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12. THE BREACH

THURSDAY, 20 MARCH 1997
MANCHESTER AIRPORT

As the UK Air flight from Malaga touched down I regretted leaving Spain. Staring out the Airbus's porthole, my mood reflected the weather: dull, cold and raining in the way that only happens in Manchester. It was not impossible that MI6 had tricked me into returning to the UK so it was a relief not to be stopped as I checked through passport control using my real passport, none the worse for its eight months in the petrol tank. Alex Huntley's passport was carefully stitched into the armoured padding of my leather motorcycle jacket - it might still prove useful.

It was good to be back relaxing in Cumbria, enjoying home cooking, walking elderly Jesse along the Eden and on the occasional sunny day taking the windsurfer out on Ullswater. But I could not stay there forever; it was time to think about getting a job and starting a new career. I'd already ruled out the obvious option for someone with a first-class degree and a couple of languages. Returning to the world of stripy shirts and champagne-quaffing hoorays would become overwhelming inside of a week. The new job would have to be as challenging and stimulating as working for MI6. That would not be straightforward.

Morrison told me in Madrid that the service had sorted out a job in `industry'. It transpired that this was in the marketing department of a motor racing team, owned by former world champion driver Jackie Stewart, in the Buckinghamshire new town of Milton Keynes. It sounded glamorous and interesting but I was not sure whether it would be suitable. Classmates who had gone into marketing from Cambridge were all cloth-headed lower-second geography graduates too thick to get anything better and I doubted that selling anything could match the exhilaration of running agents in Bosnia or the stimulation of matching wits with Iranian terrorists. And no one with two neurons firing would intentionally move from London to Milton Keynes, a sterile planned town that gave new meaning to the word `boring'.

MI6 arranged an interview with the company and, due to their behind-the-scenes string-pulling rather than the strength of my credentials, I was offered the job. But it was at a salary 25 per cent below my MI6 pay, in direct contradiction to Morrison's promise; MI6 had already reneged on their own `agreement'. A quick tour of Milton Keynes following the interview confirmed that its reputation was richly deserved. I didn't immediately accept the job, and decided to look around elsewhere. Knowing that it would be easier to forget my dispute with MI6 and settle into a duff job if I had the stimulation of living abroad in an attractive country, I decided to try my luck in Australia. Holidays there had always been barmy, and my New Zealand passport would give me full resident rights.

I took a Qantas 747 to Sydney on 19 April, intending to spend a fortnight looking round the job and housing market. After a week in the bright, vibrant and cosmopolitan city the prospect of returning to Milton Keynes to start on the bottom rung of a career in marketing seemed dire, so I telephoned Stewart Grand Prix declining their offer. They begged me to reconsider, probably at the behest of MI6 rather than any genuine desire to employ me, and told me they would ring back again in a week.

Because it would be a breach of the OSA to reveal my former employment with MI6, personnel ordered me to claim on my CV that I had voluntarily left employment with the FCO. Clearly this wouldn't work. No employer would believe that I had voluntarily resigned from a well-paid and stimulating job in the British FCO in order to start at the bottom on a lower salary in a private-sector job. There was no alternative but to tell the truth about my former employment and the manner of my dismissal. I had nothing to be ashamed of; my dismissal was illegal and there was no reason to lie to a potential future employer just to save blushes for MI6. But nevertheless, the job-search was not easy. The Australian economy was going through a rough patch and companies were laying people off. My CV would hardly be regarded as conventional at the best of economic times. Facing economic uncertainties themselves, companies were not prepared to take a punt on an unknown quantity like myself. As the rejection letters piled up, so did my anger at MI6. The idea of publishing a book reared its head again. Peter Wright had succeeded in getting Spycatcher published in Australia, so perhaps that precedent would be helpful to me? Starting with the `As', I methodically rang all the publishers listed in the Sydney phone directory. The initial response was discouraging, mostly: `We only deal with literary agents.' But my luck changed when I started on the `Ts'. The receptionist of Transworld Publishers in Neutral Bay put me straight through to a junior commissioning editor, Jude McGhee. She sounded interested and we agreed to meet the next day at the trendy Verona Caf on Sydney's Oxford Street. The meeting went well and McGhee, a young New Zealander, invited me to Transworld's offices the following day to meet her boss.

Thursday, 1 May 1997, was a glorious Sydney autumnal day, bright blue sky, temperature in the low 30s and a pleasant breeze blowing in from the harbour. Disembarking the Cremorne Point ferry to walk the few hundred metres to Transworld's offices on Yeo Street, I hoped that the meeting would result in a contract. It would be a big breach of the OSA, but given the way I'd been treated, it seemed justified. They could hardly expect me to keep my `lifelong duty of confidentiality' if they couldn't keep to their own `agreement' for a fortnight. And if I meekly accepted without protest my dismissal, MI6 would carry on casually ruining the lives of its employees and trampling on the freedoms it was supposed to protect.

McGhee greeted me in Transworld's reception and showed me through to Shona Martyn's office. Martyn, also a New Zealander judging by her accent, was in her early 40s and pictures of her young family were displayed on her desk. She introduced herself as the Australasian non-fiction editor for Transworld and related some of her previous career as a journalist first in New Zealand and then with the prestigious Sydney Morning Herald. Over the next hour we discussed the bones of my story and I threw in a few anecdotes to highlight interesting points. I was careful to disguise names, dates and operational detail. Martyn didn't make it clear whether she was interested in the project or not. She sparked over some details, but the next moment she seemed as though she wanted to end the meeting. She had an oddly hostile approach for somebody who had been a journalist, and kept asking for proof that I had really worked in MI6.

`Obviously I can't give you that,' I replied impatiently after the third time of asking, `because if MI6 would not allow my personnel papers to be released to an employment tribunal, they obviously will not give them to you.'

`But you have to understand that under ethical standards of journalism, I need proof that you really did work for MI6,' she replied. `Besides, why do you want to publish this book?' she asked.

`It is in the public interest to expose bad management within MI6,' I replied, `in order to encourage them to correct their faults. If I just let them sweep this failing under the carpet, they will not mend their ways, and in the long run that is potentially far more damaging to national security.' Martyn nodded approvingly to that at least. `I won't gratuitously damage MI6 - I will not compromise any ongoing operations, I will use aliases for members of staff and I would like to submit a draft of the text to MI6 to allow them to censor any passages whose sensitivity I may have misjudged,' I said.

`Oh, I could not possibly allow that,' Martyn retorted, `that would be against all my ethics as a journalist and defender of freedom of expression.'

`So you wouldn't be prepared to allow me to submit the manuscript?' I asked again for clarification.

`Absolutely not!' replied Martyn emphatically.

As the discussion seemed to be going nowhere, I gave her an ultimatum. `Well, are you interested in this project or not?'

Martyn thought for a moment. `Can you give me what you have written so far, and I'll think about it?'

`No, I can't do that,' I replied, `because I haven't yet written a draft.' It was too risky to give her a copy of the text, even if I recovered it from its hiding place on the internet.

Martyn thought for a moment. `I'll tell you what, then, write down a synopsis outlining the contents of each chapter and I'll have a think about it,' she replied.

I was still suspicious and reluctant. It was one thing to break the OSA verbally, as it could never be proved in court, but putting pen to paper was another. If a written synopsis fell into the wrong hands, I'd be vulnerable to legal action. But the former journalist had just vouched for her ethics. It was worth the risk. `OK, I'll give you a synopsis, but I trust that you will show it to nobody.'

Martyn pointed to the steel filing cabinet in her office. `It'll be locked up in there. It will go nowhere.' She gave me her card and I left to get the late-afternoon ferry to Fisherman's Wharf.

That evening, back in my rented holiday apartment near Bondi Beach, I typed an anodyne and brief outline. The following day, unsure of my prospects for a book contract but confident that Martyn would honour her word, I dropped a sealed envelope at Transworld's office.

My money was running out and, with no job prospects in sight, my thoughts reluctantly turned to England. There were plenty of drawbacks to returning, but at least there was a job there. It wasn't a great offer but it would provide some marketable work experience for the future. Perhaps it would turn out better than expected. If it didn't, I could come back to Sydney. I rang up Stewart Grand Prix, accepted their offer and was given a starting date.

Back in Milton Keynes, things started brightly enough. I found a small flat in Wavendon, a village a few miles from work. A Carlisle Saab dealer, from whom my mother had recently bought a car, kindly helped out by lending one of their demonstration cars. With a flat, a job and a car, my lot was better than it had been for several years. The first day at work, however, confirmed my worst fears. Contrary to what Morrison had assured me, I was the junior employee in the department with no input into policies and no outlet to use my initiative or develop projects. It amounted to little more than a school-leaver's job; MI6 had reneged on another clause of their `agreement'. Moreover, I felt the cloud of my dismissal hanging over me, making it hard for me to feel settled and welcome. Over the next few weeks I made an effort to find something better and attended several interviews, but the knotty chestnut of explaining why I had left the FCO always reared its thorny head. After many wasted miles in my loan car, I wrote to PD/PROSPECT asking for his help. The reply arrived a few days later, not from the kindly and sensible Timpson but from another officer whose name was unfamiliar. He wrote, `The service has discharged all its obligations under the Madrid agreement by finding your current employment and we are therefore not minded to help you further.'

The arrogant reply added to my anger. It would have been easy for them to use their contacts to help find something. `Stuff their lifelong duty of confidentiality then,' I thought to myself. A book contract could be my ticket out of Milton Keynes. I wrote to MI6 to ask how to submit a draft manuscript with a view to potential publication. By return post, they sent a strongly worded letter saying that it would be illegal even for me to write a draft and demanded an assurance that I had not started work on it. If they were not going to be reasonable, then it would have to be done secretly.

MI6 would be listening to my telephone at home, even though they had promised in their `agreement' not to intercept my communications. But my work PC had an internet connection and it was unlikely that they could get a warrant for that. One afternoon in early September, I fired off a two-line e-mail to Shona Martyn, asking her to get in touch if she was interested in pursuing the project. After two weeks she had not replied, so presuming that her answer was no, I thought no further of it.

A few days later, on 8 September, my landlady rang me at work in an agitated state. `I'm afraid your flat's been burgled this morning. I noticed the upstairs window was broken and when I checked through your kitchen window I saw the place had been ransacked.'

I rushed home immediately. A token attempt had been made to disguise the theft as a normal burglary; the contents of the fridge were strewn across the floor and and my bookcase had been overturned. But the identity of the culprits was not hard to guess as the only item of value that had gone was the laptop containing the draft. The TV, stereo, video-recorder and even small valuables had not been touched. The police arrived to have a poke around but they were not interested in taking any forensic evidence.

Contrary to their promise, MI6 intercepted my e-mail and my brief lapse in security sparked not only the burglary but much more significant events thousands of kilometres away. After intercepting the note to Martyn, it wasn't difficult for them to find out who she was. The e-mail address gave them the name of her Australian internet service provider, which in turn gave MI6 her name and street address.

On Friday 24 October 1997, Agent Jackson of the Australian Federal Police arrived at Transworld asking to speak to Shona Martyn. She agreed, granting him a two-hour interview during which she provided a full and detailed account of our meeting, handed over my synopsis and then signed a witness statement.

On Friday, 30 October, having a lunchtime appointment for a haircut in Wavenden, I popped home from work for a quick bite to eat first. As I was putting the kettle on, there was a knock on the door. It was the young constable from Buckinghamshire police, PC Ellis, who had investigated the mysterious theft of my laptop. With him was a burly plainclothes inspector. `Hello, Mr Tomlinson, there have been some new developments concerning your burglary and we want to ask you a few more questions about it.' Ellis seemed friendly enough, and introduced his colleague as Inspector Garrold of CID. `Would you mind if we came inside?' Ellis asked.

The same feeling of impending doom came over me that I used to feel when about to be tanned at school for some petty misdemeanour. If they were going to arrest me, they would have a search warrant, so the only thing to be gained by refusing them entry was a broken door. `Sure, come on in,' I replied, trying to sound indifferent.

`Would you mind taking a seat?' Garrold said in a tone that gave me no option but to sit down on the sofa. He and Ellis stood over me menacingly. `You are under arrest for breaking section 1 of the 1989 Official Secrets Act,' Garrold announced. He grabbed one wrist, Ellis the other, and I was in handcuffs.

More cars pulled up on the gravel drive outside and quickly my flat was filled with plainclothes officers, their mobile phones bleeping. Two joined Garrold in standing over me, menacingly. I caught glimpses of their gun-holsters under their sports-jackets, a sinister sight in the UK where police officers are rarely armed. The atmosphere became even more threatening when the friendly Ellis bade goodbye, a concerned look on his face. A little moustached Welshman opened up as soon as Ellis had left. `OK, Tomlinson, where's the fucking gun?' he demanded.

`What gun?' I asked, bemused.

`The gun, don't fuck us around, where's your gun?' he glared. Their insistence that I was armed added to the sense of unreality, as if it were another IONEC mock arrest.

`I haven't got a gun, never have had one, and I'm never likely to want one,' I replied with complete bafflement.

The Welshman detected my bemusement and softened his inquisition. `We have information that you brought back a gun from your time in Bosnia. We want to know where it is.'

`Ah, now I understand!' I laughed. `That gun's rusting at the bottom of the Adriatic.' MI6 must have told the police that I had kept it, perhaps in order to persuade them to make the arrest as heavy-handed as possible.

Garrold ordered me to stand, removed the handcuffs, and strip-searched me. Finding nothing of interest, he pushed me back on to the sofa. For the next three hours, forced by the tightly clamped rigid handcuffs to hunch with my wrists by my chin and elbows in my lap like a stuffed chicken, I watched the latex-gloved officers dismantle my flat, checking behind every picture, lifting edges of the carpet, stripping the bed, rummaging through my dirty laundry. Every item of interest was sealed in a plastic bag and deposited in a large white box brought for the purpose. It filled steadily. First was my newly purchased Psion organiser, which I had left on the coffee table. Then all the computer disks. Myriad scraps of paper with innocent phone numbers scribbled on to them. My Spanish-English dictionary. Various home videos. My photo album. I was not at all worried until a bald-headed officer, searching my leather motorcycle jacket, suddenly piped up, `Got something here, sir.' The others clustered over my jacket. Prodding and pushing at the lining, baldy pulled out a small package, carefully wrapped in masking tape. My morale plummeted when I realised that it was my `Alex Huntley' passport, driving licence and credit card. I watched latex-gloved fingers carefully insert the package into a plastic bag, seal and add it to the growing pile.

Simultaneously, a search team from Cumbria SB descended on my parents' home in Cumbria and a third team confiscated the desktop PC at Stewart Grand Prix. My captor's mobile phones were ringing incessantly because the three teams were using them to coordinate the raids.

Just after 5 p.m., as darkness was descending, Garrold announced that it was time to go. My handcuffs were released briefly to allow a visit to the lavatory; then, handcuffed to another officer, I was led out into the courtyard and bundled into the back of one of the waiting dark-green Vauxhall Omegas. Garrold got into the driving seat and we pulled out of the courtyard to start the drive towards the motorway and, presumably, London. The remaining officers carried on working in my flat.

We arrived at Charing Cross police station at around 7 p.m., the journey slowed by the evening rush-hour traffic. We parked up in a central courtyard filled with patrol cars. Still in handcuffs, I was led through heavy doors and up a ramp to the main reception desk where they handed me over to the custody of the duty sergeant. My name, address and charge were logged, then he allowed me to make one personal call and contact a lawyer. Still handcuffed, I rang my father, who already knew what was happening by virtue of his own police raid. He tried to sound upbeat and positive, but I knew he was worried. I hoped that my mother was taking the shock OK. Then I phoned John Wadham and asked for his advice. He cancelled his evening plans so that he could come at once. Two PCs took me down to the cells to await his arrival.

As the cell door slammed shut, I felt calm about my situation. My previous experiences of handcuffs and clanging doorlocks in the TA and on the IONEC lessened the unfamiliarity of imprisonment. Massaging my chafed wrists, I surveyed my new surroundings. The cell was bare except for a dirty lavatory, a concrete bench with a plastic foam mattress and one grubby blanket. I rolled the blanket into a pillow and lay down on the mattress to await Wadham's arrival.

At 8 p.m., the flap in the door slapped open, two eyes briefly checked me, the bolt slammed back and two police officers entered the cell. `OK, let's have a Full Monty,' they ordered, then escorted me in handcuffs to the interview rooms where Wadham was waiting. We only spoke briefly. There was not much he could do, as we did not yet know what evidence SB had. He gave me a book, a biography of former prime minister Gladstone, and some fresh fruit, which would make the evening pass more easily.

I slept well that night despite the primitive bedding arrangements, aided by a sleeping pill given to me by the police doctor. The next morning, after a stodgy cooked breakfast reminiscent of army food, the duty sergeant escorted me back to the interview rooms where Wadham and two police officers waited. They introduced themselves as Detective Inspectors Ratcliffe and Durn of the Metropolitan Police SB. For the rest of the morning and until late in the afternoon, they grilled me relentlessly, the tape-recorder whirring in the background, gradually revealing their evidence against me. First, the copy of the synopsis I had given to Martyn and the transcript of her interview with the Australian police. Then the transcript of a second interview with her, which Ratcliffe and Durn had flown to Sydney to conduct themselves. Finally, the `Alex Huntley' documents. Just before 6 p.m. they charged me with breaking section 1 of the 1989 OSA. The duty sergeant refused bail and remanded me in police custody until a magistrate's hearing on Monday.

`At least Ratcliffe did not try to charge you for the Huntley passport and driving licence,' Wadham explained to me sympathetically after the duty sergeant had left us for a moment. `They could have charged you under the 1911 OSA for that, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years.' Several months later Wadham learned that MI6 had pressed the police hard to charge me under this act. Thankfully, Ratcliffe argued that the charges would not stick because I had not knowingly stolen the documents.

Although the prospect of prison was unpleasant, I was not unduly worried. Indeed, I felt a sense of relief. By arresting and charging me, MI6 were blatantly exposing their hypocrisy in preventing me taking them to the tribunal. If the courts were `secure' enough for them to prosecute me for breaking the OSA, then why were they not `secure' enough for me to take them to an employment tribunal? My arrest would get considerable media coverage and it would be more embarrassing and damaging for MI6 in the long-run than it would be for me. Indeed, there were positive aspects of the arrest: until then I had been referred to as `Agent T' in newspaper reports because MI6 had used an injunction to suppress publication of my real name. Now my name would be in the public domain and I would be able legally to tell friends, relatives and future employers about my previous career and the shoddy way I had been treated. It was quite a relief to leave the shadows, even if it was via a dark prison cell.

Later that evening the duty sergeant unlocked my cell and took me to the forensic laboratory where police technicians took my fingerprints and photographs and a DNA sample by scraping the inside of my cheek with a spatula. The data would be stored on the police's central computer. `If you are acquitted of the charge then you can apply to have these records destroyed,' explained the technician, `but until then, welcome to the criminal fraternity,' he added with a smile.

The remainder of the weekend was spent in the dirty cell with Gladstone for company. I wondered what MI6 hoped to achieve by prosecuting me. Passing the synopsis to Martyn had done no harm - it probably had sat gathering dust in her filing cabinet until Federal Agent Jackson visited. Even if she had shown it to the top dog in the KGB, it was anodyne and innocuous. Prosecuting me would not solve the dispute, it would just exacerbate it. Even if they gave me the maximum sentence of two years, I would be out of jail relatively soon, and then what? On release I would be without a job and a lot more pissed off.

On Sunday afternoon I was permitted a short visit from my father, who had driven down from Cumbria bringing a change of clothing and a wash-kit so that I could be presentable for my bail hearing the following day. Wadham came later that evening to discuss the appearance. `I've found a good barrister to argue your case,' he announced. `Owen Davies is a flamboyant character, who has a good reputation for taking on political and human rights cases. He's really keen to take you on - it'll make a change from representing death-row inmates in Jamaica,' John added encouragingly.

Inevitably I/OPS would have been working over the weekend to ensure that Monday's media would report my arrest with favourable spin, so we batted back by drafting a short counter-spinner. It was a prudent move, as the Monday morning early edition broadsheets and the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 all initially quoted the MI6 line that I had been arrested for `selling secrets'. It was only when they received our own release that they moderated their line to report that I had merely shown a short synopsis to an Australian publisher.

On Sunday night, I asked the duty sergeant to open me up early in the morning to give me time to wash and shave. Permission was granted but the request `forgotten', so the next morning I was handuffed and escorted to Bow Street magistrates court unshaven and unwashed. It was a trivial but demeaning little ploy to ensure that I looked as disreputable as possible.

A Group 4 security van picked me up from the police station and in the cells at Bow Street their officers strip-searched me again. `You'll be up in the dock in about 15 minutes,' the young guard informed me, `would you like anything to drink?' I sat down, sipped the sickly sweet tea and tried to read Gladstone.

At last the door clanked open and the Group 4 guards entered the cell to re-handcuff me. My cell was at the end of a long corridor, and as we passed cell after cell captive faces pressed up against the tiny door hatches to see what was going on. `Cor, he's all right,' screamed one female. `Put `im in in here with me, and I'll sort him out for ya'.'

`Shut up, Mary,' the guards chuckled, slamming shut her hatch as we passed.

Wadham was waiting in the corridor outside the court with a begowned barrister. `Hi, I'm Owen Davies.' He extended a hand to greet me, his tanned wrist adorned with the sort of beaded bracelet favoured by beach bums. `Why is he handcuffed?' Davies demanded of my guards as he realised I couldn't reciprocate the greeting.

`We've instructions from above that he has to be handcuffed to appear in court,' replied the young guard sheepishly. Making me appear handcuffed, unshaved and in three-day-old clothes would make me appear more villainous to the assembled press gallery than if I was clean scrubbed and in a fresh suit.

`Well, we're not having that,' retorted Davies. He shooed the guards away for a confidential word with me. `Before you even go in the dock, we'll insist that you appear without handcuffs. They are just trying to swing the magistrate against you.' I had never been in trouble before, had no history of violence and had been arrested for nothing more than writing out a few words on five sheets of paper, yet I was being treated like a master criminal or a terrorist. Davies and Wadham returned to the court to argue that I should not be shackled, and I was led back down to the cells.

Davies won the first skirmish. Twenty minutes later, my handcuffs were removed at the door to the court and I walked to the dock with my dignity. The packed court fell silent. Glancing up to the public gallery, I tried to pick out my father but he was lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces. To my left the press gallery was packed with reporters, their faces familiar from television. A press artist was already starting to map out a sketch of me that would be used to illustrate the story in the following day's newspaper articles. Alongside Wadham and Davies to the right were the prosecution barristers, amongst them one of the MI6 legal representatives. I wondered what satisfaction he could possibly get from bringing this prosecution against a former colleague.

