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SUNDAY, 30 AUGUST 1998
JOHN F. KENNEDY AIRPORT, NEW YORK

`Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. For security reasons would all passengers kindly return to their seats.' There was a collective groan as passengers replaced their coats and hand-luggage in the overhead lockers while the Swissair captain repeated the message in French. I hadn't stood up to join the rush to the exits and paid little attention to the delay as I buried my nose back in The Economist. My neighbour in the aisle seat sat down impatiently. `JFK's a goddarn disgrace,' he drawled grumpily to nobody in particular.

I took a circuitous route from Auckland to Munich via Singapore and Bangkok, hoping MI6 would lose my trail somewhere along the way. After two days in Munich, rollerblading in the English gardens to keep any surveillance on their toes, I took the train to Zurich then Geneva, where I found some digs. There lawyers for Mr Al Fayed contacted me, inquiring about my knowledge of Henri Paul's relationship with MI6. I had not given it any thought since posting the letter to Harrods a year earlier, but after a casual comment to a journalist who realised its significance, his lawyers wanted a full statement. Judge Herv‚ Stephan, the magistrate in charge of the inquest into the crash that killed the Princess of Wales, Dodi Al Fayed and Henri Paul himself, invited me to Paris shortly afterwards to give evidence. It was a breach of the OSA for me to do so, but I felt entirely justified, given the significance of the tragedy. I told Stephan about Paul's MI6 file, the notes I saw of his meetings in 1992 with his MI6 case officer, Fish's plan to assassinate President Milosevic in a tunnel car-crash and about the paparazzi photographer who worked for UKN. I do not know anything more about the fatal crash, but I am convinced that there is information in MI6 files that would be useful to the enquiry, in particular concerning the movements of Henri Paul on the evening of his death. For despite thorough police inquiries, his whereabouts for an hour have not been accounted for. I suspect that he was having a drink with his MI6 handler, as a large sum of cash was found on his body later that evening. Examination of his MI6 file would clarify this and might shed light on the mysteriously high levels of alcohol and carbon monoxide found in his blood. Disappointingly, Stephan did not request the files from the British government.

NBC wanted to interview me live on their Today news programme on Monday, 31 August about this evidence and MI6's pursuit of me around the world, hence my flight to New York. But, watching a group of uniformed, armed men methodically counting down the seat rows of the MD-11, I feared MI6 had other ideas.

`Can I see your passport please, sir?' the badly overweight INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) officer asked politely as he and three colleagues stopped at my row. I handed over my passport, open at the page with the multiple-entry indefinite visa issued while a student at MIT. The official flipped to the photograph and glanced at me to verify the resemblance. `Come with us please, sir,' he ordered.

My grumbling neighbour stood to allow me out and as I stepped into the aisle, two INS men grabbed my wrists and slapped on handcuffs. `Where's your hand luggage?' one snapped, and picked out my canvas shoulder bag from the locker I nodded towards. I smiled back at the hostile glares from the plane's passengers as they frogmarched me off the plane, two in front, two behind, through the docking gantry into the crowded arrivals area, then down into the bowels of the airport.

The INS detention centre was dominated by a substantial desk on a raised plinth, behind which two officials surveyed the detainees sitting in a row on a bench against the opposite wall. My captors uncuffed me, sat me down between a snoozing Mexican in a sombrero and a greasy-haired Russian in a tight T-shirt, and manacled me to the bench with leg-irons. `I thought you gave up legirons for new arrivals 200 years ago,' I quipped.

`We've been ordered not to let you into the United States,' a marginally slimmer officer replied humourlessly. `Wait your turn here, and you'll find out why.'

Fortunately my turn for an interview came quickly. `Sit down over there,' the INS officer indicated a plastic chair in the corner of a small interview room containing a desk and computer. `Right, Mr Tomlinson,' he announced as he fired up the PC and took his seat. `We've got here a standard list of questions that we put to every alien who has been denied entrance to the USA. First, I expect you'll be wanting to know why you've been denied entry?'

`I already know,' I replied. `The CIA told you not to let me in.'

`How did you know that?' he asked, confirming my guess. He pushed over a directive from the State Department denying me entry at the request of a `friendly government'.

`But what reasons are you giving me?' I asked, knowing that a request from another government, no matter how friendly, would not be sufficient legal reason to expel me.

`We haven't got to that yet,' he replied, tapping my passport details into the PC. `Right, first question. Have you ever been convicted of any offences relating to the supply or smuggling of drugs?'

`Nope,' I replied confidently and waited while he tapped in my answer.

`Have you ever been convicted of any firearms offences?'

`Nope.'

`Have you ever been convicted of any serious offence carrying with it a jail sentence of more than one year?'

`Nope,' I replied truthfully.

`Have you ever used any alias names?'

`Oh yes, indeed,' I replied cheerfully.

`Well let's have them,' he ordered.

`Daniel Noonan, Richard Harwin, Richard Ledbury, Ben Presley, Tom Paine, Alex Huntley,' I rattled off. One by one he tapped them into his computer, asking me to spell them out. The last must have flashed up an INS record because he examined the screen for several minutes when it went in.

`OK, have you ever been involved in any espionage or terrorism?' he eventually asked.

