As the end of my probation neared, I started to fear that MI6's reluctance to provide any resettlement help was an ominous sign. If they believed that I was such a threat that it was necessary to confiscate my passports, ban me from the internet, prevent me talking to journalists and oblige me to rigidly check in with a probation officer every week until 31 July, how were they planning to control me from 1 August? From that date onwards, I would be legally free to talk to journalists, use the internet and travel abroad. It was too suspicious that they would use the stick until the end of probation but then not offer even a whiff of a carrot thereafter.
There was only one conclusion to draw. MI6 must have an elaborate, possibly sinister, plan in place, to control me after 31 July. I feared that they planned to frame me for a crime with a lengthy prison sentence. They had examples of my fingerprints and genetic signature and it would not be difficult to use this as evidence in, say, a drug-smuggling prosecution. I concluded that it was better not to stay in the UK to find out. It would mean going before the end of my probation and without a passport. But how? Luckily there was my training in HMP Belmarsh to fall back on.
Dobson advised me that one way to slip out was to take a ferry from Liverpool to Belfast, then the train to Dublin. A passport was not required to travel to Northern Ireland because it was part of the United Kingdom, nor was one required to travel between the two Irish capitals because that would antagonise the Irish Republicans. Once in Dublin, I could apply for another New Zealand passport from the High Commission and fly out. But the security forces had such an obvious loophole swamped with surveillance, including CCTV cameras that could identify a face in a crowded station, and it was ground I did not know. Dobson also gave me some of his Dover tobacco-smuggling contacts who had fast boats. But getting caught up in a smuggling racket would play into MI6's hands. After reviewing the options, the best was the most brazen - just blag my way on to one of the cross-channel ferries to France. Dobson told me he had succeeded a couple of times when the check-in staff were too busy with other passengers to pay him much attention.
I chose Monday, 27 July for my abscondment because it was the school holiday season, so the ports would be busier than usual. MI6 would be particularly vigilant during the last week of my probation, meaning subterfuge was needed. On 12 July I telephoned a travel agent and booked a Qantas flight from Manchester airport to Sydney for 2 August, the day after the end of my probation and just when MI6 would anticipate my departure. Friends who rang me were informed that the last week in July was to be spent on a cycling tour of Scotland. This would all be picked up by the UKZ telephone transcribers and relayed through the corridors of Vauxhall Cross.
On 22 July an unexpected visit forced me to bring my plans forward. At about 11 a.m., as I was upstairs in my bedroom working on the internet, I heard the crunch of two sets of heavy footsteps on the gravel drive. Spying from behind a curtain, their odd and inappropriate clothing revealed they were from SB. The elder was in a dark pin-stripe suit and heavy brogues, the younger in jeans and a blue fleece top; they looked like The Professionals with Bodie off sick.
Presumably they wanted to question me, though about what I didn't know. I had not committed any new offence and SB had no business inquiring about breaches of my probation conditions. I paid no attention when they rang the front door bell and ignored their banging on the back door. They must have known I was at home through surveillance, for they did not give up easily and rang and banged until Jesse, now nearly stone deaf, heard the noise and started barking. Luckily I had locked all the doors so they could not enter without using force. They would have brought a bigger team if they had a warrant, so as long as I lay low, they would give up and go away. After a poke around the garden and outbuildings, as if recceing the lie of the land for a later arrest, they trudged back up the drive some 40 minutes after their arrival.
They would be back with a warrant and a bigger team, so there was no choice but to leave. It took half an hour to pack. I had time for a quick lunch once my parents were back, said a fond goodbye to Jesse, knowing that I would never see her again, and put my two cases on the back seat of my mother's Saab. In case SB had posted surveillance, I hid in the boot like Gordievsky until clear of the village. We arrived 20 minutes later at Penrith railway station, from where the picturesque west country line took me to the southern port city of Poole.
