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MONDAY, 9 DECEMBER 1991
PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND

The nine of us, crammed into the Bedford minibus, were silent and tense as we drove through the darkness and driving rain towards the centre of Portsmouth. It was 8.30 p.m. and the streets were almost empty. Only a few stragglers, huddled under umbrellas, were scurrying to the pubs. Ball drove, with Long silently alongside. One by one, they dropped us off in dark side streets or deserted parking lots to merge into the night. Castle went first, striding confidently towards his target, dressed in his suit with a Barbour jacket to protect himself against the elements. Spencer followed, sheepishly scuttling into the darkness under a Burberry umbrella. My turn was next and Markham wished me luck as I slipped out of the back door of the minibus and orientated myself towards my target.

The IONEC was designed to train a recruit to a level of proficiency to step into a junior desk job in MI6. Approximately half of the course was spent in the classroom, learning the administration of the service, the theory of how to cultivate, recruit, handle and debrief agents, listening to case histories and receiving presentations from the different sections of the service. The remainder was spent in exercises, and we were on PERFECT STRANGER, the first of many increasingly complicated tests that were to form the backbone of the course.

Our brief was simple but a little nerve-racking for novice spies. We were each assigned a pub in downtown Portsmouth in which we had to approach a member of the public and, using whatever cunning ruse we could invent, extract their name, address, date of birth, occupation and passport number. We were given an alias, but had to use our initiative to invent the rest of our fictional personality.

Ball explained that the purpose of the exercise was three-fold. First, it was a gentle introduction to using and maintaining an alias identity in a live situation, an essential skill for an intelligence officer. Second, it would test our initiative and cunning in devising a credible plan to achieve the objective. Third, it would illustrate the workings and immense size of MI6's central computer index, or CCI. This is a mammoth computerised databank containing records of everybody with whom any member of MI6 has come into contact operationally since the start of record-keeping in 1945. The biographical details of our random victims were to be fed into this computer to see what, if anything, would be unearthed. The size of the database was such, Ball explained, that it was rare for an IONEC not to chance upon at least one individual with a mention in the CCI on a random trawl of the pubs of Portsmouth,

Pushing open the heavy mock-Victorian door of my designated pub, the Hole In The Wall on Great Southsea Street, I felt apprehensive. Although a simple exercise, it was our first test and I wanted to get off to a good start. We'd been given an œ8.50 advance to buy ourselves and targets a couple of drinks, so I made for the bar intending to make the most of it. Scanning the room for potential targets I was alarmed to find the pub empty. Ordering a pint of Guinness, I dismissed the barman as a potential prey. Old, fat and surly, there was little chance of getting him to talk. I sat down in a red-velveted alcove with a view of the entrance and waited for better prospects.

Time slipped by with the Guinness. I was starting on my second pint before the first customers, a smooching couple, straggled in. They would not welcome the approach of a stranger. Then a rowdy bunch of youths marched in to play pool. It would be difficult to mix with them and single one out for inquisition. A glance at my watch showed only 20 minutes before the minibus would return to pick me up. The exercise was getting awkward.

At last my luck changed as two girls wandered in. I watched as they bought drinks and settled into an alcove. In their 20s, they were casually dressed, one pretty, the other less so and a bit overweight. Probably flatmates out for a quiet drink. I had to act quickly - not only because time was running out, but also because the pool players had noticed the girls and were egging each other on to make a move.

Swearing I would never do this again, I picked up my Guinness, walked over and asked if I could join them. To my relief they agreed. `You're not from round here, are you?' the fat one asked as soon as I was seated.

`What makes you think that?' I asked.

`Your accent. You're from up north,' she volunteered. `What are you doing here?'

Her curiosity was encouraging and an opportunity to implement my plan. `I'm a yacht skipper and I'm delivering a Contessa down from Scotland to Cherbourg.' The girls listened with interest to my brazen lying. `But my mate just got ill and went home. I've called in to Portsmouth to find a new hand and restock.'

We chatted about the boat, the voyage, my apocryphal crewman, how I had got into the job. I fabricated everything on the spot, drawing on my limited sailing experience. Just like talking to the soldiers in the bar in Belgium, it was alarming that the art of deception came so easily and surprising how gullible strangers could be. They told me they were nurses and had only recently moved to Portsmouth. Encouragingly, they had done some sailing and were keen to continue now that they were living on the coast.

`Do you know anybody who might be interested in helping this weekend?' I asked. The girls glanced at each other, checking whether the other was thinking the same. `Perhaps yourselves?' I pressed home.

`Sure,' the pretty one replied hesitantly, then turned to her flatmate as if to speak for her. `Sure, we're free this weekend.'

It was easy once they were baited. In order to get in touch with them again, I asked for their names, addresses and telephone numbers, which they neatly printed in my notebook. On the false pretext that I needed to clear them with Customs in advance of our departure, I asked if they had their passport numbers handy. That too was no problem: the pretty one got up and phoned home to another flatmate and asked her to read the numbers. With only a few minutes to go, all the details required by Ball and Long were in my notebook. With my mission accomplished, I bade the unfortunate pair goodbye, promising that I would soon be in touch.

I climbed into the minibus a few minutes later. It was bursting with animated chatter. The others, some a bit tipsy, were elatedly describing how they conned innocent pub-goers into providing personal details. Markham had affected a silly French accent and pretending to be a student from Paris, claimed that his mother, who worked in the French passport agency, had told him that all British passport numbers ended with the numbers `666'. The incredulous victim rubbished the boast, so Markham bet him five pounds that it was true. The target hurried home to collect his passport, chuffed to be making some easy money out of a stupid Frenchman. Markham noted down the number, equally chuffed.

Castle, reflective of his background in the city, posed as a marketing consultant and distributed to each drinker a questionnaire that he had prepared in advance. The form enquired about the clients' drinking habits, purportedly on behalf of a major brewing company, and at the bottom were spaces to fill in name, address and passport number. Castle sipped orange juice on his own for an hour, pleased that he could pocket the cash advance, and then collected the completed questionnaires.

Hare found an old man drinking on his own, wearing the wartime maroon beret of the Parachute Regiment. The lonely veteran was happy to talk to somebody interested in his army career, and he readily volunteered his army number, as good as a passport number for the CCI.

`Is everyone accounted for?' called Ball from the driving seat, turning to check the rabble behind him. Long read out the roll call, with difficulty against the chatter. Bart, much the worse for drink, replied with a loud belch. All were present except Spencer. We waited a few more minutes before Ball decided that we would have to look for him and drove round to Spencer's watering hole, the Coach & Horses on the London Road, a notably boisterous pub. Spencer was not waiting outside, so Long went to look for him. The MI6 trainee was found, very much the worse for drink, in the midst of a lively party. He had not devised a plan, and unsure what to do with himself, had started playing the fruit machine. On the third pull, accompanied by the clanging of bells, the machine disgorged its contents. A crowd gathered round to witness this good fortune and the easy-going Spencer bought everybody a round. They returned the compliment, one thing lead to another and a party ensued. Spencer became hopelessly drunk and forgot about the boring task of extracting personal details - until Long turned up to drag him back to the minibus.

