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FRIDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 1993
CENTRAL SARAJEVO

I heard the screaming shriek of the shell cutting through the air a split second before the shock wave of the detonation crushed me to the ground, so I knew I was going to live. Harris, a 12-year-old street urchin, petty crook and veteran of the three-year Serbian siege of Sarajevo, gave me the tip only a few days earlier. He made a living hanging around the Sarajevo Holiday Inn and `guarding' the vehicles of the journalists and aid workers - if they chose not to acquire his services, windscreen wipers, aerials and anything else removable would disappear overnight. Clapping his grubby hands and whistling through broken teeth to provide the sound effects, he cheerfully explained in his pidgin English that if an incoming shell whistled, then it would land far enough away to be harmless. His words of wisdom were the first cogent thoughts that entered my mind as my senses returned and the awareness of where I was drifted back into my consciousness.

Angus, the dour, moustached NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) of the British army detachment in Sarajevo, had dropped me off on a quiet street corner in central Sarjevo just a few minutes before the shellburst, promising to return to the RV in three hours time, then again the following hour if I failed to show up for the first. Gruffly, he had wished me luck, then drove off into the mist of an early winter's evening.

As the red tail-lights of the kevlar-armoured UNPROFOR Land Rover disappeared into the murk, I slipped into a shadowy doorway to let my eyes adjust to the falling light before beginning the ten-minute walk to the home of DONNE, MI6's most important agent in Sarajevo. Unshaven, shabbily dressed and with a woollen hat pulled low over my head, I looked like any of the other Sarajevans employed by UNPROFOR being dropped off by a friendly soldier after a day's work. To further the disguise, in my left hand I lugged a half-full 25-litre polythene jerry can of the sort carried ubiquitously by Sarajevans in their daily toil to fetch water from the public spigots. Over my right shoulder was slung a canvas bag containing a notebook and pencil, a PETTLE recorder and presents for DONNE - a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label whisky and 400 Marlboro cigarettes.

Despite my innocuous appearance, there was a risk of a routine ID check by one of the Bosnian police officers who lurked on street corners. I felt nervously in my breast pocket for my G/REP forged ID card and the grubby, cellophane-wrapped card bearing the words `Ja sam gluh i nijem' - `I am deaf and dumb' in the local language. It was a worn and clich‚d ruse, but perhaps it would be enough to deflect further interest from a bored and tired policeman. My cover would not withstand further scrutiny - stuffed into a holster in my trouser band was a loaded 9mm Browning and in the poacher's pocket of my grubby overcoat a vial of morphine and two Joint Services standard issue shell dressings. All were hostages to fortune, but the benefits of carrying them outweighed the risks of their discovery. The pistol would also counter the threat from the armed muggers (usually hungry and drunken off-duty Bosnian soldiers) who lurked in the unlit alleys. The morphine and shell dressings were to counter the biggest threat in central Sarajevo - the deadly, calculated sniper's bullet or the indiscriminate and random shelling which killed everyday and blanketed every Sarajevan with the constant fear of imminent death.

Stepping from the shadowy, stinking doorway I reflected that at least I would only face these hazards for a few hours until Angus returned with the sanctuary of the armoured Land Rover. Sarajevans, like the woman scurrying home half a block in front of me, had to put up with it day in, day out. I wondered what sort of a life she led. It was impossible to gauge her age. Head down, shuffling wearily but urgently with a heavy bundle of firewood, wrapped in heavy clothes against the damp cold, she could have been a teenager, a mother or a grandmother. For sure, she would have lost at least one member of her family or a close friend to the shelling and sniping siege. No one had escaped that grief.

I must have blacked out for a second when the shell exploded, and regained consciousness gasping to refill my lungs, emptied by the crushing blast. My heart was racing so fast I could feel its every beat in the throb of my head and my ears howled with white noise. An excruciating pain shot through me from my right leg, stabbing into me as my chest moved to suck in air. Gingerly, as my breathing stabilised, I opened my eyes and it took a moment to work out what had happened. Whether it was the shock wave from the exploding shell or my instinctive leap for cover, I had been thrown back into the doorway and was lying in a contorted, twisted heap, wedged head uppermost into the corner. Still too shocked to move, I looked down at my right leg, the source of my agony. There was nothing from the knee down. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, trying not to throw up. Shifting my weight eased the pain slightly and slowly, with my right hand, I explored my lower body, dreading the worst. My hand brushed against leather, perhaps my boot. Glancing down, alarmed and apprehensive, it was indeed my Timberland, with my lower right leg still inside it. Still scarcely able to breathe, head throbbing, I felt along its length and realised with ecstatic relief that it was still attached to my upper leg. I hadn't lost it, it was just twisted at an excruciating angle underneath my crumpled body. Gingerly, I rolled further to my left. The pain eased a bit more. A bit further and there was an excruciating twang as the ligaments at the back of the twisted knee uncrossed themselves. Groaning and panting for breath, I straightened my leg, relieved that I was in one piece. Little Harris was right - I'd heard the shell coming in and it had landed far enough from me not to cause serious injury.

Lying still for a few minutes, I calmed my breathing. White noise still rang in my ears, though it was subsiding. Suspecting that my eardrums must have been blown out, I put my hands to my ears to check for blood. There was none. I checked for the Browning. It would be difficult and embarrassing to explain losing that to the office, whatever the circumstances. It was still there. I sat upright, then struggled to my feet, trying not to put weight my right leg. My body had now started shaking and shivering involuntarily. Shock was setting in and I needed fluids. My jerry can was lying on the pavement, split, and leaking slightly. I limped over, picked it up, and squeezed it, drinking eagerly from the crack. My shakes were uncontrollable and the cold water spilt down the front of my shirt, sending spasmodic shivers down me. I desperately wanted to lie down somewhere warm and be anywhere but where I was.

