The Deceiver

IN THE SUMMER OF
1983 the then Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service sanctioned the formation, against a certain internal opposition, of a new desk.

The opposition came mainly from the established desks, almost all of which had territorial fiefdoms spread across the world, for the new desk was designed to have a wide-ranging jurisdiction that would span traditional frontiers.

The impetus behind the formation came from two sources. One was an ebullient mood in Westminster and Whitehall, and notably within the ruling Conservative government, following Britain’s success in the Falklands war of the previous year. Despite the military success, the episode had left behind one of those messy and occasionally vituperative arguments over the issue: Why were we so taken by surprise when General Galtieri’s Argentine forces landed at Port Stanley?

Between departments, the argument festered for over a year, reduced inevitably to charges and countercharges on the level of we-were-not-warned-yes-you-were. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, had felt obliged to resign. Several years later, the United States would be seized by a similar row following the destruction of the Pan American flight over Lockerbie, with one agency claiming it had issued a warning and another claiming it had never received it.

The second impetus was the recent arrival at the seat of power, the General Secretaryship of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of Yuri V. Andropov, who had for fifteen years been Chairman of the KGB. Favoring his old agency, Andropov’s reign instituted an upsurge of increasingly aggressive espionage and “active measures” by the KGB against the West. It was known that Andropov highly favored, among active measures, the use of disinformation—the spreading of despondency and demoralization by the use of lies, agents of influence, and character assassination, and by the sowing of discord among the Allies with planted untruths.

Mrs. Thatcher, then earning her Soviet-awarded title of the Iron Lady, took the view that two can play at that game and indicated she would not blanch at the notion of Britain’s own intelligence agency offering the Soviets a little return match.

The new desk was given a ponderous title: Deception, Disinformation, and Psychological Operations. Of course, the title was at once reduced to Dee-Dee and Psy Ops, and thence simply to Dee-Dee.

A new desk head was appointed in November. Just as the man in charge of Equipment was known as the Quartermaster and the man in charge of the Legal Branch as the Lawyer, the new head of Dee-Dee was tagged by some wit in the canteen the Deceiver.

With hindsight—that precious gift so much more prevalent than its counterpart, foresight—the Chief, Sir Arthur, might have been criticized (and later was) for his choice: not a Head Office careerist accustomed to the prudence required of a true civil servant, but a former field agent, plucked from the East German desk.

The man was Sam McCready, and he ran the desk for seven years. But all good things come to an end. In the late spring of 1991 a conversation took place in the heart of Whitehall. …

The young aide rose from behind his desk in the outer office with a practiced smile. “Good morning, Sir Mark. The Permanent Under-Secretary asked that you be shown straight in.”

He opened the door to the private office of the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—the FCO—and ushered the visitor through it, closing the door behind him. The Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Robert Inglis, rose with a welcoming smile.

“Mark, my dear chap, how good of you to come.”

You do not become, however recently, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS, without developing a certain wariness when confronted by such warmth from a relative stranger who is clearly about to treat you as if you were blood brothers. Sir Mark steeled himself for a difficult meeting.

When he was seated, the country’s senior Foreign Office civil servant opened the scarred red dispatch box lying on his desk and withdrew a buff file distinguished by the red diagonal cross running from corner to corner.

“You have done the rounds of your stations and will doubtless let me have your impressions?” he asked.

“Certainly, Robert—in due course.”

Sir Robert Inglis followed the top-secret file with a red, paper-covered book secured at its spine by black plastic spiral binding.

“I have,” he began, “read your proposals, ‘SIS in the Nineties,’ in conjunction with the Intelligence Co-Ordinator’s latest shopping list. You seem to have met his requirements most thoroughly.”

“Thank you, Robert,” said the Chief. “Then may I count upon the Foreign Office’s support?”

The diplomat’s smile could have won prizes on an American game show.

“My dear Mark, we have no difficulties with the pitch of your proposals. But there are just a few points I would like to take up with you.”

Here it comes
, thought the Chief of the SIS.

“May I take it, for example, that these additional stations abroad that you propose have been agreed upon with the Treasury, and the necessary monies squirreled away in somebody’s budget?”

Both men well knew that the budget for the running of the Secret Intelligence Service does not come wholly from the Foreign Office. Indeed, only a small part comes out of the FCO budget. The real cost of the almost-invisible SIS, which unlike the American CIA keeps an extremely low profile, is shared among all the spending ministries in the government. The spread is right across the board, including even the unlikely Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food—perhaps on the grounds that they might one day wish to know how many cod the Icelanders are taking out of the North Atlantic.

Because its budget is spread so widely and hidden so well, the SIS cannot be “leaned upon” by the FCO with a threat of withholding funds if the FCO’s wishes are not met.

Sir Mark nodded. “There’s no problem there. The Co-Ordinator and I have seen the Treasury, explained the position (which we had cleared with the Cabinet Office), and Treasury has allocated the necessary cash, all tucked away in the research and development budgets of the least likely ministries.”

“Excellent,” beamed the Permanent Under-Secretary, whether he felt it was or not. “Then let us turn to something that
does
fall within my purview. I don’t know what your staffing position is, but we are facing some difficulties with regard to staffing the expanded Service that will result from the end of the Cold War and the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe. You know what I mean?”

Sir Mark knew exactly what he meant. The virtual collapse of Communism over the previous two years was changing the diplomatic map of the globe, and rapidly. The Diplomatic Corps was looking to expanded opportunities right across Central Europe and the Balkans, possibly even miniembassies in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia if they secured independence from Moscow. By inference, he was suggesting that with the Cold War now laid out in the morgue, the position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse: reduction of staff. Sir Mark was having none of it.