All were in high spirits that night as we returned to our training base. A strong sense of camaraderie was already developing amongst us, a feeling of being up against a common foe. For a moment, sitting quietly at the back of the bus, I pondered the morality of my actions. The girls might spend the whole week looking forward to a sailing trip that would never happen. Was it right to dupe members of the public so casually? As we drove through the portcullis entry to the `Fort', MI6's discreet training establishment in Portsmouth and our main base for the IONEC, I dismissed such concerns. We were lying for Britain and that was sufficient justification. Unwittingly, I took the first step down the long path of indoctrination towards becoming an MI6 officer.

The largest and best kept of the four coastal forts built by Henry VIII in 1545 to defend the strategically important naval harbour of Portsmouth against the French Navy, Fort Monckton, as it is marked on Ordnance Survey maps, is a dramatic and atmospheric training base for MI6. Situated on the bleak and windswept southern tip of the Gosport peninsula, it is approached by a short, winding track across the tee of the first hole of the Gosport and Stokes Bay golf course. Officially known as `No.1 Military Training Establishment', the Fort was a training base for the Royal Engineer Regiment of the army until 1956. When the Royal Engineers no longer needed it, MI6 discreetly took it over. The takeover was so discreet, in fact, that the Ministry of Defence supply branch continued to pay for its upkeep, unaware that it no longer belonged to them.

The only access through the thick grey stone walls is across a drawbridge over an empty moat, through a guarded gatehouse into the central courtyard. Directly above the gatehouse is a luxury suite of rooms, reserved for the Chief on his frequent visits. Set around the courtyard are three main blocks, east wing, main wing and west wing. Each wing is self-contained and has its own complex of bedroom accommodation, kitchens, dining-rooms and bars. Spread amongst the wings are the other training facilities needed to prepare trainees for a career in the secret service - a gymnasium, an indoor pistol range, photographic studios, technical workshops, laboratories and lecture rooms. There is even a small museum, containing mementoes from the SOE (Special Operations Executive) of the Second World War and obsolete Cold War spying equipment. At the extremity of east wing is a helicopter landing pad and an outdoor pistol and sub-machine gun range. Recreation is not forgotten and there is an outdoor tennis court and croquet pitch to the west, as well as an indoor squash court just beyond the outer wall.

Main wing, directly opposite the entrance, was our home for the IONEC. We disgorged ourselves from the minibus and headed into the in-house bar for another drink. Alcohol plays a prominent part in MI6 life and Ball and Long encouraged us to drink every night. The main wing bar, decorated with military emblems and souvenirs from Second World War SOE operations, soon became the focus for relaxation during the IONEC.

That evening Ball and Young entered the results of our work into the CCI computer. Three individuals turned up with records. Hare's old paratrooper turned out to be a Walter Mitty with no military service, one of Castle's finds had a long criminal record and the pretty girl that I had interviewed turned out to be the younger sister of an MI5 secretary.

Officially, the drab, nondescript yellow-brick building just opposite the police station on Borough High Street in Southwark, London, was a government stationery store. In reality, until recently it housed another MI6 training school. During the IONEC we spent alternate weeks at `Boro' and at the Fort. Training at Boro was oriented towards the administrative and theoretical aspects of the work and it was here that Ball and Long initiated us into the service's history, purpose and modus operandi.

MI6's roots were in the Bureau of Secret Service, founded partly in response to the Boer War which took Britain by surprise, and partly in response to an increasingly belligerent Germany. On Tuesday, 30 March 1909, a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence met in a closed session in Whitehall. Colonel James Edmonds was the first speaker. He was head of MO5, the forerunner of today's MI5, whose job was to uncover foreign spies in Britain with his staff of two and budget of œ200 per year. Edmonds had ambitious plans and wanted to extend his service to spy abroad, primarily in Russia and Germany. But Lord Esher, the chairman of the committee, disbelieved Edmonds's tales of German spying successes in England and insisted that Edmonds prepare a detailed list of cases to back his arguments.

Rather than back down, Edmonds resorted to a tactic which was used successfully by many of his successors in MI6 - he fabricated evidence to support his case. He provided Esher with a fictional list of spies drawn from a contemporary best-selling novel, Spies of the Kaiser by William Le Queux. When Esher asked for corroboration of his evidence, Edmonds claimed that such revelations would compromise the security of his informants - an excuse that was copied many times by his successors to extricate themselves from awkward inquisitions by government. It was enough for Edmonds to win his argument and with it the budget to expand MO5 to form the Secret Service Bureau. In 1911, the Official Secrets Act gave Edmonds sweeping and draconian powers to imprison anybody suspected of helping the `enemy', which at the time was Germany. That same primitive act is still on the statute books in Britain and even today there are people serving lengthy jail sentences under its auspices. Through both world wars, the Secret Service Bureau survived and thrived, eventually being named MI6 in 1948.

In the company of America's CIA and Russia's newly revamped intelligence service, MI6 has one of the few genuinely global intelligence networks, but with a staff of approximately 2,300 it is the smallest of the three by a long way. About 350 of the staff are intelligence branch or `IB' officers, the fast stream which we were being trained to join. About 800 are general service or `GS' officers, who mostly do technical and administrative work. The remainder of the staff are secretaries, clerks, guards, cooks, drivers, cleaners and mechanics.

About half of the IB and most of the support staff are based in London. Their main task is to support those in the field, plan operations, liaise with foreign intelligence services and distribute intelligence to decision-makers in Whitehall. MI6's intelligence `product' is known as CX, an anachronism from the earliest days of MI6 when the Chief, `C' in popular fiction, was Mansfield Cummings. Then the service was so secret that intelligence reports were not distributed outside MI6 and so were marked `Cummings Exclusively', abbreviated to CX. Intelligence is worthless if it is not passed on to decision-makers, and nowadays CX reports are disseminated far more widely to `customers'. The FCO and the MOD are the most important, but any government department can receive CX if the material is relevant to them. Even some large British companies, such as British Aerospace, BP and British Airways, have MI6 liaison officers who receive relevant CX.

IB officers working in British embassies overseas under cover as diplomats gather the majority of CX. These officers normally work in a small, discreet cell within the embassy, known as the `station'. The station has its own highly secure communications with Head Office and only MI6 staff are allowed access to its rooms. These rooms are frequently swept for listening devices and in many stations there is a special `safe-speech' room where important meetings are held.

There are about 50 stations around the world. The size of the station reflects the importance of the host country to Britain's interests. Those in the spy capitals of the world - Geneva, Moscow, Vienna, New York and Hong Kong - may contain up to five IB, three or four GS and perhaps half a dozen secretaries. Most stations in Western Europe are two- or three-man stations, while third world stations usually consist of only one officer and a secretary. However there are exceptions. Jakarta, for example, has a three-man station because Indonesia is a good customer for Britain's weapons industry, and Lagos is a three-man station by virtue of British interests in its oil industry. The head of station, usually a senior officer in his 40s working under cover as an FCO Counsellor, is normally `declared' to the secret service of the host country, and much of his work is in liaison. The other officers are mostly `undeclared' and may spend part of their time spying against the host country.