The court clerk asked me to stand to confirm my name and address, then Colin Gibbs of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) opened the case, arguing that bail should not be granted because I would certainly attempt to abscond. Although Gibbs admitted that my passports had been confiscated, he launched into a flattering though greatly exaggerated account about my training in the use of disguise and ability to cross borders illegally. After 15 minutes of character assassination, Owen Davies stood up to argue for bail. My father had offered the title deeds to his house as a surety and I had offered my own. It was absurd to imagine that, facing a maximum two-year sentence, I would abscond and have my flat and my parents' home confiscated. But as soon as the examining magistrate started his summing-up speech it was clear that he had decided to remand me in custody. `I have no doubt that you would be a danger to national security if you were given bail,' he intoned gravely, as if he had already made up his mind before hearing Davies' arguments. The guards indicated for me to come down off the dock and brought me back down to the court cells.

Wadham and Davies came down to see me afterwards to offer their sympathies. Peering through the door hatch, John spoke first. `It's no surprise, really, that you didn't get bail. Magistrates are scared stiff of the OSA.'

`We'll try again next week,' added Owen, his mischievous eyes twinkling. `Look on the bright side. You'll be a lot more comfortable on remand in jail than in a police cell - at least there you'll get a shower.'

And so my life was about to take a new twist that just a short while ago would have been inconceivable. As the Group 4 prison van drove me south towards Brixton jail, it passed over Vauxhall Bridge, within sight of my former employer. As I peered out of the porthole window at the building where I had spent happier times, I rued the chain of events which had led to my situation. In just a few years, I had gone from being the holder of an EPV certificate in the most sensitive part of the British government, trusted with secrets denied to all but the highest officials, to becoming a scruffy dishevelled prisoner heading for one of London's dingiest and most notorious jails.

`Oi you, Basildon. Follow me.' I looked up at the tattooed screw who had just entered the smoke-filled cell where I had been held since arrival at Brixton jail an hour earlier. Two other newly remanded prisoners were sharing the cell with me. One was an Italian, clutching a two-day-old Gazzetto dello Sport, who spoke not a word of English and was bewildered by what was going on around him; the other, his face puffy, sweaty and cement-grey, sat on his hands and rocked gently backwards and forwards, his silence broken only by the occasional gasp. `Yeah you,' the guard indicated to me. `Basildon, that's you, innit? James Bond's brother.' The guard laughed with a hacking smoker's cough at his obscure joke. And so, for the duration of my time in Brixton jail, I was named after a famous brand of writing paper. `Bring your bag, and don't try any kung fu, or any other 007 stuff.' I picked up the small case containing a few extra clothes which my father had brought down and followed him down the corridor to start the reception process.

My knowledge of prison life was limited to what I'd seen on occasional television dramas and odd snippets of wisdom from Winston and Shaggy, who had done time for cannabis dealing. I decided that the best approach would be to adopt the `grey man' tactic advised to us on SAS selection. Stay quiet but attentive, do not speak to anybody unless spoken to and cooperate quickly with all instructions. Reception took most of the day, each stage separated by a long wait in a smoke-filled holding-pen with my fellow new inmates. `Mondays are always busy,' explained one screw as he escorted me through to the search-room, `because of all the drunks and druggies who've been pulled in over the weekend.' In the searchroom there was an airport X-ray machine, photographic equipment and a large rubber mat on which the screws ordered me to stand. `Right, Basildon, your prison number is BX5126, which you'd better memorise right now,' explained the screw, ''cos all your mail has to have that number on or else it goes straight in the bin.' Like my school number and army number, BX5126 soon became indelibly ingrained in my memory. `Empty your pockets and that bag on the table,' he ordered, `then get back on the mat.'

My possessions were minutely examined. Wallet, money, credit cards, phone cards, stamps and anything else tradeable were confiscated and recorded in my personal file. My sponge bag was emptied, the razor was confiscated and recorded, but the toothpaste, shampoo and aftershave went straight in the bin. `We don't know what might be in them. They could be full of crack for all we know,' explained the screw. All the fresh fruit my father had brought for me went the same way. `Right, let's have a Fully Monty then,' the screw ordered. My pile of clothes was passed through the X-ray machine before they allowed me to dress again. After photographing and finger-printing, the screws escorted me to another holding-pen to await the medical exam.

Many prisoners come into jail in poor mental and physical health. Often they are drug addicts and need a methadone fix to ease withdrawal, or may be suicidal at the start of a long sentence. A medical check is obligatory before they can be assigned to a wing for their own safety and the safety of the other prisoners.

The two officers in the medical centre already knew who I was. `I can't believe they've nicked you,' commented the orderly as he examined my forearms and wrists for injection scars or suicide attempts. `They've really shot themselves in the arse putting you in here just for writing a book.' The burly young guard, watching over the examination in case of troublesome prisoners, chuckled in agreement. `Fuckin' madness. But look on the bright side, at least you'll be able to add another chapter to your book when you get out ...'

A glance at a wall clock showed that I finally cleared reception at about 1830. Clutching a black bin liner containing the few possessions I'd been allowed to keep, I followed two screws down a long corridor. Judging by the smell of stale cabbages that reminded me of the kitchens at Barnard Castle School, I guessed that they were taking me to the dining area to get something to eat. `Get yourself some scoff in there, Basildon,' the screw ordered, indicating a dining-room filled with tables and benches. About ten other prisoners were already eating from metal trays. There was silence, apart from the occasional grunted request for the plastic salt cellar or for left-over food. I queued up for my rice, beef stew and buttered white bread, and sat down with my metal tray on my own. Like the other prisoners, I felt subdued and unsociable and ate in silence. The Italian, still with his Gazzetto, was staring quizzically at his tray of uneaten food. Next to him a Nigerian, immaculately dressed in a brand new suit, read from his bible, his lips moving to the words. In the corner was a distinguished-looking and smartly dressed guy, perhaps in his late 60s, who judging by the anger written on his face had been given a sentence with which he sharply disagreed.

Nearest to me was the heroin junkie who had been doing cold-turkey in my holding-pen. He smiled weakly at me. `Have you got a fag?' he begged in a hoarse whisper.

`Sorry, I don't smoke,' I replied quietly, not wanting to disturb the silence.

`Lucky bastard,' he replied. `You're far better off in jail if you don't smoke. And even better off if you don't do drugs.' His chuckle at his self-deprecation was cut short by a spasm and for a moment I thought he was going to throw up.

`Tomlinson, come here,' the tattoed officer who had first christened me `Basildon' barked from the exit door. I stood up and made my way to him, leaving my tray on the table. `All right, Basildon, you've been put on the book, so we have to cuff you to take you down the wing.' Expertly, he grabbed my wrist, handcuffing me to his own wrist, and another burly, bearded screw did the same with the other wrist. As they conveyed me out into the damp air of a foggy London evening for the short walk to the neighbouring block, I wanted to ask what `the book' was, but decided to play the grey man and kept quiet. As we passed 20-foot wire fences topped with barbed wire, illuminated by the depressing yellow of sodium strip lighting, the guards must have guessed my thoughts. `Sorry about this, Basildon, but we `ave to do it, you're on the book, you see. Do you know what that means?'

`No ...' I replied, guessing it was something bad.

`Well it means the Governor's decided that you're a Category A prisoner, as opposed to a B, a C or a D, and that means that you are a highly dangerous threat to the state. It's a bit ridiculous making a bloke like you an A-cat, if you ask me,' the tattoo explained.

`But who the fuck ever asks us?' the beard laughed.

The cells in C-wing were arranged on three landings around a central atrium, with metal mesh nets across each storey to prevent suicide or murder attempts, and I was assigned cell 32. The wing had just been refurbished and the paintwork on the cast iron stairs was still bright. `Make yourself at home,' grinned the guards, as they unlocked my handcuffs in the cell. `You're lucky being on the book, you won't have to share with some other cunt.' They slammed the door behind me, leaving me on my own for the first time. My new home was tiny, about 11 feet by 7 feet, with two bunks against one wall, a barred window overlooking an exercise yard and a sink and open lavatory against the other wall.

I made myself as comfortable as possible by unpacking the few clothes and books reception had allowed me to keep, and storing them neatly in the small wall-cupboard. My plastic knife, fork and spoon, issued to me in reception, went on the narrow windowsill. The previous occupants had been heavy smokers and the floor was littered with the butts of roll-up cigarettes. There was a mop and bucket in the corner, so I cleaned them up as best I could. Then I had my first wash for three days and made up the top bunk using the clean but frayed bedding. After three nights in a police cell, sheets and a pillow were a blissful luxury and I slept well.

We were unlocked just before 9 a.m. the following day. Not sure what to do next, I watched for a few minutes from my door. The other prisoners were scrambling down the metal stairs to the kitchens on the ground floor, so I joined the rush to queue for a fried breakfast, served on a metal platter, which we took back to our cells to eat. I muddled through the routine of the rest of the day as best I could. Nobody explained the myriad little rules and vocabulary of prison; it was just a matter of watching and learning. We were unlocked again at 10 a.m. for daily exercise, a one-hour walk around the prison yard which my cell overlooked. It was a chance to get a look at my fellow prisoners as they traipsed in small groups around the yard or huddled against the surrounding fences to smoke rollups. Some were laughing and joking, others were looking morose and depressed. Some of the prisoners had heard on the radio that I had been remanded to Brixton and came over to talk. None could believe that I had been nicked for a writing a book. `It's a bleedin' liberty, that is, `commented one shaven-headed cockney, his forearms covered in the livid scars of suicide attempts.

As the day progressed, I picked up the terminology of prison. I learnt that `association' was a one-hour free period per day when we were allowed out of our cells to take a shower in the landing shower-blocks, watch television or just chat with the other prisoners. `Canteen' was not a cooking pot as it had been in the army, but the weekly opportunity we were given to buy fruit, sweets or tobacco from the prison shop. It was necessary to ask permission from the screw in charge of my landing, a cheerful cigar-smoking, whisky-reeking Indian, before moving to another landing. I discovered that we could attend various workshops and courses for up to two hours a day. There was a broad choice and I put my name down to learn to play a musical instrument and started to think that maybe my time might not be too unpleasant.

But the authorities had other ideas. That evening, during evening association, two screws came to my cell and escorted me down to the Governor's office on the ground floor. They stood behind me as the Governor, a surly Scot, addressed me disparagingly from behind his heavy metal desk. `Tomlinson, as you know, we've made you a Category A prisoner. If that decision is confirmed by the Home Office, then you'll have to move from Brixton jail. We're not equipped to deal with the likes of you in here ...'

I was confirmed as Category A early the next day, Wednesday, 5 November. Two screws came to my cell, strip-searched me, ordered me to change into a prison-issue tracksuit and handcuffed me. `Where am I going?' I asked.

`We can't tell you that, Basildon, we'd have to kill you if we did.' I did my best to smile at their joke, though it was one I had heard many times in the past few days.

I spent two long hours waiting in a holding cell in reception until at last the door was opened and my escorts ordered me to stand up to refit my handcuffs. `Sorry about the delay, there was a problem with the escort helicopter,' one of them explained.

I presumed he was joking, but later I learned that helicopter escort was standard for all A-cat prison transfers. They led me out into the grey autumnal afternoon, to a waiting van - this time from HM Prison Service rather than Group 4 Security.

`In yer get,' the screw ordered, pushing me up the steps and into one of a row of tiny cells barely big enough to sit down in, and closed the door on me, trapping my left arm which was still cuffed to his wrist. When he was sure I was secure, my wrist was released and the door swiftly bolted. A few minutes later, the van's engine rumbled into life and we started to move. Through the tiny porthole of darkened and reinforced glass I watched the South Circular Road unfold eastwards, but gradually lost my bearings as we headed into unfamiliar parts of east London.


************************


13. MAXIMUM SECURITY

WEDNESDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 1997
HMP BELMARSH

`Welcome to HMP Belmarsh,' grinned my escort as he opened the cubicle and slapped handcuffs on my left wrist. `You'll like it here ... not,' he chuckled, dragging me out of the vehicle into a grim prison courtyard and through a heavily guarded gate to reception. The process was more elaborate than at Brixton, with strip-searches and X-rays between every stage. More of my possessions were deemed illicit, including a white shirt and a pair of black trousers. `They're too close to an officer's uniform,' the screw told me curtly. My diary went because it contained a map of the London Underground which `might be helpful if you escaped'. There was little of the good-natured banter of Brixton and most of the process was done in intimidating silence. At last, they ordered me to sign my personal file and, with me holding a bin liner of my remaining possessions in one hand, escorted me down a labyrinth of bleak and cold corridors to cell 19, Spur 1, Houseblock 4.

HMP Belmarsh was opened in 1991 to house approximately 900 prisoners and is one of only five prisons in Britain equipped to house maximum-security Category A prisoners. Most A-cat's are there on remand, awaiting trial at the secure court complex linked to the prison by tunnel. If convicted they are sent to one of the `longtermer' A-cat prisons such as Durham, Parkhurst on the Isle of White, or Long Sutton in the Midlands. Belmarsh is also a local jail for south-east London, so it houses some convicted petty offenders serving short sentences. Because of the harshness of the regime and its elaborate security, it is also used to house troublesome prisoners as punishment for misdemeanours committed in more comfortable jails. The prison is built on reclaimed marshland which was deemed unsuitable for normal housing because of the infestations of rats and mosquitoes. The four houseblocks are arranged at the corners of a large quadrangle, along whose sides are all the other areas needed for a functioning prison: reception, visiting-rooms, chapel, gym, hospital, kitchens and workshops. Each houseblock is a secure unit in its own right. A command and control room, known as the `bubble', controls the only entrance, consisting of two heavy doors, electronically linked so that both can never be open at the same time. Each door has a video-intercom and the controlling officer in the bubble can only release it if he recognises the requesting officer. Inside the houseblock, three spurs lead via video-locked doors from a small central atrium containing the hotplate area where meals are served. There are also exits via walk-through metal detectors and video-locked doors to secure areas for A-cat legal and social visits and out to the exercise yard.

Of all this, though, I knew nothing as I dropped my bag in the corner of the cell just after 2 p.m. and sat down on the stained mattress to survey my new home. It was grim and grubby, though slightly bigger than the cell in Brixton. The heavy steel door, slammed ominously shut behind me, had a small solid perspex window at eye height, covered by a sliding hatch which could only be opened from the outside. A small and heavily barred window overlooked an exercise yard, in which a few prisoners were aimlessly walking, surrounded by 20-foot-high fencing bridged with anti-helicopter cables. Down one wall a metal bed was bolted immovably to the floor, a sturdy cupboard was fixed above it, opposite was a small bolted-down metal table and bench, and in the corner was a filthy toilet with a broken lid. Unlike Brixton, the toilet was situated to give some privacy if a screw were suddenly to open the sliding inspection hatch; but just to ensure that there was no hiding place, there was a smaller additional window over it so that he could inspect you if he wished. Between the toilet and the door was a porcelain sink which looked like it had not been cleaned for months, above it a scratched unbreakable plastic shaving mirror and a buzzer to summon the screws in an emergency. The lugubrious mustard-painted walls were smeared with gobs of butter, splattered mosquitoes, stains of dried snot and blobs of toothpaste which previous occupants had used to stick up posters. There was graffiti scribbled in blue biro above the bed. `Methadone strips the life out of you,' somebody had scrawled in a shaky hand. Another message was more hopeful: `Remember, no matter how long you are doing, you'll get out in the end ...' Under the cupboard was a simple Spanish prayer. High up on all four walls were patterns of crosses and Arabic words, put there by a Muslim occupant as prayer aids. Scribbled above the toilet in large, childish letters was a slogan in Turkish. In such filth, I did not feel like unpacking my belongings. I lay down on the bare mattress listening to the muffled activity of prison life. Inmates hollered to each other between cells, sometimes laughing, sometimes abusive. The sharp clacks of a game of pool rose from the floor of the spur, punctuated by exclamations in a foreign language. From the cell next door came the sound of a manically stirred hot drink, then a contented whistled rendition of Monty Python's `Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'. Every half-hour the flap covering my door hatch was slapped open, a pair of beady eyes examined me for a second, then the flap slammed shut again. Just before 6 p.m., the level of activity started to increase and the heavy clunking of keys signalled that we were being unlocked. My flap slapped open, eyes checked me, the heavy bolt clunked and the door cracked open. Peering out, the other prisoners I saw rushing to join the dinner queue on the first-floor landing and I grabbed my plastic mug and cutlery to join them.

Locked back in the cell to eat alone and in silence from a metal platter, I found that the meal was not as bad as I feared it would be. Stew, two vegetables and rice, a stodgy pudding and custard, a big pile of buttered bread, a mug of hot water to make tea or coffee, an apple and a small bag containing cereal and milk for the next morning's breakfast. We were briefly unlocked half an hour later to kick the trays out for the cleaners to collect, then a few hours later an urn of hot water was dragged around to fill our mugs. It was Guy Fawkes night, and I lay on the bed sipping cocoa listening to the firework celebrations from the nearby housing estates.

`Oi you, you next door, pass this doon,' a hoarse Geordie voice called out. I sat up, wondering if the call was directed at me. There was a sharp rattle on the heating pipe which ran the length of the landing, passing through each cell. `Oi you ... new boy next door, grab this and pass it down.' Paper rustled nearby and I looked over the end of my bed, in a tiny gap between the metal pipe and the reinforced concrete of the dividing wall, to see a sliver of carefully folded newspaper. I pulled it through into my own cell. `Make sure you pass it doon,' ordered the disembodied voice impatiently. Curiosity got the better of me and I unravelled the package revealing small crystals of a hard white substance, LSD or maybe crack. I wrapped it up, stepped over to the other side of the cell where there was also a small gap and pushed it through. It was ripped from my fingers eagerly. Ten minutes later, as the drugs took their effect, the bangs and thumps of the nearby fireworks were joined by the sound of my other neighbour as he sung along raucously to an Oasis concert blaring from his radio.

`Oi, new-boy,' a close-cropped head thrust around the door after unlock the next morning, `when I tell yer to pass sommit doon, yer jump, right?' he ordered.

`Sorry, I'm new in jail, I didn't know,' I apologised.

He stared at me hard, suspicious at my educated, middle class accent. `What you in for then?' he asked. I explained my crime. `I heard about you on the radio last night!' he exclaimed, his toughlooking face breaking into admiration. `Mind if I come in for a chat?' Sitting on my bed, he introduced himself as Paul Dobson and explained that he had been remanded in custody for allegedly shooting a rival gang leader during the `bootleg' liquor-smuggling wars in Dover. We discovered that we had been schooled almost together. He had been at the Deerbolt Young Offenders unit just a mile or so away from Barnard Castle School. He'd previously done a few years in Durham prison, so the six months waiting on remand were a stroll to him. `I'll get natural life if they convict me, but I'm not guilty,' he claimed optimistically.

My other neighbour emerged from his cell, blinking and red-eyed, to collect a mug of hot water at the lunch unlock. He stuck his shaven, scarred head around my door as I prepared a cup of tea. `Oi, next door, I'm sorry about all the noise last night. I was off me fuckin' head.' He rubbed his bleary eyes. `I'm Craggsy,' he said, extending a hand in friendly greeting. But his eyes narrowed as I introduced myself. `Oi, yer not a nonce, are yer?'

`I don't think so,' I replied, not knowing what he meant but guessing that it was not a good idea to be one.

`Well that's alright then,' he grinned, exposing a row of broken teeth. Craggs had been serving a 12-year sentence for armed robbery, but during a transfer to another prison he and three others had escaped from the van after coshing the driver and guards. He had been on the run for two weeks but was now awaiting another sentencing for the assault, and his escape attempt had earned him his E-list `stripes', a denim uniform with prominent yellow bands down each side.

Normally new inmates to Belmarsh spend the first week of their sentence on the induction wing, spur 2 of houseblock 1, to learn the prison rules with `short, sharp shock' tactics. Nicknamed `Beirut' by the prisoners, the conditions were so dirty, petty and harsh that transferring to another spur was a move into comparative luxury. I had missed the privilege because it was considered insecure for A-cat prisoners. Whilst not a problem for other A-cats, who usually had plenty of prior experience in prison, for me it meant learning the Belmarsh rules by trial and error.

Every morning after first unlock we had 20 minutes before breakfast in which to collect our mail, put our names down for gym and phonecalls or to see the duty doctor, and I used the opportunity to grab a shower in the blocks on the top landing. My second morning dawned heavily overcast and a weak, diffuse light struggled through the shower block's grimy barred window. Needing more light to avoid the worst of the filth and swamp flies, I jabbed the push-button switch by the door. Immediately there was a loud klaxon and a sudden burst of commotion from the screws on the landing below as their belt-alarms wailed. `Where is it? What's happening?' they shouted, sprinting up the stairs on to the landings. The heavy doors leading from the central atrium sprung open and reinforcements from the neighbouring spurs invaded, their batons drawn. Rushing down the landings they bellowed orders - `OK lads, back in your cells, NOW' - at the few other prisoners who were out and about, slamming their doors shut. I watched bemused for a second, then hurried back to my cell. Through the door-flap I watched the agitated screws scurry around, anxiously looking for something. Having no idea what was going on, I made a mental note to ask Dobson.

We were re-released ten minutes or so later and life re-started as normal. Back at the shower blocks, with my towel over my shoulder, I looked more carefully at the light-switch. Engraved just under the button were the words `General Alarm'.

`You daft cunt,' Dobson grinned broadly at me in the lunch queue and explained, `them buttons is only for when a scrap breaks out or sommit. You'll get a week in the segregation block if they catch you meddlin' with them. On yer own in an empty cell, no mattress except at night, exercise on yer own so no cunt to talk to the whole day, nowt te read `cept the effin bible, does yer fuckin' head in.'

Every day we were entitled by prison regulations to an hour of `association' which alternated according to the day between mornings or evenings. Our cell doors had to be locked behind us to prevent prisoners congregating out of sight of the screws and the upper landings were closed down, so all 100 prisoners on the spur crowded on to the tiny lower floor. We could take it in turns to play pool or table-football, queue to use the telephone or sit around on the floor and chat over a cup of tea. There were ten or so comfy chairs in front of the television, so there was a scramble to get a seat and then a fierce debate about which channel to watch. Popular programmes were police dramas such as The Bill (called `training videos' by Craggs) and BBC's Crimewatch, watched eagerly to see if any friends were featured. The undisputed favourite, however, was Top of the Pops, transmitted on Friday evening, though we could only watch it every second-week when the association times coincided with the programme.

On weekends we had the luxury of four hours of association each day, two in the morning and two in the evening. We were entitled to an hour of exercise a day in the bare concrete exercise yard, as long as it was not raining, and on Sundays we got a double-session if the screws were feeling generous. But there were few other opportunities for A-cat prisoners to get out of their cells. Being banged up in a cell for up to 22 hours a day was tedious and unrelenting. Even with a good book it was difficult to forget that even the most basic liberties, such as being able to get up and make a cup of tea, had been taken away. A-cats were restricted even when unlocked from our cells. Every move out of our door, whether to take exercise in the yard, queue for a meal or make a phone call, was noted in a small black book held by Mr Richards, the evercheerful senior officer in charge of our spur. We had to put in formal, written requests for trivial things. A haircut, or growing a moustache, required written permission from the Governor. Even trimming toenails required an application for the nail clippers and supervision by a screw. My status as an A-cat prisoner was a mystery and a joke to the other prisoners. Even Mr Richards couldn't understand the logic. `They're taking the bleedin' piss puttin' you on the book,' he laughed. `You've never been in jail, no previous record, a white-collar crime and they make you A-cat! Somebody's got it in for you up on high, I reckon.'