I heard the plaintive wailing for a few seconds before realising from what, or from where, it was coming. It sounded inhuman, high-pitched and tremulous, like a mortally injured dog that knows it is about to die. I looked up the street to where the swaddled woman had been scurrying only minutes earlier. Darkness was falling, but at the limit of vision lay the dark silhouette of a prone body. I dropped the jerry can and semi-hopped, semi-limped towards her.

She must have taken virtually the full blast of the explosion. There was a fresh detonation scar in the pavement just a few feet in front of her, and a smell of cordite lingered. The blast had blown away all her clothes except part of the heavy woollen overcoat which still clung to her upper body, exposing all that was left of her below. Her stomach was split with a vicious gash and her groin and thighs were shredded by shrapnel. Her lower right leg was almost unmarked, but her left leg was blown off just below the knee. The shattered bone was exposed and blood pulsed from the torn artery, squirting into the pool on the pavement. At that rate of blood loss, she would not live long. My hands were on autopilot, driven by the first-aid training I had received in the TA. ABC - airways, breathing, circulation. There was no need for the AB - she was wailing piercingly and her chest was moving. The priority was C - to stop blood loss and to keep her circulation going. Kneeling beside her, I scrabbled in my overcoat for the shell dressings. Hastily pulling them out, I dropped the morphine vial into the pool of blood. Hands still shaking, I tore off the brown waterproof outer layer of the dressing, ripped off the sterile inner layer, unfolded the thick pad of absorbent lint and rammed it up against the stub of her leg. Jamming it in place with my knee, I fumbled to open the second dressing. Despite binding the two dressings in place tightly using the attached bandages, it barely stemmed the bleeding.

She was still wailing weakly, more in fear than in pain, and presumably she was losing consciousness. I scrabbled for the morphine vial and cleaned it off, intending to give her a shot. Grabbing her right arm, I twisted the palm towards me, exposing her lower inner arm to find a vein. She had already lost so much blood that even after squeezing and massaging none stood out. I was about to jab in the syringe, thinking that it was better than nothing, when from my TA training came a distant recollection - check for head wounds before administering morphine. I fumbled for the minimaglite torch in my jacket pocket and shifted to see her face. Grabbing a handful of her long, dark hair to hold her head steady, I shone the beam into her eyes. The pupils were pinpricks. As I pushed back her hair to expose her ears, a trickle of straw-yellow fluid ran from her left ear. It would be dangerous to give her morphine. Apart from vainly attempting to stem the blood flow, there was nothing more I could do. I had exhausted the limits of my medical training and the equipment with me and resignedly slipped the vial back into my pocket.

As I bowed my head, questioning the fate that brought me here to watch this girl die, I became aware of other people around me. An old man knelt beside me, mumbling something incomprehensible in Bosanski. A Bosnian soldier stood overlooking us, his back pressed against the wall, wary of another salvo of shells. It was time for me to go. Standing up, my twisted knee reminded me about itself and I winced. The old man grabbed me by the arm and murmured something but I twisted free and stepped back into the shadows. I still had a job to do.

I limped back to the cover of my doorway. Looking back up the road to where the girl still lay, I saw that a car had pulled up - a few still ran in Sarajevo despite the siege, fuelled by black-market petrol. The bystanders were loading her limp corpse into the back seat, arguing incomprehensibly. Another shell whistled overhead, sending them and me ducking for cover. It landed perhaps a few streets away, perhaps harmlessly, perhaps not. The car carrying the dying girl pulled away and sped past, a white Volkswagen Golf splattered with rusting shrapnel pockmarks and with an improvised windscreen from another make. I hoped they were on their way to the Kosovo Hospital rather than straight to the morgue.

Sheltering in the corner of the doorway to take stock, I glanced at my watch showed that only ten minutes had passed since Angus had dropped me off. There remained two hours and fifty minutes before he would return. I was in shock from the incident, I felt cold, and my hands and trousers were stained in the girl's blood. This was no fit state for a meeting with DONNE. I removed my boots and took off my trousers. The water that remained in my split water-carrier was sufficient to rinse out the worst of the blood. After being wrung out, the damp trousers were a bit uncomfortable, but the modern lightweight material would dry quickly. Nevertheless, I hoped that DONNE's flat would be warm.

The route to DONNE's took me past the spot where the girl had been hit. As I limped by, a mongrel bitch, probably an abandoned pet, trotted out of the shadows, her long teats swinging, and cautiously sniffed the congealing blood on the pavement. She whimpered approvingly and a puppy scampered out of the shadows to join her. Eagerly, they started lapping up the blood and scraps of flesh. It was a repulsive, hellish vision, but I did not chase them off. They were only doing what came naturally. At least a couple of starving dogs would benefit from the tragedy.

Normally when an IB officer is posted overseas, he or she spends up to two years in pre-posting preparation. The most time-consuming element is the language training. Even if an agent speaks good English, it is preferable to speak to him in his mother tongue - that way his real character is more exposed. For a difficult language such as Chinese or Arabic, it takes two years to reach the required level of fluency, even if the officer is a talented linguist. For an easy language like Spanish or French the training is shorter, usually about six months. The other important element of pre-posting training is to build a thorough understanding of the political issues, intelligence requirements and agent assets of the host country. An officer therefore usually spends a few months on attachment to the relevant P desk and might even do the job full-time for a year or so. He will read in detail the files of all the station agents - CX agents, OCP keepers, liaison officers, facilities agents - and will learn the administrative background of the station - its budget, its targets for the year ahead, the CX requirements. He will meet the relevant desk officers in the FCO to get up to speed with the political situation in the country and usually takes advanced FCO courses in politics and economics. The result is that he is already thoroughly familiar with the station's work and the host country before he even packs his bags.

