We will never know its exact numbers, the Baroness tells us, because no such information exists and its members never gather in a single place. They collaborate when necessary, but not for gain or advancement. There are Network members in government, in the military, in commerce and academia; others serve in more dangerous roles. They are content for their work to be invisible and for the most part lead ordinary lives, incorporating, without any outward show, their hidden task into the fabric of their daily responsibilities.
Such a possibility, if we wish to reflect on it, now exists for us.
She gives us time to think, but we don’t need long. We are young and keen, and we accept. Nothing changes for us on the surface of things, but in our spare time we meet the Baroness whenever our duties allow, and begin our secret course of study.
There are some things you learn which, when you first encounter them, make each day seem like a gift beyond value. Our first few sessions have this quality. The fact that what we’re learning must be kept secret adds a further, intoxicating aspect to our work, which is why the protocols for secrecy are drummed into us from the start.
The success of all our future work is founded on the twin arts of observation and clandestine communication – essential practices, the Baroness tells us, which have not changed since men first learned to spy on one another, and which require nothing of technology. We learn first to see and hear through a new version of our senses, as if an extra dimension has been added to their habitual function. Our task is to act at all times on the assumption that we are being observed, and to see ourselves through the eyes of our observers. We learn to watch and follow a human target, to note and then predict his actions. Then, by inverting the same skills, to evade a follower and to conceal our own telltale gestures of impatience, anxiety or relief. We must be able, the Baroness endlessly reminds us, to transmit the signals of whatever emotion we choose to whoever is watching, as well as to draw the attention of others in whatever direction we wish.
To sharpen our skills of observation, she invites us to assign a portion of our attention to something going on around us, and then points out when our attention has faltered. Our ordinary power of attention must acquire a second track, she reminds us. At meetings in restaurants she challenges us to describe the faces we have seen at the tables on our way in and to recall the numbers of buses or taxis we’ve used on the way. She explains how to use mental mnemonics to remember lists of things or names. We must learn these skills, she says, practise them in small ways every day, and live them until they become instinctively natural, betraying no trace of our ulterior agendas.
A large part of our time is devoted to arranging and conducting meetings. For secret information to pass between two parties, there must be a moment of contact, and this is the most perilous moment of all. A ‘chance’ meeting, which has in fact been arranged in advance, may be best when the exchange must be verbal. When information can be passed on without the need for a conversation, a brush contact may be best, involving a fleeting and wordless exchange of secret material. An innocent third party, or cut-out, may be another solution. Each has its advantages and corresponding risks. Brush contacts must be arranged carefully in advance and executed with precise timing; a cut-out may be unreliable and describe both parties if interrogated; and a chance meeting must stand up to intense scrutiny if suspected. But a meeting can also be arranged remotely, by an advertisement in a paper, a phone call with a disguised message, or take the form of a ‘dead letter box’ at an agreed location, visited by both parties at different times, perhaps days apart. The Baroness’s preferred method for transmitting short messages is an ‘innocent’ letter, in which an ordinary text disguises a broken-up message, previously enciphered by means of a key known only to the recipient. To this end we practise a variety of codes and ciphers that can be created in the field without potentially incriminating aids such as printed one-time pads or code books, and study the theories of fractionation and homophony, and the various ways to combine codes that will render them impenetrable in the short term.
We learn of famous historical double agents and illegals and of their successes and failures. We study the career of one of the CIA’s greatest spies, the Soviet GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky, and are invited to decide whether he was a triple agent or not. We learn too of the quiet English mother of three to whose children Penkovsky passed microfilm-stuffed sweets in public parks and on trains, trained by the SIS for the purpose but never caught. We are told of the reckless extravagance of Aldrich Ames, whose tailored suits, bought with KGB dollars, went unnoticed while he betrayed hundreds of CIA assets abroad. We consider the long successes of illegals with carefully constructed legends such as Rudolph Abel and Konon Molody. Abel lived in New York as a retired photofinisher; Molody in London as a bubblegum-machine salesman. Both masterminded spy rings, both were eventually caught and given long prison sentences, and both were later exchanged for Western spies captured in the Soviet Union.
We are on one occasion delivered a fascinating lecture analysing the daring escape from Moscow, organised by his SIS handlers, of the KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky. The lecture is given by a middle-aged man with a serious-looking face, straw-coloured hair and a distinct Slavic accent, on loan to us for the day with the approval of his agent resettlement officer from the Firm. Afterwards, I confess how impressed I’ve been by the speaker.
‘It is the lessons of tradecraft you are being asked to consider on such occasions,’ she says, ‘not the personalities involved.’ The Baroness lets this sink in. ‘Look more closely, and you will see the cold-hearted pride and ruthless vanity from which such people suffer.’
It becomes an axiom of our training that whatever the chosen means of communication and however it is passed, there must always be a credible cover story, as well as innocuous signals, agreed in advance, to indicate danger to one’s allies. The closer the cover story is to the truth, the better. But there must always, always be a cover story.
When Saddam Hussein is foolish enough to invade Kuwait, the Baroness summons us to discuss things. We are both preparing to deploy to the Gulf and awaiting our final orders. It won’t be real war, the Baroness tells us. She predicts confidently that Kuwait will be quickly liberated, but that the West will be blinded by its victory to the greater consequences of the conflict. America’s willingness to turn its back on the heroic and ruined nation of Afghanistan but to spend billions in defence of a corrupt oil-rich state will confirm the deepest cynicism of its opponents. The time, she says, is drawing near. She offers us a final chance to withdraw. The war in Kuwait will provide the context for our operational phase with the Network. She is fond of the term context. She advises us to await our orders and do nothing except what is expected of us. We will know the signal when it is given to us. ‘Like a passing bus,’ she says, ‘you will know when to jump on it.’ It is better, she explains, that neither of us sees it coming.
We do not, in the event. When hostilities begin, we are both assigned unusual extra-regimental roles with the same interrogation team in Kuwait. Our parent unit is the Joint Services Interrogation Wing, housed at Ashford and commanded by a I Corps lieutenant colonel, hence our ‘2’ designations, which indicate an intelligence role. The assignment is unusual because the forward interrogation team to which we’re assigned – me as operations officer and Manny as 2i/c – is formed primarily from reservists who are volunteer members of 22 Int Coy, the Naval Reserve unit HMS Ferret, and 7630 Flight. We have relevant backgrounds, having both been through DSL Beaconsfield, but we’re not regular senior NCOs or Reserve officers, and in time-honoured fashion we blame the mistake in tasking on the army. Most of the interrogation teams deploy forward to where enemy prisoners are being held, but we’re assigned to Category 1 prisoners, who are usually senior officers and intelligence personnel, and our team takes over a warehouse on the outskirts of the city and converts it into an interrogation centre. We’re barely up and running when the war screeches to a halt. Saddam Hussein’s great army has fled before the allied onslaught, and the Baroness’s prediction has proven uncannily accurate. The active combat phase of Desert Storm has lasted one hundred hours, Kuwait is liberated, and Saddam’s ‘mother of battles’ turns out to be a rout.