The morning of 24 July broke cloudy and dull, like so many others during the summer of 1998. As planned, the terminal was thronging with families and children, off to France on the first day of the school holidays. Flourishing my birth certificate, driving licence and credit cards at the harassed check-in girl at the `Truckline' counter, I explained that my passport had been stolen a few days earlier and, after some cursory questioning and a quick but nerve-wracking phone call to her superior, she issued a boarding pass for the 1245 Cherbourg ferry.
With my luggage stowed, I went up on the promenade deck to catch my last view of England and watched the myriad windsurfers and jetskiers flitting across our bows as we pulled out of Poole harbour. Just as when I left the country two years earlier on my way to Spain, it gave me no jubilation or triumph to slip from under the nose of MI6, just sadness that the dispute had ever arisen and that it was still not resolved.
I hung back from the other foot-passengers as we disembarked at Cherbourg and joined the back of the queue, thinking that if the French customs officers stopped me it would be better not to hold up a line of grumbling holidaymakers. My caution was prudent because French customs were having one of their periodic clampdowns. As soon as I presented my limited documentation and caught the sceptical glare of the French Douane, it was evident that getting into France without a passport would be harder than getting out of England. In rusty French, I explained to the first Douane my cover story; I had left my New Zealand passport in Paris and travelled to England on my British passport, which had subsequently been stolen, and so needed to get back to Paris to pick up the New Zealand one. He called his boss over, who asked me to explain again. We were then joined by a third officer and my cover story was starting to sound very thin even to my own ears. `C'est impossible,' the first Douane told me repeatedly. `You must go back on the next boat.' But after much discussion, grumbling and criticism of the English authorities for permitting me to travel, the senior officer allowed me to proceed. Grabbing my bags, I made a dash for the Cherbourg train station, eager to get away before they changed their minds. By 11 p.m., I was lodged in a cheap hotel on the Rue d'Amsterdam by the Gare St Lazare in Paris. The first part of my return to New Zealand had gone reasonably smoothly. Now, all that remained was to persuade the New Zealand High Commission in London to send my passport to Paris.
The switchboards of the New Zealand embassy in Paris opened at 9 a.m. on the Monday morning and the receptionist put me through to Kevin Bonici, the second secretary in the consular section. He agreed to ring the High Commission in London and request that my passport be sent over in the next diplomatic bag. It was a relief that he saw no objection to returning it immediately. `Sure you can have it back. You've broken no New Zealand law, and no French law,' he assured me. This sensible attitude was encouraging, but a couple of hours later he rang me back again. `We have new instructions from Wellington not to return your passport until the expiry of your licence on 1 August,' he explained. It was astonishing that Wellington had taken an interest in such a trivial incident - the MI6 liaison officer there must have swung his axe. Was not New Zealand a sovereign country with complete independence from the United Kingdom? Wellington had no legal justification to refuse to return my passport, as my breach of the OSA was not illegal in New Zealand or France. Guessing that Wellington's capitulation to pressure from MI6 would be of interest to the New Zealand media, I rang a few journalists there.
Their inquiries must have caused a bit of uneasiness in Wellington, for the following morning, shortly after 10 a.m., Mary Oliver, the consul in Paris and Kevin Bonici's boss rang me. `Sure you can ha
ve your passport back,' she enthused. `Wellington have now issued a fresh instruction. You can collect it as soon as it arrives from London on Friday morning. Come round here at noon. I look forward to meeting you.'
I spent the next two days enjoying Paris in glorious weather, though fears about MI6's next move were never far from my mind. Drinking a beer on the Champs Elys‚e in the summer evening sunshine, the possibility that the French police would arrest me at the request of MI6 seemed mere fantasy. MI6 would be reluctant to give the DST the opportunity to question me about their operations against France. Even if they did arrest me, what would be the charge? Skipping a few days of probation was not an extraditable offence. But that gnawing feeling that re-arrest was imminent never totally disappeared. Realising that the best defence against MI6's excesses was to ally myself with journalists, I rang the Sunday Times, and told them the story of my abscondment. David Leppard of their `Insight' team was already in Paris covering another story and we arranged to go together to the New Zealand embassy.