The morning of 10 November had been set as the date for my second bail hearing at Bow Street Magistrates court. Two screws woke me at 6 a.m., strip-searched me in the cell, escorted me to reception, ordered me to strip again while they x-rayed my clothes, led me in handcuffs to the prison van and locked me into one of the cubicles. `We're a bit early for the police escort so you'll have to wait,' the screw said through the grill, belting himself into his seat to watch over me. `And if you piss in there, you'll do a week in the block when you get back.' The cubicle reeked of urine, so the previous occupant must have been desperate.

I'd only been in the holding-cell at Bow Street Magistrates court for a few minutes before the flap slapped open and a set of eyes peered in. This time, however, they were intelligent and friendly. `The Crown Prosecution Service want you to appear in the dock handcuffed again,' Davies explained. `I'm going up to argue that you should appear unshackled.' He won the skirmish again and half an hour later the prison service guards led me to the door of the court in handcuffs, then released me to allow me to make my own way to the dock. Davies presented my case for bail first. A barrister friend had volunteered his flat as surety, so in addition to my own flat and my father's house, he offered property of over 500,000 as a bail condition. After a week in Belmarsh, I was far keener to win it. The CPS barrister, Colin Gibbs, announced that he had an expert witness who would support his case that bail should be denied and asked the magistrate for permission for the hearing to go in camera. The request was granted and court ushers cleared the public and press galleries so that only myself, Davies and Wadham, Gibbs for the CPS, his assistant and the presiding magistrate were present. My hearing was now in exactly the same circumstances that MI6 had argued were `not secure enough' for me to take them to court for unfair dismissal. The expert witness turned out to be the second `Mr Halliday' who had recruited me. He launched into a gratuitous personal attack on me, inventing fictitious reasons for my dismissal and giving me no opportunity to defend myself. I held my tongue with difficulty, but I knew that there was little chance of getting bail, as any sympathy the magistrate may have had for my situation was gone. And so it proved when he stood up to give his verdict a few minutes later.

Davies and Wadham came down to the court cells to commiserate with me, their eyes gleaming through the tiny-door hatch. `They're determined that you don't get bail, not because they are afraid that you will abscond but because they want you to plead guilty,' explained Wadham. `They know that by remanding you in custody, you'll have to spend at least a year awaiting trial because of the backlog of cases. But if you plead guilty you'll get a sentencing hearing after a few weeks because it can be fitted into the court schedule more easily. You'll get a shorter sentence and you'll be down-graded from A-cat.'

`I see,' I replied. `They've got the Governor of Belmarsh to make me an A-cat and denied me bail so I'll have to waste a year in tough conditions if I want to plead not guilty.'

`Exactly,' Davies chipped in. `They want to avoid the embarrassment of a jury trial, which you would probably win, so they're making that option as unpalatable as possible. And even if you lost, it would still be embarrassing for them as you would stand out because you would have spent longer on remand than your likely sentence.' The maximum sentence if convicted would be two years, which would be automatically halved to 12 months as long as I behaved myself in jail. I would therefore probably walk out on conviction, as I would already have done the time on remand. `They're blatantly knobbling the system to persuade you to plead guilty because they know that any jury of right-thinking Englishmen would be sympathetic to you and acquit you,' added Davies.

I had plenty of time to reflect on my choice that afternoon. There were no A-cat prison vans available, meaning a five-hour wait in the spartan court cell, with only a wooden bench to sit on and nothing to read. The thought of spending a year in Belmarsh awaiting my day of glory at a jury trial was not pleasant, as the week I had already done had seemed more like a month. On the other hand, if I were to plead guilty, the judge would automatically cut a third off my sentence, so the most I could spend in jail would be eight months - probably as a lower-category prisoner in an easier jail than Belmarsh. The thought of capitulating to MI6's game was galling, but it would be more pragmatic. Reluctantly, as I returned to now familiar surroundings at Belmarsh with its crew of crooks and lunatics, I concluded that pleading guilty was the most sensible option.

One of the consequences of Mrs Thatcher's decision in the late 1980s to dismantle Britain's mental hospital system was that the country's jails filled up rapidly with former mental patients. Booted out of their long-term health-care centres, many could not cope and turned to crime to survive. In prison there were no mental health-care facilities, so their health worsened. Because other jails used Belmarsh as a dumping ground for troublesome prisoners, we had more than our share of `fraggles'. Most were harmless and amusing, such as Eric Mockalenny, a chunky young Nigerian whose story was typical. He had been convicted of assaulting a police officer while being arrested for exposing himself outside Buckingham Palace. In prison, his mental health degenerated. After lunch one day he came into my cell to introduce himself. `Good morning, Mr Tomlinson, I am Mr. Eric Mockalenny. Would you please give me a stamp? I must write to Princess Anne,' he said, showing a row of large white teeth. His request was so polite that I felt obliged to help him out. Mockalenny thanked me graciously and scuttled out, beaming gratefully.

Shortly afterwards, the young screw assigned to keep an eye on him collared me. `Tomlinson, don't give Mockalenny any more stamps. He's been writing three letters a day to Princess Anne, asking her to go into a joint venture of prawn-farming in Nigeria and sending her visit application forms.'

Most of Mockalenny's antics were tolerated by the prisoners and screws alike, but some of the other `fraggles' were more trying. Stonley had spent nine years in a psychiatric hospital before being released on to the streets in the `care in community' initiative. He had no home and ended up in Belmarsh for a series of minor burglaries. He spoke to nobody, never washed or shaved, and never changed his clothes. He spent associations pacing furiously in a small circle on the landing, clutching his beard and muttering to himself. Because he stank so vilely nobody approached him and he was immune from bullying or intimidation.

As for many of the other prisoners, visits to the prison gym were a highlight. On days when there were enough screws to escort A-cats off the spur, those of us who queued at Mr Richard's desk quickly enough at morning unlock to get on the list could go to the gym instead of the yard. In the well-equipped sports hall we could weight-train, play badminton, five-a-side soccer or soft-ball tennis. There was also a Concept-II rowing machine and I embarked on a manic fitness program, alternating 5,000m and 10,000m per session - and 20km on Sunday if we got double-gym. Whittling down my times was the best antidote to my otherwise futile and pointless existence in prison.

We were allowed to buy a daily newspaper and a couple of magazines a week, using private money deposited with reception who ordered the papers in bulk from a nearby newsagent. Only pornography and gun magazines were banned. The eagerly awaited paper delivery arrived just after lunch and then there was an impromptu flea market in the dinner queue to trade them. These papers, together with the small radio permitted in my cell, enabled me to follow events outside prison. My arrest was extensively reported and there were smaller follow-up features about my bail refusal. The press had become much less critical once the hostility whipped up by I/OPS in the aftermath of my arrest had abated and truth about my minor offence had surfaced. The reports became more sympathetic every time bail was refused.

`Hey Rich, I'm more famous than you now!' Onion-head, a cheerful Liverpudlian with a ruddy face and a Tin Tin quiff of blond hair waved a tabloid newspaper at me one morning. `They've even published me mug shot and number, just like Hugh Grant except better looking, eh!' he exclaimed, kissing his own image. It was considered prestigious to get into the papers and Onion-head proudly showed me an article about himself. He was one of a gang who had carried out a series of armed raids against the homes of wealthy home counties families, robbing them at gunpoint. They had just been sentenced the day before, after spending a year on remand. The Mirror published a full double-page spread, which was the source of Onion-head's pride.

`What did you get then?' I asked.

`Sixteen years,' he cheerfully replied, licking the edge of a roll-up. `Flippin' judge just used his lottery numbers, the bastard. Steve got 25, Neil got 19, Owen 22,' he added. `Still, looking on the bright side, keep me head down and me lighthouse nicely buffed-up, get parole and there'll only be 418 episodes of Top of the Pops before I'm a free man,' Onion-head laughed as he lit his roll-up. His flippant optimism cheered me up; my maximum sentence of two years seemed trivial in comparison.

One morning in November, 8.30 a.m. came and went without the usual sound of clanking keys and opening doors. As the minutes ticked by the prisoners registered their rising impatience by banging their metal bins against cell doors. `What's up?' I shouted to Dobson through the hole by the pipe.

`Dunno, I'll find out and let you know.' He called through to his neighbour and after a couple of minutes shouted back to me. `Some laddie on the other spur, Colligan, went and topped hissel' last night, daft cunt. Screws found him this morning.'

`How did he manage that?' I asked. It wasn't easy to kill yourself in Belmarsh; there was nothing sharp to slash wrists, no unprotected balconies to jump off or ropes to hang from.

`Apparently he ripped up a sheet, made a neck-tourniquet, then rolled over and over on his bed till he choked,' Dobson answered quietly. I only knew Colligan, a guy in his early twenties on remand for allegedly murdering the wife of a millionaire, by sight, but it was sad news. Apparently the evidence against him was strong and he expected a life sentence. `Lads like him, who want to be dead, should have the option of asking for a lethal injection,' Dobson added hoarsely. `It's not fair, putting somebody through living mental torture that they end up topping themsels' like that.'

We were not unlocked until a doctor examined Colligan and issued a death certificate, photographs and forensic evidence of his body had been taken, and his body had been removed from his cell. The mood on the spur was subdued for the rest of the day.

During my early days in Belmarsh, it concerned me what other prisoners would think of my offence. Former law enforcement personnel, especially police, are usually victimised and have to request segregation under prison regulation 43. Most `rule 43' prisoners are sex-offenders; the so-called `nonces' so despised by Craggs. But my fears that I might be considered a `grass' (slang for an informer) were unfounded. In the prison heirarchy - armed bank robbers at the top and those convicted of street crimes such as muggings at the bottom - most gave me `respect' for my offence. It was just as well, for one Friday night I saw the treatment dished out to `nonces' whose crimes were regarded as unacceptable. Top of the Pops was on and the spur were congregated in front of the television, cheering Mockalenny who was breakdancing incongruously to a Celine Dion single. A young black guy, fresh from `Beirut', was sitting quietly on his own, sipping a cup of cocoa. Unobserved in the general commotion, Craggs filled a plastic mug with boiling water from the urn, sidled up behind him and tipped the scalding water over his head. The guy fell to the floor clutching his scalp, screaming in agony. Craggs sprang back, arms aloft, vehemently protesting. `Sorry, mate, it was an accident, honest.' Other inmates rushed over as the livid victim got to his feet, clutching his head and lunging at his assaulter with blind anger. Somebody pressed the alarm before a fight could break out and we were invaded by the usual hordes and herded back into our cells. Craggs was still protesting his innocence as his door was slammed shut, not with convincing sincerity, but just to let everybody know that this should be the version of events given by witnesses to the screws.

Lying face down on my bed, I asked Dobson through the gap what it was all about. `He was a fookin' nonce,' he whispered. `We just got word through from t'other houseblock. He raped some lassie. Should've known better than trying to mix it with us on this spur. I was goona do `im misself, but Craggsy beat me to it. We'll not see `im again.'

Another new prisoner called Michaels came in for the Craggs Enhanced Negative Vetting interview a few days later, after he appeared at the back of the lunch queue in a new prison tracksuit, fidgeting with his Cartier watch. `What are you in for, mate?' Craggs asked with an undertone of belligerence.

Michaels, an elderly and educated fellow, hesitated for a moment, unused to being addressed by a scar-faced skinhead. `A spot of fraud,' he nervously replied, adjusting his glasses.

`Oh I say, just a spot of fraud,' Craggs mimicked an upper-class accent for his audience. `What did you get then?' he asked, still suspicious.

`Eighteen months,' replied Michaels cautiously.

`Only 18 months! That's a bleedin' touch that is, a shit and a shave,' Craggs jeered. `So how much did ya nick then?' he asked.

`The judge said that it amounted to about 600,000 in total, over about ten years or so,' Michaels nervously replied.

Craggs frowned, as his brain made a quick calculation. `Wot, you swagged six hundred bleedin' grand, and you only got 18 month?' Michaels looked at the floor and fidgeted uncomfortably with his watch. `I only swagged five bleedin' grand and got 15 years!' exclaimed Craggs indignantly.

`Aye, but you did shoot the bank manager while you were at it,' Onion-head butted in helpfully.

But Craggs was unrepentant. `Six `undred bleedin' grand, and only 18 bleedin' month,' he repeated wistfully. `Fuck me, that's what I'm gettin' into when I'm out o' here. I'll go into fraud. That's gotta be the answer, heh,' he nudged Onion-head jubilantly in the ribs, pleased with his new idea. `Yeah, that's wot I'll do,' he repeated optimistically, pleased with his brainwave. But a frown slowly crumpled his scarred face, as a dark cloud loomed. `Fuck, if only I could read `n' fuckin' write.'

Most of the other prisoners on my spur and the neighbouring spur with whom we shared our hour in the exercise yard knew me because of the media coverage and it was not unusual for a complete stranger to approach me to express his disgust that I was in prison for writing a book. They also sought my perceived expertise in case it might prove useful in the future, erroneously assuming that I would be an expert on firearms, have an insider's knowledge of the workings of every obscure department of the police or customs service and a solid grounding in criminal law. My hour in the exercise yard, where it was possible to talk out of earshot of the screws, was dominated with questions like, `What's better, an Uzi or a Heckler & Koch?', `Can SMS messages between mobile phones be intercepted?' and `How do you spot police surveillance?' The questions broke the ice, enabling me to quiz my colleagues about their own crimes, and gradually the exercise hours evolved into informal symposia on criminal tradecraft. They taught me how to ring cars, where to buy false passports, how to slip out of the UK without documents and the best countries in which to evade recapture and extradition.

Another popular topic of conversation was the relative merits of one prison over another. By universal consensus, Belmarsh was the worst prison anyone had experienced; the lack of freedom and association irksome even to the career criminals. The acknowledged jail connoisseur was Ronnie, a cockney who had been in so many foreign jails that he spoke fluent rhyming slang in several languages. His last stretch had been in a Monaco jail. One afternoon, queuing for dinner with Dobson and Onion-head, he told us how he ended up there. He had just come by some money by virtue of a `little venture' and decided to treat his mother to a weekend in Monte Carlo. `I came out of the bleedin' Casino Royale,' he continued, `all spruced up in me dinner jacket, and there was a bright yellow Lamborghini Diabolo parked outside. I thought to missel', ``I'll have that'', so I went up to the garon and told him to get the keys to me macinino pronto. The little con went and fetched the Lambo' from where it was parked and handed it over! I was with me Mam and she was saying, `No Ronnie, don't do it, don't do it', but I shoved her in the front and told her to shut up. We were halfway to the Costa Brava before the flics nicked us.' Jail in Monaco was, according to Ronnie, a `piece of pissoir.' Dutch jails too were a breeze. `They kept payin' me to go on drug-rehab courses, but I was so stoned I kept `avin to start again.' Swiss jails were `like bleedin' Hiltons' and Spanish, French and German jails were all `a touch' compared to British prisons.

Even the experienced Dobson and Craggs were in awe of Ronnie's prison knowledge. `Which country would you say has the best jails then?' asked Dobson, who was considering a career move abroad if he were acquitted from his current offence.

Ronnie furrowed his brow for a second. `Ah, there's no fuckin' contest. You wanna get yoursel' in a fackin' Icelandic jail. They're a bleedin' swan. I was getting paid 100 per week to sweep the yard, only I didn't `ave to do it if it were covered in snow, which was all fackin' year. I came out rich like a bleedin' rag'ead.'

One bitterly cold afternoon I was pacing the exercise yard furiously, trying to keep warm against a biting wind and cursing to myself about the circumstances that had lead to my imprisonment. Other prisoners were huddled in the corners of the yard sheltering from the wind, except Mockalenny who had stripped to the waist and was energetically dancing in a puddle in the middle of singing the Lord's prayer with his arms raised to the sky. Suddenly, a meaty hand clasped my shoulder from behind. I spun round, brushing the assailant's hand away and bracing myself for trouble. It was a relief to see a grin on the gnarled but friendly face of an elderly prisoner from spur two. `You're that spy fella, aren't you?' he asked. Before I could reply, he introduced himself. `The name's Henderson, Pat Henderson . . .' (a grin crumpling at the familiar joke). `I wanted a word with you,' he continued. `Do you know a bloke called George Blake?'

`I've heard of him,' I replied, `if we're talking about the same George Blake.' George Blake was the last MI6 officer to go to prison for a breach of the OSA in 1950. After spending six years in prison he escaped and fled to Moscow. `Yeah, that's the one,' Henderson laughed. `I was in Wormwood Scrubs with him, years back. A cracking fellow. He went over the wall one night.'

I laughed at the irony of ending up in jail with somebody who knew Blake.

`What's he up to now?' Henderson asked.

`I think he's living in Moscow these days,' I replied.

`Well if ever you get to meet him, make sure you give him my regards,' Henderson beamed.

The screws escorted me back up to Bow Street Magistrate's court on Monday, 17 November for my third and final chance to get bail. They subjected me to the usual Full Monty's, but this time there was no police escort. The authorities presumably realised they didn't have a dangerous prisoner on their hands, despite MI6's claims. By then it mattered little to me whether or not bail was granted as I was resigned to spending more time in jail. My only chance of release lay in the slim possibility that the Attorney General, John Morris, might drop the charges. Breaches of the OSA are not automatically prosecuted: specific authorisation, known as a `fiat', must be issued by the Attorney General. Ostensibly, it is his decision alone, but in reality the intelligence services decide. They are always the first government agencies to discover breaches of the OSA, so if they do not want a prosecution, as in the case of Melissa Norwood, they keep quiet. But if they want a person prosecuted, as was clear in my case, they swing every axe they can find in Whitehall to ensure that it is carried out with an iron fist. MI6 would lobby Morris hard. But he had not immediately conceded, suggesting that he might at least have some doubts. Like Prime Minister Tony Blair and the rest of the Labour cabinet, Morris had voted against the OSA in 1989. But Owen came to the door-hatch to bring the news. `Morris has just faxed through the fiat. I am afraid there's no way out now.' It was a blow, but I had taken care not to let my hopes of release get too high. There was now little point in contesting bail. With a fiat issued only a few minutes before the hearing, only a brave magistrate would grant it. Anyway, there were advantages to staying in prison, as time spent on remand would count towards my final sentence.

Three days later, on the BBC radio I heard news that highlighted the political nature of OSA prosecutions. Chris Patten, a former Tory minister and political heavyweight who had lost his seat in the last general election, had been appointed Governor of Hong Kong to oversee the years leading up to the 1999 handover of power to China. As Governor, he signed the OSA and regularly received CX reports. He also authorised the journalist Jonathan Dimbleby to write an official biography glorifying his governorship, entitled The Last Days. In order to substantiate aspects of the book, and no doubt also to pump up sales, Patten gave Dimbleby direct copies of many CX reports. This brazen breach of the OSA was more serious than that posed by giving Martyn a heavily disguised synopsis that was never published. The police and the CPS wanted to prosecute but Morris refused to issue the fiat, arguing that there was `no useful purpose' in prosecuting Patten.

If breaches of secrecy laws are not applied consistently to all offenders, whatever their status, then they are political offences. I wrote to Morris from my prison cell asking him to explain this inconsistency and asked what `useful purpose' he saw in prosecuting me. He never replied.

One of the many restrictions imposed on A-cat prisoners is close control over visits. We were only permitted visits from immediate family, and then only after they had been approved by the police and prison service. On my first day in Belmarsh, using a special application form, I nominated my mother as my first visitor. This was sent to Cumbria SB and two PCs interviewed her at home. It wasn't until Friday, 21 November, three weeks after my arrest, that she was cleared to make the seven-hour trip to south-east London for a 40-minute visit. There was a thick sheet of perspex between us to prevent any physical contact and we spoke through a recorded intercom. My mother found the visit traumatic and, though she tried to put on a brave face, I could tell that she was close to tears.

A-cat prisoners were allowed to receive up to four letters a day which were censored by the staff and, in my case, copied to MI6. Most of my mail came from family and friends and I could recognise who a letter was from by the handwriting and postmark. One day a letter came bearing unfamiliar handwriting. Even after reading it, it took me several minutes to realise that it was from a former member of staff. She wrote that in a few years time my offence would be regarded as purely political, a morale-boosting fillip from somebody ostensibly from the other side. Shortly after her letter, a second piece of surprise mail arrived, the envelope bearing handwriting that, by the forward slope and cut-down letter `y's, was that of a native Russian speaker. More mysteriously, it was from prisoner XM2920 in Wormwood Scrubs. It took several scans of the letter to make a mental connection with the name at the bottom. `Nueman' was the MI6 resettlement name for NORTHSTAR. My last news of him was that he was about to start an MBA and he explained in his letter what had happened next. After finishing the degree, he set up a business organising conferences on western commercial practices for Russian and Ukranian businessmen. Unfortunately, having accepted their substantial up-front registration fees, he forgot to do the rest. When some of the delegates demanded the return of their fees, he fled to Geneva. After a lengthy legal battle, he was extradited back to the UK and received 36 months for fraud. We exchanged a few letters and started a game of correspondence chess which he was soon winning handsomely.

In early December Mr Richards collared me as I was going through the metal detector to the exercise yard. `Tomlinson, get back here.' he bellowed cheerfully. `No exercise for you today, you've got a police visit.' My spirits fell. Police normally visited prisoners only to press more charges.

After the strip-search, two screws escorted me to the A-cat legal visits rooms. Waiting for me were DI Ratcliffe and the baldy who had searched my flat at the time of my arrest. He introduced himself as DI Peters and explained that he was a computer expert. Wadham was there to give me assistance. `Richard, we need your help to crack the encrypted material on your Psion,' Ratcliffe asked sheepishly.

It surprised me that SB, MI6 and GCHQ had not yet cracked the text I wrote in Spain, as the encryption programme was tiny and used only a small key and a simple password.

`We wonder if you could give us the password,' Peters asked.

`You're joking!' I laughed. `Why would I want to do that?'

`Well have a think about it,' Ratcliffe replied in a manner that indicated that life might be difficult if I didn't.

The police left the room for a moment so that I could confer with Wadham. `They've got something planned if you don't give them it,' he advised. `Unless you've really got something to hide, I'd tell them.' There was another copy buried on the internet, so it would not be a problem to lose the files. `Also,' added Wadham, `if you cooperate the judge should knock a few months off your sentence.' Ratcliffe and Peters filed back into the room a few minutes later. `The passphrase is ``MI6 are stupid tossers'',' I told them.

`We should have thought of that one,' Peters grinned.

