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FRIDAY, 8 JUNE 1984
GONVILLE & CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

A sweltering May week was drawing to a close and the rounds of drunken garden parties that undergraduates organised to celebrate the end of final exams were winding down. My engineering tutor had just told me at the Caius College garden party that the faculty had awarded me first class honours in my aeronautical engineering final exams. Too much Pimms and the evening sun slanting into Gonville court were making me drowsy as I returned to my rooms.

`Tomlinson?' an unfamiliar voice called from behind. `You're Tomlinson, aren't you?' I turned round to see Dr Christopher Pilchard, a tutor in law, leaning out of the open window of his ground-floor study. His face was familiar, but having never met him it was surprising that he knew my name. He was notorious in the college because of his ginger wig, the result of a bicycle accident many years earlier which had caused all his hair to fall out. Slightly tipsy, it was difficult to resist casually examining his hairline for signs of it as he spoke. `Tomlinson, have you thought about what you're going to do with yourself after you leave?'

`Yes, sir,' I replied cautiously, wondering why he should be interested.

`I'm joining the navy, the fleet air arm.'

Pilchard snorted dismissively, as if he didn't approve of the military. `Listen, Tomlinson, if you ever change your mind, but would like to try your hand at another form of government service, then let me know.' With that he ducked back into his study, taking care not to catch his wig on the lip of the window sash.

Continuing on to my rooms, it felt flattering to have been approached. For it had been a discreet invitation to join the British Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly referred to by its old wartime name, MI6. Every Oxford and Cambridge college and leading British university has a `talent spotter' like Pilchard, a don sympathetic to MI6 who looks out for suitable recruits. The majority of MI6 recruits come this way from the two most prestigious universities in Britain, though it is not foolproof - Philby, Maclean and Burgess were all recruited into MI6 the same way.

Pilchard's approach was flattering but, climbing the creaky wooden stairs to my digs at the top of D staircase, I decided not to pursue the offer - for the moment at least. Having read a few John Le Carr‚ novels, I reckoned the job seemed stuffy and desk-bound. Nor did I identify much with the other undergraduates whom Pilchard had approached - conservative, establishment arts students who spent most of their days lolling around drunk in the college bar. For them, getting a tap on the shoulder from Pilchard was a rite of passage, a sign that they had made their mark on college life. If that was the sort of person MI6 wanted then it wasn't the right career for me.

Inspired by the books I had read in my spare time at Cambridge, I wanted a career that offered travel and adventure: Wilfred Thesiger, the desert explorer who crossed the Arabian `empty quarter' when only in his early 20s; Sir Francis Chichester, who single-handedly circumnavigated the world by sail and almost by light aircraft; Antoine de St Exup‚ry, the French pioneer aviator whose semiautobiographical novel Vol de Nuit, set in pre-war Argentina, I had so greatly enjoyed; Captain Oates, a former member of the college, who selflessly sacrificed himself on Scott's 1914 Antarctic expedition and whose flag was displayed in the college dining-hall, reminding us of his exploits every evening. It seemed to me that the best way to lead an adventurous life like these role-models, and in a structured and secure career, was to join the armed services, and the navy appealed to me the most.

Pilchard's suggestion, however, was intriguing. Lying back on my narrow bed in the garret room, the evening light slanting in through the open window, I wondered what had marked me out amongst the other undergraduates. On matriculating in the university in 1981, I had been determined to do more than just study. My uncle in South Africa had been a member of the Cambridge University Air Squadron, a flying club sponsored by the Royal Air Force, and he enthused me to join up. The opportunity to learn to fly at the exacting standards of the RAF and even get paid a small stipend was an opportunity too good to miss. The Air Squadron became the focal point of my extracurricular and social activities at the university. We learned to fly in the Bulldog, a robust dual-seat training aircraft. My instructor, Flight Lieutenant Stan Witchall, then one of the oldest still-active officers in the RAF, had been a young Hurricane pilot in the Battle of Britain. Twice a week I bunked out of engineering lectures and cycled up to Marshall's airfield, seven kilometres from the centre of Cambridge, for flying lessons.

Scuba-diving was another activity which enthused me, inspired by the films of Jacques Cousteau. After I had qualified with the university club, Easter holidays were spent in Cornwall diving on the wrecks and reefs of the murky, cold Channel waters, then getting drunk in the evenings on the strong local brews of the old fishing and smuggling villages. It was nothing like the paradises portrayed in Cousteau's films, but was still exhilarating.

The summer holidays of 1982 were spent travelling around Europe on a rail-pass that allowed unlimited travel for a flat fee. My budget was tiny, so nights were spent sleeping on trains and the days sightseeing. Thousands of miles of slumber got me as far afield as Morocco and Turkey. The experience gave me the travel bug, enthusing me to go further afield.

The next year a vacation job in a local bakery yielded enough savings for a trip to the Far East. Two months were spent backpacking around Thailand and Malaysia on a shoestring budget. My return flight was with Aeroflot, the cheapest ticket available, and a brief refuelling stop was scheduled in Moscow. But it was the day after a Russian Air Force Mig 17 had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sakhalin peninsula, killing all 269 persons aboard the Boeing 747. In reprisal, the Western powers had banned all Aeroflot flights from their airways shortly after my plane arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Along with the other 200 passengers, I was stranded in Moscow for two days, waiting for a British Airways jet to arrive from London to pick us up. Aeroflot put us up in a cheap hotel near the airport, but refused to unload our hold luggage, leaving us with just hand-luggage and the clothes we'd been wearing on leaving sweltering Bangkok. But inappropriate attire wasn't going to spoil my unexpected opportunity to see Moscow. With an equally inappropriately dressed Australian whom I'd met on the plane, I tramped around in the freezing autumnal rain and fog in T-shirts and flip-flops, to the bemusement of the dour Muscovites.