Shortly before leaving for the station, the officer also undertakes `refresher' training down at the Fort. The course consists of further tradecraft instruction, especially in anti-surveillance; more instruction in photography; and a brush-up in small-arms and self-defence training. There is also a course in defensive driving techniques given by Royal Military Police instructors on the runway of the HMS Daedalus naval airfield near the Fort, encompassing fast-driving techniques such as hand-brake turns and J-turns. (Hire cars, rather than the Fort's pool cars are used, because it is not unheard of for over-enthusiastic novices to rip tyres off them or even overturn them.) Officer's spouses are also invited to attend a week-long course at the Fort, as it is useful to have a trained second pair of eyes during anti-surveillance runs. The course also allows partners to understand the profession better - the divorce rate in MI6 is high because of the demanding and secretive work.

For some postings, even more specialised training is required. For example, Andrew Markham, my IONEC colleague, was selected for the ORCADA slot in Bonn. This was a deep cover job, running MI6's most important agent in Germany, a high-ranking official in the ministry of finance. In return for a substantial salary, ORCADA provided five-star CX on the German economy and interest rate movements, enabling the Chanceller of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England to adjust Britain's interest rates and economy to best advantage. The ORCADA posting was so sensitive that only the ambassador in Bonn and H/BON were briefed and no one else in the embassy was even aware that Markham was from the `friends' (FCO-speak for MI6). Markham thus had to learn to become a thoroughly convincing diplomat to fool his FCO colleagues, so he attended the FCO pre-posting training courses in addition to all his MI6 courses, and in order to debrief ORCADA effectively he also attended advanced lectures at the London School of Economics and did an extended attachment with the Treasury.

It was thus highly unusual when Fowlecrooke told me that he would give me only two weeks to prepare for the posting in Bosnia. There would be no time for any language instruction or any of the normal courses. It was just enough time to read the station files, have a couple of meetings with String Vest and take a one-day refresher course on the Browning down at the Fort.

String Vest explained that my cover was not in the usual diplomatic slot in an embassy, the scenario for which we trained on the IONEC, but as the mysteriously entitled `civil adviser' to Brigadier John Reith, the commander of the British UNPROFOR contribution in Split on the Dalmatian coast. It was a flimsy, ill-considered cover-story which fooled nobody. As I was to find out, every one of my contacts in Bosnia assumed immediately that I was from British intelligence and even the greenest of army privates in the Divulje barracks was smart enough to guess. The only people na‹ve enough to be duped by the fig-leaf were, it seemed, back in Head Office.

The files revealed that Clive Mansell, profiting from his experience on SAFE HAVEN, set up the BAP station. He equipped a small office in the Divulje barracks with a computer and satellite dish and found a suitable flat in a fishing village a few kilometres from the barracks. But Mansell left after a few months on promotion to an administrative job in Century House and Kenneth Roberts, the former Black Watch officer who had been in UKO, took his place. Roberts was in post for eight months, and changed the scope of the job. Not content to restrict himself to networking in the Divulje barracks and the safety of the Dalmatian coast, he travelled extensively around central and northern Bosnia. Roberts's efforts paid dividends: he successfully recruited two useful agents and had the cultivation of three more well advanced. STEENBOX was an official in the northern town of Tuzla who provided CX on the activities and intentions of the Bosnian militia unit based there, which stubbornly refused to fall wholly under the control of Sarajevo. DONNE, his most important recruit, was an official in the Bosnian government in Sarajevo and provided key information on the tactics of the Bosnian delegation in the ICFY peace talks in Geneva.

Roberts also brought in a four-man detachment of soldiers from 602 Troop to beef up his communications and provide physical protection on forays into central Bosnia - 602 Troop are an 80-strong detachment from the Royal Signals Regiment whose permanent home is in Banbury, Oxfordshire. In peacetime, they man MI6's overseas high-frequency radio relay stations and rotate between postings in Kowandi, northern Australia (until it was closed in March 1993), Ascension Island, Northern Ireland and the Falklands where they support the chain of listening stations in Chile. In wartime, they are responsible for providing field communications for MI6 operations, such as during SAFE HAVEN, the Gulf War, and now in Bosnia. The four-man BAP detachment installed HF radio sets, known as KALEX, which were faster and easier to use than the satellite communications used by Mansell. One was set up in the top floor of the Divulje barracks in Roberts's office, the other mounted in the back of a long-wheelbase Land Rover to provide mobile communications.

As if the flimsiness of my cover was not enough of a handicap, the H/BAP job would be a challenging enough post for an experienced officer to take on at such short notice. The unusual cover, complexity of the communication arrangements, logistical difficulties and physical risks all made it a daunting prospect for an inexperienced probationer like me. There was a lot to cram in during the fortnight before flying out to Split.

The scheduled British Airways flight touched down at Split airport on the morning of the 8 November 1993. The apron of the small provincial airport was heaving with Hercules C-130s and Ilyushin 72 transport aircraft that were flying supplies to the besieged city of Sarajevo, and the terminal was teeming with transiting soldiers from the multinational UNPROFOR force, journalists, TV crews and refugees. It was not easy for Roberts to identify me in the arrivals hall. `Sorry old boy,' Roberts announced in his slightly plummy public school accent as we threaded our way through the soldiers' bergens and weapons that littered the arrivals hall, `but I've had to cut the handover down to four days. I'm desperate for some leave and personnel want me on a course in London on the twenty-second.' The station handover was scheduled for two weeks, but by now I was used to being shortchanged. It was not Roberts's fault. He was quite reasonably in dire need of a break and was expected to report in ten days for pre-posting training for his new job in the British mission to the UNHQ in New York. Personnel department screwing up again, I thought.

In the few days available for the handover, our priority was to meet DONNE, so Sarajevo was to be our first port of call. `I've booked ourselves on an Arizona Air National Guard C-130 that's flying some beans up to Sarajevo this afternoon,' Roberts told me cheerfully. There's just time to dump your stuff in the flat and then we'll pop into Divulje and meet the lads from 602 Troop.' The small flat Roberts had rented for me, a ten-minute drive in the station's Land Rover Discovery, was comfortable enough and it had views over the Adriatic. `You'll need your woolies when the snow comes, though,' Roberts grinned. `There's no heating.'