Certain stations exist primarily to spy against the host country - Moscow and Beijing, for example. Others do not spy against the host at all. Austria has no secrets of interest to Britain, but MI6 maintains a large Vienna station to spy on the Iranian and Russian communities, the arms trade and the International Atomic Energy Agency which is based in the outskirts of the city. Likewise, the New York station exists entirely to run agents in the United Nations.

The stations are administered and serviced from Head Office in London. Each has its own `Production' or `P' officer who determines the station's strategy and targets, oversees and plans operations, and administers the budget. `Requirements' or `R' officers distribute the intelligence production to customers. These P and R officers are organised in pyramidal structures into `controllerates', which have either a regional or functional focus.

When I joined, there were seven controllerates, the largest and most powerful being the East European and Western Europe controllerates. The Middle East and Far East controllerates were assuming more prominence, while the African and Western Hemisphere (Latin America and the Caribbean) controllerates were shrinking. The Global controllerate was responsible for issues such as weapons counter-proliferation, large-scale drugs trafficking and international money laundering.

The controllerates formed the `teeth' of the service, grouped in the Directorate of Requirements and Production. Alongside this directorate were two further large and unwieldy directorates responsible for administering the service and providing technical back up. Four directors form the `Board' and control the overall strategy and administration of the directorates, and they are presided over by the Chief.

One of our first lectures at Boro, given by Ball, was on maintaining our `cover' as members of the diplomatic service. We were permitted to tell immediate family about our true occupation after obtaining written permission from personnel department, but we were forbidden to tell casual acquaintances that we worked for MI6. Ball explained that to them we were to claim that we worked for the FCO in King Charles Street, Whitehall. To defend this cover, we needed to know how to behave and talk intelligently about the life and career of a genuine diplomat.

Ball assigned each of us to a cover department in the FCO. Over the next few days, we went along to Whitehall, met our `colleagues', learned about their work and memorised details about the room where they worked, bus and underground routes from our homes into Whitehall and the names of the best local pubs.

One evening, after a further lecture on cover, Ball invited us to his house for a party. `It's my wife's birthday,' he said, `and I am so pleased with how this course is gelling together that I'd like her to have the opportunity to meet you all.' In MI6 socialisation amongst officers and their spouses is not unusual, and particularly so on the IONEC, so Ball's invitation did not strike us as odd. `My wife is inviting a few of her friends around too, and since none of them are conscious as to MI6, it will be an opportunity for you to defend your cover in a social situation,' Ball added.

On the evening of the party, we trooped round to Ball's comfortable Islington house, clutching birthday cards and flowers for his wife. A long and bibulous evening ensued. His wife's friends were an eclectic, lively and interesting bunch. I spent much of the evening chatting to a commercial diver, who had now set up a marine engineering business. Hare discovered a fellow former army intelligence officer. Markham, who was fond of good wine, found a kindred spirit in one guest who was a wine merchant. It was flattering to find that all the guests were so interested in our careers as diplomats. Armed with Ball's lessons, however, it was easy to fend off their questions and maintain cover.

One guest was an attractive blonde and Spencer, his courage fortified by a few cans of Younger's lager, was soon in animated conversation with her. She was a lingerie saleswoman and model and was delighting Spencer with descriptions of some of her range of goods. They were soon swapping telephone numbers, promising to meet up.

The following morning we assembled at Boro as usual at 10 a.m., some of us nursing hangovers. The chatter was all about the previous evening. The former army officer didn't impress Hare. `He was talking bullshit. No way was he in the green slime.' Markham too spoke sceptically about the ignorance that the alleged wine merchant had displayed. But glowing with pride, Spencer related his conversation with the blonde and beamed when he revealed his success in snagging a dinner date with her.

A few minutes after ten, Ball shuffled to the front of the class and wished us good morning. He didn't look as cheerful as normal and the classroom fell silent. `I hope you had a good time last night,' Ball said, shifting awkwardly, as if he had something to hide. Spencer looked smug. `But I have an apology to make,' he paused for a moment. `The guests at the party last night were not really friends of my wife, but were MI5 officers. The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that you had all learnt your lessons about cover.' There was a stony silence as it sunk in that we had been so easily duped. It was exhilarating to con unsuspecting members of the public in PERFECT STRANGER, but we didn't like having the tables turned.

Hare was most annoyed at being fooled. `In my experience from the army,' he spoke out indignantly `if you con students they quickly lose faith in the DS.'

Only Forton found something to lighten the mood. With a chuckle, he gleefully pointed to Spencer. `Feeling alright, Alex?' he asked mockingly. `Still going on that date?' Poor Spencer was staring at the floor, ashen-faced.

Thereafter, whenever friends or relatives asked us about work, it was easy to fend off their curiosity. At first it was exhilarating to `lie in the interests of national security', but it brought changes in my relationships with friends. Carl Jung's statement that the `maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison, which alienates their possessor from the community' rang true.

The bread and butter of the work of an intelligence officer is targeting, cultivating, recruiting, then running informers who are prepared to give or sell secrets about their country to MI6. During the first weeks of the IONEC we practised these skills in a series of small exercises. Experienced officers would come down from Century House to role-play the agent, pretending to be Brazilian Generals, Russian scientists, Iranian revolutionaries, or whatever the exercise required. We would play the case officer and practise the art of getting alongside them, cultivating them, recruiting them and extracting intelligence. We then wrote up a contact report recording the circumstances of the meeting and issued a mock CX report containing the intelligence. Afterwards the role-player debriefed us and Ball and Long graded us on how well we had performed. Some of the exercises were done in public, so to a casual eavesdropper the conversations must have appeared odd, particularly as the more colourful role-players would affect the accents and dress of their role.

One such was PERFECT PASSENGER, which was intended to take the lessons learnt in PERFECT STRANGER a step further and test our ability to cultivate a target. Often MI6 use the confines of public transport - especially aeroplanes - to cultivate a target, because he or she cannot escape. In this exercise we were told that MI6 had intelligence that a South African diplomat, who was vulnerable because of financial problems, was returning from Portsmouth to London one Friday evening by train. Our assignment was to take the same train, find him amongst the other passengers, engage him in conversation and cultivate him so that he would agree to have a drink on arrival at Waterloo station. Ball showed us a surveillance shot of our target, but our only other information was that he had radical pro-apartheid views and that he always carried The Economist, which would help us identify him in the crowded train.