I hesitated for a moment. Under British law it was illegal to admit membership of MI6, but lying to the INS would be grounds for denying entry to the USA. `Yes, I used to work for British intelligence,' I admitted.

He looked round his PC at me sceptically. `OK, between what dates and where?' He grilled me for 20 minutes about my work and operations. I replied fully and cooperated completely. At the end of the interview, he picked up an ink stamp from his desk and stamped my passport. `Mr Tomlinson, you are a former intelligence officer, and under regulations 217.4(b), 212(a) and 212(c) of US immigration policy you are banned from entering the territory of the United States of America.'

He led me back to the holding-pen and manacled me to the bench, this time in a row of Chinese labourers wearing identical dark-blue `Chairman Mao' suits. `You'll be going back to Switzerland on the next available flight, in about seven hours. We'll get you a Big Mac and fries.'

`Great!' I replied with exaggerated enthusiasm. When it arrived, I gave it to my Chinese companions, who jabbered with excitement as they opened up the evil-smelling carton. He did not even allow me to ring the NBC producer who was waiting for me in the arrivals hall.

As the INS officer admitted, the CIA were behind my entry refusal, banning me for life from entering `the land of the free and the home of the brave', just for criticising a foreign intelligence service. MI6, however, unwittingly saved my life. If all had gone according to plan, I would have boarded Swissair flight SR-111 on Wednesday, 2 September to return to Geneva. The MD-11 took off as scheduled at 8.19 p.m. from JFK and crashed into the Atlantic ocean at 9.40 p.m, killing all 229 passengers and crew.

`I'd like to make it clear that you are not under arrest,' Commandant Jourdain assured me smoothly, `but we think that you may be able to help us safeguard the security of Switzerland.'

His colleague, Inspector Brandt, nodded enthusiastically in agreement. `We'd like you to tell us all about illegal British espionage operations against Switzerland,' he added.

Jourdain of the Swiss Federal police, and Brandt of the Geneva Cantonal Special Investigations department, sent me a convoqu‚ a compulsory interview request, a few days after my return from the USA, ordering me to report to the Geneva police headquarters on Monday, 21 September 1998. `The British asked us to put you under surveillance when you came to this country because you were a dangerous terrorist who could jeopardise Swiss security,' Jourdain explained, nudging a copy of MI6's letter towards me on the desk. `We watched you for the first couple of weeks. Did you spot anything?' Jourdain asked.

`No, nothing,' I replied truthfully. I hadn't been looking, but in any case I knew that Swiss surveillance was among the best in the world.

`Good,' replied Jourdain, pleased that his teams hadn't been compromised. `We saw you arrive at Zurich Hauptbahnhof at 1225 on 17 August, then you stayed at the Hotel Berne for the night.'

If they picked me up arriving at Zurich railway station, they must have been tipped off that I was arriving from Munich. MI6 must have put in a massive operation to follow me from New Zealand.

`We then followed you until 31 August, when you tried to go to New York,' continued Brandt. `But when we realised that you were not presenting any danger to Swiss interests, we decided to invite you here, to see if you could help us.'

Jourdain and Brandt were putting me into an awkward position. They wanted me to break the OSA by telling them about Britain's operations in Switzerland, which could lead to prosecution in Britain. On the other hand, since MI6's undeclared operations in Switzerland were illegal under Swiss law, refusal to help the police in a criminal investigation would be an offence for which I could potentially be imprisoned, and it would certainly scupper any chance of getting Swiss residency. Jourdain appeared to read my thoughts. `Failing to help us will not help your application for a residency permit,' he added menacingly.

I had to think of my long-term future. MI6 had used their influence to prevent me making a fresh start in New Zealand and Australia, despite Warren Templeton's and John Wadham's strenuous efforts to persuade them to negotiate an end to the pyrrhic dispute. I would have settled just for the return of my computer and for an Australian visa, but MI6 were set resolutely on a Thatcheresque, no-compromise, no-turning-back policy. Given their intransigence, I decided to pledge my future to Switzerland in the hope that I could get permanent residence status, a work permit, then find constructive and permanent employment.

`OK, how can I help?' I replied cautiously.

Over the next three months, the Swiss police convoqu‚'d me four times. Each time, I cooperated fully with their enquiries and I built up a good personal relationship with Jourdain and Brandt who even showed me MI6's increasingly irate requests to have me arrested and deported to Britain, or at least expelled from Switzerland. Jourdain assured me that they had ignored the letters, as I had done nothing against Swiss law.

`C'est vraiment vous?' laughed the French Douane incredulously, pointing out my description, which had flashed up on the screen in the border kiosk after he had tapped my passport details into the computer. In French, under my police mugshot, was written:

Name: TOMLINSON Richard John Charles Nationality:British and New Zealand

Born:           Hamilton, New Zealand, 13/01/63
Resident:       No fixed abode
Details:        Subject is former member of British Special Forces and Special Services, trained in firearms, explosives, unarmed combat, scuba-diving, pilots licence, parachutist, expert in cryptography. Subject is a menace to the security of France.