The following morning was warm and humid, and it was a relief to step into the air-conditioned lobby of Leppard's hotel on Avenue Lafayette. After a couple of calls to his room from reception, Leppard ambled down. `Bloody phone's playing up. I'm sure it's bugged.' I let his comment pass. It amused me that even experienced journalists imagined that a few crackles on the line were signs that their telephone was intercepted.
We took a taxi round to the embassy on the Avenue Leonardo da Vinci near the Place Victor Hugo. To take some photographs for the accompanying article, a Sunday Times photographer, Alastair Miller, was waiting outside as we pulled up. Even the heavy-handed DST would shy away from arresting me in front of a journalist and photographer. My suspicions about the New Zealand embassy staff were well-founded. Now they had changed their tune for the third time. `We've had new instructions from Wellington,' explained Mary Oliver, `You can't have your passport back until tomorrow.'
The embassy's capitulation to MI6 pressure over my passport was disappointing, and Oliver's farewell pleasantries fell on deaf ears as I stormed out. On the street outside I felt guilty about my rudeness and considered going back in to apologise, but Miller was impatient to get on with the photo-shoot. We walked over to the Trocadero, five minutes away, where the Eiffel tower would make a suitable backdrop, had a light lunch in an outdoor bistro, then Miller set to work. Soon we had a small crowd around us, presuming that I was a rock star or a football player.
We finished at around 1430 and since we were going the same way hailed a taxi together from the Place Victor Hugo. I kept an eye out for surveillance as we ploughed through the slow-moving Paris traffic, but saw nothing obvious. I asked the taxi-driver to drop me at the Gare St Lazare, as it was easier than giving directions to my hotel. The station was being refurbished and heavy polythene dust sheets and scaffolding obscured the familiar facade, disorientating me. Glancing around to find another landmark, I noticed a dark grey VW Passat pulling up 150 metres away. A similar car had been waiting near the taxi rank at the Trocadero. I didn't note the number so I couldn't be sure they were the same, but it added to my unease. I walked up the Rue d'Amsterdam, past the entrance to my hotel and bought a bottle of Evian from a Lebanese delicatessen. Doubling back to my lodgings, there was nobody obviously following.
No sooner had I locked the door of my room behind me and sat down on the narrow bed than there was a knock at the door. It was the sharp, aggressive knock of somebody in authority, not the soft apologetic knock of a hotel maid. `Oui, qu'est ce-que vous desirez?' I asked, unable to hide the suspicion in my voice.
'C'est la r‚ception.' The voice was too belligerent and in any case reception would have used the internal phone if they needed to speak to me. I stood up, took a deep breath and turned the key in the door. It burst in as though there was a gas explosion outside. Three heavily built men catapulted through the door, screaming, `Police, Police!', cartwheeling me backwards, smashing my head on the desk and crushing me to the floor. Resistance would have been futile, even if I was so inclined. My arms were wrestled behind my back and handcuffs snapped into place, biting into the flesh. I was helpless, but blows still rained down on the back of my head until a well-aimed kick in the ribs sucked the breath out of me. Only when I fell completely motionless did the assault stop. I was hauled upright, then thrown on to the bed. Three heavies stood over me, their glowers relaxing into triumphant, toothless grins. One was sucking a knuckle that had split during the assault. Behind them stood two more officers, their revolvers pointed at my chest. The taller of the two appeared to be in charge. A wave of the barrel and the three heavies started searching the room.
`L'ordinateur, o— est l'ordinateur?' he snapped at me. I pointed at the overturned desk where my laptop lay on the floor, face down, open at the hinge, but seemingly still in one piece. A heavy picked it up, dusted it down, slammed it shut and rammed it into a specimen bag. `Et le Psion?' continued the gun. I nodded at the bedside table and the bloody knuckle slung it in another bag. Working in silence, they gathered my other possessions and clothes together, crushed them untidily into my suitcase, struggled to close the zip, gave up and strapped it together with my belt, leaving my suit trouser-leg and a shirt-tail hanging out.