Even A-cat prisoners have the right to speak confidentially to their lawyers, enshrined in `rule 37' of the prison regulations. If I needed to telephone Wadham, informing Mr Richards beforehand supposedly ensured that the automatic recorder would be turned off. Likewise, if an envelope was marked `rule 37', supposedly the censors would not open it. But like most of the other prisoners, I had little confidence that this rule would be respected, especially in the lead up to my committal. MI6 would be keen to learn how I would plead because it would allow them to use I/OPS to ensure favourable spin in the press. I later learned that my efforts at discretion were futile and that MI6 always knew in advance of my intentions. Over on spur 1 were three Algerian students who had been on remand for nearly a year under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Ironically I first came across their files while in PTCP section. The DST asked MI5 to arrest them because of their alleged links to the FIS, the Algerian Islamic Fundamentalist group, but MI5 had been reluctant to deploy their limited A4 surveillance resources. In retaliation the DST withdrew their cooperation with us on operations such as BELLHOP, so with some internal politicking, MI5 were persuaded to take an interest in the students. Their telephones were bugged, they were put under foot surveillance and were eventually arrested for allegedly conspiring to obtain explosive materials. The evidence was weak and the three were adamant that they were not guilty. They came up for trial at the Old Bailey shortly before my committal. But the CPS made a basic error in their opening statements by revealing knowledge that the Algerians had disclosed only to their defence lawyers in the Belmarsh legal visits rooms. The defence realised that these visits had been bugged and challenged the CPS. When the CPS refused to explain their source, the judge dismissed the case and the defendants were released. Suspiciously, whenever Wadham or Davies met me in Belmarsh, we were always allocated the same room that was used by the Algerians.

Our cells were regularly searched by the screws. Without warning, specially trained three-man search teams with sniffer dogs would enter the spur and choose one or two prisoners. The inmate was strip-searched, then ejected from his home. Anything illicit in the cell was confiscated and the prisoner punished with a spell in the block. They took silver foil because it could be used to melt heroin before injection, matches as the heads could be used for incendiary devices, polythene bottles because they could be filled with chopped fruit and sugar to brew into `hooch'. The search teams also took two large, heavy-duty black suitcases into each cell. Nobody knew what was in them but the rumour was that they contained portable photocopiers. `You just see,' Dobson told me. `They'll be round your cell with those suitcases a few days before you go up in court.' And he was right; I was subjected to a lengthy search just two days before committal. So even if they had not already learnt of my intended `guilty' plea by bugging my discussions with Wadham and Davies, they would have known from copying the `rule 37' papers in my cell.

Two screws escorted me back up to Bow Street Magistrates on Monday, 24 November. Up in the dock, the magistrate asked me to confirm my identity, then read the charges against me. `What is your plea?' he finally asked.

The court was hushed in anticipation and in the press gallery I could see the hacks with pens poised to record the plea of the first MI6 officer charged with violating the OSA since Blake. `Guilty,' I replied, keeping my voice as steady as I could. The press gallery scrabbled out of court to broadcast the news. But there was not a flicker of reaction from Colin Gibbs or the SIS legal representative.

In the prison van going back to Belmarsh my guilt was reported in sensational fashion on the radio news bulletins every half hour. The next day it was on the front page of most of the broadsheets. The Times accused me of having `attempted to sell secrets' to an Australian publisher. The Telegraph lamely repeated the MI6 line that I had `endangered the lives of agents'. I/OPS must have been pleased with the results. The sensational coverage would strengthen the mythical status in which MI6 are revered in some quarters and deepen the mysterious importance of their work. But a more direct consequence for me was that there was a danger of the media coverage `hyping' my sentence and that on sentencing day on 18 December the judge would give me a longer stretch than I would otherwise have received.

`You look like a bleedin' hippy,' Onion-head laughed in the lunch queue a few days before my sentencing.

`I'd get it cut if I were you,' advised Dobson. `The joodge'll give yer three months more with yer hair like that.'

They were right - a haircut was already overdue when my appointment in Wavendon had been peremptorily interrupted by my arrest. That evening's association I filled in the application form to the Governor and Mr Richards advised me the next day that permission had been granted.

`You can be our new barber's first client,' he grinned. `Clarke! Come here,' he shouted across the spur, `your services are required!'

The new barber, a Jamaican armed robber who had just been remanded the previous day, ambled out of his cell, pulling up the drawstring of his trousers. He suffered from a severe nervous twitch which had caused his shotgun to accidentally discharge while he was holding up a bank in Southall. Luckily the shot hadn't hit anybody but nevertheless he was facing a longer sentence as a result of the negligent discharge. He had never cut hair in his life but Mr Richards had appointed him spur barber because he shared his name with Nicky Clarke, a celebrity London hairdresser. `Here's the clippers,' Mr Richards bellowed cheerfully, passing a small wooden box to the bemused Clarke. `Get one of those chairs and set up shop under the stairs.'

`Can you just tidy it up a bit?' I asked Clarke as soon as a chair had been positioned and the clippers had been plugged in. `I'm up in the dock for sentencing tomorrow.'

Clarke muttered something back to me in an unintelligible Jamaican accent, checked that the clippers were plugged into the wall, switched them on and paused for a moment, studying the buzzing blades quizzically as if weighing up their potential for robbing banks. He muttered some more. Thinking it impolite to ask him to repeat himself I just smiled encouragingly. Tentatively, he leant over me and began clipping the right side of my head but suddenly and painfully, the clippers dug hard into my ear. `Bollocks!' Clarke muttered, taking a step back to recompose himself after the twitch. Bending over, he tried again. But he was siezed by another twitch. `Shite!' Clarke muttered, as a large clump of hair fell to the ground. Frowning in concentration, he studied the right side of my head, then the left, then the right, and began to trim again.

There were no mirrors on the spur so there was no way to check progress. `Are you sure you know what you are doing?' I asked politely.

Clarke muttered something back and started fiddling with the clipper blades. He looked a bit hurt and I thought it better not to press him. But judging by the ever increasing pile of hair on the floor, he was a quick learner and he finished off with a flourish just as Mr Richards bellowed the familiar order, `Spur 1, get your dinner.' Clarke hurriedly unplugged the clippers and returned them to Mr Richards as the spur clamoured into a disorderly queue.

Dobson and Onion-head were, as usual, at the back, maximising the time out of their cells, and I joined them as soon as I had collected my plastic mug and cutlery from my cell. `You look like a bleedin' convict,' Onion-head laughed as he saw my new crop.

`Yer daft booger,' added Dobson. `The joodge'll give yer three months more with yer `air like that.'

I woke shortly after 5 a.m. the next day, shaved, washed, polished my scalp, dressed and sat on my bed reading until the screws arrived at about 7 a.m. to escort me to the Old Bailey. Having put in a request form the previous evening's association, my suit and best shoes were brought out of storage in reception for me to change into. We left at 9 a.m. for the familiar drive across east London to the Old Bailey. It was an evil, blustery, overcast day and through the darkened glass porthole of my cubicle it appeared almost night outside. As we were crossing Tower Bridge in heavy traffic, an elderly man on the pavement stopped in his stride and stared impassively into my porthole. Probably an ex-con, I thought to myself, reflecting how lucky he was to be on the outside.

The dock in court 13 of the Old Bailey was oddly positioned high above the court, like a projectionist's booth in a cinema, giving me a panoramic view of the sentencing judge, Recorder of London Sir Lawrence Verney, his two court assistants, the CPS, my defence team and various court clerks and stenographers. To the right the press gallery was packed with the usual faces. High up to the left was the public gallery, also full, and curiously there were two strangers with their fingers crossed for me. To their right was another smaller gallery, less full. Ratcliffe and Peters were there, so perhaps it was a gallery for members of the CPS who had been working on the case. Ratcliffe and Peters seemed decent on the occasions that we had met and I wondered if they really got any satisfaction from prosecuting me. It was intimidating to be the centre of so much attention and I felt more distressed than at the other court appearances.

The CPS spoke first, arguing that my actions `greatly damaged national security', without ever attempting to define `national security' or explain how it had been harmed. Emotion welled up inside me at the stupidity and injustice of the allegations and I held my head in my hands. Gibbs wanted to bring another expert witness and Verney granted permission to take the court temporarily in camera. Redd, former H/MOS, took the stand to bleat that my synopsis had `endangered the lives of officers'. Davies spoke well in my defence, pointing out that there was nothing of substance in the synopsis, that it had not left a locked filing cabinet and that my `guilty' plea and cooperation with the police deserved consideration. A glance at my wristwatch showed that the arguments went on for 53 minutes, until Judge Verney called a recess to consider his verdict. The screws slipped my handcuffs back on to take me down to the dungeons, but I only had to wait in the cell for a few minutes before the door opened and they dragged me back up to the dock.

Verney's opening words described the `seriousness of the offence', immediately dashing my hope to be out in time for Christmas. He took into account my guilty plea and that it was my first ever offence, but gave no consideration for my cooperation with the police. `I therefore have no alternative but to sentence you to 12 months imprisonment,' he announced gravely. My release date would be 1 May, only four-and-a-half months away on a calendar but a long time in Belmarsh.

Davies and Wadham came down to the dungeons to commiserate. `You know that you have the right to appeal against the sentence,' Wadham explained, `and you might get a few weeks less.' But I declined the offer. Wadham and Davies were acting for me pro bono and it would be an abuse of their generosity to ask them to mount an appeal. Ratcliffe and Peters also wanted to see me for more help in decrypting my Psion, but I declined. Judge Verney hadn't given me any consideration for my previous cooperation, so there was no reason to help them now.

Unusually, there was another inmate in the prison van on the way back to Belmarsh. The reason was clear once back on the spur. `Tomlinson, you're off the book,' announced Mr Richards cheerfully. `You'll be on work as soon as Christmas is over.' The Governor had downgraded my security status from A-cat to B-cat, meaning I could visit the gym more frequently and people other than immediate family would be able to visit.

For the Christmas break, the prison staff made an effort to bring some spirit to the spur with a small tree and tinsel above Mr Richards's desk. On Christmas day, we had a half-hour lie-in and a cooked breakfast, then all-day association. We were only briefly locked back into our cells to eat lunch of a chicken leg, roast potatoes and sprouts, Christmas pudding and a real treat of a Cornetto ice-cream. In the afternoon the staff arranged a pool tournament (won convincingly by Dobson) and then a young female screw whom we had not seen before organised a bingo game with first prize of a 5 phone card, won by Onion-head with some blatant cheating.

`You've got to give the screws some credit,' Dobson muttered as Onion-head cavorted up to the pretty screw to collect his prize, giving her a cheeky kiss, `they've had to give up their own Christmas day at home and spend it in here with us bastards.' Dobson was right that the Belmarsh staff did an excellent job, and not just on Christmas day. Relations between staff and prisoners were generally cordial and there was little of the confrontational `them and us' management style that existed in other prisons. And it couldn't be easy spending all day confined in a pressure cooker with a brewing mixture of depressed, psychopathic or violent criminals. They regularly got abused verbally and attacked physically by angry prisoners, and were at risk of being taken hostage or even murdered. The dangers they faced on a daily basis were far higher than those ever faced by the bleating Redd, the MI6 officer who had whined at my sentencing that my synopsis had `endangered the lives of agents'. And then at the end of what amounted to a very stressful day the screws had to go home to try and live on a salary a fraction of Redd's, in one of the world's most expensive cities.

`You'll not believe yer ears tonight, Rich,' Dobson told me enthusiastically on New Year's Eve. `We're gonna have a reet party!' A few prisoners had got themselves a joint prepared and there were rumours that there was some hooch about.

It was customary for prisoners to see in the New Year by banging any hard object against the heating pipes, cell doors and window bars. It seemed pointless to me. `You'll not catch me joining in with that nonsense,' I replied. `I'll be tucked up in bed.' I consoled myself that for once I would wake up in the New Year without a hangover.

`Nah, yer big wuss,' jeered Dobson, `you'll be up bangin' wi' the rest of us.'

The first sporadic clatter and whooping started at about 11.30 p.m., gathering in intensity until it became pointless trying to concentrate on my book. I had just put out the light when somebody attacked the heating pipe with their waste-paper bin, jolting me upright. Soon somebody else joined in and, as midnight approached, the din became a cacaphony as every inmate released a year's frustration in wild fits of banging, screaming and hollering. The joyful spirit was too infectious to ignore and I got out of bed, picked up my bin and hurled it against the door, then again and again, and whooped and shouted with the rest.

The only advantage of being an A-cat prisoner was automatic assignation to a single-cell on security grounds. Since my downgrading to B-cat, that privilege had gone and my days in such comparative luxury were numbered. Sunday morning associations, when we were issued with a clean sheet, pillow case and Bic razor, were when the screws also reallocated cells. On the first Sunday in January, Mr Richards bellowed out from his desk on the spur floor, `Tomlinson, get your stuff.' My time had come and resignedly I tipped my belongings into my bin liner, rolled up the mattress, sheets, pillow and blanket into a bundle and presented myself to his desk. `Over there,' he indicated, pointing to the double cell right by his desk, grinning as ever.

`You bastard,' I muttered. The words were meant to be unheard, but they slipped out too loud. `Tomlinson, I'll have you down the block if you say that again!' Mr Richards threatened without menace. Cell 2 was right next to his desk and he reserved it for troublesome `fraggles' or suicidal `toppers' so he could keep a close eye on them. Two fraggles or toppers could not be together in the same cell, so a well-behaved prisoner had to take the other bed. I'd been selected as the spur's psychiatric nurse. `You'll get your new cellmate tomorrow afternoon,' Mr Richards grinned mischievously.

Dumping my foam mattress and bedding on the metal straps of the hard iron bed, I surveyed my new cell. It had just been vacated by Parker, an untidy, overweight, chain-smoking gun-freak. Before Belmarsh, he had lived at home in Essex with his mother and weapon collection. One day he drank too much beer and fell sound asleep on his bed. His doting mother found him and, fearing he was dead, called an ambulance. The paramedics arrived, realised he was just drunk, but also found a shotgun under his bed. They called the police who arrested him and he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for illegal possession of firearms. His other hobby was lying in bed smoking and eating jaffa cakes, so jail was a Butlin's activity camp for him. The cell stank of bad hygiene, the floor had not been swept for weeks and even a bluebottle would have thrown up at the toilet. The rest of that Sunday was spent cleaning with the tiny strip of pot-scrubber and miniature bar of soap which we were allowed in our cells. That night, lying on my bed listening to a violent storm battering the prison, I prayed that my new cellmate, whether, a fraggle or a topper, would at least be clean.

As a newly demoted B-cat, I was now eligible for `work' and my first day in my new job was the next morning. Work gave me the opportunity to get out of the cell more often and my daily prison allowance went up from 1.26 per day to 1.76, making it possible to buy extra fruit, food and toiletries from the prison canteen. Somewhat surprisingly, given my crime, the Governor assigned me to the computer room, down in the basement of the workshop area. Mike, the patient and kindly course instructor, quickly realised that I already knew how to use a PC so allowed me to do as I liked rather than follow the basic computer literacy course.

Shortly after returning to the cell from my first day in the lab, the door-flap slapped back, Mr Richards's narrow eyes checked me, and the heavy door locks clunked. `Tomlinson, here's your new cellmate,' Mr Richards announced with a devilish grin as he flung the door open. I put down my pocket-computer chess game and stood, ready to greet my new cellmate. Holding open the door, Mr Richards impatiently beckoned in the new arrival, but the smell announced Stonley's presence even before he was visible. Mr Richards instinctively recoiled back into the fresher air of the spur and slammed the door shut on us.

Stonley walked over to the spare bed, put his only possessions, a plastic mug and cutlery, on the bedside locker and began angrily pacing the cell in tiny circles, clutching his beard, oblivious to my presence. I watched for a couple of minutes, and realised that he was not going to stop. `Hey Stonley,' I said warmly, `would you mind giving it a break?' Stonley stopped in his tracks and stared in surprise at me as if I were a talking flowerpot. `Have a sit-down,' I suggested. Stonley obliged immediately, as if used to being bullied around, and once perched on the edge of his bed stared angrily out of the window, still clutching his beard. `I'm Richard, what's your name?'

Stonley made no eye contact but after a short pause, spat out, `Stonley.'

`No, I mean what's your first name?'

Stonley turned from the window, flashed an angry glare and replied, `Dunno', before returning his anger to the window. I tried again, but got the same response, this time more angrily. Although Stonley was sitting motionless on the edge of his bed, his stench had wafted over to me and I had to move to the other end of my bed.

The door-flap slapped open and Onion-head, who had just been appointed a spur cleaner and was outside collecting the lunch-trays, leered in. `Arright, Rich?' he laughed, gooning his face into an exaggerated imitation of Stonley. `Wait till he starts playin' his pink oboe!' I gave him the finger and he slapped the flap back with another laugh.

I had to find a way of getting out of sharing the cell with Stonley, but my options were limited. The staff were usually reasonable about putting compatible cellmates together as it caused them less bother if they got along. But they would not let me off the hook with Stonley so easily; nobody was compatible with him and the screws accurately guessed it was not in my nature to start a fight, a tactic his previous cellmate had used to engineer a separation.

At unlock for evening association, I made a beeline for Mr Richards. `You've got to get me out of there. Stonley should be in hospital, not in prison. You'll turn me into a fraggle too if I have to share with him much longer,' I pleaded.

Mr Richards laughed, `You're going nowhere, Tomlinson. Doctor's orders. Stonley has to be in a double cell so that he learns to interact with other prisoners.'

`Well, if I have to share with him, will you please tell him to wash his clothes and get a shower?' Mr Richards obliged and ordered Stonley to take a shower and hand in his filthy clothing to the unfortunate Turkish laundryman for washing.

Locked back in after association, I found that Stonley had used the toilet and badly missed. He would never clean it up, so there was no choice but to do it myself. He was still perched on the edge of his bed, staring angrily out of the window, twiddling with his beard, as I finished and junked my last strip of pot-scrubber in the bin. As there had been cases of fraggles attacking sleeping cellmates, I didn't dare go to sleep before him and stayed up playing chess on my pocket set. At about 1 a.m., Stonley briefly went to the toilet, lay down on his bed, pulled a sheet over himself and started masturbating.

After a fitful night's sleep, inspiration struck in the morning. `Stonley, do you smoke?' I asked as soon as he was awake.

`Dunno,' he replied angrily.

`You must know the answer to that, surely?' I replied.

`Dunno,' he shouted back.

As soon as we were unlocked, I grabbed my half-full phone card, two Twixes, and a tube of custard creams, and dashed over to Onion-head's cell, where he was having a cup of tea with Dobson. `Arright, Rich?' he asked. `How's the fraggle, did he burp his worm last night?'

`Shut up, you bastard,' I replied with a smile. `Onion-head, you got any tobacco?'

`What's up, Rich?' jeered Dobson. `You tekkin' up smokin', it's that bad is it?'

I dumped the phone card, Twixes and custard creams on Onion-head's bed. `I'll swap you all that for an ounce of tobacco and five Rizlas.' Onion-head's eyes lit up - it was a good swap - and he handed me the remains of a pouch of Golden Virginia with a few papers.

Back in the cell after breakfast I asked Stonley if he would like a smoke. He glared at me suspiciously. It was perhaps the first time anybody had offered him anything since coming into prison. I produced the pouch and papers, and pushed them over to him. `They're yours, I don't smoke.'

He studied them suspiciously for a few seconds, like a stray cat who has been given a tempting morsel by a stranger, then pounced, expertly crafting a rollie and lighting up. As soon as the cell was nicely full of smoke, I got up and pushed the `room service' bell to call a screw. It was supposed only to be used in emergencies and I risked getting a day down the block for its abuse. Mr Richards arrived a few minutes later to investigate. `Tomlinson, what do you want?' he asked impatiently through the perspex window.

`Mr Richards, you never told me Stonley was a smoker.'

Mr Richards looked at me quizzically. `So what?' he asked.

`Prison regulation 12a,' I replied, `A non-smoking prisoner cannot be forced to share a cell with a smoking prisoner against his wishes.'

Mr Richards glared back at me for a moment. `Tomlinson, I'll `ave you one day,' he replied, exasperated. But he knew he was beaten. Most prisoners didn't know about the rule, but my study of the prison regulation book during associations had paid off. `OK, get your stuff, cell 8 on the first landing is free.' Mr Richards held the door open while I bundled my stuff back together and escorted me up to my new home, a single cell.

Early in January, Belmarsh received a visit from the `Health and Safety at Work' inspection teams. When we were unlocked to queue for lunch the spur and hotplate area had been plastered with signs warning us of dangers. By the stairs was a neat sign announcing, `Caution: Steep Stairs'. Around the hotplate notices warned us, `Caution: Hot Surfaces'. It was absurd to pretend that these presented serious hazards to our wellbeing, when we were cooped up in such confines with some of the most violent men in the country. `What a bleedin' liberty,' laughed Onion-head, scornfully eyeing the warning on the stairs. `They lock up an ordinary, decent armed robber like me with dangerous, book-writing ex-secret agents like you,' he said to me, `and then they warn us about steep bleedin' stairs.' With a quick glance around to ensure no screws were watching, he drew heavily on his roll-up until the tip glowed red, and lit the corner of the sign. As flames leapt up the paper laying long, black soot streaks up the wall, Onion-head chuckled mischievously, `That's that fixed then, eh? They should put up another sign saying ``Caution: Inflammable Signs''.'

Shortly after the next computer workshop session a few additional notices appeared, written on identical paper with the same typeface. Above each toilet appeared the notice, `Caution: this toilet is fucking filthy'. On the wall behind Mr Richards' desk appeared another, `Caution: this screw is bloody thick'. It took Mr Richards a few days to notice and then we never saw any more of the `Health and Safety at Work' notices.

Even though Belmarsh was a maximum security prison and elaborate precautions were taken to prevent prisoners smuggling contraband on to the spurs, there was still a fair amount of drugs about. For several prisoners, especially those facing long sentences, getting high was their only relief from the numbing boredom and lack of challenge in prison life. Drugs were smuggled in by two routes. One was by a crooked screw who had been recruited by a former inmate. The other was via the visiting-rooms. Now that I was a B-cat prisoner, I could attend open visits and saw for myself how it was done.

Open visits took place in a large hall, filled with six rows of visiting-booths. There were 20 booths on each row, separated by low dividing partitions. Around the edge of the room was a raised gantry where the screws could observe the visits. We waited in a large, smoke-filled holding-cell for our turn to go forward, be briefly searched and to receive a coloured, lettered bib to wear. The colour and letter corresponded to a particular booth. When all the prisoners were seated, the visitors were permitted to enter. They had been checked for drugs with a sniffer dog, but it was not legal for the prison staff to search them physically. Wives and girlfriends of the prisoners defeated the dog without too much difficulty by wrapping the drugs in cling-film and secreting the package in their bodies. Prisoners were allowed to kiss their partners briefly at the beginning and end of the visit, and the package was transferred. We were searched on leaving the visits hall, but prisoners who were seen kissing suspiciously were searched more thoroughly, including inside their mouths. Smugglers therefore had no option but to swallow their package, which was potentially fatal should it burst. They later retrieved the package, as Ronnie explained, `from one orifice or the other'.

Prisoners were regularly tested for drugs. Those suspected of drug-taking were called up more often to give urine samples. I had my first mandatory test on 2 February. As I was preparing to go to work, a screw came to my cell. `No work for you today, Tomlinson. Drink that tea down fast and don't have a piss.' He escorted me down unfamiliar corridors to the drug testing centre, and put me in a holding-cell with couple of other prisoners. Amongst them was the Italian guy I had briefly met when first remanded to Brixton, his cockney English now fluent.