After dropping off my baggage we rushed back to the Divulje barracks for a whistlestop tour. The office, tucked away on the top floor of the main HQ building, contained a metal desk, filing cabinet, hefty safe for classified material and large wall maps of Bosnia and Sarajevo. `Here, have a look at my souvenirs,' Roberts grinned, opening the bottom drawer of the desk. Inside were a Yugoslav-made pistol, several clips of 7.65mm ammunition for it and a hand-grenade. `I got them off a stiff I found near Tuzla,' Roberts laughed gleefully. `Here, take a look at this, one of Karadzic's bodyguards gave it to me.' Roberts handed me a small implement that had been disguised as a fountain pen, but which contained a 7.65mm bullet. `Turn the cap and it fires. Real James Bond stuff, huh?' Roberts laughed.

`Are you taking this stuff back with you?' I asked, not too happy about having a small armoury in my desk.

`Sorry old boy, I was hoping to send it back in the dip bag and donate it to the museum at the Fort, but I never got around to it.' Roberts slammed the drawer shut and we continued the tour.

Alongside the office was another small room housing the KALEX communications gear. The detachment lived in a small dormitory opposite that they had fitted out with satellite television and a few sofas. Roberts introduced me briefly to the troops. Jon, a bright and efficient young sergeant, was the detachment's leader. Baz, a caustic Geordie corporal, was dedicated and hard-working, but liked to affect a devil-may-care attitude. Jim, a cheerful lance-corporal, was full of initiative and drive, and was overdue for promotion. Finally Tosh, a Londoner, was a bit of a jack-the-lad, forever ready with a cheeky quip. `They're a good bunch,' Roberts later told me `They work hard and you won't have any trouble with them.'

Ominous grey clouds were gathering outside as we squeezed into the C-130 alongside the dusty pallets of flour and beans and strapped ourselves, bloated by our obligatory flak-jackets and helmets, into the webbing seats which stretched down the sides of the aircraft. A cheerful National Guard loadie handed us flight rations, a small, white cardboard box filled with crisps, an apple and a cheese sandwich. `Here, have some gum, it'll save your ears popping,' the grinning loadie shouted against the throbbing roar of the turboprop engines as he thrust a small box at us. I reached in and put the yellow tabs where they were supposed to be, in my ears. The loadie smiled ruefully, perhaps hoping he'd be able to catch out his next civilian passenger.

Ten bumpy minutes into the hour-long flight, the dark hold was suddenly illuminated with a blinding flash that raced the length of the fuselage and a whip-like crack audible even above the engine roar. `Fuck, we've been hit!' shouted Roberts. The Hercules lurched into a steep nosedive, forcing me to grip the webbing seating to stop myself falling into Roberts's lap and making my ears pop ferociously. The dive lasted a few heart-pumping seconds before the pilot pulled some g's to level out. `What was that?' shouted Roberts to the loadie when we were straight and level. `Was that a sniper bullet?' A few C-130s had taken sniper shots, but normally only on the approach to Sarajevo airport. We were a long way from the risky zone and so it was unlikely.

`I'll go find out,' shouted back the loadie, unstrapping himself to make his way forward to the cockpit. He returned a minute later. `Lightning strike,' he announced. `Pilot says it hit the tail, came down the fuselage, and punched a fist-sized hole out the nose, smashing up some avionics. We've got to divert to Frankfurt.' Roberts and I looked at each other in resignation. It would take another day out of our already tight schedule.

The USAF put us up in their comfortable officer's quarters in their sprawling Ramstein base and we took the first available flight to Sarajevo the next morning. This time we got within ten minutes of Sarajevo and the C-130 had just started its anti-sniper dive towards the runway when the flight was again aborted. A burst of Serbian artillery on the runway shut the airport and we had to retreat again, this time to Zagreb in Croatia.

We finally made it into Sarajevo the next day on board a Russian Ilyushin 72, their pilots taking a more robust view of bombs and bullets than the Americans, and touched down on the heavily guarded Sarajevo runway on a fine autumnal day. We were met on the apron by the affable commander of the four-man British detachment in Sarajevo, Major Ken Lindsay, with his armoured Land Rover. `You've picked a fine day for a visit,' he greeted us. `The sun's shining, we're flush with Fosters and the Serbs have only lobbed five shells at us today.' Originally a truckie in the Australian army, he married the daughter of a senior British cavalry officer, who arranged for his new son-in-law to transfer to the smart King's Royal Hussars cavalry regiment. Lindsay's official job was to ensure that the UNHCR relief deliveries were fairly shared amongst the various distribution stations in Sarajevo. But unofficially he and his team provided transport and lodging for us while in town. `Chuck your kit in the back of the wagon. We'll go for a tour of Sarajevo, then have a few tinnies in the PTT building,' Lindsay ordered cheerfully.

As we drove through the Serb-Muslim front lines into town, past the burnt-out shell of an old T-55 tank, Lindsay pointed out the Sarajevo landmarks. The pock-marked PTT building, the former telecommunications centre which had been commandeered by the UN, was where he and his contingent were based in two cramped rooms. `Ken normally lets me sleep on the floor of his room if I'm staying in Sarajevo,' explained Roberts. `He'll do the same for you as long as you don't snore.'

`And as long as you bring a slab,' added Ken.

`That's the Holiday Inn on the left,' Roberts pointed out a heavily bombed 15-storey building. `I stay there sometimes, but CNN have commandeered all the best rooms, and most of the time there is no water, so it's better to stay in the PTT.' We drove down sniper-alley, the long dual-carriageway linking the airport and PTT building to downtown Sarajevo, and took a whistlestop tour of the main Bosnian government building, the impressive but sadly bombed-out library and the Kosovo hospital.

There was little point in gratuitously risking Serbian snipers' bullets and shells so once Roberts had orientated me, we returned to the safety of the sturdy PTT building. But once dusk had fallen, Angus, Lindsay's NCO, drove us back the three kilometres into town for the handover with DONNE. There was only time for a half-hour meeting, but it was enough for Roberts to introduce me as his successor, extract a CX report and hand over a large carton of Marlboros that DONNE could trade on the burgeoning Sarajevo black market.

