The Big Breach - Index of

The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comfind the work stimulating. A casual remark at a drinks evening fromanother guest, a retired MI6 officer, led to his recruitment.Bart was next to speak. He had only just graduated from Oxford with afirst-class physics degree and had not much other experience, but spokeat length about himself. Like me, he had been recruited as part ofMI6's drive to attract more officers with scientific and technicaldegrees to work in weapons counter-proliferation.Martin Richards was the eldest on the course, in his mid-40s. He wastalent-spotted while an undergraduate at Oxford but declined to jointhe service immediately. Instead, he joined Shell Oil and spent most ofhis career working in the Middle East. Like many other Shell employees,he remained in contact with MI6, and 22 years after his first approachhe took up the offer to start a second career. Because of his age hewould not have the same opportunities as us, and had been earmarked tobecome a specialist officer concentrating on the Middle East oilindustry.Castle was next. Speaking concisely in an upper class accent, hedescribed his education at Eton, then Magdalen College, Oxford. Twentyeightand recently married, Castle had worked in the city for a fewyears where he was a successful merchant banker and took a hefty paycut to join MI6. He later made no secret of his intention to only inthe service for only a few years because he regarded the salary asinadequate stay. Based on his militaristic bearing and spotlesspinstripe suit, it seemed he must be the former Scots Guard. SinceCastle made no mention of a military career I assumed he was too modestto mention it.We turned expectantly to Spencer, the next student in line. He wasstaring dreamily out of the window, paying little attention to theproceedings. `Sorry, where were we?' he laughed, only mildlyembarrassed to be caught napping. He stood up and began telling us hisbackground. `Yeah, I flunked around at St Andrews University, Scotland,couldn't make my mind up what subject to read and took a long time tograduate. When I left, still wasn't sure what to do, so I sort ofdrifted into the army, hoping it would sort me out. It didn't really,so I ended up here.' We laughed at his self-deprecation.Hare couldn't imagine Spencer serving in the army. `Which regiment wereyou in?' he asked, sceptically.`Oh, I was in the Scots Guards for a few years,' Spencer replied.Spencer was actually a fairly adventurous sort despite his muddleddreaminess. He was an accomplished climber and mountaineer and hadworked for a while in Afghanistan with a mine-clearing charity calledthe Halo Trust, clearing Russian minefields. He was recruited by an MI6officer then serving in Kabul who had contacts with the Halo Trust.The DS spoke briefly about themselves. Ball had been posted to bothCzechoslovakia and East Germany in the 1970s but became disillusionedwith the service in the early 1980s and left to spend ten years inControl Risks, a private security company. That career ground to ahalt, so he rejoined MI6 in the mid-'80s. At the time, redundancy ordismissal from MI6 was unheard of and it was not difficult or unusualto rejoin MI6 after a lengthy gap in another career. Long explained howpage- 31 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com