I was lucky and found my target alone in a compartment. The `South African diplomat' was easy-going and affable, and I arranged a follow-up drink at Waterloo without problem. For Barking the exercise was less straightforward. He found his target without much difficulty and engaged him in conversation. Talk soon turned to apartheid politics when Barking, posing as a politics student, `discovered' that the role-player was a South African diplomat. Barking decided that the best way to persuade the target to come for a drink was to appear amenable and politically like-minded so he pretended to be a racist apartheid apologist. Soon the two were enthusiastically discussing the merits of racially segregated education, the unacceptability of mixed marriages and the impossibility of allowing non-whites to vote. Concentrating on the assignment and enjoying the sympathetic response his extremist views were eliciting from the play-acting South African, Barking paid little attention when two other men sporting beards and tweed jackets entered the compartment, and didn't notice that his conversation agitated them. Eventually the two men, left-wing politics lecturers at Portsmouth Polytechnic, could no longer stomach Barking's racist bluster and they furiously joined in the argument. Unfortunately, Barking, mindful of the `party' a few weeks earlier, presumed that they were MI5 role-players sent to see how he would handle the situation and grade his performance. He refused to back down and the exercise degenerated from a quiet attempt to gain the supposed diplomat's confidence into a four-way shouting match that ended only when the train arrived at Waterloo.

We had a busy schedule down at the Fort the following fortnight learning the `tradecraft' of spying. Tradecraft is the term used to describe the practical skills that enable a spy to meet or communicate with an agent without arousing the suspicion of the counter-intelligence opposition. It covers such skills as surveillance, antisurveillance, counter-surveillance, brush contacts and loading and clearing dead letter boxes. All require guile, cunning, a degree of acting ability, but most of all, careful planning and preparation.

An intelligence officer cannot go to a clandestine meeting with an informer without first ensuring that he is not being followed by counter-surveillance; but he must not make it obvious that he is looking out for watchers. Nervous glances over the shoulder or frequent stops to tie shoelaces would clearly signal to the surveillance that the target was up to mischief. The skill in anti-surveillance is therefore to appear an innocent diplomat, yet still identify any followers. This involves walking or driving, under the guise of an innocuous cover activity such as a shopping trip, a planned route which contains `surveillance traps'. For example, the escalators in many department stores are arranged in a switchback cascade, so from the second escalator it is often possible to check the first without appearing suspicious. A full anti-surveillance route may have dozens of such surveillance traps and may take many hours to complete. At every one of the surveillance traps the officer must make a mental note of everybody who is behind. Most of them will be innocent shoppers, but amongst them may be surveillance operatives. Ball taught us that in order to firmly identify surveillance, we must note the same face at least three times.

Surveillance teams try to make themselves difficult to positively identify, in part by using nondescript `grey men' as watchers - not too tall, not too short, unremarkable clothes - so that there is nothing that draws attention to them in a crowd. The more sophisticated surveillance teams like the Russians use tricks like reversible clothing and disguise, making repeat sightings difficult. In Moscow, strict rules about anti-surveillance drills are followed and `dry-cleaning' may mean spending a whole day `shopping' with wife and kids in tow. `Moscow rules' are also used in Iran and in South Africa because their counter-intelligence services are skilful. In contrast, in most South American countries, anti-surveillance is easy as the watchers seem to have learnt their trade from Starsky and Hutch and sport leather jackets, large moustaches and dark glasses.

Sometimes the only means to communicate with an agent may be by `brush contact' or a `dead letter box'. A brush contact is a fleeting meeting with the agent, transferring information or instructions in the process. It relies on careful co-ordination ensuring that both parties arrive at the same place at the same time so that it is possible to carry out a brush contact even when under surveillance. The followers cannot get too close, otherwise they make themselves too obvious. This gives an opportunity to brush an agent in `dead ground', for example a dogleg in a corridor or passage. We were taught to watch the agent approach the dead ground from an observation post, say a table in a caf‚. Having previously timed to the second how long it would take him to reach the dead ground and knowing how long our own trip would be, it was in theory possible to meet at the correct point, unobserved by surveillance. In reality, brush contacts are difficult to pull off reliably and we practised them assiduously.

Most of the exercises took place in Portsmouth and we took turns playing the roles of officer or agent. The `officer' found a suitable brush-contact site and then, back at the Fort, wrote instructions for the `agent' on its location. We were usually under surveillance from teams from MI5, the Portsmouth SB, Customs and Excise, or the army Intelligence Corps, so we would have to `dry-clean' before attempting the brush - sometimes identifying the surveillance, sometimes not. On one exercise, it was Spencer's turn to play the agent and I carefully planned a brush contact with him on the back stairs coming down from the public library in Portsmouth town hall. I spotted surveillance on my way to the library, but calculating that they would not follow me closely enough on the deserted stairs to see the brush contact, I did not abort. However, instead of the usual film canister or brown envelope, Spencer handed me an extravagant ice-cream, complete with chocolate flake, just before I emerged from the stairs into the street below, on a cold December's day. The surveillance team noted my bizarre acquisition and reported it to the DS.

Every evening after a day of lectures or foot-slogging around Portsmouth practising our anti-surveillance skills, we listened to a lecture from a guest speaker, usually a member of the service, who would describe a real-life operation in which they had taken part so that we could see how our new skills could be applied. One evening, Ball announced that we had a special guest who should be treated with the utmost respect. Oleg Gordievsky, the so-called `jewel in the crown' of MI6's Russian defectors, told us the story of his defection to Britain, as he does to every IONEC, providing a dramatic account of tradecraft in action.

Gordievsky first made contact with MI6 in 1974 while working as a KGB officer in Copenhagen under cover as the press attach‚ in the Russian embassy. He was cultivated over a series of badminton games and was eventually recruited by Colin Figures, who later became Chief. For the next 11 years Gordievsky provided MI6 with a treasure trove of information from the heart of the KGB. Gordievsky was run with such secrecy that only a handful of officers knew of his existence and, rather than risk widening the indoctrination circle, many non-indoctrinated officers were allowed to pursue futile operations which were known from Gordievsky to be compromised. But despite the care taken to keep his existence secret, it was inevitable that Gordievsky would eventually fall under suspicion from his masters in Moscow. During a period of home leave, he was arrested and interrogated. He was eventually released, but was suspended from work and his passport confiscated while the KGB conducted further enquiries. He managed to get word of his plight to the station in Moscow, where a mid-career officer, the Honourable Raymond Horner, was the number two. Every station has on its standing orders at least one plan for exfiltration of defectors in such emergencies. The exfiltration plan in Moscow was to smuggle the agent over the Russian border into neutral Finland. A route from Moscow had already been reconnoitred, and Horner had a Saab 90 as his official car, which in 1985 was the only car with a large enough boot to comfortably hold a grown man. This upmarket foreign car had caused some resentment amongst Horner's FCO colleagues, as they were forced to drive inferior British models and assumed that the Honourable Horner had been exempted from this rule because he held a title. Every evening Gordievsky took a stroll in Gorky Park, followed closely by his round-the-clock surveillance team. Horner identified a patch of dead ground where Gordievsky would be momentarily out of sight of his followers, meaning the pickup had to be made with split second precision, and spent the day driving around Moscow ostensibly on `errands', in reality doing thorough anti-surveillance. With military precision, he arrived at the designated spot at exactly the same time as Gordievsky, who leaped into the Saab's capacious boot, under the soon-to-be-disjointed noses of his surveillance. Horner drove out of Moscow and started the long and nerve-jangling ride to the Finnish border. Horner could not be sure that his car was not bugged, so dared not communicate with his hidden passenger. Even when over the border, it was too risky to speak out, though he must have been stifling a shout of jubilation. To let his passenger know he was safe, he played Gordievsky's favourite piece of music over the car stereo. To this day, Gordievsky is referred to in MI6 by the code name OVATION, a reference to this piece of music.