Silently they dragged me out of the room and down the narrow corridor to the lift. The commander stabbed the button but then muttered an order and decided on the stairs. There were five steep flights of them and for a moment it crossed my mind that they might give me a shove. As the five police led me past the front desk of the hotel, my hair dishevelled, shirt splattered with blood, shirt-tail hanging out, I smiled apologetically at the receptionist. He glared back, presuming I must be guilty of some villainous offence.
Outside, a small group of onlookers had already gathered. Two plain clothes police cars waited with an ambulance behind them, suggesting that they expected me to put up a fight. `Why did you smash me up?' I asked one of the officers in French as he pushed me into the back seat of the first car. He grunted menacingly and I shut up.
Sitting impassively in the back of the car, handcuffed to a flic on each side, we made our way westwards and then along the south bank of the Seine. It was a sickening feeling to lose control of my freedom again and dull helpless resignation set in, like a rabbit caught in a snare knowing its time is up. MI6 had got me again on a Friday afternoon, meaning a whole weekend in an uncomfortable police cell before a court hearing. Still, on the bright side, French handcuffs were a lot more comfortable than British ones, and Ronnie had told me that French jails were not too bad.
The traffic became more fluid as we left central Paris and we picked up speed down the southern embankment. Turning suddenly left, we passed under an elevated section of the metro and then abruptly right down a steep ramp into an underground compound.
My captors hauled me out of the car, led me through a few dimly lit corridors and shoved me into a custody cell. I gave it two stars: no toilet, no window, only a wooden bench with a dirty blanket and no mattress or pillow. British police cells were a category above. The front wall of the cell was entirely reinforced glass, allowing the guards to watch my every move. My handcuffs snapped off and the heavies ordered me to strip, then handed back my clothes, minus my belt and wristwatch. Wordlessly, they left and locked me in. I sat down on the bench and put my head in my hands. I had no idea how long they would hold me, so prepared myself mentally for the worst.
Perhaps an hour later they returned, handcuffed me again and escorted me down a short corridor into a windowless and stuffy interview room, lit by flickering neon lights. There was a long desk, behind which five police officers sat, Ratcliffe amongst them, smiling triumphantly as the heavies pushed me into a chair. Ratcliffe caught me glaring and spoke first. `You can't be surprised to see me here, Richard.'
I knew that Ratcliffe was only doing his job and following orders from on high, but it was difficult not to feel hostility towards him as the executor of this inconvenience. I ignored him and turne
d to the French officer who had overseen my arrest. `Je suis desol‚, mais je ne veux pas r‚pondre … l'Inspector en anglais ici sans votre permis.' There was no better way for an Englishman to annoy a Frenchman than by speaking English on his territory, as Ratcliffe had done. If I spoke French, it could only be helpful to my cause. His stern face cracked into a half smile and he introduced himself as Commandant Broisniard of the DST. Alongside him was Captain Gruignard, a new face who had not been present at the arrest. He had a small laptop computer in front of him, used by the French police to record interviews instead of a tape recorder. Another SB officer, Inspector Mark Whaley, sat alongside Ratcliffe and between the British and French officers sat an interpreter. In front of them, scattered across the desk, were my laptop, Psion, mobile phone and various papers and faxes.
`You have been arrested under the Mutual Assistance Act,' explained Broisniard in French. This agreement obliges a foreign police service to arrest a person at the request of another police force, whatever the reason. It was a piece of legislation that was open to abuse and SB were testing its spirit. `I am sorry', he explained, `but we are obliged to arrest you.' He advised me to cooperate fully with the questioning, assured me that Ratcliffe and Whaley were not entitled to question me directly and explained that the only language permitted in the interrogation would be French. The SB officers could propose questions via the interpreter but only he and Gruignard could directly question me on French soil.
The Big Breach Page 36