It had been a busy three years as an undergraduate, and perhaps my industry and travel was one of the reasons for Pilchard's invitation. Several years later I learned that MI6 was lacking in officers with sufficient technical expertise to understand the increasingly scientific nature of its work and Pilchard, like the other university talent-spotters, had been briefed to look out for science graduates - which was probably another reason he approached me. His invitation was interesting, but I put it to the back of my mind as there were more pressing projects. In a fortnight's time, with five friends, I would be flying to the Philippines for a university-sponsored research expedition to investigate the effects of pollution on the fragile coral reefs of the Philippine archipelago. It was to be a real Cousteau experience, diving in crystal-clear tropical waters.

Three months later, back from the Far East, I made the long trip from Cumbria to the naval town of Portsmouth to take the AIB (Admiralty Interview Board), the entry test for a naval career. After sailing through the exams and practical tests, I assumed the medical exam, held the next day, would be straightforward. I was wrong. Examination of my medical records revealed that I had experienced a mild case of asthma when aged seven, and that was enough to fail me. A Surgeon Lieutenant Commander explained that the expense of training a naval pilot was too great to risk him redeveloping later in life a childhood illness that might jeopardise his operational effectiveness. My aspirations to join the navy were dashed and it was shattering news.

Mooching around London a few days after the AIB, a poster in a Kensington underground station showing a girl wading up to her waist in a tropical swamp caught my eye. It was an advertisement for recruits to join Operation Raleigh, a youth adventure expedition, and it looked just the sort of challenge to get over the disappointment of my rejection. I sent off an application form, was accepted and a few months later was on my way to the Caribbean to join the expedition's square-rigged sailing brig, the Zebu, to learn the intricacies of crewing a square-rigger.

Back in the UK three months later, I still could not get enthusiastic about any particular career and so decided to go back to university. I applied for and won a Kennedy Memorial scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA - a fantastic prize, especially since the scholarship included transatlantic passage to New York on the QE2. I started at MIT in September 1985, but was in for a shock. Whereas life as an undergraduate at Cambridge had been carefree and easygoing, life as a graduate student at MIT was a lot of hard work. But sticking at the task was rewarded with a masters degree in the autumn of 1986. Shortly before the graduation ceremony, the Rotary Foundation wrote to me informing me that they had awarded me a further prize for a year of study in any country of my choice. My only problem was deciding where to go. Inspired by Argentine friends at MIT and their descriptions of Peronism, radicalism, hyper-inflation, military coups and the Malvinas question, I decided to use the prize to experience their country first hand. A few months later in January 1987, a Swissair flight took me to Buenos Aires International Airport.

Gripping my bag hard between my knees I braced myself for the inevitable impact. For the third time, the taxi-driver swerved the battered Renault 12, its worn tyres protesting, around the back of the belching Mercedes bus into the tiniest of gaps in the outer lane of the autopista. The journey from the airport to downtown Buenos Aires was proving an uncomfortable baptism. As we passed a huge blue-and-white billboard bearing the slogan `LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS' the beetle-browed driver, who had been glaring at me in the rearview mirror for several kilometres, took a long draw on his cigarette and flicked it out of the window into the darkness. `De donde es, usted?' he asked, suspiciously.

For a moment it occurred to me to lie. It was only a few years after the Falklands war and I was not sure how a British visitor would be received. But curious to see his reaction, I cautiously answered, `Soy Britannico.' He glanced in his mirror again, as if he hadn't heard. `Britannico ... Inglaterra,' I said, this time a bit louder.

He fixed me with his glare again and I wondered if my answer might have been undiplomatic. `Senora Thatcher,' he replied, his dark eyes flashing under his eyebrow, `She is good woman. I wish she come here - make better.' He gesticulated with a sweeping motion of his hand, and broke into a gold-toothed smile.

That was typical of the reaction of many Argentines during the coming year. The bitter memories of the Falklands war were fresh in their minds, but their antipathy was tempered by the long-standing cultural and commercial links with Britain.

That evening, after finding a room in a modest hotel, I met up for dinner with Schuyler, an American student of the same age who had also won a Rotary prize. He had majored in Latin American studies at Stanford and was amusing and laid-back. The next day we rented a flat together in central Buenos Aires.

The main objective of the Rotary prize was to get to know a different culture through travel and friendships, but we were also expected to follow a course of study. Schuyler and I enrolled in a postgraduate political science course, held in evening classes at the University of Buenos Aires. Our fellow students - senior military officers, left-wing journalists, aspiring politicians and a Peronista Catholic priest - were a microcosm of the powers in Argentine society. Democracy, under Raul Alfons¡n's Radical party, was still in fragile infancy after years of tyrannical rule by the discredited military junta. As representatives of the imperialist `Yanquis' and `Britannicos', the other students spared us no quarter in the spirited and occasionally fierce classroom debates. Schuyler was soon embroiled in political activity, attending rallies, demonstrations and student meetings. When Alfons¡n's government nearly fell to a military coup on Easter Sunday, 1987, we went together to the Casa Rosada to see the passionate Argentine crowds rallying to support democracy.

But most days, I left Schuyler to his own activities. I wanted to start flying again and one of the Air Force officers in my class put me in touch with an instructor, Rodolfo Sieger, who operated out of San Fernando airfield, a couple of hours by `Colectivo' bus from central Buenos Aires. A German immigrant, Sieger fought in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, flying Messerschmitt Me109s in the Battle of Britain. After the war, his own family wiped out in the Dresden fireball, he emigrated to Argentina, becoming a civilian pilot, and retired as a senior pilot in Aerolineas Argentinas. Needing to supplement his pension, he bought a 1930s vintage Luscombe Silvaire, a sort of aerial Citroen 2CV, and set up as a flying instructor. It was not the safest machine in which to take the Argentine pilot's licence exam, but it was cheap to hire and it was appealing to learn from a man who may have been one of Flight Lieutenant Witchall's aerial adversaries.

Over the next few weeks, preparing for my practical tests and theory exams, I learned of another aspect of Rodolfo's business. At the time there were very heavy duties on consumer electronics in Argentina, whereas in Paraguay, only a few hundred kilometres away, there were none. There were therefore incentives to smuggle in such goods, though the Argentine customs service naturally did their best to combat this trade. Once a week, Rodolfo flew over the River Plate to a grass airstrip in Paraguay and loaded up the Luscombe with video recorders and televisions. The underpowered aircraft barely staggered into the air and Rodolfo flew back in the dark of night, skimming the waves to avoid detection by Argentine naval radar.