Another common tradecraft technique we learned was the `dead letter box' or DLB. This technique involves clandestinely hiding a message where it can later be picked up by the other party. Usually the message is put in a small container such as a film canister and the hiding spot is chosen so that it can be posted or cleared even when under surveillance. DLB sites are much easier to find than brush contact sites - and we were expected to find one in less than an hour in an unfamiliar environment - behind a loose brick in a wall, in an old tree stump, tucked into a crevice of a prominent rock. The disadvantage of DLBs is that they are occasionally discovered accidentally by the public - usually by small children - who may inform the local police. It is thus risky clearing a DLB, as the opposition may be lying in wait.

I got my revenge on Spencer a few days later on a DLB exercise. In Winchester Cathedral there is a small statue of St Jude next to the fourth pew from the back on the west wall. Sitting in the pew, on the pretence of praying or meditating, it is possible for one to grope round the back of the legs of the statue without being observed. I chose it as a DLB site, but instead of a film canister I left a loaded mouse-trap for him. Poor Hare fared even worse. Against Ball's advice, Barking loaded a DLB for him in the toilet cistern of the gents in the Mr Pickwick pub in Portsmouth. The cistern was set high on the wall and Hare had to climb up on the toilet seat to reach it. Unfortunately, the gentleman in the next door cubicle took exception to Hare's activities and, in a rage, called the police. Hare was interviewed and, unable to explain the truth, he was forced to admit to cottaging and was fortunate to be let off with only a caution.

The requirement for these old-fashioned tradecraft skills is not as great for the modern spy as in the days of the Cold War. These days, electronics and computers have simplified agent communications and it is often easier to communicate with encrypted e-mail. Traditional tradecraft was emphasised on our course partly because Ball was an enthusiast and deeply inured with the techniques, but partly because the discipline and nerve required to plan and execute such operations was greater than simply clicking the `send' button on a computer, instilling better tradecraft discipline. Practising these old-fashioned techniques was also better for morale and team-bonding than sitting in front of a computer screen, and we thoroughly enjoyed the exercises. One exception, however, was Martin Richards, the eldest student on the course. A quiet, academic man, he found the exercises rather silly. One afternoon, he failed to return to the Fort and eventually rang the DS to say that he could go on no longer. He was forced to resign from MI6 and they resettled him with Shell Oil, his old company.

Secret Writing (SW), the grown-ups' term for schoolboys' `invisible ink', still plays a role in spying, but modern techniques are more sophisticated than the lemon-juice-in-a-fountain-pen familiar from Boys' Own magazine. There is a three-man joint MI5/MI6 section known as TS/SW which is responsible for research and training in the latest SW techniques. TS/SW has several different SW techniques, but the method we were taught on the IONEC and which is used ubiquitously by MI6 oficers in the field is the miraculously simple `offset' method. Like many great inventions, it was discovered by accident.

The problem with early invisible inks was that the writer could not see what he had just written. A visible ink which faded shortly after it dried was developed but that was not perfect because the indentation made by the pen could be detected and the possession of the peculiar ink itself could be compromising.

The solution came one day in the mid-1980s, when a TS/SW technician was developing a conventional SW message sent by an agent in Russia. The secret message had been written on the back of an envelope with an innocuous `cover' letter inside and posted from Moscow. As the technician swabbed the back of the envelope with developing fluid, as expected the secret message began to emerge. But to his surprise, other writing - in a different hand and mirror-written - also started to develop. Close inspection of the writing showed that it was an address in Kiev. But who was the addressee and how had it appeared over the top of the message?

There was only one logical explanation for the mysterious writing. When the agent posted his letter, the back of the envelope must have fallen to rest in the postbox on top of another envelope. That envelope must have been addressed with an ink which possessed the property of transferring an invisible chemical to paper in contact with it. The technician realised that the Kiev address must have been written with a commercially available pen. If that pen could be identified, it would be a superbly elegant, simple and deniable SW implement. MI6 mounted a systematic worldwide search for the magic pen and every MI6 station was asked to send a secretary to the local stationery store to buy every make available. TS/SW were soon at work testing them. Each was used to write a few characters, a piece of paper was pressed over the top, then swabbed with developer. It took many weeks to identify the magic pen - the Pentel rollerball. The `offset' technique has the dual advantages that the agent or officer can see what he is writing before taking the offset copy and because the pen is commercially available it is deniable and uncompromising. Offset is now used routinely by MI6 officers in the field for writing up intelligence notes after debriefing agents. It is also issued to a few highly trusted agents, but is considered too secret to be shared even with liaison services such as the CIA.

Many other technical means are used for clandestine communication between agents, officers and Head Office. Development and issue of these systems was the responsibility of the section known as TOS/AC (Technical and Operations Support, Agent Comms). One morning they brought along their latest gadgets to demonstrate to us.

The essential feature of these gadgets is that they are non-compromising, that is, they are identical or virtually indistinguishable from commercially available equipment. PETTLE recorders were particularly ingenious. Any normal audio cassette has two tracks running parallel to each other, one for each `side' of the cassette. PETTLE recorders exploited the unused part of the magnetic tape which lies between the two strips. TOS/AC demonstrated an ordinary personal stereo which played and recorded on both sides of the tape like a standard machine. But turning it upside down tripped a microswitch so that pressing the `stop' and `record' buttons together made the machine record over the central track. Pressing `stop' and `play' together played back the recording. They also demonstrated modified laptop computers. The removable floppy discs used in ordinary computers have a hidden space which is just big enough to hide a simple word processing system and file retrieval system. Typing in a simple command at the DOS prompt started up the special word processor system, allowing notes to be secretly recorded. Exiting the software, the computer reverted to normal mode, leaving the secret files invisible even to an accomplished computer specialist.

We also learned how to use SRAC (Short Range Agent Communication). This system is only issued to long-established and highly trusted agents in countries such as Russia and South Africa. The agent writes a message on a laptop computer, then downloads it into the SRAC transmitter, a small box the size of a cigarette packet. The receiver is usually mounted in the British embassy and continually sends out a low-power interrogation signal. When the agent is close enough, in his car or on foot, his transmitter is triggered and transmits the message in a high-speed burst of VHF. The transmitter is disguised as an innocuous object and for many years `Garfield Cat' stuffed animals were popular as their sucker feet allowed the agent to stick the transmitter on the side window of his car, giving an extra clear signal as he drove past the embassy.