`Sit down there,' the Douane replied, ignoring my protests. `Wait until the police arrive.' He indicated a chair in the corner of the kiosk

For the sixth time in a year, I was being detained at the request of MI6. It was late on the evening of Wednesday 6 January, and I had just picked up my parents in a hire car from Geneva airport. We were heading to a rented chalet in the French Alps, an hour's drive over the border, for a week's skiing holiday. But MI6 had learnt about the arrangements through their tap on my parents' phone and decided to spoil our holiday. They alerted the DST of my intended movements and DST notified the Douanes to stop us at the Swiss-French border. I now had to wait until the DST turned up from their regional headquarters in Grenoble. It was a bitterly cold evening, and although I was warm enough in the customs kiosk, my parents were waiting outside in the freezing car.

Four DST officers turned up at 10.30 p.m. Although the French Douanes had been happy to leave me unattended in their kiosk, confident I was not a troublemaker, the DST slapped on handcuffs the moment they arrived. `Alors, we have some questions for you, Monsieur Tomlinson,' announced the senior officer. They escorted me out of the kiosk into the main police building at the frontier, sat me down in an office and interviewed me for 90 minutes. They asked no questions relating to any form of criminal activity and all they were interested in were details of an MI6 officer who owned a chalet in the Haut-Savoie, on their home turf around Grenoble. I refused to help, so at the end of the interview they served me with papers banning me for life from entering French territory. Just like the US immigration officials, the DST had to find a reason under their regulations to justify the ban. On the standard entry-refusal proforma, there were four possible justifications. He could not tick the `lack of correct papers' box because my British passport entitled me automatically to entry. I could demonstrate that I had the funds to support myself in France, so that option was denied. I was not the bearer of any infectious diseases, so he could not select that. All that remained was `threat to the security of France'. He ticked the box with a flourish, stamped the document and handed it over to me. `You must go back to Switzerland,' he ordered. `If we find you in France, we will imprison you immediately for six months, no questions asked.'

Back in the hire car, two stern-faced officers stood blocking the route south just to ensure that I didn't try to dash for it. There was no choice but to turn around and return to my digs. It was too late for my parents to go to the chalet that evening, so they had to stay in a hotel in Geneva.

The DST were in blatant breach of European law by stopping a British passport holder entering France. MI6 and the DST were gambling that I would not have the legal backing to mount a challenge via the European courts, and if I did try, that it would take many years for my appeal to be heard. Two days before the first stage of my appeal came before the Grenoble district court on 5 May 2000, already over a year after the illegal order was served on me, the DST served an injunction to delay the hearing. I cannot take my case to the European courts in Strasbourg until all domestic remedies have been pursued, so I have no alternative but to spend more money on lawyers and wait.

Although I was enjoying life in Switzerland, had made some good friends and was earning some money with casual work, getting a work permit and permanent job was difficult. I therefore mounted an appeal against the Australian ban, using a firm of lawyers in Canberra. I suspected that MI6 had used their influence with ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) to get me banned, though MI6 denied this, improbably claiming in a letter to me that they `would not interfere in the policies of another country'. A few months later, via the Australian Freedom of Information Act, my lawyers got proof that MI6 were lying. They obtained a copy of a telegram sent by MI6 to ASIO on 2 November 1998. Although many paragraphs were blacked out with the censor's ink, it was clear that it was a request for a ban, to which the Australians had complied limply. Moreover, the date of the request was two days after my arrest, but long before I was convicted of a crime; MI6 were not content to see me receive only the punishment deemed fit by British law and had decided to add to it by stopping me from emigrating to Australia. Getting an Australian visa became a major preoccupation but after spending thousands of dollars of my savings on legal fees, I realised that I was falling into the financial trap MI6 had laid for me.

Reasoning with MI6 was not working either, and the energetic efforts of Warren Templeton and John Wadham were futile. My only remedy was to use publicity again to bring them to the table. At the end of April, I bought some web-design software and learnt how to build internet pages. My first site was an amateurish and jokey affair and appeared on the Geocities server late on the evening of Saturday, 1 May. The pages contained nothing secret and were just a lighthearted poke at MI6. On the front page, there was a photograph of me in a silly hat superimposed against Vauxhall Cross, with the Monty Python theme tune playing in parody of MI6's absurd pursuit of me, and on the inside pages were copies of the documents served by the Australian, American and French authorities banning me from their countries at MI6's request. Nevertheless, on Monday morning the Geocities security officer, Mr Bruce Zanca, e-mailed me to say that they had received a complaint about my website from a `third party' and were therefore closing down the site. By late morning my pages had disappeared. I found another empty space on the Geocities server and re-posted them, including Zanca's e-mail. A few hours later I got another, more irate, e-mail from Zanca telling me they had removed my new pages, and ordering me not to post anything else onto their server. I copied this e-mail into my pages and posted everything back. That came down a few hours later and Zanca got badly annoyed and threatened legal action. Fortunately, I didn't need to put them up again because word spread around the internet of the preposterous way that MI6 and Geocities were censoring me, and numerous `mirrors' of my site sprang up.

On 13 May, another site about MI6 appeared on Lyndon Larouche's website, publishing a list of 115 names purporting to be of serving and former MI6 officers. This news exploded onto the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Because of the publicity about my first site, I was immediately assumed to be the author.