One day we flew out to Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes. Rodolfo had tracked down a much-needed and rare spare part for the old aeroplane just over the border in Chile and asked me to collect it. The tiny Luscombe was not powerful enough to fly over the Andes, so this stage of the journey would have to be done by bus.

On arrival at the isolated border crossing, nestling in the shadow of Aconcagua, it dawned on me that I had a problem. My New Zealand passport was best for travelling in and out of Argentina as, unlike the British passport, it required no visa. In Chile, however, the British passport was more convenient because, unlike New Zealanders, Brits needed no visa. Rushing to pack for the trip, I had grabbed just my British passport.

The two surly Argentine border police who boarded the bus at the checkpoint might not overlook it, however. Realising that my New Zealand passport with its Argentine entry stamps was in my bedside locker in Buenos Aires, there was no option but to bluff my way over the border. I claimed that my New Zealand passport had been stolen and I was going to Santiago, the only New Zealand embassy in the southern cone, to get a replacement. The elder of the two guards believed my story, but the younger got suspicious and ordered me off the bus to search me. He soon found my unstamped British passport in my rucksack and arrested me on suspicion of having entered the country illegally.

They took me back to Mendoza police station, strip-searched me and dumped me in a dirty cell furnished with a damp mattress and a bucket. After a couple of boring hours they escorted me to an office where two scowling officers sat behind a steel desk. To my bafflement, they were suspicious that I was a spy and interrogated me. Details of my activities, my address, my friends were earnestly noted in little black books. After an hour, their questions seemed absurd. `What is the name of your dog?' one asked.

`Jesse,' I replied, barely containing my exasperation.

They held me overnight in the dirty cell and in the morning a colonel from the Argentine air force came out from Buenos Aires to interrogate me again. `What is the name of your dog?' he asked menacingly.

`I told the other bloke that last night,' I replied innocently, wondering why our lakeland terrier puppy was such a threat to Argentine Skyhawks. It later dawned on me that he was testing my cover. If I really was an innocent exchange student, it would be easy to remember inconsequential details like my dog's name. But if I was a spy under cover, spontaneously and correctly answering trivial questions from one day to the next would be harder. The lesson was useful when I did become a spy.

They released me later that day, though not without first making me play an impromptu game of rugby. They reasoned that any genuine New Zealander would be an excellent wing-forward, and my protests to the contrary fell on deaf ears. Mendoza is one of the main rugby-playing provinces of Argentina and some of their players were very good. They made me suffer and on returning to Buenos Aires the following day, my right eye was badly blackened. `So you met some of my Gestapo friends,' Rodolfo laughed. I wasn't sure whether he was joking.

A few weeks later, a Swiss diplomat friend invited me to a barbecue at the Swiss embassy. Britain and Argentina still had not reestablished diplomatic links after the Falklands war, so British interests were looked after by a few British diplomats working inside the Swiss embassy. My Swiss friend introduced me to one of them, a tall, gangly fellow a few years older than myself, who was a second secretary. He was fascinated to hear about my flying and asked eagerly about the range and load-carrying ability of the Luscombe. He seemed a bit disappointed when he learned that it struggled to carry more than a television and a video recorder.

After joining MI6 I discovered that the gangly fellow, Mark Freeman, was from the service. In Buenos Aires he was running what became quite a coup for MI6 against the Argentine navy.

Having failed to predict the invasion of the Falklands Islands in April 1982, the reputation of MI6 in Whitehall nosedived. MI6 set out to avoid repeating the same mistake and threw resources at the region, doubling the size of its station in Buenos Aires, building a chain of listening posts in the Chilean Andes to give early warning of Argentine aircraft movements and opening a new one-man station in Uruguay. Soon a steady stream of intelligence was coming from these efforts.

One piece of intelligence was of particular interest to the DIS (Defence Intelligence Staff) in Whitehall. The Argentines were developing a new and top secret naval mine, made of plastic, rendering it difficult to detect using conventional minesweeping techniques. It contained electronics which enabled it to distinguish the noise-signatures of British and Argentine ships. The DIS regarded the new mine as a dangerous threat and wanted details of its specification. MI6 learned of a French weapons technician who was working on the project in the Rio Gallegos naval base. They successfully recruited him, giving him the codename FORFEIT.

Smuggling the mine out of the Rio Gallegos base was not too difficult as FORFEIT had top-level security clearance and was trusted by the Argentine security guards. He loaded one of the mines into the boot of his car and drove it out of the base, claiming that he was taking it to another naval base in Commodore Rivadavia for sea trials. The hard bit of the operation was smuggling the mine out of Argentina.

Options for getting the mine to the UK were constrained by the need to ensure that the operation was deniable, so MI6 dared not use a submarine to sneak into one of the bays of Argentina's long, unpopulated coastline. MI6 considered recruiting a pilot to fly the mine across the River Plate to Uruguay in a light aircraft, and that was why Freeman had been disappointed to learn of the Luscombe's feeble capacity. In the end, an MI6 officer working under cover as a Danish chemical engineer rendezvoused with FORFEIT at a lockup garage in Buenos Aires, transferred the mine to the boot of his hire car and drove it to the Uruguay border. Prior reconnaissance revealed that the border police rarely searched vehicles but, just in case, the businessman had a cover story that the strange barrel-shaped piece of plastic in the boot of his car was nothing more sinister than a piece of chemical engineering equipment. In the event the cover story was not needed and he drove it without incident to Montevideo. From there it was clandestinely loaded on to a navy ship which was replenishing after a Falklands tour, and shipped to the UK.

Boarding a Swissair flight back to London in December 1987 at the end of an interesting year, I picked up a copy of La Nacion, Argentina's leading newspaper. Down on page five there was an article about a light aircraft which had crashed while making a night landing at a small grass airfield just outside Buenos Aires, killing the pilot. Police were investigating the wreckage among rumours that the plane was being used for smuggling. The pilot was unnamed but I knew it must be Rodolfo.

