The Big Breach (14 page)

Back in my room at the Arena, the brown envelope inside the paper contained a plain sheet of A4 paper. Surprisingly, there was also a thick wadge of œ50 notes, amounting to œ1,000 in total. Eager for an explanation, I moistened a ball of cotton wool with the doctored Polo aftershave and applied it to the blank sheet and waited. Nothing happened. I reversed the sheet and tried again. This time typed script gradually appeared, faint pink at first, then darkening to a deep purple. It was a message from the Rome station:

MESSAGE BEGINS

1. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SUCCESSFUL FIRST MEETING WITH APOCALYPSE. THE INTELLIGENCE WAS EXCELLENT BUT, AS YOU POINT OUT, WE NEED FURTHER DETAIL. UNFORTUNATELY APOCALYPSE CONTACTED ROME STATION YESTERDAY AT 1900 HOURS ON HIS EMERGENCY CONTACT NUMBER. HIS MAFIA CONTACT HAS REQUESTED A MEETING IN MILAN AT 2100 TODAY. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU DEBRIEF APOCALYPSE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE MEETING. WE FEAR HE MAY BE IN TROUBLE. WE ENCLOSE £1,000 STERLING TO PAY HIM IF REQUIRED.

2. YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR WAY TO MILAN THIS EVENING. ROM/1 SEC WILL MEET YOU IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOTEL TREVISO AT 2130. APOCALYPSE IS DRIVING TO MILAN FROM YOUR LOCATION AFTER YOUR MEETING. WE SUGGEST YOU ACCOMPANY HIM.

GRS0000

ENDS

I didn't like the last line. We'd been trained not to let an agent take control of a meeting and getting in his car would put APOCALYPSE literally in the driving seat. If the scenario were real, I would hire my own vehicle and make my own way to Milan. But this was an exercise and perhaps there was another agenda. Were Ball and Long testing my initiative with a little ploy? Did they expect me to refuse the order to get in APOCALYPSE's car and make my own way? Or did they want me to accept a lift from APOCALYPSE so that my arrest could be engineered more easily? Evading the inevitable arrest would not be well received by the DS - much of the training value of the exercise lay in the interrogation phase. Against my instinct, I reluctantly decided to go with APOCALYPSE.

There was no smoke alarm in the room, but nevertheless I took the sheet of paper bearing the instructions and carefully folded it, concertina fashion, into four and stood it in the empty bathroom sink. Lit at the top, it would burn downwards and make much less smoke than when lit from the bottom. The Zippo's flame touched the paper and, accelerated by the alcohol-based aftershave, quickly consumed it. I swilled the ashes down the plughole, taking care that no trace of soot was left in the sink.

I met APOCALYPSE again later that afternoon in a small caf‚ just behind the town church. He had arrived early and was sitting on his own in the corner table. The school day had just finished and the other tables were crowded with giggling adolescents. APOCALYPSE didn't look too comfortable. `Shall we go somewhere else?' I offered.

`We'll only be a minute or so. I've got you lots more information,' APOCALYPSE whispered. He delved into his small backpack and handed me three photocopies. They were the specifications for the SA-14s. `I've also got you lots more detail on the tramp steamer and the shipment. You'll need pen and paper to write it down,' he said firmly. I fished out my notebook and he dictated the name of the fictitious ship, sailing date, expected rendezvous date in Ireland, cargo bill-of-loading number and the number of the end-user certificate which the Libyans had used to acquire the weaponry.

I guessed that APOCALYPSE was loading me up with documentation so that when I came to be arrested, there would be plenty of incriminating material on me for my interrogators. But I couldn't throw the papers away. The exercise scenario was that I should give them to H/ROM SEC in the Hotel Treviso that evening, and the DS wouldn't be too happy if I jettisoned them. While APOCALYPSE excused himself to visit the bathroom, I slipped the scrap of paper down the inside of my sock. Dealing with the other papers would have to wait.

APOCALYPSE returned to his seat. `Listen, I've got to go to Milan tonight to meet the mafia guys. I don't know what they want. I want you to come up with me in case there's trouble.'

APOCALYPSE's invitation reeked of a trap, but the DS wanted me to fall for it. `Yes, I got the same message last night,' I replied. `I've got my bag. Let's go.'