To this day, I do not know who published the famous list, but it was not me. I have my suspicions, however, that it was MI6 themselves. They had a motive - to incriminate and blacken me. They had the means to make the list and the knowledge to post it onto the internet without leaving a trace. And, despite their protestations to the contrary, the list was not particularly damaging to them. Later I got the chance to study it for myself. I did not recognise most of the names and so cannot comment as to whether they were from MI6 or from the FCO. Of the names that I did recognise, all were retired from the service or were already widely blown. If MI6 had set out to produce a list that caused me the maximum incrimination, but caused them the minimum damage, they could not have done a better job.

The way the existence of the list was publicised to the world's press was also odd. The first announcement was made when the British government's official censor, Rear-Admiral David Pulvertaft, issued a `D-notice' to stop UK newspapers publishing the web address of the list or any of the names. There was no better way to generate publicity because immediately every journalist in Britain wanted to know what the D-notice was censoring, and foreign newspapers the world over, to whom the D-notice was irrelevant, published the web address and even the entire list. The next peculiarity was the manner in which the FCO announced the incident. If MI6 really wanted to limit the damage, they would have used a junior spokesperson to dismiss the list as a hoax. Instead, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced at a packed news conference that not only was the list accurate but, without presenting a shred of evidence, named me as the culprit. Both these tactics can only be explained by a plan to incriminate and discredit me.

They certainly succeeded if it was their intention. Until the list was produced, the press had been fairly sympathetic to me. But after Cook's accusation, the media turned on me with vitriol. In Britain, the Sunday Telegraph led the charge. They accused me of being a traitor who had recklessly endangered the lives of MI6 officers in a selfish pursuit of an employment tribunal and printed the I/OPS propaganda that MI6 sacked me for being `unreliable' and `going on frolics'. Their columnist Andrew Roberts, a contemporary at Cambridge but now an establishment toady and friend of MI6, wrote a petty personal attack on me, making absurd claims such as that I cheated to gain admission to MIT. The tabloid newsapers were equally hostile. The Sun tracked down Tosh, now out of 602 Troop and working in the City, and paid him œ500 to claim that I took the troop to a brothel in Split on his birthday. He e-mailed me afterwards to apologise and at least he had the guts to give the newspaper his name, unlike some of the anonymous worms they also dug up from my old TA regiment. The Sun also published my e-mail address and encouraged its readers to send me hatemail. I received over ten thousand e-mails over the next week, some of them amounting to death threats. Interestingly, however, by no means all of the e-mails were hostile, perhaps indicating the lack of judgement of the Sun's editor and the lack of public support for MI6. The majority of readers who e-mailed me thought that it was a good thing to publish the names of MI6 officers, one writing that I deserved an OBE for services to humanity and another stating that taking Tosh to a brothel was a good use of MI6 money.

The publication of the list had all the hallmarks of a classic I/OPS operation to winkle me out of fortress Switzerland, an objective that was accomplished three weeks later. On Monday, 7 June, Inspector Brandt rang to summon me to the Geneva police headquarters at Chemin de la GraviŠre for a meeting at 2 p.m. I arrived to find a stone-faced Commandant Jourdain, in no mood for small talk. `You must leave Switzerland immediately,' he told me. `You are banned from entering Swiss territory until 7 June 2004, and must be out of the country by 1800 this evening.' My protests that this was an unreasonably short period of notice fell on deaf ears. It would scarcely give me time to pack my suitcase. `And we don't want any publicity in the press,' continued Jourdain. `If you talk to the newspapers about this, we will increase the ban to ten years.'

`So where do you want to go to?' asked Brandt. `We will book the ticket for you.'

`I really don't know,' I replied angrily. Just about every reasonable option was closed off. All of the anglophone countries were out of the question and I feared that I would have legal problems if I stayed in Europe. `OK,' I replied, after some consideration, `get me a ticket to Moscow.' I didn't really want to go there, but I knew that Jourdain would be uncomfortable with expelling me from Switzerland at the request of the British only for me to seek refuge in Moscow.

Jourdain stared at me for a moment while the implication sunk in. `You don't want to go there,' he replied. `It's cold and you don't speak Russian.'

`OK, then I'll go to Havana. It's warm and I speak Spanish.'

From Jourdain's point of view this was no better, and he needed to seek advice from his superiors. `Wait here while I call Berne,' he announced. `All right,' announced Jourdain on his return a few minutes later. `Berne have given you an extension until 1800 tomorrow, so that you have more time to find a place to go,' he smiled weakly. `Telephone Inspector Brandt before 1200 tomorrow with your decision.'

I was very disappointed by the attitude of the Swiss authorities. They had a reputation as a neutral country who were prepared to shelter individuals harassed by foreign powers, and I had helped them a lot over the past six months. Now they were blatantly siding with MI6 and were expelling me for the publication of the list without any evidence that I was the culprit. Even with the extension, there was not much time to sort out my plans. I had become quite established in Switzerland, even though I did not yet have a resident's permit. My French was fluent, I had made some good friends and I was getting some serious job interviews and felt that it would only be a matter of time before one materialised into a job. The Swiss had dealt me a low blow in forcing me to start again from scratch somewhere else (I later discovered the full extent of their double standards: every time I went for a job interview, Jourdain rang the company afterwards and told them not to employ me). My threats to go to Havana or Moscow had bought me some extra time, but I did not really want to go to either of these cities. I would not be able to work there and guessed that after a few months I would be bored. Also, I was in no mood for a long journey. I rang up Geneva station and asked for a rail ticket to the nearest town not in France or Switzerland. They booked me onto a train leaving at 1735 the following evening, 25 minutes before my deadline, arriving at Konstanz in southern Germany at 2235.