`Right, let's get back to the PTT building for some beers with Ken,' Roberts urged eagerly as soon as the debrief was over. `That'll be Angus there.' Sure enough, two headlights were coming towards us and Angus pulled up at the RV bang on time. Roberts climbed into the passenger seat, leaving me to clamber into the back of the vehicle over assorted flak-jackets, helmets and tools. Before pulling the heavy door shut, I had a last glance round; my next trip would be alone and I hoped I would remember the route.

We spent the evening drinking heavily with Lindsay and his detachment, and arose early the next morning, hungover, to take the first flight back to Split. Roberts was due to fly home to London the next afternoon, leaving me in charge. `No time to meet STEENBOX, I'm afraid,' grinned Roberts as we shivered in the dark airport waiting room, `but I'll explain how you get to Tuzla and where to find her.' Roberts was understandably demob happy and I would have to pick up the pieces from scratch after the heavily curtailed handover.

Peering through the rain-spattered windscreen into the darkness, I tried to pick out physical features weakly illuminated by the Discovery headlights and relate them to the map spread on my knee. Silently, I cursed Fowlecrooke for leaving so little time for the handover. Meeting STEENBOX required navigating to Tuzla, 360 km north-east of Split along forest tracks and through two war fronts. It would not have been a straightforward task in daylight, but we had been badly held up by an aid convoy earlier on the route and now darkness and rain were both falling. The narrow, potholed lane traversed a steep valley side. The hillside to the right, densely packed with trees, rose to the clouded skyline. Down to the left, I could just pick out through the trees the glint of the stream on the valley bottom. It could have been any one of hundreds of similar valleys in rugged central Bosnia, but there was something not quite right about it. The road was narrower and the valley contours steeper than those on the map. `Jim, are you sure this is the right road?'

`Yeah,' Jim replied casually from behind the wheel. `Know it like me own bell-end.' Jim was grinning like a kid on a bouncy castle. Nothing ever bothered him. He was a big chunky guy, but serious about his fitness. Down at Divulje he was out running and lifting weights every day. But I wasn't too sure he knew his body parts as well as he thought he did.

Jim lifted on the throttle and changed down a gear, the V8 engine growling as it slowed the heavily laden vehicle. The headlights had picked up a tree trunk, the size of a telegraph pole, which had fallen across the narrow road and we drew to a stop in front of it. `Must have been the storm last night,' Jim announced cheerfully. Without further ado he hopped down from the vehicle and, as if he was trying out for a `world's strongest man' competition, picked up the trunk, staggered with it in his arms for a few yards up the road and threw it in the ditch.

I glanced in the mirror to see the familiar lights of Jon and Baz's underpowered Land Rover crawling up the hill behind us. Reaching down to the stereo I flicked off Jim's tape and grabbed the Motorola from behind the instrument binnacle. `Baz, do you reckon this is the right road?' I asked.

There was a pause while he consulted Jon, before the Motorola hissed back. `Keep yer keks on. Just round the next corner we should come to that burnt-out Scroat village.' Baz sounded confident and as he had done the trip three times with Roberts I trusted his judgement. I put the Motorola down just as Jim clambered back into the vehicle, slapping his hands together to brush away the bark and leaves adhering to them. He clunked the vehicle into first gear and pulled away.

Round the next corner there was no burnt-out Croatian village, just another fallen tree, much bigger than the first. Beyond that, I could see another, then another. Undaunted, Jim prepared to jump out of the vehicle to move them, but I grabbed his arm. `No, this isn't right,' I said. This was not the work of a storm. The trees had been laid across the road for a purpose. `Baz, Jon, turn round immediately, we've taken a wrong turn,' I ordered down the Motorola.

Jim detected the urgency in my voice, and had already launched the Discovery into a three point turn. He'd just got it pointing the other way when Baz squawked on the Motorola `Hey Rich, we've got trouble.'

The comms-wagon was about 100 metres down the road, halfway through the three-point turn. With no power steering Jon must have been cursing trying to get the heavy vehicle turned round, and he'd been too slow to get away from the militiamen. Two were standing over the bonnet, pointing their AK47s directly through the windscreen at Baz. Two more were at the driver's door, perhaps talking to Jon or, worse, trying to force it open. More were at the rear door, peering in through the window at the computers and communication equipment and pulling at the handle. Other shadowy figures were emerging from the woods, making purposefully towards the vehicle, weapons held out menacingly.

There was no time to reply to Baz before our vehicle was also surrounded. The barrels of two AK47s loomed at me through the windscreen, their owners just dark shadows. There was a sharp tap on my side window and, looking round, a pistol gesticulated for me to open up. Trying not to make a sudden movement, I slipped my hand round to feel for the button on the top edge of the door - Jim would have tripped out the central locking when he got out to move the tree. I pushed it down, praying that the unreliable system would work. There was a satisfying clunk as all five doors locked up. The pistol crashed threateningly against the window in response.

The situation was awkward rather than desperate. Thankfully most of the soldiers were clean shaven, so they were not from the Afghan Mujahideen group that was known to be operating in the area and who would not hesitate to execute infidels. Our lives were probably not in danger - even the worst Bosnian militia groups were unlikely to murder UNPROFOR soldiers as it would lead to severe retribution. But I was worried about the vehicles and equipment. Only a few weeks earlier a group of French journalists had been ambushed a few kilometres from this spot, ordered out of their Land Cruiser at gunpoint and left at the side of the road as their ambushers drove away in the new vehicle. It would be a disaster if the same thing happened to us. Losing the Discovery and comms-wagon would be bad enough but the KALEX HF comms equipment, though outdated, was still classified `TOP SECRET'. Still, I thought to myself with a weak smile, they would be in for a nasty surprise if they tried opening my briefcase. The metal box that contained the encryption OTPs and other classified material had an inbuilt incendiary device that would destroy the contents with a satisfying bang if it were opened incorrectly. I hoped that they would not get that far.