Back in London, without money, I needed a job, preferably one that satisfied my sense of adventure and desire to work overseas. I wrote to Pilchard asking if the offer he had made in 1984 was still open. He didn't reply directly, but a couple of weeks later a letter arrived on FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) crested paper signed by a Mr M.A. Halliday inviting me to an interview at 3 Carlton Gardens, London SW1.

Sitting on the low leather sofa in the reception hall of the elegant John Nash-designed house overlooking St James's Park in central London, I was curious and intrigued rather than nervous. The meter ticking next to my battered old BMW parked a block away was more worrying than the impending interview. I checked my watch and hoped it would not last long. Recent editions of The Economist and Financial Times were scattered in front of me on the low glass-topped table, and I picked one up to pass the time.

I heard soft footsteps descending the stairs from the mezzanine floor above and shortly a tall, pretty girl stepped out on to the marble floor, her high-heels clacking as she approached. I put down The Economist and stood. `Mr Tomlinson?' she asked, smiling. I nodded. `Mr Halliday will see you now. I'm Kathleen, by the way.' We shook hands and she escorted me up the stairs to the mezzanine floor where she showed me into one of the offices.

A small and slightly built man in a wide-lapelled brown suit with a string vest glimmering through an acrylic shirt awaited behind a desk. We exchanged greetings and shook hands. He urged me to sit down on a low armchair and sat down opposite me, a low table between us. He smiled. `Do you know what you are doing here?' he asked.

`Haven't a clue,' I replied cautiously.

`Well first, can I ask you to read and sign this?' He handed me a printed sheet of paper and a biro. It was an excerpt from the 1989 OSA (Official Secrets Act), headed `TOP SECRET'. He went over to the window and gazed over St James's Park while I read it. I signed it vigorously to signify that I was finished, and he returned with another file. `Now read this,' he ordered, handing me the green ring-binder.

Halliday returned to the window, leaving me to read the 30 or so plastic-wrapped pages. They explained that MI6 was Britain's overseas intelligence-gathering organisation, administered by the FCO, and that its objective was to gather intelligence from secret human sources on political, military, economic and commercial policies of rival foreign powers. A couple of paragraphs explained the selection procedure - almost identical to the FCO entry procedure, with one extra round of interviews. The positive vetting procedure - an inquisition into a candidate's private life - was described, then it outlined in general terms an MI6 career. Six months of training, a first overseas posting after a couple of years behind a desk in London, then alternate three-year home and overseas postings until compulsory retirement at 55. At the back was the payscale - not generous compared to salaries in the private sector, but still adequate.

I closed the file and put it down on the low table. Halliday got up from his desk and rejoined me. `What do you think?' he asked eagerly, as though I had just finished inspecting a second-hand car he was trying to sell.

`I'd like to know more,' I replied cautiously.

Halliday asked the usual interview questions with one unusual request. `One of the jobs we often have to do in MI6 is make a succinct character appraisal of a contact of the service - a pen portrait if you like. Could you describe somebody succinctly who you have come across in your life?' he asked. I thought for a moment, then described Rodolfo. A colourful character, it was not difficult. Halliday made it clear that he was seeking a long-term commitment to the service, in return for which there was a high degree of job security.

`That sounds fine,' I replied. `I'm looking for just that sort of thing.' The interview ended with Halliday assuring me that he would write to me soon. There were only a few minutes left on the parking meter.

Two weeks later a letter arrived inviting me for a second interview. It was flattering, but my priority was to get overseas quickly and the prospect of having to put in two or three years behind a desk in London first did not appeal. I screwed the letter into a ball and threw it away.

Though keen to go travelling, my debts obliged me to earn some money. Most of my friends from university were settled into steady careers in London in banking or management consultancy. Their lifestyle held no appeal, but pragmatically it offered the best way to save some money. It was the start of the Thatcher boom years and it was easy to get a highly paid job. Booz Allen & Hamilton, a management consultancy in Mayfair, employed me on a salary three times that on offer at MI6. But despite the welcome fat pay cheques, it was clear after a couple of weeks that it wasn't the career for me. Not replying to Halliday's letter was a mistake, and also rude. Writing back, I explained that having taken another job it would be wise to stick it out for a year, but would like to keep in touch. Halliday sent me a polite and understanding reply by return post.

Finding little stimulation in the sedentary consulting job, I needed a more challenging activity to occupy me. When I saw an advert in a newspaper to join the Territorial Army, Britain's reserve army corps, it seemed an ideal avenue in which to channel my spare energy. As it only required attendance at weekends and for two weeks' annual camp per year, joining up would not oblige me to leave the job that paid my bills. Flicking through the glossy recruitment brochure that arrived in the post a few days after my enquiry, I glanced at descriptions of the various reserve units, but the choice was clear: the Special Air Service volunteer regiment. When I rang the recruitment number, a gritty Scottish voice growled the instruction to report to the Duke of York's barracks on King's Road in central London the following Saturday with running shoes and tracksuit for a basic fitness test.

That first test was relatively easy for a fit young man - just five miles around the barracks running track in under 40 minutes. But that was just the start of the demanding selection process. The PT instructor who led the test said that we would need to attend every second weekend for the next year to undertake a series of daunting tests of endurance and stamina, plus a two-week intensive selection camp.

The following weekend just over a hundred other hopeful recruits turned up at the Duke of York's for the first stage of the selection process. Most were former regular army soldiers, or had experience in other parts of the Territorial Army. Some were condescending towards the few recruits, like myself, who had no previous military experience. `You won't get past the first weekend,' scoffed one shaven-headed former marine. We were briefly interviewed to assess our previous military experience and suitability for the course. Those with criminal convictions and the weirdoes who turned up equipped with black balaclavas or armed with knives were shown the gate. The quartermaster's store issued us with basic army clothing and equipment which we would have to use for the selection course - camouflage trousers, a pair of boots, a couple of hairy woollen shirts, a woolly pullover, webbing, water cans, sleeping bag, a waterproof poncho, a bergen to put it all in and, most importantly, a compass. We were given another running test - this time eight miles in one hour in our new boots. About 20 per cent immediately dropped out and were told to return their newly issued kit.