`Herr Tomlinson?' The voice behind me was friendly, but still my anger flashed within. It was late in the evening, I had arrived in a strange town in a country I hardly knew and whose language I hardly spoke, it was raining outside, I had nowhere to stay and I had only struggled a few yards off the station platform with my two heavy suitcases, yet already somebody - presumably an official - wanted a word with me. I spun around, scowling with hostility. `Nein, Ich bin nicht Herr Tomlinson.' It was about the limit of my German.

A stone-faced uniformed police officer and two civilians, one male in his mid-40s, one a blonde female, stood before me. `Ausweis, bitte,' ordered the uniformed officer.

`What?' I replied impatiently and rudely.

`Your papers, please,' interpreted the civilian male.

`Oh fuck off,' I replied and picked up my luggage. I couldn't help my language. The Swiss must have tipped off the Germans and now, I presumed, I was about to be arrested. If they wanted to arrest me, I would not make it easy for them.

`No, no, wait, you're not under arrest, Herr Tomlinson.' The civilian grabbed me by the shoulder, as if to get my attention rather than to restrain me. `We just want to talk to you, Richard,' the female spoke for the first time, smiling sweetly.

I shifted to face my interlocutors squarely, still suspicious. `I am Herr Kugel, from the BfV (Bundesamt f�r Verfassungsschutz), and this is my colleague, Fr"ulein Gajabski.'

`We guess you must be tired after your journey, and as it's so late, we've booked you into a hotel for the night,' Gajabski said in flawless English.

`We'll help you with your luggage,' added Kugel. He dismissed the uniformed police officer with a short command and whistled up a railway porter who scuttled over with a baggage trolley.

`Don't worry, you are not in any trouble,' Gajabski assured me. `We'll just have a quick drink tonight, then if it is OK with you, we'll have lunch tomorrow.'

Kugel and Gajabski escorted me in the drizzle over to the Halm Hotel opposite the station, the porter struggling behind with my heavy luggage. Kugel checked me in, paying the bill in advance, while Gajabski tipped and dismissed the porter. `We guess you'll want to go up to your room for a few minutes. We'll meet you at the bar at 11 p.m.,' Kugel said. It was more of a firm request than a direct order, but in any case I was intrigued to know what they wanted. Also, I needed a beer.

`Fr"ulein Gajabski and myself are from the BfV,' explained Kugel once three bottles of Becks had been served, with glasses. `Our duty is to protect the German constitution, particularly against the activities of foreign intelligence services. We've read about your case in the newspapers, and we think that you may be able to help us with our investigations into British and American operations against Germany.'

The Swiss Federal police must have tipped them off about my arrival in Konstanz. Jourdain had previously questioned me about ORCADA, the spy in the German ministry of finance that Markham had run in Bonn, even offering me money for his identity. The Swiss Federal police work closely with their counterparts in Germany, particularly on the banking and finance sectors, and it was inevitable that Jourdain would tip off the Germans. The two BfV officers did not push me hard at the first meeting, but they asked me to reflect on their request overnight and insisted that I take lunch with them the next day.

`So, have you decided if you are going to help us?' asked Kugel hopefully. We were nearing the end of a long lunch in the Seerestaurant of the Steigenberger Inselhotel overlooking Lake Constance. Kugel and Gajabski used all the cultivation tricks on me that I learnt on the IONEC. They were sympathetic to my situation, flattered me on my very limited German, assured me that any information that I gave them would be treated with the utmost confidentiality and offered me help in settling in Germany. Now, as the meal was ending, they were putting to me their final recruitment pitch. I could imagine how eagerly anticipated my reply would be and how they must already be mentally writing up their contact report.

`No, I am sorry, I really can't help you,' I replied. I could see the disappointment in their eyes. They would have to report back negatively to their line-manager, and would not get the pat on the back they were hoping for. `I could go to jail for 40 years in Britain under their Official Secrets Act, and it is just not worth it.' The 1911 OSA, which stops Britons `collaborating with a potential enemy', was enacted just before the First World War to stop British naval engineers helping the Germans to rebuild their navy. I could just imagine `expert witnesses' like Redd taking the witness stand to argue that Germany was still a potential enemy.

`But we can assure you, Richard, that your identity will never go beyond the two of us at the table,' Gajabski argued.

It was just what we had been trained to say to potential informers too, and I knew that it was not true. `But even if I do help you,' I argued, `how do I know that you will help me? I helped the Swiss police with their enquiries and where did that get me?'

Kugel and Gajabski had no reply.