When my turn came I was asked to confirm that I was not on any medication. `No bad back, then?' the screw asked suspiciously. Most of the dope-using prisoners had permanent `bad backs' and queued every day to get a dose from the doctor of Brufen pain-reliever which masked traces of marijuana in their blood, rendering the test worthless. Indeed, Ronnie's bad back was so `bad' the doctor had ordered him to have an extra mattress in his cell. The screw lead me over to a urinal, gave me a small receptacle and told me to fill it. `Tomlinson, if you hear of any drug use, you'll give us a nod, won't you?' he asked lamely afterwards. `You'll have to do better than that to recruit me,' I laughed.

The probation service summoned me on 29 March, and I went to the legal visits rooms to find a young female officer waiting for me. `There is something very odd about your case,' she frowned. `Normally we have a first appointment with a prisoner three months before they are released, but we were only told about you by the Home Office two days ago and the Governor wants to talk to me about you after this meeting.' I suspected the meddlesome hand of MI6, but said nothing. She explained that I would be on probation for three months after my release, and during that time I could be reimprisoned for breaching any probation conditions. `But frankly, for somebody like you who is a first-time, non-violent offender, there won't be any conditions and we probably won't bother you much.' She made an appointment to see me three days before my release, and wished me luck for the rest of my sentence.

The mood on the spur varied from day to day, depending on which screws were on duty. If the good-natured and cheerful Mr Richards was in charge, associations were quiet and generally trouble-free. But when Mr Richards was on leave, senior screws from other spurs stood in and their different management style, or unfamiliarity with the foibles of a troublesome prisoner, could quickly antagonise the whole spur. In early April the atmosphere became so tense that even Mr Richards was losing his cool. First, a bottle of hooch was found brewing behind the washing machine and because nobody would own up association was cancelled for the day. Then the local newsagent went bankrupt and all the prisoners, myself included, lost the money paid in advance for the deliveries. Then we lost another association because most of the screws took leave to attend the funeral of a colleague who had hung himself. With missed associations and trivial annoyances, the spur was in a tetchy mood and there were some minor scuffles in the lunch queue. That afternoon association was late starting because a screw had fallen ill and a replacement could not be found immediately. We were late getting to the gym, so our session was shorter than usual. `Spur 1, in your cells, no shower, no water.' Mr Richards bellowed as soon as we were back, the timetable disruption forcing him to cut the ten minutes we normally had to get a shower and hot water. A cup of tea at every bang-up was an important part of the daily routine, and having it denied was demoralising.

`Mr Richards, yer a fat, fat bastard,' hollered Onion-head from the balcony, ducking into his cell before Mr Richards could identify him. A few prisoners tried to make a dash for the urn, but Mr Richards collared them and emptied the mugs of those who had succeeded in filling them. Other screws starting banging-up prisoners like me who had reluctantly gone into their cells, and the spur resounded with the clunking of the heavy locks and the slapping of the flaps. One irritated prisoner banged his metal waste-paper bin against the cell door and soon everybody joined in. I lost my temper too, and kicked my cell door so hard that I bruised my toe, making me madder still.

A few prisoners who had not yet gone into their cells were putting up a protest, Craggs the most vociferous. I heard Mr Richards hollering at Craggs, `In your cell, Craggs!' even his good humour tested to the limit.

`I'm havin' my fucking mug of water,' screamed back Craggs.

`Craggs, get in your cell NOW!'

The argument was hotting up and I hopped over to my flap. The screw had slammed it shut with such haste that it had bounced back open slightly and the spur floor was just visible. Mr Richards was standing in front of the hot water urn, blocking the furious Craggs. `Craggs, if you take one step closer, you're down the block.'

Craggs glared at Mr Richards and then rushed, leaping for his throat. Mr Richards just had time to press his belt alarm before the angry inmate was on top of him. Craggs' moment of vengeance and glory was short-lived. He was quickly overpowered by screws bursting in from the other spurs and was hauled off down to the segregation block, never to be seen again.

The tension of the day's events was too much for Mockalenny. That evening at unlock for dinner he emerged from his cell wearing nothing but his underpants, singing `God save our Princess Anne' to the tune of the British national anthem. He had painted his face with toothpaste for tribal war paint, had fashioned a head-band out of threads from his blanket and was brandishing a pool-cue like a spear. The screws allowed him get his dinner, still singing and waving his spear. When he had eaten his meal and we were all banged-up once more, he was escorted from the spur and we never saw him again either.

A few days before release, Mr Richards called me up for another probation visit. Making my way over to the legal visits rooms, I was expecting to see the pretty young officer again. But this time it was a senior male officer who didn't smile or shake hands in greeting. `Tomlinson, here's your probation conditions.' He handed me a two-page sheet. `You will not be allowed to leave the country after you are released and you will have to hand both your British and New Zealand passports to the Metropolitan police SB. You will not be allowed to speak to any journalists or any members of the media. If you do you will be immediately reimprisoned. Do you understand?' I nodded, though I found it difficult to believe that they could impose such Stalinist conditions. `And finally, you will not be allowed to use the internet or e-mail.'

`You're not serious,' I laughed. `Don't tell me, I am not allowed to use a telephone either, or read a newspaper, I suppose?'

The probation officer glared humourlessly at me, and didn't reply.

Dobson kept telling me that the last few days before release would be the longest of my life but they were little different from any of the others. Even when the remaining days of incarceration could be counted on my fingers, the intense feeling of anger at my imprisonment never left me. The manner in which MI6 had dismissed me, abused their powers to block my right to expose their malpractice with the argument that the courts were `not secure,' and then hypocritically and glibly used the same courts to sentence me still rankled deeply. Unable to come to terms with my fate like the other prisoners, even one day of incarceration was too much. All the six months of boring frustration had succeeded in doing was to increase my resolve to publish this book.


************************


14. ON THE RUN

FRIDAY, 1 MAY 1998
LONDON

`Morning, Tomlinson, you're out and about early,' Mr Richards greeted me cheerfully as he pushed open my door at 7 a.m. He must have unlocked many other prisoners on their release days, but he still got pleasure from it. The previous evening I gave my spare food, magazines and books away, leaving only a few items to stuff into a bin liner while Mr Richards held the cell door open. He gave me a moment to bang up Dobson and Onion-head to say goodbye through their flaps.

`Good luck wi' yer book. If ye' need a hand smugglin' it into Britain, yer know who to call,' shouted Dobson, already up and reading at his desk.

`Tell `em I'm an innocent man!' yelled Onion-head from his pit. Mr Richards then escorted me down the now-familiar corridors to reception. `And I hope I never see you again,' Mr Richards said with a smile as he handed me over to the reception staff.

Even though my release was imminent, there were still the familiar strip-searches, X-rays and long waits in smoke-filled holding-pens. `You might be nicking something for all we know,' explained one reception screw. `Them prison shirts are all the rage at the Ministry of Sound these days.'

The process had dragged on for three hours when a screw stuck his head around the door of the holding-cell. `Which one of you's Tomlinson, then?' he asked, glaring around at us. I stuck up my hand. `You're wanted down at Scotland Yard this afternoon, 3 p.m.,' he announced seriously, `and you've to take your passports.' The releasees waiting with me whistled and cheered. `You'll be back in `ere Monday morning then,' laughed one black guy. `They'll charge you with somfin' new tonight, hold you in the police cells over the weekend, then nick yer back `ere Monday sharp.' It was gut-wrenching to know he was probably right. If MI6 were planning on bringing new charges, they would do it on a Friday afternoon, meaning a long weekend in the police cells until a Monday court appearance.

Stepping through the heavy gate of HMP Belmarsh clutching my bin liner, brought no feeling of jubilation, just a quiet sense of relief that it was over and pleasure at seeing my mother waiting for me. Thankfully there were no journalists, just a couple of police in a Mini Metro who watched as I walked to greet her. She drove me to Richborne Terrace for my first decent shower in six months and a quick lunch before my appointment at Scotland Yard.

A WPC met me in the lobby and took me upstairs, where Ratcliffe and Peters were waiting in an interview room. A pile of polythene specimen bags were spread out on a table. `To put your mind at rest, Richard,' announced Ratcliffe, `we are not about to charge you with anything new - we just want to give you your stuff back.' One by one, Peters opened the bags and gave back my possessions. It was like opening Christmas presents, the items were so unfamiliar after months locked in a bare cell - my Psion (from which they had `accidentally' erased all the data), video camera, various books and videos.

`There are some items you can't have back, unfortunately,' Peters said when the items were all displayed on the table. `MI6 have told us the photographs and videos that you took in Bosnia could damage national security,' he said with a hint of sarcasm. The photos and video footage of burned out Bosnian villages and the Balkan countryside were completely unconnected with my work and could have been taken by any of the soldiers on duty there, and Peters was clearly sceptical of MI6's claim.

`One other thing,' interjected Ratcliffe. `Have you brought your passports?'

`Sorry, I forgot,' I lied, using my MI6 training to sound vaguely convincing.

Ratcliffe looked annoyed. `OK, since you've just got out of jail, we'll give you a break, but we'll make an appointment with your local police station for you to hand them in there first thing tomorrow morning.'

`OK, I'll give them my British passport,' I replied superciliously. `You've the legal right to take that, but you're not having my New Zealand passport.' My probation terms were so unreasonable and irksome that I was determined to be awkward. Ratcliffe said nothing, but looked nonplussed, so I continued. `My New Zealand passport belongs to the New Zealand government and it is against international law for a foreign police force to confiscate it.' I wasn't sure that my claim was correct but I said it with conviction and Ratcliffe, who probably didn't know himself, seemed to believe me.

`Well in that case, you'll be in breach of your probation and we'll have no choice but to re-arrest you,' he replied.

`Ok then,' I replied defiantly, `I'll ring the New Zealand High Commission right now and tell them that you want to arrest me for refusing to surrender my passport.' I picked up my mobile phone that Peters had just returned, and started dialling an imaginary number.

`OK, forget surrendering your New Zealand passport to us. How about if you surrender it to the New Zealand High Commission until your probation is over?' suggested Ratcliffe resignedly. It was a fair compromise and my point was made. We agreed that I would post it to the High Commission first thing the following morning.

Ratcliffe, his duty done, got up and left, leaving me with Peters who escorted me to the exit with my things in a bin liner. `Richard,' he said guardedly in the lobby, `I just want to let you know I agree with what you've done. They were bastards to you, and they should be held accountable. But if you are going to carry on your campaign, just make sure you do it abroad. It causes us too much work here . . .' Unfortunately I was not to come across Peters again.

Leaving my flat the following morning with my mother, it was evident that we were under surveillance. A green Vauxhall Astra with two male occupants was parked facing my flat only a few metres away at the junction of Richborne Terrace and Palfrey Place. It was the only `trigger' position that would enable them to watch both the front door and side entrance. There were no obvious followers as we walked the few hundred metres to the Oval Underground station, but once my mother was on her way back home I was alone and had the opportunity to do a few basic anti-surveillance moves. Walking down Kennington Road towards Kennington police station, I picked up a possible watcher, a young, slightly plump female. There were probably others but it would take more rigorous anti-surveillance to be sure. MI6, anxious to ensure that I stayed in Britain, would be watching to check that my New Zealand passport was posted to the High Commission. I was equally determined to mess them around as much as possible and decided to hang on to the passport as long as I dared, to see what would happen.

The police station was almost within the shadow of Century House, now unoccupied and boarded up. It was Saturday morning, so there were half a dozen other people awaiting attention to enquire about relatives locked up the night before, or to present driving licences after the usual Friday evening drink-drive controls. I sat down on the bench in front of the duty sergeant's counter, picked up a copy of the local newspaper and prepared for a long and tedious wait. I was getting into a good article about a gang who had just been remanded to Belmarsh for holding up a Securicor van when there was a sharp rap on the window of the interview counter. The elderly duty sergeant peered at me over his bifocal glasses. `Mr Tomlinson, step this way. Inspector Ratcliffe is waiting for you.'

`How do you know my name?' I mischievously called back.

The sergeant looked sheepish; he shouldn't have let on that he already knew me, as it revealed that they had followed me to the station. `Never mind, just get in there,' he replied impatiently, indicating one of the interview rooms.

`There you are, just as you asked,' I announced sarcastically, slapping my British passport on the desk.

`And have you posted your New Zealand passport to the High Commission?' asked Ratcliffe.

`Oh yes, indeed I have,' I lied brazenly. `When and where,' asked Ratcliffe suspiciously. `In the postbox by the Oval tube station, just after I said goodbye to my mother this morning,' I replied, stifling a smirk. Ratcliffe knew I was lying, because the watchers had not reported me posting anything. Ratcliffe could not admit that he had me under surveillance, so he had to accept my false assurance.

With my New Zealand passport still in my top pocket, MI6 had no choice but to keep me under surveillance. That afternoon would give the opportunity to make them earn their living. On the IONEC we practised anti-surveillance against teams from MI5's A4 and the Met SB in London on a couple of exercises, and recced two routes. The first, from Waterloo station across the Thames to the Barbican centre, was a beginner's route, full of easy and obvious surveillance traps, and there was no obvious cover reason for me to go to the City. Taking that route would make it obvious that I was surveillance -aware and they would possibly back off. The second, more complicated and advanced, was down Oxford Street. The crowds made it more difficult for both dogs and hare, but there were some really good anti-surveillance traps. Also, there was a plausible cover reason for me to go there: I badly needed some new clothes.

That afternoon was spent trudging up and down the famous shopping street, feigning interest in clothes and taking advantage of surveillance traps. In Debenham's department store, the switch-back escalators allowed me to scan the shop floor below and I picked up one watcher. At the tube station, a little-used short-cut forced another follower to expose himself as he exited the side entrance like a rabbit from a hole, anxious not to lose my trail. Browsing aimlessly in the labyrinthine bookshelves of Foyles bookstore at Charing Cross Road forced two others to do the same. By the end of the afternoon, I had confirmed repeat sightings on three watchers and had picked up a possible fourth.

Sunday dawned with clear blue skies and a refreshing wind. It was a perfect day to skate in the park and that would provide an opportunity to bait my surveillance. Most surveillance teams train only against targets on foot or in a motor vehicle, and they are ill-prepared to follow targets who choose unusual modes of transport. Skating was ideal; too fast to follow on foot, and followers would be reluctant to expose themselves in a slow-moving car. About 11 a.m., I strapped on my K2s, grabbed a Walkman and burst out of the side entrance of my flat. Some rapid skating took me down Palfrey Place, Fentiman Road and towards Vauxhall Cross. It was a gorgeous, uplifiting morning and it was exhilarating to be on skates again. Passing Vauxhall Cross, I gave the surveillance cameras an exuberant one-fingered salute. Skating backwards over the smooth pavement of Vauxhall Bridge gave me an opportunity to confirm that there was no obvious surveillance behind. Arriving at Hyde Park 20 minutes later, I was feeling buoyant, confident that I had escaped.

`Hey, yo,'' a familiar voice called out. `Where yo'been?' I spun around to see Winston and Shaggy, weaving towards me through the strollers and joggers on the broad asphalt path in front of Kensington Palace. `Where the hell yo' been these last months, fella?' Shaggy grinned, pulling aside his heavy-duty stereo headphones so that he could hear my reply.

`I've just done a stretch down in Belmarsh,' I replied, smiling coyly.

Both Shaggy and Winston had done short stretches in Brixton for peddling in Notting Hill and so they would know Belmarsh. Winston looked at me disbelievingly. `Like fuck, fella, educated white-boys like you don't get bird!'

I explained how I'd ended up in Belmarsh, but they were still disbelieving.

`Nah, yo's pullin' my arse,' laughed Winston scornfully. `Yo can't get locked up in `dis country for writin' no book.' Winston skated off, laughing mockingly.

`Right fella,' Shaggy addressed me, suspicious but prepared to believe me, `if yo's really done bird, what d'ya call a fella like Winston?' he asked.

`A fraggle?' I answered.

Shaggy laughed, `Hey Winston, git back here, you fraggle, dis fella really has done bird!'

Winston skated back over. `If yo's really done bird in Belmarsh, that takes respect!' I held out the palms of my hand and Winston slapped them enthusiastically, delighted to find that the educated white-boy really was an ex-con.

`Shit man, dat helicopter is pissin' me right off,' Winston exclaimed a few minutes later, glaring at a Metropolitan police helicopter that was droning a thousand feet above us. `Let's get some quiet by d'lake, see what's happenin' there,' he suggested.

Dodging through the ambling pedestrians, we skated over to the Serpentine, on the other side of the park. There were half a dozen of the regulars already there and we joined in the banter. But the helicopter followed us over, the buzzing noise intrusive. `Hey, Winston, yo' been dealin' again?' shouted Shaggy. `Dat bleedin' `copter is followin' yo',' he laughed. Winston came over to join us, looking nervously at the helicopter. `What yo' bin doin' den, badboy?' laughed Shaggy.

`I bin good dees days,' answered Winston. `He ain't followin' me, no fuckin' way man, but he's gettin' right on my tits.'

They had used a helicopter to escort me on my prison transfer from Brixton to Belmarsh, but that was because it was a standard operating procedure for A-cats. It would be difficult to keep me under surveillance while I was on my skates, but surely they wouldn't go to the expense of using the police helicopter to follow me? There was only one way to find out. `Let's go down to Trafalgar Square,' I ventured. `See what's up over there.' We took off through the heavy Piccadilly traffic, Winston blowing his whistle, skating backwards just in front of any taxi-driver who dared get in his way, giving abuse or the finger, and Shaggy, ghetto blaster balanced on his shoulder, hopping on and off moving buses or grabbing the back-rack of passing motorcyclists. The trip only took a few minutes but it was long enough for the helicopter to appear over our heads again.

Winston was now even more agitated. `Dat bastard, he followin' me!' he glared skywards indignantly, frowning hard as he planned how to deal with this unwanted intrusion on his day's skating. `Hey, Shaggy, wot you say, we go back over the lake, if he follows us, den we give `im somfin' interestin' to look at?' We skated back up Piccadilly, around Hyde Park Corner and back over to the Serpentine. The helicopter droned over a few minutes later. Shaggy and Winston glared hard at the intruder. `Right,' dem nosey bastards are asking what for,' announced Winston. Without a further word, they turned around, bent over and dropped their shorts. `Stick your fuckin' lense up my fuckin' arse!' yelled Winston gleefully.

The helicopter surveillance that afternoon made me realise that MI6 were serious about keeping me under watch and persuaded me that it would be prudent not to play around any more. That evening I posted my passport to the New Zealand High Commission on Haymarket. A few months later, a probation officer told me that SB, under instructions from MI6, put in a warrant to re-arrest me after I failed to post it on Saturday morning. The magistrate threw out the application, pointing out that warrants for breach of probation must be requested by the probation service and not the police. MI6 were not deterred and on Monday morning ordered probation to put in another application. But by then my passport was safely in the post and they couldn't justify an arrest.

After my New Zealand passport was out of my hands there was no more obvious physical surveillance. But MI6 were tapping my home and mobile phones and it was irksome knowing that people I knew in UKZ would be listening to me. Whenever I heard a good joke down the pub, I rang my home ansaphone and repeated it so the transcribers would at least have something to liven up their day. I confirmed that my mail was under surveillance by posting a couple of letters to myself, building into them the anti-tamper tricks we learnt on the IONEC. Any letters posted at the nearest postbox to my house on Richborne Terrace were also intercepted.

In early June I saw a television documentary about the death of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed in the Alma tunnel in Paris in August of the previous year. It revealed that the chauffeur, Henri Paul, who also died, worked normally as the Ritz security manager. Mysteriously, a large sum of cash was found on his body. It dawned on me that he was the same Ritz security manager I had come across while reading BATTLE's file in SOV/OPS section in 1992. Realising that this information would be important to the imminent inquest into the deaths, but knowing that going to the British police would see me immediately re-arrested, I wrote to the father of Dodi Al Fayed, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store. There was no reply from Harrods, so, presuming that he was not interested in the information, I thought nothing more of it. Six months later, after casually mentioning this to a journalist who immediately recognised its significance, a representative of Mr Al Fayed contacted me. He assured me categorically that the letter had never arrived.

Getting out of jail was a relief, but living in the real world meant working to pay for a roof over my head. My flat was mortgaged commensurate with my MI6 salary, so a new job would have to be as well paid if I wanted to stay there. My experience in MI6 had already proven difficult to market, and to add to my difficulties MI6 said that they would not use their contacts to help me. I didn't want another soul-destroying descent into debt, so I chose to sell my flat. It was in central London, had a small but well-kept garden, a garage and was in good condition, so it sold quickly. It was gut-wrenching to move out for the last time in mid-June and load up my possessions for the drive up the motorway to my parents' home in Cumbria, where I could stay until the probation was over. When my travel restrictions were lifted, I planned to move to Australia or New Zealand where it would be easier to start afresh at the bottom of a new career without the millstone of a mortgage. I bought a laptop computer and hooked up the internet so I could research job opportunities there. It was in direct breach of my probation conditions, but MI6 would have to admit that they were tapping my parents' telephone if they wanted to re-arrest me. In any case, it gave me pleasure to break an absurd and technophobic condition. The internet proved fruitful and soon my Psion was filling with contacts in Auckland and Sydney. One career that interested me was telejournalism and I made contacts with TV companies in both cities. Among them was Australia's Channel 9 TV and their young London correspondent, Kathryn Bonella, met me a couple of times in London. These meetings had to be discreet, because although I was just looking for a job, MI6 would view them as a breach of probation and would try to have me re-arrested.

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 have 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 Elyse 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 rception.' 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 turned to the French officer who had overseen my arrest. `Je suis desol, mais je ne veux pas rpondre ... 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.

As Broisniard explained this, every now and again the interpreter paraphrased a few sentences into English for the benefit of Ratcliffe and Whaley. They tired of listening to the French, and in a lull, Ratcliffe interjected impatiently, `We think you may have used the internet in breach of your probation conditions.' I ignored him, and replied to Broisniard in French.

`What did he say?' I asked, innocently.

Broisniard's smile broadened. The interpreter translated Ratcliffe's question into French and Gruignard opened up the laptop and started typing. He seemed unfamiliar with a keyboard and typed using his two index fingers, pausing occasionally while he searched for a key, his lower lip mouthing the letters as he tapped them in. `Voil...', announced Gruignard finally, evidently pleased with his work. `Est ce-que vous avez utilis l'internet,' he read out aloud, checking his handiwork.

Broisniard put on his glasses and leant over to read the computer screen. `Est ce-que vous avez utilis l'internet,' he repeated to me sternly.

`Jamais,' I lied emphatically.

Ratcliffe remembered enough schoolboy French to understand and, eager to get on with the interview, started to ask another question. But Broisniard cut him off. `Attendez, attendez un moment,' he said, holding up his hand, and leant over the laptop to watch Gruignard type in my reply.

Gruignard's lower lip quivered as he tapped out the letters J - A - M - A - I - S, his eyes scanning the keyboard for each key. `Et voil...,' he triumphantly announced as he completed the word and hit the `Enter' key.

Ratcliffe tried again to get in his question, but Broisniard cut him off with a movement of his hand. It was the interpreter's turn to speak next. He sat up from his slump with a jolt. `Never!' he translated.

Broisniard looked satisfied and at last Ratcliffe could begin his next question. `We believe you may have spoken to an Australian journalist, Kathryn Bonella, in breach of your probation terms.'