Minutes later, we were speeding up the S7
superstrada
towards Rome in APOCALYPSE's hired Fiat Panda. APOCALYPSE drove in silence, deep in thought. We were nearing the centre of the capital before he turned to me. `I've got to make a phone call to my girlfriend. I'll just be a minute.' He pulled into an AGIP petrol station on the Via 20 Settembre, and left the car to make the call. I guessed that he would probably be calling the DS, alerting them that we would soon be arriving at the arrest site.

Using a 500-lire coin, I partially unscrewed the trim panel from the side of the passenger footwell, stuffed the three sheets of information on the SA-14s down the gap and had just finished screwing it back together when APOCALYPSE returned. `OK, everything's in order,' he announced, 'Let's get on our way to Milan.'

We navigated northwards through the busy Rome traffic and were approaching the entry to the A1
autostrada
when we came upon a carabinieri roadblock controlling the traffic flowing on to the motorway. Four uniformed officers were questioning the driver of a battered Fiat 500, their dark-blue Alfa-Romeos parked alongside. As we drew closer, one raised a white gloved hand, indicating for us to pull in. `Shit' exclaimed APOCALYPSE, a little too vehemently. We drew to a halt just as the little Fiat accelerated away in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke.

One of the carabinieri strutted over to APOCALYPSE's window, dark glasses hiding his eyes. `Documenti,' he snapped, clicking his fingers.

APOCALYPSE looked at me, bemused. `He wants your driving licence and insurance details,' I urged.

`I haven't got them,' replied APOCALYPSE with a shrug of his shoulders.

The carabinieri glared back. `Documenti,' he repeated, then in accented English, `Passport.'

APOCALYPSE shrugged his shoulders, `I left it in my hotel,' he replied, speaking slowly and deliberately.

The carabinieri beckoned to his boss who strutted over and barked out a few orders. `Chiavi,' he demanded impatiently, while the first carabinieri went round to the front of our car to send the registration number through to their control centre. The officer reached through the window, grabbed the ignition keys and ordered us out of the car. Two other carabinieri started searching the boot. `Whose car is this?' the senior officer asked in heavily accented English.

`It's a Hertz rental car' answered APOCALYPSE.

The officer conferred on his radio again and ordered us to wait. I had expected to be arrested but still was not sure if this was a mock arrest or whether we had genuinely stumbled into one of the many random traffic controls on Italian roads. Surely the DS would not plan a mock arrest to this level of detail? That smoking Fiat 500 pulling away as we arrived was so plausible. Could this be a real road block? Was the exercise was about to go spectacularly wrong?

The senior officer came back and snapped a few orders to his subordinates, then turned to us. `There are some irregularities in the paperwork of your car. You must come with us to the station while we investigate further.'

They bundled us into the back of separate Alfa-Romeos, carabinieri clambering in either side of me, SMGs cradled in their laps. Two other officers took charge of APOCALYPSE's Fiat. With sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, we hurtled down the
autostrada
, traffic parting in front of us.

We turned off ten kilometres later and pulled into a carabinieri station in the shadows of the flyover. My captors wordlessly dragged me out of the Alfa-Romeo, escorted me into a large room and pushed me into a chair in front of a substantial steel desk. Four armed guards stood over me. Another officer walked in, causing the guards to spring to attention. He was dressed in civilian clothes and spoke impeccable English. `I'm sorry to treat you like this, but we have had intelligence that two mafia contacts were making their way up to Milan in a car like yours. We need to eliminate you from our enquiries.'

He handed me some forms and ordered me to fill in details of name, address, occupation and date of birth. The DS would check that we had remembered all the basic details of our alias cover story. I handed back the paper and the civilian cross-examined me on them. I answered confidently, determined not to let him catch me out so easily.

One of the carabinieri who made the original arrest entered and interrupted proceedings. `Capitano, ho trovato niente nella macchina.' It was close enough to Spanish for me to understand that they had failed to find anything incriminating in the hire car. The captain glared at his subordinate and irritably ordered him to go back and continue searching. Eventually they would find the papers hidden in the door panel, but hopefully it would take them a while. Meanwhile, I rehearsed in my head a cover story to explain their existence.