Though I had arrived in Konstanz with the intention of quickly moving on elsewhere, the meeting with the BfV persuaded me that I was better off staying put in Germany. They would be unlikely to bother me at MI6's request after they had tried to recruit me. As there was a language school in Konstanz, I decided to study until my German was good enough to look for a job. I found a bedsit and started an intensive four hours per day language course. Living in a European Union country had other advantages. Unlike Switzerland, I needed no work permit or residence permit because my British passport automatically gave me those rights. I registered as a resident, opened a bank account, obtained a phone-line in my own name and even bought a car. The little second-hand BMW I got from a dealer in Hamburg gave me mobility and so if I had to move again suddenly, I would not have to throw away most of my possessions as I had done in Switzerland.

Kugel and Gajabski contacted me several times over the next few months and took me out to two further lunches at the Tolle Knolle restaurant on the Bodanplatz in Konstanz to persuade me to talk about ORCADA or other aspects of British and American operations against Germany, but finally they realised that I would not cooperate with them and told me that our meeting in September would be the last. I was relieved when they assured me that I could stay in Germany and that they would not bother me again.

Driving back to Konstanz from a day out in Austria one Sunday in late September, I accidentally strayed into a Swiss border post near Bregenz. Before I realised my mistake, the guard tapped on my window demanding my documents. I lowered the window, `Nein, nichts,' I replied honestly, and tried to reverse away from the control post.

But that just made the guard suspicious and he blocked me off. `Ausweis,' he snapped, holding out his hands for my passport. Realising that there was no way out I handed over my papers and he took them into his kiosk to check them. Two guards came out five minutes later, hauled me out of the car and threw me into a holding cell. The police arrived two hours later, strip-searched me, handcuffed me and took me to the police station. A day in a Swiss police cell was not much hardship - it was really very comfortable with clean bedding, a spotless toilet and sink and even a welcoming bar of soap and a towel, neatly folded on the bed, just like in a Hilton - but nevertheless the inconvenience was annoying and did not endear either the Swiss or MI6 to me.

By October my German was fairly fluent and I found a job as a private mathematics coach for a wealthy German family in a town in southern Bavaria. I moved to Oberstdorf, a small village nearby, nestled in the foothills of the German Alps. I only had to teach for a couple of hours per evening, so as soon as the snow started to fall I bought a new snowboard and got a day-job teaching snowboarding on the nearby Fellhorn range. Things were starting to look up for me - I was earning enough to make ends meet, was making a few friends in Oberstdorf and MI6 appeared to be leaving me alone. But I was wrong on that last count.

Since arriving in Germany, I had avoided talking to journalists and there had been scarcely an article about me in the British press. Warren Templeton meanwhile was energetically seeking to open dialogue with MI6 to put an end to the dispute. But despite my ceasefire and genuine attempts at conciliation, MI6 were determined to cause me as much inconvenience, cost and hassle as they could.

In February 2000, Patrick, a friend from Geneva, invited me to his chalet in Chamonix, at the foot of Mont Blanc, for a fortnight of skiing and snowboarding. Strictly, I was not allowed in France but I gambled that the DST would not realise I was on their patch. I'd not been there long when my landlord in Oberstdorf rang me. `What have you done?' he asked me accusingly, `the police are here.' He explained that at 6 a.m. he had been awoken by a sharp knock on the door. On opening it, he had been bowled over by four uniformed police and two civilians. The latter turned out to be my friends Herr Kugel and Fr"ulein Gajabski. They were searching the flat as we spoke with a warrant to confiscate my computer.

Presumably the BfV bowed to MI6's pressure and sided with them once they realised that I would not help them. Whether Kugel intended to arrest me or not, there was now no way that I could go back to Germany. MI6 had ratcheted down on me again, cutting me off from another potential opportunity to put the dispute behind me. Luckily I had my computer and other valuables with me.

I was in France illegally and could not stay there for long. I needed to find another home, and was running out of options. The only sensible choice was Italy, and an internet search found a language school in Rimini, a holiday resort on the Adriatic coast. On 2 March I packed up my car again, said goodbye to Patrick and moved out of Chamonix.

I found a little holiday apartment a block away from the beach in Rimini without problem - being the off-season still there was plenty of empty tourist accommodation. Having previously learnt French and Spanish, Italian was relatively straightforward and I made rapid progress in the classes. I found the lifestyle in Italy agreeable too, and started to think about building a long-term future in the country. But before I could make any firm commitments to an employer or a long-term rental contract, I needed to sort out my dispute with MI6. Despite everything that they had done to me, I still felt some perverse loyalty to them and wanted to find an amicable solution. I had more or less given up any hope of getting them to an employment tribunal - the only fair settlement - and I would have settled just for an assurance that they would lift their surveillance on me, let me travel freely and allow me to get on with my life. But all my letters to this effect to them were ignored and Warren Templeton's attempts to mediate were firmly dismissed. They seemed absolutely determined to break me both financially and mentally, and once again my only option was to pressure them to mediation. After I had been settled in Rimini for a couple of months, I wrote to MI6 to inform them that a Swiss literary agent was negotiating on my behalf with a publisher who was interested in publishing my story, and asked them how I could submit my manuscript for clearance. I hoped that MI6 would agree to mediate, in which case I was prepared to withdraw completely from the publication deal. But MI6 reacted a week later with their customary vindictive stupidity.