I waited while the interpreter rephrased the question in French, Gruignard labouriously tapped it into the PC and Broisniard finally put the question to me in his own language, all of which provided at least five minutes to think of a good answer. `Bien s-r, j'ai parl ... Mademoiselle Bonella quelquefois.'

My response went back through the recording and interpretation process, while Ratciffe fidgeted impatiently. He sensed that he had got me when the English translation finally arrived. `What did you speak to her about?' he demanded urgently. Again, the interpreter translated the question, Gruignard slowly typed the question into the PC and Broisniard put the question to me.

`Un emploi.' I replied and the process started again. Broisniard was starting to look irritated. Not with his officer's amateur typing or my facetiousness, but with Ratcliffe's irrelevant questions. They had arrested me at gunpoint, as if I were a terrorist, and now Ratcliffe just wanted to know about my job interviews and whether I had used the internet.

The Janet and John style of the interrogation was leaving me plenty of time to think, and I went through a mental list of everything on my computer and Psion. I was not confident they would find nothing incriminating. Files on my laptop were encrypted with PGP and the hard disk had recently been defragmented so there was no danger there. But although everything in my Psion was also encrypted, I feared that they might succeed in breaking the small encryption program. Moreover, they would probably keep the computers, and the Psion contained important information including all my contacts and research on the job market, my bank account details and PIN numbers. I would be crippled without it. The Psion sat temptingly close on the desk between Broisniard and myself; if only I could get hold of it without being seen.

I asked Broisniard for a drink, as the adrenaline rush of the arrest had made me thirsty and it was hot in the interview room. Broisniard barked an order into the internal phone and one of the guards came back a few minutes later with a bottle of Evian and put it on the desk. I picked it up with both handcuffed hands, took a swig and replaced it close to the Psion. Ratcliffe wanted to know the password to my encrypted files and while his question was being translated and typed, I took another swig and replaced the bottle even closer. The question was put to me in French by Broisniard.

`The password is ``Inspector Ratcliffe is a nonce'',' I lied.

`C'est quoi, un ``nonce''?' Broisniard asked seriously. After my explanation, the smirking Broisniard repeated the phrase to Gruignard to tap it into the laptop and the interpreter leaned over to help with the spelling. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ratcliffe and Whaley conferring, heads down. This was my chance. I reached for the bottle of Evian, took a swig, replaced it next to the Psion, slipped my hands down from the bottle, and grabbed the pocket-sized computer. With it under the table and out of their sight, I slipped out the stamp-sized memory disk, stuffed it down my boot and replaced the Psion. None of the five police officers noticed anything and I couldn't stop myself grinning.

The first interrogation session lasted about an hour but Ratcliffe got nowhere. The heavies took me back to my cell and gave me a baguette, a piece of cheese and a cup of coffee. One sat down at the desk outside and switched on a soap opera on the portable TV. Once he was no longer paying me any attention, I pulled my boot off and slipped the Psion disk under the sole-lining. It was a tight fit around the toe but I could walk without showing a limp.

Ratcliffe and Whaley were not present at the second interrogation. `O- sont les anglais?' I asked politely.

`Pah,' Broisniard flicked his wrist dismissively. He explained that he was holding me `garde en vue', meaning he could hold me for up to 48 hours without pressing charges, without allowing me to make a phone call and without allowing me a lawyer. Only a police lawyer could visit me after 20 hours to explain my legal rights. He then continued the interview disinterestedly, running through a list of questons Ratcliffe had given him while Gruignard slowly tapped my banal responses into the laptop.

The increasingly bored Broisniard interviewed me once more that evening before putting me back in a cell at about 11 p.m. with another bottle of Evian and a greasy bacon sandwich. Sleep would be difficult enough in normal circumstances on a hard bench with no pillow, with the strip lights on and a guard watching, but as soon as I lay down, I realised that the police had cracked a rib during their assault. The pain prevented me lying on my left-hand side, and even lying on my back the rib hurt every time I inhaled. It would be a long, sleepless night, giving me plenty of time to reflect on the events of the day. The sheer stupidity of MI6! What did they hope to achieve by arresting me? They would get a whole load more bad publicity once the details got out. Even if GCHQ set one of their Cray computers churning and six months later cracked the PGP files on my laptop, what would that prove? The French would never extradite me for having encrypted files that were shown to nobody, whatever the contents. I consoled myself with the message they would find if they did crack the book-sized decoy file on my laptop; `MI6, you are a bunch of sad fraggles and are wasting your time and taxpayers' money,' repeated thousands of times. The real text was snuggled up under my big toe.

Broisniard came to my cell at about 9 a.m. with a plastic cup of instant coffee, syrupy with sugar. It was Saturday morning and he was probably not happy about having his weekend wasted on a pointless arrest. As I held out my wrists for the usual handcuffs, he shrugged dismissively. `No handcuffs this morning,' he replied in French. `But if you fuck around, we'll beat you up,' he added, waving a finger at me sternly. I had a sneaking admiration for the DST - they didn't pussyfoot around.

Fortunately, the mood in the interrogation room lightened. Broisniard was relaxed and even irreverent. He asked a few more of Ratcliffe's questions, but with me repeating the same rubbish as yesterday he soon got bored and his questioning took another direction, which at first left me unsure how to respond. `How many times did you come to France on operations?' he asked, with a sly grin. It was not a straightforward question. I had indeed been to France a few times on operations which were not declared to them. Was Broisniard really expecting me to cooperate, or was he leading me into a trap? Revealing details of MI6 operations against France would breach the very law for which the DST arrested me.

I decided to play it safe. `I'm sorry, I can't tell you about that.' `Why not?' asked Broisniard, slightly disappointed.

`The British might ask you to arrest me,' I replied gravely.

Broisniard gave up around lunchtime. Back in my cell, the guards bought me another sandwich and a bottle of water and then, as I had been in custody for more than 20 hours, a young police lawyer visited to explain my legal rights. `By lunchtime,' he explained, `you will have been in custody for 24 hours, and so a judge will decide whether to extend the garde en vue. You will probably be released as you have broken no French law.' I kept my fingers crossed.

Gruignard came to my cell an hour later to say that the judge had given them permission to hold me for a further 24 hours. My spirits had been reasonably high until then, but the news that they would not release me hit hard. Gruignard told me that they still had not been able to decrypt the files in my computer and they would not release me until they were cracked. `But it is impossible to crack PGP encryption,' I retorted in French. `Breaking it would take a Cray supercomputer at least six months!'

`Alors, donnez-nous le mot de passe,' replied Gruignard. They were blackmailing me: no password, no release.

Fortunately, Gruignard was bluffing. At about 2200, Broisniard and Gruignard had had enough and came to my cell with broad smiles. `You are free,' Broisniard announced. `You have broken no French law.'

`So if I broke no French law, why did you arrest me?' I asked furiously.

`The English asked,' shrugged Broisniard. `They said that you were a terrorist and dangerous. That is why we beat you up,' he continued, matter-of-factly.

`Can I see the warrant?' I demanded.

`You're free without charges, why do you want to see that?' he retorted.

`The English want your computers,' Gruignard said, changing the subject. He showed me my Psion and brand new laptop, smothered in red sealing wax and string, ready to be sent off to London for examination. (I did not see them again for five months, despite energetic recovery attempts by Anne-Sophie Levy, a young Parisian lawyer who volunteered to represent me. It wasn't until Christmas 1998 that she rang me to tell me that SB had finally agreed to return them. They did not find anything illegal on either computer and did not charge me with any offence. SB posted them back to me, but although my laptop came back unharmed, exasperatingly, my Psion, containing most of my important personal information, never arrived. SB claimed that it must have been `lost in the post'.)

`Je veux parler avec les anglais cons,' I demanded to Broisniard, intent on giving Ratcliffe and Whaley a piece of my mind.

`They've gone down the Pigalle,' he replied with a smirk. I considered going to the notorious red-light district with a camera to look for them, but settled for a good night's sleep. Broisniard and Groignard led me out to the car, at last without handcuffs, and drove me round to a nearby cheap hotel. They handed over my NZ passport with the explanation that the British had picked it up from the embassy for me and even shook hands as they left me in the lobby.

With little sleep the whole weekend, my instinct was to crash out but there was work to be done. Adverse publicity for MI6 would be the best weapon to dissuade them from trying the same tactic again and I got to work ringing London. Most of the British papers carried the story prominently the following morning, portraying MI6 adversely.

SB had been busy in London the same weekend. At 6 a.m. on the day of my arrest, they burst into the south London flat of Kathryn Bonella, pulled her out of bed and took her down to Charing Cross police station for questioning about her meetings with me. She was eventually released without charge, but not before SB threatened to cancel her UK work permit.

After a few hours sleep, I got up early the next morning, packed my bags and checked out. MI6 would be disappointed they had not been able to detain me and they would be working overtime on the computers. If they realised that the Psion disk was missing, there was no point in hanging around waiting for another chat with the DST. I took the Paris metro to the Gare du Nord, where there was a small independent travel agent who specialised in cheap tickets to Australasia. They sold me a ticket for a Nippon Airways flight which left from Charles De Gaulle airport late that evening to Tokyo, where I changed for the New Zealand leg.

`Are you Richard Tomlinson?' a spotty, callow young man in a cheap suit addressed me with a Kiwi accent.

`No,' I replied dismissively, thrusting my trolley through the airport crowd. He looked like he might be trouble, and having just stepped off the long flight from Paris I was not in a mood to do an interview.

`You are Richard Tomlinson, aren't you?' he persisted, impatiently strutting alongside my trolley.

`I most definitely am not,' I replied in a Pythonesque French accent, `I am Mr Napoleon Bonaparte. And who are you?'

But the stranger was undeterred. `You are Richard Tomlinson, and I hereby serve you with this injunction,' he announced pompously, thrusting a thick sheaf of official-looking papers on to my trolley, and scuttled off anonymously into the crowds.

Thumbing through the 85 pages of legal jargon intended to stop me speaking to the media in New Zealand, it mystified me what MI6 were so afraid of. I learnt nothing in MI6 that would be of interest to the New Zealand media. The gagging order, taken out at considerable expense to the British public, was intended only to stop me criticising the way MI6 had treated me. Sitting in the back of the cab on my way to the Copthorne hotel on the Auckland waterfront, the thought of all those civil servants slaving away over their weekend putting together the injunction against me made me smile.

MI6 could not have used a more stupid tactic, as everybody wanted to know why they had gagged me. The next few days were a hectic whirlwind of interviews with New Zealand television and newspapers. The news soon crossed the Tasman Sea to Australia, and the Australian media wanted interviews with me. Even Time magazine picked up the story and ran a full-page article covering my arrest in Paris, the injunction and the stupid obstinacy of MI6 in refusing to admit that the root cause of the whole problem was their own glaring management faults.

The injunction meant that NZSIS (New Zealand Security & Intelligence Service) would take an interest in me. Although New Zealand has some of the most liberal laws governing individual freedoms anywhere in the world, their actions in injuncting me had shown that they were prepared to drop all these laws without hesitation if asked by MI6. NZSIS maintains very close links to MI6, to the extent that every year one of their new-entry officers is sent to the UK to attend the IONEC and spend a few years working as a UK desk officer. Dual-nationality holders of New Zealand passports, such as myself, were not automatically barred from working in NZSIS, unlike dual-nationality citizens of other closely allied countries such as Australia or Canada, and there is at least one fully fledged New Zealander working full-time in MI6. It irked me that NZSIS would be intercepting my phone and following me, and made me feel unwelcome in the country of my birth.

Moreover, without my Psion all the job leads in New Zealand that I had researched back in the UK were lost. I decided to give up my thoughts of settling in New Zealand and try Australia instead. I had a good network of friends in Sydney and had a job offer there with a company whose name was still in my head.

With the New Zealand authorities watching my every move, it would require some subterfuge to get to Australia unobserved. I laid a false trail, telling journalists that I was going to spend the weekend up on the Coramandel peninsula, a well-known beauty spot on New Zealand's north island. The message would get back to the authorities one way or another, whether through the bugging of my hotel telephone or through word of mouth from one of the journalists.

Late on the afternoon of Friday 7 August, I packed my suitcase, checked out of the Copthorne and took a taxi to Auckland airport. The Qantas sales desk sold me a one way ticket to Sydney for a flight that would be leaving an hour later. From the moment I checked out of the hotel until the aircraft took off, there would be just over two hours. Even if NZSIS had seen me leaving the Copthorne, they would not have much time to react and stop me leaving New Zealand. Hopefully, it would allow me to sneak into Australia unnoticed. But I had greatly underestimated the determination of MI6 to cause me as much bother as they could.

`Mr Tomlinson?' I looked up from my seat, into which I had just settled on the packed Qantas MD-11, to see two of the stewards standing over me. `Would you mind stepping off the plane please, Mr Tomlinson,' continued the senior of the two men. `And bring your bag,' he added, to underline that I would not be going to Australia. At least there was no sign of the police, so I hoped that I wasn't about to be arrested.

The two stewards led me off the plane and escorted me back through customs to a Qantas administrative office. There a more senior official explained what had happened. `We have had a fax from our head office in Canberra saying that you have not been given an Australian visa,' he said apologetically. `We're holding the plane back while we get your suitcase out of the hold - I am really sorry about this.' He had seen me on the television and knew who I was.

`Can I see the fax?' I asked, suspecting that there was some foul play. The Australian authorites could only have learnt of my intention to go to Sydney a few hours earlier and the fax probably didn't really exist.

`Sorry, we're under strict instructions not to show it to you. If you phone Marien Smith at the Australian consulate in Auckland, she will explain everything.' The fax was probably just an invention to buy them more time to find an official reason to pull me off the plane. I rang Marien Smith immediately and my suspicions were confirmed when she admitted knowing nothing about the visa refusal. I felt really let down by the New Zealand and Australian authorities' attitude to me. They were joining in with MI6's bullying and harassment without examining the issues for themselves and making their own minds up based on their own laws. It was far easier for them just to bow to political pressure from MI6 than stand up for the rights of one individual.

Back at the Copthorne, the receptionist insisted that as the hotel was full, he would have to give me the main suite at the price of a normal room. The hotel lobby and dining area were deserted and the hotel didn't appear full to me, but I shrugged my shoulders and took the key. As soon as I was up in the suite, the telephone rang. TVNZ had heard the news of my removal from the plane and wanted to come over with a camera crew to do an interview for that evening's late news slot. I agreed to let them come over and in the meantime started to unpack my suitcase which had been packed only a few hours earlier. They arrived at 8 p.m. and shot a short interview, during which I protested at the harassment I was receiving at the hands of the New Zealand authorities, then they rushed back to edit it for the main news at 9 p.m.

Alone at last, I grabbed a Steinlager from the minibar and sat down on the bed to decide what to do next. It was disappointing to be banned from Australia. Although as an New Zealand citizen a visa was not normally required, there was a clause in their agreement that allowed each country to ban nationals of the other if they were of `character concern'. The clause was drafted to allow each country to ban the other's serious criminals such as rapists and murderers, but Australia had invoked it to keep me out. The Australian authorities had nothing against me but just like the New Zealand authorities, they had been asked by MI6 to make life difficult for me and so had obliged.

Lying on the bed, I dialled a friend in Sydney to tell him that my trip was off. No sooner had he answered than there was a soft knock on the door. I told him to hang on for a minute, put the phone down on the bedside table, and got up to answer. My previous arrests made me suspicious of unexpected visitors. `Who is it?' I asked cautiously, without opening the door.

`It's Susan. Is Caroline there?' a female voice answered.

`Sorry, wrong room,' I answered, and went back to the phone. But there was another more impatient knock. Somewhat irritated, I got back up to answer the door again.

`It's Susan here, I think I may have left something in the room.'

There was no spyhole so I slipped on the security chain and turned the key. The door smashed to its limit against the chain, then again and again. `Police, police, open the fucking door,' shouted an irritated male voice. `All right, all right, calm down,' I replied, slipping the chain to avoid a big bill from the Copthorne.

A pugnacious-looking Maori led the charge. `Get back over there, in the corner,' he yelled, shoving me backwards away from my half-unpacked suitcase. Two more officers followed him up.

Once the room was secured and they had me under control - not that I was resisting - a fourth entered. `I'm Detective Inspector Whitham, Auckland Threat Assessment Unit,' he announced, flashing his ID at me. He introduced the glowering Maori, who looked disappointed I had not hit him, as Constable Waihanari.

`We have a warrant to search you and your belongings,' announced Waihanari, waving a sheet of paper at me. `Strip,' he ordered. While my clothes were being searched, a female officer and a portly fourth officer pulled on latex gloves and started a careful search of my belongings. The telephone was still off the hook, with my friend listening in from Sydney, so the female slammed down the receiver and for good measure pulled the telephone lead out of the wall socket.

`Can I see the warrant?' I demanded after Waihanari had allowed me to get dressed again. I checked it for accuracy - any discrepancy would make it invalid and I could force the police to leave - but every detail was correct. They even had the correct hotel room number, explaining why the receptionist insisted I took the suite.

I heard other voices lurking outside in the corridor and as I finished reading the warrant they entered. To my surprise, one was Ratcliffe. `What the hell are you doing here?' I shouted, leaping to my feet and causing Waihanari's eyes to light up. Ratcliffe had flown all the way to New Zealand at the British taxpayer's expense (and I later learnt that Whaley had accompanied him) for this latest episode of petty harassment. `Get out of this room now!' I shouted. Waihanari was limbering up with a gentle haka and I turned to him. `If he doesn't get out of here right now, you can have your fun.' Ratcliffe held up his hands to calm me down, and backed out of the room. He knew this latest piece of harassment would be relayed to the press the next day and he did not want a repeat of the bad publicity of the Paris.

The New Zealand police searched my hotel room more professionally and thoroughly than the French. Anything unscrewable was unscrewed - all the light fittings, electrical sockets and desk fittings, and they dismantled all my personal belongings. They found the Psion disk after an hour and a half, hidden inside a clunky British adaptor plug. The porky officer smiled with delight when he opened it up and pulled it out. I smiled too, as I had backed a copy up on the internet that morning in an Auckland internet caf.

Just after 11 p.m. the police left with the disk and a few other pieces of paper that they decreed were evidence that I was `endangering New Zealand security'. Feeling bloody annoyed, I went out into downtown Auckland to get drunk. The second pub I stumbled into had a promotion evening for a canned vodka cocktail called `KGB'. When I was halfway through my first can, a young man came up to me and clapped me on the shoulder. `I know you, mate, I've seen you on telly every night this week. You're that fella those pommy bastards have been chasing around the world,' he grinned. `Here, have a KGB on me.' He waved over the waiter and got me another can.

Soon all his mates joined in and I knew I was in for a long night and a rough tomorrow. `Stick at it and put one over the bastard poms,' they urged me. Their fighting spirit and irreverent attitude to state authority was a refreshing contrast to the attitude of many people in England who limply advised me to give in to MI6.

Despite the support from the drinkers that night in the pub, and from many other ordinary Auckland folk who approached me on the street during the next few days, one even asking for an autograph, I reluctantly decided that it was not advisable to stay in New Zealand. If MI6 had twisted the arms of the New Zealand authorities into the confiscation of my property, then it was inevitable that sooner or later they would try to press charges against me. I decided to go back to Europe, and chose Switzerland because of its reputation for neutrality.

But first I had to find myself a lawyer who could help me get back my confiscated property, as once back in Europe it would be impossible to act for myself. One of MI6's objectives in continually having me detained was to force me to spend my savings on lawyers to recover property that they confiscated from me. Whilst they had unlimited legal resources at their disposal, they knew that my reserves were finite. I was therefore pleased to find a lawyer who was prepared to represent me pro bono. Warren Templeton, a diligent and independent barrister from Auckland, had seen coverage of my case on TVNZ and tracked me down to the Copthorne Hotel. I accepted his kind offer gladly and he has worked ceaselessly ever since to put an end to MI6's treatment of me, not only in New Zealand but also elsewhere around the world.


************************


15. SINISTER CIRCLES

SUNDAY, 30 AUGUST 1998
JOHN F. KENNEDY AIRPORT, NEW YORK

`Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. For security reasons would all passengers kindly return to their seats.' There was a collective groan as passengers replaced their coats and hand-luggage in the overhead lockers while the Swissair captain repeated the message in French. I hadn't stood up to join the rush to the exits and paid little attention to the delay as I buried my nose back in The Economist. My neighbour in the aisle seat sat down impatiently. `JFK's a goddarn disgrace,' he drawled grumpily to nobody in particular.

I took a circuitous route from Auckland to Munich via Singapore and Bangkok, hoping MI6 would lose my trail somewhere along the way. After two days in Munich, rollerblading in the English gardens to keep any surveillance on their toes, I took the train to Zurich then Geneva, where I found some digs. There lawyers for Mr Al Fayed contacted me, inquiring about my knowledge of Henri Paul's relationship with MI6. I had not given it any thought since posting the letter to Harrods a year earlier, but after a casual comment to a journalist who realised its significance, his lawyers wanted a full statement. Judge Herv Stephan, the magistrate in charge of the inquest into the crash that killed the Princess of Wales, Dodi Al Fayed and Henri Paul himself, invited me to Paris shortly afterwards to give evidence. It was a breach of the OSA for me to do so, but I felt entirely justified, given the significance of the tragedy. I told Stephan about Paul's MI6 file, the notes I saw of his meetings in 1992 with his MI6 case officer, Fish's plan to assassinate President Milosevic in a tunnel car-crash and about the paparazzi photographer who worked for UKN. I do not know anything more about the fatal crash, but I am convinced that there is information in MI6 files that would be useful to the enquiry, in particular concerning the movements of Henri Paul on the evening of his death. For despite thorough police inquiries, his whereabouts for an hour have not been accounted for. I suspect that he was having a drink with his MI6 handler, as a large sum of cash was found on his body later that evening. Examination of his MI6 file would clarify this and might shed light on the mysteriously high levels of alcohol and carbon monoxide found in his blood. Disappointingly, Stephan did not request the files from the British government.

NBC wanted to interview me live on their Today news programme on Monday, 31 August about this evidence and MI6's pursuit of me around the world, hence my flight to New York. But, watching a group of uniformed, armed men methodically counting down the seat rows of the MD-11, I feared MI6 had other ideas.

`Can I see your passport please, sir?' the badly overweight INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) officer asked politely as he and three colleagues stopped at my row. I handed over my passport, open at the page with the multiple-entry indefinite visa issued while a student at MIT. The official flipped to the photograph and glanced at me to verify the resemblance. `Come with us please, sir,' he ordered.

My grumbling neighbour stood to allow me out and as I stepped into the aisle, two INS men grabbed my wrists and slapped on handcuffs. `Where's your hand luggage?' one snapped, and picked out my canvas shoulder bag from the locker I nodded towards. I smiled back at the hostile glares from the plane's passengers as they frogmarched me off the plane, two in front, two behind, through the docking gantry into the crowded arrivals area, then down into the bowels of the airport.

The INS detention centre was dominated by a substantial desk on a raised plinth, behind which two officials surveyed the detainees sitting in a row on a bench against the opposite wall. My captors uncuffed me, sat me down between a snoozing Mexican in a sombrero and a greasy-haired Russian in a tight T-shirt, and manacled me to the bench with leg-irons. `I thought you gave up legirons for new arrivals 200 years ago,' I quipped.