Soon passing selection became my only goal. My work at Booz Allen & Hamilton was unimportant - just something that had to be done between TA weekends to pay the rent. Every second weekend for the next five months, along with the other surviving candidates, I reported to the Duke of York's at 1930 on Friday evening after a boring but tiring day in the office. We were issued rations and our kit was checked by the DS (Directing Staff) to ensure that we were using only the original equipment issued to us. Anybody who tried to make the selection process easier by purchasing better-quality boots or goretex waterproofs was immediately `binned', the terminology for ejection from the course. At about 2130, we crammed into the back of a leaking canvas-roofed four-ton lorry and drove down the King's Road, past its thronging pubs, out of London and down the M4 motorway towards Wales.

We would arrive in the early hours of the morning at a remote forest location somewhere in the bleak Brecon Beacon mountains, often already soaked if it was raining. Using our standard army issue sleeping bag and poncho to make a bivouac, we slept for a few hours in a copse or by a mosquito-infested reservoir. Reveille would be at 0600 and the DS gave us an hour to eat a breakfast of dehydrated porridge, canned meat and boiled sweets, make a mug of tea, then pack away all our kit into our bergens. At 0700, the DS gave us a grid reference, usually a hilltop six or seven kilometres away. We set off at the double en masse, navigating to the control-point with our waterproofed ordnance-survey map and precious compass. The field rapidly strung out as the fittest and best navigators got to the front. On arrival at the checkpoint, another member of the DS, enviably curled up in his tent with a hot brew on, called out a new grid reference another ten kilometres or so away across difficult terrain. On arrival there, we would be given another grid reference, then another, and so on, never really knowing where or when the march would end.

At around 1800 the fastest runners reached the final checkpoint where we cooked some of the rations that we had been carrying all day and got some rest. The other runners would straggle in over the next few hours. The really slow candidates, or those who could not complete the course through exhaustion or injury, were binned. At about 2100 the DS would brief us on the night march, done in pairs, as the risk of navigating through the craggy mountain ranges in darkness was too great - candidates had occasionally died of exposure or made navigational errors and walked off cliffs. We normally finished this shorter march at about 0400, caught about two hours' sleep before reveille and breakfasted, then there followed an hour or so of hard PT, known as `beasting'. A `warmup' run of about four kilometres in our boots, with badly blistered and cut feet from the previous marches, half-killed us and and then a gruelling routine of press-ups and sit-ups finished us off. At about 1100, the torment was over and we collapsed into the lorry for the five-hour drive back to London.

Every weekend, the ratchet was tightened a bit more and the field of remaining candidates got smaller. The marches increased in length and difficulty of navigation and we had increasingly heavy loads to carry in our bergens. I was secretly pleased to see the marine who had sneered at me drop out of one of the harder marches, moaning about badly blistered feet.

The final and most dreaded selection weekend was the infamous `long drag'. We had navigated all over the Brecon Beacons and knew them too well, so long drag was held in unfamiliar territory in the Peak District of northern England. The goal was to cover a total of 65 kilometres cross-country in under 20 hours, carrying full webbing, a 501b bergen containing all our gear and rations, and an old FN rifle from which the sling had been removed. At the end of that test only 19 of the 125 who started the course remained of which I, proudly, was one.

Although the long drag endurance test was a major hurdle, there was still a long way to go before those of us who remained would be `badged' with SAS berets bearing the famous `Who Dares Wins' motto and accepted into the regiment. Every second weekend for the next six months was taken with `continuation' training, learning the basic military skills required of an SAS soldier. We were still under scrutiny, however, and any recruit who was deemed by the DS not to have the right attitude or aptitude was binned. Having had no previous experience of the army, even the most basic infantry skills were new to me: field survival, escape and evasion, long-range reconnaissance patrol techniques, dog evasion, abseiling from helicopters, foreign weapon familiarisation. The final two week selection took place at Sennybridge camp in Wales where these skills were put to the test in a long and arduous field exercise.

At the end of the exercise we were `captured' by the enemy - role-played by paratroopers - blindfolded, roughed up a bit, then taken in the back of a cattle truck to an old disused farm in the Welsh hills. There, still blindfolded, we were stripped and forced into `stress' positions - either hands spread against a wall, feet kicked back a metre or so and spread wide apart, or else squatting on the floor with back arched and fingers on our heads. After a few minutes either position became uncomfortable, and after 20 minutes cramps and muscle spasms set in. The discomfort was relieved every few hours when we were taken to be `interrogated' by officers from the Joint Services Interrogation Wing. We were only allowed to give away the `big four' permitted by the Geneva Convention - name, rank, date of birth and service number - and the interrogators used every ploy they knew to trick us into giving away more. Anybody who gave away the smallest extra detail, even merely admitting that they were thirsty, was immediately binned. After 20 minutes of that we were lead back to the cattle pen and put into a different stress position. Those who endured were finally released after 20 hours.

Finally, because we would shortly learn to parachute, we had to pass P-company, a brutal fitness test taken by the Parachute Regiment as a test of suitability for parachute training. It required explosive strength and power rather than the stamina of SAS selection and I was sorry to see that after going so far a couple of guys failed this last hurdle. The handful of us who remained were `badged' in a simple ceremony by the CO (Commanding Officer), a colonel in 22 SAS, and accepted into the regiment. It was a proud moment for me, but it needed to be kept in perspective. Our selection process was a stroll in the park compared to the far more arduous and drawn out selection of the regular army's 22 SAS regiment, and our standards of soldiering were much lower. We were awarded an identical beret, but that was about the only thing that was equal between the two regiments.