`Emergenza, Emergenza!' cried the overweight and sweating figure, perched on the tip of a ladder swaying just below the balcony of my apartment. `There's a gas leak!' he shouted urgently in Italian. `Gas leak, get out of your apartment immediately!'

The police had been knocking on the door of my third-floor apartment for the past two hours. They must have watched me arrive home on my bike from my Italian class shortly after 1 p.m., as they started knocking as soon as I put the kettle on. I wasn't expecting anybody and, peeping through the spyhole, I realised from the training videos in Belmarsh that they were plain clothes police - they all had large moustaches and bad haircuts. The door was heavy duty, so I let them exercise their knuckles. I realised that MI6 must have used my letter admitting that I had a book manuscript as an excuse to raid me yet again and confiscate my computers. Quickly, I encrypted everything important on my laptop, defragmented the hard disk for good measure and hid the tiny but crucial Psion memory disk inside the apartment's television set. With everything secure, I went out onto the balcony to escape the increasingly impatient banging, lay on my sun-lounger and opened up a book. They eventually admitted defeat to two-inches of dead-locked oak and called out the fire brigade. Now the police chief was peering up at me from his wobbly perch, sweating profusely in the midday sun, pretending that there was a gas leak in the hope that this would trick me into opening the door.

`You've got the wrong building,' I replied mockingly from my sun-lounger. `This building is electricity only! Try that building over there,' I pointed out the neighbouring block. `Yes, I can smell the gas from over there!' I said with an exaggerated gesticulation.

`Open the door,' he ordered back impatiently, pulling out from his top pocket a heavily chromed police ID badge and thrusting it at me, the gesticulation sending the ladder into a worrying sway. `Police, open the door.'

`OK,' I smiled, `but why didn't you just come up the stairs and knock on the door? It's a lot easier than coming up a ladder.' I ducked back into the apartment before I could see his reaction. It was Wednesday, 17 May, the same day that Mrs Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, announced that she intended to publish her memoirs about MI5, and was negotiating a huge advance with a British publisher. Unlike me, she had not been arrested or had her computer confiscated and the British authorities were happy to let her publish. As in the Patten case, it was one rule for the people at the top and another for the little guy like me. Britain's 24-hour news channel, Sky News, had booked me for a live telephone interview at 1530 to discuss this jaw-dropping hypocrisy. The phone started ringing as the Italian police burst into my flat.

`Up against the wall,' screamed the two heavies who led the charge, their pistols drawn and pointing at my chest.

`All right, calm down,' I urged them. It was my tenth police bust and I had my hands up against the wall and feet apart before they'd even recovered their breath. Five other officers entered the room and one put the lights on. `Hey, turn them off,' I ordered, remembering a tip given me by Onion-head. `You might have a warrant to search my room, but you haven't got one to steal my electricity.' The irritated officer flicked them off and went over to raise the blinds. The sweaty chief arrived a few minutes later, introduced himself as Inspector Verrando of Rimini DIGOS, the Italian special investigations police, and presented two British SB officers who had come along for a day's outing on the Italian seaside. Whereas Peters and Ratcliffe had some human decency and intelligence, these were a couple of jobsworths, selected to follow MI6 orders unquestioningly.

The search of my flat took about two hours. The jobsworths waved a vaguely worded warrant that empowered them under the Mutual Assistance Act to confiscate anything they wanted. My computer and Psion were first in the pile. Then my whole CD collection, both music and software. `I'm not competent to examine them for hidden files,' announced Jobsworth One.

`Are you competent to do anything?' I replied helpfully.

Next all my legal papers. Then my mobile phone. `So that we can see who you've been calling,' explained Jobsworth Two.

Then the television remote control. `So you can see what I've been watching on telly?' I asked.

Finally they helped themselves to one of my suitcases, loaded it up and announced they were ready to interview me at the Rimini police station. Glancing behind as they escorted me out, I realised they had cleared my room of everything of value. The only thing they couldn't get in my suitcase was the television containing the precious disk.

Verrando interviewed me for six hours before he realised that I had done nothing illegal and that the British police had abused the powers of the Mutual Assistance Act. But by then it was too late. The jobsworths were on their way back to London with all my belongings. They returned my suitcase a few days later when I faxed the head of SB in London with a description of their incompetence, but I never saw my computers, software, CDs, mobile phone or TV remote control again.

A few days later, Verrando wrote asking me to go back to the police station. I ignored his request, thinking it meant trouble. I had just applied for registration in Rimini, which I needed in order to legitimise my presence in Italy, and presumed that Verrando wanted to tell me that I couldn't have it and order me to leave Italy. If they wanted me urgently, they would come and get me, I reasoned. I heard nothing more until I bumped into an off-duty Verrando browsing the top shelf of a newsagent's in the town centre. `Why didn't you come to see us the other day?' he enquired politely, hurriedly grabbing a photography magazine from a lower shelf. `Your permit is ready. The British embassy in Rome rang us and asked us not to give you one, so we decided to give you it immediately so that they would not be able to take the decision up to the Interior Ministry.'

