vehicles coming up behind me and nothing in lane two of two, indicating to my near-side, checking rear-view and wing mirror again with a confident look over my left shoulder to check my blind spot. All clear, moving into lane two of three, going past the one-mile marker board and gantry for Junction 31 of the Mike One.’

  This commentary has to be fluid and constant without breaks; there is always something to talk about. Unfortunately, Emma and I were the only two in our car to pass the intercept assessment and we were now down to four candidates.

  We progressed on to urban driving methods, in which we look to be able to move through London traffic at speed, making use of the bus lanes, driving through red lights, one-way streets, bumping half of the car up pavements to squeeze through tight spots and ultimately trying to be as quick across the city of London as the Tube.

  On the last day of th
e driving phase we all sat down with Darren, the chief instructor and the driver trainers who’d been assessing us over the past weeks. It’s all very relaxed, around a table in the training room. It’s pass or fail. They tell each of you first if you have passed or failed and, if you have passed, what to work on going into the surveillance phase of training.

  The comments were quite fair really. The other two guys got passes and were told they needed to concentrate on not getting lazy once they started the surveillance vehicle follows. It’s incredibly easy to fall into bad habits once you become target orientated.

  ‘When people in your team die, it will more than likely be from a crash. Be careful.’

  Darren had that look in his eyes, he’s dealt with death a lot. He wasn’t big-timing it. Emma was next. She passed too which I was incredibly pleased about. She’d worked very hard and actually got top marks on the written assessments on the police roadcraft test we did prior to this meeting. I was given extra time on the test because Darren made the point that the words ‘would be dancing around like a fucker’ for me.

  ‘TC, fail.’

  The other guys looked stunned and the frown on my face said it all, I didn’t believe it for a second.

  ‘Only joking, yeah, fine, no issues.’

  And that was it, no other feedback, which I took as a compliment. I was starting to learn the service was a lot like the Military Special Ops unit in Northern Ireland. No feedback was good. Darren gave me a small smile out of the corner of his mouth and a nod in acknowledgement. After we shook hands with the driving instructors, Darren ushered them out and shut the training-room door.

  ‘Right, congratulations. Fun bit over. Unfortunately after all that driving, you’re not actually going to drive a car for about a month, while we teach you foot surveillance.’

  I always found this approach a bit arse about face really. I can see the argument as you go straight from foot surveillance into vehicle follows but a month away from driving for some of these guys is a huge amount of time.

  ‘Get yourself back to the safe houses, you start early tomorrow morning. If you’re not used to walking mega miles, tape your feet up. You’ll be averaging around twenty miles a day for the next month. See you in the morning. No drinking tonight.’

  I didn’t celebrate that night. I got some Chinese food as I left the Tube, walked back to the house and prepped my kit for the next day. Twenty miles a day sounds a lot for most people, especially in the world we live in now with transport taking us everywhere, and electronic meetings, lifts in the office, etc. But it’s a sneaky way for the service to put in physical standards without actually saying people have to be of a set fitness level. If they can’t follow a target throughout the day due to their lack of endurance, they fail the course instantly. Simple.

  The next morning I woke up at 0430hrs for my morning run. If my body remained sharp, my mind would find everything a bit easier. I loved running around North London at that time in the morning, everything is quiet just before the daily madness starts of heavy traffic and everyone rushing to get the Tube with their caffeine fix in hand. The only people up at this time were delivery drivers going to the depots and the homeless adjusting their positions, trying to stay warm.

  When I got back to the safe house I was still the only one up and I jumped in the shower. As I left the bathroom in just a towel to return to my small bedroom, Dave stumbled out of his bedroom in his pants, carrying his fags and coughing as if he was dying of lung cancer already.

  ‘Dude, the fuck??’

  ‘Been for a run, mate, you want some breakfast putting on?’

  ‘TC, I can’t eat first thing in the morning, you know that. What are you running for, you bell end!?’

  I loved Dave already, he was like a comedy TV character, never downbeat, honest about his slightly chubby build and, despite having absolutely no security or investigations experience, he was picking this stuff up quickly. Dave’s best quality was how fucking funny and positive he was. Always made me laugh.

  I’ve always been an early riser and a light sleeper so the early starts on this course weren’t an issue for me. I would not have any problems with the endurance aspect of the foot surveillance phase, but I needed to keep on top of my admin and fuel my body. Even the fittest people in the world would fail this if they didn’t eat. The easier your body finds it, the fewer demands you will put your mind under, and when you’re being asked to remember virtually everything it pays to make life easy for yourself.

