Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus

Author:Tom Marcus [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781405927888
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-10-05T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

We’d been on this Russian job for weeks now. I loved working against these guys; they truly understood how to operate on foreign soil, and, despite posing as diplomats based out of the Russian Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens, they were anything but diplomatic. Most of the time foreign intelligence operators from the Russian SVR were here to advance their own technical or military progress. They would hardly ever try to recruit members of the British Parliament because they knew the risks of being caught were incredibly high.

Britain is a world leader in military tech, especially equipment that requires lasers, so its defence companies and civilian tech firms that become the targets of hostile intelligence agencies. They operate high levels of security and counter-intelligence to prevent corporate espionage, so they were still a difficult nut to crack, but with the right squirrel it was not impossible. I loved the Russians, though, because despite them trying to steal secrets they would do it in a way that was subtle – no sledgehammers involved unless it was a reprisal on one of their own defecting agents.

I always thought of the intelligence officers from the SVR, who are basically MI6’s counterparts, as the stealthy bank robbers. Not the sort that would stick 10kg of military-grade explosives on the safe door, blow it, and walk out with the loot, but the type that has everyone looking in one direction while they flirt with the security guards. Once the vault door is open, they leave virtually everything apart from one seemingly insignificant piece of jewellery. Then they close the door behind them and it is weeks before anyone realizes anything is missing, by which point they are either out of the country or have planted enough ‘evidence’ somewhere else to mean that everyone chases their tails for years before they truly understand what’s happened.

Stealing secrets with a feather, that’s how the Russians did it. This particular job started out following a Russian SVR officer as he left the Russian Embassy in his Mercedes S Class with the 248 diplomatic plates, but over the weeks we’d stopped our surveillance of him and changed instead to watching the woman he’d recruited to steal some information about a piece of equipment used in satellite imagery. The Russian had recruited a tall blonde in her early twenties and encouraged her to start a relationship with one of the assistant engineers on the satellite projects. She had massive debts, which he used as the hook to get her to do what he asked. It was starting to work too; we’d watched this blonde woman and the slightly overweight engineer go on a few dates, sharing some late-night drinks as they grew closer.

The Russians’ hope was that once the blonde had completely embedded herself in the engineer’s life, they could gradually start hacking his emails and phone messages. This data would be pieced together with further information the blonde would glean from him during some pillow talk about his job. This was clever, as it distanced the Russians from the situation.

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