Between TA weekends, my first priority was to get fit enough to pass SAS selection. Most mornings I arrived at Booz Allen & Hamilton after running twice around Hyde Park, then clock-watched until the evening when I could escape to the nearby Lansdowne sports club for a couple of kilometres of swimming. My lifestyle priorities were very different from my colleagues', who dedicated their spare time to eating and drinking, and I felt little sense of identity with them, exacerbated by the sense of achievement in getting badged. Every morning at my desk I wondered what motivated them in their daily struggle to climb the corporate ladder. Ernst Goldstein was particularly inscrutable. He only had a few more years to wait to receive a fortune that was held in a trust fund until his 30th birthday and although he earned a hefty salary as a management consultant, he lived as if he had already inherited big money, borrowing heavily to support a lavish and extravagant lifestyle. He spent hours on the phone, mostly chatting to friends organising expensive parties and occasionally to clients whom he oleaginously addressed as `Sir'. Whenever his trimphone rang, his hand shot out like a striking cobra, reaching the receiver before the first `tring' had finished, and he answered `Goldstein speaking' with irritating eagerness. While the whole office was working late one night on a `vitally important' project, I sneaked over to his cubicle while he was absent and glued down his trimphone receiver with a couple of blobs of superglue. When he returned a few minutes later with the managing director and started enthusiastically discussing a cashflow spreadsheet, I rang him on the internal line. As usual, his hand shot out like a frog's tongue for the receiver, but this time it came back with the phone attached, clattering into the side of his head. Worse, because the cradle had not been tripped, the telephone would not stop ringing. Goldstein went berserk, waving the still-ringing phone around as if he were trying to shake a mad dog off his arm. At last, with a manic desperate yank, he ripped the receiver away - only it came away with the top half of the telephone, spilling wires and bells on to the desk. The office was in uproar by now, but Goldstein was oblivious. He put the receiver to his ear and, oleaginous as ever, replied, `Goldstein speaking.' The managing director stalked off, trying not to lose his dignity by bursting into laughter.

Shortly afterwards, I resigned. The writing was on the wall even before the trimphone incident. The managing director realised that I was not interested in the job and started playing games to make life unpleasant. One evening he arranged a meeting with me at 0730 the following day, forcing me to get into the office unusually early. Then he rang in to tell me that his train had been `delayed'. It was a relief to get out of the oppressive company, and besides it gave me more time for courses with the Territorial Army.

We were obliged to learn to parachute, and I signed up for the next available basic course at RAF Brize Norton. Two weeks and twelve jumps later, the RAF awarded me my coveted SAS parachute wings. I also got myself on a signals course, learning how to operate the encrypted PRC319 radios and high-speed morse, and completed a basic German course.

I had also just passed my motorcycle test and bought a battered old 800cc BMW trail bike. Inspired by Thesiger's adventures, I wanted to experience the vast emptiness of the deserts for myself. I got a Michelin map of the Sahara from Stanfords map shop, strapped a few jerry cans to the side of the bike, packed up some camping gear and set off on a freezing April morning for Africa.

The trip went smoothly until the end of the tarmac road at Tamanrasset, about halfway down Algeria. The soft sand exposed the inadequacies of the heavily laden motorbike, my inappropriate tyres and lack of off-road motorcycling experience. I covered only five miles on the first day, continuously bogged down in the soft sand or heaving the heavy bike upright after crashing. After one severe fall the forks bent backwards so far that the front wheel rubbed on the engine casings. There was no option but to dismantle them and turn the stanchions through 180 degrees in order to get going again. The wheel no longer fouled the engine but the bike was even harder to handle. Luckily the next morning another big crash straightened the forks out so that the bike handled properly again.

Just south of the dusty and derelict Algerian village of In-Guezzam, I reached the Niger border, marked by a dilapidated wooden hut flying a faded Niger flag and housing a small army detachment. A handful of saffron-robed Tuareg desert traders waited outside, their camels snorting in a patch of shade provided by a sun-bleached awning. The Niger border guards, supervised by a hefty-looking captain dressed in khaki and sporting a set of sunshades, were poking through the Tuaregs' bundles. On the other side of the hut three immaculate BMW motorcycles bearing German number plates were neatly parked. Their owners were camped out alongside, lounging under a flysheet with a few books and magazines, cooking a meal. They looked bored, as if they had been there for some time, and were not much interested when I rode over to greet them. `How long have you been here?' I asked.

`Three days,' answered a tall, crew-cut Aryan type, dressed in expensive-looking motocross gear. `That bastard,' he nodded at the fat Captain, `vill not let us through,' he spat.

I tried to lighten his mood with some small talk. `Good trip down?' I asked cheerfully.

The German looked at me, then my bike, examining its damage. `Jah,' he paused for emphasis. `We have not fallen off once.' I left them to get back to their magazines and went over to introduce myself to the fat captain.

Glaring at me through his dark glasses as I approached, he bristled with animosity. The Germans must have had a few slanging matches with him and perhaps he expected trouble from me. `Attendez-l...,' he snapped, indicating me to go back and wait with the other motorcyclists.

I didn't protest, but in my bad French asked how long I should prepare to wait. His anger abated as he realised that I was not seeking a confrontation. Approaching a bit closer, I noticed that he wore French army parachute wings on the breast pocket of his shirt. `Ah, vous ˆtes parachutiste,' I said, affecting a tone of respect.

His anger subsided like a spoilt child presented with a lolly. He drew himself to attention, puffed out his chest and proudly announced, `I am the most experienced parachutist in the Niger army,' and told me the alarming stories of his eight jumps.

The simple piece of childish flattery was enough. After half an hour, the captain stamped my passport and waved me through. Riding away southwards, in the one wing-mirror that remained intact, I could see the Germans remonstrating angrily with the captain that he had let me through before them.

Stopping a few days later in Agades, the first town on the southern side of the Sahara, I was drinking a beer at a small outdoor bar when another motorcyclist approached. His front wheel was buckled and the forks badly twisted, so the bike lolloped like an old horse. He dismounted painfully, dropped the bike on the ground rather than putting it on its sidestand, came into the bar and ordered a large beer. He turned out to be an orange-packer from Mallorca called Pedro and over our beers we laughed at our various crashes. He spoke no French, so the next day I translated while the local blacksmith straightened out his bike, then we rode together down to Lom‚, the main port and capital of Togo. There my trip was over and I put my battered bike on a Sabena cargo plane back to Europe, but Pedro continued his tour of West Africa. A few years later I visited him in Mallorca, and he told me what happened next. Whilst waiting on his bike at some traffic-lights in the lawless town of Libreville in Sierra Leone, two men had pulled him down and robbed him. Gratuitously, one had also bitten him hard on the cheek, leaving not only a vicious scar but also infecting him with the HIV virus.