`We've been ordered not to let you into the United States,' a marginally slimmer officer replied humourlessly. `Wait your turn here, and you'll find out why.'

Fortunately my turn for an interview came quickly. `Sit down over there,' the INS officer indicated a plastic chair in the corner of a small interview room containing a desk and computer. `Right, Mr Tomlinson,' he announced as he fired up the PC and took his seat. `We've got here a standard list of questions that we put to every alien who has been denied entrance to the USA. First, I expect you'll be wanting to know why you've been denied entry?'

`I already know,' I replied. `The CIA told you not to let me in.'

`How did you know that?' he asked, confirming my guess. He pushed over a directive from the State Department denying me entry at the request of a `friendly government'.

`But what reasons are you giving me?' I asked, knowing that a request from another government, no matter how friendly, would not be sufficient legal reason to expel me.

`We haven't got to that yet,' he replied, tapping my passport details into the PC. `Right, first question. Have you ever been convicted of any offences relating to the supply or smuggling of drugs?'

`Nope,' I replied confidently and waited while he tapped in my answer.

`Have you ever been convicted of any firearms offences?'

`Nope.'

`Have you ever been convicted of any serious offence carrying with it a jail sentence of more than one year?'

`Nope,' I replied truthfully.

`Have you ever used any alias names?'

`Oh yes, indeed,' I replied cheerfully.

`Well let's have them,' he ordered.

`Daniel Noonan, Richard Harwin, Richard Ledbury, Ben Presley, Tom Paine, Alex Huntley,' I rattled off. One by one he tapped them into his computer, asking me to spell them out. The last must have flashed up an INS record because he examined the screen for several minutes when it went in.

`OK, have you ever been involved in any espionage or terrorism?' he eventually asked.

I hesitated for a moment. Under British law it was illegal to admit membership of MI6, but lying to the INS would be grounds for denying entry to the USA. `Yes, I used to work for British intelligence,' I admitted.

He looked round his PC at me sceptically. `OK, between what dates and where?' He grilled me for 20 minutes about my work and operations. I replied fully and cooperated completely. At the end of the interview, he picked up an ink stamp from his desk and stamped my passport. `Mr Tomlinson, you are a former intelligence officer, and under regulations 217.4(b), 212(a) and 212(c) of US immigration policy you are banned from entering the territory of the United States of America.'

He led me back to the holding-pen and manacled me to the bench, this time in a row of Chinese labourers wearing identical dark-blue `Chairman Mao' suits. `You'll be going back to Switzerland on the next available flight, in about seven hours. We'll get you a Big Mac and fries.'

`Great!' I replied with exaggerated enthusiasm. When it arrived, I gave it to my Chinese companions, who jabbered with excitement as they opened up the evil-smelling carton. He did not even allow me to ring the NBC producer who was waiting for me in the arrivals hall.

As the INS officer admitted, the CIA were behind my entry refusal, banning me for life from entering `the land of the free and the home of the brave', just for criticising a foreign intelligence service. MI6, however, unwittingly saved my life. If all had gone according to plan, I would have boarded Swissair flight SR-111 on Wednesday, 2 September to return to Geneva. The MD-11 took off as scheduled at 8.19 p.m. from JFK and crashed into the Atlantic ocean at 9.40 p.m, killing all 229 passengers and crew.
 

`I'd like to make it clear that you are not under arrest,' Commandant Jourdain assured me smoothly, `but we think that you may be able to help us safeguard the security of Switzerland.'

His colleague, Inspector Brandt, nodded enthusiastically in agreement. `We'd like you to tell us all about illegal British espionage operations against Switzerland,' he added.

Jourdain of the Swiss Federal police, and Brandt of the Geneva Cantonal Special Investigations department, sent me a convoqu a compulsory interview request, a few days after my return from the USA, ordering me to report to the Geneva police headquarters on Monday, 21 September 1998. `The British asked us to put you under surveillance when you came to this country because you were a dangerous terrorist who could jeopardise Swiss security,' Jourdain explained, nudging a copy of MI6's letter towards me on the desk. `We watched you for the first couple of weeks. Did you spot anything?' Jourdain asked.

`No, nothing,' I replied truthfully. I hadn't been looking, but in any case I knew that Swiss surveillance was among the best in the world.

`Good,' replied Jourdain, pleased that his teams hadn't been compromised. `We saw you arrive at Zurich Hauptbahnhof at 1225 on 17 August, then you stayed at the Hotel Berne for the night.'

If they picked me up arriving at Zurich railway station, they must have been tipped off that I was arriving from Munich. MI6 must have put in a massive operation to follow me from New Zealand.

`We then followed you until 31 August, when you tried to go to New York,' continued Brandt. `But when we realised that you were not presenting any danger to Swiss interests, we decided to invite you here, to see if you could help us.'

Jourdain and Brandt were putting me into an awkward position. They wanted me to break the OSA by telling them about Britain's operations in Switzerland, which could lead to prosecution in Britain. On the other hand, since MI6's undeclared operations in Switzerland were illegal under Swiss law, refusal to help the police in a criminal investigation would be an offence for which I could potentially be imprisoned, and it would certainly scupper any chance of getting Swiss residency. Jourdain appeared to read my thoughts. `Failing to help us will not help your application for a residency permit,' he added menacingly.

I had to think of my long-term future. MI6 had used their influence to prevent me making a fresh start in New Zealand and Australia, despite Warren Templeton's and John Wadham's strenuous efforts to persuade them to negotiate an end to the pyrrhic dispute. I would have settled just for the return of my computer and for an Australian visa, but MI6 were set resolutely on a Thatcheresque, no-compromise, no-turning-back policy. Given their intransigence, I decided to pledge my future to Switzerland in the hope that I could get permanent residence status, a work permit, then find constructive and permanent employment.

`OK, how can I help?' I replied cautiously.

Over the next three months, the Swiss police convoqu'd me four times. Each time, I cooperated fully with their enquiries and I built up a good personal relationship with Jourdain and Brandt who even showed me MI6's increasingly irate requests to have me arrested and deported to Britain, or at least expelled from Switzerland. Jourdain assured me that they had ignored the letters, as I had done nothing against Swiss law.
 

`C'est vraiment vous?' laughed the French Douane incredulously, pointing out my description, which had flashed up on the screen in the border kiosk after he had tapped my passport details into the computer. In French, under my police mugshot, was written:

Name:		TOMLINSON Richard John Charles
Nationality:British and New Zealand
Born:		Hamilton, New Zealand, 13/01/63
Resident:	No fixed abode
Details:	Subject is former member of British Special Forces and Special Services, trained in firearms, explosives, unarmed combat, scuba-diving, pilots licence, parachutist, expert in cryptography. Subject is a menace to the security of France.


`Ridiculous,' I laughed. `It's a joke. The British are pulling your leg.'

`Sit down there,' the Douane replied, ignoring my protests. `Wait until the police arrive.' He indicated a chair in the corner of the kiosk

For the sixth time in a year, I was being detained at the request of MI6. It was late on the evening of Wednesday 6 January, and I had just picked up my parents in a hire car from Geneva airport. We were heading to a rented chalet in the French Alps, an hour's drive over the border, for a week's skiing holiday. But MI6 had learnt about the arrangements through their tap on my parents' phone and decided to spoil our holiday. They alerted the DST of my intended movements and DST notified the Douanes to stop us at the Swiss-French border. I now had to wait until the DST turned up from their regional headquarters in Grenoble. It was a bitterly cold evening, and although I was warm enough in the customs kiosk, my parents were waiting outside in the freezing car.

Four DST officers turned up at 10.30 p.m. Although the French Douanes had been happy to leave me unattended in their kiosk, confident I was not a troublemaker, the DST slapped on handcuffs the moment they arrived. `Alors, we have some questions for you, Monsieur Tomlinson,' announced the senior officer. They escorted me out of the kiosk into the main police building at the frontier, sat me down in an office and interviewed me for 90 minutes. They asked no questions relating to any form of criminal activity and all they were interested in were details of an MI6 officer who owned a chalet in the Haut-Savoie, on their home turf around Grenoble. I refused to help, so at the end of the interview they served me with papers banning me for life from entering French territory. Just like the US immigration officials, the DST had to find a reason under their regulations to justify the ban. On the standard entry-refusal proforma, there were four possible justifications. He could not tick the `lack of correct papers' box because my British passport entitled me automatically to entry. I could demonstrate that I had the funds to support myself in France, so that option was denied. I was not the bearer of any infectious diseases, so he could not select that. All that remained was `threat to the security of France'. He ticked the box with a flourish, stamped the document and handed it over to me. `You must go back to Switzerland,' he ordered. `If we find you in France, we will imprison you immediately for six months, no questions asked.'

Back in the hire car, two stern-faced officers stood blocking the route south just to ensure that I didn't try to dash for it. There was no choice but to turn around and return to my digs. It was too late for my parents to go to the chalet that evening, so they had to stay in a hotel in Geneva.

The DST were in blatant breach of European law by stopping a British passport holder entering France. MI6 and the DST were gambling that I would not have the legal backing to mount a challenge via the European courts, and if I did try, that it would take many years for my appeal to be heard. Two days before the first stage of my appeal came before the Grenoble district court on 5 May 2000, already over a year after the illegal order was served on me, the DST served an injunction to delay the hearing. I cannot take my case to the European courts in Strasbourg until all domestic remedies have been pursued, so I have no alternative but to spend more money on lawyers and wait.

Although I was enjoying life in Switzerland, had made some good friends and was earning some money with casual work, getting a work permit and permanent job was difficult. I therefore mounted an appeal against the Australian ban, using a firm of lawyers in Canberra. I suspected that MI6 had used their influence with ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) to get me banned, though MI6 denied this, improbably claiming in a letter to me that they `would not interfere in the policies of another country'. A few months later, via the Australian Freedom of Information Act, my lawyers got proof that MI6 were lying. They obtained a copy of a telegram sent by MI6 to ASIO on 2 November 1998. Although many paragraphs were blacked out with the censor's ink, it was clear that it was a request for a ban, to which the Australians had complied limply. Moreover, the date of the request was two days after my arrest, but long before I was convicted of a crime; MI6 were not content to see me receive only the punishment deemed fit by British law and had decided to add to it by stopping me from emigrating to Australia. Getting an Australian visa became a major preoccupation but after spending thousands of dollars of my savings on legal fees, I realised that I was falling into the financial trap MI6 had laid for me.

Reasoning with MI6 was not working either, and the energetic efforts of Warren Templeton and John Wadham were futile. My only remedy was to use publicity again to bring them to the table. At the end of April, I bought some web-design software and learnt how to build internet pages. My first site was an amateurish and jokey affair and appeared on the Geocities server late on the evening of Saturday, 1 May. The pages contained nothing secret and were just a lighthearted poke at MI6. On the front page, there was a photograph of me in a silly hat superimposed against Vauxhall Cross, with the Monty Python theme tune playing in parody of MI6's absurd pursuit of me, and on the inside pages were copies of the documents served by the Australian, American and French authorities banning me from their countries at MI6's request. Nevertheless, on Monday morning the Geocities security officer, Mr Bruce Zanca, e-mailed me to say that they had received a complaint about my website from a `third party' and were therefore closing down the site. By late morning my pages had disappeared. I found another empty space on the Geocities server and re-posted them, including Zanca's e-mail. A few hours later I got another, more irate, e-mail from Zanca telling me they had removed my new pages, and ordering me not to post anything else onto their server. I copied this e-mail into my pages and posted everything back. That came down a few hours later and Zanca got badly annoyed and threatened legal action. Fortunately, I didn't need to put them up again because word spread around the internet of the preposterous way that MI6 and Geocities were censoring me, and numerous `mirrors' of my site sprang up.

On 13 May, another site about MI6 appeared on Lyndon Larouche's website, publishing a list of 115 names purporting to be of serving and former MI6 officers. This news exploded onto the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Because of the publicity about my first site, I was immediately assumed to be the author.

To this day, I do not know who published the famous list, but it was not me. I have my suspicions, however, that it was MI6 themselves. They had a motive - to incriminate and blacken me. They had the means to make the list and the knowledge to post it onto the internet without leaving a trace. And, despite their protestations to the contrary, the list was not particularly damaging to them. Later I got the chance to study it for myself. I did not recognise most of the names and so cannot comment as to whether they were from MI6 or from the FCO. Of the names that I did recognise, all were retired from the service or were already widely blown. If MI6 had set out to produce a list that caused me the maximum incrimination, but caused them the minimum damage, they could not have done a better job.

The way the existence of the list was publicised to the world's press was also odd. The first announcement was made when the British government's official censor, Rear-Admiral David Pulvertaft, issued a `D-notice' to stop UK newspapers publishing the web address of the list or any of the names. There was no better way to generate publicity because immediately every journalist in Britain wanted to know what the D-notice was censoring, and foreign newspapers the world over, to whom the D-notice was irrelevant, published the web address and even the entire list. The next peculiarity was the manner in which the FCO announced the incident. If MI6 really wanted to limit the damage, they would have used a junior spokesperson to dismiss the list as a hoax. Instead, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced at a packed news conference that not only was the list accurate but, without presenting a shred of evidence, named me as the culprit. Both these tactics can only be explained by a plan to incriminate and discredit me.

They certainly succeeded if it was their intention. Until the list was produced, the press had been fairly sympathetic to me. But after Cook's accusation, the media turned on me with vitriol. In Britain, the Sunday Telegraph led the charge. They accused me of being a traitor who had recklessly endangered the lives of MI6 officers in a selfish pursuit of an employment tribunal and printed the I/OPS propaganda that MI6 sacked me for being `unreliable' and `going on frolics'. Their columnist Andrew Roberts, a contemporary at Cambridge but now an establishment toady and friend of MI6, wrote a petty personal attack on me, making absurd claims such as that I cheated to gain admission to MIT. The tabloid newsapers were equally hostile. The Sun tracked down Tosh, now out of 602 Troop and working in the City, and paid him 500 to claim that I took the troop to a brothel in Split on his birthday. He e-mailed me afterwards to apologise and at least he had the guts to give the newspaper his name, unlike some of the anonymous worms they also dug up from my old TA regiment. The Sun also published my e-mail address and encouraged its readers to send me hatemail. I received over ten thousand e-mails over the next week, some of them amounting to death threats. Interestingly, however, by no means all of the e-mails were hostile, perhaps indicating the lack of judgement of the Sun's editor and the lack of public support for MI6. The majority of readers who e-mailed me thought that it was a good thing to publish the names of MI6 officers, one writing that I deserved an OBE for services to humanity and another stating that taking Tosh to a brothel was a good use of MI6 money.

The publication of the list had all the hallmarks of a classic I/OPS operation to winkle me out of fortress Switzerland, an objective that was accomplished three weeks later. On Monday, 7 June, Inspector Brandt rang to summon me to the Geneva police headquarters at Chemin de la Gravire for a meeting at 2 p.m. I arrived to find a stone-faced Commandant Jourdain, in no mood for small talk. `You must leave Switzerland immediately,' he told me. `You are banned from entering Swiss territory until 7 June 2004, and must be out of the country by 1800 this evening.' My protests that this was an unreasonably short period of notice fell on deaf ears. It would scarcely give me time to pack my suitcase. `And we don't want any publicity in the press,' continued Jourdain. `If you talk to the newspapers about this, we will increase the ban to ten years.'

`So where do you want to go to?' asked Brandt. `We will book the ticket for you.'

`I really don't know,' I replied angrily. Just about every reasonable option was closed off. All of the anglophone countries were out of the question and I feared that I would have legal problems if I stayed in Europe. `OK,' I replied, after some consideration, `get me a ticket to Moscow.' I didn't really want to go there, but I knew that Jourdain would be uncomfortable with expelling me from Switzerland at the request of the British only for me to seek refuge in Moscow.

Jourdain stared at me for a moment while the implication sunk in. `You don't want to go there,' he replied. `It's cold and you don't speak Russian.'

`OK, then I'll go to Havana. It's warm and I speak Spanish.'

From Jourdain's point of view this was no better, and he needed to seek advice from his superiors. `Wait here while I call Berne,' he announced. `All right,' announced Jourdain on his return a few minutes later. `Berne have given you an extension until 1800 tomorrow, so that you have more time to find a place to go,' he smiled weakly. `Telephone Inspector Brandt before 1200 tomorrow with your decision.'

I was very disappointed by the attitude of the Swiss authorities. They had a reputation as a neutral country who were prepared to shelter individuals harassed by foreign powers, and I had helped them a lot over the past six months. Now they were blatantly siding with MI6 and were expelling me for the publication of the list without any evidence that I was the culprit. Even with the extension, there was not much time to sort out my plans. I had become quite established in Switzerland, even though I did not yet have a resident's permit. My French was fluent, I had made some good friends and I was getting some serious job interviews and felt that it would only be a matter of time before one materialised into a job. The Swiss had dealt me a low blow in forcing me to start again from scratch somewhere else (I later discovered the full extent of their double standards: every time I went for a job interview, Jourdain rang the company afterwards and told them not to employ me). My threats to go to Havana or Moscow had bought me some extra time, but I did not really want to go to either of these cities. I would not be able to work there and guessed that after a few months I would be bored. Also, I was in no mood for a long journey. I rang up Geneva station and asked for a rail ticket to the nearest town not in France or Switzerland. They booked me onto a train leaving at 1735 the following evening, 25 minutes before my deadline, arriving at Konstanz in southern Germany at 2235.

`Herr Tomlinson?' The voice behind me was friendly, but still my anger flashed within. It was late in the evening, I had arrived in a strange town in a country I hardly knew and whose language I hardly spoke, it was raining outside, I had nowhere to stay and I had only struggled a few yards off the station platform with my two heavy suitcases, yet already somebody - presumably an official - wanted a word with me. I spun around, scowling with hostility. `Nein, Ich bin nicht Herr Tomlinson.' It was about the limit of my German.

A stone-faced uniformed police officer and two civilians, one male in his mid-40s, one a blonde female, stood before me. `Ausweis, bitte,' ordered the uniformed officer.

`What?' I replied impatiently and rudely.

`Your papers, please,' interpreted the civilian male.

`Oh fuck off,' I replied and picked up my luggage. I couldn't help my language. The Swiss must have tipped off the Germans and now, I presumed, I was about to be arrested. If they wanted to arrest me, I would not make it easy for them.

`No, no, wait, you're not under arrest, Herr Tomlinson.' The civilian grabbed me by the shoulder, as if to get my attention rather than to restrain me. `We just want to talk to you, Richard,' the female spoke for the first time, smiling sweetly.

I shifted to face my interlocutors squarely, still suspicious. `I am Herr Kugel, from the BfV (Bundesamt fr Verfassungsschutz), and this is my colleague, Fr"ulein Gajabski.'

`We guess you must be tired after your journey, and as it's so late, we've booked you into a hotel for the night,' Gajabski said in flawless English.

`We'll help you with your luggage,' added Kugel. He dismissed the uniformed police officer with a short command and whistled up a railway porter who scuttled over with a baggage trolley.

`Don't worry, you are not in any trouble,' Gajabski assured me. `We'll just have a quick drink tonight, then if it is OK with you, we'll have lunch tomorrow.'

Kugel and Gajabski escorted me in the drizzle over to the Halm Hotel opposite the station, the porter struggling behind with my heavy luggage. Kugel checked me in, paying the bill in advance, while Gajabski tipped and dismissed the porter. `We guess you'll want to go up to your room for a few minutes. We'll meet you at the bar at 11 p.m.,' Kugel said. It was more of a firm request than a direct order, but in any case I was intrigued to know what they wanted. Also, I needed a beer.

`Fr"ulein Gajabski and myself are from the BfV,' explained Kugel once three bottles of Becks had been served, with glasses. `Our duty is to protect the German constitution, particularly against the activities of foreign intelligence services. We've read about your case in the newspapers, and we think that you may be able to help us with our investigations into British and American operations against Germany.'

The Swiss Federal police must have tipped them off about my arrival in Konstanz. Jourdain had previously questioned me about ORCADA, the spy in the German ministry of finance that Markham had run in Bonn, even offering me money for his identity. The Swiss Federal police work closely with their counterparts in Germany, particularly on the banking and finance sectors, and it was inevitable that Jourdain would tip off the Germans. The two BfV officers did not push me hard at the first meeting, but they asked me to reflect on their request overnight and insisted that I take lunch with them the next day.

`So, have you decided if you are going to help us?' asked Kugel hopefully. We were nearing the end of a long lunch in the Seerestaurant of the Steigenberger Inselhotel overlooking Lake Constance. Kugel and Gajabski used all the cultivation tricks on me that I learnt on the IONEC. They were sympathetic to my situation, flattered me on my very limited German, assured me that any information that I gave them would be treated with the utmost confidentiality and offered me help in settling in Germany. Now, as the meal was ending, they were putting to me their final recruitment pitch. I could imagine how eagerly anticipated my reply would be and how they must already be mentally writing up their contact report.

`No, I am sorry, I really can't help you,' I replied. I could see the disappointment in their eyes. They would have to report back negatively to their line-manager, and would not get the pat on the back they were hoping for. `I could go to jail for 40 years in Britain under their Official Secrets Act, and it is just not worth it.' The 1911 OSA, which stops Britons `collaborating with a potential enemy', was enacted just before the First World War to stop British naval engineers helping the Germans to rebuild their navy. I could just imagine `expert witnesses' like Redd taking the witness stand to argue that Germany was still a potential enemy.

`But we can assure you, Richard, that your identity will never go beyond the two of us at the table,' Gajabski argued.

It was just what we had been trained to say to potential informers too, and I knew that it was not true. `But even if I do help you,' I argued, `how do I know that you will help me? I helped the Swiss police with their enquiries and where did that get me?'

Kugel and Gajabski had no reply.

Though I had arrived in Konstanz with the intention of quickly moving on elsewhere, the meeting with the BfV persuaded me that I was better off staying put in Germany. They would be unlikely to bother me at MI6's request after they had tried to recruit me. As there was a language school in Konstanz, I decided to study until my German was good enough to look for a job. I found a bedsit and started an intensive four hours per day language course. Living in a European Union country had other advantages. Unlike Switzerland, I needed no work permit or residence permit because my British passport automatically gave me those rights. I registered as a resident, opened a bank account, obtained a phone-line in my own name and even bought a car. The little second-hand BMW I got from a dealer in Hamburg gave me mobility and so if I had to move again suddenly, I would not have to throw away most of my possessions as I had done in Switzerland.

Kugel and Gajabski contacted me several times over the next few months and took me out to two further lunches at the Tolle Knolle restaurant on the Bodanplatz in Konstanz to persuade me to talk about ORCADA or other aspects of British and American operations against Germany, but finally they realised that I would not cooperate with them and told me that our meeting in September would be the last. I was relieved when they assured me that I could stay in Germany and that they would not bother me again.

Driving back to Konstanz from a day out in Austria one Sunday in late September, I accidentally strayed into a Swiss border post near Bregenz. Before I realised my mistake, the guard tapped on my window demanding my documents. I lowered the window, `Nein, nichts,' I replied honestly, and tried to reverse away from the control post.