But I was underestimating their capacity for spite. MI6 might have lost the support of the Italian police, but that didn't deter them. Driving up the autostrada to Milan to see an Italian lawyer about the confiscations, I found that I was under surveillance. It started off discreetly just outside Rimini, but by Bologna I had made repeat sightings and noted the number plates of three cars - a white Fiat Punto, a silver Volkswagen Golf and a grey Fiat Bravo. The Golf got so close on several occasions that I could clearly make out the driver, a swarthy character dressed in a red vest. I rang the lawyer in Milan for advice, and he called the police. They told me to pull into the Stradale Nord service station, just outside Piacenza, and I watched in my rear-view mirror as the Punto and Golf followed me off the motorway and parked up behind the service station complex, partially shielded by some bushes. The Fiat Bravo continued up the motorway, no doubt to park up in a lay-by to watch for when I left the service station. The Italian police arrived 20 minutes later in a Fiat patrol car, and I explained the situation to them. They were sceptical at first and I had to stretch my Italian vocabulary to persuade them that I was not completely mad. They realised I was not a crank when they eventually approached the two vehicles. The four occupants promptly abandoned their cars, scattering into the nearby woods. `Go on, shoot, shoot!' I urged the police, pointing at the machine-guns hanging from their waists, but disappointingly they were not too enthused by the idea.

The police poked around the vehicles to see if the occupants had left any traces of their identity, but there was nothing except empty coke cans and hamburger wrappers. `They're not police surveillance,' they assured me. I had already guessed as much. The surveillance was far too amateurish to be from the Italian authorities, and the occupants would not have run away if they were officials. The only explanation was that MI6 had hired an amateur surveillance team to watch me once the Italians had refused to help them any more. When the patrol car left, I bought a Stanley knife in the service station and slashed their tyres. Back in my car, I faxed the British ambassador in Rome using my newly purchased replacement Psion and mobile phone and asked him to send me the bill. Not surprisingly, he didn't send me the bill - I would have sent it straight to my lawyer.

A few days later, my stay in Rimini was over. The landlady of my apartment did not like the embarrassment of the police visit and she told me that the apartment had been `booked by some Germans last year'. She asked me to leave with a week's notice. I was without a home and with the holiday season approaching fast it was impossible to find other accommodation in Rimini. But perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. I moved north and after a few weeks roughing it in various hostels I found an apartment in Riva del Garda, a far more pleasant town on the northern edge of Lake Garda. It was a sportsman's paradise, with fantastic cycling, windsurfing and walking opportunities for the summer, and with good skiing nearby in the winter. I decided to settle there for a while, MI6 permitting.

But my optimism was short-lived. A few days later, on a trip to Monte Carlo for a job interview, MI6 had me arrested again by the Monaco Special Investigations Unit, who threw me into the cells of their station, by the harbour front. Sitting on a hard bench for a few hours, I rued that I was becoming even more of a connoisseur of police cells than Ronnie from Belmarsh. MI6 asked the Monaco police to confiscate my new Psion and mobile phone, but fortunately they rang for advice from the DST, who advised them to let me go. After six hours of detention they released me on condition I went straight back to Italy.

Shortly after returning home to Riva del Garda, I found that MI6 had been busy again in my absence. The estate agency with whom I had found my flat rang me up and called me into their office on the pretext of requiring a copy of my passport. `Richard,' announced Betty, the elder of the two sisters who ran the agency, `while you were away, we had a visit from two men who said that they were from the police.' Anger welled up inside me at this latest intervention from MI6, but worse was to come as Betty explained. `But we realised straight away that they were not really from the police because they asked such unprofessional questions about you.'

`Like what?' I asked.

`They wanted to know how much you were paying in rent for your flat, and whether you had a telephone line - the real police would not be interested in that.'

`Did they say anything else?' I asked.

`Yes,' Betty hesitated for a moment before continuing. `They told me that you were a paedophile and warned me to keep you away from my daughter.'

I left Betty's office scarcely able to contain my despair and anger at the depths to which MI6 seemed prepared to stoop in order to wreck my chances of settling anywhere. For although Betty realised immediately what was going on, Riva del Garda is a small town and I knew that she would not have been the only person whom MI6's hired goons approached. I soon detected hostility from other acquaintances who had presumably been fed the same line, then after a month or two my new landlady got cold feet and told me to leave my new flat. Once again I was without a home, and yet MI6 still had not finished with me.

Another trip to Milan was necessary, but more surveillance immediately appeared, this time a white Volkswagon Polo. The same fat bloke in a red vest was behind the wheel, with a long-haired, scruffy companion alongside. This time they made no pretence at discretion and sat glued to my bumper. If I stopped in an autostrada lay-by to check my map, they stopped right behind me. On the roads leading into Milan, if I indicated left, but turned right, they did the same. I dived on to a roundabout near the central station in the city centre and drove around it, indicating at every turn-off, but swerving back on at the last moment. They did the same, right on my bumper. I drove around again, this time a bit faster. They did the same, the narrow tyres on their Polo squealing. I accelerated, my BMW gripped firmly and I pulled away a car length from them. Once more around the roundabout and I had pulled out half a lap lead on him. Two more sinister circles and I was right on his tail. The fat bloke was grimacing in his rear view mirror, unsure how to react, and his companion was shouting down his mobile phone for advice from his controller. I flashed my lights and gave them a friendly wave. `Where will this end?' I thought to myself, unsure whether the story was farce or tragedy.