Grabbing the Motorola I got on to Baz. `Don't get out of the vehicle at all costs,' I shouted.

`Gotcha,' Baz replied, not as cockily as before.

The pistol banged against the side window again and an order was barked in Bosanski. Stooping slightly so that the pistol owner's blackened face was visible, I shrugged and held up my hands. `I don't understand. Ich verstehe nicht. Je ne comprends pas,' I replied, cursing for the umpteenth time how ridiculous it was for personnel to send me on a posting of this nature lacking even rudimentary language training. The voice barked out again and a rifle butt smashed into the right headlight, breaking the lens. I got the message and reached for the steering column stalk to flick out the remaining light.

The voice barked out again, so I dropped the window a crack, hoping that it would be taken as a gesture of conciliation. `How can I help?' I asked feebly in English. The voice screamed again, more aggressively this time, and the vehicle rocked as he pulled hard on the door handle. Other soldiers tried to force open the rear door too. Winding down the window another half-inch, I tried to identify myself. `UNPROFOR, UNPROFOR. British soldiers,' I said, holding my United Nations ID card up against the window.

Meanwhile, I could hear that Jim was also getting an interview, though his inquisitor spoke a few words of English, and I glanced across. `Manchester United,' the face uttered proudly, grinning into Jim's window. `Bryan Robson,' the face beamed even more broadly, giving a thumbs up.

Jim, a fan of Liverpool, swallowed his pride. `Yeah. Man United. Very good, best team in the world.' He gave a thumbs-up sign and the face grinned with appreciation.

But the voice in my window, which I took to be the commander's, snapped out another order and I turned away from Jim as the soldiers milling around the front of the vehicle sprung forward, the windscreen bristling menacingly with AK47s. My eyes were getting accustomed to the dark now that the headlights were out and I could make out the faces peering down the barrels at us. They looked tired and pissed off. The commander barked another order and the sound of 7.62mm rounds slotting into the AK47's breaches sent my stomach churning. The young soldier in front of me slipped the safety catch down on to the first notch - automatic fire on the AK47. His face was no longer pissed off, but tense and frightened. I resigned myself to losing the vehicles and turned to Jim to give the signal to get out.

But Jim had other ideas. Smiling like a teddy bear on a grand day out, he reached down the side of the transmission tunnel and pulled his Browning from its holster. Like John Wayne in the OK Corral preparing for a final showdown, he pointed it skywards, paused for a second, then with his left hand pulled back the slider, driving a round into the barrel. `What the fuck are you doing? Put that down!' I gasped.

`Nah, they're just bluffing,' Jim replied. `Watch . . .' The Manchester United supporter's weary face cracked into a smile, then a smirk, then an infectious giggle, as Jim waved the pistol at him. `See, they're more scared than we are.' One by one, the tension in the other faces ranged against us lifted and the barrels drooped as the laughter spread at Jim's grossly disproportionate response. The commander alongside me shouted something in Bosanski as he sensed the mirth on the other side of the vehicle, but nobody paid any attention. A moment later he realised that he'd lost face amongst his undisciplined rabble and, turning away angrily from me, skulked off back up the road.

I watched for a second through the rear-view mirror. `You are a crazy bastard,' I said to Jim, as soon as I was sure that he was gone. `What the fuck possessed you to do that?' I said, trying to hide my admiration for his coolness.

`That Man U supporter told me not to worry,' Jim replied. `Apparently that O/C's a right cunt and his bark's worse than his bite.' Jim tucked the pistol back into the holster as most of the soldiers drifted away, leaving just a couple hung around our vehicle, now relaxed and friendly. The Manchester United supporter grinned at the window and Jim lowered it.

`You go now,' the Bosnian smiled. `You lucky. You nearly cross front line. Serbs . . .' He gesticulated to the next corner, his English failing him. `That captain . . .' He gestured up the road, made an O with thumb and forefinger, and pumped it up and down in an internationally recognised sign - `Fuck him, nobody like him.' I reached over with a pack of Marlboros - we always carried them for such occasions though none of us smoked. He took one and lit it up and I thrust the rest of the packet at him as soon as he had put away his lighter. `Follow me,' he urged. `Mines, that's why trees.' He set off the way we had come, occasionally indicating us to keep well away from one verge or the other. Only then did we realise that we had had more than one lucky escape. After our guide had tapped the window to signify the all-clear, we continued down the road in silence, reflecting on our good fortune.

Thereafter, we ensured that we made no further navigational mistakes by avoiding driving on unfamiliar roads after dusk. Others who made similar mistakes in Bosnia were not as lucky. A few weeks later, a British captain took the same wrong turn as us but ran over one of the anti-tank mines and was killed instantly. In March, a group of ODA workers were ambushed by a Mujahideen group just outside the town of Zenica in central Bosnia. They were driven to woodlands a few miles away, forced from their vehicles and made to kneel at the side of the road. Their captors shot one victim dead with a bullet to the back of the head. The others ran for their lives, diving into a freezing river to avoid a hail of lead, and were lucky to escape with only minor wounds.

We were able to establish contact with STEENBOX in Tuzla later on that first trip and thereafter we made the three-day trip to see her every two weeks. The logistics of each trip were in the capable hands of Jon, who loaded up our two vehicles with the comms equipment, supplies, a small armory of an SA-80 rifle and Browning 9mm pistol for each of us, flak-jackets, helmets and spare parts for the vehicles. We took camping gear in case we had to rough it, but slept whenever we could in the mess halls of the various UNPROFOR bases that dotted Bosnia, or in the few hotels that remained open, catering to aid workers and journalists. Jon plus two others accompanied me on every trip, the fourth member taking it in turn to stay at Divulje barracks to operate the fixed KALEX. They always looked forward enthusiastically to the trips up country, the highlight being the traverse of the front line between the Bosnian-Croat forces and the Bosnian-Muslim militia at Gornji Vakuf. Both sides liked to snipe at UNPROFOR vehicles passing through the bombed out town, then to milk the propoganda points by blaming the other. Soft-skinned vehicles such as ours were obliged to travel through the town in convoy under the protection of two Warrior APCs, which returned fire enthusiastically and spectacularly at any suspected sniper position. In the dozen or so traverses of Gornji Vakuf that we made, we were lucky that neither of our vehicles were hit, though we regularly came under fire.