Photography is another important skill for an intelligence officer, whether to snap a surveillance shot of a target or to photograph secret documents. We were taught photography by an instructor from the service's technical support division, TOS/PH. He showed us how to take long-range snaps of targets using huge telephoto lenses and how to take clear close-ups of documents. MI6 uses commercially available photographic equipment where possible because anything specially made could be compromising. We did, however, practise with gadgets such as midget cameras and specially made collapsible document-copying cameras. Best fun, though, were the lessons on covert photography during which we secretly photographed members of the public with a variety of still and video cameras mounted in briefcases or shoulder bags. Back in an underground cellar below the Fort we were taught how to develop our shots as every overseas MI6 station has a darkroom which we were expected to know how to use.

Twice a week, we were given instruction in self-defence in the Fort's small gymnasium. Our instructor, Bill, was a former sergeant in the Royal Marines Special Boat Service who had also worked for a few years for the Las Vegas police force. Although only a little over five feet tall and dwarfed by all of us, he could put any of us on the floor or in an agonising thumb-lock within seconds. Over the weeks, we were taught how to judo-throw would-be attackers, fend off knife attacks, escape from headlocks and armlocks, and disarm a gunman. Self-defence is taught more for fun and morale building than for any real purpose - a traffic warden has more need of it than an MI6 officer and physical violence is never deliberately used. Bill could only recall one incident when a former student put the teaching into practice. A female officer was receiving unwanted attention from a drunken lout on a train during her evening commute. While the yob pestered her, the other male passengers buried their noses deeper into their newspapers. Eventually she could take no more and, just as Bill had taught her, she tightly rolled up her copy of The Economist and jabbed it into her assailant's eye, quickly silencing him.

We were also taught weapons-handling but, like self-defence, it was more for fun and fostering of team spirit than for any practical purpose. It was virtually unknown for MI6 officers to carry a weapon and no officer has ever used one in anger. Our instructor, Tom Nixon, a former sergeant in the Special Air Service, participated in the May 1980 Iranian Embassy siege at Prince's Gate. Under his expert supervision, we practised twice weekly at the outdoor range at the western edge of the Fort and in the small indoor range, modelled on the famous `killing house' range at the SAS barracks in Hereford. We mostly used the Browning 9mm pistol, standard issue to the British armed forces, but also trained on foreign weapons like the Israeli Uzi and German Heckler & Koch sub-machine guns.

The DS and lecturers taught us how to plan and mount bugging operations, even though this is not the job of the IB. TOS has about a hundred officers trained in the specialist skills to carry out these tasks: locksmiths, clandestine entry specialists, sound engineers, electricians. We just required an understanding of their skills and abilities. Ball gave us an exercise, PERFECT NEIGHBOUR, in which we had to plan such an operation. Briefing us on the scenario, Ball said to imagine that the IRA had acquired a `safe house' in Gosport, near the Fort, and that intelligence showed that the house was to be used to plan a bombing campaign. Over the next two weeks, we had to draw up a detailed portfolio of the house, its layout, its occupants and their movements, then make recommendations on how and when the house should be entered to place covert listening devices. All of us were given a different house to recce. These belonged to innocent members of the public. `Are there any restrictions on what we can do?' asked Hare at the end of the briefing.

`No - you can do whatever you want,' replied Ball. `Just don't get caught.'

That evening I borrowed a covert shoulder-bag mounted camera from the photographic laboratories and strolled round to my target, a medium-sized family home set in a small garden and fronting on Gomer Lane. To the rear was a small garden, backing on to the grounds of Stanley Park and Bay House School. Squeezing the bag to activate the Pentax SLR inside, I covertly photographed the house, shooting a roll of film which I developed that evening. The following morning, a visit to Gosport Town Hall on Walpole Road yielded a copy of the electoral roll, giving the names and occupations of the occupants. Posing as an architectural student, I borrowed the plans of their house from the building regulations department on the fourth floor on the pretext that it was for a design project at the polytechnic. The clerk would not release photocopies but allowed me to study them in the waiting-room. As soon as he was out of sight, an SLR with close-up lenses was used to photographed them. Just as I finished, Castle walked in. He too had thought of the same ruse. He got away with it but Spencer, who turned up an hour or so later, was not so lucky. The clerk was by now wary of the rush of odd requests for plans of Fareham town houses. He called his superior, who refused to believe Spencer's protests that he was a builder's jobber.

Thereafter every spare half-hour from the classroom was spent observing the house to build up a detailed picture of the daily movements of the occupants. The best place for the listening device would be in the kitchen, where the family socialised. But more detailed information was needed. One evening I jogged round to the house and found that it was empty. This was my chance. After checking that nobody was watching, I climbed the fence bordering Stanley Park, scrambled through the shrubbery and up to the hedge at the back of the house. Nobody was at home next door either, so I scuttled the few metres of open ground into the cover of the lean-to at the back of the house, sending a startled cat shooting through my feet and under the windsurfer lying nearby. Crouching in the shadows for a few minutes, I listened for any sign of compromise. There was silence, so I stood up and peered through the kitchen window. After my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I sketched the kitchen layout in a notebook. Just as I turned to make my exit I noticed that the key had been left in the door. Recalling Ball's words - `just don't get caught' - I turned it and pushed the door open. My intrusion into a stranger's house was amoral and illegal but in the euphoria of the IONEC it seemed totally justified. Ball rewarded my efforts with full marks on the exercise.

We worked long hours down at the Fort. Training started at 9 a.m. and a typical day would involve several lectures, small-arms drill or self-defence classes, an exercise in the afternoon, more lectures, then dinner, perhaps another evening exercise and then we had to write up the exercises going into the middle of the evening. Socialising in the bar afterwards was obligatory, so often we would not get to bed until the early hours. To compensate for the long weekday hours, we finished just after lunch on Friday afternoons and were not expected back at the Fort until mid-morning the following Monday. All of us lived in central London, so we normally shared lifts back into town. For the first few weeks of the IONEC I rented a room from an old Cambridge friend, but realising early in the course that MI6 would be a lifetime career, getting on the property ladder became imperative. I found a one-bedroom garden flat on Richborne Terrace in the pleasant but slightly dilapidated Victorian suburb of Kennington. It was in poor decorative order and the garden was sorely neglected, but it was as much as I could afford and I was very proud of it. Every weekend was spent digging, planting, painting and sawing.

I was enjoying the social life in London too. One day Julian, an English friend I met in Argentina, invited me to an evening of indoor go-kart racing in London to celebrate his birthday. Having spent so many hours tearing up my mother's garden in my home-made go-kart, I fancied my chances in a race and so was looking forward to the event.