I arrived back from the Sahara just in time to go on a NATO-organised LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) exercise in Belgium. All NATO countries were invited to send their LRRP troops to the exercise: there were American Rangers, German Fernsp"htruppen, Danish Jaeger troops, a reconnaissance troop from the French Foreign Legion, Spanish special forces bizarrely carrying umbrellas as part of their field kit, Greek special forces with bright green camouflage cream applied like a clown's mask, unhappy-looking Dutch conscript special forces, Portuguese, Canadians and Turks. We were there as the British representatives. Ian, a former Royal Tank Regiment sergeant was our PC (Patrol Commander). Mac, a scouser, was lead scout and Jock, with a barely comprehensible Scottish highland accent was the fourth member of our patrol. Ian appointed me signaller, meaning I would have to carry the PRC319 VHF radio, DMHD (Digital Message Handling Device), code books and OTPs (One Time Pads), an SA80 5.68mm rifle, SUSAT telescopic day-sight, image-intensifying night-sight and all my personal survival kit. With a static-line parachute on my back, a reserve parachute on my chest and all this equipment bundled up and hanging off the front of the parachute harness, it was nearly impossible to walk to the Transall transport aircraft for the flight to the DZ (Drop Zone).

As dawn was breaking, we were parachuted in our patrols into the flat farmland of northern Belgium. The Belgian army were out in force with helicopters, ground troops and search dogs acting as the `enemy' to track us down. We had to get off the DZ and into cover fast to avoid capture. We got ourselves into a small copse by a pond and I set up the radio while the others mounted stags (look-out) and got a brew on. Within minutes the DMHD had received a string of 40 numbers. After decyphering it with the OTPs and decoding it with the code-book, we had the order to set up an OP (Observation Post) on a road about ten kilometres from our existing location, in order to report on `enemy' traffic movements. To avoid detection, we had to make the distance straight away in the few hours that remained before daybreak.

That would be the pattern for the next four days. A long walk at night, sometimes as far as 40 kilometres, then a lay-up during the day in an OP where we signalled back to the UK command centre our observations of traffic movements of the Belgian army. Between shifts on stag or manning the radio, we grabbed a few hours' sleep.

By the end of the first week, we were all filthy dirty and dishevelled. Camouflage cream and mud was ground into our beards, our fingernails were clogged and our clothing was stinking and soaked with the ceaseless rain. We had also run out of food. Given time, finding food and water would not be much of a problem - there were turnips and potatoes in the fields, water in ditches and ponds. But the DS were piling the pressure on us and we had no time to foray.

The exercise was drawing to a close but the hardest part was still to come. That night we were supposed to make an RV with a `partisan' friendly agent on the other side of the heavily guarded Albert canal. All the bridges would certainly be guarded and there would be foot patrols along the towpaths. We'd heard endless shooting during the night as the Dutch and German patrols, who had started the exercise the day before us, ran into trouble. All we had eaten for the past two days was a few boiled sweets and biscuits that we had got from one of the buried caches, whose locations had been signalled through to us. Our maps showed a pond in the midst of our copse but it was dried up to nothing more than a foulsmelling, mosquito-filled swamp, meaning we also had no safe water.

`We need some food, badly,' announced Ian, to grunts of approval from the others. `Tomlinson, you speak French, don't you?' he said. `Get your civvies on and see if you can get us some food.' At the bottom of my bergen there were some training shoes for use on river crossings, lightweight dark grey Tenson trousers which could double as tactical trousers and a blue Helly Hansen thermal shirt. While I changed into them Jock got some of the foul-smelling swamp water on the boil, picking out the the mosquito larvae, so that I could have a wash and a shave. An hour or so later, I almost looked like part of the human race again. With a handful of Belgian francs in my pocket, I set out for the nearest village.

It was early lunchtime when I got to Zittart. As I strolled into a bar, trying my best to appear casual, one old fellow cradling a glass of Stella Artois glanced up at me and a couple of crew-cut youths sporting downy moustaches were playing pool. At the side of the bar was a small fast-food counter, displaying backlit photographs of chips and hamburgers. I ordered eight portions of hamburgers and chips for the patrol and, while they were frying, got myself a glass of Stella. On an empty stomach my head was soon humming and I found myself chatting to the barman. `Where are you from?' he asked, noting my bad French. The presence of the exercise in the region had been announced in the local press, and any civilian who helped capture a soldier was given a reward, so some imaginative lying was required. `Sweden,' I replied. It was the first non-NATO country that came into my head. I padded out the story, inventing answers to his questions on the hoof. `Yeah, my name is Rickard. I'm an engineer at the SAAB factory in Gothenburg. I'm driving down to Paris with a few friends for a holiday. The car's broken down just outside the village, radiator's boiled over.'

The cover story flowed easily and the two lads finished their game of pool and came over to meet the foreigner. `What's life like in Sweden then?' asked one. `Do you get well paid?'

I replied with invented figures, and he seemed impressed. `Do you have to do military service?' asked the other.

`Yeah, two years,' I replied, knowing from Swedish friends in London that it was the correct answer. `What about you?' I asked.

`We have to do two years ``mili'' here,' sniffed the younger of the two. `We've only got six months till we get out. What a waste of time it is. There is some stupid NATO exercise on around here at the moment.'

`Yeah, I've seen a few convoys and helicopters,' I interjected, trying to sound casual.

The elder joined in. `We spent the whole of last night trudging up and down the Albert canal, down by Strelen, firing blanks at stupid German soldiers trying to swim across. We're supposed to be down there again tonight but our Lieutenant fell over and cracked a rib last night. The tosser thinks we are going to carry on without him tonight.' They laughed sarcastically.

I left 20 minutes later with a bag of hamburgers for my `Swedish friends' and five litres of water for the `car radiator'. After I told Ian what I'd heard in the bar, we swam the canal uneventfully at Strelen that night and were one of three patrols to make it to the final RV without capture. At the end of the exercise all the patrols were graded on their performance and we were in the top ten, only behind the four Danish Jaeger patrols, a Portuguese patrol and a few American Ranger patrols. Considering we were only part-timers and the rest were all the full-time elite of their professional armies, it was not a bad performance.