STEENBOX proved a problematic agent to debrief. The information she gave about the intentions of the local militia was not CX but merely the official propaganda of the Bosnian VIth army in Tuzla. At one meeting, just after dusk in a small caf‚ in Tuzla, a group of senior Bosnian militiamen walked in and ordered coffee at the bar. As they had not yet noticed us at a small table in the corner, I whispered to STEENBOX `I'd better get out of here - it'll be dangerous if they see us together. I'll meet you in 20 minutes in the caf‚ opposite the town hall.'

`No, no, it's OK,' STEENBOX casually replied. `They're friends of mine and they already know that you are Kenneth's successor.'

There was clearly no point in pretending to Whitehall officials that information from STEENBOX was CX, as it was being passed to me with the blessing of the VIth army command. They were just using her and me as a direct route to disseminate their propaganda into Whitehall. I sent a series of telegrams to String Vest arguing my case, but he would have none of it.

`We are convinced that STEENBOX is reporting without the knowledge and approval of her superiors,' String Vest wrote in one telegram, without substantiating his position with evidence, `and her information is valuable CX.' String Vest's intransigence was due to new obligations he was under as the P officer for the Balkans. A year earlier, under pressure from the Treasury, MI6 had admitted a team of specially vetted management consultants to look at productivity. They treated CX and agents as widgets and introduced an `internal market' system. P4 was given targets for how much CX his section had to produce per month and how many agents it had to cultivate and recruit per quarter. In the last six months of 1993, he had to have CX-producing agents in the Serb, Croat and Muslim factions of Bosnia, and one under cultivation in each. If STEENBOX was written off through my argument, then he would be behind on this target. Rather than do that, he preferred to distribute her propaganda as CX.

String Vest was equally adamant that I should attempt to recruit John Vucic, a young Australian-Croat who was working in the headquarters of the Bosnian-Croat faction in the town of Posusje. Vucic was a 26-year-old second-generation Croat accountant from Sydney, who worked as a clerk in the headquarters. Vucic had good access and would be a useful source if he could be recruited. String Vest was adamant that I should try. `As an Australian national, you should play on his Anglophilian interest in cricket to pursue a recruitment,' he wrote in one telegram. String Vest ignored my protests that Vucic was more extreme than Attila the Hun, resolutely defending human rights abuses by his beloved Croatian people. String Vest was blatantly ignoring my judgement as the officer on the ground so as to satisfy targets imposed by faceless management consultants.

`Slow down a bit, Tosh,' I urged. `Baz'll be effin' and blindin' at you, trying to keep up on these roads.' Tosh lifted off slightly, but I knew that I'd have to remind him again ten minutes later. The heavily laden comms-wagon with its underpowered diesel engine struggled at the best of times to keep up with the powerful V8 Discovery, but with the impetuous Tosh at the wheel Baz and Jon's job would be harder. We were hurrying into Sarajevo with a busy few days ahead of us. I'd been unable to get into the city for the past ten days through a combination of circumstances. The Serb besiegers had shut down completely the sporadically open land route into the city after a tizz with the French UNPROFOR contingent; then the airfield had been shut through heavy fog, and when that lifted, the Hercules that I was about to board at Split went unserviceable on the runway.

DONNE was long overdue for a debrief and String Vest had been sending increasingly irate telegrams of complaint. Also, two senior FCO diplomats from the Balkans desk wanted a meeting with Karadzic in his headquarters in the village of Pale just outside Sarajevo to understand better his negotiating position in the ongoing ICFY talks. As there was no other British diplomatic representation nearby, String Vest asked me to organise the trip. Getting permission to travel from Sarajevo to Pale was not easy, as it meant negotiating a safe passage through the Bosnian-Muslim and Bosnian-Serb front lines, not to mention clearing the trip with the obstreperous French UNPROFOR contingent in Sarajevo. I'd arranged a meeting with them at 1800 that evening, but we'd been held up when a Spanish UNPROFOR APC crashed in front of us, blocking the road.

`We'll never get there unless we leg it,' Tosh answered back.

`Listen, Tosh, this is your last warning, if you don't lift off a bit, I'll have to drive,' I slapped down the sun visor against the low winter sun which was reflecting from the day-old snow that covered the abandoned fields and returned to my briefing notes.

`Shit, Jon's lost it!' shouted Tosh urgently, slamming on the brakes of the Discovery.

I spun round in the seat to see the comms-wagon completing a somersault on to its roof, 50 metres behind us. Tosh brought the Discovery to a juddering halt on the ABS and gunned it into a three-point turn to get back to the accident scene. As we skidded to a halt alongside, Jon and Baz were crawling out of the wreckage, dazed and shaken, but thankfully not hurt. `Yer bastard,' muttered Baz as he got to his feet and surveyed the remains of the comms-wagon. `We'd better call the AA.' The vehicle had rolled twice before ending on its roof in a ditch, and even if it could be repaired it would be off the road for several weeks.

`Black ice, there was nothing Baz could do,' Jon apologised to me.

We now had to replan the next few days. `Tosh, set the HF up,' ordered Jon, `We'll have to get Jim to fly the spare comms-wagon up from Split.' There was no way that the French would give us permission to travel from Sarajevo to Pale for the Karadzic meeting in a single vehicle, so it was imperative that Jim acted fast. I left Jon and Baz to guard the crippled vehicle against scavengers until the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) recovery unit arrived, and set off with Tosh in the Discovery for the meeting with the French.