“Like you, we have no alternative but to recruit. Leaving recruitment to one side, the training alone is six months before we can bring a new man into Century House and release an experienced man for service abroad.”

The diplomat dropped his smile and leaned forward earnestly. “My dear Mark, this is precisely the meat of the discussion I wished to have with you. Allocations of space in our embassies, and to whom.”

Sir Mark groaned inwardly. The bastard was going for the groin. While the FCO cannot “get at” the SIS on budgetary grounds, it has one ace card always ready to play. The great majority of intelligence officers serving abroad do so under the cover of the embassy. That makes the embassy their host. No allocation of a “cover” job—no posting.

“And what is your general view for the future, Robert?” he asked.

“In future, I fear, we will simply not be able to offer positions to some of your more … colorful staffers. Officers whose cover is clearly blown. Brass-plate operators. In the Cold War it was acceptable; in the new Europe they would stick out like sore thumbs. Cause offense. I’m sure you can see that.”

Both men knew that agents abroad fell into three categories. “Illegal” agents were not within the cover of the embassy and were not the concern of Sir Robert Inglis. Officers serving inside the embassy were either “declared” or “undeclared.”

A declared officer, or brass-plate operator, was one whose real function was widely known. In the past, having such an intelligence officer in an embassy had worked like a dream. Throughout the Communist and Third Worlds, dissidents, malcontents, and anyone else who wished knew just whom to come to and pour out their woes as to a father confessor. It had led to rich harvests of information and some spectacular defectors.

What the senior diplomat was saying was that he wanted no more such officers any longer and would not offer them space. His dedication was to the maintenance of his department’s fine tradition of appeasement of anyone not born British.

“I hear what you are saying, Robert, but I cannot and will not start my term as Chief of the SIS with a purge of senior officers who have served long, loyally, and well.”

“Find other postings for them,” suggested Sir Robert. “Central and South America, Africa …”

“And I cannot pack them off to Burundi until they come up for retirement.”

“Desk jobs, then. Here at home.”

“You mean what is called ‘unattractive employments,’ ” said the Chief. “Most will not take them.”

“Then they must go for early retirement,” said the diplomat smoothly. He leaned forward again. “Mark, my dear chap, this is not negotiable. I will have the Five Wise Men with me on this, be assured of it, seeing that I am one myself. We will agree to handsome compensation, but …”

The Five Wise Men are the Permanent Under-Secretaries of the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defense, and the Treasury. Among them, these five wield enormous power in the corridors of government. Among other things they appoint (or recommend to the Prime Minister, almost the same thing) the Chief of the SIS and the Director General of the Security Service, MI-5.

Sir Mark was deeply unhappy, but he knew the realities of power well enough. He would have to concede. “Very well, but I will need guidance on procedures.”

What he meant was that, for his own position among his own staff, he wanted to be visibly overruled. Sir Robert Inglis was expansive; he could afford to be.

“Guidance will be forthcoming at once,” he said. “I will ask the other Wise Men for a hearing, and we will lay down new rules for a new set of circumstances. What I propose is that you instigate, under the new rules that will be handed down, what the lawyers call ‘a class action’ and thus establish specimen counts.”

“Class action? Specimen counts? What are you talking about?” asked Sir Mark.

“A precedent, my dear Mark. A single precedent that will then operate for the whole group.”

“A scapegoat?”

“An unpleasant word. Early retirement with generous pension rights can hardly be called victimization. You take one officer whose early departure could be envisaged without demur, hold a hearing, and thus set your precedent.”

“One officer? Had you anyone in mind?”

Sir Robert steepled his fingers and gazed at the ceiling.

“Well, there is always Sam McCready.”

Of course. The Deceiver. Ever since his latest display of vigorous if unauthorized initiative in the Caribbean three months earlier, Sir Mark had been aware that the Foreign Office regarded him as a sort of unleashed Genghis Khan. Odd, really. Such a … crumpled fellow.

*   *   *

Sir Mark was driven back across the Thames to his headquarters, Century House, in a deeply introspective mood. He knew the senior civil servant in the Foreign Office had not merely “proposed” the departure of Sam McCready—he was insisting on it. From the Chief’s point of view, he could not have chosen a more difficult demand.

In 1983, when Sam McCready had been chosen to head up the new desk, Sir Mark had been a Deputy Controller, a contemporary of McCready and only one rank above him. He liked the quirky, irreverent agent whom Sir Arthur had appointed to the new post—but then, so did just about everybody.

Shortly afterward, Sir Mark had been sent to the Far East for three years (he was a fluent Mandarin-speaker) and had returned in 1986 to be promoted to Deputy Chief. Sir Arthur retired, and a new Chief sat in the hot seat. Sir Mark had succeeded
him
the previous January.

Before leaving for China, Sir Mark had, like others, speculated that Sam McCready would not last long. The Deceiver, or so ran the received wisdom, was too rough a diamond to cope easily with the in-house politics of Century House.

For one thing, he had thought at the time, none of the regional desks would take kindly to the new man trying to operate in their jealously guarded territories. There would be turf wars that could only be handled by a consummate diplomat, and whatever else his talents, McCready had never been seen as that. For another, the somewhat scruffy Sam would hardly fit into the world of smoothly tailored senior officers, most of whom were products of Britain’s exclusive public schools.