A couple of weeks later, back at my parents' home, I wrote again to `Mr Halliday' to reapply to join MI6. The Territorial Army was a lot of fun, but it was no career and at 27 I was too old to join the regular army. MI6 offered the satisfaction of public service, plus it was a structured and secure career with plenty of variety, good pay and perks, and it promised an intriguing lifestyle. The little incident extracting intelligence from the Belgian soldiers had been satisfying and if that was a taste of what MI6 would be like, it would be the right career for me. A couple of days after writing to Halliday, he wrote back inviting me for another interview in Carlton Gardens.

As I rang the doorbell for the second time, I wondered if Halliday would remember my face. As before, Kathleen showed me up to his office on the mezzanine floor. Halliday had changed a lot since our meeting, gaining about six inches in height, losing his beard and acquiring a better wardrobe. `Please, take a seat.' He ushered me into the same low chair as at the first interview. `I expect you have already guessed,' he said, `that I am not the same Halliday you met on your last visit here. Halliday is an alias we use in the recruitment process.'

`Oh yes, I knew that, of course,' I blustered.

Halliday smiled sagely, seeing through my feeble bluff. The rest of the interview was much as before - the same OSA flyer to sign, the same plasti-wrapped folder to read. The new Halliday though, asked more searching questions than the first. `Often in MI6,' he said, `we must use charm, guile and our wits to persuade somebody to do something they may not want to do, or to get them to tell us information which perhaps they should not. Are there any examples from your own life where you have had to do that?' I thought for a moment then told him about flattering the Niger army captain into letting me cross the border during my Sahara trip and about my `undercover' intelligence gathering from the Belgian soldiers in the bar. Halliday seemed to like both those stories.

Halliday wrote to me a few weeks later, inviting me to attend a further round of tests and interviews in Whitehall. MI6 is part of the civil service, so to join the `Intelligence Branch' candidates have to first pass exactly the same exams which fast-stream candidates for other parts of the civil service must take, whether they are joining the FCO, Treasury or Department of Trade and Industry. MI6 candidates sit the exams separately from other candidates, however, because even at this early stage of the selection process their identities are regarded as secret.

Five other candidates sat with me in the waiting-room before the first exam. One was the son of a serving MI6 officer, one a Metropolitan Police SB (Special Branch) officer, another in the DIS, one a merchant banker and the last worked for a political consultancy in Oxford. The multi-choice tests were like something out of a 1960s `know your own IQ' book - lots of weird shapes from which we had to choose the odd one out, or dominoes in which we had to guess the next in the series. There was a simple test of numeracy, then a longish but straightforward written paper in which we had to compose a couple of essays. In the afternoon we had to discuss a couple of current affairs topics individually with one of the serving MI6 officers who were supervising the tests. Finally, there was a group discussion exercise. We were asked to plan what advice we would give to a notional high-tech British company which had caught a couple of Chinese exchange engineers spying. The policeman was loud and outspoken, adamantly maintaining that the Chinese spies should be arrested immediately. He dismissed as utterly wet the political consultant's pleas for lenient treatment to safeguard Anglo-Chinese relationships. The discussion exercise broke down in acrimony, despite the diplomatic intervention of the merchant banker.

Having no benchmark, I had no idea if I had done well or badly so after the exams were over a few of us went for a drink to the Admiral Nelson pub across the road and discussed the day's events. The bespectacled and mild-mannered political consultant told me that he would not pursue his application, whether or not he passed the test, if they accepted applicants like the aggressive policeman.

The final stage of the selection process, a lengthy interview before a panel of serving MI6 officers, took place a few days later in Carlton Gardens. The interview got underway late because one of the three had got a puncture on his bike, but eventually they lined up behind the table with `Halliday' observing from behind. They grilled me with detailed questions on current affairs, my reasons for joining MI6, my long-term ambitions and whether I was genuinely committed to a lifelong career. When I didn't know an answer, I admitted my ignorance rather than bluff. I left Carlton Gardens an hour later convinced that they would fail me.

I was delighted to receive a letter to the contrary a few weeks later. Subject to a successful background security check, I had a job in MI6.

The security vetting procedure was the last hurdle. Many government employees are `positively vetted', which means that perfunctory checks are made that an individual does not have a criminal record, extreme political views, drug or alcohol dependence or financial problems. Candidates for MI6 must undergo more stringent examination leading, if successful, to an EPV (Enhanced Positive Vetted) certificate. It is a labour-intensive process and MI6 has a staff of about a dozen officers in the vetting department. First, my name was checked with MI6's database, showing up my brief meeting with Freeman in Buenos Aires which he had recorded. The search of MI5's databases and police SB records drew a blank. My creditworthiness was also investigated. My moderate debts were acceptable, as I had not been long out of university, but any records of defaulting on loan repayments or very substantial debts would have disqualified me. Still on a green light after this first round, I was invited to an interview with the vetting officer assigned to my case. He was an avuncular former head of the East European controllerate in MI6 and delved into my personal life. He wanted to know about my political views, any contact with extremist organisations of the left or right, friendships with foreign nationals, any problems with alcohol and contact with drugs. MI6 has loosened up considerably in recent years. Not so long ago, former membership of an organisation such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament would have excluded a candidate, but is acceptable nowadays, and casual experimentation with drugs is ignored. The vetting officer did not take my answers at face value, though. He asked me to nominate eight referees who knew me well, covering all periods of my life since schooldays. These referees were all interviewed by him to check the veracity of my statements. Honesty pays - if it is discovered that a candidate has tried to hide some misdemeanour, he or she is unlikely to be awarded an EPV. There were no skeletons in my cupboard and two months later a photocopied letter in a plain envelope arrived announcing the award of an EPV certificate and confirming the job offer. There were no clues about what my new career would involve. The FCO crested notepaper simply stated to `arrive promptly at Century House, 100 Westminster Bridge Road, at 10 a.m. on Monday, 2 September 1991. You should bring your passport'.