18.
AN MI5 RECRUIT?
Marina’s “minder”, Patricia, was assigned to ensure that they had a quiet weekend, and although they could not resist getting the Sunday papers when they walked out along the Embankment in the morning, they avoided talking too much about the Russian situation. They had lunch at a riverside restaurant and chatted about their careers to date, their families and their boyfriends. Later on, they ordered pizzas to be delivered in the evening while they watched TV.
On Monday morning, the instruction was for Patricia to take Marina to a meeting in the office soon after 10 am – where she found herself in an interview room, confronted by two MI5 officials. One was a specialist interrogator who introduced himself as Tony, and the other was Tom Spencer, who said he was the senior officer coordinating the inquiry into her relationship with Nikolai Aldanov.
Tony began by explaining that she was not facing any charges but was obviously a key witness in any action which might follow involving Aldanov. In front of him, he had the 100-plus pages of transcripts from their online exchanges, which, he said, had been carefully analysed.
“Did you feel you were being encouraged to share information about your job with him?” he asked.
“Well, not at the time,” she replied. “We both asked questions about each other’s lives, just to get to know each other, I suppose.”
“Do you know now that he was duping you into believing that he was a naval officer in Sevastopol when he was really an intelligence officer in Moscow chatting to you from inside Russia’s secret service headquarters?”
“Oh, no! Are you serious? I am sure you are, of course, but gosh, this is really a shock to me. I suppose I first began to realise that something was not right about it all from things your people said to me in Portsmouth – but not this. Is he really a spy, then?”
“We’ll find out. Do you remember him asking you about the new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier?”
“Well yes, of course. It had just arrived in Portsmouth when we were in touch, and I could see it from my office – but it was not a secret. All the newspapers had pictures of it – it was enormous and dwarfed everything else around it. We were all talking about it.”
“Did he want to know any more information about the ship? When it would become operational, for example?”
“I don’t really remember now, but I didn’t know very much, anyway. He was obviously interested, and I might have mentioned it again when it sailed off to go on exercises and then visited New York – but that was all in the papers, as well. If you have the transcripts there you probably know more than I can recall.”
“It is pretty clear to me that he was probing for information – in fact, this sort of thing came up quite often.”
“I don’t remember thinking that at the time – we just wrote chatty notes to each other like any other couple might do, and obviously we had the navy and ships as a common interest. But I don’t have any confidential information in my job.”
“Did you wonder why you had to sign the Official Secrets Act, then?”
“It just seemed like something routine to me, but I am sure I was careful.”
Tony shuffled through his file and then asked, “Did you mention that some other British ships were operating in the Med when he told you he would be heading that way?”
“If I did, it was just to show him that I was interested in where he was going. I think we talked about Malta, but I am sure he mentioned the Med first. I know where all our ships are when they are at sea, but I certainly didn’t tell him anything confidential that I can remember.”
“That may well be the case,” said Tony sternly. “But it looks as though he was softening you up and that he thought he was on to a valuable source of information in the long run.”
“Yes, I think I can see that now – but he seemed such an interesting and friendly sort of man, and I was really interested in meeting a Russian. I have always wanted to start finding out more about where my family came from, and I suppose that was the main thing on my mind when I was asking him questions about himself.”
The interrogator then continued by reading extracts from the online exchanges and pointing out the extracts which had been of concern to the security services.
“This was a potentially dangerous liaison between the Russian GRU and the Royal Navy because you were clearly close to the heart of naval operations. We have been analysing all the things you said, and it is probably true that you did not pass on anything specifically confidential, but we can see where he was leading you.”
“I realise that now,” said a rather cowed Marina. “I am really sorry. What happens now?”
At this point, Tom Spencer stepped in. “It looks like we have a good case against Aldanov, and when we are ready, there will be a court case, and we will want you to give evidence against him. That will probably be a month or more away, and we’ll discuss your evidence in much more detail nearer the time. But what plans do you have, Marina?”
“I suppose I just want to go back to work again and live as normal a life as possible – will that be a problem?”
“I think it will be,” said Tom. “We know that the Russian embassy people are anxious to get to you and to your father, perhaps to try to influence your evidence and maybe play on your Russian background in some way. Would you say you still have what I might call Russian sympathies?”
“Not at all,” she replied quickly. “Not in the political sense. It is just the history of Russia that interests me because of the family background – it would be the same wherever they came from. A lot of people are researching their ancestors on the Internet these days and discovering things they never knew.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Tom. “I’ve been doing it myself. But it is a bit different when the Russian secret service gets involved – and why do you think they want to see your father as well?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marina. “He was not very forthcoming when I asked him about that in Portsmouth last Friday, but I think he was quite worried – and not just about me. I can talk to him again, if you like?”
“Sure, you can do that, but I think we will be talking to him as well. There is another problem, and that’s the press. This has all become a big news story in the papers and on TV, and they all want to interview you, and we are anxious to prevent that happening because of your value to us as a witness. You can always say no, of course, but they will be very persistent and can make life difficult, as well as offering you a big fat cheque. One way forward would be to agree to your doing one exclusive interview with someone fairly reliable like the BBC, and we would help you to prepare for this. But that would only create another news story, and everything you said or didn’t say would be analysed and followed up on, and all this could create a wrong impression about you when the time came for you to give evidence at the trial.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Marina. “So how can I avoid all this for a month or more?”
“I have a suggestion,” said Tom. “Would you consider moving to work for us in MI5, or at least give it a try? You already work for the Government, and a transfer to the MOD in some capacity would be quite straightforward. Then when the trial is over, you could quietly move from Portsmouth to join us here in this section, perhaps on the Russian desk?”
This unexpected idea made Marina gasp in amazement. And then, for the first time, she sensed that something positive might come from all this – but then she realised that it would also mean returning to London, and she was enjoying Portsmouth so much more.