The 48 hours were a whirlwind of meetings to debrief DONNE and sort out the Pale trip. The recalcitrant French commander eventually agreed to allow the diplomatic visit, but not until his decision was eased by two bottles of Scotch. Multiple meetings with the Bosnian-Muslim militia and several cartons of cigarettes eventually secured a safe passage through their lines, though they were deeply opposed to British diplomatic contact with the Serbs. Finally, Major Indic, the temperamental Bosnian-Serb liaison officer in the PTT building, agreed to give us permission to travel onwards through Serbian-held territory to Pale, though, to show who was boss, he made me wait in his office for six hours before he would agree.

602 troop were working just as hard. Jim managed to get the spare comms-wagon on to a Hercules arriving in Sarajevo the evening before the arrival of the two VIPs, a considerable accomplishment because all the incoming flights were supposedly only for humanitarian aid. Baz and Tosh got the Discovery gleaming clean for the visitors, no mean feat given the sparsity of running water at the airfield and its filthy state from the overland journey up from Split. They'd also got their uniforms cleaned up and boots polished and I too had changed into a clean shirt and jacket and tie. I was in the French operations centre at the airfield, checking with the ops officer that there were no last minute hitches on the route up to Pale, when Jon called me up on the Motorola. `Rich, if you've got a spare moment, could you come down to the loading bay and give us a hand dealing with the Frogs? I want to get the damaged comms-wagon on the flight back to Split, but I can't understand what they are saying.'

Down at the loading bay, our sad-looking vehicle was waiting to be loaded on the next Hercules, and was in the custody of a French loadmaster sergeant. `C'est quoi le problŠme?' I asked. The sergeant explained that only vehicles that could move under their own power were allowed on to the runway, to minimise the time that the aircraft were stationary and thus vulnerable to sniper fire.

`OK, I'll see if the REME can get it running again,' Jon replied as soon as I had translated.

Although the vehicle's bodywork was badly damaged, the running gear was mostly untouched and, with some attention, it might be got moving again. `It's piston locked,' announced the grubby REME mechanic after a cursory inspection. `When she went over on her back, oil from the sump leaked past the rings into the combustion chambers. I'll have to blow the oil out.' He removed the gloplugs from each cylinder, then asked Jon to crank the engine on the starter motor. But more oil had leaked past than even the mechanic had imagined and as the starter-motor engaged an angry geyser of black oil shot out of the cylinder head, catching him square in the face. I was not quick enough to duck either and my jacket, tie and shirt were splattered. `Sorry about that, sir,' grinned the REME grease-monkey, wiping his face on an old rag. No doubt he would have a laugh with his mates over a beer that evening.

There was only an hour and a half until the visitors arrived, and I was far from presentable. Baz dashed back to the PTT building in the Discovery to try to find me a change of clothing, but a frantic search yielded nothing. The worst of the oil scrubbed out of my shirt with swarfega and tissue paper, but my silk tie was beyond redemption. Later that morning I was forced to meet the VIPs with my shirt open at the neck. It was not appropriate dress for a diplomatic meeting but the more important objective was to get the two VIPs to Pale safely and back for their return flight that evening.

The meeting with Karadzic and his henchmen went smoothly enough, and that evening with the VIPs dispatched back to Zagreb, I typed out a telegram to P4 on the portable PC. The KALEX HF radio had not yet been swapped from the damaged comms-wagon into the replacement vehicle, so John manually encrypted the telegram and beamed it back to MI6's Poundon communication centre using the satellite transmitter. An hour later, String Vest, who must have been working at his desk late that evening, sent me a return telegram. `Congratulations on setting up a difficult meeting under what must have been very trying circumstances,' he wrote.

In February 1994 an uneasy ceasefire was brokered by UNPROFOR between the warring factions and the Bosnian Serbs paused their indiscriminate shelling and sniping of the city. Sarajevo was temporarily more or less safe and, coincidentally, I had a rush of requests to visit me, amongst them String Vest. `I'd love to have come out earlier, and accompanied you on one of your up-country trips,' he told me over dinner in a comfortable Split restaurant, `but I was just far too busy.'

Shortly after String Vest had returned to London, Head Office took the decision to close BAP. Now that Bosnia had been recognised as an independent state and Sarajevo was returning to some semblance of normality, the FCO opened an embassy, incongruously over a mafia- run casino, and had established diplomatic relations. It was the right time to run MI6 operations out of the embassy under diplomatic cover and end the charade of my `civil adviser' fig-leaf. Personnel had already selected a suitable H/SAR, and she was nearing the end of her language training.

I was relieved when the telegram arrived in mid-April 1994 announcing that the new H/SAR would be flying out to Sarajevo in early May. SBO/1 recommended that her diplomatic cover not be tainted through direct contact with me, as he rightly suspected that I was well-blown to the Bosnian secret police, so I was not required to show her around her new patch.

My only task therefore was to oversee with Jon the closure of the station in the Divulje barracks in the first week of May. String Vest suggested that I drive the Discovery and small station items back to London overland rather than incur the expense of sending out the S&D C-130 to pick it up; 602 troop stayed behind for a few more days to pack up the two remaining vehicles, the original comms-wagon now repaired, and they followed with the KALEX's and other gear.

Although I enjoyed aspects of the posting, particularly working with 602 troop, the lack of guidance from a more experienced hand made it frustrating. I needed a break from the constant proximity of bombs, bullets and blood, and I was looking forward to a holiday with Sarah. She had had a cancer scare a few months earlier, though fortunately she was by now out of hospital.

Driving up the spectacular cliff-top road that runs up the Dalmation coast from Split to Trieste on the first leg of my return home, I stopped off at the top of one of the highest cliffs just as the sun was spectacularly setting over the sea. There was still one more task remaining to complete the station closure; reaching into the back of the Discovery, I pulled out Roberts's gun collection and hand-grenade and threw them as far as possible into the deep water of the Adriatic.