But that just made the guard suspicious and he blocked me off. `Ausweis,' he snapped, holding out his hands for my passport. Realising that there was no way out I handed over my papers and he took them into his kiosk to check them. Two guards came out five minutes later, hauled me out of the car and threw me into a holding cell. The police arrived two hours later, strip-searched me, handcuffed me and took me to the police station. A day in a Swiss police cell was not much hardship - it was really very comfortable with clean bedding, a spotless toilet and sink and even a welcoming bar of soap and a towel, neatly folded on the bed, just like in a Hilton - but nevertheless the inconvenience was annoying and did not endear either the Swiss or MI6 to me.

By October my German was fairly fluent and I found a job as a private mathematics coach for a wealthy German family in a town in southern Bavaria. I moved to Oberstdorf, a small village nearby, nestled in the foothills of the German Alps. I only had to teach for a couple of hours per evening, so as soon as the snow started to fall I bought a new snowboard and got a day-job teaching snowboarding on the nearby Fellhorn range. Things were starting to look up for me - I was earning enough to make ends meet, was making a few friends in Oberstdorf and MI6 appeared to be leaving me alone. But I was wrong on that last count.

Since arriving in Germany, I had avoided talking to journalists and there had been scarcely an article about me in the British press. Warren Templeton meanwhile was energetically seeking to open dialogue with MI6 to put an end to the dispute. But despite my ceasefire and genuine attempts at conciliation, MI6 were determined to cause me as much inconvenience, cost and hassle as they could.

In February 2000, Patrick, a friend from Geneva, invited me to his chalet in Chamonix, at the foot of Mont Blanc, for a fortnight of skiing and snowboarding. Strictly, I was not allowed in France but I gambled that the DST would not realise I was on their patch. I'd not been there long when my landlord in Oberstdorf rang me. `What have you done?' he asked me accusingly, `the police are here.' He explained that at 6 a.m. he had been awoken by a sharp knock on the door. On opening it, he had been bowled over by four uniformed police and two civilians. The latter turned out to be my friends Herr Kugel and Fr"ulein Gajabski. They were searching the flat as we spoke with a warrant to confiscate my computer.

Presumably the BfV bowed to MI6's pressure and sided with them once they realised that I would not help them. Whether Kugel intended to arrest me or not, there was now no way that I could go back to Germany. MI6 had ratcheted down on me again, cutting me off from another potential opportunity to put the dispute behind me. Luckily I had my computer and other valuables with me.

I was in France illegally and could not stay there for long. I needed to find another home, and was running out of options. The only sensible choice was Italy, and an internet search found a language school in Rimini, a holiday resort on the Adriatic coast. On 2 March I packed up my car again, said goodbye to Patrick and moved out of Chamonix.
 

I found a little holiday apartment a block away from the beach in Rimini without problem - being the off-season still there was plenty of empty tourist accommodation. Having previously learnt French and Spanish, Italian was relatively straightforward and I made rapid progress in the classes. I found the lifestyle in Italy agreeable too, and started to think about building a long-term future in the country. But before I could make any firm commitments to an employer or a long-term rental contract, I needed to sort out my dispute with MI6. Despite everything that they had done to me, I still felt some perverse loyalty to them and wanted to find an amicable solution. I had more or less given up any hope of getting them to an employment tribunal - the only fair settlement - and I would have settled just for an assurance that they would lift their surveillance on me, let me travel freely and allow me to get on with my life. But all my letters to this effect to them were ignored and Warren Templeton's attempts to mediate were firmly dismissed. They seemed absolutely determined to break me both financially and mentally, and once again my only option was to pressure them to mediation. After I had been settled in Rimini for a couple of months, I wrote to MI6 to inform them that a Swiss literary agent was negotiating on my behalf with a publisher who was interested in publishing my story, and asked them how I could submit my manuscript for clearance. I hoped that MI6 would agree to mediate, in which case I was prepared to withdraw completely from the publication deal. But MI6 reacted a week later with their customary vindictive stupidity.

`Emergenza, Emergenza!' cried the overweight and sweating figure, perched on the tip of a ladder swaying just below the balcony of my apartment. `There's a gas leak!' he shouted urgently in Italian. `Gas leak, get out of your apartment immediately!'

The police had been knocking on the door of my third-floor apartment for the past two hours. They must have watched me arrive home on my bike from my Italian class shortly after 1 p.m., as they started knocking as soon as I put the kettle on. I wasn't expecting anybody and, peeping through the spyhole, I realised from the training videos in Belmarsh that they were plain clothes police - they all had large moustaches and bad haircuts. The door was heavy duty, so I let them exercise their knuckles. I realised that MI6 must have used my letter admitting that I had a book manuscript as an excuse to raid me yet again and confiscate my computers. Quickly, I encrypted everything important on my laptop, defragmented the hard disk for good measure and hid the tiny but crucial Psion memory disk inside the apartment's television set. With everything secure, I went out onto the balcony to escape the increasingly impatient banging, lay on my sun-lounger and opened up a book. They eventually admitted defeat to two-inches of dead-locked oak and called out the fire brigade. Now the police chief was peering up at me from his wobbly perch, sweating profusely in the midday sun, pretending that there was a gas leak in the hope that this would trick me into opening the door.

`You've got the wrong building,' I replied mockingly from my sun-lounger. `This building is electricity only! Try that building over there,' I pointed out the neighbouring block. `Yes, I can smell the gas from over there!' I said with an exaggerated gesticulation.

`Open the door,' he ordered back impatiently, pulling out from his top pocket a heavily chromed police ID badge and thrusting it at me, the gesticulation sending the ladder into a worrying sway. `Police, open the door.'

`OK,' I smiled, `but why didn't you just come up the stairs and knock on the door? It's a lot easier than coming up a ladder.' I ducked back into the apartment before I could see his reaction. It was Wednesday, 17 May, the same day that Mrs Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, announced that she intended to publish her memoirs about MI5, and was negotiating a huge advance with a British publisher. Unlike me, she had not been arrested or had her computer confiscated and the British authorities were happy to let her publish. As in the Patten case, it was one rule for the people at the top and another for the little guy like me. Britain's 24-hour news channel, Sky News, had booked me for a live telephone interview at 1530 to discuss this jaw-dropping hypocrisy. The phone started ringing as the Italian police burst into my flat.

`Up against the wall,' screamed the two heavies who led the charge, their pistols drawn and pointing at my chest.

`All right, calm down,' I urged them. It was my tenth police bust and I had my hands up against the wall and feet apart before they'd even recovered their breath. Five other officers entered the room and one put the lights on. `Hey, turn them off,' I ordered, remembering a tip given me by Onion-head. `You might have a warrant to search my room, but you haven't got one to steal my electricity.' The irritated officer flicked them off and went over to raise the blinds. The sweaty chief arrived a few minutes later, introduced himself as Inspector Verrando of Rimini DIGOS, the Italian special investigations police, and presented two British SB officers who had come along for a day's outing on the Italian seaside. Whereas Peters and Ratcliffe had some human decency and intelligence, these were a couple of jobsworths, selected to follow MI6 orders unquestioningly.

The search of my flat took about two hours. The jobsworths waved a vaguely worded warrant that empowered them under the Mutual Assistance Act to confiscate anything they wanted. My computer and Psion were first in the pile. Then my whole CD collection, both music and software. `I'm not competent to examine them for hidden files,' announced Jobsworth One.

`Are you competent to do anything?' I replied helpfully.

Next all my legal papers. Then my mobile phone. `So that we can see who you've been calling,' explained Jobsworth Two.

Then the television remote control. `So you can see what I've been watching on telly?' I asked.

Finally they helped themselves to one of my suitcases, loaded it up and announced they were ready to interview me at the Rimini police station. Glancing behind as they escorted me out, I realised they had cleared my room of everything of value. The only thing they couldn't get in my suitcase was the television containing the precious disk.

Verrando interviewed me for six hours before he realised that I had done nothing illegal and that the British police had abused the powers of the Mutual Assistance Act. But by then it was too late. The jobsworths were on their way back to London with all my belongings. They returned my suitcase a few days later when I faxed the head of SB in London with a description of their incompetence, but I never saw my computers, software, CDs, mobile phone or TV remote control again.

A few days later, Verrando wrote asking me to go back to the police station. I ignored his request, thinking it meant trouble. I had just applied for registration in Rimini, which I needed in order to legitimise my presence in Italy, and presumed that Verrando wanted to tell me that I couldn't have it and order me to leave Italy. If they wanted me urgently, they would come and get me, I reasoned. I heard nothing more until I bumped into an off-duty Verrando browsing the top shelf of a newsagent's in the town centre. `Why didn't you come to see us the other day?' he enquired politely, hurriedly grabbing a photography magazine from a lower shelf. `Your permit is ready. The British embassy in Rome rang us and asked us not to give you one, so we decided to give you it immediately so that they would not be able to take the decision up to the Interior Ministry.'

But I was underestimating their capacity for spite. MI6 might have lost the support of the Italian police, but that didn't deter them. Driving up the autostrada to Milan to see an Italian lawyer about the confiscations, I found that I was under surveillance. It started off discreetly just outside Rimini, but by Bologna I had made repeat sightings and noted the number plates of three cars - a white Fiat Punto, a silver Volkswagen Golf and a grey Fiat Bravo. The Golf got so close on several occasions that I could clearly make out the driver, a swarthy character dressed in a red vest. I rang the lawyer in Milan for advice, and he called the police. They told me to pull into the Stradale Nord service station, just outside Piacenza, and I watched in my rear-view mirror as the Punto and Golf followed me off the motorway and parked up behind the service station complex, partially shielded by some bushes. The Fiat Bravo continued up the motorway, no doubt to park up in a lay-by to watch for when I left the service station. The Italian police arrived 20 minutes later in a Fiat patrol car, and I explained the situation to them. They were sceptical at first and I had to stretch my Italian vocabulary to persuade them that I was not completely mad. They realised I was not a crank when they eventually approached the two vehicles. The four occupants promptly abandoned their cars, scattering into the nearby woods. `Go on, shoot, shoot!' I urged the police, pointing at the machine-guns hanging from their waists, but disappointingly they were not too enthused by the idea.

The police poked around the vehicles to see if the occupants had left any traces of their identity, but there was nothing except empty coke cans and hamburger wrappers. `They're not police surveillance,' they assured me. I had already guessed as much. The surveillance was far too amateurish to be from the Italian authorities, and the occupants would not have run away if they were officials. The only explanation was that MI6 had hired an amateur surveillance team to watch me once the Italians had refused to help them any more. When the patrol car left, I bought a Stanley knife in the service station and slashed their tyres. Back in my car, I faxed the British ambassador in Rome using my newly purchased replacement Psion and mobile phone and asked him to send me the bill. Not surprisingly, he didn't send me the bill - I would have sent it straight to my lawyer.

A few days later, my stay in Rimini was over. The landlady of my apartment did not like the embarrassment of the police visit and she told me that the apartment had been `booked by some Germans last year'. She asked me to leave with a week's notice. I was without a home and with the holiday season approaching fast it was impossible to find other accommodation in Rimini. But perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. I moved north and after a few weeks roughing it in various hostels I found an apartment in Riva del Garda, a far more pleasant town on the northern edge of Lake Garda. It was a sportsman's paradise, with fantastic cycling, windsurfing and walking opportunities for the summer, and with good skiing nearby in the winter. I decided to settle there for a while, MI6 permitting.

But my optimism was short-lived. A few days later, on a trip to Monte Carlo for a job interview, MI6 had me arrested again by the Monaco Special Investigations Unit, who threw me into the cells of their station, by the harbour front. Sitting on a hard bench for a few hours, I rued that I was becoming even more of a connoisseur of police cells than Ronnie from Belmarsh. MI6 asked the Monaco police to confiscate my new Psion and mobile phone, but fortunately they rang for advice from the DST, who advised them to let me go. After six hours of detention they released me on condition I went straight back to Italy.

Shortly after returning home to Riva del Garda, I found that MI6 had been busy again in my absence. The estate agency with whom I had found my flat rang me up and called me into their office on the pretext of requiring a copy of my passport. `Richard,' announced Betty, the elder of the two sisters who ran the agency, `while you were away, we had a visit from two men who said that they were from the police.' Anger welled up inside me at this latest intervention from MI6, but worse was to come as Betty explained. `But we realised straight away that they were not really from the police because they asked such unprofessional questions about you.'

`Like what?' I asked.

`They wanted to know how much you were paying in rent for your flat, and whether you had a telephone line - the real police would not be interested in that.'

`Did they say anything else?' I asked.

`Yes,' Betty hesitated for a moment before continuing. `They told me that you were a paedophile and warned me to keep you away from my daughter.'

I left Betty's office scarcely able to contain my despair and anger at the depths to which MI6 seemed prepared to stoop in order to wreck my chances of settling anywhere. For although Betty realised immediately what was going on, Riva del Garda is a small town and I knew that she would not have been the only person whom MI6's hired goons approached. I soon detected hostility from other acquaintances who had presumably been fed the same line, then after a month or two my new landlady got cold feet and told me to leave my new flat. Once again I was without a home, and yet MI6 still had not finished with me.

Another trip to Milan was necessary, but more surveillance immediately appeared, this time a white Volkswagon Polo. The same fat bloke in a red vest was behind the wheel, with a long-haired, scruffy companion alongside. This time they made no pretence at discretion and sat glued to my bumper. If I stopped in an autostrada lay-by to check my map, they stopped right behind me. On the roads leading into Milan, if I indicated left, but turned right, they did the same. I dived on to a roundabout near the central station in the city centre and drove around it, indicating at every turn-off, but swerving back on at the last moment. They did the same, right on my bumper. I drove around again, this time a bit faster. They did the same, the narrow tyres on their Polo squealing. I accelerated, my BMW gripped firmly and I pulled away a car length from them. Once more around the roundabout and I had pulled out half a lap lead on him. Two more sinister circles and I was right on his tail. The fat bloke was grimacing in his rear view mirror, unsure how to react, and his companion was shouting down his mobile phone for advice from his controller. I flashed my lights and gave them a friendly wave. `Where will this end?' I thought to myself, unsure whether the story was farce or tragedy.

EPILOGUE

MI6 have spent a substantial amount of British taxpayers' money on preventing me from taking them to an employment tribunal or informing the public of the toll that their lack of accountability has had on my life - a toll that mirrors the harm the unaccountable agency inflicts on other individuals whose civil liberties are violated. MI6 prosecuted and imprisoned me under laws which on 20 July 2000 were scathingly condemned by a UN report into Britain's human rights record. They took expensive injunctions out against me in the UK, Switzerland, Germany, the USA and New Zealand, all in disregard for laws governing freedom of speech, guessing correctly that I did not have the funds to appeal through the courts. They have had me arrested or detained a total of 11 times in the UK, France, New Zealand, the USA, Switzerland, Germany, Monaco and Italy and have used these detentions as excuses to confiscate valuable personal property which has not been returned, and which Special Branch have spent thousands of man-hours examining. MI6 senior managers have used their leverage with friendly intelligence services to have me banned from France, the USA, Switzerland and Australia, again guessing correctly that I would have limited funds to appeal.

MI6 have never justified to the government why this expenditure is necessary; MI6 is not accountable so it need not do so. They need only make a vague claim that my attempts to seek an employment tribunal `damage national security' and other government agencies or foreign intelligence services spring to their assistance. No attempt is ever made to substantiate their claim, or explain exactly how `national security' has been damaged (though ironically, when one of their officers recently got drunk in a tapas bar and lost his laptop, and another fell asleep on a train and mislaid his briefcase, on both occasions they gravely assured the nation that the loss of secret documents had `not in any way prejudiced national security').

MI6's actions against me, purportedly to safeguard `national security', have had the opposite effect. By using their contacts with foreign intelligence services to pursue me so relentlessly, they have notified them as to my whereabouts. Several foreign services have promptly taken advantage of my captivity or dislocation to ask me to reveal information about MI6 to them. MI6 have thereby confirmed that they regard it as more important to harass, imprison or inconvenience me than to keep secret whatever it is that I am supposed to know.

MI6 cannot justify all this expenditure for any genuine motive to protect national security. During the cold war, the stakes were high enough that perhaps they could make a legitimate case for the prerogative for absolute security transcending the rights and freedoms of individuals. But the cold war has been over for two decades. MI6 has moved into new pastures, mainly nuclear and biological weapon proliferation, organised crime, money-laundering and drug-trafficking. All these are sources of possible danger to Britain, but they are problems that have been efficiently dealt with for years by the police, the customs service and open diplomacy. MI6 has attempted to grab these new areas from other perfectly competent government agencies, but in doing so has not shed its cold war culture. MI6 managers have retained all the baggage that accompanies excessive secrecy and lack of accountability: inefficiency, poor decision making, arrogant management. They have got away with it because, despite all their cock-ups over the years, MI6 is still eulogised by powerful parts of British society and wields disproportionate power in Whitehall. The reason that MI6 has spent so much money suppressing this book is not because it contains anything damaging, but because they fear it may undermine their quasi-mythical status.

Through my lawyers, Warren Templeton in New Zealand, Anne-Sophie Levy in France, John Wadham and latterly Madeleine Abas in the UK, I have attempted to negotiate with MI6 throughout this pyrrhic battle. All I have ever asked for is an independent judgement on the legality and fairness of my dismissal. MI6 could have diffused this dispute at any time over the past five years by picking up a phone and opening an honest dialogue to achieve this basic human right. Instead, they have teased and played me on a line, encouraging me to negotiate, not with any genuine intention of finding a solution, but simply and cynically as a means to gather intelligence on my intentions and whereabouts. They have then used this information, which I have given them in good faith, to persuade foreign police forces to take punitive actions against me or confiscate my possessions.

All MI6 has accomplished with its expensive strategy is to drive me into a corner, forcing me to fight back. They have forced me to flee from the UK and live abroad, then obliged me to hop from one country to another, never living at the same address for more than a few months. They have made it difficult for me to get fulfilling employment and have actively sought to disrupt my career plans. This ceaseless harassment has ironically left me with no choice except to publish this book. Once my story is in the open, MI6 will find it difficult to exaggerate the threat posed by me and thereby persuade allied police and intelligence services to act against a `terrorist'. I hope that it may put an end to the dispute and allow me to move forward in life.

I chose to publish first on the Internet, because it is the only means to circumvent MI6's gagging orders or other persuasive methods. Shortly after I sent my manuscript to a UK publisher, Fourth Estate, their premises were raided by special branch police and their computers confiscated. Fourth Estate declined to publish this book and other UK publishers were put on notice that they would face serious legal and illegal action if they attempted to do so. An American publisher I approached quickly received a menacing visit by the FBI, acting on behalf of MI6, and was persuaded to drop the project. The FBI then recruited an American literary agent to gather intelligence on my intentions and waste my time and money. Publishers I spoke to in Australia and New Zealand also received threatening visits from their respective security services. Even the Swiss literary agent who initially brokered a publishing deal was hit by a swingeing injunction and was forced to withdraw his services. I have also offered on three occasions to submit the manuscript of this book for vetting but MI6 has merely responded with menacing letters threatening me with imprisonment or used my admission of having a text as justification to confiscate my computers.

This waste of time, money and resources would have been avoided in the first instance if MI6 were properly accountable to the government. The belief amongst senior MI6 officers that they are above the law, encapsulated in the head of personnel's claim that `nobody can tell the Chief what to do', was the cause of this debacle. If the Chief were accountable, he would have ensured that personnel officers were trained in employment law and that professional personnel management practices were in place within the service. (Ironically, the Spycatcher debacle of the 1980s was also caused by shoddy personnel management; MI5 refused to allow Peter Wright to transfer pension credits from his previous employment in another branch of the civil service, resulting in his disaffection.) The way to stop a repeat of similar farces in the future is not to spend large amounts of public money wielding a big stick to punish miscreants, but to prevent disputes in the first place by implementing sympathetic and fair management practices. This will only happen when the Chief, and the entire service, is really accountable to democratically elected government.

A step towards greater democratic accountability was taken when the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by Tom King MP, was given limited powers to examine the activities of the intelligence services. But its role remains entirely advisory, and attempts by King to extend its powers have been resisted by MI6, who pay only lip service to his recommendations. In his 1998 annual report to the Prime Minister, amongst several other criticisms of MI6, King made an indirect reference to me, writing, `recent experiences on both sides of the Atlantic underline the importance of having a range of effective measures for dealing with staff problems as they arise'. King was also referring to the case of Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who was peremptorily sacked, then forced to seek refuge in Moscow when his former employer vindictively stifled his protests at his treatment. But MI6 paid no attention to King's recommendation, did not learn from the CIA's mistake and continued to employ the same counterproductive tactics against me throughout 1999. In his 1999 report, Mr King repeated more strongly his recommendation, made a direct reference to me, and wrote in bold text, `We strongly support the right to have access to an employment tribunal.' Still MI6 paid no attention to this criticism, or many of his other recommendations, and refused to grant me a tribunal. MI6 will continue to ignore King's recommendations until there is a radical shake-up of the Official Secrets Act and the way the intelligence services are run.

The Official Secrets Act should be abolished immediately and replaced with a Freedom of Information Act, similar to the laws that exist in Australia and New Zealand. `National Security' should be clearly defined in the act. The Chiefs of both MI5 and MI6 should be replaced by a single Intelligence Tsar from outside the services who is not indoctrinated with the existing cover-up secrecy culture, and who is fully answerable to a Parliamentary Select Committee. Only then will there be full democratic control over the intelligence services. The new head should moreover oversee the merging of the two services into a single entity, perhaps renamed the United Kingdom Security and Intelligence Service. Expensively maintaining separate overseas and domestic intelligence services makes no more sense than having separate health services for men and women.

National security will not in any way be compromised by the merging of the two services into a single accountable entity - similar procedures work fine in the USA, Canada and New Zealand - and indeed security will be greatly enhanced as an answerable service will rapidly review its management procedures and there will be no repeat of the numerous intelligence fiascos which the country has suffered in the past five years.

I am not sure how MI6 will react when this book is published. I hope that they will react positively by reforming their obvious shortcomings to ensure that no other employee is driven down the same route. Unfortunately, past experience suggests that they will not be so prudent. In reality, their vindictive efforts to stop me telling this story are not to protect anything that is still sensitive - I left MI6 six years ago, and even then knew nothing of major sensitivity - but just to cover up exposure of their unreasonable mismanagement of my dismissal and their incompetent attempts to stop me having a fair hearing. Every time they have taken a punitive action against me, they have been forced to dig yet deeper to cover up each new piece of unreasonable vindictiveness.

Yet MI6 could save themselves all these efforts, legal battles and the British taxpayer considerable expense if they were to accept this simple pledge from me. I will come back to the UK voluntarily, hand over to charity all my personal profits from this book, accept whatever legal charges MI6 wish to bring against me, and if necessary go to prison again, on one simple condition: that I first be allowed to take them to an employment tribunal. If MI6 were a noble and fair organisation, genuinely interested in protecting national security and accountable for the public money that they spend, then they would accept this offer with alacrity. But having both worked for, and been targeted by, them for nearly a decade, I doubt that they will.


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