The captain questioned me politely for the next hour, checking through the minutiae of my cover story. It reminded me of the Mendoza police interrogation in Argentina. I did not diverge from my cover story and he was starting to run out of justification for holding me when the carabinieri returned, triumphantly clutching the photocopies. The captain studied them for a few minutes, then turned to me. `So, Dr Noonan, if you really are a historian as you claim, how do you explain these papers in your car?' He shuffled through them in front of me. `They appear to be detailed descriptions of a shoulder-launched anti-helicopter weapon, which we know the mafia have just acquired from Libya.'

I faked an innocent expression. `I've never seen them before,' I replied, shrugging my shoulders. `They must have been left in the car by the previous hirer.'

It was a plausible explanation. The captain had not uncovered even a tiny chink in my cover story, but I knew he would not release me yet as the DS would want to hold me until my cover was broken. The captain got up and left.

Half an hour later, he returned. His mood was more hostile. `Dr Noonan, I do not believe your story. I am arresting you under Italian anti-terrorist laws. You do not have the right to call a lawyer.' He snapped his fingers. Two of the four guards handcuffed me and frogmarched me back outside. Their grip on me was vice-like. If these guys were acting, they were doing a good job. As they pushed me towards the two Alfa-Romeo patrol cars, I caught a glimpse of the Fiat. The wheels were off, both front seats and all the carpets were stripped out and the bonnet insulation had been pulled away. Foolishly, I couldn't hold back a smirk. One of the guards noticed and, as he bundled me into the back of the Alfa, he gave my head a stealthy bash against the door pillar. Armed carabinieri climbed in on either side. One of them blindfolded me, then thrust my head down between my knees, viciously tightening the handcuffs a couple of notches so they bit into my wrists.

They dragged me from the car, stiff, aching and still blindfolded some 40 minutes later, and escorted me indoors. I didn't know it, but I was at the main carabinieri HQ just outside Rome. The blindfold was pulled away and I found myself in a small cell, no more than ten feet by ten feet, furnished with a simple iron bed with a mattress and one pillow. In the corner was a continental-style hole-in-the-floor toilet, with a shower rose above it.

One of the guards released the handcuffs, letting blood flow back into my numbed hands, and ordered me to strip. As I removed each garment, he shook them and examined them carefully for hidden objects. The scrap of paper bearing the details of the ship and end user certificates was still in my right sock. Steadying myself by leaning on the mattress, I pulled off the sock, secreting the wedge of paper between thumb and palm. Handing the sock to him with my left hand, I steadied myself with my right hand as I pulled off my left sock. As he examined and shook it, I slipped the incriminating evidence under the pillow.

My clothes were stuffed into a black bin liner and the carabinieri handed me a pair of grey overalls a size too small, blindfolded me again, then handcuffed me face downwards to the bed. The heavy door clanged shut so probably the guards were gone, but I waited for five minutes, listening carefully, before moving. There wasn't much slack on the chain of the handcuffs but by sliding them along the rail of the bedstead I groped for the scrap of paper under the pillow, transferred it to my mouth and swallowed it.

Lying chained to the bed felt isolated and slightly humiliating, but it was just an exercise. I tried to imagine what it would really be like to be caught working under natural cover. Ball told us that it had happened only once to an MI6 officer. He was working in Geneva when, unbeknown to him, a fellow guest in his hotel was murdered. One of the staff had noticed the officer chatting - wholly innocently - to the guest earlier in the evening, so he became a key suspect. At 4 a.m., the police burst into his room and arrested him. His cover story was solid, however, and he survived the police interrogation. He was eventually released.

It seemed like hours before the door opened again. The guards unlocked me from the bed, handcuffed my wrists, hauled me to my feet and man-handled me down a corridor and out into welcome fresh air. It must have been just after nightfall because the still air was laden with dew. The guards forced me up some stairs and into another building. I heard the guards whispering something in Italian to a third person and then got a whiff of the strong, unmistakable smell of stale cigarettes and whisky, indicating that Ball was nearby. The guards pushed me onwards for a few more yards, forced me into a chair, handcuffed my wrists behind me and pulled the blindfold away.