  I would always leave the safe house before everyone else; they travelled together but I knew we were still at risk even though we weren’t officially MI5 officers yet. To think an MI5 safe house is actually ‘safe’ is a mistake. Yes, it has all sorts of cover and protection around it, people doing back searches on the property, and it has state-of-the-art locks and alarm systems, but the house is still in a street accessible by anyone. Travelling to and from it as a group makes you a huge target.

  Leaving and arriving at Thames House was an operation in itself for me. I would vary my routes in and out every day, I’d change my profile by taking a different coloured top in a small bag; I’d even turn my phone off at different points in my journey. I had spent nearly all my adult career so far staying in the shadows, hiding from the terrorist organizations hunting them down. A lot of my awareness came from my days in Northern Ireland. The threat to our life out there was so great that not only were we armed 24/7, we also had a little covert LED that could be seen on the dash as we approached our cars. If it was flashing we would know instantly that our cars had been booby-trapped with an improvised explosive device.

  The threat wasn’t only from people wanting to kill us, we faced a bigger threat from hostile intelligence agencies. The building behind Thames House was owned by the fashion company Burberry. The issue I had with that was that it overlooked the rear entrance to our building and crucially the vehicle exit from our underground garage. If I was a Russian intelligence officer looking to recruit and blackmail MI5 officers, the perfect place to place a covert camera would be in that Burberry building. I trusted no one.

  Grabbing a coffee from a local shop near Thames House, I circled my route back towards the River Thames and Horseferry Road. I had time to kill and wanted to make sure a woman I’d spotted near the London Eye across Lambeth Bridge wasn’t following me. Stopping at a shop window, I forced her to go past me as she walked towards the Channel 4 building. Satisfied she was no longer a threat, I made my way back towards St John’s Gardens, taking a seat to finish my coffee. It was calm there, which I always found strange. One of the calmest places in London was this tiny little well-kept park just fifty metres from the Thorney Street back entrance of MI5, the world’s best intelligence agency. It was a nice contrast to think of this little patch of green as the light before going into the building that dealt with only darkness.

  The rest of the guys were already in the training room laughing and joking nervously as they waited for Darren and the other instructors.

  ‘Get lost?’ Dave was already cracking jokes, which meant he was probably the most nervous out of us all.

  ‘Nah, was having a coffee with your mum.’

  ‘Prick.’

  As the laughter grew at our banter, the instructors walked in.

  ‘Right, you can’t learn surveillance in a classroom, so grab your stuff and we’re going to split you off one to one with an instructor and take you out all day. You’ll be back here in about eight hours.’

  My instructor was ex-military too; he wasn’t staying in A4 for much longer though, as he was transferring to G Branch.

  ‘Right, you look like undercover military, you’re not fucking Jack Bauer, listen to everything I say. I don’t care how good you think you are, if I don’t pass you, Darren will fuck you off,’ he said to me. He’d obviously been briefed on me and was keen to knock me down and show me I wasn’t an ‘official’ MI5 officer just yet. What a prick.

  Funny that, because my hair was long a
nd I wasn’t clean-shaven like this cunt. Darren had just told me my profile today was spot on. I had to swallow his bullshit because it was likely designed to trigger a reaction in me to make me fuck up. Most ex-military who apply for the security service do so for the wrong reasons and they don’t make good operators.

  ‘I’ll do everything you say,’ I said, trying to be as humble as possible. He relaxed his positioning with me. I wasn’t on a pass or fail like the other candidates on this course but I still wanted to make life as easy as possible. Plus arriving with my new team would be hard if the training team forewarned them of some cocky arrogant Northern bastard.

  That day was easy, even though the instructor tried to push me harder than most, walking at a faster than normal pace, asking me constant questions throughout: what was the registration number of the vehicle we’d just passed, how old would I estimate the person walking by us carrying an umbrella was, what were the names of the last three streets we’d been down. I finally earned the instructor’s respect and we eventually made it back to Thames House with the others for daily debrief.

  Darren was explaining how important it was to have the ability to combine memory recall with a ‘shit filter’: ‘Remembering everything is useless. You need to pick out the key points to remember and develop the sense of noticing what is out of place and what’s not. This morning before you deployed, for example, how many people were in this room, including instructors?’

  Everyone went quiet and I saw some of the instructors smiling, including the hard arse who’d been trying to beast me all day. It was simple memory recall and could be worked out by attaching trainers to candidates, etc., amazingly though, only Emma shouted out the right answer as I stayed quiet, trying to fly under the radar in case I came across as too confident.