The track was built in an old bus depot in Clapham. Julian had invited 30 or so other friends and amongst them were some very pretty girls. One in particular I noticed imediately. As we milled around sorting out helmets and awaiting our heats, I could hardly keep my eyes off her. She was tall, almost five foot ten inches, and had blue eyes and long shiny dark hair which she often caressed and pushed back from her face whenever she laughed. She had cinched-in the waist of the baggy overalls issued to us with an old school tie, accentuating her slender waist. I watched her race in one of her heats. She drove like an old granny popping down to the supermarket for a tin of Whiskas and soon the leaders were bearing down on her to lap her and the race marshalls pulled out the blue flag to show that she should give way. But it was to no avail. Lap after lap, the leaders sat on her bumper, trying to get past. Being lighter than the men behind her, she could accelerate more quickly on the straights, but tiptoed around the corners. The marshalls waved their flags more vigorously, but it was in vain. She just took one hand off the steering wheel and waved back at them. I found out from Julian that she was called Sarah.

After the karting we went for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. In the mˆl‚e as we waited to be seated, to my surprise I found that she seemed to be trying to get a seat near me. We chatted all evening and ended up going out to dinner again two days later.

Although the core activity of MI6 is agent-running, its charter, known as the `Order Book', requires it to maintain a capability to plan and mount `Special Operations' of a quasi-military nature. MI6 officers do not have the necessary military skills to carry out such operations themselves. Their role is to set the objectives of the operation and obtain political clearance for it from the Foreign Secretary. Thereafter the operation is executed by specially trained officers and men from the three branches of the armed forces.

The Royal Air Force provides a small detachment of around ten pilots known as the `S&D flight'. They are selected by the RAF for their outstanding skills and most arrive with prior experience in the special forces flights which service the SAS and SBS. They operate a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft and a Puma helicopter, are trained on many other military aircraft, and because they may be required to fly commercial aircraft the lucky selectees also obtain civilian commercial pilot's licences. The C-130 is mostly used for delivering or recovering equipment at overseas stations which are too big or dangerous to travel in a diplomatic bag, and the Puma is used for ferrying MI6 personnel and VIPs around the UK, particularly on the shuttle run between Head Office and the Fort. It can frequently be seen at Battersea Heliport or over London on such journeys, distinguishable from normal RAF Pumas by the large undercarriage containing long-range fuel tanks.

The army provides a detachment from the SAS regiment, called Revolutionary Warfare Wing in Hereford, and the navy provides a small detachment from their Special Boat Service in Poole. Both have similar roles as far as MI6 is concerned and are known collectively within the service as the `increment'. To qualify for the increment, SAS and SBS personnel must have served for at least five years and have reached the rank of sergeant. They are security vetted by MI6 and given a short induction course into the function and objectives of the service. If they have not already learnt surveillance skills, they take a three-week course at the Fort. Back at their bases in Hereford and Poole, their already substantial military skills are fine-tuned. They learn how to use improvised explosives and sabotage techniques, as well as advanced VIP protection skills, study guerilla warfare organisation and practise advanced insertion techniques - for example high-altitude parachuting from commercial aircraft or covert landings from submarines. Advanced civilian qualifications are acquired: several of the SBS Increment have commercial ship's skipper's tickets in their alias name, enabling them legally to hire, say, a fishing trawler.

On the IONEC, a week of the course is dedicated to familiarisation with the increment and the S&D flight and `military week' was eagerly anticipated by most of us.

After being issued with a set of military fatigues and boots so outdated they looked like they were SOE relics, we set off from the Fort helipad in the S&D Puma. It was just after nightfall and the cabin of the helicopter was lit by the dim, red emergency exit lights. Using infra-red night sights, the two pilots showed off their impressive low-altitude skills by flying at high speed over the rolling west country farmland, often below the normal military legal limit of 50-feet, a privilege given only to the S&D flight. Every few minutes, one of the pilots cheerfully called out over the intercom, `Everyone OK back there? Just sing if you feel sick.' Nobody replied, though Bart was looking pale. Half an hour later, the Puma hovered to a standstill a couple of feet off the ground in the corner of a dark field. `Jump,' screamed the loadie, pushing us out into the darkness, and the Puma roared off into the night. As my eyes adjusted, I realised that we were in the SAS's Pontrilas training area in Wales. `What are we supposed to do now?' asked Hare to nobody in particular, `Pretend to be sheep?' Bart groaned and threw up, splashing Castle's boots, but before we had time to laugh an authoritative voice rang out from behind a nearby hedge, `Over here, lads.'

We shuffled over to where two shadowy figures waited. One was no more than five foot six inches tall and of slight build. The other sported the sort of moustache favoured by soldiers. He spoke first, in a strong Brummie accent. `I'm Barry, the 2IC of RWW. The purpose of tonight's exercise is to give you a little insight into some of our work, so that when you're back at your comfortable desks, you'll have an idea what it is like for us out in the field.' With that, he turned away, expecting us to follow. Barry's smaller companion was more amiable and trotting alongside us, introduced himself as `Tiny'.

Tiny was also a sergeant in RWW and was one of its longest-serving members. It was easy to see why he would be useful - his diminutive frame and modesty were advantages in undercover work. As Tiny himself explained, `I once spent a whole evening trying to convince my mum I was in the SAS, but even she wouldn't believe me.' It was difficult to imagine how he could have passed SAS selection, but all members of RWW must do so. The only exemptions are the few female officers who are occasionally seconded to RWW from the army intelligence corps.

We trudged in silence in the drizzle for ten minutes or so until Barry called a halt. Tiny pulled out a folding spade from his small backpack and started digging. In a minute or so he uncovered a plastic screwtop container, about the size of a beer keg. It was a cache, just like the ones I had dug up in Belgium, and it contained survival rations, water, maps, compass and money. `We often bury several of these overseas to support emergency exfiltration contingency plans for you guys,' Tiny explained. He then showed us how to bury it, leaving no sign of disturbance, and gave us tips on how to record its location succinctly and unambiguously. Tiny finished his demonstration and lead us back to the field we had come from. From his backpack he fished out eight NATO issue torches complete with infra-red filters, handed them out to us and arranged us in a `T' shape, the standard pattern used in NATO for guiding down helicopters. We pointed our torches skyward and in seconds the Puma roared into view out of the darkness. We piled into the back, keeping well clear of Bart.

We were dropped off at a small military airfield a few minutes away. It was just past midnight, cold, and the drizzle had thickened into driving rain. Forton was getting fed up and Castle looked disinterested. We followed Tiny out of the wet into a small classroom just below the airfield control tower. A woman in her late 20s, dressed in outdoor casual clothes, waited by the blackboard. She introduced herself as Mags, a captain from the Army's shady agent-handling Force Reaction Unit, on attachment to the RWW, and gave us a lecture on the next stage of the exercise, a simulated agent emergency exfiltration using the S&D Hercules. She explained how we would have to spread out in a set pattern along the runway and use our infra-red torches to guide in the aircraft, and then she numbered us off, assigning us each a position in the pattern. Turning to Barry, who was standing at the back of the class, she snapped, `Hand out the comms, sergeant.' Barry glowered back and gave each of us a Motorola walkie-talkie. Mags assigned Forton and me to opposite sides of the far end of the landing pattern and we trudged off down the runway together. `Troll-bitch from hell, isn't she?' Forton laughed.

