The Big Breach - Index of

The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comnow,' giggled Bidde, `and the fate of Micky and Tricky is lessunpleasant, so I guess it is ethical.' He squiggled an approval at thebottom of the minute and placed it in his burgeoning out-tray. I laterlearnt that Micky and Tricky carried out their mission successfully,were returned to the UK in the C-130, given an honourable dischargefrom duties at Porton Down, and went into comfortable retirement in aTOS secretary's London flat. The fate of Thicky remains a state secret.Still chuckling, Bidde turned his mind to me. `What can I do for you,young man?' he asked benevolently. Trying to keep a straight face, Iexplained that his help was needed to devise a suitable cover story forNORTHSTAR's involvement in the Trufax operation. Bidde quickly inventeda suitable legend. `He should claim to be a second-generationdescendant of one of the Russo-Germanic families from the Germancolonies around the lower Volga River basin,' he suggested. `TheGermans have recently given lots of them German passports,' Biddeexplained. `You should get him a Germanic-sounding alias - how aboutValery Ruben?' he suggested.Valery Ruben was at work at the Trufax office in Conduit Street thefollowing day. Within a week he had contacted nearly 20 journalists inMoscow, Leningrad and Kiev and had a steady stream of informationflowing to his fax machine. None of it was CX, but it was early days.It would take a while to establish which journalists had good accessand which were second-rate.NORTHSTAR focused his relationship on to one promising Muscovitejournalist. Pavel Felgengauer, a 40-year-old freelancer specialising indefence issues, appeared to have some of the characteristics that mightjust make him a good agent. He had excellent access, being close toYeltsin's defence minister, Pavel Grachev. The reports that Felgengauerprovided after his meetings with Grachev often came tantalisingly closeto the CX threshold so we decided to cultivate him.NORTHSTAR spoke to Felgengauer at length from the Trufax office. Bit bybit, we built up a character profile of his career, lifestyle andaspirations in the hope that we might find a motivation for him to spyfor us. But cultivating him over a telephone line was a slow business.To make real progress we needed to meet him face to face, so we triedto persuade him to visit London. Although he would accept payments forhis stories - we sent out several substantial lump sums to him by TNTcourier - he would always have an excuse to cancel or postpone anytentatively arranged trips out of his country. Eventually, wereluctantly and disappointedly accepted that Felgengauer was mostlikely playing the line with us, possibly in collaboration with Russianintelligence. We had hooked him, but now he was just teasing us,accepting payments and throwing back morsels of quasi-intelligence tokeep us interested. It was a classic disruption tactic, used many timesby Russian intelligence to waste MI6 resources. Russel closed downTrufax after three months to NORTHSTAR's intense disappointment. Intotal, it cost around œ40,000 and did not produce a single CX report.Trufax, it would seem, had to be put down to `experience'.Russel, meanwhile, was reorganising SOV/OPS. Unlike other natural coversections which regularly mounted overseas operations into their targetcountries, SOV/OPS had hitherto limited its operations to Russianstravelling outside Russia. Now that the KGB was reformed and weakened,page- 71 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com