As we reached our assigned positions, Mags's voice crackled over the Motorolas. `Alpha one, confirm position, over.' I turned to face her at the far end of the runway and, as she had instructed, flashed the letter A in morse on the torch. `Bravo one, confirm position, over,' she called for Forton, but he was still chatting besides me and just turned to wave his torch like a child with a sparkler. `Bravo one, get in position immediately, over,' snapped Mags. Forton sauntered over the runway and Mags continued checking off the rest of the pattern. She got as far as Barking when her instructions were blotted out by Forton singing into his Motorola, turned on full power, his best rendition of `Strangers in the Night'.

Forton reached the fourth verse before the Hercules screamed into view and drowned him out. With its props on full reverse thrust and its tyres screaching in protest, it halted in an astonishing short space. The rear ramp dropped and a Range Rover burst out and tore off down the runway towards the control tower. As briefed by Mags, we ran to the aircraft and clambered into the spacious hold. The aircraft executed a sharp U-turn and accelerated back down the runway as we clung to the webbing seats inside, took off, flew a tight circuit and landed again. The rear ramp was already half-open as the plane touched down, giving a view of the Range Rover hurtling down the runway after us. With the aircraft still rolling, the Range Rover hurtled up the ramp at alarming speed, the RWW crew strapped it down and only seconds after touching down we were airborne again. `That was an example of how we do hot exfiltrations,' Barry shouted over the roaring engines.

We spent the night at Stirling Lines, the SAS's headquarters in Hereford, dining in the officer's mess. It was an honour, because normally only SAS personnel are allowed to set foot in the building. After dinner, Barry stood up and spoke. `I've arranged an interesting talk. I'm sure it will be a humbling experience for all of you.' He glowered at Forton and lead us into a meeting room by the mess. A stocky, dark-haired soldier was waiting, standing by an overhead projector. As we settled into our seats he stared blankly at the wall behind us and waited until there was silence before he spoke. Quietly he introduced himself and for the next hour he told how in the Gulf War his eight-man Scud-hunting patrol, Bravo Two Zero, was compromised and ambushed, and how he was captured and tortured by the Iraqis for several months. He spoke with no trace of boastfulness, emotion or humour, as if he was telling us about a trip to buy a bit of wood from B&Q. When he finished, he thanked us for our attention and left.

We trooped back to the bar in silence. It was some minutes before Spencer spoke up. `It would make a cracking book, that would.' For once, Spencer was right. Andy McNab published his story a year later and it became a worldwide best-seller.

The next morning, the Puma picked us up and took us down to the Special Boat Service's base in Poole, Dorset. The SBS contribution to the increment is much smaller than RWW, only about 15 men. As one would expect, given its naval roots, the SBS increment is oriented towards marine operations and its men are expert frogmen and underwater demolitions experts. Many have served also in Commachio troop, the Royal Marines' maritime counter-terrorist unit, or in their Mountain and Arctic Warfare cadre. The SBS increment is primarily employed by MI6 to place tracking beacons on ships whilst they are anchored in harbour.

The beacon is about the size of a house brick and to work effectively it must be placed high up on the ship's superstructure. We were given a demonstration in the indoor swimming pool by an SBS sergeant of the lightweight drysuit, recycling breathing apparatus and compact collapsible ladder used to covertly approach and board a ship in harbour.

The SBS increment also operates MI6's mini-submarine, about the length of two cars. The pilot and navigator sit astride the cylindrical forward hull dressed in drysuits and breathing apparatus. The rear half of the craft flattens into a passenger compartment which is just large enough to carry four persons, packed together like sardines. The compartment is flooded during a dive and the drysuited passengers breathe air piped from the craft's onboard supply. The mini-sub is used for infiltrating specialist agents into a hostile country and for exfiltrating compromised agents.

The SAS and SBS increments are complemented by another specialist cadre who occasionally participate in increment operations and we were also introduced to their skills during military week. These 20 or so men and women, known collectively as UKN, encompass a diverse range of specialist skills. Only the small `core' who are on call full-time draw a modest salary from MI6. The rest work unpaid and take time off from their real jobs to participate in MI6 operations. Their core skill is surveillance and counter-surveillance. To blend into foreign streets, some are drawn from ethnic minorities and many have a good command of foreign languages. Other skills are diverse: one is a pilot who, though working full-time for an air-taxi company, is prepared to drop everything to help out in an MI6 operation when required. Another is a yachtmaster who provides his boat when required. UKN have an odd status in the office because they are regarded as agents rather than staff, so we dealt with them under alias. They are also deniable assets - if an increment soldier were captured in an operation, MI6 would initiate diplomatic efforts to secure their release, but UKN have no such reassurance. They would be denied and their only hope of securing release would be through private legal action. As they clearly cannot get insurance on the commercial market, they take enormous personal risks every time they go abroad.

Although Ball and Long kept us under continuous assessment on the IONEC, most emphasis was placed on our performance in the final exercise, known as EXERCISE SOLO. Traditionally SOLO took place in Norway with the cooperation of its secret service. But our SOLO was to be hosted for the first time by SISMI, the Italian secret service.

The decision to base SOLO in Italy was taken for political reasons at a high level in both countries. MI6 had been in liaison with SISMI before, but the relationship was tetchy and weak. MI6 regarded southern European liaison services as unprofessional and insecure and SISMI preferred to work with the CIA and the BND (the German external intelligence service). Recent developments, however, had brought MI6 and SISMI closer. SISMI was doing some good work against its recalcitrant southern neighbour, Libya, and MI6 wanted access to this intelligence. SISMI's relationship with the BND was also going through a difficult patch, so they regarded bolstering links with MI6 as a useful insurance policy. MI6 proposed to SISMI that they cooperate on training exercises as a means of cementing the relationship, so the Italian-based SOLO was born. In return, MI6 offered to host training on its home turf for SISMI's new recruits.

Because of the political background to the decision, it was important that the exercise was a success. Ball and Long spent a month in Italy prior to the start of the IONEC, planning the exercise with the help of SISMI and Rome station.

Ball briefed us that we were to imagine that we were employed in UKB, the section which works against IRA operations outside the UK. An intelligence report from GCHQ had revealed that the IRA were cooperating with the Italian mafia to smuggle Chinese-made SA-14 hand-held anti-aircraft missiles into Sicily where they would be clandestinely shipped to Northern Ireland for use against British army helicopters. Our imaginary mission was to go to Italy and debrief APOCALYPSE, a mole within the IRA. We were to write up the CX, then pass it in a brush contact to `Eric', a courier who would hand us `further instructions'. We were issued with Pentels for secret- writing and developer fluid disguised as aftershave, but had to plan the rest of the operation ourselves over the next fortnight. We were all now wise to the trickery of the DS and did not expect an easy time.